The Loudest Voice
A post in which Ashley vaguely compares herself to psychopaths and Donald Trump, though she promises she is not really much like either.
Conclusion First: Human perception of leadership is flawed. We often reward the wrong people with our loyalty or with honors, accolades, votes, and money because they act the most dominant when everyone is watching.
Over the weekend, I led the final Girl Scout meeting for my daughter’s fifth grade Troop. Most of the girls have been together (with some roster changes) since Kindergarten. We joined when my daughter was in first grade, and I became a co-leader the following year. The Troop is voluntarily disbanding as the girls head into middle school with its plethora of activities and academic demands.
After exploring the sculpture trail at our local botanical garden, we rode back to the rendezvous point with the other parents. But the girls weren’t being picked up immediately. We surprised them with a small celebration in the park. Cupcakes and snacks and juice boxes were shared. And the girls played wildly on the playground—a sight that tugged at my heartstrings. They are mere months away from finding playground equipment to be a pretty lame distraction.
We gathered the girls for some parting words at a picnic table. My co-leader had prepared notes. I had prepared nothing. This has been our dynamic all along.
My co-leader has, easily, done 90% of the work of running the Troop. I am the designated “second.” A warm body that fulfills the two-leader requirement. Yes, I did the mandatory first aid and CPR training. And I took the lead on the once-a-year camping trips. But she did everything else: every trip to the Girl Scout supply store, managing all the badges, communicating with the council, organizing cookie sales and other fundraisers, attending council meetings, organizing a multi-Troop World Thinking Day event, running point on communications, and much more. We agreed to run it this way, so I don’t feel like I let her down. And I thought it had been obvious to everyone that she was the head honcho.
Bonus Content: Leadership in Action
Running a small business takes creativity, vision, energy, and leadership. You can see all those in abundance in this 3 minute video of Tom’s new best friend Sherri Kizer, proprietor of Wild Birds Unlimited in Hendersonville, Tennessee.
Tom is joining Sherri at Wild Birds this Saturday, April 20 to sign copies of A Dog’s Book of Wisdom and celebrate the fifth birthday of Tennessee’s finest shop dog, Asher.
Look for the Asher button around the 30 second mark.
Yet something funny happened at our gathering this weekend. As we shared our parting words, the most precocious (and, frankly, most annoying) of the girls raised her hand to speak. We yielded the floor to this little hooligan for the last time. She pointed to me and said, “You have been a really great leader and taught us so many things, especially about nature. Thanks for being in charge of our troop.” Next she pointed at my co-leader and declared, “And you’ve helped a lot too.”
I’ve been slighted relative to the level of my contributions in the past, so I know how much it can hurt (see my post last week and its notes on my first job in publishing). I hope it stings less coming from an 11-year-old, even if she is terribly astute about most things. At that moment, I just looked at my co-leader and shook my head and rolled my eyes. I consoled myself that at least the parents understood the real leadership arrangement—my co-leader got a much larger parting gift than I did, as was her due.
Even so, that small interaction has stuck with me through this week. Why did the child perceive me to be the “real” leader? It brings me no joy to say this, but I can only conclude that it’s simply because I was always the loudest adult in the room.
Relative to my co-leader, I gave firm and direct orders to the girls, took authoritative action when something went awry, cracked down (often), separated girls who were causing problems, and drew an uncrossable line about what I would and would not tolerate. If you’re wondering, yes, I will yell at other people’s kids at a playground. Kids can be kids but some stuff is simply intolerable in civil society.
My co-leader is incredibly diligent, thoughtful, slow-to-act, and modest. She shouldered an enormous burden with the true work of leading the Troop but frequently needed help when it was time to make a decision. I’m almost always a fast decider, so I was happy to oblige. We made a solid team, but there was no doubt that she was really running the show.
The Flaws of Our Perception
Now we come to the point: Human perception of leadership is flawed. We often reward the wrong people with our loyalty or with honors, accolades, votes, and money because they act the most dominant when everyone is watching.
Research shows that humans tend to favor leaders with psychopathic traits. The primary psychopathic traits include antisocial behavior, narcissism, superficial charm, impulsivity, and a lack of guilt and empathy.
The overt aggression of psychopathic behavior may exert a primal appeal. On Wall Street, financial leaders score highly on psychopathic traits and lower than average on emotional intelligence. Meta-analysis of studies on psychopathy and leadership show a weakly positive correlation between psychopathic tendencies and leadership emergence among men (but not women). It’s important to note, however, that psychopathy is negatively correlated with leadership effectiveness.
As much as it pains me to make the comparison, I’m the Donald Trump of the Girl Scout leadership scenario. Forceful, decisive, and more than willing to be the loudest voice in the room. I have some qualities of a leader, but I haven’t really put in the work for the job at hand. My co-leader is the Joe Biden: diligent, quiet(er), and a long-running servant to the organization at every level.
Even outside politics, we tend to anoint and praise leaders who present as uniquely powerful individuals. These are people who have leveraged the force of their will or their ruthless intelligence to overcome (or overthrow) every obstacle set in their way. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you probably lap up stories that celebrate the triumphs of these individuals. We love the success stories of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, et al, because they are presented as larger-than-life, perfectly leading through every crisis. We must know, on some level, that these are myths of the oldest tradition. And yet we all fall under their spell. (I’m not much of a war history buff, but even I became deeply enamored with Churchill when I was reading The Splendid and the Vile. The mythology was strong!)
Blessed Are the Meek
As a noted and accomplished loud person, I struggle with the Biblical pronouncement that the meek shall inherit the earth. My gut reaction is that meek equals weak, and weak means letting people walk all over you. But scholars note that the original text from the Gospel of Matthew can also be translated as “humble” or “modest.”
Perhaps a better reading is “blessed are the humble, for they are doing the real work of the people, and will, accordingly, be given the earth and tasked with running it, because they are already so good at it.”
“I foster as best I can this idea: to abandon myself completely to Fortune, expect the worst in everything, and resolve to bear that worst meekly and patiently. It is for that alone that I labor; that is the goal toward which I direct all my reflections.” — Montaigne
“There are no meek dogs. What we lack in power, we make up for in barking.” — Margaret the Pug