Interestingly enough I am familiar with the types of behaviors
that Kramer describes in his article. I
work with the educational system and for a university that is nonprofit. And yes, even in the nonprofit sector we see
leaders rise and we see them crash and burn.
I can give one example of a co-worker of mine let’s call him John, who
started in the same ranks as I did. He
was blessed with a certain ambitiousness and assertiveness that I do not
possess. I watched him climb his way to
the top of the food chain until he was working at our main headquarters head to
head with the big honchos of our organization.
I remember at the Assistant Director position he was very well liked and
all of us always looked forward to spending time with him at reunions,
graduations, and other conferences that we attended. When he was promoted to Director, he still
maintained the same likeability and charisma with his fellow colleagues but his
staff was beginning to see how his new freedoms affected his job
performance. We who shared similar roles
were willing to forgive certain behaviors only because we knew him and still
respected him as a person. Kramer
explains that the followers of great leaders usually are not pointing out their
flaws and instead generally will look the other way (Kramer, 2003). Kramer explains the dangers that leaders face
when they don’t reflect on the ingratiating behavior their subordinates demonstrate
towards them and thus it creates the false illusion that they are perfect. Needless
to say, when John was promoted and moved to the “White House” of the
organization, which is the headquarters for the entire university, we began to
see the changes in him. Kramer (2003)
likes to call one of the big follies of leaders in these positions as the “sin
of omission” and this is where John started to fail as a leader. What got him to the top which was his
assertiveness, hard work and “whatever it takes” type of attitude began to
slack. He became lazy and started making
a lot of mistakes. Curiously, he had
always been someone who paid attention to details but he stopped “sweating the
small stuff” as Kramer (2003) would say.
Eventually his department suffered as well as his employees who had to
pick up the slack for him.
An interesting view on this topic is the fall of religious leaders. When we think of religious leaders we think
they are endowed with values such as kindness, compassion, empathy, honesty and
integrity, yet time and time again we see religious leaders fall from grace. One of the reasons that we are seeing this is “because
of the celebrity status we give” to these religious leaders (Wallen, 2015). They begin to lose perspective on why they
began the kind of work that so impassioned them in the beginning and are given almost
God-like qualities by their followers. In
this case, followers are just as much to blame in feeding the type of scandals
and corruption that befalls religious leaders because they are not reminding
them of their humility (Kramer, 2003). Kramer explains that it goes beyond personal
flaws or a lack of moral fiber, and in fact has to do with a change in behavior
that comes with the pursuit of power. According
to social psychologist Dacher Keltner, empirical studies show that “people who
have power suffer deficits in empathy, the ability to read emotions, and the
ability to adapt behaviors to other people” and furthermore, "power can
actually change how the brain functions” (Solomon, 2015). Scientifically, how power changes our
behavior as a leader makes a lot of sense. The science of neuroplasticity demonstrates “the
potential that the brain has to reorganize by creating new neural pathways to
adapt, as it needs” ("Neuroplasticity,"
2010). In fact, the science of
neuroplasticity is being used in many management and leadership programs to
teach people how to “rewire” their brains. One example is the Neuro Leadership
Institute which uses science to create better leaders. Banking on this idea of neuroplasticity, we
can imagine how leaders who are surrounded by power somehow lose touch with the
basic principles that got them to where they are. Our brains can easily rewire to adapt to new environments
and in essence is a way of survival. When
you are at the top of the food chain, the only way to stay at the top is to
survive, and that means doing whatever it takes. Hence we are willing to make many trade-offs
to guard this position and sometimes don’t even realize our mind has gone into
survival mode.
References
Kramer, R. M. (2003, October).
The harder they fall. Harvard Business
Review, 81(10), 58-66. Retrieved
from
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=09f16198-cfdb-44a9-bec4-5d9678b17694%40sessionmgr103&vid=0&hid=105&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d&preview=false#AN=10986098&db=bth
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