Clark:
00:00:05
Ben White had this thing, didn't he, up until recently of constantly
Clark:
00:00:08
pulling the gloves and the shirt and pushing and tapping and generally
Clark:
00:00:13
just irritating the goalkeeper.
Clark:
00:00:15
And I said it's gamesmanship, but it's not sportsmanship.
Clark:
00:00:19
It's all about winning regardless of the cost, how ugly it
Clark:
00:00:22
is, or how unfair it is.
Clark:
00:00:25
I remember the 70s when games were really hard, you know, Billy
Clark:
00:00:28
Bremner and these guys would be having punch ups on the pitch.
Clark:
00:00:31
But that was in the spirit of the game.
Clark:
00:00:33
It comes down to the referees being proper, sincere and
Clark:
00:00:37
honest arbiters of the game.
Clark:
00:00:39
And it seemed that that particular game, the referee lost control very
Clark:
00:00:43
quickly which comes down to the subject that I'm guessing you guys are going
Clark:
00:00:47
to touch on at some point during our conversation today, leadership.
Clark:
00:00:50
The referee has to be, at some point, a leader of the way the game's played.
Clark:
00:00:55
And that man in the Villa West Ham game wasn't.
Clark:
00:00:58
He showed no strength of character, he made strange decisions that were
Clark:
00:01:02
borderline or certainly from the outside appeared biased, but they were definitely
Clark:
00:01:07
inconsistent and one of the things I think you can't have in anybody that's taking
Clark:
00:01:12
charge of something is inconsistency.
Rob:
00:01:14
Is the referee leading the game or is he managing the game?
Rob:
00:01:17
I think the referee is about managing that we uphold certain standards.
Rob:
00:01:23
Is that management or is that leadership in your view?
Clark:
00:01:25
I was thinking about this on the way in because I didn't have time to,
Clark:
00:01:28
to comment on it, but I noticed your post this morning about leadership.
Clark:
00:01:31
I found it interesting because I like to listen to myself, because, I find
Clark:
00:01:37
myself quite an interesting person.
Clark:
00:01:39
Some of the knee jerk reactions that I come out with I do wonder
Clark:
00:01:42
where it comes from sometimes.
Clark:
00:01:43
The first thing I thought, when, when, when I saw your post, and
Clark:
00:01:47
I wanted to comment, but I just didn't have time to get out of the
Clark:
00:01:49
house was, well, how do they know?
Clark:
00:01:51
How does anybody know where a leader is?
Clark:
00:01:53
How do the people that are answering this questionnaire know where a leader is?
Clark:
00:01:57
And then it made me think, and I had a little bit of a chunter to myself on the
Clark:
00:02:00
way in the car, what makes a good You
Rob:
00:02:02
need to record these and make these a podcast.
Clark:
00:02:04
I'd get locked up, mate.
Clark:
00:02:05
Well, I started to think, well, hold on a minute, what makes a good follower?
Clark:
00:02:09
If the people that are saying that they need a good leader, are so clued
Clark:
00:02:14
up as to what makes a good leader.
Clark:
00:02:16
Surely they must also know what a good follower is.
Clark:
00:02:18
When you talk about the referee, I think in all situations,
Clark:
00:02:21
there's the question, right?
Clark:
00:02:22
Leader of what?,
Clark:
00:02:23
is the referee a leader, well, he's not a leader of the football teams,
Clark:
00:02:26
clearly, but he is the person that is supposed to uphold the integrity
Clark:
00:02:31
and the principles of the game.
Clark:
00:02:33
In that regard, I would say he is what you might call an ethical
Clark:
00:02:37
or a moral leader on the pitch.
Clark:
00:02:39
One would like to think, so I would compare a football
Clark:
00:02:42
referee to a rugby referee.
Clark:
00:02:43
And the interesting thing about rugby referees is that you can hear
Clark:
00:02:46
them talking in a lot of cases.
Clark:
00:02:48
Some of the conversations that they have with players, I find very
Clark:
00:02:51
interesting because you will often hear them invoking the spirit of the game.
Clark:
00:02:56
This is not how we want to play this game, is it lads?
Clark:
00:02:59
You see that in rugby and I find that fascinating because you try
Clark:
00:03:03
that in football and you get, you get laughed off the pitch.
Clark:
00:03:06
But I would suggest that when somebody says, is the referee a leader?
Clark:
00:03:10
Well, the question is a leader of what?
Clark:
00:03:11
When somebody says to me, I find it fascinating the entire conversation around
Clark:
00:03:16
leadership, because we look around the world at the moment, you point to one
Clark:
00:03:19
good leader, is Mr. Putin a good leader?
Clark:
00:03:21
I don't know, certainly some people think he is.
Clark:
00:03:23
Is Mr. Trump a good leader?
Clark:
00:03:24
Well, there's a lot of people that think he isn't.
Clark:
00:03:27
Mr. Starmer?
Clark:
00:03:28
Well, slip of the tongue.
Clark:
00:03:28
In our country, for instance, you say to somebody, name a good leader, and
Clark:
00:03:32
they'll point to Mr. Churchill probably, because he saved millions of lives,
Clark:
00:03:36
and, and I think with good reason.
Clark:
00:03:37
But you couldn't call him a moral or ethical leader, because some of his morals
Clark:
00:03:41
and ethics were seriously questionable.
Clark:
00:03:44
The question is, well, what are they a leader of?
Clark:
00:03:47
And the thing is, you know, you, you imagine Mr. Churchill
Clark:
00:03:51
trying to lead us through.
Clark:
00:03:52
You have to remember that the followers of Mr. Churchill, his subjects
Clark:
00:03:58
or whatever you want to call him were very different people to the
Clark:
00:04:00
people that you see around us today.
Clark:
00:04:03
How do you lead that completely different country of people?
Clark:
00:04:07
You know, look at Tony Blair, leader of the country for years.
Clark:
00:04:10
Some people thought he was the best person ever.
Clark:
00:04:12
And yet he took us into a war costing millions and millions and millions
Clark:
00:04:16
of pounds, certainly thousands of lives, all based on a lie.
Clark:
00:04:20
Was he a good leader?
Clark:
00:04:21
I don't know.
Clark:
00:04:21
Was he a leader of?
Clark:
00:04:22
I think that's the question.
Clark:
00:04:23
The referee certainly, I would suggest, is, at least in theory,
Clark:
00:04:27
a moral or ethical leader.
Tony:
00:04:29
It's a can of worms there, isn't it?
Tony:
00:04:31
You've, you've, you've opened a can of worms there, Rob.
Tony:
00:04:34
I think there's two sides to this, right?
Tony:
00:04:36
If I can just dip into the manager versus leader.
Tony:
00:04:40
The referee as a manager or leader, I think from a technical perspective, he's
Tony:
00:04:45
there just to do a job that he's qualified to do, which is run the game by the rules.
Tony:
00:04:49
Be fair, be equitable and all of those kind of things.
Tony:
00:04:52
Obviously he's a human, he's emotional, he's impacted by situations.
Tony:
00:04:56
So he's got to rise above that where he can and be really
Tony:
00:04:59
professional under high pressure.
Tony:
00:05:01
make decisions and deal with the consequences of those decisions, whether
Tony:
00:05:05
they're the right decisions or not, should be technically good enough to do the job
Tony:
00:05:09
because he's been appointed to that game.
Tony:
00:05:10
So I think it's a technical job that doesn't require him to lead anybody else.
Tony:
00:05:16
Maybe his team of assistant officials and the fourth official and all of that.
Tony:
00:05:20
That's probably his team.
Tony:
00:05:22
He's in charge of that to a degree.
Tony:
00:05:23
But again, it's management.
Tony:
00:05:24
They're not developing new skills in the game.
Tony:
00:05:26
They're actually just applying existing knowledge.
Tony:
00:05:28
They're not building capacity.
Tony:
00:05:30
So I think it's a management task.
Tony:
00:05:31
However, as soon as we introduce the idea of ethics that Clark's talking
Tony:
00:05:37
about or values or morals or, or something, there's a, Immediately my
Tony:
00:05:43
sort of antenna immediately goes, Oh, there's some sort of leadership challenge
Tony:
00:05:47
going on here because alluding to the difference between rugby and football,
Tony:
00:05:53
where it's very clear how those two games differentiate themselves by the capacity
Tony:
00:06:00
for each sport to run itself in public.
Tony:
00:06:03
Rugby does it brilliantly.
Tony:
00:06:05
It's all in the open.
Tony:
00:06:06
There's a much higher degree of respect between players and officials.
Tony:
00:06:09
There's almost a collective shared set of values that people have
Tony:
00:06:14
agreed to adhere to and aligned to.
Tony:
00:06:16
That gets played out publicly because they have conversations
Tony:
00:06:19
about it and football resists it because it's entrenched in the game.
Tony:
00:06:23
It's a far more international game now than it ever was before.
Tony:
00:06:27
So all of these old stiff upper lip British high standards that
Tony:
00:06:30
we used to uphold, the game's changed in that regard that the
Tony:
00:06:34
Italian leagues played differently.
Tony:
00:06:36
There's a lot more simulation.
Tony:
00:06:37
For example, I don't want to stereotype people, but let's assume the referee
Tony:
00:06:42
is authentic, unbiased fair in his intentions and he's trying to run
Tony:
00:06:48
a good game the way he sees it.
Tony:
00:06:50
Of course he might be influenced by the emotions of the situation, who knows.
Tony:
00:06:54
But let's, let's assume he's got his game in full control.
Tony:
00:06:58
The idea that he could, in a window of 90 minutes get his leadership challenges.
Tony:
00:07:03
I would say is how do I get these 22 players and the staff
Tony:
00:07:08
on the sideline and the subs that are going to come on in a bit.
Tony:
00:07:10
How do I get them to collectively adhere to the way I think the game should be run?
Tony:
00:07:16
By the rules, the sense of fair play with a sense of goodwill and not wanting
Tony:
00:07:21
to harm each other, you know, whatever it, whatever it might be, there's an
Tony:
00:07:25
inherent expectation that everybody on that pitch through the referee should
Tony:
00:07:30
be able to uphold and adhere to these principles that the game demands.
Tony:
00:07:35
The laws of the game say this is how the game should be played.
Tony:
00:07:37
The referee is there to uphold them.
Tony:
00:07:39
So in a sense, there's a leadership challenge there, but it's an impossible
Tony:
00:07:43
one for the referee to navigate.
Tony:
00:07:45
He might send someone off to try and set the tone.
Tony:
00:07:47
He might book someone early to try and set the tone, or he might let the game flow.
Tony:
00:07:51
Because that's what the fans want.
Tony:
00:07:53
And he's a bit old school.
Tony:
00:07:54
He thinks, Oh, we'll let a couple of crunching tackles
Tony:
00:07:56
go, but we'll calm it down.
Tony:
00:07:57
You know, he might have some conversation with the players.
Tony:
00:07:59
So that's the sort of interpersonal skills or, or the feel for the game
Tony:
00:08:04
that the referee might have that may be inconsistent between him and
Tony:
00:08:08
the next referee, but when we're talking about a shared set of values.
Tony:
00:08:11
If I'm manager A and I think, right, we're going to, we're going to really
Tony:
00:08:15
push the boundaries there against Villa in the first 10 minutes, because
Tony:
00:08:18
there might be a bit of a soft touch.
Tony:
00:08:19
If we go and clatter a few people and we get away with
Tony:
00:08:22
it, we're onto a winner here.
Tony:
00:08:24
Look what's happened to him before.
Tony:
00:08:25
Depending where we all sit on that, on our own belief systems to
Tony:
00:08:29
whether that's ethical or unethical is the referees in the same boat.
Tony:
00:08:33
The laws of the game shouldn't fluctuate.
Tony:
00:08:35
But the individual will go.
Tony:
00:08:39
I'm a bit old school.
Tony:
00:08:39
Don't mind a bit of a tit for tat in the first 10 minutes.
Tony:
00:08:43
As long as no one's going to get the leg broken.
Tony:
00:08:45
Might let a little bit go.
Tony:
00:08:46
Whereas somebody else might go, Hey, bang, do that.
Tony:
00:08:49
So I think there's a leadership component to it because.
Tony:
00:08:52
The capacity to align people to a shared belief in how something should be done,
Tony:
00:08:57
I think is what leadership is all about.
Tony:
00:08:59
I just don't think it's the referees, within the referees capability to
Tony:
00:09:03
do that on any given day in such a short window of opportunity.
Tony:
00:09:07
I think the game as a whole needs to agree what that looks like,
Tony:
00:09:10
including the refs, including the coaches, including the players.
Tony:
00:09:14
If anything, I think it's a coach driven thing.
Tony:
00:09:16
Leadership is in the hands of the coach around the ethics
Tony:
00:09:20
and are we going to play?
Tony:
00:09:21
Are we going to be squeaky clean and, and succeed and win the
Tony:
00:09:26
fair play award at the season?
Tony:
00:09:27
Cause I know teams have been pilloried.
Tony:
00:09:29
The fans will go nuts if the team's finished mid table, but they
Tony:
00:09:32
won the fair play award because they didn't get stuck in enough.
Tony:
00:09:35
You know what I mean?
Tony:
00:09:36
Where to actually mobilize a whole football movement towards acceptance
Tony:
00:09:41
of what a good value set should look like on the pitch is really difficult.
Tony:
00:09:44
I don't think that's the referees job, but I think there he is the one that
Tony:
00:09:48
has to uphold the ethical standard first and foremost, and then draw the line
Tony:
00:09:54
so he knows when somebody's crossed it.
Rob:
00:09:55
In my current thinking and understanding, I see a manager as
Rob:
00:09:58
being like a steward of certain values.
Rob:
00:10:00
It's holding people accountable to a certain level of performance.
Rob:
00:10:04
I see the role of the manager is about congruence.
Rob:
00:10:07
Everyone on the same page, this is what we demand.
Rob:
00:10:10
I would see a referee as a kind of a manager, the, the leadership has come
Rob:
00:10:14
from FIFA and everyone else who's agreed these are the standards that we play by.
Rob:
00:10:20
The referee is then the manager says, look, you're falling below
Rob:
00:10:23
the standards we've agreed to, these are the rules, whatever.
Rob:
00:10:26
A leader would be either someone who's wanting to change the game
Rob:
00:10:30
or the coach who's, who's wanting to develop the team and lead the
Rob:
00:10:34
team to, to something different.
Tony:
00:10:36
And accepted whether we think it's a good referee or not.
Tony:
00:10:39
He's passed a certain standard to be a referee, so he's got the
Tony:
00:10:42
technical know how to manage the game.
Tony:
00:10:45
I think he's managing the game.
Tony:
00:10:46
My point around leadership is when there's a challenge to grow, Capacity to believe
Tony:
00:10:53
in something or sharing our intention.
Tony:
00:10:56
It becomes an immediately leadership challenge because if
Tony:
00:10:58
people are not on the same page, then they need to grow together.
Tony:
00:11:02
Otherwise they'll grow apart.
Tony:
00:11:04
There's no alternatives, one or the other.
Tony:
00:11:06
Isn't a manager a leader,
Clark:
00:11:08
Tony?
Tony:
00:11:08
Not necessarily.
Tony:
00:11:09
For me, only if there's new capacity to be built.
Tony:
00:11:12
Leadership is required when we haven't we haven't faced this before we're going
Tony:
00:11:17
into something that we actually need to rely on each other to grow through.
Tony:
00:11:22
I think leadership's
Clark:
00:11:23
required then.
Clark:
00:11:24
The reason I asked that question, Tony, and I ask your forgiveness
Clark:
00:11:27
for this, but I'm sort of talking a little bit tongue in cheek because you
Clark:
00:11:30
guys know my thoughts on leadership.
Clark:
00:11:32
That is nowhere near as necessary as people think it is.
Clark:
00:11:35
And it's certainly not clearly from our conversation.
Clark:
00:11:38
It's not something that can be nailed down particularly easily.
Clark:
00:11:41
When you look at a football pitch, for instance.
Clark:
00:11:43
The levels of leadership in the various aspects of the game are constantly
Clark:
00:11:47
changing and they're all over the pitch.
Clark:
00:11:49
The other night with Villa and Westham, the leader of the football
Clark:
00:11:53
team, the Aston Villa football team wasn't even at the side of the pitch.
Clark:
00:11:56
He was consigned to the stands because, the laws of the game
Clark:
00:11:59
said that he'd been naughty and he couldn't stand near the pitch.
Clark:
00:12:02
But he was a leader.
Clark:
00:12:03
The captain's armband was changed around a couple of times as subs came on.
Clark:
00:12:07
There were various leaders there.
Clark:
00:12:08
I mentioned the referee as a particular type of leader regarding morals and ethics
Clark:
00:12:13
because these things all come into play.
Clark:
00:12:15
This was sort of my point really, when I saw, Rob's, and you're
Clark:
00:12:18
both completely right, obviously, in what you've just said.
Clark:
00:12:21
I'm sort of being a little bit of a smart ass when it comes to
Clark:
00:12:25
the question of what is a leader.
Clark:
00:12:26
When you asked the question about leadership regarding your questionnaire
Clark:
00:12:30
this morning, my thought was, how long is a piece of string?
Clark:
00:12:33
Leader of what, under what circumstances, let's say, for instance you've got a group
Clark:
00:12:38
of people, let's say you have 10 people that are professional bridge builders.
Clark:
00:12:42
All they do is build bridges all day.
Clark:
00:12:44
Who's leading?
Clark:
00:12:45
You know, these guys all know their jobs.
Clark:
00:12:46
They slot into their positions to do what needs to be done.
Clark:
00:12:50
When somebody turns up and says who's in charge here,
Clark:
00:12:52
they'll all point to somebody.
Clark:
00:12:53
So there is a leader.
Clark:
00:12:55
I'm not pretending that you guys don't know that leadership
Clark:
00:12:58
in most cases is situational.
Clark:
00:13:00
Of course it is.
Clark:
00:13:01
It depends on the circumstances and what aspect of the current
Clark:
00:13:04
project is being focused upon.
Clark:
00:13:06
My question is, when we talk about leadership, I think we very often
Clark:
00:13:11
forget the other side of that coin, and that is who's being led.
Clark:
00:13:15
The current climate and the questionnaire that Rob posted on LinkedIn this
Clark:
00:13:19
morning was posted in an environment, LinkedIn, that professes to know
Clark:
00:13:25
what a leader is and to constantly be telling the world how they should be.
Clark:
00:13:30
I'm asking myself, who are these people that are telling
Clark:
00:13:34
everybody what a leader should be?
Clark:
00:13:36
And I'll tell you what what I think the answer is.
Clark:
00:13:39
The first thing that came to my mind, because I have a weird mind, was Moses,
Clark:
00:13:44
Going up to the mountain to talk to God, whether this happened or not is
Clark:
00:13:48
irrelevant, you know, it's allegorical.
Clark:
00:13:49
But Moses went up the mountain and he came down and all the people that
Clark:
00:13:53
he was apparently the leader of were all dancing around some golden cow.
Clark:
00:13:58
And he said, right I'm going to kill you all because you weren't good followers.
Clark:
00:14:01
You followed another God.
Clark:
00:14:03
Now, the reason this came into my mind was, we look at him as and ask ourselves
Clark:
00:14:08
whether he's a good leader or not.
Clark:
00:14:09
But what about all the Muppets on the ground dancing around the cow?
Clark:
00:14:13
They might say to Moses, you're not the sort of leader that we want.
Clark:
00:14:16
You've got to let us dance around this golden cow, because
Clark:
00:14:19
that's what we want to do.
Clark:
00:14:20
And he will turn around and say, well, how are we supposed to get
Clark:
00:14:23
to the promised land then if you're constantly dancing around golden cows?
Clark:
00:14:27
Who's in charge of this flipping thing then?
Clark:
00:14:29
Therein lies the problem.
Clark:
00:14:31
Because LinkedIn is basically a bunch of people dancing around the golden
Clark:
00:14:35
cow, demanding that leaders don't kill them when they, when they find
Clark:
00:14:40
them dancing around the golden cow.
Clark:
00:14:41
This is the issue.
