Macbeth, flawed promises and praise. I lead a multi-faceted professional life. Recently, in one week I was working on, “Dimensions of Organisational Culture and Silos”, ”Hard and Soft System Challenges in defining Purpose” and Macbeth. So let’s talk about Macbeth.
The conversation was with a 14 year old who is part of a group of school-aged boys I work with at an EFL Football Championship Club. When they attend for an extended day, we provide some support to the school subjects they’re missing: hence Macbeth. As a leader, it would appear that Macbeth was doing fine, a respected and trusted individual known for his bravery and his ability to lead by example until when on an upward trajectory, he is taken in the suggestion that there are “more and better things to come his way.” And after this, things go horribly wrong and as they do he is increasingly less able to make sense of his world, the severity of his actions or the flawed encouragement and ego challenges from the doomed Lady Macbeth.
In the play at any rate, his reign is defined by terror and decline leading to his death. For a Shakespearian tragedy to work, we have to witness the decline and fall of a once decent and esteemed man, and after my conversation with the 14 year old lad, I began to apply some of the themes to the challenges we encounter that can throw us off track and into turmoil.
The Witches play with Macbeth: they give him purposefully flawed information but flawed only in the way that Macbeth seizes on it to confirm his ambition and misplaced sense of destiny. This led me to wonder about the occasions when we have seen once good people face a career disaster because, (and encouraged by others), they placed their personal sense of destiny, power and “being right” over common sense and ethically sound practice.
I was once asked to work with an individual who had taken over a failing team. Using a blend of “Pace Setting” and “Coercive” leadership styles he achieved a significant upturn in outcomes with all of the plaudits that accompany a job well done. However, what will “get you there won’t keep you there,” and no truer phrase could have been applied to this individual. Listening only to those who suggested that he was right, and that “more of the same” was what was needed, the team he had effectively saved, began to fall apart, eventually turning on him.
I was approached to mediate between him and the team. Part of my work with him focussed on alternative Leadership Styles and approaches, using some of Daniel Goleman’s work on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. He was unreceptive and relationships within the Team continued to deteriorate, Absenteeism and complaints increased, performance dwindled and long serving employees sought work elsewhere: and still he persisted. His refusal to accept that he was now acting on flawed information fed a misplaced determination to control all outputs and behaviours, crushing creativity, professional latitude, agency and previously agreed autonomy.
My efforts at mediation failed. I was there on the day when, against my advice, made a “back me or sack me” statement to his manager. He spent the following six or so weeks languishing at home until he accepted a reasonable severance offer. Materially helpful? Yes, but it did nothing to restore the self inflicted reputational damage or enhance career advancement,
Like Macbeth, the decline in his judgement began when he was at his most successful and as it turned out, vulnerable to the flattery of others who saw his downfall as part of a necessary game of organisational politics and power. Unlike Macbeth, there was no applause from a wowed audience who had engaged in the power of the play, no curtain call, no stage-door plaudits. This was real and it hurt.
