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Katharina Balazs: Are leaders supermen?

Dr. Katharina Balazs is a Professor of Leadership and Multicultural Performance in the European Executive MBA programme.  What are the myths of being a good leader?

My name is Katharina Balazs, I’m a professor of leadership and organisational behaviour at ESCP Europe, and today I’m going to answer the question: “Are leaders supermen?”

The first statement I would like to make is that sustainable competitive advantage in an organisation is not created by economies of scale, it has nothing to do with being in the right kind of industry, using the right kind of technology or being in the right kind of strategic position. It is based on leadership and the emotional intelligence of leaders.

Now, leadership is a difficult topic. But there’s some good news to it. Leaders are not necessarily born. The good news about leadership is that everyone can become a leader. Of course, there are some genetic predispositions, but today people can learn the right kind of leadership behaviour. And many of them do. But of course, some of them get it very, very wrong.

Now, let’s look a little bit at the first myth about leadership, namely that leaders are completely rational beings. According to a Gallup poll, 25% of leaders believe in ghosts, 10% of them have even seen a ghost, 25% of leaders have communicated with somebody dead, 17% of them have communicated telepathically with someone, 14% have seen a UFO, 25% believe in astrology, and a whopping 50% believe in extra-sensory perception.

Now, how to understand a little bit better the driving forces of leaders? What makes a leader tick? How does a leader work? We only have to look at the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard, who said: “The tragedy of life is that you only understand it backward, but you have to live it forward.” Or the great playwright, Eugene O’Neill, who said: “There is no past and no future, only the past happening over and over again.” So it is very important to see that our childhoods have a very strong influence on who we are today, and especially in the case of leaders who derail.

It was Sophocles who said: “It is hard to learn the mind of any mortal, or the heart till he be tried in chief authority. Power shows the man.” And of course, excessive power leads to something that we call excessive narcissism, which is one of the biggest failings of leaders. An example of excessive narcissism was given by Samuel Goldwyn, the founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who said: “I don’t want any yes men around me. I want people to tell me the honest truth, even if it costs them their jobs.” Now, this kind of mentality leads to the fact that certain people in leadership positions – and we only have to look at the Jeffrey Dahmer killings or the golden boys of Lehman Brothers – have this feeling of invulnerability, which of course if a very transcendent feeling. But today the problem is, when the mighty fall, they tend to drag the whole global economy with them.

Now, how to get rid of this kind of narcissistic mentality? There is an old Indian saying that says: “When you discover you’re riding a dead horse, it is better to dismount.” Mental health is about having a choice. Now, how to dismount, how to become a more insightful leader? First of all, you only have to look at the old Greeks, who said: “Know thyself!” That’s step number 1. Who are you? Where do you come from? Who is driving your car? What are your motivating factors? And the second is about feedback. Today, in organizations, we tend to get feedback all over the place, feedback comes immediately, and we do not tend to necessarily like feedback. Feedback can be very painful and we prefer to kill the messenger when the feedback is bad. But feedback can act as a life vest. So you should not really throw it away.

Now, to come back to my original question: “Are leaders supermen?” I will leave you to decide on that. I only want to tell you that today in order to be an effective leader, you need the wisdom of Socrates, the drive of Alexander the Great, the political skills of Machiavelli, and the patience of Job, and of course it does not hurt to have a deep understanding of the business.


Katharina Balazs' resumé
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