Understanding Toilet Paper Leadership

Written by Rozhan Othman, Professor in Management BruneiTuesday, 04 August 2009 12:23
Leadership books usually discuss about characteristics of good leadership. So, today I'll talk about bad leaders. People in position of leadership usually think of themselves as good leaders. In reality, there are good leaders, just so, so leaders and bad leaders. Specifically, I'll talk about a particular category of bad leaders, i.e. nasty leaders.
Nasty leaders subscribe to what I term as toilet paper leadership. The essence of toilet paper leadership is that people should be treated as toilet paper because they are to be used to either make the leader look good or to clean their *##@#. To understand toilet paper leadership I'll contrast them with good leaders. I'll refer to good leaders as passionate gardener leaders.
Toilet paper leaders are typically self-centered. They are opportunists and are mainly concerned with their own interest. They will use terms such as "common goals" and "mission" to disguise their intentions.
They rely on impression management to impress their superiors. But their subordinates usually can see that these leaders are not concerned about the organization. Passionate gardener leaders see themselves as servant leaders.
It is not that they are not concerned about personal gain. Like a good gardener, these leaders are concerned with the beauty of the garden.
These leaders see their goals as something to be attained by honestly working for the organization. They create winners out of everyone just like the gardener ensuring each tree turns into a beauty because they believe this is the only way to make the organization win and attain their own personal goals.
Passionate gardener leaders know that when the contribution of their subordinates is recognized, the credit will also naturally come to them. No need haggle over it.
To toilet paper leaders working smart is about taking advantage of people. When something good is done by their subordinates they will step in front to take the credit. When something bad happens they will put the subordinates on the firing line, especially when the bad things happened as a consequence of the leader's action.
For passionate gardener leaders, they will create opportunities for their subordinates to shine. Like a good gardener, they are not concerned with putting their names on the trees that they plant. Instead, they put the names of the trees on the plants.
And when a problem appears, passionate gardener leaders will step in front to shield their subordinates from being harassed because of the failure. This way the followers can stay focused on doing a better job.
Toilet paper leaders will avoid work under the guise of "delegation". They are too busy in their own political games and pursuing their own personal interest to be bothered with actual work.
Their "delegation" is in reality abdication. Passionate gardener leaders, however, knows that they must carefully organize the work of others under their charge to create a beautiful garden.
They recognize that a beautiful garden is not created by abdicating leadership and simply hoping that the random effort of others will somehow create a beautiful garden.
Toilet paper leaders are generally insecure about themselves. They are nervous of smart and capable people. Toilet paper leaders will try to avoid exposing their deficiencies by making decisions without consulting with smarter people. These leaders are nervous of having their ideas scrutinized by others.
When these leaders call for meetings it is usually held to brief others of the decisions they have made. Passionate gardener leaders are confident and see having their ideas scrutinized as a learning opportunity for themselves and their subordinates.
They are confident of themselves and do not shun having to defend and improve on their ideas. Toilet paper leaders, however, cannot tolerate smart followers who speak their own mind and will marginalize them or flush them out of the way.
Toilet paper leaders see information as something to be manipulated for their own purposes. They do this by restricting information flow or altering it to serve their own purposes.
Passionate gardener leaders see information as a resource for action. They use it like the gardeners use fertilizers. Information is shared to create critical debates to enhance the quality of decisions and create a shared purpose.
Toilet paper leaders prefer to circle themselves with weak, timid and pliable people. They prefer followers who always tell them what they want to hear. These followers are usually themselves incompetent opportunists.
These are the kind of followers that are usually rewarded by toilet paper leaders. Passionate gardener leaders prefer to have strong and capable followers. They prefer followers who have the courage and honesty to tell them of the situation as it is.
Toilet paper leaders tend to create a climate of distrust and low morale. Good people tend to leave and the bad ones remain. But toilet paper leaders are not concerned with this as long as they are in power and continue to reap personal benefit from their leadership.
Passionate gardener leaders know too well that they need a team of good gardeners to keep a garden beautiful. Passionate gardener leaders don't always have money and wealth to reward everyone. Instead, they keep good people by nurturing a climate of trust and fairness.
It is easy to start looking around to identify who are the toilet paper leaders and who are the passionate gardener leaders around us. Well, let me suggest that we begin by asking ourselves which leadership style we ourselves resemble.
Do we see a lot of toilet paper strewn around us or a beautiful garden in our midst? But then, toilet paper leaders are too self-absorbed and conceited to notice all those toilet paper strewn around them, duh.