Okay okay – enough of the leadership bashing!
9 January 2020
Errol Amerasekera
The recent (and current) bushfires in Australia have been devastating on every level. What has been amazing and inspiring is how people from all walks of life have unified and are contributing to the recovery cause. (It has always fascinated me how willing people are to open up, contribute and unify in the face of a crisis, yet how quickly this desire recedes once life (or business) returns to normal. But this is probably a topic for different post).
What has been less inspiring however is how quickly and harshly the leadership of our Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has been criticised. One of the main criticisms he has faced is his lack of empathy in dealing with individuals who were personally and significantly impacted by the bushfires and who were, for very good reasons, emotionally distraught. The ability to feel and demonstrate empathy is a vital leadership competency. The importance of being empathetic as a leader is, for the most part, common sense, so I won’t go into that now.
So did Scott Morrison demonstrate effective leadership and appropriate empathy given the circumstance?
In my opinion, I don’t think so. In fact, I think what he demonstrated in terms of leadership, let alone empathy, fell well short in terms of what we as a public should expect from our leaders, especially those who have made a conscious decision to sign up for those roles in political leadership. So from that perspective, I agree with those who are critical in terms of their assessment of Scott Morrison’s leadership.
Where I differ however, is in the way this message has been ‘delivered’. Just to be clear, I am not referring to those people Scott Morrison encountered whilst ‘on the ‘trail’, who were clearly under immense stress, traumatised and in many cases had just suffered a significant loss. In my view, given what they had just been through, they are absolutely justified to express, and say, and yell, and cry in whatever manner, and to whomever they feel they need to.
The irony of course is that many of those commentators being critical of Scott Morrison’s lack of empathy did so in a way which totally lacked empathy; they were being critical of his leadership, in a manner which in itself was not very ‘leaderful’. Leadership is about demonstrating and modelling those behaviours that are important. So even though many of those sideline pundits do not occupy formal leadership roles, they do in fact have informal leadership roles in terms of their power to influence via their respective platforms. In these cases, modelling the leadership they expect someone else to demonstrate in the way their message is delivered might prove to be a more effective strategy in terms of effecting the positive changes that they are desiring.
The burden of leadership is indeed heavy. And for those people who have never felt its weight, I think the easy option is to stand on the sidelines and simply be critical. The more difficult option is to try to understand why our leaders, and people in general, sometimes behave in ways that fall short of our expectations. What is their life experience? What have they lived through, good and bad, which shapes their behaviours? What are the stories they quietly whisper in their own heads, about themselves? And then to ask how does the accumulation of these experiences create the fertile psychological ground out of which grows those behaviours which seem so out of touch with what is needed at a particular moment in time?
It is when we can suspend our own judgement long enough, and take a little time to ponder these questions, that we ourselves are demonstrating the empathy that we are so desperate to see in our leaders.
Why is this important?
Firstly, in my experience, belittling, shaming and being hyper-critical are rarely effective strategies to empower an individual to change their behaviours.
Secondly, there are always reasons why people behave in the ways that they do. So even though their behaviours are not always effective and functional, sometimes even dysfunctional, there are usually good reasons why a particular behavioural set is present. Real leadership, effective leadership, empathetic leadership, is being able to “see through” those behaviours, even the less helpful and dysfunctional ones, and understand or at least intuit the internal narratives (inner dialogue) and the stories people have lived through, which in turn drive those behaviours.
Full disclosure – I do not personally know Scott Morrison. Therefore, I do not feel I have the right or the knowledge to run a commentary on his personal psychology or the narratives which gave rise to his inability to demonstrate empathy, at least on those days he met with survivors and victims of the bushfires. So apart where I have specifically alluded to his behaviour, none of the following specifically refer to Scott Morrison. However, here are the three most common psychological dynamics that I have found whilst working with clients (leaders) that inhibits their ability to demonstrate empathy in a consistent and effective manner.
Emotional overwhelm
There are many leaders we work with who have confessed that they sometimes, if not frequently, feel overwhelmed. In many cases they are not just overwhelmed by their operational responsibilities eg back-to-back meetings, delivering shareholder/stakeholder expectations, the size of their inbox etc, but they are also emotionally overwhelmed and exhausted. The reasons for this are numerous, but we find most commonly the constant demands that they experience; their own perception that vulnerability represents a flaw; others perceptions that they are invincible; and the ongoing pressure to deliver on multiple strategic outcomes all contribute to their emotional exhaustion.
When people are emotionally overwhelmed they go into survival mode. In survival mode the primitive parts of people’s brain gets engaged. This is the part of the brain that is primarily responsible for survival, instinct and drive. It is also part of the brain that drives our fight- flight- freeze response in reaction to a perceived threat. As the primitive part of the brain gets engaged, the modern part of the brain simultaneously gets disengaged, this is a part of the brain that is responsible for problem-solving, language, judgement, impulse control and reasoning.
