We all know the story of the hare and the tortoise. In the corporate world, an extended version of the story eventually got more attention than the original one, mainly for its message on “competence”. Here the hare and the tortoise ran four times. In the second time, the hare corrected his mistakes: he was not lazy and won the race at ease. This time the morale of the story changed to “Fast and steady is better than slow and steady”. In the third race, the tortoise proposed a change in the track, both ran at their full speed. There was a river in the track and the finishing point was on the other part of the river. The hare reached the bank in a full swing and fell in dismay on how to cross the river. The tortoise reached the place slowly, and swam the river to reach its goal conveniently. The hare did not have “swimming” in its competency lists, therefore he lost the race. Leadership: Understanding followers competence
When employees
become followers and the boss becomes the leader, it brings
benefits for both
the employee and
the employer
Mahbubur Rahman
We all know the story of the hare and the tortoise. In the corporate world, an extended version of the story eventually got more attention than the original one, mainly for its message on competence. Here the hare and the tortoise ran four times. In the second time, the hare corrected his mistakes: he was not lazy and won the race at ease. This time the morale of the story changed to Fast and steady is better than slow and steady. In the third race, the tortoise proposed a change in the track, both ran at their full speed. There was a river in the track and the finishing point was on the other part of the river. The hare reached the bank in a full swing and fell in dismay on how to cross the river. The tortoise reached the place slowly, and swam the river to reach its goal conveniently. The hare did not have swimming in its competency lists, therefore he lost the race.
All employees have a set of competencies, they can perform to their fullest if their competencies are judged and utilized properly. The tortoise is incompetent in running but competent in swimming. Therefore, it can be said there is no incompetent employee in real life. The charismatic leaders understand it from their gifted intuition; everyone does not have this fortune. In organizational structure, leaders are mainly positional.
Charisma is hardly found in positional leadership. Therefore, these leaders do not understand the way to help bloom a subordinate. They lack vision. Their power comes from the organizational hierarchy. In a place where the organisational structure or system is weak, few gain favour of the top management and become excessively powerful. This power is misused to gain allegiance. Nepotism becomes the determinant culture to survive from corporate politics and conflicts. They recruit the substandard people, promote and reward them. This is the main cause for the presence of unjust culture in an organization, its poor management and inferior organizational achievements. If the leader is a mediocre, the followers are too.
Here the HR role comes in: choosing the leader, developing the leader, finding the suitable leader for future. Unfortunately, in many third world countries, the HR role is not extended enough to perform this task. Positional leaders have an inferiority complex that brings out their defence mechanism. Inferiority complex hurts ones ego, and the person with this disease brings out his most powerful defence mechanism to hide it. The dangerous part of this problem starts when s/he starts hiding it from himself. The subconscious mind starts playing tricks because none wants to be inferior. One of those tricks is having superiority thoughts of oneself, negative and demeaning thoughts about others. The subconscious mind starts constructing a wall around the ego. This wall helps them to hide their own flaws from themselves and restrict other people to come in and have a look. The showoff, egocentric behaviour pattern, egoist and egotistical attitudes make the subordinate to fear his leader, very rarely attracting respect from him.
Positional leadership is not a bad thing but when it is not taken care of, kept underdeveloped and not nurtured systematically it may create these problems.
This discussion, however, should not be misjudged with a popular leader. Popularity is completely a different thing. In an organization, popular leaders can sometimes be harmful for both the employee and the organizations stance. Kristine Maudal and Even Fossen in their blogpost on The Huffington Post titled Being a Good Leader Is Not a Popularity Contest persuasively said that popularity has two perspectives, one is shortsighted, superficial, and the other one is long-standing, based on trust, respect and knowledge.
Popular leaders cannot take critical decisions; if they do, they cannot stay with it or those sophomoric decisions do not bring sustainable betterment. The decision of a popular leader pleases few people, sometime individuals; on the other hand, genuine leaders make decisions to improve, develop and achieve.
When employees become followers and the boss becomes the leader, the organization brings benefit for the employee and the employer simultaneously. This notion should be carefully understood because many people become a mob-leader and without strengthening the organizational discipline and culture, they destroy it, and when they switch jobs they switch in a group. They are only comfortable with people they previously worked with and found apparent loyalty. This sort of leadership is based on small personal gains or a possibility of gains in the future, sometime on greed, undue benefits, insecurity, etc. Mob followers do not follow; they keep connected for future opportunity. In the corporate world if the boss tells a joke and people in the room laugh aloud, it does not necessarily mean all enjoyed it!
Understanding the followers competence makes a leader efficient and successful. Followers assignments match their skills, develop it to the fullest possibility. The human becomes a resource. Then the job satisfaction and career growth automatically follows. If a leader chooses a person for doing a work where the person does not have interest or competence, it is a case of leadership failure. The person involved
should not feel rejected, unworthy or incompetent.
The writer is Chief Human Resources Officer, Beximco Media