Tony:
00:14:42
That's brilliant.
Tony:
00:14:43
So, what I forgot to say earlier was the one word that jumped out was trust, I
Tony:
00:14:48
think the question of what is a leader and the question of what is leadership
Tony:
00:14:52
are two different questions and people probably get mixed up in all of those
Tony:
00:14:56
notions, but in order to lead anyone, you need their permission to be led.
Tony:
00:15:02
And you can only do that if you can build trust.
Tony:
00:15:04
This formal authority where you do what you're told we're going here.
Tony:
00:15:08
And so if you think about the military, we just have to do what
Tony:
00:15:11
we're told when we're told to do it.
Tony:
00:15:13
And there's a reason why all of those rules exist.
Tony:
00:15:15
There's no choice in those circumstances, you just got to
Tony:
00:15:18
go when you're told to go right.
Tony:
00:15:20
Whereas when you're in a situation where those rules haven't been established.
Tony:
00:15:25
Those rules need to be created.
Tony:
00:15:27
Let's say you need people then to buy into an idea that requires a bit of leadership.
Tony:
00:15:33
That's less about management that requires, oh, I'm navigating
Tony:
00:15:36
some complex territory.
Tony:
00:15:38
I need to understand these people.
Tony:
00:15:39
even the person who's in charge may not know what the hell they're doing.
Tony:
00:15:44
So that's a situation where leadership is required, where it
Tony:
00:15:48
comes from and how it then manifests is where the challenge lies.
Tony:
00:15:52
That's where people can start to define themselves as having
Tony:
00:15:55
some leadership capability.
Tony:
00:15:57
Aside from this, it's sort of informal authority.
Tony:
00:15:59
How do I gain your trust to believe in my ideas and to tackle
Tony:
00:16:02
it this way is, I think, an example of somebody demonstrating
Tony:
00:16:07
some some leadership capability.
Rob:
00:16:09
I look at it that there's three levels of authority.
Rob:
00:16:12
There's positional where you've been given this, but the
Rob:
00:16:14
people don't really follow you.
Rob:
00:16:16
There's relational because you've built the relationships and the trust.
Rob:
00:16:19
But the biggest one is moral.
Rob:
00:16:21
When you go back to Churchill.
Rob:
00:16:22
The first time I ever thought about this was I had this discussion with
Rob:
00:16:26
Matthew Ward, one of the very early.
Rob:
00:16:28
Podcast, I think he came just after you, Tony and he said, churchill's a leader.
Rob:
00:16:33
So all these people are calling themselves leaders who are really managers.
Rob:
00:16:36
You're a manager, not a leader.
Rob:
00:16:38
First off that the LinkedIn environment is leader sounds better.
Rob:
00:16:42
So it's like what people are bragging a little on their CV.
Rob:
00:16:45
It's like, make your CV look the best.
Rob:
00:16:47
So I'm a leader, not a manager.
Rob:
00:16:49
Then people call themselves leaders.
Rob:
00:16:51
So in my post, when I'm writing stuff, I think manager, but I know that
Rob:
00:16:56
people refer to themselves as a leader.
Rob:
00:16:57
So I, I use the terminology and in the way that we use that terminology, we
Rob:
00:17:02
dilute the meaning of what leading is.
Rob:
00:17:05
And what a leader is.
Rob:
00:17:06
I've looked at who are great unifiers.
Rob:
00:17:08
Churchill is one.
Rob:
00:17:09
But Churchill only while there was a war.
Rob:
00:17:11
There's certain attributes of certain leaders that fit with certain contexts.
Rob:
00:17:16
When there's a war, you want someone who's quite dogmatic,
Rob:
00:17:19
quite strong like Churchill.
Rob:
00:17:21
Recently I've just been listening to a book about De Gaulle because I don't know
Rob:
00:17:25
if you know the, the story of De Gaulle, I didn't realize until quite recently,
Rob:
00:17:29
but France agreed peace with Germany.
Rob:
00:17:31
They were signing an arm armistice.
Rob:
00:17:33
And De Gaulle was a lowly general.
Rob:
00:17:36
He'd had some encounters with Churchill and Churchill respected him, and Churchill
Rob:
00:17:40
put him on the BBC and De Gaulle said, no.
Rob:
00:17:42
There is a France.
Rob:
00:17:43
And what's happening in France.
Rob:
00:17:45
Agreeing peace with them is wrong.
Rob:
00:17:47
All those that see themselves as French come to me.
Rob:
00:17:49
And that was the resistance.
Rob:
00:17:51
There was a number of resistance, but I was hoping that de Gaulle would
Rob:
00:17:55
have all the qualities that you think a unifier would have, you know, like
Rob:
00:17:58
he'd build these relationships, he'd treat people well, he'd lead the moral,
Rob:
00:18:02
you know, he was just an arrogant ass.
Rob:
00:18:05
He was like, I am France.
Rob:
00:18:07
You can't disagree with me because I am France.
Rob:
00:18:09
But again, like Churchill, he was kicked out soon after.
Rob:
00:18:13
He was a wartime prime minister, president doesn't always fit with, with peacetime.
Rob:
00:18:19
So I think.
Rob:
00:18:20
there is an element of the right leader for the right situation.
Clark:
00:18:23
The fact that you just mentioned somebody there who clearly
Clark:
00:18:27
not a nice person, not a person that you would envy being, let's say.
Clark:
00:18:32
And I think of somebody like Gandhi, he was not a wartime leader, but he
Clark:
00:18:35
certainly unified his people, but apparently was not a very nice person
Clark:
00:18:39
at all, certainly not to his, his wife.
Clark:
00:18:40
The reason I, I disagree with you, Tony, actually, I wasn't taking
Clark:
00:18:44
issue with what you was saying and I apologize if it came across that
Clark:
00:18:47
way, my point was, I can't agree with this, this idea of getting permission
Clark:
00:18:51
from the people that you're leading.
Clark:
00:18:53
Because that assumes that the people that you're leading are rational
Clark:
00:18:58
human beings, and there's no such thing as a rational human being.
Clark:
00:19:01
We like to think that we are, but I would argue even all of the decisions
Clark:
00:19:05
that we make, tend to be made apropos whatever situation we find
Clark:
00:19:10
ourselves in and then justified later.
Clark:
00:19:12
There are scientific studies that show we make decisions not necessarily based
Clark:
00:19:16
on emotion, but certainly instinctive reactions to situations that we make.
Clark:
00:19:22
And then we rationalize them afterwards.
Clark:
00:19:25
And when I, when I say that there's no such thing as a
Clark:
00:19:27
rational human being, that's not to criticize the entire human race.
Clark:
00:19:32
It's just a fallacy to think that we are able to make these rational decisions
Clark:
00:19:37
in any given moment which is why, whilst it is the best form of government that
Clark:
00:19:42
we have around at the moment, democracy has some serious flaws because you're
Clark:
00:19:45
giving the power of the vote to some people with some very questionable
Clark:
00:19:50
perspectives on life, from all spectrums of the political demographic.
Clark:
00:19:56
It is the only way that we've found so far that works, but to give everybody
Clark:
00:20:00
the opportunity to have an equal say in what gets done has some drawbacks.
Clark:
00:20:05
And this idea that a leader can only lead with the permission And
Clark:
00:20:09
that speaks directly to this analogy that I mentioned about Moses.
Tony:
00:20:13
It's not what I'm saying though, Clark, just to be clear, if
Tony:
00:20:15
I've been designated role of leader.
Tony:
00:20:18
I've got some formal authority.
Tony:
00:20:20
It's like you vote a politician.
Tony:
00:20:22
The majority of people vote Keir Starmer in because they had
Tony:
00:20:25
the choice of two effectively.
Tony:
00:20:26
So they went with him.
Tony:
00:20:27
They voted for the agenda, they voted for what the promise was.
Tony:
00:20:31
And then of course, weeks later, months later, things don't quite
Tony:
00:20:34
seem the same as what they were.
Tony:
00:20:36
Now people have lost confidence.
Tony:
00:20:38
Okay, so he's in, he was the leader of the opposition.
Tony:
00:20:41
He won the prime minister's seat from a position of authority, now
Tony:
00:20:46
has got the ultimate authority.
Tony:
00:20:48
The ultimate position of power and now people may not give him
Tony:
00:20:52
permission to lead them anymore.
Tony:
00:20:54
They may change their vote at some point down the track.
Tony:
00:20:56
What I'm alluding to is if I'm not got the position of formal authority,
Tony:
00:21:01
so we have to grow new capacity in a new way together as a collective.
Tony:
00:21:05
If it's Rob yourself and I are going to go on some quest together, and we're
Tony:
00:21:10
not sure who's going to take charge, for example, at some point, as we look
Tony:
00:21:14
into each other for to find this new way of doing what it is that we might
Tony:
00:21:19
be doing, then one of us may suddenly assume to take the lead, let's say.
Tony:
00:21:25
It's almost a prerequisite that the other two of us will think that that's okay.
Tony:
00:21:30
Yeah, I think this is great.
Tony:
00:21:31
We think Clark can lead us through this.
Tony:
00:21:33
There's still more work to be ironed out as to who's going
Tony:
00:21:35
to lead us to this next thing.
Tony:
00:21:37
There's some informal authority that can be built that where people will
Tony:
00:21:42
give the non designated leader some, some permission to take them somewhere.
Clark:
00:21:47
Exactly right.
Clark:
00:21:48
And that I, that was the point I was going to make.
Clark:
00:21:50
I agree with you in that regard.
Clark:
00:21:52
When we talk about permission, my point was simply that in any given
Clark:
00:21:56
situation, let's say for instance, there's 20 people in a room and suddenly
Clark:
00:22:00
there's a bang and there's a commotion outside, nine times out of ten people
Clark:
00:22:05
will look at somebody for an answer.
Clark:
00:22:08
That's the permission.
Clark:
00:22:09
That's you tacitly giving permission.
Clark:
00:22:11
Yes, exactly right.
Clark:
00:22:12
So when I disagree with this idea of permission, my point was simply
Clark:
00:22:15
that there are situations in which a person won't rationally hand over
Clark:
00:22:21
authority to somebody, but under the right circumstances, they immediately
Clark:
00:22:25
want somebody that they can turn to.
Clark:
00:22:27
This is why I brought this subject up in the first place, because leadership
Clark:
00:22:31
as a concept, certainly from my perspective, it seems to be being
Clark:
00:22:35
framed these days by the followers, which I find profoundly interesting.
Clark:
00:22:41
It's the people dancing around the golden calf that are telling
Clark:
00:22:45
Moses how he should lead.
Clark:
00:22:46
That implies that Moses needs their permission to lead them.
Clark:
00:22:51
In actual fact, and I've proven this to groups of people in my work, because
Clark:
00:22:56
you can create a situation in a work environment, certainly in a training
Clark:
00:22:59
environment, and certainly amongst managers when, when they're talking
Clark:
00:23:02
about this idea of leadership, when you present a challenge, And then you
Clark:
00:23:06
just stand and look at them because they will all look back at you and say,
Clark:
00:23:09
right, what do we do when you then say, I don't know what you're asking me for.
Clark:
00:23:13
Then you start to understand how people automatically want to pass
Clark:
00:23:18
on accountability for a situation, responsibility to somebody else.
Clark:
00:23:23
And this is why the whole idea for me.
Clark:
00:23:25
of leadership is such a problem that, to me, the idea of the followers or the
Clark:
00:23:32
people following the leader describing what a leader should be is anathema.
Clark:
00:23:36
It's ridiculous.
Clark:
00:23:38
It's basically the football players telling the referee what
Clark:
00:23:41
the rules of the game should be, and it's a complete nonsense.
Clark:
00:23:44
There are situations in which in times of heightened stress when people will
Clark:
00:23:49
basically do anything they're told because they don't know what to do and they will
Clark:
00:23:53
hand over authority to somebody that seems to know what they're doing, but when there
Clark:
00:23:57
is no stress around, everybody suddenly has to decide what Moses should be doing.
Clark:
00:24:01
And we want to dance around this car, so you're clearly not leading us properly,
Clark:
00:24:05
because we want to dance around this car.
Clark:
00:24:07
This idea of permission, you know, we live in a country, for instance,
Clark:
00:24:11
where the police, police the nation by consent, but where's the consent?
Clark:
00:24:16
Most people are not happy with the way the police run, run the show these
Clark:
00:24:19
days, but in the absence of any other alternative, people just go along with it.
Clark:
00:24:23
For me, the way most leadership happens nowadays, at the moment, is that in
Clark:
00:24:28
the absence of any better alternative, you know, oh, here's Stalman, okay,
Clark:
00:24:32
nobody likes him, and you know, the bloke's got the charisma of a wet fish.
Clark:
00:24:36
All right.
Tony:
00:24:37
If we take the idea of formal and informal authority, if you've got
Tony:
00:24:41
a police officer who's got the formal authority to apply the laws of the land.
Tony:
00:24:45
The police officer who has the ability to build informal authority and trust
Tony:
00:24:50
and engage and do it that way is always going to get more traction.
Tony:
00:24:53
They can build more capacity between themselves and the community that
Tony:
00:24:57
they're serving by growing trust in the way that they speak to people.
Tony:
00:25:02
In the way that they manage themselves in the way that they uphold their integrity
Tony:
00:25:07
and their all of those types of things.
Tony:
00:25:10
A president who is able to not just rule the people because he's got the
Tony:
00:25:15
job, but, but actually engages with the people, understands what they
Tony:
00:25:20
want, and, and tries to work with them, for the betterment of everybody, is
Tony:
00:25:23
always going to be revered more than the one that just assumes a position
Tony:
00:25:27
of power and, and starts to do what they do for whatever reason they do it.
Tony:
00:25:31
Because they're in service, aren't they?
Tony:
00:25:33
We trust them to, to serve us.
Tony:
00:25:35
Whether it's in our local constituency or it's all, all
Tony:
00:25:38
the way to federal government.
Tony:
00:25:40
We hope that they will do what they've told us they're going to do.
Rob:
00:25:44
I think it's difficult when you look from permission and I
Rob:
00:25:46
don't think it's about permission.
Rob:
00:25:47
We don't need permission.
Rob:
00:25:49
We need commitment.
Rob:
00:25:50
Because if you're going to make a change, you need people to follow you.
Rob:
00:25:53
And people are only going to follow you when they're committed to the idea.
Rob:
00:25:55
It's not about getting their permission.
Rob:
00:25:57
It's about getting their commitment.
Rob:
00:25:59
I'm not a good follower.
Rob:
00:26:00
I won't follow someone blindly.
Rob:
00:26:02
I spent my whole school career school life rebelling because you
Rob:
00:26:07
can't tell me where I'm going to be.
Rob:
00:26:09
Yet.
Rob:
00:26:09
If I trust someone, I trust someone's ethics, their integrity, and that they
Rob:
00:26:16
know what they're doing more than me.
Rob:
00:26:18
You know, when I see someone with a system or of something that I
Rob:
00:26:21
want to learn, I'll learn that.
Rob:
00:26:23
That's the permission.
Rob:
00:26:24
You can be voted in from democracy, but mostly more than half of people haven't
Rob:
00:26:29
voted for you, haven't voted you in.
Rob:
00:26:31
So the key to get in change is getting people to commit to your ideas.
Rob:
00:26:38
A prime minister actually, and even the president doesn't have a lot
Rob:
00:26:41
of power because the checks and balances, they have to get voted and
Rob:
00:26:45
ratified by the house of commons, the house of lords, the king eventually.
Rob:
00:26:49
They can be stopped at a number of points.
Rob:
00:26:51
Obama talked about how little he could do because everything he did was
Rob:
00:26:55
blocked because he was a Democrat while it was a strong Republican Senate.
Rob:
00:26:59
So it's about the ability to agree on a way forward.
Rob:
00:27:04
In wartime and, and what I've realized from looking at these
Rob:
00:27:09
leaders, De Gaulle was horrible.
Rob:
00:27:11
He just didn't like people and he was like, I am France.
Rob:
00:27:13
You can't disagree with me.
Rob:
00:27:14
They tried to honor him.
Rob:
00:27:15
And he said, how can you honor France?
Rob:
00:27:17
Martin Luther King didn't need to be a great person and didn't need to have
Rob:
00:27:21
great relationships because he has such and Empowering vision the same of Gandhi.
Rob:
00:27:25
When you've got a great movement that everyone agrees in, like end slavery
Rob:
00:27:28
civil rights Equal rights these kind of things you have such moral authority
Rob:
00:27:33
that you don't need the relationships.
Rob:
00:27:35
People might not like Martin Luther King, but they still
Rob:
00:27:39
stand for the same thing on.
Rob:
00:27:41
When you use the
Rob:
00:27:42
example of us three
Rob:
00:27:43
going off on a quest, we don't necessarily need a leader.
Rob:
00:27:46
We need someone with an idea on each stage.
Rob:
00:27:49
There's going to be different challenges.
Rob:
00:27:51
It's the ability to have that discussion.
Rob:
00:27:54
And I think when we, when we have these discussions, I don't think
Rob:
00:27:57
there is a leader, but I think through sharing ideas and from what
Rob:
00:28:01
we're doing is refining so that we may or may not come to an agreement.
Rob:
00:28:05
My insight from, from conflict is that basically there's an agreement there, but
Rob:
00:28:10
there's a lot of stuff that's in the way.
Rob:
00:28:12
And I think when you look at personality conflicts, it's not the
Rob:
00:28:15
personality that we conflict with.
Rob:
00:28:17
It's the neurosis that people have dealt with to deal with
Rob:
00:28:21
under stress that people react to.
Rob:
00:28:24
Ultimately, you know, I sometimes look at you.
Rob:
00:28:26
If you go back to the early caveman, there was a small group.
Rob:
00:28:30
How did they agree things they didn't necessarily, you know,
Rob:
00:28:33
generally there is a leader.
Rob:
00:28:34
But sometimes it's just we agree to do something.
Clark:
00:28:37
So there's a thing though, Rob, that's interesting when you mention the
Clark:
00:28:40
vision there, the idea of having a vision that people follow, because if, for
Clark:
00:28:44
instance, a leader had the vision that we're going to kill all the people we
Clark:
00:28:48
don't like, for instance, Hitler, Stalin.
Clark:
00:28:50
I was trying to skirt around actually saying it, but You know,
Clark:
00:28:57
Kristallnacht and, and, and all the things that happened from, you know,
Clark:
00:29:00
sort of 1933 onwards, it became fairly clear that here was a vision.
Clark:
00:29:05
Here was an idea for the future of a country that was questionable at best,
Clark:
00:29:10
downright evil, most people would say.
Clark:
00:29:13
Yet, He led millions and millions of people, and so if the idea is a bad
Clark:
00:29:18
one, does that make the leader, who's carrying out this vision, a good leader?
Clark:
00:29:23
This is the point for me, of the followers framing what leadership is all about.
Clark:
00:29:28
Because basically, that man was telling the people what they wanted to hear.
Clark:
00:29:33
He was giving them a vision that they wanted.
Clark:
00:29:36
It was stupid.
Clark:
00:29:37
It was downright evil.
Clark:
00:29:38
But nobody, and this goes back to our question of the football game.
Clark:
00:29:42
The referee stands there, theoretically, and says to the players, Listen,
Clark:
00:29:46
we all know the laws of the game.
Clark:
00:29:49
You are going to try and break some of them.
Clark:
00:29:50
But you don't want them broken against you.
Clark:
00:29:53
So I'm going to uphold to the best of my ability, not just the letter
Clark:
00:29:57
of the law, but the spirit of the law so that we can have a good game.
Clark:
00:30:00
He is thereby for me, more of a leader than anybody else on the pitch, because
Clark:
00:30:05
he's a leader on behalf of the spirit of the game, the principles of the game.
Clark:
00:30:11
And, and I know that a lot of people might say, yeah, but
Clark:
00:30:14
that's not what the game's about.
Clark:
00:30:15
The game is about winning, but at what cost,?
Tony:
00:30:18
If the referee, Clark, if the referee has had that dialogue, so if
Tony:
00:30:21
the referee has pulled the captains together and, and, and said that,
Tony:
00:30:24
I'll pull the teams together before.
