The Horrible History of Leadership
One man could sail 3,600 miles in a tiny open boat and keep his men alive. The other had won battles against great odds and believed he knew how to win another.
Neither is an obvious role model for today’s leaders. Welcome to the Horrible History of leadership.
First up, Captain Bligh.
Captain Bligh: brilliant sailor. Difficult boss.
Bligh was an excellent sailor and navigator. He knew his trade. He was also known for his temper and harsh treatment of his crew.
In 1789, the crew of HMS Bounty mutinied. Fletcher Christian and his fellow mutineers took control of the ship and put Bligh and 18 loyal men into a small open boat. Then they sailed away.
Not exactly a glowing result from the employee engagement survey.
But here comes the surprising bit. Bligh navigated that tiny boat more than 3,600 nautical miles across the Pacific to Timor. There was little food and water. The boat was overcrowded and the conditions were dangerous. Yet he kept his men alive. It was an extraordinary feat of seamanship.
So was Bligh a great leader? It depends what we mean by leader. He was an outstanding sailor and could lead people through an extraordinary crisis. But he had failed to build the loyalty and trust needed to keep his crew with him. The man who could navigate thousands of miles of dangerous ocean could not keep his own crew on board.
That is a useful lesson for modern organisations. Being brilliant at your job does not make you brilliant at leading other people. How many organisations promote their best technical performer into management and then act surprised when they discover that managing people requires a completely different set of skills?
The best social worker is not automatically the best social work manager. The best engineer is not automatically the best engineering manager. The best accountant is not automatically the best finance director.
Technical skill can get you promoted. It does not necessarily make people want to follow you.
Now meet General Custer.
General Custer: brave soldier. Successful commander. Very confident.
Custer had a record of military success. He was brave, ambitious and certain of his own ability. Perhaps too certain.
In 1876, he was leading soldiers against Lakota and Cheyenne people. His scouts gave him information and warnings, but Custer did not fully heed them. He attacked at Little Bighorn.
It ended in disaster. Custer and all the men under his immediate command were killed. His defeat became more famous than many of his earlier victories.
There is another leadership lesson here. Confidence is useful. Leaders need confidence to make difficult decisions. But confidence can become arrogance. Experience can become complacency. Strong opinions can become an inability to listen.
A leader who has been right many times can start believing they must be right this time. That is when a strength becomes a weakness.
Good leaders do not have to agree with every warning they hear. But they do need to hear it. They need to be able to ask: “What am I missing?” That may be one of the most important questions a leader can ask.
Bligh and Custer therefore give us two different leadership warnings. Bligh shows us that technical brilliance is not enough. Custer shows us that confidence without humility can be dangerous.
Together they expose a common mistake. We confuse success with leadership.
Organisations can reward people for being brilliant at their old job and then give them responsibility for leading other people. They can reward confident leaders who deliver results while overlooking how they treat people. They can mistake certainty for decisiveness.
Until something goes badly wrong.
Perhaps we should judge leaders by three simple questions: Can you do the job? Can you lead the people doing it? Can you change your mind when the evidence tells you that you are wrong?
Bligh gives us one answer to the second question. Custer gives us a warning about the third.
Leadership is not just about what you achieve. It is about how you achieve it, how you treat people and whether people would willingly follow you again.
History remembers the outcome. Employees remember the leadership.
