Why are Leaders so Boring? How to Radiate in Worlds that Matter

Most of the time, it is very difficult to figure out who the modern leader is.

What does he or she really stand for beneath scripted platitudes? Are they simply in search of power at any price, just as Eichmann determinedly soared his way through the ranks regardless of the human cost of his promotions? 

I find myself asking whatever happens to the hearts of such men and women, as they turn a blind eye, whilst the more morally sensitive feel troubled and bemused?
Our increasingly homogenised world seems to be inhabited with excessively dull leaders; cut from the same cloth as Mr Machine, in a drab suit and a mind tailored to care little beyond self-interest. Eichmann was profoundly 'banal' as many writers commented during his trial - he wasn't a wild, foaming at the mouth psychopath at all.

One of the strategies the contemporary leader is often excessively skilled at, is deadening himself from the effects and impact of his organisation’s activities. What we might call the “normotic” leader, to borrow the psychoanalyst Christopher Bollas’s term. He numbs himself with action, busyness, gambling, alcohol or other mindless pursuits, so he doesn’t connect with just how out of step he is with his own nature. There is another group of leaders who Freud would say have no moral conscience whatsoever.

 Then there are leaders like Paul Smith.

He falls into an entirely separate category of leader, by aligning his efforts and the impact of his company with his own moral conscience.

Paul Smith is a breath of fresh air, a joyful man, seemingly free of corporate pretence no matter how successful he becomes. My sense is that he doesn’t hide anything from himself in order to soldier-on, dehumanise himself in order to do things he doesn’t want to do. It’s a well know fact how robust his ‘No” can be towards potential investors and partners if he views them as rather money-driven sharks. His growth strategy isn’t the mindless ‘big is best’, “why would I need to open 20 shops a year that have no character and mean nothing,” he says, “when I can open two or three that are really interesting and give people goose bumps?" 

A leader using words like “goose bumps?”

I like it.

In the foyer of the Conrad Hotel in Tokyo, a few years ago, I met this legendary fashion entrepreneur. He was signing autographs, mobbed by fans. He looked fabulous, not just because he looks so funky, but by the sheer gusto of his aliveness.

I was checking into the hotel, proudly carrying one of his holdalls with the trademark image of a striped British Mini Cooper.  

Paul has been a huge success in Japan – as well as worldwide - with over 2,000 local people employed by Paul Smith Ltd., becoming the biggest European designer in the difficult market of Japan with over two hundred shops. Rumour has it that he used to take a small train set into early meetings with his Japanese colleagues and play with it when he got bored.                                                                

Perhaps part of Paul Smith’s success is sustained by the fact that he’s the sort of leader who has a Department of Silly in the basement of his London offices. It houses all sorts of wacky objects to inspire more than creativity.

Such permission inspires play, a sense of fun and connecting that helps us to forget our individual separateness and remember our shared humanity that makes us a team rather than merely a group. Paul Smith’s best leadership advice is perhaps his simple words:

“Everyone gets on better when you just be yourself.”

You cannot do that if you are hiding from the sights, sounds, smells and other forms of knowledge that indicate you are out of step with your own conscience. Who really is that grey, that boring, as the often-dull performances in the corporate office life suggests? Is what we mean when we nickname a leader “The Empty Suit”, someone who has sold his moral conscience to the highest bidder? 

The fantasy of working against one's moral-self for decades, to magically return to an earlier  state of integrity upon retirement, is one of the saddest human illusions. It rarely happens when we've been slowly killing ourselves off, as we perform the false self.

Working in an alive way with the very real dilemmas seems the only way forward.   “You’ve got to somehow keep your purity but still get your income,” says Paul, “ even when each pulls you in an opposite direction.”

To keep your purity means to resist covering your eyes from seeing and looking at yourself and what matters to you. It also means saying you matter, not just the whims of the tribes. 

Don’t give up on yourself, on what makes you truly unique, no matter how high the bribe, tempting the status, or shiny the accolades.

There is surely no higher ambition than to be true to your own conscience. 

With such ambition, people invariably stand a chance to radiate, just like the incomparable Mr. Smith.