Leading with Cheese, Fish, and Carrots: The Propaganda of Team Leadership: How Leadership Euphemisms Demoralize and Destroy Teams
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About this ebook
Leadership books and seminars commonly open with anecdotal stories for engrossing the listener. A reason why these books and seminars are so popular, or even needed, is because the authors realize that employees naturally resist change, and that management will face a barrier every time they are the carriers of bad news such as job cuts, pay cuts, or reorganization where employees are negatively affected and forced into new positions or new duties. But the reliance on anecdotes and metaphors for success can backfire by making the employees feel underappreciated, or worse, insulted and manipulated.
At its core leadership is about understanding human nature. Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf, spoke about the “small measure of thinking power the broad masses possess,” thereby reminding us that understanding human nature is also an essential key to controlling it. This book is not so much about leadership per se, as it is about how to think about leadership by learning to ask the appropriate questions and learning to find the appropriate answers. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of leadership propaganda, motivational sayings, and groupthink.
The material in this book is excerpted from the previously published book, Leadership, It Ain’t Rocket Science: A Critical Analysis of Moving with the Cheese and Other Motivational Leadership Bullshit, also by Martina Sprague.
Martina Sprague
Martina Sprague grew up in the Stockholm area of Sweden. She has a Master of Arts degree in Military History from Norwich University in Vermont and has studied a variety of combat arts since 1987. As an independent scholar, she writes primarily on subjects pertaining to military and general history, politics, and instructional books on the martial arts. For more information, please visit her website: www.modernfighter.com.
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Leading with Cheese, Fish, and Carrots - Martina Sprague
INTRODUCTION
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Having read hundreds of books about leadership, I have grown tired of trite sayings attempting to define it on a bumper sticker: You manage things but lead people.
Okay, so what? To lead means to take somebody somewhere. Okay, this is obvious. What else is obvious? It is obvious that the leader cannot exist without the followers. The opposite is not necessarily true. The followers can benefit from the leader’s direction and wisdom, but they do not need him or her in order to exist. Understanding this relationship between leader and follower places the role of the leader in the proper perspective.
The leader’s first responsibility when attempting to express a vision, solve a problem, reach a consensus, and lead the team toward the goal is to define reality; to think critically, encourage response, and avoid getting trapped in meaningless sayings. Chinese statesman and military leader Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997 CE) informed us that debate tends to make things complicated.
¹ He was right, of course, but likely had only his own interests in mind. The fact that your followers do not accept an atmosphere of strict obedience should be celebrated. If you can draw strength from their resourcefulness, you will welcome doubt without viewing it as an assault on your person. In fact, a healthy dose of talk and debate can have the effect of bringing down barriers, not raising them.
At its core leadership is about understanding human nature. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945 CE), in Mein Kampf, spoke about the small measure of thinking power the broad masses possess,
² thereby reminding us that understanding human nature is also an essential key to controlling it. Cringe if you will at my use of a quote from he who is perhaps the most despised man in modern history. But being clever, even insightful, is not synonymous with having an admirable character. Hitler was right. Had the masses utilized their thinking power properly, there is a good chance that the Holocaust would not have happened. He also said, I found it difficult to understand how men who always had reasonable ideas when they spoke as individuals with one another suddenly lost this reasonableness the moment they acted in the mass.
³ It is called groupthink in modern lingo, and tends to occur within a group of people who are trying to reach a consensus without applying critical thought and analysis. Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945 CE), Hitler’s minister of propaganda, understood that any mantra repeated often enough is apt to become viewed as true. Thus without a proper understanding of human nature, ranting about how there is no I
in team and together everybody achieves more could have dangerous consequences. The dissenters, those who question your ideas, may be your most valuable employees because they counteract this groupthink mentality and help you achieve a more balanced perspective.
This book is not so much about leadership per se, as it is about how to think about leadership by learning to ask the appropriate questions and learning to find the appropriate answers. It explores the strengths and weaknesses of leadership propaganda, motivational sayings, and groupthink. The material in this book is excerpted from the previously published book, Leadership, It Ain’t Rocket Science: A Critical Analysis of Moving with the Cheese and Other Motivational Leadership Bullshit, also by Martina Sprague.
Of the best rulers, the people (only) know they exist.
— Lao-tzu
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Few are those who can see with their own eyes and hear with their own hearts.
— Albert Einstein
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The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete, until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.
— John Tyndall
WE WOULD RATHER BE RUINED THAN CHANGED
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Does leadership have a goal? The purpose of leadership studies is inevitably to achieve victory. The leader can wear different hats. He can lead from the front or the rear; he can present the team with charismatic speeches or follow a model based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Individual goals further influence how he or she views and writes about the discipline. Proponents of different leadership theories have attempted to inspire current and future leaders without understanding that it is really the followers and not the leaders who need inspiration, because they alone decide whether or not they will follow. Furthermore, much of what has been written about leadership is noncritical. Although it includes statistics and fancies, it excludes deeper examination and analysis. We accept as presented what we find in books and manuals even as we have no idea to what extent or if it is founded upon sound principles. This leaves us at a crossroads without a standard to guide us. To move a step closer to understanding the relationship between leader and follower, we will examine, compare, and contrast the tools managers and leaders commonly use when trying to implement new ideas by appealing to the passionate side of the workforce.
When I read Marcus Buckingham’s and Curt Coffman’s book, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, I thought it the soundest book about leadership ever written. However, I am sorry to report that I cannot say the same for various other cookbooks
for leadership, ranging from Who Moved My Cheese? An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson and Kenneth Blanchard