The Death of the Alpha Male Leader
By Daniel Snell, October 2020
In this month’s article, we highlight a potential tipping point in the evolution of inclusive leadership. In spite of a headline-grabbing D&I faux pas, general corporate malpractice and populist toxic political rhetoric, we see the continual rise to prominence of the inclusive leader. We also attempt to help leaders see how D&I acts as an obvious bellwether for assessing the culture and leadership beliefs of an organisation.
This juxtaposition of modern and old fashioned attitudes was laid bare with the recent comment by Charles Scharf, CEO, of Wells Fargo, who let slip that it was the ‘limited pool of Black talent’ that was the real reason for lack of diversity in recruitment and progression. His frantic back-peddling and newly found commitment to D&I training, one hopes, leads to new, more inclusive attitudes but more likely it will be a marketing veneer to protect reputations and appearances, rather than offer up real change. Sadly, we know that for a certain aged gentleman from a certain background, this is a very commonly held attitude that is often shared if only in private.
Why so many D&I efforts fail to have real impact
However, much of the problem with the D&I agenda and it’s approach lies in its inability to understand and access the target recipient and how to successfully deliver change in attitudes. Centrally, it often doesn’t take into account the beliefs, attitudes and experiences of those who currently hold the power and will do so for some time yet.
Frustratingly over the last 5 years, we have seen and heard the same refrains, when it comes to D&I: “In spite of implementing x, y and z we aren’t seeing the change in outcomes we want at the pace we want them.”
However, what many individuals, who are genuinely committed to creating inclusive change in their organisations fail to understand, is that many of the people who hold the power in business came of age in a very different era that they can’t understand or relate to.
Leadership expectations have radically changed since I entered the world of work in the ’90s. The model for masculine success in leadership has almost entirely done a ‘180’; from the cult of the individual to that of the modern inclusive leader.
Anyone working in D&I has to understand the psychological make-up of the people who are often the main decision-makers, budget-holders and influencers in business if they want to make genuine change. Failure to understand this and work with it collaboratively means that, at best, efforts will be wasted, and at worse, will actually make it harder to change an individuals’ true beliefs and attitudes, which they may have learnt to hide behind a facade of outward compliance, leaving D&I to remain a peripheral liberal agenda outside Executive walls.
How we got here and how leaders might respond to their advantage
Let me assimilate my own life and career experiences to offer up a cultural perspective on white, middle-aged, middle-class male leadership.
The role models and experiences I witnessed of how to be a successful man are radically different from those of the current generation.
I worked in heavily masculine, toxic office cultures, where we were pitted against each other. We were encouraged to conquer our circumstances, peers and competition. You either won or you lost. Emotions and feelings were for girls and not to be encouraged. You bought into the ‘put up and shut up’ model of leadership. You figured out where the real power lay and how to influence it. Along with your ability to ‘close a deal’ a significant part of your success was based upon your ability to navigate corporate cultures. Favours and promotions were given only to those who ‘played the game’.
Career-wise — there was little professional development. It was to eat what you kill.
If you didn’t make your targets, you were firstly ridiculed, then bullied, and finally alienated and in time… ‘shown the door’. Out went the bottom 20% — for the younger readers that Jack Welch inspired attitude was venerated in the ’90s! The cut and thrust either excited you, or you were eaten alive, chewed up and spat out.
In this process, it felt like you were obliged to kill something intrinsic in yourself in order to fit in and flourish. To survive you became hardened, ruthless, disassociated from your own feelings and those of others. It certainly wasn’t about empowered inclusion.
Like many of my peers, my hardening began at school and on the rugby field. I figured out the harder I played, the more popular I became. I played very hard rugby and with many hard men in winning teams and to a fairly high standard.
I also understood that I was privileged, our post-game parties were in Chelsea, Fulham, Nottinghill and Knightsbridge and we were surrounded by attractive women. We drank a lot. We felt we owned London. Everyone I knew was in a top firm, usually as a lawyer, banker or on a fast track graduate programme. We were the winners.
To understand the above is to understand many of the men who now run our businesses and our country. Men who are at the top of their game. Very able, sharp, often highly skilled, driven and competitive. Intellectual ability married with drive, corporate/relationship savvy and some steel.
The World has changed
However, in the last 20 years or so, the world has changed in a way many of those male alpha leaders barely recognise and certainly don’t feel comfortable in it.
They are being asked to lead a cultural and leadership agenda they neither understand nor can connect with and authentically lead. Ironically, they also cannot ask for help, as they hail from a generation that must appear confident in everything, equipped with all the answers and would see being vulnerable or uncertain as a weakness that they must hide at all costs.
Imagine, if you had honed yourself in an aggressively competitive world, in the cult of the individual, where you are always trying to win through dint of your skills, wit, edge, and drive? Where you would benchmark yourself, your career and life success against your school, uni, rugby, and work peers?
And now they’re being asked to be inquisitive, vulnerable and open…?
However, whether those currently in control want it or not, incrementally and subtly everything has changed… the ground under their feet has moved beyond recognition and nothing quite makes sense anymore.
