Good leaders like to be challenged all the time - it inspires them, helps retain their edge, and makes them stronger. More importantly, it helps them to think laterally, ideate aggressively, and foster out-of-box thinking - with the result that the organisation grows, and the teams grow along with their leaders. Such leaders always recruit sharp, inquisitive, hungry people.
On the other hand, bad leaders are invariably insecure managers - they like to be surrounded by people who are less qualified, who know less, who are non-confrontational, who are instruction-driven, who take readily to micro-management and who are not particularly ambitious. Bad leaders are invariably at the forefront of an army of obsequious, myopic, complacent people; and they spend far too much time with these people - at the cost of an indifferent organisation.
Organisational culture feeds the seeds of leadership : most leaders are born, but some are also made. Look for such an organisation; and try and work with such leaders.
The snappily-dressed interviewee waiting at reception looked
admiringly after a tall, arresting male in an impeccable suit who swept into the office with the general air of a busy managing director and vanished into an adjacent corridor.
“Is that someone terribly important ?” he asked the receptionist, who, without pausing in her typing, replied, “No, he’s an intern.”
“Wow!” replies the wannabe employee. “Then why does he dress that way ?”
“Because he would someday soon like to become someone very important."
A bit later, a gentleman with dishevelled hair and stubble emerged from a door and crossed into a room at the other end. The first button of his shirt was undone, a sleeve was rolled up, and most of the shirt was sticking out of the back of his trousers.
The interviewee looked after him with disfavour. “Wow! What a slob ! Who IS that, the janitor ?”
The receptionist glared at the candidate balefully: “That’s the Chairman of the Company.”
“Jeepers ! Why is he dressed like that ?”
“Because he has already become someone very important.”
Anachronistic anecdote, isn’t it ? I heard it decades ago.
Today, when you walk into an office, how do you tell who’s who ? Where did the workplace dress code go ? And do we even need it any more ?
