1. “Laughing your leader to humility is probably the best medicine there is to counter some truly painful and embarrassing episodes in life.” So declared an old Taiwanese acquaintance as he shared with me an experience in which both he and his colleagues endured while on a business trip abroad; no need to mention any names, but the trip, he said, was an absolute horror! It was an experience everyone on that trip would rather forget. The episode in question was a press conference intended to announce a major merger.
2. Drawing a capacity crowd, some people were there out of mere curiosity, others were followers of the eccentric president of a global plc in Asia, investors, financial journalists and even representatives of several European governments, including ministers of trade and commerce. The eccentric president spoke with typical banter and eloquence: surprising the audience who were there to hear all about the multi-billion-dollar merger of two companies, one from the East and the other from the West. He began by attacking the imperialistic tendencies of European powers and introducing the substance to his chapter and verse of assertions, concluding by saying, “one bad turn deserves another.” Apparently, the proposed merger was an elaborate hoax.
We chose to laugh
3. His opening was greeted first by laughter and then by angry outbursts from several government(s) representatives who were becoming increasingly outraged. People stood up and began to leave the press conference room; others (mainly Taiwanese) took hold of their seats as if to attack him. In short, there was great disorder, over which the voice of the president could still be heard, describing how he had decided to attack the European imperialists for the wrongs done to the Chinese race all those years ago.
4. “But in the end,” he said, “even the European imperialists ought to be thankful, because my elaborate scheme had a certain bearing upon the continuing global crisis which had become ridiculous for every liberal free marketer who was a friend of progress. “We, his friends and colleagues,” said my old acquaintance as we sipped on our green tea, taking in the cool sea breeze and enjoying the sunset in Danshui, “were not impressed.” And, accepting that it were better to laugh than cry, as the wisdom of nations goes, “we chose to laugh”. He continued: “Our laughter surprised him no end; we humbled him by our laughing at him and not with him, he immediately let fall his pretentions. The next thing I remember we were on our plane home – in total silence and shock.”
If humility is so important, why are leaders arrogant?
5. Hearing this tale reminded me of an article I chanced upon the other day, published in the Harvard Business Review; it bemoaned the seeming lack of modesty among the leaders of industry, government, and many other walks of life. The author, one Bill Taylor, asked the following questions: “If humility is so important, why are so many leaders today, especially our most famous leaders, so arrogant? Or, to flip the question around: In the face of so much evidence that humble leaders do, in fact, outperform arrogant leaders, why is it so hard for leaders at every level to check their egos at the office door?”
6. Answering his own question(s), he wrote: “For one thing, too many leaders think they can’t be humble and ambitious at the same time. One of the great benefits of becoming CEO of a company, head of a business unit, or leader of a team, the prevailing logic goes, is that you’re finally in charge of making things happen and delivering results. Edgar Schein, professor emeritus at MIT Sloan School of Management, and an expert on leadership and culture, once asked a group of his students what it means to be promoted to the rank of manager. “They said without hesitation, ‘It means I can now tell others what to do.’” Those are the roots of the know-it-all style of leadership. “Deep down, many of us believe that if you are not winning, you are losing,” Schein warns. The “tacit assumption” among executives “is that life is fundamentally and always a competition” — between companies, but also between individuals within companies. That’s not exactly a mindset that recognizes the virtues of humility.” He went on to add: “In reality, of course, humility and ambition need not be at odds. Indeed, humility in the service of ambition is the most effective and sustainable mindset for leaders who aspire to do big things in a world filled with huge unknowns.”
Gaining knowledge experientially
7. I totally agree with Mr. Taylor. The Chinese have a saying: If you do not experience anything, it’s impossible to gain knowledge. An instance, in which I gained much knowledge experientially, may now be told. It all happened at MacDonald’s restaurant in Cheltenham – where I flipped burgers for a living – it was my first job in England. The incident in question took place during the Cheltenham Festival of 1989. The Cheltenham Festival, to those not in the know, is the annual meeting in the National Hunt racing calendar in the United Kingdom, boasting prize money second only to the Grand National.