Many leaders now find themselves being asked by their people to lead in a new way, where they must invest in others, be genuinely transparent, lead through an ethical and values-based purpose. Their success is apparently predicated on the empathetic and thoughtful development of others, through patient listening and guidance. In short, to be committed to others ahead of themselves. Not very Gordon Gekko!
How does the traditional alpha hero leader exist in this new world?
It must feel like the end of an era, as we move from the ‘cult of me’ to an inclusive world of ‘we’… and whilst there are sadly many individuals who have no intention of changing and are fighting to hold on to the old ways, we are heartened that so many leaders want to learn and change. The only problem for them is that what was imprinted in their DNA during their formative years in life and work, and what they were taught to value, how they were taught to think about talent and how they got on in their careers, stops them from changing.
And this is why D&I training doesn’t work and can’t deliver and why we get concerned when we hear so many well-intentioned people working in the D&I space say that they shouldn’t have to land the commercial case for D&I with decision-makers. It’s like an unhelpful battleground is being created. They are showing that they don’t really understand who they need to reach and how they need to help them change. Instead, they make D&I about under-represented groups, sidelining and making wrong the white male power-holders, casting them all as racist gammon dinosaurs. Instead of finding ways to reach those individuals to help those who are open and curious but afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing, or being ostracised by their peers…and leaving them unable to share their experience.
No wonder the agenda feels like it isn’t progressing.
The transition of leadership styles and expectations
Sadly, some business leaders pay mere lip service to ethics, values and purpose. For some, it’s just part of a game they play, a marketing exercise, a ruse. What they fail to understand is the impact this has on brand, culture and talent attraction and retention.
In the recent Edelman Trust Barometer report — an online survey in 28 markets with 34,000+ respondents — highlights the fact that ‘no institutions are seen as both competent and ethical. Yet, people are crying out of trust and leadership anchored in purpose, ethics and inclusion. Again from the Edelman Trust Barometer, ‘92% of employees say that CEOs should speak out on issues of the day, 75% of the general population believe CEOs should take the lead on change instead of waiting for the government to impose it. 66% want to buy products that stand with them; 75% of all employees want to feel as though they are changing society’ and that ‘ethical drivers such as integrity, dependability and purpose drive 76% of the trust capital of business, while competence accounts for only 24%.”
Trust in institutions and leaders is at an all-time low. Which might explain why no one was terribly surprised by Trump’s creative Tax evasion practices. Most people probably expect business organisations and their leaders to practice Tax evasion/avoidance.
Although some powerful forces are trying to keep hold of authority and wealth, the world is undoubtedly evolving to a more inclusive, open, empowered and educated place — we aren’t going to go backwards now… people aren’t going to try to be a little less inclusive and a little more sexist or racist next year.
Diversity and Inclusion as a bellwether
Enter the Diversity and Inclusion agenda, which is a very useful bellwether for how genuinely purpose-driven, open and inclusive a culture is. Almost certainly the D&I agenda won’t be successfully advancing in organisations that don’t believe in the value of ethical, purpose-driven business practices.
All of these different insights seem to point to a looming crossroads in the evolution of businesses and their leaders.
And although many leaders may still feel supremely confident and protected in their worlds, as they drive from the City to Surrey and back in their S-Class, the world around them is unquestionably changing — be it technology, perceptions of talent, social and or cultural work expectations.
Traditionalists may see Diversity and Inclusion as some sort of awful left, liberal wet woke-ish agenda but while they look backwards, youthful, sharper forward-looking leaders now see D&I not only as a competitive edge but also the direction of travel. They have read the runes and set themselves against the old guard.
Secretly, everyone knows D&I and the wider inclusive agenda aren’t going to go away. They’re structural and here to stay.
For leaders who want to be around for the next 5 years or longer, they will need to embrace and engage with D&I, or they will increasingly look old fashioned and out of touch. The best talent will see that the leadership team is out-of-touch or inauthentic and they simply won’t stay or even join in the first place. We believe that future talent and future leaders now hold the balance into this cultural ethics and values struggle — as it will be they who choose where they want to work and which business brand they wish to be associated with.
Change from within not blame from without
The skill of organisations like Arrival Education is not to make leaders look or feel bad, but to have them come to their own considered conclusions and on their own terms. No one wants to be lectured or made to feel bad or out of touch. Let’s remember that in all other matters, these people are the cream, the best of the best. The winners.
My journey from alpha male to inclusive leader has not been an easy one — and I have misstepped many times along the way — it’s hard to change once your attitudes are set. But I think it is essential and with the benefit of hindsight, my journey merely mirrored the ever-evolving attitudes and expectations of a younger more inclusive workforce.
There is no way the best young talent will tolerate the toxic cultures I grew up in, and neither should they. Businesses and their leaders will have to find a way to demonstrate they are truly open, listening, changing and inclusive if they want to create trust and fellowship.
Arrival Education expertly helps discerning HRD’s, Executive leaders and their teams own and drive the Diversity Dividend.
