Leaders eat last

March 2021 in the Belgian rural municipality of Sint-Truiden. As in the rest of Western Europe, the Sint-Truiden people are balancing between hope and despair. Despair because a third wave of COVID-19 infections is sweeping through the country, resulting in many new sick people, hospitalizations and deaths. The municipality had been affected by a corona outbreak at the local hospital Sint-Trudo just a few weeks earlier. Desperation also because preventive measures are being tightened. Keeping distance, disinfecting hands, wearing mouth masks, limited shopping and closed cafes and restaurants will remain the rule indefinitely.

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On the other hand, there is also hope. Very soon after COVID-19 emerges in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019 and spreads at a breakneck pace, scientists are deciphering the genetic code of the virus. With this knowledge, they can design tests and develop effective vaccines in record time. Several European governments are giving priority to vaccination of the most vulnerable citizens (older people or people with certain diseases) for two reasons: first, because these groups have the highest mortality rates and second, to quickly reduce the pressure on the health care systems.

But in addition to hope and despair, anger also rages in Sint-Truiden. The citizens are furious with their mayor, the 56-year-old Veerle Heeren. Rumor has it that when the vaccines were being reserved for people over 85, the mayor - who is also a member of parliament and an ex-minister - had herself vaccinated along with thirteen other acquaintances including her sister, her son, her hairdresser and some neighbors. Simply because there were still some vaccines available. The mayor evades all questions and shrouds herself in silence. Only when a few weeks later a local whistleblower makes the necessary evidence public does she confirm the fact.?In a first reaction she states that she did "nothing illegal", only made an "error of judgement" and that she sees no reason why she cannot continue to function as mayor. A few weeks later, she does step aside under pressure.

?US Marines

?When reading this news item, you can only think of Simon Sinek's "Leaders eat last" statement, an allusion to the common "Officers eat last" rule in the United States Marine Corps. During field training and in certain combat environments, the officers of these forces eat last. It is also customary for them to serve the food to the soldiers. With this act, the officers emphasize that the people on the front lines are of crucial importance. It often happens that officers have to skip a meal. And while this is unfortunate and uncomfortable for them, you don't win a war with hungry soldiers at the front.

?According to Simon Sinek, this "Leaders eat last" culture stands in stark contrast to today's Western corporate culture full of quick gain, greed and self-interest. "In the military they give medals to people who are willing to sacrifice themselves so that others may gain. In Business we are giving bonuses to people who are willing to sacrifice people so that we may gain," he writes. But leadership is not a "free lunch." There has been a social contract between a group and the leader since time immemorial. The leader can only claim certain privileges or status symbols in exchange for protection. A leader puts the interest of the group before his own interests. He provides an internal "circle of safety" and protects the group from external danger. That's why a lot of people react furiously to the practice of overpaid corporate leaders sacrificing their own staff for exuberant profits and temporary rising share prices. No human being would have felt aggrieved at the fact that Nelson Mandela or Mother Theresa were pocketing a bonus of hundreds of millions of dollars, writes Sinek. And this is because they respected the social contract with the group. Mandela and Mother Theresa were willing to make sacrifices for the good of the group. They put the welfare of others above their own and suffered personally, such as Mandela's years in prison on Robben Island.?"Leaders are the ones who are willing to give up something of their own for us. Their time, their energy, their money, maybe even the food of their plate. When it matters, leaders choose to eat last."

The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.         

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Great expectations

?Sinek has clearly taken his cue from Robert K. Greenleaf who introduced the concept of Servant Leadership in his essay "The Servant as Leader." Greenleaf writes: “The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. (…) The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?”

While traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by someone at the "top of the pyramid," servant leadership is different. The servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first, and helps people develop and perform to the best of their ability.

?Promoters of servant leadership like to refer to exemplary figures such as Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and even Jesus Christ... no doubt very inspiring figures, but are these ideals achievable? One wonders if people like Simon Sinek or Robert K. Greenleaf ever open the newspaper... Below is a random selection of news items from the spring of 2021:

·??????The Dutch hotel site Booking.com received 65 million in aid from the Dutch government in the year 2020 because the corona crisis caused the number of bookings to plummet by more than 60%. Despite this support, 4,300 employees were laid off and bonuses of $28 million were paid to three top executives.

·??????Two Americans plead guilty in Tokyo to helping former top executive Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan. The ex-boss of carmaker giant Renault-Nissan was smuggled out of the country in a suitcase in late 2019 and ended up in Lebanon via Turkey. The Japanese government accuses Ghosn of tax fraud. According to the indictment, the man allegedly withheld some $94 million in rewards from 2009-2018.

