It’s all about me, me, me. Isn’t it?

We live in a time where individuality and the importance of self appears to be championed above all else. “My truth” trumps “the truth”. “You’re making me uncomfortable” trumps “I’m being unreasonable”. “Cancel culture” trumps debate.

As a business leader, I was horrified this week to see a new kind of selfishness that has dire implications for businesses and the people that work in them. If such an attitude is widespread, then lockdown has created a monster which is heading towards your business any day now.

Here’s the background

On returning to work from holiday, I realised that I cannot be truly effective for my business unless I am in the office. Hybrid working isn’t going to work for me.

It was a sad realisation because I enjoy not commuting. I enjoy only being responsible for my own time. I enjoy the other benefits that working at home brings. But, as much as I enjoy these things, I find I am not able to create as much value sitting in my home office as I can in the company office.

As I pondered my pandemic problem, I realised other people must be in the same boat too. Others who like the idea of working from home may also have reluctantly had to admit that it’s not as effective for them as working in an office.

So, I decided to take the debate to LinkedIn.

I wrote a post, deliberately a little provocative, stating that hybrid working wasn’t going to work for just over half of the workforce. A decent debate followed. I learned a lot and opened my mind to a few new ideas, which, after all, is part of the point of digital networking: tapping into diversity of thought.

But, what I wasn’t prepared for was a minor trolling I took from an account director at a competing marketing agency, who seemed to take offence at the concept that someone would challenge the effectiveness of ubiquitous home working.

Here’s the symptom

Among other accusations in this person’s post (let’s call him John), he made a statement noting he didn’t see why he should have to turn up at work so that others can learn from him. I’m honestly not sure I’ve ever seen such a selfish sentiment from someone who is supposed to be in a leadership position?

I’m confident John will have taken learnings from others on his own way up the career ladder, so to see things from such a me-first position is extraordinary.

If there are others thinking like this after lockdown, we’re in trouble. Big trouble.

Here may be a generation of middle management who believe that work is about ‘getting work done’ rather than co-creating systems, ideas, value and momentum. They believe their only responsibility is to themselves and their family. They’ve forgotten the responsibility they owe to their subordinates and the accountability they owe to their peers.

Problem 1: Threat to the mission

Any student of business or leadership will have come across the famous Adair’s Balls. John Adair’s Action Centred Leadership model (AKA Adair’s Balls), stresses the importance of balancing three sets of competing needs: Individual needs, team needs and task needs.

A leader who doesn’t want to attend an office because he doesn’t see any need to address team needs, will unbalance the team and jeopardise the task. John, by putting his own needs ahead of others, is putting the business at risk.

It might seem like an overstatement, but he is a threat to the mission.

Problem 2: Long-term decline in professional standards

?One of the most important principles of being a leader is being present.

It’s not just about being seen. It’s about allowing others to emulate your behaviour and learn by inculcation. Learning by observation and doing, otherwise known as inculcation, is one of the most effective ways of learning. It’s how junior staff learn the things they don’t know. Often, juniors don't know what they don't know, which is why observation is so important. It’s how businesses develop talent to consistent standards. It’s how good leaders build great teams.

It might well be possible for middle and senior staff to do the majority of their functionary work remotely. But by doing so, they are denying their subordinates development and career opportunities, and impacting professional standards.

Problem 3: You just got cancelled

Something John might also want to think about.

If being at work for him is just about ‘doing the work’, it’s highly likely that whatever he’s doing can be done better, faster, cheaper, and more reliably by a machine or offshore. His role, if it really is just about getting work done, just got cancelled.

Human beings are social animals. Since we first strutted confidently out of the caves, our ability to progress has been our ability to collaborate, to pull together, to find common purpose. Lockdown has given us many of us the mistaken impression that we are pretty brilliant on our own. The truth? We’re not.

Then I got cancelled

Now, back to LinkedIn. I took issue with John’s comments and posted some forthright feedback in the thread. The next day I was surprised to see that not only had he deleted his comment, but he also removed his connection to me. I was cancelled.

John, you won’t be reading this because you disconnected from me. But if by chance you do, I would urge you to think carefully. Not about what your team and company can do for you, but about what you can do for them.