2021 continues to be an eventful year - and as of the writing of this blog, we are still only sitting on January 11! At the time of my last post we we were experiencing Aloha-gate in Alberta and had not yet gotten to the vote certification process in the U.S. Presidential election. What a difference a week has made in the reality we are facing today! The (top!) highlights of the past week include: the second impeachment process has begun for Donald Trump following the Capitol debacle of January 6, coupled with ever-challenging COVID-19 case counts and deaths. We see resignations from Trump's Cabinet (rather late in the day), some Republicans jumping ship, other allies looking to distance themselves from the carnage, Trump suspended from social media platforms, and Trump world losing corporate opportunities.
At a more local level in Alberta, the latest political polls show the governing United Conservative Party (UCP) dropping precipitously as the choice of Albertans, now sitting with a 31% approval rating as compared to the NDP at 48%. In April 2019, the UCP won a majority government with nearly 55% of the vote in their favor. This appears to be a direct outcome of a variety of government missteps and anxieties primarily (though not exclusively) related to handling of COVID-19. Much like what we now see in the US, there are starting to be some cracks in unity within the UCP/conservative ranks and certainly many calls for resignations, reassignment, and consequences for government leaders and staffers who are believed to have not shown the "right stuff" or even followed government policies and directives.
When I last posted (Leadership Lost), I talked about the fundamental sense of betrayal that so many people seemed to feel here in Alberta when government leaders and staffers seemed to go against their own directives and guidelines on managing the COVID-19 response. Those who had adhered to restrictions, experienced loss of income/job, had to home school, or otherwise had their lives impacted were incensed. I identified several reasons for this sense of anger and betrayal, the consequences of which for the UCP are currently reflected in the political polling noted earlier.
One element of that anger I glossed over quite significantly, however, was a sense of foolishness that we might be experiencing during these type of perceived leadership failures. Let me explain. Most of us assess our leaders against our own needs and values - ill-defined as they sometimes might be. Whether this be in politics or work or other group settings, we gravitate towards leaders whom we believe "get us" and believe in the same things we do. The key question here is how do we make such an assessment and determine fit? For the vast majority of us - whether in politics or business - we have limited time, access, and ability to vigorously and authentically assess and evaluate our prospective leader's values and capabilities. And in many cases, our leadership candidates purposefully look to keep their true persona and intentions vague. In today's social media and sound bite-driven, world we are even more challenged to go past the surface to what might be real versus staged.
We are also confounded by our unconscious filters and biases. Contrary to what this first statement implies, filters in our minds actually serve a great purpose. They allow us to deal with the literally thousands of pieces of data our senses take in every hour and every day. If we had to pause for any length of time to consciously process, evaluate, and make sense of this data, we could literally be frozen into place. An example? I suspect very few of us who drive have to place a lot of thought into what to do when we get to an intersection or have to respond to a traffic signal. We automatically press the brake when we see a red light, maintain or increase speed when coming to a green light, and perhaps press even harder on the gas when we see yellow. At the same time this is happening, you are listening to the radio, a fellow passenger, or might be processing other to-do's and issues in your brain.
What does this concept of filters and unconscious bias have to do with how we pick and evaluate our leaders? Whether we realize it or not, and whether we want to own that reality or not, we unconsciously look for qualities, characteristics, and statements that support what we already want to believe. This is called confirmation bias. Moreover, any contrary information is not only often dismissed, it might not even register on one's radar! We don't even see the facts when they are staring us in the face. We see what we want to see, we dismiss what we don't, and we get highly emotional and even more entrenched when our strongly held views are challenged.
Equating this to gambling, when presented with a losing hand (e.g., our leaders are not what we expected they would be), we often double down. We become more committed to a cause, a leader, a direction that isn't supported by the facts or reality. But at some point, in leadership as in gambling, we run out of chips to stay in our particular world. "Winning", or coming back from the point of no return, is no longer possible. The result is at least despondency if not outright anger. If the latter, we blame everyone but ourselves for defeat.
In reality, however, our sense of anger reflects that we are primarily angry at ourselves. The leadership we have lost was likely never there in the first place. It was a mirage of our own making. We eventually realize that the leaders we came to place our faith in have not changed since we first cast our vote for them. They are who they have always been, possessed of the same values when first elected or selected, guided by the same ambitions as they once were, and committed to the same objectives as always.
Our anger is not so much that they fooled us into believing they understood us and cared for the same things we did, or even cared about us.
Our anger might just be based on the fact that we fooled ourselves into seeing what wasn't there to begin with. We have seen the enemy and it was us.
It's About Leadership. The challenge just might be to own what we imagined and created. ______________________________
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