Business | Opinion
Consumed by leaders' madness
Have you noticed anyone in your team displaying any of the symptoms in this checklist lately: increased energy, activity and restlessness; excessively "high", euphoric mood; extreme irritability; distractibility, or inability to concentrate well?
- By Stefan Stern, Financial Times
- Published: 00:45 April 27, 2008
Have you noticed anyone in your team displaying any of the symptoms in this checklist lately: increased energy, activity and restlessness; excessively "high", euphoric mood; extreme irritability; distractibility, or inability to concentrate well?
Or how about unrealistic beliefs in one's abilities and powers; poor judgment; increased sexual drive; abuse of drugs, particularly cocaine, alcohol and sleeping medications; provocative, intrusive or aggressive behaviour; denial that anything is wrong; or spending sprees (source: www.medicinenet.com)?
Most of my colleagues have managed at least one of these in the past few weeks. Happily, no one I know has clocked up too many. That would be worrying, because these are apparently the signs that someone is suffering from a bipolar disorder, or what used to be called manic depression.
This is serious but under-discussed stuff. Mental health is the last taboo. But secrecy could be unhealthy too. And suppressing or ignoring concerns about the state of our psyches is probably not healthy either.
Who hasn't cracked, or nearly cracked, under pressure? I shall return to the subject of keeping cool at times of great stress next week, but for the moment I am interested in getting the diagnosis right.
Twice in my career I have worked for bosses who seemed, at least temporarily, to have lost all grasp of reality. It wasn't just that unreasonable commands were consistently being given to me and others. It was that the literally and clearly impossible was being demanded daily.
Surrealist tendencies
Good bosses are ambitious and want to stretch their people. They may even, like a surrealist, claim that black could be white if only everybody worked a bit harder. But good bosses know to keep their surrealist tendencies in check. They remain grounded on planet earth most of the time.
Bad, mad bosses escape the earth's gravitational pull and fly off into their own orbit of insanity. And then you have a problem. By definition, you cannot be sure of getting through to people in that state with rational arguments. In these circumstances, a lion tamer is likely to have as much success as any other professional in dealing with the boss from hell.
"Madness in great ones must not unwatch'd go," Claudius tells Polonius in Hamlet. But a kind of madness can consume leaders without anyone around them feeling able to do much about it.
The former British foreign secretary David Owen has just published a fascinating book: In Sickness and In Power - Illness in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years. Lord Owen draws on his medical experience (he was a doctor before entering politics) as well as his knowledge of life in the great offices of state.
The case of Anthony Eden, British prime minister between 1955 and 1957, is startling. As Lord Owen explains, Eden's health had been poor since 1953, when an operation to remove his gall bladder went wrong.
Eden had waited many years to succeed Winston Churchill. By the time he did so, the previously urbane and charming political figure had become an angry, unpredictable one. His damaged thought processes, a consequence of failing health, led to Britain's involvement in the disastrous invasion of Egypt in October 1956 to win back control of the Suez canal.
Eden, it has now been revealed, had taken pethidine (a morphine derivative) only a few hours before chairing Cabinet meetings round this time. He was also taking barbiturates to help him sleep and drinamyl ("purple hearts" - an amphetamine-related drug) to perk him up. Drinamyl impairs judgment and can cause patients to "lose contact with reality".
Lord Owen also shows how President John F. Kennedy, in his first months in office in 1961, suffered "stomach/colon and prostate problems, high fevers, occasional dehydration, abscesses, sleeplessness and high cholesterol". He also had recurring back and adrenal ailments, related to Addison's disease. During the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy experienced "constant and acute diarrhoea and a recurrence of his urinary tract infection". Who could remain calm and lucid while dealing with all that?
Lord Owen would probably reject the label management guru, but this latest book, in addition to his earlier work, The Hubris Syndrome, places him in the front rank. It was hubris, Lord Owen believes, that lay behind Tony Blair and George Bush's disastrous handling of the Iraq war.
And how does Dr Owen (qualified at St Thomas's hospital, London, in 1962) diagnose the hubris syndrome? Among other symptoms, sufferers display: a narcissistic propensity to see the world primarily as an arena in which they can exercise power and seek glory; a disproportionate concern with image and presentation; a messianic manner of talking about what they are doing and a tendency to exaltation; excessive confidence in their own judgment and contempt for the advice or criticism of others; unshakeable belief that in the court of history (or God)they will be vindicated; restlessness, recklessness and impulsiveness.
I know: how unlike the meek and unassuming newspaper columnist.
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