“The Emperor is naked!”

It is left to a naïve child to blurt out the truth, when so many would not because they were flattering the emperor or afraid of appearing stupid.

In 1837, the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen published the folk tale, The Emperor’s New Clothes. The story tells of a vain ruler obsessed with being a fashion plate. Every outfit had to be new and spectacular. Enter two con men who flatter the high king promising to create a suit of clothes so dazzling that only the incompetent and stupid will not see its magnificence.

Andersen, like the Grimm brothers, collected folk tales from around the world.  He based this one on a German translation of a Spanish version of a Persian retelling of an Indian tale. All previous versions make the clothes visible to those of legitimate birth; people praise the unseen clothes lest they outed as bastards. Andersen changed the invisibility indicator to incompetence and so insecure courtiers’ fawning exposes the king’s bum.

The con-tailors elaborately loom an invisible suit. The emperors advisors rave about the garments’ beauty. No one, including the Emperor, admits they might be too stupid to appreciate such sartorial splendor.

One small boy gives the ruler the “straight skinny” when the emperor parades past in his birthday suit.

As leaders rise, the “straight skinny” recedes.

Getting honest feedback at the top of an organization (or a country), is hard. A Mike Nichols and Elaine May song lyric from the movie Ishtar illustrates:

“Telling the truth can be dangerous business. Honest and popular don’t go hand-in hand.

If you admit that you play the accordion, no one will hire you in a rock-n-roll band.”

 There are the flatterers, who might “fib just a little” to better their career prospects.

“You are such an amazing founder. Ignore the shareholder requests for a new CEO. Who else could lead this company as well as you do!”

There are the “sugar-coaters.”

“The people who fill out surveys only complain; we have millions of happy customers.”

“When you cut sales demographically we’ve made some real gains in the those over 65.”

 There are some who are protecting your feelings.

“No, of course that dress doesn’t make you look fat.”

“Everybody forgets things.”

“You look good!”

We old people hear this one so much, comedians now talk about the three ages of man: Youth, Middle Age, and “You look good!”)

It ain’t all their fault

Leaders create the dearth of straight skinny. When you explode at bad news, you ensure others “won’t make that mistake again.”

Are you susceptible to flattery?  When you receive a compliment do you glow in a way that affects critical thinking?

Who do you include in your closest meetings? Flatterers and sugar-coaters? People who believe in you and your ideas? Or “”Difficult people,” “Debbie Downers,” “Nattering nabobs of negativity?”

Are you prepared to believe any cockamamie explanation instead of the truth. ”You know DeNile is not just a river in Egypt.” (Denial is self-preservation for vanity.)

There are consequences beyond your feelings.

Beneath the radar in every disaster there was probably a “straight skinny teller:”

“General Custer, sir, I think there might be more of them than you think.”

“Captain Smith., I’d like to see Titanic set the crossing record too, but they did say icebergs have been spotted.”

At one point in my career I studied large process safety incidents, BP’s Texas City Refinery, Deep Water Horizon, Challenger, Columbia, and many more. In every one I studied there was always someone with the “straight skinny” who was disregarded or even ridiculed. Lives and livelihood are too much at stake not to listen.

Not listening is a tragic flaw

Playwrights and authors have always seen those who ignore the “straight skinny” as creators of their own destruction.

Sophocles, gave Oedipus many who warned about the “kill Dad, bed Mom” thing. Did Fast-Oedi listen? Not-so-much.

King Lear listened to daughters Goneril’s and Regan’s flattery and rejected his truth-tellingdaughter Cordelia. ‘How like a serpents tooth it is to have a thankless child.” When the Earl of Kent tries to inform him of his mistake, Lear kicks him out of the cabinet.

Anakin Skywalker, feared losing Padme, became Darth Vader. Othello feared losing Desdemona and he and pretty much everyone became dead. Neither listens to people trying to give them the straight skinny.

Finding your straight skinny teller

You can look for straight skinny devotes by assiduously avoiding the opposites. What is the opposite of the straight skinny teller? The crooked skinny teller who promises you inside information, but gives you lies that only benefit them? The straight corpulent who is always positive, not just a half-full person, but a cup-runneth-over person.

There are some other ways:

• Start with the person in the mirror. Express gratitude for bad news. Take compliments graciously and move on, steeling yourself against flattery. Ask for all the data, not just the good stuff.
• Notice who agrees and disagrees with you. You want independent thinkers. The person who always agrees with you is gravitating to the power source. The person who always disagrees may be counter-dependent.
• Don’t play favorites. Bring different people into meetings. Ask for opposing viewpoints in decision-making discussions.
• Value you those who help keep your ego in check. When the Roman Senate authorized a Triumph, the parade and celebration ceremony for victorious generals, they placed a Senate slave in the general’s chariot to repeat “Momento mori sic transit gloria” (“Remember you are mortal; glory fades”). My wife sometimes fills this role, with humor that helps me laugh at myself.
• Say “thank you” when someone gives you the straight skinny. Reward those who break you out of denial, short circuit your magical thinking, and identify and challenge assumptions. Perhaps you’ll avoid that embarrassing moment when someone blurts out:

 The Emperor is naked!

