Familiarity in Leadership: Does it Really Breed Contempt?
As you may or may not know I run a company called Brothers in Beat. The main service is a unique twist on a well-known team building activity called team building drum circles. One of our corporate drumming events was for a company called Telemasters.
At the company I worked for before I started Brothers in Beat, the boss tried his level best to ensure there would never be familiarity… by being a prick. At the Telemasters event I remember instantly noticing two things:
1. I immediately suspected who the CEO was.
In a smallish room crowded with sixty people, while we were setting up the equipment in preparation for the team building to start, I was just casually scanning the room to get a feel for the crowd, and I easily, effortlessly, immediately identified who the person in charge was. He later introduced himself and my gut feel was confirmed.
2. Within seconds, and I mean seconds, I sensed that he was an inspiring, effective leader, someone I would want to follow.
This guy, Mario Pretorius, the CEO and founder of the company, made such an impression on me before we even said a word to each other, that I started speaking to his employees about what kind of person he is. They all said that they loved him as a boss and that he is a very inspiring guy to work for.
He doesn’t have his own office. According to one person, it’s his biggest fear, that he would start getting disconnected from his staff. They told him that as the CEO of a publicly traded company, he should really get his own private office; he absolutely resists the idea with a passion. He sits among them, not in a private office. He doesn’t have preferred parking. He doesn’t keep his staff at a distance. He’s one of them, yet he leads them. He commands respect, easily, without being nasty, without keeping them at a distance.
This made me wonder whether the whole concept of ‘avoiding familiarity in leadership’ is actually a bunch of tommy rot, or whether this guy, Mario Pretorius, just manages to avoid familiarity while still commanding the respect, love and loyalty of his staff.
Yet I have seen familiarity breed contempt. I myself have experienced it, taking the leaders around me less-seriously as familiarity creeps in…
…So is the question really whether familiarity breeds contempt? I don’t think so.
Familiarity does breed contempt, but you can get around that. The question is why do people believe that familiarity breeds contempt. If you answer that question, maybe you can have the familiarity without the contempt.
We’ve too easily accepted the generalisation that familiarity breeds contempt, without questioning it. How easy it is to just follow pre-determined, prescribed rules, without engaging in the very difficult activity known as thinking, using our own heads to decide why it’s true.
Before I go on, I need to explain that, familiarity, as I understand it, is not friendship. If you want to make your employees your buddy-oh-pal, then of course they will have a position in your life where they can question your decisions and voice that to you, because that’s what friends get to do.
As far as I know, and as far as I’m concerned, familiarity as it relates to leadership is when people start to see who you are, who you are as a person, the true authentic you.
as an example of the kind of leaders who I have had contempt for in the past.1. Get over yourself! Be humble.
One key to being the kind of leader Mario Pretorius is, is to be humble. If you’ve got an ego to satisfy you’ll want that preferred parking and private office, you’ll insist on it. This comes across as “I’m better than you”, and that breeds contempt.
2. Inspire Don’t Threaten.
Be aware that true leadership is not forced on people. There are times to be firm but great leadership is where people follow because they choose to.
If the boss has to always threaten and shout to get people to do their job, let me tell you straight, they’re a crap leader (send them a link to this page)! Being an awesome leader is not just about getting people to do things – a dictator can do that.
Being an awesome leader is about developing people as well, because at the end of the day, you may not know your purpose in life, but you can know for sure it’s about people. The products and services your company make are all about making life better for people and the money people pay for it will be used to make life easier and better for people.
A leader that has to threaten and shout will get things done half-heartedly, mostly poorly, and that’s about all.
Almost all of my school teachers had this mindset. One particularly good example was Mrs Ferdinand. She was and is a good person don’t get me wrong. She thought, and probably still thinks that the students she teaches respect her. They don’t. They think she’s a bitch. Of course they show her respect, they respect her authority, they do what she says because if they don’t they’ll get into trouble. But they don’t respect her. Showing someone respect and respecting someone are two totally different things.
Contrast that with Mr Putter. He’s the guy you go to when life just gets too much. When you have a problem you can talk to him, yet when he says you have to do something you did it, because you respected him. He was firm when he had to be but you never felt he thought he was better than you.
An effective leader inspires people. People want to follow such a person because they know where they’re going, they have a vision, they’ve made their staff part of that vision, and they’re going after it with a vengeance, together!
3. Be authentic.
Familiarity on its own does not breed contempt. Hypocrisy does.
When people sense that you are trying to fool them into thinking you’re somebody that you’re not so you can get them to do what you want them to do, that breeds contempt.
Share some of your fears and insecurities with your staff. As I’ve said, according to one of Mario Pretorius’ employees, becoming disconnected from his staff is one of his fears. I almost couldn’t believe that it was one of his staff talking about him like that, I thought it must be a member of his family.
Be an inspirational leader, but let them know you’re human too. You’ll be surprised the difference this makes. It builds a buffer where they recognise your fallibility, and will allow for that, instead of feeling angry or let down when they start to see your mistakes and weaknesses.
The reason some leaders think familiarity breeds contempt is because, as followers become more and more familiar with their leader, they start to notice inconsistencies - inconsistencies between what the leader says and what they do, and inconsistencies between how the leader acts and how they expect their employees to act – and that is what breeds the contempt.
Again using my school teachers, they would say “we’re here to see that you grow into respected members of society, to get the best out of you”, and that was true to a large degree, but that was inconsistent with some of their other actions and the way they said certain things which communicated, “You’ll do what we say when we say because we say!”, in other words: “we’re higher, superior!” - Contempt!
At another organisation I was involved in, the motto was, “Love People”, but the employees were treated like absolute dirt. You can’t claim to be all about people, and then treat the very people who make the vision happen like crap? Then it’s not about people at all, it’s about the vision itself, and that’s empty and pointless.
People were customers for a year or two or three, and then the inconsistency in their actions and words started breeding contempt, which has led to them losing most of their employees… and customers… more than once, and having to build it back up again.
So to be an effective leader that inspires people to action, be authentic, be consistent, because it’s when we try to be someone we’re not that inconsistencies become very obvious. You can only keep up the pretense for so long before people start to notice. They’ll pick up on it that you’re trying to fool them… and contempt starts to creep in.
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