Leadership and obedience

by Fernando Ribeiro

Corporate scandals like Enron and WorldComm do share some similarities with the atrocities committed during World War II against the Jews. It might seem farfetched, but in reality in all these cases a leader did not act alone. She needed the buy-in of some or several followers, who usually justified their acts by stating that they were simply following orders (Hinricks, 2007). If that is true, does it mean that once I have a leader I no longer have to think for myself? Does that mean that if I accept someone’s leadership I have to give up on what makes more human than machine, i.e. my freewill?

In trying to define leadership it is fairly easy to confuse leadership with obedience. Some definitions, for instance, state that a leader is someone with followers (Drucker as cited in Kruse, 2013). Eisenhower, the 34^th president of the United States, defined leadership as the art of making followers do what the leader wants (Cohen, 2009).  I am sorry; but I vehemently disagree with such definitions.

I have never been a leader of a cult; I have never been a prominent CEO of any large corporation; I have never led men to a war or a bloody battle; I have never had people saying that my word on any topic should be followed. Such power and acknowledgment must be, though, an immense, dangerous, yet ego-satisfying force ever concealed from and provided to men or women. I can imagine how blinding it can be and that is exactly why I look at it with respect and, why not to say, some fear.

For my lack of high ranks, though, fortunately never induced me to desperately search for positions of leadership; neither did it lead me to be an easy follower; someone who does what he is told. During my corporate life, I had all kinds of strange experiences. From a boss telling me to be “more arrogant and cool” to a boss who would look for legal breaches for “kicking back” fees to clients. On all these occasions I am proud that I was able to utter my loudly “no.” It was not easy or painless and of course those actions of mine did not come without a price and at least on one occasion – maybe more than one – it cost me my job; but my dignity was intact as I stuck to my values.

What people fail to see is that accepting to be led does not mean blindly following whatever you are being told to do. It is much easier to be a victim than it is to be an actor (Kofman, 2006); it is much easier to “blame it” on someone else while exempting yourself of any responsibility. Sometimes people change their behavior or even their beliefs because of some sort of explicit or implicit pressure (Gleitman, Gross, & Reisberg, 2011), making them conform to an arbitrary rule. Sometimes people just change their behaviors or attitudes because someone has told them so (Gleitman et al., 2011) in a typical display of obedience.

Milgram (1974) wanted to study what exactly makes people obey to a certain character; that is, what exactly followers look for in order to obey an individual. Obedience, it seems, is a function of S.I.N. (Wolfe, 2004):

• “S” (Strength) is related to the hierarchy of the individual or the perception of power of a given individual. People are more likely to obey when they perceive the person giving the order as someone of higher status than the person receiving the order;
• “I” (Immediacy) is related to the immediate effects of your action. In other words, it is much easier to detonate a bomb by pressing a button and not seeing what is happening on the ground –  in a videogame manner – than it is to detonate a bomb immediately seeing the people suffering from its devastating effects;
• “N” (number) has to do with the number of people adhering to or stating a norm. From determining the size of a line (Asch, 1951; Asch, 1956) to more complex tasks, peer pressure increases conformity substantially.

 

Hinrichs (2007), studying crimes of obedience, from corporate fraud to the event at Abu Ghraib prison, offers an interesting seven-propositional model about the role of leadership beliefs and the propensity to commit crimes of obedience:

• First, people who consider leaders more responsible for ethical decisions and behaviors are more likely to obey an unethical order when in a follower position.
• Second, people who see themselves as low self-efficacy leaders are more likely to defer moral responsibility to the leader.
• Third, people who have higher motivation to lead might be more lenient to unethical leaders because as followers they want to revere the leader and might know the difficulties of leadership.
• Fourth, people who romanticize leadership, i.e. who think that the leaders are the sole responsible for success and overestimate the leaders’ contributions are more likely to exempt their own responsibilities as followers, putting more responsibility on leaders.
• Finally, three other aspects work as moderators for the four initial items. (i) Self-monitoring, the ability to adjust one’s own behavior to the expectations of other people in a given environment, (ii) power distance, the perceived level of different power dynamics in a given arrangement, a similar construct to that of Strength in the obedience function, and (iii) collectivism, the ideal of preserving the wellbeing of the group rather than of the individual, increment the chance of a given individual to commit crimes of obedience when acting as a follower.

In my last post here; I drew attention to the importance of knowing ourselves. Now, I am telling you to hold yourself accountable, be it as a leader, be it as a follower. One of the most beautiful things in human beings is our ability to choose, to hold our impulses, putting the limbic system into a pause while we call on the prefrontal regions to decide on something, pondering the future and the consequences. We might not like the consequences of our acts; it is true – but that does not mean that we don’t have a choice because in the end we always do.

Leaders are not the ones who have followers or the ones who manage to create an obedient crowd. Leaders are those who inspire others to find their own ways, to think for themselves. A leader badly exists (Cohen, 2009); she is a catalyst for a shared principle that, for being shared, does not belong to any one individually and that yet to exist collectively needs each individual. As the baroque Portuguese writer Gregorio de Matos once said, “the whole without the part is not whole; the part without the whole is not part” (Vida em Poesia, n.d.)

It is only when we understand such an interconnectedness that we can understand our roles and take on our share of responsibility. Leadership is not at all about obedience. Leadership is about freedom; freedom of choice, freedom of being, freedom of thought.

As a leader or as a follower, there is no system, gate or lock that anyone can set upon the freedom of your mind (Woolf, 1957).

 

 

 

References

Asch, S.E. (1951). Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion of judgments. In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership and men, 177–190. Pittsburgh, PA:Carnegie Press.

Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: I. A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1-70. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0093718

Blass, T. (1991). Understanding behavior in the Milgram obedience experiment: The role of personality, situations, and their interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(3), 398-413. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.3.398

Cohen, G. (2009). Defining leadership. Leadership Excellence, 26(8), 16-17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/204638762?accountid=13158

Gleitman, H., Gross, J. J., & Reisberg, D. (2011). Psychology. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Kofman, F. (2006). Conscious business: How to build value through values. Boulder, CO: Sounds True.

Kruse, K. (2013). What Is Leadership? – Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/04/09/what-is-leadership/

Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority. An experimental view. Science, 184(4137), 667-669.

Hinrichs, K. T. (2007). Follower propensity to commit crimes of obedience: The role of leadership beliefs. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 14(1), 69-76. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203143030?accountid=13158

Vida em Poesia (n.d.). Gregório de Matos. Retrieved from http://www.vidaempoesia.com.br/gregoriodematos.htm

Wolfe, J. (2004). Introduction to psychology – MIT Open Courseware [Audio podcast]. Retrieved from http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/brain-and-cognitive-sciences/9-00-introduction-to-psychology-fall-2004/

Woolf, V. (1957). A room of one’s own. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.