Followership in a post-crisis world

Who will you follow in tomorrow's world?


- Bernie Maddoff, once held up as a role model of old-fashioned values on Wall Street, turns out to be the biggest scamster in history.


- Ramalinga Raju (Asia Business Leader Award 2002), the revered and celebrated CEO of India's software superstar Satyam, brings his career and his company to shame and disgrace.


- 2 of the most respected CEOs on Wall Street - Dick Fuld and Sam O'Neal drive their firms straight into a train smash


I can go on, but you get the drift.


So, who do you trust? If the smartest and cleanest corporate leaders are turning out to be common crooks, who will you choose to follow?


As I watched Jamie Dimon (CEO of JPM) accept the 'Legend in Leadership' award from Yale School of Management, I couldn't help but wonder - is he really ...


We are heading into a severe crisis of trust - in leadership. In 2007, before the current crisis emerged, Harvard University carried out a study to explore the level of trust that people had in their leaders.


On a scale of 1(none at all), 2 (not much), 3(moderate amount) and 4 (great deal), they found the following.



- Only Military (3.15) and Medical (3.02) leaders managed to breach a score of 3.


- The worst sector for leadership was the press (2.26)


- Business leaders were 5th from the bottom at 2.75


Overall, 77% of Americans believed that the country is facing a crisis of leadership.


... and this was before the real crisis even surfaced !!! I shudder to think what results we will see if they were to carry out the same study this year.



Now, almost everything I've said so far is intuitive ... sad, but intuitive. What's not so intuitive, though, is the fountain of hope that drives followership in the world. Its the irrational, downright naive view that otherwise smart people take ... that the world and our leaders will be better in the future.

In the same Harvard study in 2007, when asked the question "Compared to today, do you think that 20 years in the future we will have better leaders or worse leaders?", a whopping 59% of respondents said 'better leaders'.

This is the cool-ade induced view that gives Barrack Obama a 68% confidence rating from the same American people who have just gone through 8 years of the worst president ever. Hope is not audacious, its just the only thing we have.

Something tells me that followership will be alive and well in the post-crisis era as well. We are simply 'eternal suckers' for a smooth voice, a message of hope and optimism, and a nicely tailored suit.