8. The Festival usually takes place at the Cheltenham Racecourse, and, is always scheduled in March each year; it tends to coincide with Saint Patrick’s Day, thus making it particularly popular in Ireland, on both sides of the border. The Festival is held over a period of four days, featuring races including the Cheltenham Gold Cup, Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase, and Stayer’s Hurdles. Vast sums are gambled during the week, with some individuals betting their entire savings in the vain hope of winning it big. The festival is also renowned for its, ‘Cheltenham roar’ – referring to a particular noise generated when the starter raises the tape for the first race of the festival.
Remember, this is England; we are not in Africa!
9. The Cheltenham Festival is one of the busiest periods in the hospitality trade in Cheltenham and the MacDonald’s restaurant was no exception. The restaurant’s manager had taken the necessary expedience of hiring a very large black Englishman from Gloucester, whom we nicknamed the underboss; for he was so named because he had the bearing of an Italian Mafiosi underboss, he had an intimidating appearance about him. He also had a massive ego to boot – like a character straight out of the hit 1970s mafia movie, The Godfather. It fell to him to supervise the restaurant at night, the time when drunken patrons frequented the restaurant most, and it was normal to have an altercation or two, mostly from revelers spilling out of pubs which tended to close their doors at around 11pm in the evening.
10. At six and half feet tall, and weighing in a respectable 15 stones, the underboss was an impressive mountain of a man, and I think he was something of an amateur wrestler or at the very least, he had once been one. For some unknown reason, the underboss, whose real name I cannot remember, singled me out for special instruction in what to do in event of an incident. I recall him telling me: “Remember, this is England; we are not in Africa! If there should be anything untoward respecting our customers, call me at once. Do not attempt to take matters into your own hands. We do things differently in this country!”
The Fantastic Desert Orchid
11. On Gold Cup day, as it happened, the whole of Cheltenham was heaving with activity. There were so many people in the town; one could hardly move with ease for want of space and the whole place was abuzz with talk of how Dessie, the English race-horse officially known as, Desert Orchid, was going to win the largest prize money in history. I think the prize purse stood at around £67,000 – a very large sum of money in those days indeed! However, there were also roamers that Dessie might not do so well, as the ground was deemed by some racing aficionados, as not particularly suitable owing to rain and snow which had fallen relentlessly for several days in Cheltenham; making the racecourse going somewhat heavy.
12. There was also talk of another contender: the mud-loving Yahoo was the one the smart money apparently went. Many gambling Irish revelers put bets on Yahoo, hoping against all hope; the heavy going racecourse would suit the horse best. But it was Dessie that won the day, beating Yahoo in the final stages of what proved to be a nail-biting race, winning by a nose, before a capacity crowd nearly 60 thousand strong. Many punters won and lost money hand-over-fist that day. Dessie, the winning horse, was given three cheers as the gelding was unsaddled, surrounded, so I heard afterwards, by thousands of fans.
Never bet on horses
13. An Irish punter had been on a losing streak, and succumbed to that awful temptation of chasing losses by playing on the next race; alas, his last hope, fell flat with the Yahoo, after the horse was beaten to the post by Dessie. I really don’t understand how betting works, as I thought he would still have won money; for Yahoo came in second, but the punter lost, and lost very badly.
14. It turned out that the monies he used to gamble were drawn from the family nest egg, house and all, and as such he had good reason to fear returning home to Ireland to face the music, as it were. He betook himself to one of the local pubs to drown his sorrows, where he was joined by many similarly affected losers. It was while he was at the pub, so we gathered afterwards, that an argument started which spilled over into our restaurant. By the time the revelers arrived at MacDonald’s they were all of them completely legless according to common parlance, some of whom were in a mood for a fight in order to ease their collective pain.
There were no takers
15. Thus upon entering MacDonald’s, they immediately begun spoiling for a fight, hoping that one foolish customer or other would rise to the challenge; but were largely ignored, no doubt because it was plainly clear to all that a fight would most certainly end badly, the revelers most likely coming off the worst. One by one the peace loving customers drifted out of the restaurant, albeit awkwardly, leaving behind the Irish revelers, I think all 30 of them alone, except for MacDonald’s 10 members of staff, including myself. We naturally looked to our underboss to maintain some semblance of order, but he was nowhere to be seen. And since there was no visible leadership in the restaurant to calm down the situation, the revelers got all the more worked up, deliberately ordering milkshakes which they in turn deliberately dribbled on the floor, and on the tables with a view that one of the restaurant staff would come out and clean up after them.
