It is an unintentional
Posted on July 28, 2010
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
It is an unintentional lack of self-awareness.
In Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, Lady Hunstanton says to Mrs. Allonby, “how clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.” Some people seem to feel that leadership is about image and appearances. They try to look and act the part. They work hard at faking their sincerity. They’re about as authentic as “natural vinyl.” Everyone’s “phony detectors” are getting ever better at spotting this leadership acting. We can quickly see the difference between leadership doing and being. We know when someone is “doing their leadership thing” or really being a leader. One reason that Scott Adams’ Dilbert cartoon strip and books have been so popular is because they expose and ridicule leadership fakery (the big danger is that they also turn people into crusty cynics who automatically assume insincere and faked leadership in most people they see. If we look hard enough for evidence to support our biases, we’ll generally find it).
A major contributor to the self-hypocrisy that leads me to fool myself is my own ego. If I suffer from “I-strain,” I can’t see myself very well.
chris gustafson
Comments
Leave a Reply