Elephant and ostrich of the leadership jungle

“What is wrong? I just can’t figure out,” said the head of a major company. He had asked me to help him with his organisation complexities. Our conversation went on for about two hours. He looked perplexed. He sounded perturbed. He said “I don’t understand” at least six times. I accepted the assignment with one condition that the findings will be unfiltered, candid and non-editable. He looked at me and said, “Of course, that is a given.”

The assessment took four weeks. I requested for a meeting to present my findings with the condition that it has to be offsite, one on one, over coffee. I got a prompt call from his secretary on arranging the meeting in the coffee house of a five star hotel. I thought about asking for a change of venue but postponed the request. In the meeting I could sense his eagerness to know what I had found out. He told me, “Details later. If I were to ask the ONE big factor that is holding my company back, what will it be?” I looked at him, smiled and said, “That one big factor is YOU.”

As a leader it is your job to look “out” for gaps/issues. The problem is that when you tell leaders that your job is to look “out”, they take it literally. They actually look outside for what the problem or gap is. Most leaders and employees play the search-the-situation, search-the-environment approach. While this approach is great to keep your eyes on the shifting market, it may come at the cost of looking inside.

Many leaders confuse looking inside with an inward approach. They feel looking inside will limit their ability to capture the shifting paradigm. Correct, but partly. Looking inward is not just about being limited to your own products and operation, but also about looking inside the mindsets of the decision makers. A mind that is set will look outward and be blind to the opportunities appearing in the market. An approach that is negative will avoid change till it becomes a monster. That is why leaders need to see what they are not willing to see.

One of the major problems with leaders is their inability to address issues that are uncomfortable and require courage. The other problem is that people are not comfortable coming to them and talking about uncomfortable issues. In the case that I have mentioned above, when I went around talking to his team, I sensed a certain reserve. They were hesitant to talk clearly. They started spinning around the main problem. I had to use several empathic communication methods to let them speak openly. In the end, it was a strange mixture of fear, nervousness and awe that prevented them to speak their minds to him. Organisations that do not address the elephants in the room basically slip into the ostrich leadership style. This style is not uncommon. Ostrich leadership is derived from the popular myth that ostriches bury their heads in the sand to avoid danger. Most organizational failures have some unaddressed elephants in the room due to the leader being in denial of the changes that need to be made. Some of these EIRs, i.e., elephants in the room are:

Elephant in the room 1: Married to the comfortable success – This is the classic sitting on your laurels leaders. Succeeding early, they live in the reflected glory of their earlier success. Look at the auto market in Pakistan. The traditional Japanese and Korean cars’ dominance has become questionable. The rise in fuel prices is an elephant that is in Pakistan for some time. Come the US-Iran war, and these brands are facing the Chinese electric vehicle storm. Major Chinese brands are sweeping the carpet from under the traditional brands. The comfort of knowing that EVs are not going to take over as they need battery recharge stations that are very few in Pakistan was a lull before the storm. The ostrich is now forced to get its head out of the petrol driven vehicles to hybrid and electric vehicles.

Elephant in the room 2: A psychologically unsafe culture – This one is very common. In the most progressive of multinationals I find many a leaders in denial on this one. They all talk about candour and everybody having a voice. Sure, voice is there. However, the voice becomes scripted. It is not a voice that speaks of free volition. It is a voice that knows what to say if it needs to be heard. The meetings are dominated by one or two senior voices. Agreements are reached pretty fast. Actions on the agreed points is however another story. The post meeting talks are bound to be an unhealthy gush of gossip or negative vent out. Ostrich leadership specializes in finding solace in meetings without dissent. They feel there is harmony in the room. In reality there is fear in the room. Fear is a cancer for productivity. I have had many employees relating how this inability to express and be heard has choked their brains. When their thinking is repressed, routine work also takes a lot of time and effort. The irony is that the leader keeps on blaming the employees for lacking initiative and creativity.

Elephant in the room 3: A competent/toxic leader – The classic. The sharp, clever, yet dodgy manager who knows how to bring in numbers but is a behaviour disaster. Such people are elephants in the room that you see, report, object to, without much ado. His boss pretends that it is people’s jealousy. He sees him as a top performer without whom the company cannot function. As friction increases so does the denial. The unhappiness becomes disillusion. The top guy knows but pushes it under the carpet till the carpet gets tattered.

Ignoring the elephant is only going to make the elephant bigger. For a leader, ignorance is not a bliss – it is a threat. A threat that you are constantly pushing back, yet is creating unease in your mind. For your employees this attitude conveys all the wrong messages. In the company mentioned in the beginning of the article employees would ruefully smile and tell me: “Even if we tell him the truth about this manager, he is not going to do much”. That means the elephant is being allowed to dance at the expense of the team. The best strategy is to make an ABET (awkward but essential truth) team that briefs you about things that need to be faced, discussed and dealt with ASAP. Many leaders justify their denial by saying they do not want to “hurt” others. Not so, as Fredrich Neitzche said, “Many a peacock hides his tail from all eyes, and called it his pride.”