On our ‘Engaging People, Powering Companies’ podcast last week,

Amrit talked about how he hears more than he would like to, about leaders who say one thing publicly and then do another privately, behind the closed doors of business. Leaders who speak so proudly of how they treat their people, how they operate, the values that guide them, and then go and violate and undermine it all in the boardroom with their behaviour and conduct. People saying quietly, ‘but do you really know what it is like here, because it isn’t that; it isn’t those words on the wall or in the company handbook, far from it’.

Saying one thing and doing another is a sure-fire way to erode any culture of it’s worth, and instead creates one where people talk behind backs, whisper in corners, and creates little subcultures of people connecting through how truly awful it is to work somewhere. Culture is created and cultivated, whether overtly or covertly, and it is powerful, be it the power of strong healthy working environments or God-awful ones. Leaders who succumb to the power and allow it to go to their heads, are catalysts for terrible cultures that of course filter through the organisation, hitting the bottom line.

Amrit pondered if power itself lessons a person’s morality and quoted historian, politician and writer, Lord Acton, when he said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Is it the frailty of the human condition that when one experiences power, they can’t help but be corrupted by it. Are we all that weak? Does power make us stray from the very things that might have driven us to step up and lead in the first place, turning us into monsters who are self-serving?

I am going to call ‘you know what’ on this, and quote Lord Acton once more when he said, “authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force”. And in this instance, I am going to refer to liberty as being what helps people bring their best selves to work, and to be part of something that they believe in. So then, when does power become force, control, power over people, having that ‘don’t you know who I am’ attitude that creates the divide of us and them? I know firsthand that great leaders exist. I also know firsthand that they don’t. As do we all, I am sure. So, what makes the great, great, and stops them being corrupt by power, and what makes some lose themselves to the dark side?

Rather than the belief that power corrupts all, research shows instead, that roles of power draw those with dispositions of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism and social dominance to them. This research (“Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: could participant self-selection have led to the cruelty?”) was conducted by Thomas Carnahan and Sam McFarland in 2007, due to the first experiment (1971) concluding that those that played the role of a prison guard in this experiment, became sadistic and exercised their power over inmates. The 1971 conclusion was that power corrupts, and this view went on to guide social psychologists for decades.

However, the early experiment failed to measure one crucial aspect, and that was the behavioural and cognitive patterns of those who willingly wanted to contribute to the experiment in the first place. Who was being drawn to an experiment that required the playing of a prison guard, a position that had the potential to dominate over another? The second experiment showed that those that volunteered lacked empathy and altruism and instead held those tendencies mentioned above. It showed that power reveals a person’s innate nature, who they really are. This is a nicer story by far, but still poses a problem and a scary one at that.

How on earth can we make sure that those that end up in positions of power are the right people and want liberty over dominance? Power with the people rather than power over the people? In an ideal world we could screen all leaders before they take the helm, and make sure that they have the right characteristics and traits to do the job for the greater good for humanity, before they can step up. Blue sky thinking indeed!

Researching the latest thinking on leadership this week across an array of articles, suggested that the top three characteristics needed for great leadership are emotional intelligence and the ability to build and maintain relationships, trust and transparency, and to be empathetic. All very human qualities and if we want to do business the right way, bringing our people along with us and doing our bit for the good of our species, well then, this just feels right. But these powerful positions draw a different breed to them, so what is the answer?

You are not going to be surprised when I tell you I don’t have one. What I can say is that I am ever hopeful. Hopeful that we are learning and growing as a species and generally want to do better for our planet and each other. Maybe as we learn more about what we need and what serves us, then the balance will shift and we will find methods and systems that protect the masses rather than the elite, egotistical few. Until the revolution, one predictor that feels like a great guide of who would fit in at the top is human values. Human values are widely researched and gives a really good understanding of what drives and motivates people. Human values are relatively unwavering and would help really assess the goals of those in positions of power.

If it could become common place for us to make this part of a recruitment process, before appointing someone, this could really help to understand what type of leader someone will be. I know that there would need to be a willingness for this, which is an issue in itself, however, it is possible. And as I said, I am ever hopeful!

In the meantime, swimming in that hope, we here at &Evolve, have been working hard with a chartered psychologist and a behavioural scientist, to look at how we can understand and measure the degree of alignment between a person/team/organisations human values set, in the form of a survey. We were fortunate enough to be allowed to validate and correlate our work with that of Professor Schwartz, whose work on human values is renowned and respected greatly. It is a start, and a way of bringing this insight into the mainstream as a tool, and when the world is ready, we are too! Until then, we will work tirelessly to make it a little better, one conversation at a time. 

Listen to the podcast here.