Blair(leader)ship has history on its shoulders. The rest of us have just dandruff

The BBC is broadcasting a series called Blair Years portraying insights into Tony Blair’s life as (ex) UK Prime Minister. The last episode focus on his relationship with George W Bush and the war in Iraq. The series are exquisite in a typical BBC documentary style. They use lots of ‘talking heads’ commentators including GW Bush himself, ex aids etc. There is of course a primary political ’reading’ ( listening, watching…) of this pieces. But there is also a leadership reading which is the one I am interested here.

In the The Leader with Seven Faces book, I wrote:

“We are living in times of pseudo-meta-values. Pardon my language! I mean the abuse of ‘super-value language’ with the goal of providing an overall, blank justification for our actions as individuals and leaders. There have always been those pseudo-meta-values, as I call them, in the religious, social and political arena. But today, we have a few of them pretending to have the power to make most other values totally secondary and dependent, if not irrelevant. My prototype is the new Holy Trinity of integrity, sincerity and honesty. Leaders who profess total honesty, often use that declaration as a justification for other things. The same applies to integrity and sincerity. Many years ago, I spotted an American cartoon where one of the characters said: “If I am so honest, how can I be wrong?” It may make you smile, but don’t take it lightly. Many leaders today seem to be judged almost only on the basis of their sincerity and honesty. We even have the language for it: “At least you can’t say he is not honest, or he is not sincere, etc.” as if that was an overriding justification for everything else.

But you could say that this Holy Trinity of values is nothing more than a baseline, a given. One expects honesty, sincerity and integrity from leaders, but those do not constitute a vaccination against error, misjudgements or other ‘corrosions’. British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is a master of referring to the Holy Trinity of values as a justification for his political behaviour. I still haven’t heard many people challenging the supposedly overriding power of those values. I would say to the Blair-like-leaders: “You may be sincere and honest, but you may be totally wrong. Or you may not. Besides, your personal sincerity and integrity is simply a pass for you to hold office, and it is otherwise irrelevant for any further socio-political discourse.” Translation: “We take your sincerity-honesty for granted. Now, can we talk about the things we should be talking about?” A similar use of a supposed super-value is the appeal to or recognition of ‘consistency’. ‘He is a very consistent leader’ people may say. It is said as if consistency inevitably leads to the Holy Trinity. And, as the cartoon says, if you are so consistent (on top of honest, integral and sincere), surely you must also be right! Just one small observation: Hitler was very consistent”

These series have brought me back to those days when I wrote the above paragraph and Mr Blair was still in office. On screen, he continuously started his answers to the journalist’s questions with his famous ‘I believe’ or ‘I believed’. This little combination of two words contains the entire leadership DNA code of Blair-like style of leadership.

The word ‘I’ takes us to his me-leader-centric view of the world. We all use the word ‘I’ but when the leader does, one has to be careful as to what comes next. Believing is next here: I-believe. A colossal percentage of Blair’s own case in the explanation of his decisions is based in this combination code of ‘I’ and ‘believing’. It implies that whatever comes next is going to be based upon sincerity and honesty: ‘this is what I deeply believe(d)’, ‘I always believed’ etc.

Blair’s inducement to makes us to believe that, if he believed, he then was honest, and that if he was honest he was doing ‘the right thing’ ( I would be millionaire if I got a penny for each time that Blair uses ‘the right thing’) goes down on screen (whether now or then) as a charming call for understanding. If you follow it and get yourself trapped you will, will you not, become part of the worldwide community of people who (1) believe (2) therefore are honest and (c ) do the right thing. What a privilege.

Blair mesmerizes the crowds ( well, some of them). It still puzzles me how nobody stops him in the middle of his statements and say: “Mr Blair, I know you believe. But I am talking not to Blair’s private persona but Blair (ex) Prime Minister. A country can’t go to war – for example – on the basis of what one person believes, or on the basis of one person belief + honesty + consistency + doing-the-right-thing, not even what this person is the Prime Minister. There is a government here, a Parliament, a collective leadership. I am not interested in you ‘I’. Since when did we devolve to you the power to lead by your beliefs? We welcome them but we see them as the baseline for you to hold office. Beyond that, if all you use is your ‘I’ you are a dictator, not a democratic leader”.

The ‘I believe’ + ‘I am doing the right thing’ school of leadership is dangerous, even if by far there are other more dangerous schools. Picking on Blair is quite frankly easy because he is a natural case study of dangerous naivety and the Father of All Right Thing Intentions leadership. It is almost a caricature case study of the leader-is-right because (please feel free to add), he wants to do the right thing, is honest, is consistent etc. These blair(leader)ship sees his legacy as something that we normal mortals of today can’t grasp. History is the only one qualified to understand ( so we have to wait). History will prove him right. Blair has history on his shoulders ( he said) whilst the rest of us have just dandruff.

In business 2007 we have no room for ‘I believe’ as the sole reason for leading. Collective intelligence is the necessary organizational fabric of today. Leadership is about embracing all, not on the back of ‘my own beliefs’ only but through dialogue and rational+ emotional cooking of ideas. The opposite to ‘I believe’ is not ‘beliefs don’t matter’ ( or we don’t want a leader with beliefs); it is: here are my beliefs, where are yours, can we talk?; and by the way, I feel very strongly about this, convince me that I am wrong if you will.

There are no more polarised styles of leadership than Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. That may seem strange since politically there are (in theory) lots of overlaps. Clinton is another belief man. A strong one. But in Clinton-school-of leadership beliefs matter as much as trying very hard that other people embrace them and emotionally click with them. Clinton was ( sorry to talk past sense, I assume this is still the case today) famous for not being content with wining just the rational argument; he wanted to win the emotional as well since what the other side felt mattered. Agreeing was not enough if the other is left disengaged. Blair seems that, for all his beliefs and righteousness, doesn’t really care if ‘the other side doesn’t get it’ – after all History will. He may talk about wining minds and hearts but behaves as if the only thing that matters is his beliefs. The Blair school of leadership says: If you don’t see it, tough. I can’t change that. I know I am right, History will prove it, next? And he got away with it all. And he got a new job to win hearts and minds in the Middle East. Please, history, come soon and prove me wrong.