Tony:
00:30:26
Conceptually, everybody goes into that
Clark:
00:30:27
game
Tony:
00:30:27
knowing what the rules are.
Tony:
00:30:28
Yeah, they do.
Tony:
00:30:29
But they also know that every referee is different.
Tony:
00:30:32
Oh, we've got this guy, he's a home banker.
Tony:
00:30:34
We're going to get nothing.
Tony:
00:30:35
You know, those discussions happen in every game.
Tony:
00:30:37
Oh, we're going to get nothing out of this guy.
Tony:
00:30:40
We always get bad Right, so all of those pre existing notions exist.
Tony:
00:30:43
It's a brilliant analogy that you, that you make, if the referee pulls them
Tony:
00:30:48
together before the game and says, look, and says exactly what you said, that's
Tony:
00:30:52
leadership because he's trying to get two groups of factions who are going to
Tony:
00:30:57
be in conflict for the next two hours.
Tony:
00:30:59
He's trying to get them to at least go about it with a shared code of conduct,
Tony:
00:31:03
and I know that the code of conduct exists, but already before they've
Tony:
00:31:07
even started, they're coming at it, as we all do, through our own lens,
Tony:
00:31:11
through our own perceptions, through our own experiences, all of that.
Tony:
00:31:14
But I think his, he is demonstrating leadership if he says, this is how
Tony:
00:31:19
we're going to do things today, guys.
Tony:
00:31:21
Are you with me?
Tony:
00:31:21
Then it's clear.
Tony:
00:31:22
We've got a shared intention about how this game is going to be managed.
Tony:
00:31:25
We're all
Clark:
00:31:27
arguing in favour of each other.
Clark:
00:31:28
We're all singing from the same hymn sheets.
Clark:
00:31:31
Because this goes back to this idea of, of permission.
Clark:
00:31:35
But also trust, as Rob says, and consent, because the point I'm trying to make about
Clark:
00:31:41
we need to look at who the followers are.
Clark:
00:31:42
Let's say, for instance, you've got a dozen people in a situation
Clark:
00:31:47
and it's all going pear shaped.
Clark:
00:31:48
And everybody's saying, what do we do?
Clark:
00:31:50
And they look to somebody and they say, you're the one.
Clark:
00:31:52
lead us out of this situation.
Clark:
00:31:54
And that person then turns around to them and says, No, I'm not leading you.
Clark:
00:31:57
You're not going to do what I say.
Clark:
00:31:59
Why should I lead you?
Clark:
00:32:00
And they say, Well, we've got nobody else.
Clark:
00:32:02
At that point, the leader then says, and I'm talking metaphorically because I
Clark:
00:32:06
think all leadership situations involve a level of this, where the person says,
Clark:
00:32:12
if you want me to lead you, what are the parameters within which we should operate?
Clark:
00:32:17
For instance, can I tell you what to eat, what to wear, what
Clark:
00:32:21
names you should call each other?
Clark:
00:32:22
No, of course not.
Clark:
00:32:23
So what are the parameters?
Clark:
00:32:24
We are trying to accomplish X. In pursuit of that goal, I want to quote
Clark:
00:32:30
Rob, a certain amount of blind loyalty.
Clark:
00:32:32
You may not know exactly why I'm doing something, but if you
Clark:
00:32:36
question everything that I say, we're never going to get anywhere.
Clark:
00:32:40
So to, within certain parameters, for instance, in the game of football,
Clark:
00:32:45
within the rules and the spirit of the game, I expect you guys to, to listen
Clark:
00:32:50
when I say that's not happening or we're going to be doing X, Y, and Z. Okay.
Clark:
00:32:54
And it's not a matter of authority then, it's not a matter of formal authority or
Clark:
00:32:59
permission or anything, it's basically, if you guys all agree that we need to
Clark:
00:33:03
accomplish X, for instance, beat the Germans in this war, then I need you
Clark:
00:33:08
guys to go along with, and that's my point, I need you to be good followers.
Clark:
00:33:15
If you want me to be a good leader, then you need to be good followers, will it?
Clark:
00:33:18
We'll agree what the terms of that arrangement is, but under that situation,
Clark:
00:33:23
you then need to do, to do your part.
Clark:
00:33:25
The problem that we find so often now is that the people dancing
Clark:
00:33:29
around the golden calf, they're saying to Moses, no, no, no, no.
Clark:
00:33:33
Hold on a minute.
Clark:
00:33:34
We want to dance around this golden calf.
Clark:
00:33:35
And Moses said, but that was not part of the agreement.
Clark:
00:33:37
Well, we've changed the agreement.
Clark:
00:33:39
Well, all right, pick your own flipping leader then.
Clark:
00:33:42
Because we had an arrangement and now you're going against it.
Clark:
00:33:45
This is the problem with leadership.
Clark:
00:33:47
And one of the reasons that that particular referee had such a bad
Clark:
00:33:50
game was because he personally didn't have the personal integrity to
Clark:
00:33:56
stick by what he was supposed to be.
Clark:
00:33:59
He was there to uphold the laws of the game, and he didn't
Clark:
00:34:01
have the ability to do that.
Clark:
00:34:02
If, for instance, we look at somebody like Tony Blair, who I detest beyond
Clark:
00:34:06
measure, because he was so weak that he allowed another country to
Clark:
00:34:10
persuade him to do something against the interests of his own people.
Clark:
00:34:14
Then for me, he was going against the agreement that he'd
Clark:
00:34:17
made with the British people.
Clark:
00:34:18
He had said to them, I'm going to lead you as a country for the
Clark:
00:34:21
interest of our country, not this other country who's bigger and
Clark:
00:34:25
more powerful and got more money.
Clark:
00:34:26
And I happen to like him and I want to be his mate.
Clark:
00:34:28
I'm going to do a book tour when I, when I leave office.
Clark:
00:34:30
He was working against the interests of his own people.
Clark:
00:34:32
So he was working outside of that arrangement.
Clark:
00:34:34
And in all leadership situations, there is a tacit agreement that the leader will
Clark:
00:34:40
behave in a certain way and the followers will also behave in a certain way within
Clark:
00:34:44
the parameters that they've agreed to.
Clark:
00:34:46
Unfortunately, most people, and you look on LinkedIn, are all the people
Clark:
00:34:49
that supposedly know what a leader is.
Clark:
00:34:51
They, they haven't got a clue.
Clark:
00:34:53
And the reason they haven't got a clue is because they, they are looking at it
Clark:
00:34:56
from the perspective of the follower, who doesn't want to have any accountability
Clark:
00:35:01
for their part in the arrangement.
Clark:
00:35:02
And this is a problem that we have now with leadership.
Clark:
00:35:05
I had this exact situation in a factory where I was told we were
Clark:
00:35:09
making some change, I was told by the general manager, you can't do that.
Clark:
00:35:14
You can't tell these guys to do X, Y, and Z. I said, but that is their job.
Clark:
00:35:18
You know, I'm not even asking them to do something beyond their normal role.
Clark:
00:35:23
I'm asking them to do their job.
Clark:
00:35:25
It's as simple as that.
Clark:
00:35:25
Ah, yeah, but the circumstances of this and the current climate
Clark:
00:35:29
and COVID and da da da da.
Clark:
00:35:31
Well, then don't pay them if they're not doing their job.
Clark:
00:35:33
Or if you're going to pay them, expect them to play
Clark:
00:35:35
their part in the arrangement.
Clark:
00:35:37
You know, we, we talk about things like quite quitting and all that sort of stuff.
Clark:
00:35:41
It's great to have these conversations about how people
Clark:
00:35:43
feel about the current arrangement.
Clark:
00:35:45
But at the end of the day, if you've entered into an agreement with a
Clark:
00:35:47
leader, then be a bloody good follower.
Clark:
00:35:49
End of rant.
Rob:
00:35:50
You can talk about leadership and you can talk about all of these things, but
Rob:
00:35:54
fundamentally it comes down to character.
Rob:
00:35:56
It comes down to the clarity of your identity, of who you are, of
Rob:
00:36:01
what you believe in, what you stand for, what your philosophy is, and
Rob:
00:36:05
that I think sets the boundaries.
Rob:
00:36:08
Where there is problems is where there is either a lack of character, lack
Rob:
00:36:13
of those foundations, lack of a sense of identity and a sense of mission.
Tony:
00:36:17
We can have all the qualities in the world though and be in a situation
Tony:
00:36:20
that doesn't require leadership.
Tony:
00:36:21
So the characteristics don't define the leader.
Tony:
00:36:24
They certainly define the person and they certainly help to
Tony:
00:36:26
build that informal authority.
Tony:
00:36:28
They help to build trust.
Tony:
00:36:29
People will trust that more implicitly because of those characteristics, but
Tony:
00:36:34
in itself it doesn't define that we can meet the challenge that we're facing.
Tony:
00:36:38
Like if I've got all those fantastic characteristics, but I've got is
Tony:
00:36:42
an idea that's rubbish and I still want to go and do it regardless.
Tony:
00:36:47
Then that doesn't make me a great leader.
Tony:
00:36:49
It just means I'm a great bloke with no idea.
Rob:
00:36:51
Isn't
Tony:
00:36:52
that the idea?
Tony:
00:36:52
Of course, it's important to have good character and sound character.
Tony:
00:36:56
But in itself, it's not leadership.
Tony:
00:36:57
It's different from that.
Rob:
00:36:58
If you've got the character of integrity and you know, your idea isn't
Rob:
00:37:01
working then you have the integrity to say, I'm not the right person for this.
Rob:
00:37:05
So those characters is the self awareness of knowing when you're, when you can
Rob:
00:37:10
contribute something and when you can't.
Clark:
00:37:12
A good example of how leadership might is to look at a parent,
Clark:
00:37:16
the responsibility of a parent.
Clark:
00:37:18
I think one could reasonably say that a parent is a leader, mother or father.
Clark:
00:37:24
And they both have slightly different roles, but there are
Clark:
00:37:28
certainly overlapping for sure.
Clark:
00:37:30
But as a parent, you are the leader of the kids, let's say, although there's
Clark:
00:37:35
much more to it than that, because the family unit is, it's complex and
Clark:
00:37:39
they're more involved than just a parent being in charge of the kids.
Clark:
00:37:43
But let's just say as a parent, you could consider yourself the leader of that
Clark:
00:37:47
family, in which case, would a parent ever have to do something or encourage or
Clark:
00:37:54
instruct their children to do something that the kids might not want to do?
Clark:
00:37:58
Well, yeah, all the flipping time.
Clark:
00:38:00
And that's the point for me about leadership, because a leader
Clark:
00:38:04
often has to get people to do things that they don't want to do.
Clark:
00:38:07
And the question then comes down to, well, is it a good thing?
Clark:
00:38:11
Is it the thing that benefits the unit, the family, the group as a whole?
Clark:
00:38:16
In which case, the people being led would probably do well to ask themselves,
Clark:
00:38:23
although I don't like it, is this for the betterment of us as a unit?
Clark:
00:38:28
One of the problems, I see around me today is that, and you, you, you said
Clark:
00:38:33
it, Rob, you're not a good follower.
Clark:
00:38:35
Well, that's the problem.
Clark:
00:38:36
In the world today, nobody's a good follower.
Clark:
00:38:38
Everybody is an independent unit that won't be told what, what's
Clark:
00:38:43
the best thing to do or the best way to go about doing something.
Clark:
00:38:45
And yet, when we talked about Churchill, for instance, the, the country that he led
Clark:
00:38:50
was a very different country to the one we, we, for me, I think the people in the
Clark:
00:38:55
Second World War were a different breed.
Clark:
00:38:57
They were, they, they were hardier than, as, as a group
Clark:
00:39:01
of people than we are today.
Clark:
00:39:03
I think that's fair to say, you know, many of them had grown up without shoes.
Clark:
00:39:07
With almost no food the ideas around discipline were very different
Clark:
00:39:10
then to what they are today.
Clark:
00:39:11
Let's face it, most people probably got beaten on a fairly regular basis as kids.
Clark:
00:39:15
So they were a different breed of people.
Clark:
00:39:17
And yet that group of people who could quite easily say,
Clark:
00:39:21
well, I'm not doing well.
Clark:
00:39:22
I grew up in the first war.
Clark:
00:39:23
I've, I've seen everything.
Clark:
00:39:24
I'm tough.
Clark:
00:39:25
Nobody's telling me what to do.
Clark:
00:39:26
And yet.
Clark:
00:39:27
You know, this nation of whatever it was back then, 30, 35, 40 million
Clark:
00:39:31
people were a nation of good followers.
Clark:
00:39:34
And to me, that's fascinating because we live in a world now.
Clark:
00:39:39
Not just in this country, but predominantly, you know,
Clark:
00:39:42
certainly Western parts of the world, where you have, let's be
Clark:
00:39:45
kind, let's not call them soft.
Clark:
00:39:47
They have more opportunities than, than have ever been available
Clark:
00:39:50
in, in the history of the world.
Clark:
00:39:52
And yet the average person is not particularly tough, doesn't need to be.
Clark:
00:39:57
And yet they still say, no, I'm not.
Clark:
00:39:59
Nobody's telling me what to do.
Clark:
00:40:00
I'm not following anybody.
Clark:
00:40:01
I have individual sovereignty over everything that I do.
Clark:
00:40:05
You can't tell me what to do, but how can you lead those people?
Clark:
00:40:08
They're telling the leaders how the leaders should be, and the leaders are
Clark:
00:40:11
like, well, what, what should I do?
Clark:
00:40:12
Shall I just do what you want?
Clark:
00:40:13
Who agrees with parameters nowadays then?
Clark:
00:40:16
So how a group of people should accomplish something.
Clark:
00:40:18
I, I literally hear people at least once a day, usually several times a
Clark:
00:40:23
day telling me how the world's going, down the creek without a paddle.
Clark:
00:40:27
I don't think it is.
Clark:
00:40:28
I think it's a great world.
Clark:
00:40:30
I have enormous optimism because eventually at some point.
Clark:
00:40:33
People will realize maybe we need to get our own shit together and stop telling
Clark:
00:40:37
the leaders what they should be doing
Tony:
00:40:39
and start being good followers.
Tony:
00:40:40
I think you've nailed it there, Clark.
Tony:
00:40:42
I think you've nailed it.
Tony:
00:40:43
When you're in a team environment and you're the designated leader.
Tony:
00:40:46
Let's say you've been given the position of manager, for example,
Tony:
00:40:49
whether you can lead or not.
Tony:
00:40:51
Is about to be defined in those moments.
Tony:
00:40:53
So you've got a group of individuals who are looking blankly back at you as
Tony:
00:40:56
you address them for the first time.
Tony:
00:40:58
You're thinking, who are these people that I'm going to try and
Tony:
00:41:01
pull together into this force.
Tony:
00:41:03
I want to succeed on all these external goals that the business has set for
Tony:
00:41:07
me, I want to be the guy that takes them to achieve what we want to
Tony:
00:41:10
achieve, all of that sort of stuff.
Tony:
00:41:11
Within it, you've got these people that you're talking about, that there's
Tony:
00:41:16
immediate resistance to being led, there's self interest over collectivism,
Tony:
00:41:21
individualism versus collective, all of those sorts of things are in play.
Tony:
00:41:25
I think the leader defines themselves in those moments by finding the
Tony:
00:41:29
capacity to bring that stuff together.
Tony:
00:41:32
I think that's where leadership lives in those gaps between
Tony:
00:41:35
the aspiration over here.
Tony:
00:41:37
This is what we want to achieve together.
Tony:
00:41:38
The reality is I'm standing there for the first time.
Tony:
00:41:41
In front of you, rabble.
Tony:
00:41:42
How the hell are we going to do this?
Tony:
00:41:44
Because I've never led you before, you've never followed me before.
Tony:
00:41:48
This is an almighty challenge.
Tony:
00:41:50
For me, it's complex.
Tony:
00:41:52
You're all complex.
Tony:
00:41:53
You don't even know why you're doing half the things you're doing.
Tony:
00:41:56
So, let's start talking about it.
Tony:
00:41:59
Let's find a way forward so when we get up in the morning we can really enjoy
Tony:
00:42:02
coming to this place and find some meaning in what it is that we're doing together.
Tony:
00:42:07
Otherwise, back off and go somewhere else and, and, and go and take
Tony:
00:42:10
your problems somewhere else.
Tony:
00:42:11
I'll find somebody else who can do it.
Tony:
00:42:13
That's the key.
Tony:
00:42:14
That's the key.
Tony:
00:42:14
I think they're in that.
Tony:
00:42:16
There's their objective.
Tony:
00:42:18
I've been tasked to take us there.
Tony:
00:42:20
I don't have all the answers, but I'm not going to get there,
Tony:
00:42:23
unless you lot come with me.
Tony:
00:42:25
How are we going to do it?
Tony:
00:42:26
I don't know.
Tony:
00:42:27
Let's start talking.
Tony:
00:42:28
Let's work it out.
Tony:
00:42:29
Leadership lives in those gaps.
Clark:
00:42:31
It's that conversation, whether that conversation
Clark:
00:42:34
actually explicitly takes place.
Clark:
00:42:36
Or whether it's just a tacit agreement amongst a group of people, according
Clark:
00:42:40
to the laws that are already in place.
Clark:
00:42:42
But that conversation is the key to what is or isn't leadership.
Clark:
00:42:47
If, for instance, on Sunday, when Villapay West Ham, If the referee after 20 minutes
Clark:
00:42:53
just walked off the pitch, I'm done.
Clark:
00:42:55
I'm not doing this.
Clark:
00:42:56
What would happen then?
Clark:
00:42:57
Because he could turn around and say, hold on a minute.
Clark:
00:43:00
There are rules and you're not following them.
Clark:
00:43:02
I'm trying to enforce them.
Clark:
00:43:03
And you guys are just arguing with me.
Clark:
00:43:05
Play your own flipping game then, see how that works out.
Clark:
00:43:08
And that conversation, what is it you expect from me?
Clark:
00:43:12
And what is it then, in return, I should be able to expect from you?
Clark:
00:43:16
Because if you say that you want me to be the leader, and I say
Clark:
00:43:20
no, then what are you going to do?
Clark:
00:43:21
You're going to pick somebody else.
Clark:
00:43:22
Are they going to be qualified?
Clark:
00:43:23
And are you going to have the same conversation?
Clark:
00:43:25
Or is it basically just going to be a group of people saying, we
Clark:
00:43:28
all want this, let's do this.
Clark:
00:43:30
We all want to have Thursdays off, and we all want to sit around eating pizza.
Clark:
00:43:34
Well, then you're going to fail.
Clark:
00:43:36
Because you know, you, your purpose in life isn't to sit around eating pizza.
Clark:
00:43:41
It's to accomplish something.
Clark:
00:43:42
How is that gonna get accomplished if you are all sitting around
Clark:
00:43:44
doing what you want to do?
Clark:
00:43:46
So I'm gonna be the person if that's what you want to get us there.
Clark:
00:43:50
But I expect X from you as well.
Clark:
00:43:52
I need you guys to play your part.
Clark:
00:43:53
This is the whole point of me being a miserable, chuntering,
Clark:
00:43:57
grumbling person all morning, is this idea that the followers should
Clark:
00:44:01
dictate what the leader should be.
Clark:
00:44:02
Maybe if you guys are prepared to do your part, but, you know, what,
Clark:
00:44:07
how often do you see on LinkedIn.
Clark:
00:44:08
I'm a follower guru.
Clark:
00:44:10
I, I can tell you how to be good subjects of your leader.
Clark:
00:44:14
It doesn't happen, does it?
Clark:
00:44:15
No, it's just all about the leader.
Clark:
00:44:16
It's all on them.
Clark:
00:44:17
Because then when it goes pear shaped, we can blame them.
Clark:
00:44:19
Like they did to Moses.
Rob:
00:44:21
I agree with where you're going.
Rob:
00:44:22
And the point where I switched from thinking about conflict and
Rob:
00:44:27
relationships to teams was the point where I realised that we have to unify.
Rob:
00:44:32
We have a different world to say the second world war, but I
Rob:
00:44:36
don't think people are different.
