The danger of creating saints in the workplace
To commemorate All Saints' Day, we use the ongoing adoration of St. Greta of Sweden as an opportunity to help you determine whether you're fueling a culture where certain leaders (perhaps even yourself) are viewed as saints, thus masking potentially fatal flaws that can unwittingly lead stakeholders into damnation.
The headline: ๐๐๐๐ฅ๐๐ข๐ฆ ๐๐จ๐ซ ๐๐ซ๐๐ญ๐ ๐๐ก๐ฎ๐ง๐๐๐ซ๐ ๐๐ฌ ๐๐๐26 ๐ฉ๐ซ๐จ๐ญ๐๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ซ๐ฌ ๐ซ๐๐ฅ๐ฅ๐ฒ ๐ข๐ง ๐๐ฅ๐๐ฌ๐ ๐จ๐ฐ ๐๐ก๐๐๐ ๐จ๐ ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ฆ๐๐ญ๐ ๐ฌ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฆ๐ข๐ญ (The Straits Times)
The goal: to (๐)๐ซ๐จ๐ฐ, (๐)๐ซ๐จ๐ญ๐๐๐ญ, ๐๐ง๐ (๐)๐ฎ๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ข๐ง success by pondering these 3 questions throughout your day:
๐ก Are you growing a sustainable team or a cult of personality?
๐ก Are you protecting your cause for sainthood at the expense of your stakeholders?
๐ก Do you have a devil's advocate to hold you fully accountable?
For more information on COP26, turn to this link from Alex Epstein, someone who has had no problem playing the role of devil's advocate when it comes to this week's UN Climate Conference.
RElated content:
UN chief warns โhumanity has opened the gates to hellโ as he convenes world leaders for climate summit (CNN, 9/20/2023)
World is on โhighway to climate hellโ, UN chief warns at Cop27 summit (The Guardian, 11/7/2022)
โFinding and Fixing the Fossil Fuel Fear Factors Fracturing Your Organizationโ (The Energy Detox, Episode 86)
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Transcript
(AI training in progress; please excuse any errors)
Hello and welcome to another live edition of the energy detox a petroleum based blend of leadership conversations guaranteed to boost your professional and personal output by flushing away the hidden and often toxic barriers to peak performance. I'm your host, Joe Sinnott, a chemical engineer, executive coach and 16 year energy industry veteran helping you tap into the same resources fueling today's most sustainable and successful leaders. And this morning, on November 1 2021, we are going to acknowledge the fact that it is the feast of All Saints, also known as All Saints Day or All Hallows Day, of course, following yesterday, which was Halloween, and on All Saints Day, at least in the Catholic Church and some other denominations, we honor all of those who were canonized by in the Catholic Church, and therefore, are in heaven. That is the definition of a saint, someone who lived a life on Earth that allowed them to gain access to heaven. And through the process of the Catholic Church. They determined that this individual is there and has achieved heavenly glory, if you will. But we're not going to go down the route of further explaining the theological explanations of All Saints Day. But instead, we're going to look to you as a leader and ask whether or not you might be elevating yourself unwittingly or perhaps consciously or elevating others to a position of sainthood, and thereby, perhaps limiting the effectiveness of you or others as leaders. So with that being said, we're going to continue the process of last week's iterations of the energy detox, we're going to take one energy industry headline to further this point. And that headline today is from Scotland, where the cop 26, the UN climate conference kicked off yesterday. And as is the case with many climate events, Greta Thunberg, the 18 year old sensation, if you will, is in Glasgow is there I don't know that she's actually going to have an official role within cop 26. But she's there. And of course, she attracted quite a mob this weekend when she came into town and, and descended the escalator at the train station. And we're going to use Greta because of course, she has in many ways been elevated to saintly status by her followers, who see her as a beacon of No, say hope, but maybe a beacon of doom and gloom in an attempt to help rally people around her message when it comes to the environment. And in particular climate change. And of course, when you elevate someone to saintly status, at least again, in terms of the Catholic Church, the ideas they have, they are in heaven, they're there. They're they've made it and their job now is to help pray for those of us here on Earth to help us live a better life here on earth and to help get us to heaven. But the question is with someone like Greta Thunberg, or or other leaders, again, who have achieved the status is whether or not that that guidance, if you will, like looking to them, is indeed leading us to the place where we need to go. And so again, we're going to use today, as we did last week to ask three questions of you to make sure that you are not allowing yourself to be canonized, you're not out there actively advocating for yourself to become a saint, and you're not out there accidentally pushing others to a saintly status. And so the first question today to help avoid the dangers, if you will of self canonization is whether or not you are growing a sustainable team, or whether you're growing a cult of personality. And what happens in a cult of personality. Well, of course, things get built up around the individual leader. And this has happened throughout human history very often for for negative reasons. But in a cult of personality, of course, it becomes about the leader himself or herself. It becomes about their ability to to rally the troops and and to to engender excitement again, much as Greta Thunberg has done within the climate change world, if you will. But of course, is that a good thing? And is it sustainable? And in many cases, the answer is no. For no other reason, then you need something more concrete at times than just one individual to rally the troops. Yes, we need leaders to to, again, bring people together and build excitement and and to engender some sort of energy among the masses to move people forward. But if there isn't something behind that, that is again, sustainable, that has a strong framework so that if and when that leader is no longer there, the mission movement can continue. Well again, you've got yourself, likely a cult of personality and not On a team that is built for long term success. So again, ask yourself, and like, frankly, ask the leaders around you. Is there a culture within your organization or beyond your organization within your own world within your family? Where, yes,