A bad time to play a leader
16. Seeing that no one was willing to go out and clean up after the revelers, it fell to me to do so, as my colleagues were slightly younger than I was, many of whom were students at the former St Paul’s and St Mary’s Colleges. St Paul’s and St Mary’s Colleges metamorphosed into The University of Gloucestershire in 2001. The underboss, as you can imagine, was considerably older than the rest of us, and I believe he was precisely appointed for his role because of his age; the memory fails me, as I cannot remember how old he was. Assuming leadership in a moment of crisis was a gift to the revelers owing to my colour. There was no way of hiding the fact that I am a black African man. They immediately seized upon that simple fact and their insults became all the more stinging. “Go home to Bongo Bongo land;” they bellowed out, “you have no business interfering in a white man’s affairs.”
17. A woman, who stood out because of her strikingly flaming red hair, started screaming at me, making vulgar monkey gestures – as if to goad me into attacking her. My reaction to them probably helped to escalate the situation rather than calm things down; for I silently went about the business of cleaning up after them with a mop and bucket. It was at that time, I think, the man who had lost his family fortune on the horses, stepped forward armed with a bottle of Whisky. I have no idea where the bottle of Whisky came from. He challenged me to a duel. I ignored him – point-blank. And the more I ignored him the worse he got, smashing the bottle on the table, which caused it to break into jagged pieces of glass, and spattering its contents onto the floor, the whole restaurant now stunk to high heaven of Whisky; he set about to start attacking me, all the revelers formed something of a circle, baiting me.
The shaking of a tree makes it stronger
18. The shaking of a tree, some say, makes it take deeper and faster root. I have no idea where courage came from that night; perhaps it was God’s providence working in me, I really can’t say, but I felt no fear whatsoever. I found the whole situation slightly amusing despite its seeming life-threatening seriousness. For I knew at once that if I rose to the challenge, that it would be curtains for me. So I stood my ground – I calmly went about cleaning the floor as if nothing was really the matter.
19. The schoolboy in me could not help but see the funny side to the whole situation. It was funny in the sense that I survived bombs and bullets in Uganda’s chaotic civil wars, only to find myself with the possible likelihood of dying at the hands of a raving loser in a faraway country, and on the floor of a MacDonald’s restaurant; and, moreover, the idea of dying in Cheltenham, a Georgian spa town renowned the world over for its beauty and gentility, struck me as extremely bizarre. “You couldn’t make it up even if you tried,” I remember thinking.
20. Also, a thought flashed across my mind: My possible violent death would be the talk of the town – an extraordinary gift to the British tabloid press. Even in those days, immigration was an emotively explosive issue in England. I could see the big black headlines: “Black African drug dealer immigrant dies in a brawl with Irish Gold Cup revelers in Cheltenham” or “Cheltenham Gold Cup: Ugly bust-up leaves one Black African Asylum Seeker dead at MacDonald’s” I included ‘drug dealer’ in the possible headline because that’s how most black immigrants were viewed. I remember thinking that God must have a strange sense of humour. Fancy perishing thus: All because a foolish Irish reveler had bet his family nest egg and lost it to the wind!
It’s your duty to gain control of the situation
21. Still, I lived to tell the tale. Somehow, our eyes locked, and the next thing I knew I was staring the man right in the eye as it were; for I recalled a piece of advice I was once given by a survivor of the war that ended Amin’s reign in Uganda back in 1979. He was a major in the Uganda National Liberation Front. He is long dead now. But at the time, he was a young officer who took it upon himself to try to persuade my father that I should be sent to Sandhurst, The Royal Military College, when I came of age; he was persuaded that I had the makings of a first-rate officer, and took matters very personally that he would spend his spare time taking me under his wing. Of course it was all a silly fantasy; I’ve never had a taste for innocent blood, unlike most Ugandan Generals. But I once asked him what he would do if he were to come face-to-face with a raving madman charging at him with a gun or a knife…his response was, as an officer, it is your duty to gain control of the situation.