Rob:
00:44:37
I think people are softer because the environment is softer.
Rob:
00:44:40
But if people aren't following, you have to be a better leader, right?
Rob:
00:44:43
So I'm a bad follower.
Rob:
00:44:45
So there are 8 billion plus people in the world, right?
Rob:
00:44:48
And we all have a different idea.
Rob:
00:44:49
The idea that I'm a leader and you will do as you're told and you'll get behind me.
Rob:
00:44:54
We've had centuries of these advertising campaigns are of don't be selfish.
Rob:
00:44:59
Give up your self interest.
Rob:
00:45:00
No one's going to do it.
Rob:
00:45:01
It's biologically hardwired into us that we are selfish.
Rob:
00:45:04
The reason that you have so much politics, the reason that there is so
Rob:
00:45:08
much disengagement, the reason there is so much gossip, rumors, all of these things
Rob:
00:45:12
that undermine teams is because if I see my self interest as doing something that
Rob:
00:45:19
isn't for the team, I'm going to do that.
Rob:
00:45:21
We can appeal to people to be more noble and whatever, but they aren't.
Rob:
00:45:25
I realized people aren't good at joining together.
Rob:
00:45:29
Traditionally there's been this whole thing of, okay, this is what we're doing.
Rob:
00:45:33
The whole patriotism idea is based on your country matters more than you do.
Rob:
00:45:40
And that may be if I agree with that.
Rob:
00:45:43
For me, I'm not patriotic.
Rob:
00:45:44
I believe where I was born was luck.
Rob:
00:45:48
The idea of countries is someone made this whole idea of this is a nation.
Rob:
00:45:54
This isn't a nation.
Rob:
00:45:54
That changes all the time.
Rob:
00:45:56
If I was born in Nazi Germany.
Rob:
00:45:58
Okay do what's good for your country.
Rob:
00:46:00
Well, i'm going to do something that's immoral and Leaders
Rob:
00:46:02
should be held accountable that if they're doing something immoral.
Rob:
00:46:05
People shouldn't follow them.
Rob:
00:46:06
Because isn't that the way that you you stop having another holocaust.
Clark:
00:46:10
Who decides what's moral though, mate?
Rob:
00:46:11
We agree to something So this is, this is the thing that if you feel that
Rob:
00:46:16
something's immoral, do you still do it?
Rob:
00:46:18
If you, so there are hundreds of companies, pharmaceutical companies,
Rob:
00:46:22
food companies, tobacco companies, oil companies, all of these people.
Rob:
00:46:26
doing things that most people would say were immoral if they were transparent.
Rob:
00:46:30
And yet people are going along with them.
Rob:
00:46:32
And I think if you feel that something's immoral, I don't
Rob:
00:46:36
think that you should do it.
Clark:
00:46:37
So that's the key, I think, Rob.
Clark:
00:46:39
What you just said there about the, the, the idea of being patriotic towards
Clark:
00:46:44
a country because people follow this, this incorrect idea that the country
Clark:
00:46:48
is more important than the individual.
Clark:
00:46:50
I would say anthropologically speaking, the country is more
Clark:
00:46:53
important than the individual because the tribe has to continue, whereas
Clark:
00:46:57
the individual need not continue.
Clark:
00:47:00
If we go back in history and, and forget countries because they're an
Clark:
00:47:03
artificial construct, but groups of people have always gathered together
Clark:
00:47:07
throughout history for the collective protection of the entire group.
Clark:
00:47:11
And it's always been accepted for obvious reasons that the individual must
Clark:
00:47:16
be sacrificed, if necessary, for the good of the continuance of the tribe.
Clark:
00:47:21
It makes sense, because if we all just look after ourselves, then we're all
Clark:
00:47:26
going to be gone within 50, 60, 70 years.
Clark:
00:47:28
So the idea that the tribe is more important than the individual
Clark:
00:47:32
has some basis in logic.
Clark:
00:47:34
However, as you've just said, you, you can't decide which tribe you're born into.
Clark:
00:47:39
So the idea that certain members within the tribe might be promoting
Clark:
00:47:44
questionable ideals or practices, they have to be able to, and this is
Clark:
00:47:48
probably one of the, the most important parts of leadership, have to be able
Clark:
00:47:52
to, to be entered into a conversation.
Clark:
00:47:55
We have to be able to say, I don't agree with this.
Clark:
00:47:57
And the problem is, this does go back to this idea, and there's
Clark:
00:48:00
a reason why I'm such a massive advocate of the idea of the 10th man.
Clark:
00:48:05
Because somebody has to raise the question, hold on a minute, whoa, Jews?
Clark:
00:48:10
Well, why all of a sudden have we just decided we're going to kill all the Jews?
Clark:
00:48:14
Where did this come from?
Clark:
00:48:15
Whose idea was this?
Clark:
00:48:16
What have they done?
Clark:
00:48:17
Somebody has to ask those difficult questions.
Clark:
00:48:20
And then if you look at a tribe, you know, throughout history,
Clark:
00:48:23
probably the average tribe was no bigger than a few hundred people.
Clark:
00:48:26
They had elders who were considered wise by virtue of the experience that
Clark:
00:48:32
they've gathered throughout the years.
Clark:
00:48:33
That group of elders would probably make decisions by committee, although there
Clark:
00:48:38
would be a chief, generally speaking.
Clark:
00:48:39
But that person, and this is why I've always considered myself
Clark:
00:48:43
much to most people's disbelief.
Clark:
00:48:45
something of a monarchist, simply because that person lives their
Clark:
00:48:50
entire life learning how to best serve the interests of the country.
Clark:
00:48:55
Supposedly, theoretically, that's the idea.
Clark:
00:48:57
It's a little bit like how on the battlefield, armies will have a standard.
Clark:
00:49:02
In the middle of the battlefield because it's the thing around
Clark:
00:49:05
which the rest of the troops can rally when things are going bad.
Clark:
00:49:09
That's the thing that they look at.
Clark:
00:49:11
If it's still there, if it's not fallen, we've still got a chance.
Clark:
00:49:15
And that's, to me is the point of a figurehead within a, within a country.
Clark:
00:49:19
The point that you make though is an important one.
Clark:
00:49:22
That that person, whoever that person is.
Clark:
00:49:25
has to be able to answer questions directed at them regarding
Clark:
00:49:29
the path that they're taking.
Clark:
00:49:30
And one of the problems that we find I keep hearing people talk about far right
Clark:
00:49:34
activists around, you know, the news, the media talk about far right activists
Clark:
00:49:39
and how terrible it is to be far right.
Clark:
00:49:41
And I keep thinking, are there any far left activists?
Clark:
00:49:43
Well, what are they doing?
Clark:
00:49:45
If there's one extreme, there must be another extreme.
Clark:
00:49:47
Why, why is nobody talking about, about these guys?
Clark:
00:49:50
The thing is, throughout history, we talk about Hitler, but he killed
Clark:
00:49:54
far fewer people than Stalin.
Clark:
00:49:57
You know, I think it was 9 million versus 20 million, 20 million people killed,
Clark:
00:50:02
and they were mostly his own people.
Clark:
00:50:03
And the problem in all of these situations, and we look around that you
Clark:
00:50:07
talk about people like Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini and Mao Tse Tong and, you
Clark:
00:50:11
know, look at some of the leaders around the world without naming them now, because
Clark:
00:50:13
I don't want to be killed in my sleep, but, you look at some of these people and
Clark:
00:50:17
the problem with, with their leadership is that their methods cannot be questioned.
Clark:
00:50:22
Nobody can question what, and you just said about Charles de Gaulle, I'm France,
Clark:
00:50:26
everything that I want to do is right.
Clark:
00:50:28
Well, as far as I know, nobody is right all the time.
Clark:
00:50:33
So how can an imperfect, flawed person assume and ask all of their followers to
Clark:
00:50:38
assume that they can't make a mistake?
Clark:
00:50:40
Somebody has to be the court jester.
Clark:
00:50:42
Somebody has to be the person that points out the emperor's And you close
Clark:
00:50:46
and this is this is one of the problems with the idea of the follow up leadership
Clark:
00:50:51
relationship, because as long as the followers are getting what they want.
Clark:
00:50:55
And the leaders saying the things that the followers want to hear,
Clark:
00:50:58
everybody's happy, even if they're all running over the edge of a cliff.
Clark:
00:51:01
The idea of the 10th man is the person that says, hold on,
Clark:
00:51:04
you're wrong and you're wrong.
Clark:
00:51:06
You're flipping wrong.
Clark:
00:51:08
You literally all and there's millions of you and you're all
Clark:
00:51:10
going in the wrong direction.
Clark:
00:51:12
We look at America at the moment.
Clark:
00:51:14
There were two candidates for the rulership of the biggest, most powerful
Clark:
00:51:20
country that the world has ever seen.
Clark:
00:51:22
And they're both morons!
Clark:
00:51:23
How does that happen?
Clark:
00:51:24
How on earth does that happen?
Clark:
00:51:25
I don't, I don't want to insult either of them.
Clark:
00:51:28
They clearly are intelligent people.
Clark:
00:51:31
However, I don't think they should be in charge of the most powerful
Clark:
00:51:33
country in the world, either of them.
Clark:
00:51:35
How does that happen?
Clark:
00:51:37
Because basically that person got there by telling all the followers
Clark:
00:51:41
what the followers wanted to hear.
Clark:
00:51:42
Well, that's clearly not going to work, is it?
Clark:
00:51:44
It's not for the betterment of humanity, it doesn't seem to me.
Rob:
00:51:48
I agree with that and, and when I said that the leader needs to be better,
Rob:
00:51:52
what I mean is and this is where the, the 10th man and the idea of the unifier are
Rob:
00:51:57
the opposite ends of the same concept.
Rob:
00:52:00
For the followers to follow, they have to have something that's better.
Rob:
00:52:03
We all need something.
Rob:
00:52:05
We all need the tribe.
Rob:
00:52:06
We all need the family.
Rob:
00:52:07
We all need ultimately some kind of connection to the whole world so that
Rob:
00:52:11
the universe is bigger than than we are.
Rob:
00:52:14
What people crave are things that they can get.
Rob:
00:52:16
But what really makes people happy, what really satisfies people is what they give.
Rob:
00:52:22
Deep down people really want to contribute.
Rob:
00:52:24
What I learned from conflict is that say you've got a couple and they're
Rob:
00:52:28
fighting for their marriage or whatever.
Rob:
00:52:29
And they're both fighting for their idea of what their marriage can be.
Rob:
00:52:33
Neither of them has the full truth.
Rob:
00:52:34
And this is where the 10th man comes in because the 10th man can pick apart
Rob:
00:52:38
what's true from what's false, but there is the seed of truth in both of them.
Rob:
00:52:43
What needs to happen?
Rob:
00:52:45
This is what leadership needs to be is you need to take those two
Rob:
00:52:48
contrasting ideas and through the friction, find what's true, what's not.
Rob:
00:52:53
Then you have to raise to a higher level of thinking.
Rob:
00:52:56
It's like Einstein said that every problem is solved at a higher level of thinking.
Rob:
00:53:00
When I say the leader needs to be better, I mean, it's not necessarily
Rob:
00:53:04
leader, but the idea that we get behind.
Rob:
00:53:06
And then the idea that we get behind doesn't need to come from
Rob:
00:53:08
the leader, but the leader needs to be the one that facilitates the
Rob:
00:53:11
conversation, gathers the idea and ultimately has to get behind them.
Rob:
00:53:16
What people will give up for is when say someone is patriotic and
Rob:
00:53:21
they really believe in the country.
Rob:
00:53:22
And I Take your point that if you go back to Braveheart or the
Rob:
00:53:26
spartans or anything like that.
Rob:
00:53:28
It was a real belief and this is our way of life.
Rob:
00:53:30
This is what i'll give my life for.
Rob:
00:53:32
When we have that idea And now I think that is what on a smaller notion is
Rob:
00:53:38
that leaders and companies need to do is, okay, what do you come to work for?
Rob:
00:53:42
You come to work for money, but what else?
Rob:
00:53:44
What is it that you want?
Rob:
00:53:46
What is it that you want to give to the world?
Rob:
00:53:49
When we can get that idea and we encapsulate all of those ideas,
Rob:
00:53:53
we can come up with a mini vision and that's what people get behind.
Rob:
00:53:56
Not the leader, but the vision, and then where it can be helped.
Rob:
00:53:59
That's what the commitment that you need to hold people accountable.
Clark:
00:54:02
Yeah, what does it look like?
Clark:
00:54:04
That's the, that's the question that you need to ask, right?
Tony:
00:54:06
I'm just going to take you back, Rob, to the last bit that you spoke
Tony:
00:54:10
about prior to Clark speaking, which was this moral compass idea, right?
Tony:
00:54:16
So you work in, in a cigarette factory and you know that
Tony:
00:54:21
cigarettes can kill people, right?
Tony:
00:54:23
Every day you're going to work with this on your conscience.
Tony:
00:54:26
Now you've got two choices.
Tony:
00:54:27
You can stop doing it or live with the fact that you're
Tony:
00:54:32
not living true to yourself.
Tony:
00:54:34
Now that comes at a cost, right?
Tony:
00:54:35
So lots of people don't have that choice.
Tony:
00:54:38
to say, well, I'm just going to quit work because it's not
Tony:
00:54:43
in line with my core values.
Tony:
00:54:45
But it might not be easy to go and get a job somewhere else.
Tony:
00:54:47
I've got a family to feed and those crises of conscience weigh heavily on people.
Tony:
00:54:52
So they're doing something day after day after day.
Tony:
00:54:55
That's inside themselves.
Tony:
00:54:57
They're at war because they know it's not right.
Tony:
00:55:00
And it's playing out in all sorts of ways, both inside and outside of work.
Tony:
00:55:03
I'm sort of disengaged at work, but outside of work, I'm just carrying this
Tony:
00:55:08
burden around that I wish I wasn't, but I don't feel like I've got a choice.
Tony:
00:55:12
It's a whole different conversation.
Tony:
00:55:13
We've talked about ethics and all of that sort of stuff today, the, the consequences
Tony:
00:55:17
of following people even when we know it's maybe not the right thing to do.
Tony:
00:55:22
So who are we then?
Tony:
00:55:23
I think that's a great point.
Tony:
00:55:25
Because the consequence of doing it, the cost to me for living, not true
Tony:
00:55:28
to myself, not in an authentic way.
Tony:
00:55:30
I carry that burden, right?
Tony:
00:55:32
And it happens all, all the time.
Tony:
00:55:33
That was the thing I picked up.
Tony:
00:55:35
I just wanted to, Maybe feed that into another conversation.
Tony:
00:55:38
What can we do about that?
Clark:
00:55:40
You sort of followed a train of thought that I was having in my mind when
Clark:
00:55:42
Rob was speaking this idea of a vision.
Clark:
00:55:45
people will get behind an idea.
Clark:
00:55:47
And whilst, as you say, most people are selfish, very often the most
Clark:
00:55:53
selfish thing you can do is be selfless and work towards the benefit of
Clark:
00:55:57
the group because then you benefit.
Clark:
00:55:59
If you can imagine a tribe, let's say in prehistoric Britain.
Clark:
00:56:03
There's let's say, 50, 000 people in the entire country.
Clark:
00:56:06
And there's tribes of 200 people dotted all around the place.
Clark:
00:56:09
Whilst occasionally they may come into conflict with each other, by and large,
Clark:
00:56:12
most people's memories are of a time when things were good, when there was plenty
Clark:
00:56:17
of food, when the weather wasn't so bad.
Clark:
00:56:20
When there was no illness around and that then establishes for that group of
Clark:
00:56:24
people, a vision of what good looks like.
Clark:
00:56:27
This is what we want all the time.
Clark:
00:56:30
Later on, for instance, as society grew and people came into more conflict,
Clark:
00:56:34
those various tribes with their various visions could say to each other, look,
Clark:
00:56:39
we keep fighting and killing each other, but it's to the detriment of both of us.
Clark:
00:56:43
Why don't we come to some sort of accord where as a group of tribes, somebody
Clark:
00:56:49
is in charge of all those tribes and says, listen, I will be the arbiter of
Clark:
00:56:54
all of the disagreements between you.
Clark:
00:56:56
We will become a country, but you guys can still be your own tribes as
Clark:
00:57:01
long as you don't kill each other.
Clark:
00:57:02
That then is offering a vision of what life might be like under that set of
Clark:
00:57:06
circumstances where everybody realizes that the best way to get along is for
Clark:
00:57:11
everybody to play their part in this bigger picture, this bigger vision.
Clark:
00:57:15
And then if you, if you propel that forward into the future and say, well,
Clark:
00:57:19
hold on a minute, That's all anybody wants is to live in peace, right?
Clark:
00:57:22
So surely the leaders of the countries can come to some sort of agreement
Clark:
00:57:27
where they say, hold on a minute, let's stop killing each other, right?
Clark:
00:57:30
Let's stop bombing each other so we can stop making bombs, so we can put that
Clark:
00:57:34
money into education and into agriculture.
Clark:
00:57:37
Why hasn't that happened?
Clark:
00:57:38
The only conclusion I can come to is that a lot of people don't want it to
Clark:
00:57:42
happen because people make guns and bombs and vaccines and poisons and medicines.
Clark:
00:57:48
So we can't seem to come to a situation where the mass of followers are finding
Clark:
00:57:55
themselves a leader with a vision.
Clark:
00:57:57
I mean, this is what's happening in America at the moment.
Clark:
00:58:00
The Americans have found they believe a leader who is going to be acting
Clark:
00:58:04
and he seems to be certainly trying to act in their best interests,
Clark:
00:58:08
which makes sense as a leader, right?
Clark:
00:58:10
And maybe then over time, you could start to get leaders with a similar
Clark:
00:58:14
sort of common sense approach.
Clark:
00:58:15
Encouraging each other to be to be more cooperative.
Clark:
00:58:18
Maybe that that would end up with a vision because all anybody
Clark:
00:58:22
wants is a world of peace.
Clark:
00:58:24
Right?
Clark:
00:58:25
And the only way to achieve that then is to stop those that are working against
Clark:
00:58:31
the interests of the rest of the group from doing the things that they do.
Clark:
00:58:35
So it means imposing some sort group wishes or the group's desires onto the
Clark:
00:58:40
ones that want to be totally selfish.
Clark:
00:58:42
My final point, Rob, is basically saying, no, you can't be an individual.
Clark:
00:58:47
You have to be patriotic.
Clark:
00:58:49
You have to be for the group and the problem we have today
Clark:
00:58:52
is that nobody wants to do that.
Clark:
00:58:54
But at the end of the day, that can be the only way that you achieve
Clark:
00:58:56
the vision that most people want.
Rob:
00:58:58
A lot of the reason for this destructiveness of wars
Rob:
00:59:01
and whatever is bad leadership.
Rob:
00:59:03
Someone says, okay, I can gain and I can lead people astray.
Rob:
00:59:07
Donald Trump is looking after his own, but he's at a cost that
Rob:
00:59:10
putting them at war with others.
Rob:
00:59:11
So I'm going to steal Greenland.
Rob:
00:59:13
I'm going to take this, I'm going to take that which is isolating them.
Rob:
00:59:16
And I think.
Rob:
00:59:17
It's bad leadership.
Rob:
00:59:19
Like Tony said that, that people don't agree with it as a cost.
Rob:
00:59:22
And I think that's where the burnout comes.
Rob:
00:59:24
And I think it's bad leadership that creates more wars because
Rob:
00:59:28
someone says, Oh, this is a better way and it's better for some.
Rob:
00:59:31
There's gullible followers and this is probably a conversation
Rob:
00:59:34
for another time, but somewhere we need to work out that process.
Rob:
00:59:38
So followers are less gullible and, and self interested leaders don't
Rob:
00:59:43
have as much influence as they have.
Clark:
00:59:45
But the problem may not be the leaders, Rob, it may be the fact that
Clark:
00:59:49
all of the followers want to do their own thing, because at some point,
Clark:
00:59:53
we all have to sacrifice our desires for the benefit of the greater good.
Clark:
00:59:57
And if nobody wants to do that, it's never going to happen.