So if a leader is already emotionally overwhelmed and in some degree of survival mode prior to entering the situation where the appropriate response is to be empathetic, is almost impossible for them to demonstrate empathy. If they then are faced with an attack or harsh criticism, it reinforces the need that survival is paramount. In this case, from a neurological, physiological and psychological perspective, there is no option but to go into fight- flight- freeze.
If we study footage of Scott Morrison relating to those affected by the bushfires from this perspective it is clear that he was in a fight- flight- freeze response. The fight was in the way he ‘forced’ someone to shake his hand. The flight can be seen in the way he could not wait to ‘escape’ the interactions and the pace at which he moved away at. And the freeze is in the almost trance-like look at his face, through many of the exchanges. This all suggests that the modern part of his brain was well and truly disengaged, meaning his ability to problem solve, show impulse control and demonstrate sound judgement was severely impaired. All of these functions are not only vital to effective leadership, they also contribute to the foundation that enables leaders to demonstrate empathy. So given all that, it is not surprising we saw what we saw in terms of Scott Morrison’s leadership on those days.
Poor or absent modelling of empathy
Pop psychology is quick to tell people how much people’s childhood experiences influence and impact their psychology, and therefore their behaviour as an adult. And as clichéd as this is, I think it is a cliché mostly because it is just simply true. We learn our patterns of behaviour from our parents, less from what they say, but much more from what they demonstrate to us. For people who had parents, who for whatever reason, did not demonstrate or show empathy, showing empathy as an adult, is not part of their natural psychological and behavioural tendency. This is because empathy, like most other behaviours, is learnt. And the most influential teachers of our behaviour are those we had around us in our formative years, most often our parents.
If a good friend asks me to change the oil in their car engine, I would have to reply “you are a dear friend, and I would really love to help you, but I just can’t do it, I have no idea how to even start the process of changing the oil in your car engine.” It’s a question of skill rather than will.
Similarly, no matter how much a leader wants to demonstrate a particular behaviour, and knows that they should demonstrate that behaviour, if it is a behaviour that they have not learned at the appropriate time when that developmental window was open, they will not be able to do so in a natural and authentic way.
In these situations, is it reasonable and fair to judge and be critical of the leader? That is a decision each of us needs to make through our own moral and ethical framework.
A lack of self-empathy
This dynamic is inextricably connected to the previous section. If during people’s formative years they are not empathised with in appropriate and adequate ways, their ability to ’empathise’ with themselves does not develop. These people grow into adults who tend to be overly critical and disparaging about themselves. Most of us have an “inner critic” who puts us down and makes us feel inadequate about certain things e.g. our appearance, our ability, our intellect, our sense of success etc. But if this inner critic does not exist in balance with one’s ability to have self-love, self- compassion and self-empathy it makes for a very tumultuous and traumatic internal dialogue. By the way, don’t be fooled – often people who are very successful and high functioning have a very strong inner critic; and what makes them so driven is the belief that if they achieve success on some astronomical level, it will finally shut that critic up.
Anyway, it makes it very hard to give and demonstrate empathy for others, when you do not have a strong capacity to have it for yourself. And this may be another reason why some people (and leaders) appear to be challenged in demonstrating empathy, even in circumstance where for others it seems obvious and natural to do so.
Clearly I have significantly over-simplified the concept by implying the leader’s ability to demonstrate empathy is either present or not. An individual leader’s ability to demonstrate a particular kind of competency falls along a spectrum. That ability can also be situation dependant; the fact is some days we have better access to our leadership skills than others.
To some, it might sound like I’m making excuses for poor leadership, or at least for Scott Morrison’s lack of empathy. Maybe I am, maybe I am not? But what I do know is that standing on the sidelines and being critical (and unempathetic) to those people already in leadership roles, it is not going to deliver the outcome we want in terms of leaders who can demonstrate empathy, humanity and vulnerability in the face of a crisis. But I also am not letting the Scott Morrisons of the world “off the hook”. As a leader I believe it is your moral imperative to actively work on those aspects of your psychology and internal dialogue which ‘trigger’ you into a state of fight- flight- freeze. These internal narratives can be changed and transformed, but there has to be a desire on the behalf of the leader to “do the work”.
In my opinion, this is the real burden of leadership. It is the burden created by the fact that leadership (and life) will constantly shine a light on the areas where we feel the most inadequate and/or in need of development. For Scott Morrison, like all leaders, this is the challenge of leadership.
So whenever you are ready Scott, I’ll be waiting for your phone call. 🙂
Personal Reflection:
In my view, one of the things we as a society are in dire need of is more empathy. So given we have just entered a new decade take a few minutes to reflect on:
• In your leadership role, formal or informal, were their days, or even moments, where you could have felt and demonstrated more empathy?
• Whilst maintaining as much empathy for yourself as you can muster, think about the underlying psychological dynamics and narratives and their origins, which contributed to those low empathy moments
• What can you do to transform or resolve those narratives so that you are less likely to be triggered into fight- flight- freeze and/or have more capacity for self -empathy?