Page 31 - An Indispensible Resource for Being a Credible Activist

leader responds to legal compliance issues, how a leader experiences and uses his or her
authority, and whether or not a leader wants to know if he or she has spinach in his or her
teeth, as theorist Heather Anderson describes it. 3
What can we learn from Thompson’s important research for ourselves, to better under-
stand and assist our leadership, and to better understand the entire workforce? Many impor-
tant things. The implications of this research extend far beyond Catastrophic Leadership
Failure. The issues of stress and health are very relevant for HR/OD credible activists, as well
as any employees, and these will be expanded upon in all parts of this book.
Change is hard. People—any of us—can be resistant or defensive to it. However, we can
also be resilient and bring awareness to ourselves; we can ask what about our EI—and lives—
we want to be different and better. We can explore what is in our power to adjust, change,
and improve. We can make changes. We can define what our goals are and plan to meet
them. When we consider how far we have come from the time of cave dwellers until now,
we realize just how much change, growth, and development is possible for human beings.
There will be those leaders who don’t want to hear Thompson’s cautionary message on
Catastrophic Leadership Failure and who don’t want to understand how it is they wound up
in the news media, in court, or having bankrupted millions of stakeholders. There will be
those business leaders who are too frightened or ashamed to acknowledge that they have
mishandled something important. They will keep it a secret. They will view all those around
them who try to do things differently than them as their enemies. There will be those lead-
ers who don’t understand that employees who are hardworking, innovative, creative, and
ethical, but who aren’t “yes-men” or “yes-women” will either grow bored and leave or
might even be lost via unwise corporate termination decisions. This points to another form
of leadership failure—firing the wrong people and retaining the wrong people.
Leaders who fail will exclude quality staff from meetings, decisions, and processes
because they don’t want to share power, to share success or to share failure—they don’t
want to share learning. They may continue to make quite bad decisions and not even be
aware they are violating the law or creating more and more serious problems for themselves
because they only want to be surrounded by those who agree with them—or because they
will only accept disagreement and critical thinking from a select few.
This is another area where diversity and emotion, largely happening in the uncon-
scious, must be noticed, acknowledged, and addressed. Catastrophic Leadership Failure can
be a downward spiral. The refusal to share power is crucial.
When the HR credible activist steps up and says, “I think we need to do something dif-
ferent,” he or she is asserting him- or herself in a way that may not be welcome. He or she
may not be welcome to do this on certain issues or may be welcome to do this under one
boss but not under another. These permissions are sometimes made clear and defined in
professional roles and sometimes are not.
You may find yourself in a meeting during which nobody speaks to you, looks at you,
asks you what you think, or allows you to speak without being spoken over or interrupted.
This means you are invisible, you are not welcome, your feedback is not welcome, your
thoughts are not welcome, and you have no power; there is an unwillingness to share power
with you. For whatever reasons, your skills, knowledge, and abilities are unwelcome and
there is a preference that you remain quiet and not rock any boats. This is a particularly

14 The H R Toolkit