00:00:05
Ben White had this thing, didn't he, up until recently of constantly
Clark:
00:00:08
pulling the gloves and the shirt and pushing and tapping and generally
Clark:
00:00:13
just irritating the goalkeeper.
Clark:
00:00:15
And I said it's gamesmanship, but it's not sportsmanship.
Clark:
00:00:19
It's all about winning regardless of the cost, how ugly it
Clark:
00:00:22
is, or how unfair it is.
Clark:
00:00:25
I remember the 70s when games were really hard, you know, Billy
Clark:
00:00:28
Bremner and these guys would be having punch ups on the pitch.
Clark:
00:00:31
But that was in the spirit of the game.
Clark:
00:00:33
It comes down to the referees being proper, sincere and
Clark:
00:00:37
honest arbiters of the game.
Clark:
00:00:39
And it seemed that that particular game, the referee lost control very
Clark:
00:00:43
quickly which comes down to the subject that I'm guessing you guys are going
Clark:
00:00:47
to touch on at some point during our conversation today, leadership.
Clark:
00:00:50
The referee has to be, at some point, a leader of the way the game's played.
Clark:
00:00:55
And that man in the Villa West Ham game wasn't.
Clark:
00:00:58
He showed no strength of character, he made strange decisions that were
Clark:
00:01:02
borderline or certainly from the outside appeared biased, but they were definitely
Clark:
00:01:07
inconsistent and one of the things I think you can't have in anybody that's taking
Clark:
00:01:12
charge of something is inconsistency.
Rob:
00:01:14
Is the referee leading the game or is he managing the game?
Rob:
00:01:17
I think the referee is about managing that we uphold certain standards.
Rob:
00:01:23
Is that management or is that leadership in your view?
Clark:
00:01:25
I was thinking about this on the way in because I didn't have time to,
Clark:
00:01:28
to comment on it, but I noticed your post this morning about leadership.
Clark:
00:01:31
I found it interesting because I like to listen to myself, because, I find
Clark:
00:01:37
myself quite an interesting person.
Clark:
00:01:39
Some of the knee jerk reactions that I come out with I do wonder
Clark:
00:01:42
where it comes from sometimes.
Clark:
00:01:43
The first thing I thought, when, when, when I saw your post, and
Clark:
00:01:47
I wanted to comment, but I just didn't have time to get out of the
Clark:
00:01:49
house was, well, how do they know?
Clark:
00:01:51
How does anybody know where a leader is?
Clark:
00:01:53
How do the people that are answering this questionnaire know where a leader is?
Clark:
00:01:57
And then it made me think, and I had a little bit of a chunter to myself on the
Clark:
00:02:00
way in the car, what makes a good You
Rob:
00:02:02
need to record these and make these a podcast.
Clark:
00:02:04
I'd get locked up, mate.
Clark:
00:02:05
Well, I started to think, well, hold on a minute, what makes a good follower?
Clark:
00:02:09
If the people that are saying that they need a good leader, are so clued
Clark:
00:02:14
up as to what makes a good leader.
Clark:
00:02:16
Surely they must also know what a good follower is.
Clark:
00:02:18
When you talk about the referee, I think in all situations,
Clark:
00:02:21
there's the question, right?
Clark:
00:02:22
Leader of what?,
Clark:
00:02:23
is the referee a leader, well, he's not a leader of the football teams,
Clark:
00:02:26
clearly, but he is the person that is supposed to uphold the integrity
Clark:
00:02:31
and the principles of the game.
Clark:
00:02:33
In that regard, I would say he is what you might call an ethical
Clark:
00:02:37
or a moral leader on the pitch.
Clark:
00:02:39
One would like to think, so I would compare a football
Clark:
00:02:42
referee to a rugby referee.
Clark:
00:02:43
And the interesting thing about rugby referees is that you can hear
Clark:
00:02:46
them talking in a lot of cases.
Clark:
00:02:48
Some of the conversations that they have with players, I find very
Clark:
00:02:51
interesting because you will often hear them invoking the spirit of the game.
Clark:
00:02:56
This is not how we want to play this game, is it lads?
Clark:
00:02:59
You see that in rugby and I find that fascinating because you try
Clark:
00:03:03
that in football and you get, you get laughed off the pitch.
Clark:
00:03:06
But I would suggest that when somebody says, is the referee a leader?
Clark:
00:03:10
Well, the question is a leader of what?
Clark:
00:03:11
When somebody says to me, I find it fascinating the entire conversation around
Clark:
00:03:16
leadership, because we look around the world at the moment, you point to one
Clark:
00:03:19
good leader, is Mr. Putin a good leader?
Clark:
00:03:21
I don't know, certainly some people think he is.
Clark:
00:03:23
Is Mr. Trump a good leader?
Clark:
00:03:24
Well, there's a lot of people that think he isn't.
Clark:
00:03:27
Mr. Starmer?
Clark:
00:03:28
Well, slip of the tongue.
Clark:
00:03:28
In our country, for instance, you say to somebody, name a good leader, and
Clark:
00:03:32
they'll point to Mr. Churchill probably, because he saved millions of lives,
Clark:
00:03:36
and, and I think with good reason.
Clark:
00:03:37
But you couldn't call him a moral or ethical leader, because some of his morals
Clark:
00:03:41
and ethics were seriously questionable.
Clark:
00:03:44
The question is, well, what are they a leader of?
Clark:
00:03:47
And the thing is, you know, you, you imagine Mr. Churchill
Clark:
00:03:51
trying to lead us through.
Clark:
00:03:52
You have to remember that the followers of Mr. Churchill, his subjects
Clark:
00:03:58
or whatever you want to call him were very different people to the
Clark:
00:04:00
people that you see around us today.
Clark:
00:04:03
How do you lead that completely different country of people?
Clark:
00:04:07
You know, look at Tony Blair, leader of the country for years.
Clark:
00:04:10
Some people thought he was the best person ever.
Clark:
00:04:12
And yet he took us into a war costing millions and millions and millions
Clark:
00:04:16
of pounds, certainly thousands of lives, all based on a lie.
Clark:
00:04:20
Was he a good leader?
Clark:
00:04:21
I don't know.
Clark:
00:04:21
Was he a leader of?
Clark:
00:04:22
I think that's the question.
Clark:
00:04:23
The referee certainly, I would suggest, is, at least in theory,
Clark:
00:04:27
a moral or ethical leader.
Tony:
00:04:29
It's a can of worms there, isn't it?
Tony:
00:04:31
You've, you've, you've opened a can of worms there, Rob.
Tony:
00:04:34
I think there's two sides to this, right?
Tony:
00:04:36
If I can just dip into the manager versus leader.
Tony:
00:04:40
The referee as a manager or leader, I think from a technical perspective, he's
Tony:
00:04:45
there just to do a job that he's qualified to do, which is run the game by the rules.
Tony:
00:04:49
Be fair, be equitable and all of those kind of things.
Tony:
00:04:52
Obviously he's a human, he's emotional, he's impacted by situations.
Tony:
00:04:56
So he's got to rise above that where he can and be really
Tony:
00:04:59
professional under high pressure.
Tony:
00:05:01
make decisions and deal with the consequences of those decisions, whether
Tony:
00:05:05
they're the right decisions or not, should be technically good enough to do the job
Tony:
00:05:09
because he's been appointed to that game.
Tony:
00:05:10
So I think it's a technical job that doesn't require him to lead anybody else.
Tony:
00:05:16
Maybe his team of assistant officials and the fourth official and all of that.
Tony:
00:05:20
That's probably his team.
Tony:
00:05:22
He's in charge of that to a degree.
Tony:
00:05:23
But again, it's management.
Tony:
00:05:24
They're not developing new skills in the game.
Tony:
00:05:26
They're actually just applying existing knowledge.
Tony:
00:05:28
They're not building capacity.
Tony:
00:05:30
So I think it's a management task.
Tony:
00:05:31
However, as soon as we introduce the idea of ethics that Clark's talking
Tony:
00:05:37
about or values or morals or, or something, there's a, Immediately my
Tony:
00:05:43
sort of antenna immediately goes, Oh, there's some sort of leadership challenge
Tony:
00:05:47
going on here because alluding to the difference between rugby and football,
Tony:
00:05:53
where it's very clear how those two games differentiate themselves by the capacity
Tony:
00:06:00
for each sport to run itself in public.
Tony:
00:06:03
Rugby does it brilliantly.
Tony:
00:06:05
It's all in the open.
Tony:
00:06:06
There's a much higher degree of respect between players and officials.
Tony:
00:06:09
There's almost a collective shared set of values that people have
Tony:
00:06:14
agreed to adhere to and aligned to.
Tony:
00:06:16
That gets played out publicly because they have conversations
Tony:
00:06:19
about it and football resists it because it's entrenched in the game.
Tony:
00:06:23
It's a far more international game now than it ever was before.
Tony:
00:06:27
So all of these old stiff upper lip British high standards that
Tony:
00:06:30
we used to uphold, the game's changed in that regard that the
Tony:
00:06:34
Italian leagues played differently.
Tony:
00:06:36
There's a lot more simulation.
Tony:
00:06:37
For example, I don't want to stereotype people, but let's assume the referee
Tony:
00:06:42
is authentic, unbiased fair in his intentions and he's trying to run
Tony:
00:06:48
a good game the way he sees it.
Tony:
00:06:50
Of course he might be influenced by the emotions of the situation, who knows.
Tony:
00:06:54
But let's, let's assume he's got his game in full control.
Tony:
00:06:58
The idea that he could, in a window of 90 minutes get his leadership challenges.
Tony:
00:07:03
I would say is how do I get these 22 players and the staff
Tony:
00:07:08
on the sideline and the subs that are going to come on in a bit.
Tony:
00:07:10
How do I get them to collectively adhere to the way I think the game should be run?
Tony:
00:07:16
By the rules, the sense of fair play with a sense of goodwill and not wanting
Tony:
00:07:21
to harm each other, you know, whatever it, whatever it might be, there's an
Tony:
00:07:25
inherent expectation that everybody on that pitch through the referee should
Tony:
00:07:30
be able to uphold and adhere to these principles that the game demands.
Tony:
00:07:35
The laws of the game say this is how the game should be played.
Tony:
00:07:37
The referee is there to uphold them.
Tony:
00:07:39
So in a sense, there's a leadership challenge there, but it's an impossible
Tony:
00:07:43
one for the referee to navigate.
Tony:
00:07:45
He might send someone off to try and set the tone.
Tony:
00:07:47
He might book someone early to try and set the tone, or he might let the game flow.
Tony:
00:07:51
Because that's what the fans want.
Tony:
00:07:53
And he's a bit old school.
Tony:
00:07:54
He thinks, Oh, we'll let a couple of crunching tackles
Tony:
00:07:56
go, but we'll calm it down.
Tony:
00:07:57
You know, he might have some conversation with the players.
Tony:
00:07:59
So that's the sort of interpersonal skills or, or the feel for the game
Tony:
00:08:04
that the referee might have that may be inconsistent between him and
Tony:
00:08:08
the next referee, but when we're talking about a shared set of values.
Tony:
00:08:11
If I'm manager A and I think, right, we're going to, we're going to really
Tony:
00:08:15
push the boundaries there against Villa in the first 10 minutes, because
Tony:
00:08:18
there might be a bit of a soft touch.
Tony:
00:08:19
If we go and clatter a few people and we get away with
Tony:
00:08:22
it, we're onto a winner here.
Tony:
00:08:24
Look what's happened to him before.
Tony:
00:08:25
Depending where we all sit on that, on our own belief systems to
Tony:
00:08:29
whether that's ethical or unethical is the referees in the same boat.
Tony:
00:08:33
The laws of the game shouldn't fluctuate.
Tony:
00:08:35
But the individual will go.
Tony:
00:08:39
I'm a bit old school.
Tony:
00:08:39
Don't mind a bit of a tit for tat in the first 10 minutes.
Tony:
00:08:43
As long as no one's going to get the leg broken.
Tony:
00:08:45
Might let a little bit go.
Tony:
00:08:46
Whereas somebody else might go, Hey, bang, do that.
Tony:
00:08:49
So I think there's a leadership component to it because.
Tony:
00:08:52
The capacity to align people to a shared belief in how something should be done,
Tony:
00:08:57
I think is what leadership is all about.
Tony:
00:08:59
I just don't think it's the referees, within the referees capability to
Tony:
00:09:03
do that on any given day in such a short window of opportunity.
Tony:
00:09:07
I think the game as a whole needs to agree what that looks like,
Tony:
00:09:10
including the refs, including the coaches, including the players.
Tony:
00:09:14
If anything, I think it's a coach driven thing.
Tony:
00:09:16
Leadership is in the hands of the coach around the ethics
Tony:
00:09:20
and are we going to play?
Tony:
00:09:21
Are we going to be squeaky clean and, and succeed and win the
Tony:
00:09:26
fair play award at the season?
Tony:
00:09:27
Cause I know teams have been pilloried.
Tony:
00:09:29
The fans will go nuts if the team's finished mid table, but they
Tony:
00:09:32
won the fair play award because they didn't get stuck in enough.
Tony:
00:09:35
You know what I mean?
Tony:
00:09:36
Where to actually mobilize a whole football movement towards acceptance
Tony:
00:09:41
of what a good value set should look like on the pitch is really difficult.
Tony:
00:09:44
I don't think that's the referees job, but I think there he is the one that
Tony:
00:09:48
has to uphold the ethical standard first and foremost, and then draw the line
Tony:
00:09:54
so he knows when somebody's crossed it.
Rob:
00:09:55
In my current thinking and understanding, I see a manager as
Rob:
00:09:58
being like a steward of certain values.
Rob:
00:10:00
It's holding people accountable to a certain level of performance.
Rob:
00:10:04
I see the role of the manager is about congruence.
Rob:
00:10:07
Everyone on the same page, this is what we demand.
Rob:
00:10:10
I would see a referee as a kind of a manager, the, the leadership has come
Rob:
00:10:14
from FIFA and everyone else who's agreed these are the standards that we play by.
Rob:
00:10:20
The referee is then the manager says, look, you're falling below
Rob:
00:10:23
the standards we've agreed to, these are the rules, whatever.
Rob:
00:10:26
A leader would be either someone who's wanting to change the game
Rob:
00:10:30
or the coach who's, who's wanting to develop the team and lead the
Rob:
00:10:34
team to, to something different.
Tony:
00:10:36
And accepted whether we think it's a good referee or not.
Tony:
00:10:39
He's passed a certain standard to be a referee, so he's got the
Tony:
00:10:42
technical know how to manage the game.
Tony:
00:10:45
I think he's managing the game.
Tony:
00:10:46
My point around leadership is when there's a challenge to grow, Capacity to believe
Tony:
00:10:53
in something or sharing our intention.
Tony:
00:10:56
It becomes an immediately leadership challenge because if
Tony:
00:10:58
people are not on the same page, then they need to grow together.
Tony:
00:11:02
Otherwise they'll grow apart.
Tony:
00:11:04
There's no alternatives, one or the other.
Tony:
00:11:06
Isn't a manager a leader,
Clark:
00:11:08
Tony?
Tony:
00:11:08
Not necessarily.
Tony:
00:11:09
For me, only if there's new capacity to be built.
Tony:
00:11:12
Leadership is required when we haven't we haven't faced this before we're going
Tony:
00:11:17
into something that we actually need to rely on each other to grow through.
Tony:
00:11:22
I think leadership's
Clark:
00:11:23
required then.
Clark:
00:11:24
The reason I asked that question, Tony, and I ask your forgiveness
Clark:
00:11:27
for this, but I'm sort of talking a little bit tongue in cheek because you
Clark:
00:11:30
guys know my thoughts on leadership.
Clark:
00:11:32
That is nowhere near as necessary as people think it is.
Clark:
00:11:35
And it's certainly not clearly from our conversation.
Clark:
00:11:38
It's not something that can be nailed down particularly easily.
Clark:
00:11:41
When you look at a football pitch, for instance.
Clark:
00:11:43
The levels of leadership in the various aspects of the game are constantly
Clark:
00:11:47
changing and they're all over the pitch.
Clark:
00:11:49
The other night with Villa and Westham, the leader of the football
Clark:
00:11:53
team, the Aston Villa football team wasn't even at the side of the pitch.
Clark:
00:11:56
He was consigned to the stands because, the laws of the game
Clark:
00:11:59
said that he'd been naughty and he couldn't stand near the pitch.
Clark:
00:12:02
But he was a leader.
Clark:
00:12:03
The captain's armband was changed around a couple of times as subs came on.
Clark:
00:12:07
There were various leaders there.
Clark:
00:12:08
I mentioned the referee as a particular type of leader regarding morals and ethics
Clark:
00:12:13
because these things all come into play.
Clark:
00:12:15
This was sort of my point really, when I saw, Rob's, and you're
Clark:
00:12:18
both completely right, obviously, in what you've just said.
Clark:
00:12:21
I'm sort of being a little bit of a smart ass when it comes to
Clark:
00:12:25
the question of what is a leader.
Clark:
00:12:26
When you asked the question about leadership regarding your questionnaire
Clark:
00:12:30
this morning, my thought was, how long is a piece of string?
Clark:
00:12:33
Leader of what, under what circumstances, let's say, for instance you've got a group
Clark:
00:12:38
of people, let's say you have 10 people that are professional bridge builders.
Clark:
00:12:42
All they do is build bridges all day.
Clark:
00:12:44
Who's leading?
Clark:
00:12:45
You know, these guys all know their jobs.
Clark:
00:12:46
They slot into their positions to do what needs to be done.
Clark:
00:12:50
When somebody turns up and says who's in charge here,
Clark:
00:12:52
they'll all point to somebody.
Clark:
00:12:53
So there is a leader.
Clark:
00:12:55
I'm not pretending that you guys don't know that leadership
Clark:
00:12:58
in most cases is situational.
Clark:
00:13:00
Of course it is.
Clark:
00:13:01
It depends on the circumstances and what aspect of the current
Clark:
00:13:04
project is being focused upon.
Clark:
00:13:06
My question is, when we talk about leadership, I think we very often
Clark:
00:13:11
forget the other side of that coin, and that is who's being led.
Clark:
00:13:15
The current climate and the questionnaire that Rob posted on LinkedIn this
Clark:
00:13:19
morning was posted in an environment, LinkedIn, that professes to know
Clark:
00:13:25
what a leader is and to constantly be telling the world how they should be.
Clark:
00:13:30
I'm asking myself, who are these people that are telling
Clark:
00:13:34
everybody what a leader should be?
Clark:
00:13:36
And I'll tell you what what I think the answer is.
Clark:
00:13:39
The first thing that came to my mind, because I have a weird mind, was Moses,
Clark:
00:13:44
Going up to the mountain to talk to God, whether this happened or not is
Clark:
00:13:48
irrelevant, you know, it's allegorical.
Clark:
00:13:49
But Moses went up the mountain and he came down and all the people that
Clark:
00:13:53
he was apparently the leader of were all dancing around some golden cow.
Clark:
00:13:58
And he said, right I'm going to kill you all because you weren't good followers.
Clark:
00:14:01
You followed another God.
Clark:
00:14:03
Now, the reason this came into my mind was, we look at him as and ask ourselves
Clark:
00:14:08
whether he's a good leader or not.
Clark:
00:14:09
But what about all the Muppets on the ground dancing around the cow?
Clark:
00:14:13
They might say to Moses, you're not the sort of leader that we want.
Clark:
00:14:16
You've got to let us dance around this golden cow, because
Clark:
00:14:19
that's what we want to do.
Clark:
00:14:20
And he will turn around and say, well, how are we supposed to get
Clark:
00:14:23
to the promised land then if you're constantly dancing around golden cows?
Clark:
00:14:27
Who's in charge of this flipping thing then?
Clark:
00:14:29
Therein lies the problem.
Clark:
00:14:31
Because LinkedIn is basically a bunch of people dancing around the golden
Clark:
00:14:35
cow, demanding that leaders don't kill them when they, when they find
Clark:
00:14:40
them dancing around the golden cow.
Clark:
00:14:41
This is the issue.
Tony:
00:14:42
That's brilliant.
