My Pen Mates,
"The buck stops here!" Truman once famously stated to assume government accountability. By creating a public locus in such a prominent office, the idea was to gain trust and confidence in a system that works. The president as figurehead, wielding executive powers can make such bold and irrefutable statement without sounding self-serving.
Rod Marinelli, after closing out the first 0-16 record in NFL history which lead to his eventual firing, said something that caught my attention. As head coach, he owned responsibility for the dismal season and was quick to note that through all the bad decisions and the bad breaks, multiple issues and factors converged to end up with the results he got. But he was quick to follow this up with saying that while it would be convenient for him to point fingers, he did not want to risk becoming invisible by doing so.
At first I read this as the mature, honorable thing to do, befitting an upstanding figurehead and leader. Aside from being spared the trouble of explaining oneself for assigning blame, taking ownership of all the negative things that happened while in the leadership position removes doubts about ones integrity and does not call into question the leader's ability to maintain composure in the face of adversity. It earns points by telling the world that things didn't go my way this time but I am not a rotten guy who will throw my minions under the bus just to get ahead or out the way.
Upon more reflection, a seed of doubt took root. To stay in the business and the industry, it was to his interest to keep good relations even with the people who let him down. It is the wise who remembers that the people you pass going up are the same people you meet coming down. So is it prudence or ego that's the impetus to take ownership rather than point and assign blame?
At the subconscious plane, I believe it's always the latter. Not to knock the prudent and the humble who will forever be true to their virtue, but in the high profile world filled with stress and power, the egotist employs means of survival foreign to the humble's experience. It's almost necessary to have a big ego to ascend to lofty positions; these are positions occupied by people who believe in themselves and their abilities, those who stuck out their necks to gain an advantage and to differentiate themselves and their exalted qualities. An integral part of their self-preservation instinct is to protect that pedestal upon which they have been hoisted, as tenuous and temporary as it may be. To the egomaniac, ownership of blame for failure is no different from taking credit for triumphs; both garner the attention they require for sustenance, and having the public's eyes drawn away from them is tantamount to losing the public relations pillar of their self-erected shrines.
Consider what happens when a leader points fingers. The anointed culprit becomes the subject of scrutiny, perhaps ridicule. Still, that's attention given the unworthy and diminishes the exposure of the pointer. The more fingers are pointed to more sinners, the less attention the blamer gets __until he becomes invisible. That's a cruel fate for one who thrives on heads and eyeballs turning their way in their presence, whose every word is devoured and parsed by many, and whose every action is subject to close examination by either an adoring or condemning public. But this is not unique to heads of state, football coaches, movie stars, or university deans. The stark truth is that not only does everyone have an ego, but that we are all egotists with varying degrees of need. Ones ascension in the social ladder is usually commensurate with the size of the ego, but that doesn't exclude wallflowers from having one __even when it's severely repressed. We all need attention to feed our self image but there is a wide range of need (craving) that everyone can get by with. Perhaps there are occasions when someone needs to be invisible, and this usually happens spontaneously when there is a disjoint between the need and the stature. For stature requires experience in the measured and judicious accumulation of ego assertion. When a person's tendency is to deflect criticism by pointing fingers, then there is still a lot of ego management to go through to become a leader.
Ultimately, the fear of invisibility is a norm particularly for high profile people. There is no power or voice for those who cannot be seen. The true leader must be an absolute egotist, and would rather be guilty than be perceived as impotent.
Mon
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