22. One of the ways you gain control of the situation, he said, is that you must never display fear, and you do that by looking your attacker right in the eye. Rarely would a man kill another man with the victim looking him in the eye. Rightly or wrongly, I fixed my look on the Irishman – holding his gaze for a while and forcing him to drop his, looking away sheepishly. The next thing I noticed was his posture began to change, from that of fight to one of flight. In the meantime, his friends came to their senses as well; they too noticing a sudden change in his demeanor and sheepishly began to shuffle out of the restaurant – one by one. It was not long before he let fall his weapon, the broken Whisky bottle fell onto the floor, shattering into many more small pieces; and, he too sheepishly shuffled out of the restaurant, following his friends and leaving the door wide open. I have no idea why the police were never called; I suppose we all react differently in stressful situations.
The mask fell off
23. As the ordeal came to an end, I suddenly broke into a cold sweat, shivering all over my body, perhaps owing the enormity of the relief that I was now feeling. The knowledge that one is alive, that is, truly alive, is an awesome thing. We really should never trifle with life, life is a precious thing. I was all alone in the main eating area, but it was not long before my colleagues began to emerge from their hiding places, one by one. The one person who was still missing was the underboss. No one knew where he was hiding. Anxious to get things in order we all of us started looking for him; I found him hiding in the manager’s lavatory on the first floor. He was covered in sweat, perhaps due to stress and fear, puffing away furiously on his cigarette.
24. He looked at me with pleading eyes, as if to say that I should keep what I was witnessing to myself. I assured him that his secret was safe with me. That’s when I saw the real man behind the bravado. He was a broken man in every sense of the word. I discovered afterwards that he had been in prison for beating up a man, leaving him half-dead. That incident showed him how violent he could be, and resolved there and then never to put himself in a situation in which he had to fight, lest he should kill someone for real. But it was his experience in prison that really broke him. He told me that as a black man in the English criminal justice system, it was very easy to receive a stiff prison sentence, and once in prison, life could be exceedingly harsh. There were so few opportunities for him as a former prisoner, that he was sometimes compelled to put on a mask in order to land a job, even a job as the so called underboss at MacDonald’s.
25. The role of underboss was as good as it would ever get for him; it was important that what I saw was kept between us, he said. I understood his predicament perfectly. But my colleagues and I never again allowed him to throw his weight about, and each time he tried to do so, we simply laughed him to humility, dropping heavy hints that we had not forgotten the unfortunate incident. I imagine all was soon forgotten in the collective memory of the restaurant since many of us, who went through the experience, very quickly moved on; for the MacDonald’s is a business that experiences a high turnover of staff.
We do our leaders a service by laughing them to humility
26. Our common proverb regards it as ingratitude when we look a gift horse in the mouth. Putting myself in the shoes of the underboss, and keeping to the run of the subject under discussion, I think it is important to view every opportunity to lead others, even in moments of crisis, entirely as a gift; it is not for us to cavil at leadership, but to accept the privilege with grace. No matter how we come by our leadership role, we should be true to ourselves, and resist the temptation of putting on a mask as the underboss clearly did. When we put on a mask, either to hide an unfortunate event in our past or to impress others with our new found power, we run the risk of falling into pride.
27. Pride is the origin of tyranny, both at low level leadership roles such as the underboss at MacDonald’s, and at a higher level, of say, in the management of the affairs of state. In less sophisticated countries such as my first home country, Uganda, many of the problems at government level are owing to leaders who emerged from very humble beginnings to state power. They have thus waxed proud, very proud indeed, and extremely conceited; they proudly glory in their power and apparent success, boasting of their heart’s desire, boasting that they can do what they please and that they have all they wished for and have carried their point.
28. I think we would all be the better off if we knew how to laugh our leaders to humility. It is something more sophisticated societies such as Britain do well; the British vibrant press, most especially the tabloid press, has done much to create a culture of satire. Satire is very healthy, and a clever way of bursting our leaders’ bubbles, especially in times of crisis. Indeed, I would go so as to say that we owe it to ourselves and our leaders to cultivate satire; for the art of laughing leaders to humility is both a service and a duty.
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