A personal experiment on leadership? Is leadership rigged?

Now, before we dive into this, here is my humble request and disclaimer: as an author, I consider myself an underdog whose views may not necessarily align with the majority; I do not discredit other people's privilege or entitlement to whom they view themselves to be, but rather, critically analyzes the situations as they occur in my own life much like a career mortician.

Exploring leadership styles and shapes.

Recently, I had the privilege to travel to an unknown land to seek the answer to the leadership question. It eventually turned out we had three types of leadership:?

• the?triangles,
• the rectangles,?
• and the circles.

You can already tell I am a math student, but here is a little bit of assurance: we are not going to calculate the area of the rectangle, the radius, and the diameter of the circle, nor are we going to extrapolate on the theory around?isosceles triangle learning the base and legs but explore leadership matters.?

Leadership discovery journey.

As my inquiry began, I was nervous; I did not know what to expect. After all, I am among those who have been told they can never be leaders; I've encountered numerous systems that ensure we don't grow in a specific direction. For so many years, I have struggled to understand why the world functions like this, yet most renowned leaders speak volumes about how everyone is a leader, including the famous phrase leaders are made and not born.

The moment of truth reckoned on me a few days into the new land; I would soak into learning what leadership is in creating a caring, just, and thriving life while living uniquely with integrity. At first, I thought this was just another training like many I've heard, and I did not expect much apart from learning a new theory.

I was mistaken; as the test of time came, I realized how severe and practical a leadership test can be, unearthing the core of your soul to see if your beliefs and practices could hold up under pressure while put on the public scale.

Leadership litmus test.

After learning all the theories about leadership, we had a simple exercise to identify individual core values, pick a few, and create a t-shirt. Well, it was easy enough. We were all happy sitting around and discussing it.

The critical point was the next stage; we were required to freely choose to sit in a position that we deemed comfortable. Subsequently, the freedom of choice was deemed exercised; secondly, we had ushers walk around with a bag of colored plastic poker chips assumed to be dollars, with some given a value of gold, each with an assigned point. We were required to dip our hands without looking and pick five.

The next step was trading on the floor with a sale condition set: you must make at least one sale, and when the game stops, you must have at least five chips of whatever value. Then, hand them over to the judges as you count and write down your points.

Leadership anatomy.

The trading started, and as we walked majestically and aggressively as the capitalist spirit could empower us, we negotiated hard. Some won big deals, and some lost terribly. At the end of the round, whoever had the highest points became the leader, named triangles, and those with medium scores became rectangles or vice versa.

I am trying to remember which one, as I was not among those, and the bottom of the pyramid was us, and like the moon, it was a proud full circle.

In the second round, the rules were changed. Interestingly, we had no say but had to play by the rules as we were told. This time, as a group, we were given an extra three chips, which we could use before proceeding into trading.

We could give them to whoever we chose within the group to boost their scores. Interestingly, at the circles, we unanimously agreed to restock the chips to those with the lowest points, boost them, and move them to the rectangles. Eventually, one ended in the triangles by the end of the game.

Round three went on, and trading came to a close with triangles staying put and the majority of players staying the same, while in rectangles, there was a considerable movement towards either triangle or to the circles; on the third round, circles had maintained a vast number of the players who started over.

In round four, the game was handed over to the triangles or the leaders to create the rules; of course, they did a diligent job of creating rules carefully tailored to help them maintain the lead and try to capture more gold from the rest.?

As the rules were published, the teams got an opportunity to review and share their comments. Interestingly, the triangles defended their decision and thought they had created the fairest rules.

The moment of leadership kicked in, and round four was canceled because there were extremely high irregularities against the core values the players had shared a day before the game.

The reflection point required all participants to report all the irregularities; now, this was a fun moment. One player in my group, with a core value of justice, raised his hand and said the game was unfair. The rules were imposed, and the game needed checks and balances, concluding that some people were never meant to win; he continued.

He removed a bunch of additional chips he had hidden to demonstrate that anyone could have violated the rules and not be caught, and of course, an irregularity. Honestly, I have no idea where he got the guts to do that.

The second player from the circles was upset and called the game to be rigged, something the organizer had to address carefully after that. Of course, the triangles spoke about their prowess and how lucky they were to pick gold right from the beginning of the game, which may be luck or could have been rigged, as we were told.

The rectangles taunted their handwork and somehow felt obligated to do something to help the circles, but the rules could not allow them, so they went on to mind their own business.

Leadership post-mortems.

The environment we find ourselves in determines our potential to become leaders by default; as the triangles said, right from the beginning, they got gold. Whether it was designed merely by luck, they got it; it determined their position and influenced their behaviors, as they could even waive trading as long as they were not caught maintaining group status.

Leadership is potentially rigged in our society. As voice-in-circles groups demonstrated, they noted participants needed to be fully involved in the initial game's rule-making. The irregularly committed can be overlooked if we are only following what we are told, and ultimately, the circles will never get a chance to be in the triangles arena. Rectangles will remain engaged in their entrapment, prohibiting them to make a move to help the circles.

?

Leadership core values and morality do not mean you will win or be recognized for it. If the organization's or society's objective is to win, and numbers matter, decency and core values have little room in our culture as long the majority cares about the bottom line, the number, metrics, or dollars.

Leadership which is not based on a foundation of caring for others or humanity or justice for all, and without integrity, exists in our society. Unfortunately, as the circle's group noted, you can do little or nothing when this is forced into our throats and separates our human existence into circles, triangles, and rectangles where fair and just competition is almost impossible.

Formal leadership malpractice is a reality; as the organizer handed the triangles the mandate of creating round four rules, one could see how easily the so-called majority win can be abused to hand power to your close competitors to sanitize an unfair, unjust, or noninclusive decision-making process.

They were, ultimately, missing checks and balances, which handed over predetermined results; the circles would never see a single win. Yet, they would be required to uphold the highest morality standards and Integrity checks for triangles and rectangles to maintain their status quo.

Being in the circle's group was satisfying and highly educative to me. Our group's collective reasoning was uplifting: exploring the legitimacy of the game, the outcome, and the intentions of the rule makers and their agents and scrutinizing where we are positioned after the dust settled.

I did not have to be someone I was not; I lost dollars to someone willing to take a valuable chip from me to offer me a cheaper one.?

Personal reflection and social impacts.

All these reminded me of the natural reality of growing up in Africa in the equatorial Savannah grasslands. The great intentions of the Impalas did not matter, nor did their gentleness, beauty, calmness, and harmless nature to the lions or the hyenas.?

Nonetheless, the lions, hyenas, and leopards hunted them day and night and brutally killed these innocent animals for their flesh, not forgetting they are herbivores who don't compete with them for food or habitat;?life can never be fair, perhaps!

Now, in your society, what leadership type is being practiced? And what are your core values? Are you willing to sacrifice everything to live by them??

Like the circles, are you willing to challenge the system created to oppress others systematically? Are you willing to live by the consequences of the rule makers and triangles and rectangles reactions? Who would never want to change the rules of the game?

I hope to live, learn, and write another day.

Happy Holidays!!

Disclaimer: Opinions, views, and suggestions are based on the author's personal life and as an underdog career experience.