Politicians Emerge Where There is a Leadership Gap
There are many different types of people that operate within a business. Based on my experience, here are some of them.
Worker Bees- These are hard workers who are happy with their lot in life and have few long term leadership aspirations beyond doing a good jobs and putting bread on the table for thier family.
Survivors – These are not so hard workers who do what is necessary to survive in the business and are either looking for something else or see work as a means to end – an enjoyable life.
Aspirants- Employees in this group truly aspire to be leaders in a business and believe that hard work and doing a good job will get them recognised. They let their work to the talking for them. Not everyone in this will become a leader in the business however their aspire to get there.
Politicians - Employees in this group also aspire to be leaders however they often look for opportunities to climb the corporate ladder by shamelessly promoting themselves, sometimes at the costs of others, and often are divisive in the business in an attempt to curry favour or use wedge politics to get themselves noticed.
I have come across people in each of these groups during my working life. The funny thing is that people often clearly fall into one of these categories although they often dont know it themselves. Of course as the CEO you want a great combination of Worker Bees and Aspirants in the business and should ensure that the Survivors and Politicians are shown the door as soon as possible.
The challenge is that the survivors are easy to spot and KPI’s often help weed them out while the politicians are harder to deal with, especially when they may be good at the work they do.
The real theme of this post is what impact does strong leadership have on these groups. I think strong leadership allows the Worker Bees to get on with their lives, Survivors are weeded out, Aspirants are recognised and promoted for the great work they do and Politicians are starved of the much needed political opportunities and therefore are just measured on the work they do, not the politics they play.
However, it is interesting to see what happens when there is weak or no leadership in a business. This doesn’t really impact the Worker Bees as they just on with their job and continue to deliver. The Survivors stay around longer than they should as people are not weeding them out fast enough and the result is that mediocrity becomes OK in a business.
Most interestingly, the Politicians get the much needed oxygen and rely on form over substance to move ahead in the business. The real losers are the Aspirants. They don’t like to play the political games or more likely don’t want to play the political game and therefore either start to look for other roles or become disengaged from the business. They chat amongst themselves and the culture in the business changes.
The point is, in selecting a leader (at all levels – not just the CEO), it is important that they can lead and lead well. I will talk more later about what makes a good leader. The question for you is … are you a Worker Bee, Survivor, Aspirant or a Politician?
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How true.
Whenever there is a leadership vacuum, it will be filled: filled by new leadership or by politicians.
If it is let be filled by politicians, most firms can kiss goodbye an open, honest, collaborative culture and are condemned to mediocrity.
Career politicians will win few friends and while they might measure their own success by how many people they can “shaft” or outplay (survivor style
)they have to get out of bed every day and ask themselves how good they feel about life.
As the old saying goes, “bad things happen when good people fail to act”.
Hi,
I can’t avoid thinking of the Peter Principle. Check out this Wikipedia article if you don’t know it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle
And definitely get yourself the book! I consider this book as one of the must-reads for any leader.
I also think that if you have a sufficient number of worker bees and aspirants, there will be no place for politicians. Although politicians might not be kicked from top-down, by the leader, they will have no support from the base (bottom-up) and starve anyway.
Also, “Observer from the UK” says that ‘… they have to get out of bed every day and ask themselves how good they feel about like.’
I don’t think politicians or survivors ask themselves these kinds of questions when they wake up, but rather : how can I earn more money today, how can I b*llshit with my co-workers more today, whom do I have to bribe today, …
Finally, you can create very dangerous mutations of the above styles. Let me introduce the:
Worker-Bee-Politician : someone who THINKS he’s a good worker-bee and actually believes that his career success is due to his good work, whereas it’s only due to his real politician-style way of doing things. This guy is a shizo, most commonly, and every company’s nightmare.
His body would actually show real signs of overwork and his brain would think they come from actual work done for the company, whereas nothing of it is true. He lives in a completely imaginary world, believing his co-workers admire him for the tough job he does, whereas everyone sees his real face, except himself. But he doesn’t care, because in the leader position he thinks he is, he just kicks everyone else out of this bubble some obscure portion of his brain created.
He cannot understand at all why top management seems to be unhappy with him, because he’s so confident in what he does that he would even accuse top management to be unaware of the real challenges. The Worker-Bee-Politician is often a true one-man-show who magically avoids most control and supervision, and is able to create a parallel world in a real company. That is where the true danger comes from.
P.S. If someone wants to make a horror movie about a worker-bee-politician creating a parallel universe in a real company, I know someone for the main role
What a great post. I was just talking about this topic with my partner. He is incredibly hard working, creative thinker.. really the type of person who wants to get things done. At his current position he is always so frustrated as it seems like all the other workers are either the worker bees or the survivors. All they do is the minimum, if even that, and the project managers barely do their job. It is so incredibly frustrating when it feels like you are the only one who cares! But why is it that companies don’t appreciate a worker like him? I think that looking at the four groups you mentioned, he is definitely the aspirant. He hates the politics. He just wants to do a good job, be appreciated for working hard and work in an environment that supports creative thinking.
I know that if I had a business and I was looking for a new worker there, I would want someone exactly like him! I mean, business is not a social club, it is for working and making the business better. It is great to have someone with good ideas and initiative. I do not understand how a company can be happy to just have the whole place full of people that are mediocre and still pretend that they are heading for something better? How does that happen?
I think you should write here a list of companies that have great leaders and who would really appreciate a worker like him. It is certainly time to move on, but where do you go when it seems like the it is the same everywhere?