In week four of our seven-part thought leadership series on the Seven Tough Truths of Effective Leadership, we will examine why leaders must be demanding.
The entrepreneur and founder of Walmart, Sam Walton, had a motto that was easy to say but difficult to execute: “Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore conventional wisdom.” Leadership often requires doing something that has not been done before, resisting a trend embraced by the majority, or working against a change forced on everyone. Whether fighting to eliminate unjust laws, introducing a product that shapes society, or changing the way an industry operates, all require introducing something new or different from the status quo.
Yet swimming upstream is more challenging and riskier than going with the flow – you’re much more likely to get exhausted and drown. It is easier to conform and concede to the current context, and the reasonable approach is to take the path of least resistance. This is the fourth tough truth of effective leadership. It seems like good business practice to be reasonable, which certainly poses the least risk in most situations. However, leaders must often be unreasonable to succeed in competitive business environments. In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”
When faced with this truth, most people succumb to the subtle psychological trick known as the “just world hypothesis.” This introduces a bias into our thinking that the world is inherently fair and justice is a natural part of it. This is fundamentally wrong - the world is indifferent. Justice is a human construct, not a natural one. In a naturally indifferent world, bad things happen to good people, and good things happen to bad people. Setting aside beliefs about karma, a person being good does not necessitate good things happening to them, nor bad things happening to mostly bad people. It is not due to the person’s nature but rather their actions and context that create good or bad outcomes. It is with these actions and the unreasonable commitment to these actions that leaders bring about significant change. According to Aristotle, “The only way to avoid controversy is to do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
Acting with unreasonable perseverance towards something that counters the majority view will likely lead to conflict. This might be an abstract conflict with society or a personal conflict with other individuals or businesses. This inevitably brings a leader into internal conflict with the socialized value of being liked and accepted and the psychological construct of attachment, or, as some might say, “not making enemies.” The idea that having enemies necessarily means someone is not a leader or a good person is an error. As Winston Churchill put it, “You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something sometime in your life.”
When leaders unreasonably persevere with their actions, they can bring consequences contrary to context. These counter-context actions mean the leader can take people, businesses, and even societies in directions that are not aligned with where the current context and majority view are pushing them. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s quote epitomizes this, "Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
To act contrary to the context is one thing – it only requires the leader to be a ‘lone nut’ choosing to act and then continue to act that way with unreasonable perseverance. However, a leader must lead others on a sustained journey down an unreasonable and potentially uncomfortable path. This is a massive part of what makes a leader a leader. While they may be naturally wired to act in a counter context, most people do not behave this way. As Rosalynn Carter said, "A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't necessarily want to go but ought to be." It is unreasonable to ask people to go where they do not want to go. A reasonable person allows people to go where they want, while the unreasonable person, the leader, manages to get large numbers of people to go where they do not initially want to go.
Getting people to do this requires consensus, which, by definition, is the current context of the majority. This extends the tough truth - the leader doesn’t want the current consensus because they need to unreasonably move the majority to a context they do not yet have consensus for. A reasonable person would likely adopt the attitude that “the majority will change when it’s ready to change.” Still, the unreasonable leader strives to change the consensus itself. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a shaper of consensus."
Effective leaders have a natural ability to fight against conformity, deal with the ambiguity of setting a different path, cope with the fear of making enemies along the way, and manage the anxieties of others who follow them into an unreasonable and often uncertain future. To truly lead is to be unreasonable in the eyes of the majority. True leaders must manage the tough truth of being unreasonable, whereas the consensus view is that reason should prevail.
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