·??????The furniture chain Ikea has been fined €1 million by the French courts for spying on its employees. Between 2009 and 2012, the French IKEA branch spent 600,000 euros a year on private investigators. Their job was to investigate how employees could afford an expensive car, why employees behaved disruptively at work and the informants collected all kinds of private data from employees and job applicants.

·??????A commission of inquiry into the gigantic fraud of the payment giant Wirecard is underway in the German parliament. This fintech darling was once worth $24 billion on the stock market until, in 2019, The Financial Times newspaper revealed that revenue of $2 billion was artificially inflated through shadowy transactions with unreal companies around the world. In June 2020, CEO Markus Braun resigned, half the staff was fired, and the former COO remains a fugitive.

Good leadership and good parenting are both about taking care of the people entrusted to you        

?Step by step

?The scandals in the US with the energy company Enron and the media company Worldcom, in the UK with the construction company Carillion, in Italy with the dairy group Parmelat, in France with the media group Vivendi, in the Netherlands with the accounting fraud at Ahold ... it would make one hopeless. On the one hand, the average person is not a saint like Jesus, Gandhi or Mandela, but on the other hand, neither is he a greedy narcissist like Markus Braun, Carlos Ghosn or Jean-Marie Messier. And step by step, everyone can make our workplace a more pleasant place to be, or as Bob Chapman describes it in his book Everybody Matters: "Truly human leadership means sending people home safe, healthy and fulfilled. If you are a parent, what do you want for your children? You want them safe. You want them healthy and you want them fulfilled: you want them to live lives of meaning and purpose. Good leadership and good parenting are both about taking care of the people entrusted to you". Bob Chapman inherited the Barry-Wehmiller industrial company in 1975 and built the group from 20 million to 3 billion dollars in sales through a hundred acquisitions. When a worker pointed out to him that blue-collar workers had far fewer rights than administrative workers (blue-collar workers had a time clock, administrative workers did not; blue-collar workers could not call home, administrative workers could use the work phone for short private calls), Chapman developed a corporate culture in which "everyone counts". While the heavy financial crisis in 2008 rained down redundancies in many American companies, Chapman and his management worked on a number of measures (he himself returned to his original 1975 salary, everyone in the company took four weeks unpaid leave) that enabled them to keep everyone on board.

?Finally, I would like to give you some ideas that you as a leader can work with to help you break free from self-interest and choose for the group. A first step you can take as a leader is to be aware every morning that the advantages you enjoy are a consequence of the position you hold and not of the fact that you are such an incredibly talented John Johnson or Jennifer Jefferson. In his book, Simon Sinek describes a beautiful anecdote about a former US Deputy Secretary of Defence who gave a speech at an international conference. The man said: "Today I stand before you with a Styrofoam coffee cup. Yesterday, I took the plane to this city in economy class. At the airport, I took public transport to a budget hotel. This morning, I took a taxi to this conference room and I bought myself this instant coffee from a vending machine. What a difference from last year when I was deputy minister. Then I flew first class. A private chauffeur brought me to my suite in a luxury hotel. In this conference centre, a delicious caffé latte in a porcelain coffee bag was served to me in a VIP room." Too bad our mayor of Sint-Truiden did not hear that speech. Perhaps it would have made her realise more quickly that it is difficult to ask the population's understanding for the long wait for a vaccination when you, in your official function, take advantage of the first opportunity to don’t wait your turn.

?A second step is to be aware of the shadow you cast as a leader. Be aware of how your actions and your words are interpreted by others. A few years ago, we received a message from the primary school that the following week would have a special focus on healthy food. Parents were asked to give their little ones only healthy snacks such as a piece of fruit or a nut bar. On Monday evening, at the kitchen table, our little daughter told us that the teacher had two chocolate bars during the break and that made our daughter very upset. It is a pity that our mayor of Sint-Truiden was not at our kitchen table that evening. Perhaps this would have made her realise more quickly that her abuse could be interpreted by the population as a licence to try the same thing.

?Finally, a final step that I would like to explain here is working with your staff on a paradigm shift whereby the focus within the team is not on the mission or the objectives, but on the staff themselves. You work on a mutual bond of trust where the leader supports the team members in their development and success and where the team members do everything to make the organisation's mission succeed. Let me quote Bob Chapman again: "At Barry-Wehmiller, our primary purpose is crystal clear to us: We're in a business so that all our team members can have meaningful and fulfilling lives. We do everything we can to create an environment in which our people can realize their gifts, apply and develop their talents, and feel a genuine sense of fulfilment for their contributions. In other words, Barry-Wehmiller is in business to improve lives. We do that through the building of capital equipment and offering engineering consulting. But that's our what, not our why. It simply provides the vehicle, the economic engine through which we can enrich the lives of our team members." Too bad our mayor of Sint-Truiden has not read this book. Maybe she would have vaccinated people instead of being vaccinated herself...