Mark was in tears again. Tearing up myself, I gently asked if he was grieving. “Yes,” he said. “I’m grieving the loss of others’ trust, as well as the loss of leadership opportunities.” I was surprised, given that Mark (not his real name) had been miserable as a team lead, and it took courage to tell his boss the truth and give up the role. Over the year he’d been my coaching client, we’d established that he thrived doing hands-on work he loved. But as a 46-year-old mid-career professional with a wife and two kids, his company was grooming him for leadership.
“I feel like I’ve gone from ‘go-to guy’ to low on the totem pole,” Mark said, lip trembling. “I think this decision will limit future assignments.” My heart fell. Despite his ample financial resources and family support, he was unable to move towards the more fulfilling life he craved. Despite suffering from depression and the acute dread of staying in his organization until retirement, he couldn’t step off the corporate ladder.
Over the past four decades, I’ve worked with a lot of organizational leaders. Reported to them. Collaborated with them. Mentored, trained, and coached them. Even helped hire and terminate them.
And I’ve met many kinds of leaders. Insecure, unskilled ones. Confident, competent ones. Reluctant or unwilling ones. Aspiring leaders. Burned out leaders. Destructive, toxic leaders.
Despite my own experience as an organizational leader plus 20 years working in leadership development, I’m no expert on leadership. But in all my reading of the experts, exposure to organizations, and mentorship by leaders, I’ve never heard a single person question one fundamental assumption about leadership that exacerbates the many problems organizations face.
The problematic assumption? Leadership roles are primarily viewed as rewards instead of jobs. This thinking is so central to our modern beliefs about work that it sounds ridiculous to question. Everyone takes for granted there’s a “ladder” to climb. We accept “up or out” cultures that demand we eventually “advance” to “higher” roles or leave. When approaching middle age, we feel pressure to seek leadership positions because of their higher pay and elevated sense of worth, even when we don’t want them. When we don’t get “promoted” our self-esteem suffers, even when part of us is relieved.
Like Mark, many of my coaching clients struggle with trying to fit themselves into leadership roles they’re ill-suited for out of a desire to earn more, feel accomplished, and gain others’ respect. Many struggle with trying to conform to an organizational culture that values “growth” — meaning they look down on those who enjoy their jobs and don’t want to “move up”.
I’ve never heard anyone question one fundamental assumption about leadership that exacerbates organizational problems: Leadership roles are primarily viewed as rewards instead of jobs.
What’s baked into this conceptualization of leadership-as-reward is dysfunctional hierarchy. It’s a hierarchy because it’s a vertical power structure where both people and their roles are assigned greater or lesser value compared to others. It’s dysfunctional because (a) this assignment of disparate value to different roles is based on narrow beliefs and values, (b) the assignment of people to these roles is similarly limited or arbitrary, and (c) the system doesn’t adequately serve the majority of its participants — largely because of (a) and (b).
When employees are promoted, they’re “elevated” to roles that essentially grant two things: (1) more money than other people, and (2) more power over more people. The adjectives we use to talk about leadership (some of which I’ve put in quotes, above) point to the “power over” nature of modern organizational leadership positions. This is the same mindset that brought us feudalism, colonialism, racism, sexism, and slavery. More on feudalism later, but today most people recognize that those systems were limited at best, and deeply destructive to both humanity and ecology at their worst.
The dysfunctional hierarchy that’s integral to the concept of leadership-as-reward exists despite the good intentions of an individual leader, or their commitment to equity or “servant leadership.” It’s inextricably baked into our thinking and systems. Also, the inconvenient truth is that hierarchy and inequity are necessary for a large, complex society like ours to function, despite what DEI consultants say. Thousands of humans who are neither related nor acquainted simply can’t coordinate effectively without hierarchy and inequity.
Therefore, if an employee wants to earn more than their current salary, they have two options: do the same job elsewhere or move into a leadership role. [Side note: the expectation that we increase earnings over our lifetime is also an entirely made-up concept at odds with Life on this planet that probably emerged along with totalitarian agriculture and the bizarre invention of “surplus”, and took hold during industrialization and capitalism.] This system of increased earnings tied to promotion reveals three further problems: Continue reading on Medium!
