What if our definition of leadership has been wrong all along? And if it is genuinely incorrect, what resulting harm is it causing to those itching to attain a leader role?
Dr. Maja Korica
“Leaders are part of a huge stumbling block to change,” said Dr. Maja Korica. “This idea of charismatic leadership is entirely irrelevant to me.”
Korica is an Associate Professor of Management and Organization at Warwick Business School, at the University of Warwick. Her research focuses on understanding complex and rarely seen organizational settings in addition to executive management and leadership in practice.
Korica thinks that many senior leaders believe in the adage, “I’ve worked hard to get to this level; now you should work harder than me in order to succeed.” With such a mindset, leaders are consciously (or perhaps unconsciously) pitching an ethos where work must become central to one’s life to thrive.
For example, if the up-and-coming leader is not focusing all of their time and thus devoting their centrality to ‘the work,’ senior leaders may ignore them for promotion or plum new assignments. In many organizations, this is precisely how succession planning works.
When the institution of work becomes the primary mechanism for meaning in life—as demonstrated by leaders whom exhibit workaholism or presenteeism traits—the result becomes a broader set of environmental constraints that inhibit any chance for a more caring and humanistic place of work.
A case in point is the rather infamous example of Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of America’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon famously said in 2021 that he wanted employees exclusively back in the office rather than working from home because “it doesn’t work for young people.”
“It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle. It doesn’t work for culture,” Dimon said.
It is this example that permeates many leaders throughout the world. If you’re young and don’t hustle—working hours at whatever the cost—you will not succeed.
Ultimately leaders have a moral duty, which is a responsibility to others, to those they serve. “What can you do to create better conditions so others can thrive?” Korica stated.
Senior leaders’ individual biases are then further propagated by wider tendencies in society that hold a lot of workers back. One might align this to a leader’s fundamental attribution error, as Korica suggests.
She alluded to an example with Best Buy. The organization was once a proud and high-performing example of the Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE) model. Unfortunately, it was swiftly cancelled in 2013 by an incoming CEO. Korica believes the company’s new CEO had to signal to the market for “top-down accountability.” As a result, ROWE became a casualty despite evidence showing tremendous increases in productivity, engagement, customer satisfaction, and so on.
What is clear is that CEOs and senior leaders operate from separate places than the typical team member. As you climb the ladder, leaders become removed from the realness of the organization. “You also are fundamentally different from others,” said Korica, “yet due to fundamental attribution error, leaders are unaware of this ridiculously wrong view of people’s reality.”
When the concepts of passion, hustle, and ego importance eclipse the need for dignity, balance, and care, organizations become rife with disengagement or attrition.
Korica points out another example with Goldman Sachs. How do junior bankers learn poor judgment, inauthentic leadership skills, and a work-all-the-time mindset? “It’s because of what they observe of senior bankers,” she said. Perhaps it’s a real-life example of Martin Seligman’s concept known as learned helplessness: when employees feel that they have no control over their situation, they may begin to behave helplessly. (Or, in this case, as horrible employees.)
Not only do we have to worry about leaders in organizations who exacerbate poor leadership practices, but mainstream and business media also continue to portray “celebrity leaders” in ways that glorify many negative characteristics.
Korica points out the media’s culpability by their repeated use of what is referred to as “ideational roles.” “These traditional masculine, aggressive visions of who these males are is what dominates the press,” she said. “This label of entrepreneurship gives them a very distinct positive notion.”
These sorts of leaders are benefitting on the back of positive public associations with the word entrepreneur. Korica suggests it then allows for terms like poaching, taking public, paying no taxes, using size to shut down smaller competitors to help justify to others what it means to be a successful entrepreneur.
“When good ideas are associated with celebrity entrepreneurs, it becomes a way to justify the bad behavior of these leaders,” she said.
Young people will then look to these celebrity leaders or entrepreneurs as the template to lead. The positive association becomes entirely backwards to what employees and team members desire—or perhaps need—from their leaders.
“It is difficult to have conversations in the classroom with my students,” she said, “because the cult of leadership justifies a way to allow for morally dubious action because these entrepreneurs appear to be successful.”
The workaholic, uncaring, aggressive, and utterly out-of-touch leader winds up presenting a non-progressive, mythological entrepreneur based on faulty understanding. Said Korica, “Who are we giving pedestals to, and for what reasons?”
“Leadership is about action, not the pomp,” remarked Korica. “By making the elites look great, we are poisoning the pool.”
Indeed, if we cannot reset what it means to be a leader, there will be issues for years to come, pandemic or not.
Watch the interview with Dr. Maja Korica in its entirety below or listen to the podcast here.
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Check out my book, “Lead. Care. Win. How to Become a Leader Who Matters.” Thinkers50 #1 rated thinker, Amy. C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School, calls it “an invaluable roadmap.”