Tony:
00:14:43
So, what I forgot to say earlier was the one word that jumped out was trust, I
Tony:
00:14:48
think the question of what is a leader and the question of what is leadership
Tony:
00:14:52
are two different questions and people probably get mixed up in all of those
Tony:
00:14:56
notions, but in order to lead anyone, you need their permission to be led.
Tony:
00:15:02
And you can only do that if you can build trust.
Tony:
00:15:04
This formal authority where you do what you're told we're going here.
Tony:
00:15:08
And so if you think about the military, we just have to do what
Tony:
00:15:11
we're told when we're told to do it.
Tony:
00:15:13
And there's a reason why all of those rules exist.
Tony:
00:15:15
There's no choice in those circumstances, you just got to
Tony:
00:15:18
go when you're told to go right.
Tony:
00:15:20
Whereas when you're in a situation where those rules haven't been established.
Tony:
00:15:25
Those rules need to be created.
Tony:
00:15:27
Let's say you need people then to buy into an idea that requires a bit of leadership.
Tony:
00:15:33
That's less about management that requires, oh, I'm navigating
Tony:
00:15:36
some complex territory.
Tony:
00:15:38
I need to understand these people.
Tony:
00:15:39
even the person who's in charge may not know what the hell they're doing.
Tony:
00:15:44
So that's a situation where leadership is required, where it
Tony:
00:15:48
comes from and how it then manifests is where the challenge lies.
Tony:
00:15:52
That's where people can start to define themselves as having
Tony:
00:15:55
some leadership capability.
Tony:
00:15:57
Aside from this, it's sort of informal authority.
Tony:
00:15:59
How do I gain your trust to believe in my ideas and to tackle
Tony:
00:16:02
it this way is, I think, an example of somebody demonstrating
Tony:
00:16:07
some some leadership capability.
Rob:
00:16:09
I look at it that there's three levels of authority.
Rob:
00:16:12
There's positional where you've been given this, but the
Rob:
00:16:14
people don't really follow you.
Rob:
00:16:16
There's relational because you've built the relationships and the trust.
Rob:
00:16:19
But the biggest one is moral.
Rob:
00:16:21
When you go back to Churchill.
Rob:
00:16:22
The first time I ever thought about this was I had this discussion with
Rob:
00:16:26
Matthew Ward, one of the very early.
Rob:
00:16:28
Podcast, I think he came just after you, Tony and he said, churchill's a leader.
Rob:
00:16:33
So all these people are calling themselves leaders who are really managers.
Rob:
00:16:36
You're a manager, not a leader.
Rob:
00:16:38
First off that the LinkedIn environment is leader sounds better.
Rob:
00:16:42
So it's like what people are bragging a little on their CV.
Rob:
00:16:45
It's like, make your CV look the best.
Rob:
00:16:47
So I'm a leader, not a manager.
Rob:
00:16:49
Then people call themselves leaders.
Rob:
00:16:51
So in my post, when I'm writing stuff, I think manager, but I know that
Rob:
00:16:56
people refer to themselves as a leader.
Rob:
00:16:57
So I, I use the terminology and in the way that we use that terminology, we
Rob:
00:17:02
dilute the meaning of what leading is.
Rob:
00:17:05
And what a leader is.
Rob:
00:17:06
I've looked at who are great unifiers.
Rob:
00:17:08
Churchill is one.
Rob:
00:17:09
But Churchill only while there was a war.
Rob:
00:17:11
There's certain attributes of certain leaders that fit with certain contexts.
Rob:
00:17:16
When there's a war, you want someone who's quite dogmatic,
Rob:
00:17:19
quite strong like Churchill.
Rob:
00:17:21
Recently I've just been listening to a book about De Gaulle because I don't know
Rob:
00:17:25
if you know the, the story of De Gaulle, I didn't realize until quite recently,
Rob:
00:17:29
but France agreed peace with Germany.
Rob:
00:17:31
They were signing an arm armistice.
Rob:
00:17:33
And De Gaulle was a lowly general.
Rob:
00:17:36
He'd had some encounters with Churchill and Churchill respected him, and Churchill
Rob:
00:17:40
put him on the BBC and De Gaulle said, no.
Rob:
00:17:42
There is a France.
Rob:
00:17:43
And what's happening in France.
Rob:
00:17:45
Agreeing peace with them is wrong.
Rob:
00:17:47
All those that see themselves as French come to me.
Rob:
00:17:49
And that was the resistance.
Rob:
00:17:51
There was a number of resistance, but I was hoping that de Gaulle would
Rob:
00:17:55
have all the qualities that you think a unifier would have, you know, like
Rob:
00:17:58
he'd build these relationships, he'd treat people well, he'd lead the moral,
Rob:
00:18:02
you know, he was just an arrogant ass.
Rob:
00:18:05
He was like, I am France.
Rob:
00:18:07
You can't disagree with me because I am France.
Rob:
00:18:09
But again, like Churchill, he was kicked out soon after.
Rob:
00:18:13
He was a wartime prime minister, president doesn't always fit with, with peacetime.
Rob:
00:18:19
So I think.
Rob:
00:18:20
there is an element of the right leader for the right situation.
Clark:
00:18:23
The fact that you just mentioned somebody there who clearly
Clark:
00:18:27
not a nice person, not a person that you would envy being, let's say.
Clark:
00:18:32
And I think of somebody like Gandhi, he was not a wartime leader, but he
Clark:
00:18:35
certainly unified his people, but apparently was not a very nice person
Clark:
00:18:39
at all, certainly not to his, his wife.
Clark:
00:18:40
The reason I, I disagree with you, Tony, actually, I wasn't taking
Clark:
00:18:44
issue with what you was saying and I apologize if it came across that
Clark:
00:18:47
way, my point was, I can't agree with this, this idea of getting permission
Clark:
00:18:51
from the people that you're leading.
Clark:
00:18:53
Because that assumes that the people that you're leading are rational
Clark:
00:18:58
human beings, and there's no such thing as a rational human being.
Clark:
00:19:01
We like to think that we are, but I would argue even all of the decisions
Clark:
00:19:05
that we make, tend to be made apropos whatever situation we find
Clark:
00:19:10
ourselves in and then justified later.
Clark:
00:19:12
There are scientific studies that show we make decisions not necessarily based
Clark:
00:19:16
on emotion, but certainly instinctive reactions to situations that we make.
Clark:
00:19:22
And then we rationalize them afterwards.
Clark:
00:19:25
And when I, when I say that there's no such thing as a
Clark:
00:19:27
rational human being, that's not to criticize the entire human race.
Clark:
00:19:32
It's just a fallacy to think that we are able to make these rational decisions
Clark:
00:19:37
in any given moment which is why, whilst it is the best form of government that
Clark:
00:19:42
we have around at the moment, democracy has some serious flaws because you're
Clark:
00:19:45
giving the power of the vote to some people with some very questionable
Clark:
00:19:50
perspectives on life, from all spectrums of the political demographic.
Clark:
00:19:56
It is the only way that we've found so far that works, but to give everybody
Clark:
00:20:00
the opportunity to have an equal say in what gets done has some drawbacks.
Clark:
00:20:05
And this idea that a leader can only lead with the permission And
Clark:
00:20:09
that speaks directly to this analogy that I mentioned about Moses.
Tony:
00:20:13
It's not what I'm saying though, Clark, just to be clear, if
Tony:
00:20:15
I've been designated role of leader.
Tony:
00:20:18
I've got some formal authority.
Tony:
00:20:20
It's like you vote a politician.
Tony:
00:20:22
The majority of people vote Keir Starmer in because they had
Tony:
00:20:25
the choice of two effectively.
Tony:
00:20:26
So they went with him.
Tony:
00:20:27
They voted for the agenda, they voted for what the promise was.
Tony:
00:20:31
And then of course, weeks later, months later, things don't quite
Tony:
00:20:34
seem the same as what they were.
Tony:
00:20:36
Now people have lost confidence.
Tony:
00:20:38
Okay, so he's in, he was the leader of the opposition.
Tony:
00:20:41
He won the prime minister's seat from a position of authority, now
Tony:
00:20:46
has got the ultimate authority.
Tony:
00:20:48
The ultimate position of power and now people may not give him
Tony:
00:20:52
permission to lead them anymore.
Tony:
00:20:54
They may change their vote at some point down the track.
Tony:
00:20:56
What I'm alluding to is if I'm not got the position of formal authority,
Tony:
00:21:01
so we have to grow new capacity in a new way together as a collective.
Tony:
00:21:05
If it's Rob yourself and I are going to go on some quest together, and we're
Tony:
00:21:10
not sure who's going to take charge, for example, at some point, as we look
Tony:
00:21:14
into each other for to find this new way of doing what it is that we might
Tony:
00:21:19
be doing, then one of us may suddenly assume to take the lead, let's say.
Tony:
00:21:25
It's almost a prerequisite that the other two of us will think that that's okay.
Tony:
00:21:30
Yeah, I think this is great.
Tony:
00:21:31
We think Clark can lead us through this.
Tony:
00:21:33
There's still more work to be ironed out as to who's going
Tony:
00:21:35
to lead us to this next thing.
Tony:
00:21:37
There's some informal authority that can be built that where people will
Tony:
00:21:42
give the non designated leader some, some permission to take them somewhere.
Clark:
00:21:47
Exactly right.
Clark:
00:21:48
And that I, that was the point I was going to make.
Clark:
00:21:50
I agree with you in that regard.
Clark:
00:21:52
When we talk about permission, my point was simply that in any given
Clark:
00:21:56
situation, let's say for instance, there's 20 people in a room and suddenly
Clark:
00:22:00
there's a bang and there's a commotion outside, nine times out of ten people
Clark:
00:22:05
will look at somebody for an answer.
Clark:
00:22:08
That's the permission.
Clark:
00:22:09
That's you tacitly giving permission.
Clark:
00:22:11
Yes, exactly right.
Clark:
00:22:12
So when I disagree with this idea of permission, my point was simply
Clark:
00:22:15
that there are situations in which a person won't rationally hand over
Clark:
00:22:21
authority to somebody, but under the right circumstances, they immediately
Clark:
00:22:25
want somebody that they can turn to.
Clark:
00:22:27
This is why I brought this subject up in the first place, because leadership
Clark:
00:22:31
as a concept, certainly from my perspective, it seems to be being
Clark:
00:22:35
framed these days by the followers, which I find profoundly interesting.
Clark:
00:22:41
It's the people dancing around the golden calf that are telling
Clark:
00:22:45
Moses how he should lead.
Clark:
00:22:46
That implies that Moses needs their permission to lead them.
Clark:
00:22:51
In actual fact, and I've proven this to groups of people in my work, because
Clark:
00:22:56
you can create a situation in a work environment, certainly in a training
Clark:
00:22:59
environment, and certainly amongst managers when, when they're talking
Clark:
00:23:02
about this idea of leadership, when you present a challenge, And then you
Clark:
00:23:06
just stand and look at them because they will all look back at you and say,
Clark:
00:23:09
right, what do we do when you then say, I don't know what you're asking me for.
Clark:
00:23:13
Then you start to understand how people automatically want to pass
Clark:
00:23:18
on accountability for a situation, responsibility to somebody else.
Clark:
00:23:23
And this is why the whole idea for me.
Clark:
00:23:25
of leadership is such a problem that, to me, the idea of the followers or the
Clark:
00:23:32
people following the leader describing what a leader should be is anathema.
Clark:
00:23:36
It's ridiculous.
Clark:
00:23:38
It's basically the football players telling the referee what
Clark:
00:23:41
the rules of the game should be, and it's a complete nonsense.
Clark:
00:23:44
There are situations in which in times of heightened stress when people will
Clark:
00:23:49
basically do anything they're told because they don't know what to do and they will
Clark:
00:23:53
hand over authority to somebody that seems to know what they're doing, but when there
Clark:
00:23:57
is no stress around, everybody suddenly has to decide what Moses should be doing.
Clark:
00:24:01
And we want to dance around this car, so you're clearly not leading us properly,
Clark:
00:24:05
because we want to dance around this car.
Clark:
00:24:07
This idea of permission, you know, we live in a country, for instance,
Clark:
00:24:11
where the police, police the nation by consent, but where's the consent?
Clark:
00:24:16
Most people are not happy with the way the police run, run the show these
Clark:
00:24:19
days, but in the absence of any other alternative, people just go along with it.
Clark:
00:24:23
For me, the way most leadership happens nowadays, at the moment, is that in
Clark:
00:24:28
the absence of any better alternative, you know, oh, here's Stalman, okay,
Clark:
00:24:32
nobody likes him, and you know, the bloke's got the charisma of a wet fish.
Clark:
00:24:36
All right.
Tony:
00:24:37
If we take the idea of formal and informal authority, if you've got
Tony:
00:24:41
a police officer who's got the formal authority to apply the laws of the land.
Tony:
00:24:45
The police officer who has the ability to build informal authority and trust
Tony:
00:24:50
and engage and do it that way is always going to get more traction.
Tony:
00:24:53
They can build more capacity between themselves and the community that
Tony:
00:24:57
they're serving by growing trust in the way that they speak to people.
Tony:
00:25:02
In the way that they manage themselves in the way that they uphold their integrity
Tony:
00:25:07
and their all of those types of things.
Tony:
00:25:10
A president who is able to not just rule the people because he's got the
Tony:
00:25:15
job, but, but actually engages with the people, understands what they
Tony:
00:25:20
want, and, and tries to work with them, for the betterment of everybody, is
Tony:
00:25:23
always going to be revered more than the one that just assumes a position
Tony:
00:25:27
of power and, and starts to do what they do for whatever reason they do it.
Tony:
00:25:31
Because they're in service, aren't they?
Tony:
00:25:33
We trust them to, to serve us.
Tony:
00:25:35
Whether it's in our local constituency or it's all, all
Tony:
00:25:38
the way to federal government.
Tony:
00:25:40
We hope that they will do what they've told us they're going to do.
Rob:
00:25:44
I think it's difficult when you look from permission and I
Rob:
00:25:46
don't think it's about permission.
Rob:
00:25:47
We don't need permission.
Rob:
00:25:49
We need commitment.
Rob:
00:25:50
Because if you're going to make a change, you need people to follow you.
Rob:
00:25:53
And people are only going to follow you when they're committed to the idea.
Rob:
00:25:55
It's not about getting their permission.
Rob:
00:25:57
It's about getting their commitment.
Rob:
00:25:59
I'm not a good follower.
Rob:
00:26:00
I won't follow someone blindly.
Rob:
00:26:02
I spent my whole school career school life rebelling because you
Rob:
00:26:07
can't tell me where I'm going to be.
Rob:
00:26:09
Yet.
Rob:
00:26:09
If I trust someone, I trust someone's ethics, their integrity, and that they
Rob:
00:26:16
know what they're doing more than me.
Rob:
00:26:18
You know, when I see someone with a system or of something that I
Rob:
00:26:21
want to learn, I'll learn that.
Rob:
00:26:23
That's the permission.
Rob:
00:26:24
You can be voted in from democracy, but mostly more than half of people haven't
Rob:
00:26:29
voted for you, haven't voted you in.
Rob:
00:26:31
So the key to get in change is getting people to commit to your ideas.
Rob:
00:26:38
A prime minister actually, and even the president doesn't have a lot
Rob:
00:26:41
of power because the checks and balances, they have to get voted and
Rob:
00:26:45
ratified by the house of commons, the house of lords, the king eventually.
Rob:
00:26:49
They can be stopped at a number of points.
Rob:
00:26:51
Obama talked about how little he could do because everything he did was
Rob:
00:26:55
blocked because he was a Democrat while it was a strong Republican Senate.
Rob:
00:26:59
So it's about the ability to agree on a way forward.
Rob:
00:27:04
In wartime and, and what I've realized from looking at these
Rob:
00:27:09
leaders, De Gaulle was horrible.
Rob:
00:27:11
He just didn't like people and he was like, I am France.
Rob:
00:27:13
You can't disagree with me.
Rob:
00:27:14
They tried to honor him.
Rob:
00:27:15
And he said, how can you honor France?
Rob:
00:27:17
Martin Luther King didn't need to be a great person and didn't need to have
Rob:
00:27:21
great relationships because he has such and Empowering vision the same of Gandhi.
Rob:
00:27:25
When you've got a great movement that everyone agrees in, like end slavery
Rob:
00:27:28
civil rights Equal rights these kind of things you have such moral authority
Rob:
00:27:33
that you don't need the relationships.
Rob:
00:27:35
People might not like Martin Luther King, but they still
Rob:
00:27:39
stand for the same thing on.
Rob:
00:27:41
When you use the
Rob:
00:27:42
example of us three
Rob:
00:27:43
going off on a quest, we don't necessarily need a leader.
Rob:
00:27:46
We need someone with an idea on each stage.
Rob:
00:27:49
There's going to be different challenges.
Rob:
00:27:51
It's the ability to have that discussion.
Rob:
00:27:54
And I think when we, when we have these discussions, I don't think
Rob:
00:27:57
there is a leader, but I think through sharing ideas and from what
Rob:
00:28:01
we're doing is refining so that we may or may not come to an agreement.
Rob:
00:28:05
My insight from, from conflict is that basically there's an agreement there, but
Rob:
00:28:10
there's a lot of stuff that's in the way.
Rob:
00:28:12
And I think when you look at personality conflicts, it's not the
Rob:
00:28:15
personality that we conflict with.
Rob:
00:28:17
It's the neurosis that people have dealt with to deal with
Rob:
00:28:21
under stress that people react to.
Rob:
00:28:24
Ultimately, you know, I sometimes look at you.
Rob:
00:28:26
If you go back to the early caveman, there was a small group.
Rob:
00:28:30
How did they agree things they didn't necessarily, you know,
Rob:
00:28:33
generally there is a leader.
Rob:
00:28:34
But sometimes it's just we agree to do something.
Clark:
00:28:37
So there's a thing though, Rob, that's interesting when you mention the
Clark:
00:28:40
vision there, the idea of having a vision that people follow, because if, for
Clark:
00:28:44
instance, a leader had the vision that we're going to kill all the people we
Clark:
00:28:48
don't like, for instance, Hitler, Stalin.
Clark:
00:28:50
I was trying to skirt around actually saying it, but You know,
Clark:
00:28:57
Kristallnacht and, and, and all the things that happened from, you know,
Clark:
00:29:00
sort of 1933 onwards, it became fairly clear that here was a vision.
Clark:
00:29:05
Here was an idea for the future of a country that was questionable at best,
Clark:
00:29:10
downright evil, most people would say.
Clark:
00:29:13
Yet, He led millions and millions of people, and so if the idea is a bad
Clark:
00:29:18
one, does that make the leader, who's carrying out this vision, a good leader?
Clark:
00:29:23
This is the point for me, of the followers framing what leadership is all about.
Clark:
00:29:28
Because basically, that man was telling the people what they wanted to hear.
Clark:
00:29:33
He was giving them a vision that they wanted.
Clark:
00:29:36
It was stupid.
Clark:
00:29:37
It was downright evil.
Clark:
00:29:38
But nobody, and this goes back to our question of the football game.
Clark:
00:29:42
The referee stands there, theoretically, and says to the players, Listen,
Clark:
00:29:46
we all know the laws of the game.
Clark:
00:29:49
You are going to try and break some of them.
Clark:
00:29:50
But you don't want them broken against you.
Clark:
00:29:53
So I'm going to uphold to the best of my ability, not just the letter
Clark:
00:29:57
of the law, but the spirit of the law so that we can have a good game.
Clark:
00:30:00
He is thereby for me, more of a leader than anybody else on the pitch, because
Clark:
00:30:05
he's a leader on behalf of the spirit of the game, the principles of the game.
Clark:
00:30:11
And, and I know that a lot of people might say, yeah, but
Clark:
00:30:14
that's not what the game's about.
Clark:
00:30:15
The game is about winning, but at what cost,?
Tony:
00:30:18
If the referee, Clark, if the referee has had that dialogue, so if
Tony:
00:30:21
the referee has pulled the captains together and, and, and said that,
Tony:
00:30:24
I'll pull the teams together before.