05:14
you're rallying the troops? Yes, you have some leaders with some some rah rah capability, and you have people that seem to enjoy the presence of those leaders and and seem to he praise and worship and honor upon those individuals. But is it sustainable? Is there something missing? Which leads us to the next question, which is, are you protecting your cause for sainthood at the expense of your stakeholders? Are you unconsciously putting yourself in a position where you're not going to be knocked down, you're not going to be cast aside, you're not going to be viewed as something less than holy, if you will? Are you protecting yourself and your image, and in turn, losing focus on what is most important, which, again, if you're leading an organization should be the ultimate objectives of your employees, your stakeholders, your customers, your investors, your board members, whoever, whatever the case might be, and it's not solely about yourself. And again, obviously, this is somewhat cliched, right, you know, where we talk about wanting empathetic leaders and leaders who, who understand that it's about people, not just about themselves, but when you frame it in terms of saints, right? Something we should all aspire to be, again, going back to Catholicism, we're all called to be saints, we're all called to live a holy life so that we can ultimately get to heaven and lead others to heaven, that in and of itself is a good thing. Unless, of course, it becomes only about ourselves. And it becomes only about our cause, and only about others looking to us and us feeling like we need to protect whatever positive attributes we have, and what are the pod, whatever positive attributes people look to us, if our goal is merely to protect that, instead of helping people move forward, and again, from a theological standpoint, move upward to heaven, then you may not be the strong, successful, sustainable leader that you think you are. And that leads us to the third and final question today. Which is, do you have a devil's advocate to hold you fully accountable as a leader, because again, going back to the cause for sainthood, when a saint is in the running, if you will, or to be to be a saint or when someone is, you know, living a good life on earth here, they have to go through, of course, a process. And that includes the process of having a devil's advocate, look back on their lives to determine whether or not they truly lived a life that is worthy of being elevated to sainthood. And that's one of the requirements of course, the the miracles that need to be attributed to that Saint. Obviously, having lived a good, solid, holy life, but again, there's going to be a devil's advocate, who as part of this process needs to go and make sure that maybe there isn't some giant red flag that questions whether or not this person is indeed in heaven, and is therefore worthy of being called a saint. So coming back to you, as a leader, who do you have around you, that is playing devil's advocate, who is there to say, no, not so fast, maybe you're not moving down the right path, maybe this isn't the right direction to go in. And again, in many ways, as a coach, that's what I do. I play devil's advocate, I don't do it in a way, of course, that is meant to just knock someone down and disqualify them from moving forward. As a leader. Of course, the idea is to help them to help identify these problems, or they prevent them from doing what they're expected to do as a leader, before it becomes a bigger issue. Before again, it does disqualify them from from being the the long term leader that in many cases they hope to be. So again, coming back to you and yourself, who is around you that's playing devil's advocate, or conversely, do you have everyone around you who was simply nodding and smiling and has already conceded that you deserve canonization? And they're not even looking to you and maybe questioning whether or not you're making mistakes? Because if that's the case, that is dangerous, and that, of course, is not sustainable? So with all that being said, I certainly hope you have a very happy All Saints Day. I hope that
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some of these questions that we've asked today have helped you discover opportunities to uncover a culture where people are unwittingly being elevated to sainthood status. And coming back to the headline that generated today's conversation regarding cop 26. The UN climate in Scotland, I do welcome you to turn to someone who has had no problem playing devil's advocate when it comes to saintly figures like Greta Thunberg. And that, of course, is Alex Epstein. And if you click the link in the description of this show, it'll take you to several bullet points where Alex just was just that he plays devil's advocate for this UN conference that kicked off yesterday. And again, whether or not you agree with all of Alex's positions, it is necessary to have people like Alex Epstein to at least ask the questions. So again, I thank you for listening to me as I help you ask question About yourself about your career about your your leadership abilities. And I welcome you to continue joining me each morning at 6:30am. Eastern here on the energy detox, where we will, again, continue taking one energy related headline to help ask you questions about your leadership. And we'll continue doing a live so that if you have questions or comments here as we're speaking, we'll be happy to address them to bring your comments, your suggestions, your feedback into the fold, all in an attempt to help lead others to, if not heaven, to long term sustainable Success.