My inner thirteen-year-old boy spit Mountain Dew everywhere when I came up with this title, but he thinks it is “way better than ‘Self-Leadership’ – boring!”  Every act of leadership is first an act of self-leadership. Leading change starts with “taking yourself in hand,” (snicker, snicker).

Change requires leaders

I spent a significant part of my long consulting career “training” leaders. I facilitated leadership workshops at British Airways, General Motors, Short Brothers, BP among other companies. I ran countless leadership team offsites to formulate new strategies, or design new organizations.

Eventually, I differentiated between management skill, which focuses on getting work done in a relatively steady state, and leadership skill, which clarifies direction in abnormal states like change, war or emergency, and attracts followers so that “people move as one” in the new direction – transformation, victory or safety. I emphasized the importance of both skills to the organizations with whom I worked. Some companies were more successful at change than others, but I know I reached many individuals in ways they appreciated.

I will always remember the epiphany of one senior manager, who said, “I didn’t want to attend this session, but I now see that change in this huge corporation comes down to me doing different things or doing things differently. I can’t do it myself, but we can’t do it without me either.”

Leadership development

Each of these learning interventions was different. Sometimes clients expected a “secret sauce,” a formula for leadership that had worked many places and would work for them. In my early years, I often used the same themes: vision and visionary communication, empathy, empowerment, trust, tough-mindedness, and exemplary actions. Many of these ideas worked as themes, but the “course materials” were always different. After all, leadership is steeped in the context of the change. We lead toward something or away from something, but the something is specific.

Many organizations, even civilizations have trained leaders. The Periclean Age Athenians educated high potentials in philosophical dialogue and oration and sent them to Eleusis to experience the “mysteries” of the cult of Demeter – the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth – change and hope apparently aided by ergot fungus.

Militaries have always trained their elite corps from the Spartan Hippeis (not “hippies”), to Rome’s Praetorian Guard, to West Point, Annapolis, and the US Airforce Academy. Many business schools, universities, and even high schools offer courses in leadership. Many of these probably teach a combination of management and leadership skill, along with concepts like initiative, proactivity, and prioritization. All good content, but many will still say that “leaders are born not made.”

Self-leadership

Great leaders are often portrayed as born with certain virtues. Six-year-old George Washington told his father “Father, I cannot tell a lie. It was I who cut down your prize cherry tree with my little hatchet.” His father was so impressed with Georgie’s honesty that he didn’t punish him; perhaps this is where Washington’s famed magnanimous ideals came from. (My father would have slowly removed his belt.)

The cherry tree story showed up in the fifth edition of Mason Locke Weems’ book The Life of Washington,  originally published in 1800, the year of Washington’s death, under the title The History of the Life, Death, Virtues, and Exploits of General George Washington. Parson Weems was a traveling Episcopal minister, who sold his books on the side. He apparently subscribed to the “great leaders are born” theory, describing the President’s natural honesty, athleticism, temperance, and “veneration for the Deity.” He missed that Washington overcame dyslexia to teach himself to read. Washington’s wisdom came from accepting responsibility for and learning from some colossal mistakes. He single-handedly started the French and Indian War by attacking a French scouting party he could have easily gone around and was strategically cautious in battle thereafter. His motto was “99% of failures come from people who make excuses.”

Twelve-year-old Abraham Lincoln borrowed Parson Weems’ book from a farmer seven miles walk from his home. When the tome got damaged by rain, Lincoln worked for the farmer for three days to repay his debt.

Honest Abe is often described as a self-made man. He had no formal education, but taught himself to read. His voice was often as “shrill,” or “reedy” or “sharp and piercing like a boatswain’s whistle.” Yet he was known as a tremendous orator. “His words rang through” and his enunciation and slow, considered delivery ensured that he was understood.

Washington and Lincoln came from vastly different backgrounds, but they each developed themselves. In that sense perhaps all leaders are self-developed, people experienced in “taking themselves in hand” or first leading themselves before leading others.

Taking yourself in hand

Even when I get past my teenage boy snickering, it’s an unusual phrase for self-leadership. Holding your own hand and leading yourself. We have many such phrases:

• “Pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” has been used as an unrealistic expectations cudgel for the disadvantaged, but expresses personal responsibility and self-reliance.
• “Steel yourself” implies determination and self-imposed tough-mindedness that will not accept failure or give up.
• “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” advocates a “there is no failure, but giving up” ethos.
• “No. Try not! Do or Do Not. There is no Try!” in the words of Yoda from George Lucas’s Star Wars.

Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, is instruction for self-leadership.

1. 1. Be proactive
   2. Begin with the end in mind
   3. Put first things first
   4. Think win/win
   5. Seek first to understand, then to make yourself understood
   6. Learn to synergize
   7. Sharpen the saw

Whether you buy Covey’s recipe for success or leadership or whether you have your own five or seven principles, you only become successful, fulfilled, a leader, by acting, practicing, learning (perceiving and processing), and acting again – in other words,  by “taking yourself in hand.”

(Snicker, snicker)