Tony:
00:30:26
Conceptually, everybody goes into that
Clark:
00:30:27
game
Tony:
00:30:27
knowing what the rules are.
Tony:
00:30:28
Yeah, they do.
Tony:
00:30:29
But they also know that every referee is different.
Tony:
00:30:32
Oh, we've got this guy, he's a home banker.
Tony:
00:30:34
We're going to get nothing.
Tony:
00:30:35
You know, those discussions happen in every game.
Tony:
00:30:37
Oh, we're going to get nothing out of this guy.
Tony:
00:30:40
We always get bad Right, so all of those pre existing notions exist.
Tony:
00:30:43
It's a brilliant analogy that you, that you make, if the referee pulls them
Tony:
00:30:48
together before the game and says, look, and says exactly what you said, that's
Tony:
00:30:52
leadership because he's trying to get two groups of factions who are going to
Tony:
00:30:57
be in conflict for the next two hours.
Tony:
00:30:59
He's trying to get them to at least go about it with a shared code of conduct,
Tony:
00:31:03
and I know that the code of conduct exists, but already before they've
Tony:
00:31:07
even started, they're coming at it, as we all do, through our own lens,
Tony:
00:31:11
through our own perceptions, through our own experiences, all of that.
Tony:
00:31:14
But I think his, he is demonstrating leadership if he says, this is how
Tony:
00:31:19
we're going to do things today, guys.
Tony:
00:31:21
Are you with me?
Tony:
00:31:21
Then it's clear.
Tony:
00:31:22
We've got a shared intention about how this game is going to be managed.
Tony:
00:31:25
We're all
Clark:
00:31:27
arguing in favour of each other.
Clark:
00:31:28
We're all singing from the same hymn sheets.
Clark:
00:31:31
Because this goes back to this idea of, of permission.
Clark:
00:31:35
But also trust, as Rob says, and consent, because the point I'm trying to make about
Clark:
00:31:41
we need to look at who the followers are.
Clark:
00:31:42
Let's say, for instance, you've got a dozen people in a situation
Clark:
00:31:47
and it's all going pear shaped.
Clark:
00:31:48
And everybody's saying, what do we do?
Clark:
00:31:50
And they look to somebody and they say, you're the one.
Clark:
00:31:52
lead us out of this situation.
Clark:
00:31:54
And that person then turns around to them and says, No, I'm not leading you.
Clark:
00:31:57
You're not going to do what I say.
Clark:
00:31:59
Why should I lead you?
Clark:
00:32:00
And they say, Well, we've got nobody else.
Clark:
00:32:02
At that point, the leader then says, and I'm talking metaphorically because I
Clark:
00:32:06
think all leadership situations involve a level of this, where the person says,
Clark:
00:32:12
if you want me to lead you, what are the parameters within which we should operate?
Clark:
00:32:17
For instance, can I tell you what to eat, what to wear, what
Clark:
00:32:21
names you should call each other?
Clark:
00:32:22
No, of course not.
Clark:
00:32:23
So what are the parameters?
Clark:
00:32:24
We are trying to accomplish X. In pursuit of that goal, I want to quote
Clark:
00:32:30
Rob, a certain amount of blind loyalty.
Clark:
00:32:32
You may not know exactly why I'm doing something, but if you
Clark:
00:32:36
question everything that I say, we're never going to get anywhere.
Clark:
00:32:40
So to, within certain parameters, for instance, in the game of football,
Clark:
00:32:45
within the rules and the spirit of the game, I expect you guys to, to listen
Clark:
00:32:50
when I say that's not happening or we're going to be doing X, Y, and Z. Okay.
Clark:
00:32:54
And it's not a matter of authority then, it's not a matter of formal authority or
Clark:
00:32:59
permission or anything, it's basically, if you guys all agree that we need to
Clark:
00:33:03
accomplish X, for instance, beat the Germans in this war, then I need you
Clark:
00:33:08
guys to go along with, and that's my point, I need you to be good followers.
Clark:
00:33:15
If you want me to be a good leader, then you need to be good followers, will it?
Clark:
00:33:18
We'll agree what the terms of that arrangement is, but under that situation,
Clark:
00:33:23
you then need to do, to do your part.
Clark:
00:33:25
The problem that we find so often now is that the people dancing
Clark:
00:33:29
around the golden calf, they're saying to Moses, no, no, no, no.
Clark:
00:33:33
Hold on a minute.
Clark:
00:33:34
We want to dance around this golden calf.
Clark:
00:33:35
And Moses said, but that was not part of the agreement.
Clark:
00:33:37
Well, we've changed the agreement.
Clark:
00:33:39
Well, all right, pick your own flipping leader then.
Clark:
00:33:42
Because we had an arrangement and now you're going against it.
Clark:
00:33:45
This is the problem with leadership.
Clark:
00:33:47
And one of the reasons that that particular referee had such a bad
Clark:
00:33:50
game was because he personally didn't have the personal integrity to
Clark:
00:33:56
stick by what he was supposed to be.
Clark:
00:33:59
He was there to uphold the laws of the game, and he didn't
Clark:
00:34:01
have the ability to do that.
Clark:
00:34:02
If, for instance, we look at somebody like Tony Blair, who I detest beyond
Clark:
00:34:06
measure, because he was so weak that he allowed another country to
Clark:
00:34:10
persuade him to do something against the interests of his own people.
Clark:
00:34:14
Then for me, he was going against the agreement that he'd
Clark:
00:34:17
made with the British people.
Clark:
00:34:18
He had said to them, I'm going to lead you as a country for the
Clark:
00:34:21
interest of our country, not this other country who's bigger and
Clark:
00:34:25
more powerful and got more money.
Clark:
00:34:26
And I happen to like him and I want to be his mate.
Clark:
00:34:28
I'm going to do a book tour when I, when I leave office.
Clark:
00:34:30
He was working against the interests of his own people.
Clark:
00:34:32
So he was working outside of that arrangement.
Clark:
00:34:34
And in all leadership situations, there is a tacit agreement that the leader will
Clark:
00:34:40
behave in a certain way and the followers will also behave in a certain way within
Clark:
00:34:44
the parameters that they've agreed to.
Clark:
00:34:46
Unfortunately, most people, and you look on LinkedIn, are all the people
Clark:
00:34:49
that supposedly know what a leader is.
Clark:
00:34:51
They, they haven't got a clue.
Clark:
00:34:53
And the reason they haven't got a clue is because they, they are looking at it
Clark:
00:34:56
from the perspective of the follower, who doesn't want to have any accountability
Clark:
00:35:01
for their part in the arrangement.
Clark:
00:35:02
And this is a problem that we have now with leadership.
Clark:
00:35:05
I had this exact situation in a factory where I was told we were
Clark:
00:35:09
making some change, I was told by the general manager, you can't do that.
Clark:
00:35:14
You can't tell these guys to do X, Y, and Z. I said, but that is their job.
Clark:
00:35:18
You know, I'm not even asking them to do something beyond their normal role.
Clark:
00:35:23
I'm asking them to do their job.
Clark:
00:35:25
It's as simple as that.
Clark:
00:35:25
Ah, yeah, but the circumstances of this and the current climate
Clark:
00:35:29
and COVID and da da da da.
Clark:
00:35:31
Well, then don't pay them if they're not doing their job.
Clark:
00:35:33
Or if you're going to pay them, expect them to play
Clark:
00:35:35
their part in the arrangement.
Clark:
00:35:37
You know, we, we talk about things like quite quitting and all that sort of stuff.
Clark:
00:35:41
It's great to have these conversations about how people
Clark:
00:35:43
feel about the current arrangement.
Clark:
00:35:45
But at the end of the day, if you've entered into an agreement with a
Clark:
00:35:47
leader, then be a bloody good follower.
Clark:
00:35:49
End of rant.
Rob:
00:35:50
You can talk about leadership and you can talk about all of these things, but
Rob:
00:35:54
fundamentally it comes down to character.
Rob:
00:35:56
It comes down to the clarity of your identity, of who you are, of
Rob:
00:36:01
what you believe in, what you stand for, what your philosophy is, and
Rob:
00:36:05
that I think sets the boundaries.
Rob:
00:36:08
Where there is problems is where there is either a lack of character, lack
Rob:
00:36:13
of those foundations, lack of a sense of identity and a sense of mission.
Tony:
00:36:17
We can have all the qualities in the world though and be in a situation
Tony:
00:36:20
that doesn't require leadership.
Tony:
00:36:21
So the characteristics don't define the leader.
Tony:
00:36:24
They certainly define the person and they certainly help to
Tony:
00:36:26
build that informal authority.
Tony:
00:36:28
They help to build trust.
Tony:
00:36:29
People will trust that more implicitly because of those characteristics, but
Tony:
00:36:34
in itself it doesn't define that we can meet the challenge that we're facing.
Tony:
00:36:38
Like if I've got all those fantastic characteristics, but I've got is
Tony:
00:36:42
an idea that's rubbish and I still want to go and do it regardless.
Tony:
00:36:47
Then that doesn't make me a great leader.
Tony:
00:36:49
It just means I'm a great bloke with no idea.
Rob:
00:36:51
Isn't
Tony:
00:36:52
that the idea?
Tony:
00:36:52
Of course, it's important to have good character and sound character.
Tony:
00:36:56
But in itself, it's not leadership.
Tony:
00:36:57
It's different from that.
Rob:
00:36:58
If you've got the character of integrity and you know, your idea isn't
Rob:
00:37:01
working then you have the integrity to say, I'm not the right person for this.
Rob:
00:37:05
So those characters is the self awareness of knowing when you're, when you can
Rob:
00:37:10
contribute something and when you can't.
Clark:
00:37:12
A good example of how leadership might is to look at a parent,
Clark:
00:37:16
the responsibility of a parent.
Clark:
00:37:18
I think one could reasonably say that a parent is a leader, mother or father.
Clark:
00:37:24
And they both have slightly different roles, but there are
Clark:
00:37:28
certainly overlapping for sure.
Clark:
00:37:30
But as a parent, you are the leader of the kids, let's say, although there's
Clark:
00:37:35
much more to it than that, because the family unit is, it's complex and
Clark:
00:37:39
they're more involved than just a parent being in charge of the kids.
Clark:
00:37:43
But let's just say as a parent, you could consider yourself the leader of that
Clark:
00:37:47
family, in which case, would a parent ever have to do something or encourage or
Clark:
00:37:54
instruct their children to do something that the kids might not want to do?
Clark:
00:37:58
Well, yeah, all the flipping time.
Clark:
00:38:00
And that's the point for me about leadership, because a leader
Clark:
00:38:04
often has to get people to do things that they don't want to do.
Clark:
00:38:07
And the question then comes down to, well, is it a good thing?
Clark:
00:38:11
Is it the thing that benefits the unit, the family, the group as a whole?
Clark:
00:38:16
In which case, the people being led would probably do well to ask themselves,
Clark:
00:38:23
although I don't like it, is this for the betterment of us as a unit?
Clark:
00:38:28
One of the problems, I see around me today is that, and you, you, you said
Clark:
00:38:33
it, Rob, you're not a good follower.
Clark:
00:38:35
Well, that's the problem.
Clark:
00:38:36
In the world today, nobody's a good follower.
Clark:
00:38:38
Everybody is an independent unit that won't be told what, what's
Clark:
00:38:43
the best thing to do or the best way to go about doing something.
Clark:
00:38:45
And yet, when we talked about Churchill, for instance, the, the country that he led
Clark:
00:38:50
was a very different country to the one we, we, for me, I think the people in the
Clark:
00:38:55
Second World War were a different breed.
Clark:
00:38:57
They were, they, they were hardier than, as, as a group
Clark:
00:39:01
of people than we are today.
Clark:
00:39:03
I think that's fair to say, you know, many of them had grown up without shoes.
Clark:
00:39:07
With almost no food the ideas around discipline were very different
Clark:
00:39:10
then to what they are today.
Clark:
00:39:11
Let's face it, most people probably got beaten on a fairly regular basis as kids.
Clark:
00:39:15
So they were a different breed of people.
Clark:
00:39:17
And yet that group of people who could quite easily say,
Clark:
00:39:21
well, I'm not doing well.
Clark:
00:39:22
I grew up in the first war.
Clark:
00:39:23
I've, I've seen everything.
Clark:
00:39:24
I'm tough.
Clark:
00:39:25
Nobody's telling me what to do.
Clark:
00:39:26
And yet.
Clark:
00:39:27
You know, this nation of whatever it was back then, 30, 35, 40 million
Clark:
00:39:31
people were a nation of good followers.
Clark:
00:39:34
And to me, that's fascinating because we live in a world now.
Clark:
00:39:39
Not just in this country, but predominantly, you know,
Clark:
00:39:42
certainly Western parts of the world, where you have, let's be
Clark:
00:39:45
kind, let's not call them soft.
Clark:
00:39:47
They have more opportunities than, than have ever been available
Clark:
00:39:50
in, in the history of the world.
Clark:
00:39:52
And yet the average person is not particularly tough, doesn't need to be.
Clark:
00:39:57
And yet they still say, no, I'm not.
Clark:
00:39:59
Nobody's telling me what to do.
Clark:
00:40:00
I'm not following anybody.
Clark:
00:40:01
I have individual sovereignty over everything that I do.
Clark:
00:40:05
You can't tell me what to do, but how can you lead those people?
Clark:
00:40:08
They're telling the leaders how the leaders should be, and the leaders are
Clark:
00:40:11
like, well, what, what should I do?
Clark:
00:40:12
Shall I just do what you want?
Clark:
00:40:13
Who agrees with parameters nowadays then?
Clark:
00:40:16
So how a group of people should accomplish something.
Clark:
00:40:18
I, I literally hear people at least once a day, usually several times a
Clark:
00:40:23
day telling me how the world's going, down the creek without a paddle.
Clark:
00:40:27
I don't think it is.
Clark:
00:40:28
I think it's a great world.
Clark:
00:40:30
I have enormous optimism because eventually at some point.
Clark:
00:40:33
People will realize maybe we need to get our own shit together and stop telling
Clark:
00:40:37
the leaders what they should be doing
Tony:
00:40:39
and start being good followers.
Tony:
00:40:40
I think you've nailed it there, Clark.
Tony:
00:40:42
I think you've nailed it.
Tony:
00:40:43
When you're in a team environment and you're the designated leader.
Tony:
00:40:46
Let's say you've been given the position of manager, for example,
Tony:
00:40:49
whether you can lead or not.
Tony:
00:40:51
Is about to be defined in those moments.
Tony:
00:40:53
So you've got a group of individuals who are looking blankly back at you as
Tony:
00:40:56
you address them for the first time.
Tony:
00:40:58
You're thinking, who are these people that I'm going to try and
Tony:
00:41:01
pull together into this force.
Tony:
00:41:03
I want to succeed on all these external goals that the business has set for
Tony:
00:41:07
me, I want to be the guy that takes them to achieve what we want to
Tony:
00:41:10
achieve, all of that sort of stuff.
Tony:
00:41:11
Within it, you've got these people that you're talking about, that there's
Tony:
00:41:16
immediate resistance to being led, there's self interest over collectivism,
Tony:
00:41:21
individualism versus collective, all of those sorts of things are in play.
Tony:
00:41:25
I think the leader defines themselves in those moments by finding the
Tony:
00:41:29
capacity to bring that stuff together.
Tony:
00:41:32
I think that's where leadership lives in those gaps between
Tony:
00:41:35
the aspiration over here.
Tony:
00:41:37
This is what we want to achieve together.
Tony:
00:41:38
The reality is I'm standing there for the first time.
Tony:
00:41:41
In front of you, rabble.
Tony:
00:41:42
How the hell are we going to do this?
Tony:
00:41:44
Because I've never led you before, you've never followed me before.
Tony:
00:41:48
This is an almighty challenge.
Tony:
00:41:50
For me, it's complex.
Tony:
00:41:52
You're all complex.
Tony:
00:41:53
You don't even know why you're doing half the things you're doing.
Tony:
00:41:56
So, let's start talking about it.
Tony:
00:41:59
Let's find a way forward so when we get up in the morning we can really enjoy
Tony:
00:42:02
coming to this place and find some meaning in what it is that we're doing together.
Tony:
00:42:07
Otherwise, back off and go somewhere else and, and, and go and take
Tony:
00:42:10
your problems somewhere else.
Tony:
00:42:11
I'll find somebody else who can do it.
Tony:
00:42:13
That's the key.
Tony:
00:42:14
That's the key.
Tony:
00:42:14
I think they're in that.
Tony:
00:42:16
There's their objective.
Tony:
00:42:18
I've been tasked to take us there.
Tony:
00:42:20
I don't have all the answers, but I'm not going to get there,
Tony:
00:42:23
unless you lot come with me.
Tony:
00:42:25
How are we going to do it?
Tony:
00:42:26
I don't know.
Tony:
00:42:27
Let's start talking.
Tony:
00:42:28
Let's work it out.
Tony:
00:42:29
Leadership lives in those gaps.
Clark:
00:42:31
It's that conversation, whether that conversation
Clark:
00:42:34
actually explicitly takes place.
Clark:
00:42:36
Or whether it's just a tacit agreement amongst a group of people, according
Clark:
00:42:40
to the laws that are already in place.
Clark:
00:42:42
But that conversation is the key to what is or isn't leadership.
Clark:
00:42:47
If, for instance, on Sunday, when Villapay West Ham, If the referee after 20 minutes
Clark:
00:42:53
just walked off the pitch, I'm done.
Clark:
00:42:55
I'm not doing this.
Clark:
00:42:56
What would happen then?
Clark:
00:42:57
Because he could turn around and say, hold on a minute.
Clark:
00:43:00
There are rules and you're not following them.
Clark:
00:43:02
I'm trying to enforce them.
Clark:
00:43:03
And you guys are just arguing with me.
Clark:
00:43:05
Play your own flipping game then, see how that works out.
Clark:
00:43:08
And that conversation, what is it you expect from me?
Clark:
00:43:12
And what is it then, in return, I should be able to expect from you?
Clark:
00:43:16
Because if you say that you want me to be the leader, and I say
Clark:
00:43:20
no, then what are you going to do?
Clark:
00:43:21
You're going to pick somebody else.
Clark:
00:43:22
Are they going to be qualified?
Clark:
00:43:23
And are you going to have the same conversation?
Clark:
00:43:25
Or is it basically just going to be a group of people saying, we
Clark:
00:43:28
all want this, let's do this.
Clark:
00:43:30
We all want to have Thursdays off, and we all want to sit around eating pizza.
Clark:
00:43:34
Well, then you're going to fail.
Clark:
00:43:36
Because you know, you, your purpose in life isn't to sit around eating pizza.
Clark:
00:43:41
It's to accomplish something.
Clark:
00:43:42
How is that gonna get accomplished if you are all sitting around
Clark:
00:43:44
doing what you want to do?
Clark:
00:43:46
So I'm gonna be the person if that's what you want to get us there.
Clark:
00:43:50
But I expect X from you as well.
Clark:
00:43:52
I need you guys to play your part.
Clark:
00:43:53
This is the whole point of me being a miserable, chuntering,
Clark:
00:43:57
grumbling person all morning, is this idea that the followers should
Clark:
00:44:01
dictate what the leader should be.
Clark:
00:44:02
Maybe if you guys are prepared to do your part, but, you know, what,
Clark:
00:44:07
how often do you see on LinkedIn.
Clark:
00:44:08
I'm a follower guru.
Clark:
00:44:10
I, I can tell you how to be good subjects of your leader.
Clark:
00:44:14
It doesn't happen, does it?
Clark:
00:44:15
No, it's just all about the leader.
Clark:
00:44:16
It's all on them.
Clark:
00:44:17
Because then when it goes pear shaped, we can blame them.
Clark:
00:44:19
Like they did to Moses.
Rob:
00:44:21
I agree with where you're going.
Rob:
00:44:22
And the point where I switched from thinking about conflict and
Rob:
00:44:27
relationships to teams was the point where I realised that we have to unify.
Rob:
00:44:32
We have a different world to say the second world war, but I
Rob:
00:44:36
don't think people are different.
