There’s a tacit agreement in the corporate world that, once you step into the murky waters of “leadership,” you’re expected to lie. That is, to masquerade any inconvenient truth into a package that somehow progresses the organization’s agenda. This is exacerbated once an organization is big enough to attract “professional” leaders: people who’ve gotten so good at lying that they surf between corporations turning magically chaotic small teams into neutered machines of corporate sameness. The challenge of the corporate leader is to steer an organization through indirect nudges and motivate their followers by obfuscating the truth, also known as lying.
Man, this one is really well-written. And I say that as someone with so little integrity that none of this especially bothers me, so I’m not just automatically aligned with the content!
I think some of this dilemma is a function of -you guessed it- scale: there are things that enliven and motivate you that would not work on others, and vice versa, and what seems most impossible about being e.g. a CEO is the need to say things that work for all types at once. Some people, like you I’d assume, demand and require reality: substantive, honest, unvarnished reality; not only can you “take it,” you need it to be real and to be yourself. Others, of course, are different, and for all kinds of reasons. A single All Hands speech cannot appeal to both constituencies, and you probably cannot build a company out of just one constituency (both for hiring reasons and because it really does take all types!!!). But maybe this is all just cope!
Leaders are liars
Man, this one is really well-written. And I say that as someone with so little integrity that none of this especially bothers me, so I’m not just automatically aligned with the content!
I think some of this dilemma is a function of -you guessed it- scale: there are things that enliven and motivate you that would not work on others, and vice versa, and what seems most impossible about being e.g. a CEO is the need to say things that work for all types at once. Some people, like you I’d assume, demand and require reality: substantive, honest, unvarnished reality; not only can you “take it,” you need it to be real and to be yourself. Others, of course, are different, and for all kinds of reasons. A single All Hands speech cannot appeal to both constituencies, and you probably cannot build a company out of just one constituency (both for hiring reasons and because it really does take all types!!!). But maybe this is all just cope!
Anyway: loved this one.
Just re-read this. Best thing I’ve read this year.
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 Aries szn is here and it’s 🌶️🌶️🌶️