January 20, 2020 marked the end of the Trump presidency, if not the end of Trump, MAGA, and associated realities. The assessment/evaluation of his term will continue for decades to come. The full impact and story will NOT be told or understood until that kind of time has passed. Here in Alberta, the passing of this chapter in the US is being received to mixed reviews. In some quarters, positively, anticipating a return to less vitriolic and chaotic times, a commitment to healing and inclusion, and for environmental protection. In other quarters, dreading the consequences of cancelled energy projects and viewing such changes with anger and dismay.
Politically, for our conservative government in Alberta, the year 2020 and the commencement of 2021 is a time that seems like it can't pass fast enough. Receiving the news of another blow to Alberta's energy economy, on top of mixed reviews on COVID/healthcare management and Aloha-gate, has led to a sharp rise in unpopularity of our Premier and a similar plunge in trust in his leadership.
In my previous two blogs I have focused on the theme of Leadership Lost. What was not addressed in those two previous posts, however, is the reality that leadership has never been anything but a team sport. Donald Trump, Jason Kenney, and any other leader have never achieved anything alone - good or bad. By its very definition, the term leader entails and requires that there are people to be led, that there be followers, and that there be supporters to help achieve and even sometimes help to develop or massage a vision to be pursued.
Particularly in the US at the present time, we have heard many terms that describe how Donald Trump both came to power and was allowed to ignore, shatter, and blow past so many long-held protocols and norms of Presidential behaviour - incite, collude, collaborate, connive. Complicity is a word that I choose to use in describing the reality of his leadership. Usually complicity or being complicit implies, or is taken to mean, negative intent. It need not necessarily be so. Positive results could also, conceivably, be supported by positive actions; e.g., I could be complicit in supporting a colleague's success. But I will be focusing on the more commonly held negative connotation this word invokes.
Complicity, I believe, can come in many forms and can be visualized as a continuum. At one end there may be those of use who are unconsciously complicit or only want to make ourselves vaguely aware of nefarious things that are going on around us. We might consider ourselves smaller cogs in the machinery of an organization, business, or public sector entity. We are content to work our 9-to-5 shift, get our pay cheque, and stay apart from other elements of an organization's life. We'd rather not know and work on the premise that ignorance is bliss. Others of us might be more aware of situations and circumstances based on our positions or connections to other individuals in an organization. One example I can cite here is that of an accounting clerk - seeing expense claims of executives, knowing and perhaps even calling into question dubious submissions from those in positions of power, but ultimately bending to power (willingly or unwillingly). The expenses claims are no longer questioned as it relates to policy but merely moved along.
Others of us are more knowingly and intentionally collaborators in nefarious deeds. Not surprisingly, although not a given, individuals like Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump were key supporters of their father through thick and thin. Blood can be thicker than water. Others in a leader's inner circle may also actually believe in fundamentally the same causes and similarly believe that ends pursued justify means used. This may be accompanied by a further belief that all leaders are flawed in one way or another but that, again, the outcomes being pursued are grounds to support overlooking, forgiving, or even actively defending such character defects.
As we dig deeper into the circle of collaborators, there are also those who are as self-centred and narcissistic as the leader themselves. These are perhaps the most dangerous and culpable actors in the rise of a dangerous leader. These individuals are more than competent, skilled, and experienced. They have vision and foresight enough to understand how the leader can help them to advance their own ends so they become willing accomplices in the leader's actions and agenda. In some cases, these collaborators become co-opted into the spiderweb they have helped create. In my executive leadership experience, this has taken on the form of "right-thinking" people being given greater consideration for performance bonuses, increased or accelerated promotional opportunities, more frequent and attractive personal development opportunities, and so forth. It has even meant beneficial (and mostly largely unscanctioned/hidden) changes to benefits plans and related compensation elements that would not pass moral, ethical, and even legal tests.
Often, these collaborators, slowly but inevitably, get dragged to a point of no return. They - we - delude themselves through a variety of mental gymnastics or self-defense mechanisms to come along with the leader, either voluntarily or involuntarily, as strong advocates or as the willfully blind. Our future defense when consequences arrive - as in most circumstances they inevitably do - is to claim ignorance, no ill intent, or lack of power to alter the destructive path.
Leadership lost through complicity often comes from a corruption of our personal values. And as with so many other things, it happens gradually and then suddenly. We find ourselves through a series of compromises, each of them seemingly small and inconsequential at a place we would never have imagined - an attack on the U.S. Capitol for one.
It's About Leadership. But that leadership includes the team that supports the leader. At a point we all have to be clear about or rediscover our personal values, be prepared to be judged by our own standards, and hold ourselves accountable to what we have actioned or not actioned. Eleventh hour confessions and contrition are unlikely to save us from Leadership Lost and its consequences. We reap what we have helped sow.
It's About Leadership. What do you want to be remembered for? How do you want your 15 minutes of fame (media attention, public spotlight) to look? With whom do you want to be forever associated?
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