Rob:
00:44:37
I think people are softer because the environment is softer.
Rob:
00:44:40
But if people aren't following, you have to be a better leader, right?
Rob:
00:44:43
So I'm a bad follower.
Rob:
00:44:45
So there are 8 billion plus people in the world, right?
Rob:
00:44:48
And we all have a different idea.
Rob:
00:44:49
The idea that I'm a leader and you will do as you're told and you'll get behind me.
Rob:
00:44:54
We've had centuries of these advertising campaigns are of don't be selfish.
Rob:
00:44:59
Give up your self interest.
Rob:
00:45:00
No one's going to do it.
Rob:
00:45:01
It's biologically hardwired into us that we are selfish.
Rob:
00:45:04
The reason that you have so much politics, the reason that there is so
Rob:
00:45:08
much disengagement, the reason there is so much gossip, rumors, all of these things
Rob:
00:45:12
that undermine teams is because if I see my self interest as doing something that
Rob:
00:45:19
isn't for the team, I'm going to do that.
Rob:
00:45:21
We can appeal to people to be more noble and whatever, but they aren't.
Rob:
00:45:25
I realized people aren't good at joining together.
Rob:
00:45:29
Traditionally there's been this whole thing of, okay, this is what we're doing.
Rob:
00:45:33
The whole patriotism idea is based on your country matters more than you do.
Rob:
00:45:40
And that may be if I agree with that.
Rob:
00:45:43
For me, I'm not patriotic.
Rob:
00:45:44
I believe where I was born was luck.
Rob:
00:45:48
The idea of countries is someone made this whole idea of this is a nation.
Rob:
00:45:54
This isn't a nation.
Rob:
00:45:54
That changes all the time.
Rob:
00:45:56
If I was born in Nazi Germany.
Rob:
00:45:58
Okay do what's good for your country.
Rob:
00:46:00
Well, i'm going to do something that's immoral and Leaders
Rob:
00:46:02
should be held accountable that if they're doing something immoral.
Rob:
00:46:05
People shouldn't follow them.
Rob:
00:46:06
Because isn't that the way that you you stop having another holocaust.
Clark:
00:46:10
Who decides what's moral though, mate?
Rob:
00:46:11
We agree to something So this is, this is the thing that if you feel that
Rob:
00:46:16
something's immoral, do you still do it?
Rob:
00:46:18
If you, so there are hundreds of companies, pharmaceutical companies,
Rob:
00:46:22
food companies, tobacco companies, oil companies, all of these people.
Rob:
00:46:26
doing things that most people would say were immoral if they were transparent.
Rob:
00:46:30
And yet people are going along with them.
Rob:
00:46:32
And I think if you feel that something's immoral, I don't
Rob:
00:46:36
think that you should do it.
Clark:
00:46:37
So that's the key, I think, Rob.
Clark:
00:46:39
What you just said there about the, the, the idea of being patriotic towards
Clark:
00:46:44
a country because people follow this, this incorrect idea that the country
Clark:
00:46:48
is more important than the individual.
Clark:
00:46:50
I would say anthropologically speaking, the country is more
Clark:
00:46:53
important than the individual because the tribe has to continue, whereas
Clark:
00:46:57
the individual need not continue.
Clark:
00:47:00
If we go back in history and, and forget countries because they're an
Clark:
00:47:03
artificial construct, but groups of people have always gathered together
Clark:
00:47:07
throughout history for the collective protection of the entire group.
Clark:
00:47:11
And it's always been accepted for obvious reasons that the individual must
Clark:
00:47:16
be sacrificed, if necessary, for the good of the continuance of the tribe.
Clark:
00:47:21
It makes sense, because if we all just look after ourselves, then we're all
Clark:
00:47:26
going to be gone within 50, 60, 70 years.
Clark:
00:47:28
So the idea that the tribe is more important than the individual
Clark:
00:47:32
has some basis in logic.
Clark:
00:47:34
However, as you've just said, you, you can't decide which tribe you're born into.
Clark:
00:47:39
So the idea that certain members within the tribe might be promoting
Clark:
00:47:44
questionable ideals or practices, they have to be able to, and this is
Clark:
00:47:48
probably one of the, the most important parts of leadership, have to be able
Clark:
00:47:52
to, to be entered into a conversation.
Clark:
00:47:55
We have to be able to say, I don't agree with this.
Clark:
00:47:57
And the problem is, this does go back to this idea, and there's
Clark:
00:48:00
a reason why I'm such a massive advocate of the idea of the 10th man.
Clark:
00:48:05
Because somebody has to raise the question, hold on a minute, whoa, Jews?
Clark:
00:48:10
Well, why all of a sudden have we just decided we're going to kill all the Jews?
Clark:
00:48:14
Where did this come from?
Clark:
00:48:15
Whose idea was this?
Clark:
00:48:16
What have they done?
Clark:
00:48:17
Somebody has to ask those difficult questions.
Clark:
00:48:20
And then if you look at a tribe, you know, throughout history,
Clark:
00:48:23
probably the average tribe was no bigger than a few hundred people.
Clark:
00:48:26
They had elders who were considered wise by virtue of the experience that
Clark:
00:48:32
they've gathered throughout the years.
Clark:
00:48:33
That group of elders would probably make decisions by committee, although there
Clark:
00:48:38
would be a chief, generally speaking.
Clark:
00:48:39
But that person, and this is why I've always considered myself
Clark:
00:48:43
much to most people's disbelief.
Clark:
00:48:45
something of a monarchist, simply because that person lives their
Clark:
00:48:50
entire life learning how to best serve the interests of the country.
Clark:
00:48:55
Supposedly, theoretically, that's the idea.
Clark:
00:48:57
It's a little bit like how on the battlefield, armies will have a standard.
Clark:
00:49:02
In the middle of the battlefield because it's the thing around
Clark:
00:49:05
which the rest of the troops can rally when things are going bad.
Clark:
00:49:09
That's the thing that they look at.
Clark:
00:49:11
If it's still there, if it's not fallen, we've still got a chance.
Clark:
00:49:15
And that's, to me is the point of a figurehead within a, within a country.
Clark:
00:49:19
The point that you make though is an important one.
Clark:
00:49:22
That that person, whoever that person is.
Clark:
00:49:25
has to be able to answer questions directed at them regarding
Clark:
00:49:29
the path that they're taking.
Clark:
00:49:30
And one of the problems that we find I keep hearing people talk about far right
Clark:
00:49:34
activists around, you know, the news, the media talk about far right activists
Clark:
00:49:39
and how terrible it is to be far right.
Clark:
00:49:41
And I keep thinking, are there any far left activists?
Clark:
00:49:43
Well, what are they doing?
Clark:
00:49:45
If there's one extreme, there must be another extreme.
Clark:
00:49:47
Why, why is nobody talking about, about these guys?
Clark:
00:49:50
The thing is, throughout history, we talk about Hitler, but he killed
Clark:
00:49:54
far fewer people than Stalin.
Clark:
00:49:57
You know, I think it was 9 million versus 20 million, 20 million people killed,
Clark:
00:50:02
and they were mostly his own people.
Clark:
00:50:03
And the problem in all of these situations, and we look around that you
Clark:
00:50:07
talk about people like Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini and Mao Tse Tong and, you
Clark:
00:50:11
know, look at some of the leaders around the world without naming them now, because
Clark:
00:50:13
I don't want to be killed in my sleep, but, you look at some of these people and
Clark:
00:50:17
the problem with, with their leadership is that their methods cannot be questioned.
Clark:
00:50:22
Nobody can question what, and you just said about Charles de Gaulle, I'm France,
Clark:
00:50:26
everything that I want to do is right.
Clark:
00:50:28
Well, as far as I know, nobody is right all the time.
Clark:
00:50:33
So how can an imperfect, flawed person assume and ask all of their followers to
Clark:
00:50:38
assume that they can't make a mistake?
Clark:
00:50:40
Somebody has to be the court jester.
Clark:
00:50:42
Somebody has to be the person that points out the emperor's And you close
Clark:
00:50:46
and this is this is one of the problems with the idea of the follow up leadership
Clark:
00:50:51
relationship, because as long as the followers are getting what they want.
Clark:
00:50:55
And the leaders saying the things that the followers want to hear,
Clark:
00:50:58
everybody's happy, even if they're all running over the edge of a cliff.
Clark:
00:51:01
The idea of the 10th man is the person that says, hold on,
Clark:
00:51:04
you're wrong and you're wrong.
Clark:
00:51:06
You're flipping wrong.
Clark:
00:51:08
You literally all and there's millions of you and you're all
Clark:
00:51:10
going in the wrong direction.
Clark:
00:51:12
We look at America at the moment.
Clark:
00:51:14
There were two candidates for the rulership of the biggest, most powerful
Clark:
00:51:20
country that the world has ever seen.
Clark:
00:51:22
And they're both morons!
Clark:
00:51:23
How does that happen?
Clark:
00:51:24
How on earth does that happen?
Clark:
00:51:25
I don't, I don't want to insult either of them.
Clark:
00:51:28
They clearly are intelligent people.
Clark:
00:51:31
However, I don't think they should be in charge of the most powerful
Clark:
00:51:33
country in the world, either of them.
Clark:
00:51:35
How does that happen?
Clark:
00:51:37
Because basically that person got there by telling all the followers
Clark:
00:51:41
what the followers wanted to hear.
Clark:
00:51:42
Well, that's clearly not going to work, is it?
Clark:
00:51:44
It's not for the betterment of humanity, it doesn't seem to me.
Rob:
00:51:48
I agree with that and, and when I said that the leader needs to be better,
Rob:
00:51:52
what I mean is and this is where the, the 10th man and the idea of the unifier are
Rob:
00:51:57
the opposite ends of the same concept.
Rob:
00:52:00
For the followers to follow, they have to have something that's better.
Rob:
00:52:03
We all need something.
Rob:
00:52:05
We all need the tribe.
Rob:
00:52:06
We all need the family.
Rob:
00:52:07
We all need ultimately some kind of connection to the whole world so that
Rob:
00:52:11
the universe is bigger than than we are.
Rob:
00:52:14
What people crave are things that they can get.
Rob:
00:52:16
But what really makes people happy, what really satisfies people is what they give.
Rob:
00:52:22
Deep down people really want to contribute.
Rob:
00:52:24
What I learned from conflict is that say you've got a couple and they're
Rob:
00:52:28
fighting for their marriage or whatever.
Rob:
00:52:29
And they're both fighting for their idea of what their marriage can be.
Rob:
00:52:33
Neither of them has the full truth.
Rob:
00:52:34
And this is where the 10th man comes in because the 10th man can pick apart
Rob:
00:52:38
what's true from what's false, but there is the seed of truth in both of them.
Rob:
00:52:43
What needs to happen?
Rob:
00:52:45
This is what leadership needs to be is you need to take those two
Rob:
00:52:48
contrasting ideas and through the friction, find what's true, what's not.
Rob:
00:52:53
Then you have to raise to a higher level of thinking.
Rob:
00:52:56
It's like Einstein said that every problem is solved at a higher level of thinking.
Rob:
00:53:00
When I say the leader needs to be better, I mean, it's not necessarily
Rob:
00:53:04
leader, but the idea that we get behind.
Rob:
00:53:06
And then the idea that we get behind doesn't need to come from
Rob:
00:53:08
the leader, but the leader needs to be the one that facilitates the
Rob:
00:53:11
conversation, gathers the idea and ultimately has to get behind them.
Rob:
00:53:16
What people will give up for is when say someone is patriotic and
Rob:
00:53:21
they really believe in the country.
Rob:
00:53:22
And I Take your point that if you go back to Braveheart or the
Rob:
00:53:26
spartans or anything like that.
Rob:
00:53:28
It was a real belief and this is our way of life.
Rob:
00:53:30
This is what i'll give my life for.
Rob:
00:53:32
When we have that idea And now I think that is what on a smaller notion is
Rob:
00:53:38
that leaders and companies need to do is, okay, what do you come to work for?
Rob:
00:53:42
You come to work for money, but what else?
Rob:
00:53:44
What is it that you want?
Rob:
00:53:46
What is it that you want to give to the world?
Rob:
00:53:49
When we can get that idea and we encapsulate all of those ideas,
Rob:
00:53:53
we can come up with a mini vision and that's what people get behind.
Rob:
00:53:56
Not the leader, but the vision, and then where it can be helped.
Rob:
00:53:59
That's what the commitment that you need to hold people accountable.
Clark:
00:54:02
Yeah, what does it look like?
Clark:
00:54:04
That's the, that's the question that you need to ask, right?
Tony:
00:54:06
I'm just going to take you back, Rob, to the last bit that you spoke
Tony:
00:54:10
about prior to Clark speaking, which was this moral compass idea, right?
Tony:
00:54:16
So you work in, in a cigarette factory and you know that
Tony:
00:54:21
cigarettes can kill people, right?
Tony:
00:54:23
Every day you're going to work with this on your conscience.
Tony:
00:54:26
Now you've got two choices.
Tony:
00:54:27
You can stop doing it or live with the fact that you're
Tony:
00:54:32
not living true to yourself.
Tony:
00:54:34
Now that comes at a cost, right?
Tony:
00:54:35
So lots of people don't have that choice.
Tony:
00:54:38
to say, well, I'm just going to quit work because it's not
Tony:
00:54:43
in line with my core values.
Tony:
00:54:45
But it might not be easy to go and get a job somewhere else.
Tony:
00:54:47
I've got a family to feed and those crises of conscience weigh heavily on people.
Tony:
00:54:52
So they're doing something day after day after day.
Tony:
00:54:55
That's inside themselves.
Tony:
00:54:57
They're at war because they know it's not right.
Tony:
00:55:00
And it's playing out in all sorts of ways, both inside and outside of work.
Tony:
00:55:03
I'm sort of disengaged at work, but outside of work, I'm just carrying this
Tony:
00:55:08
burden around that I wish I wasn't, but I don't feel like I've got a choice.
Tony:
00:55:12
It's a whole different conversation.
Tony:
00:55:13
We've talked about ethics and all of that sort of stuff today, the, the consequences
Tony:
00:55:17
of following people even when we know it's maybe not the right thing to do.
Tony:
00:55:22
So who are we then?
Tony:
00:55:23
I think that's a great point.
Tony:
00:55:25
Because the consequence of doing it, the cost to me for living, not true
Tony:
00:55:28
to myself, not in an authentic way.
Tony:
00:55:30
I carry that burden, right?
Tony:
00:55:32
And it happens all, all the time.
Tony:
00:55:33
That was the thing I picked up.
Tony:
00:55:35
I just wanted to, Maybe feed that into another conversation.
Tony:
00:55:38
What can we do about that?
Clark:
00:55:40
You sort of followed a train of thought that I was having in my mind when
Clark:
00:55:42
Rob was speaking this idea of a vision.
Clark:
00:55:45
people will get behind an idea.
Clark:
00:55:47
And whilst, as you say, most people are selfish, very often the most
Clark:
00:55:53
selfish thing you can do is be selfless and work towards the benefit of
Clark:
00:55:57
the group because then you benefit.
Clark:
00:55:59
If you can imagine a tribe, let's say in prehistoric Britain.
Clark:
00:56:03
There's let's say, 50, 000 people in the entire country.
Clark:
00:56:06
And there's tribes of 200 people dotted all around the place.
Clark:
00:56:09
Whilst occasionally they may come into conflict with each other, by and large,
Clark:
00:56:12
most people's memories are of a time when things were good, when there was plenty
Clark:
00:56:17
of food, when the weather wasn't so bad.
Clark:
00:56:20
When there was no illness around and that then establishes for that group of
Clark:
00:56:24
people, a vision of what good looks like.
Clark:
00:56:27
This is what we want all the time.
Clark:
00:56:30
Later on, for instance, as society grew and people came into more conflict,
Clark:
00:56:34
those various tribes with their various visions could say to each other, look,
Clark:
00:56:39
we keep fighting and killing each other, but it's to the detriment of both of us.
Clark:
00:56:43
Why don't we come to some sort of accord where as a group of tribes, somebody
Clark:
00:56:49
is in charge of all those tribes and says, listen, I will be the arbiter of
Clark:
00:56:54
all of the disagreements between you.
Clark:
00:56:56
We will become a country, but you guys can still be your own tribes as
Clark:
00:57:01
long as you don't kill each other.
Clark:
00:57:02
That then is offering a vision of what life might be like under that set of
Clark:
00:57:06
circumstances where everybody realizes that the best way to get along is for
Clark:
00:57:11
everybody to play their part in this bigger picture, this bigger vision.
Clark:
00:57:15
And then if you, if you propel that forward into the future and say, well,
Clark:
00:57:19
hold on a minute, That's all anybody wants is to live in peace, right?
Clark:
00:57:22
So surely the leaders of the countries can come to some sort of agreement
Clark:
00:57:27
where they say, hold on a minute, let's stop killing each other, right?
Clark:
00:57:30
Let's stop bombing each other so we can stop making bombs, so we can put that
Clark:
00:57:34
money into education and into agriculture.
Clark:
00:57:37
Why hasn't that happened?
Clark:
00:57:38
The only conclusion I can come to is that a lot of people don't want it to
Clark:
00:57:42
happen because people make guns and bombs and vaccines and poisons and medicines.
Clark:
00:57:48
So we can't seem to come to a situation where the mass of followers are finding
Clark:
00:57:55
themselves a leader with a vision.
Clark:
00:57:57
I mean, this is what's happening in America at the moment.
Clark:
00:58:00
The Americans have found they believe a leader who is going to be acting
Clark:
00:58:04
and he seems to be certainly trying to act in their best interests,
Clark:
00:58:08
which makes sense as a leader, right?
Clark:
00:58:10
And maybe then over time, you could start to get leaders with a similar
Clark:
00:58:14
sort of common sense approach.
Clark:
00:58:15
Encouraging each other to be to be more cooperative.
Clark:
00:58:18
Maybe that that would end up with a vision because all anybody
Clark:
00:58:22
wants is a world of peace.
Clark:
00:58:24
Right?
Clark:
00:58:25
And the only way to achieve that then is to stop those that are working against
Clark:
00:58:31
the interests of the rest of the group from doing the things that they do.
Clark:
00:58:35
So it means imposing some sort group wishes or the group's desires onto the
Clark:
00:58:40
ones that want to be totally selfish.
Clark:
00:58:42
My final point, Rob, is basically saying, no, you can't be an individual.
Clark:
00:58:47
You have to be patriotic.
Clark:
00:58:49
You have to be for the group and the problem we have today
Clark:
00:58:52
is that nobody wants to do that.
Clark:
00:58:54
But at the end of the day, that can be the only way that you achieve
Clark:
00:58:56
the vision that most people want.
Rob:
00:58:58
A lot of the reason for this destructiveness of wars
Rob:
00:59:01
and whatever is bad leadership.
Rob:
00:59:03
Someone says, okay, I can gain and I can lead people astray.
Rob:
00:59:07
Donald Trump is looking after his own, but he's at a cost that
Rob:
00:59:10
putting them at war with others.
Rob:
00:59:11
So I'm going to steal Greenland.
Rob:
00:59:13
I'm going to take this, I'm going to take that which is isolating them.
Rob:
00:59:16
And I think.
Rob:
00:59:17
It's bad leadership.
Rob:
00:59:19
Like Tony said that, that people don't agree with it as a cost.
Rob:
00:59:22
And I think that's where the burnout comes.
Rob:
00:59:24
And I think it's bad leadership that creates more wars because
Rob:
00:59:28
someone says, Oh, this is a better way and it's better for some.
Rob:
00:59:31
There's gullible followers and this is probably a conversation
Rob:
00:59:34
for another time, but somewhere we need to work out that process.
Rob:
00:59:38
So followers are less gullible and, and self interested leaders don't
Rob:
00:59:43
have as much influence as they have.
Clark:
00:59:45
But the problem may not be the leaders, Rob, it may be the fact that
Clark:
00:59:49
all of the followers want to do their own thing, because at some point,
Clark:
00:59:53
we all have to sacrifice our desires for the benefit of the greater good.
Clark:
00:59:57
And if nobody wants to do that, it's never going to happen.
