I’ve never tried role-playing games (RPGs). I don’t have any fictional character I love enough to want to assume its persona, and I suspect I would get stage-fright (I can act alright when I am fed a script, but to free wheel Sailor Moon? No can do). Nor have I tried D&D or any online version, either. I don’t get the appeal, but I appreciate the effort that countless other people put in the story lines and character study.
But there’s another RPG I have been playing for several years, without realizing it. It’s the Corporate RPG. Like any other RPG, it comes with no strict script and the rules are manmade, albeit some codified in law. Unlike other RPGs, though, it is a long-running game, with roughly eight-hour play time, five days a week. New players join, old ones leave; the game itself never stops.
By Corporate RPG, I don’t mean that we’re play-acting working or faking it. What I mean is that when entering the game, we each come in to play a role, and the other players adjust their interactions with us in relation to that role. Each role comes with a name (job title) and strengths and weaknesses (e.g. your years of experience, place in the hierarchy, your job function). You can form alliances, you can back-stab, form your own strategy, go on a lone quest, or just sit at the communal space and shoot the breeze.
The above doesn’t make worklife sound very appealing, or at least all that nice. Anecdotally I am inclined to think that the more strategic and perhaps ruthless players get ahead faster than the team players, but I don’t have proof or first-hand experience. But what I am really interested in is this concept of a role at the workplace. What does a role dictate, regardless of who plays it?
Titles matter
In 2021, I had my own YouTube channel called ‘When I grow up.’ I interviewed people from different walks of life, focusing on their professional paths. I wanted to show young people (and myself) that success comes in all shapes and sizes and from innumerate places. Several interviewees in a more corporate setting said that titles don’t really matter that much when you get older. And consequently requested that theirs be quotes exactly right, with seniority levels attached.
Titles matter. They give you a place in hierarchy, which in turn dictates who has the upper hand and the final say. Titles also matter outside of a direct line of command: when working with a new person, you base your expectation of their skill level and sway on their title, at least initially. An intern working with a director can be pretty sure what the pecking order is. And so can the director, for that matter.
Titles also matter when looking for a job. While the job market (both local and global) has not consolidated titles, it’s harder to switch up than to switch laterally. A more senior title indicates more demanding tasks and responsibilities, even if that’s not the case. Back in the day, a Manager would signify someone with people and/or budgets to manage; that’s not always so nowadays. The difference between a Specialist’s and an Expert’s knowledge is unknown to me, and the various Junior-Vice-Executive-Director-Chief-Principal-President-Lead-Heads prefixes mean little to me outside an organization chart.
Titles often have two indicators: your function and your seniority. Both of these matter. For instance, a Finance Director can be expected to have more say over finances than a Marketing Director, although the latter can be assumed to have a better understanding of why investing a large sum of money on data analytics for online performance is an indispensable expense. I think everyone who’s ever worked anywhere or been in any human community knows that certain skillsets are valued over others, and even when that’s not explicitly stated anywhere, it’s an undertone well understood. I am not going to go into that in this post, but it is nonetheless ‘true’ (as true as anything that cannot be proved) that certain functions are valued higher than others. And in those cases, seniority doesn’t always override.
I believe that when you’ve got enough experience under your belt, titles don’t matter as much. When your CV is filled with demonstrated experience, you can more freely take on an interesting gig, even if it doesn’t come with a fancy title. Some people don’t even want that fancy title because it comes with greater responsibilities, and I’d add, expectations. It is expectations that actually got me thinking about this theme of Corporate RPG. As a young professional, titles do matter to me and I’m not ashamed to admit that. Titles matter to me because I see them to indicate my expected level of seniority and expertise. And other people’s titles matter to me for the same reason: when you encounter a new player for the first time, you look at their overall score. Their absolute strength or weakness gives you an indication of how much influence they could have over you, whether you should steer clear or if you could try form an alliance. Sounds cynical and calculative? Welcome to Corporate RPG!
Act your role
In all seriousness, I don’t see the workplace as a dog-eat-dog world. I know of companies where screaming at your subordinates (and referring to your reports and team members as ‘subordinates’) is common and not actively dealt with. I’ve not had that experience and I hope I never will; what I have experienced, though, is the inability to act one’s role, to modify the phrase ‘act one’s age.’ This is most often the case with executives.
I’ve coached a dozen executives in several roles. As a young professional with an initial in-built reverence for hierarchy and senior titles, I’ve been surprised to discover two common themes amongst most leaders: one, a lack of understanding of the influence they pull, and two, their insecurity in themselves as leaders.
I’m no influencer
‘You do understand that what you say, goes?’ I asked an executive once. They looked uncomfortable.
Plato theorized in The Republic that the best rulers would be those unwilling to rule, for they would not be corrupted by power. ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,’ goes my all-time favourite quote, brought to us by Lord Acton in the 19th century. We’re now dangerously close to me slipping into a full-blown philosophical study of dictatorships, so let’s leave that for another blog site entirely and stay in the Teams call that the above conversation (and all the others just like it) took place in.
I don’t know why executives find it difficult to wield power. Perhaps it’s partly due to the insecurity I will write about next. But in the contexts where I have encountered this it’s been a distinct unwillingness to tell others what to do; a disbelief in the need to tell others what to do; and/or a lack of means to rule.
Reluctant Hero
It’s well known that for a long time, organizations have tended to promote subject-matter experts into leadership roles that include leading both people and things, whether they sought those responsibilities or not, and whether they were well-suited for them or not. Some organizations are trying to find ways to have both expert leaders and experts ‘doers.’
I’d say most people in leadership positions that I have met and worked with like the money and influence that come with the job. But they may not like the need to set boundaries and coach others. They may think ‘we’re all adults here, we all know how to act and behave; I don’t need to babysit anyone.’ Confounding babysitting or micromanagement with leadership and coaching is a rookie mistake and leads to the same outcome as micromanagement: your best and brightest become frustrated and leave.
As a leader, your job is to lead. Whether it’s in your title or not, if you have people reporting to you, you need to make sure they know which way they’re going. I see many leaders as reluctant heroes, thrown into (people) management roles with no training or no desire to be there. I hope that we crack the code of promoting skilled leaders to leadership roles and promoting skilled subject-matter experts to Lead Expert roles and finding a way to have them co-exist and work together.
All thumbs comms
Something that’s baffled me is the all thumbs attitude that many senior leaders have to communication. It’s primarily not a technical handicap but a cultural one. They’re simply not used to communicating with and to their teams. They don’t have the practice of sharing strategy updates, notes from leadership team meetings where new decisions are made. They don’t have the practice of keeping track of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) at a frequent interval. And perhaps worst of all, they don’t have the practice of promoting an open dialogue.
This has been the most difficult area to coach for me. While I always try to be mindful of everyone having different strengths and weaknesses, I really struggle to help a leader lead when their first comment to me suggesting they communicate more with their teams is ‘Am I allowed to use our team chat?’ Yes. Yes you are. In fact, one might think you are obliged to.
The reluctant influencer thus is reluctant because they don’t want to tell others what to do; they don’t think it’s necessary; or they don’t know how to do it. They may also be very insecure.
Am I Naked?
Being all-thumbs with communication is part of insecurity. I don’t know if this particular phenomenon is more about people’s general fear of communicating and being the centre of attention, or about overall insecurity as a leader.
Someone once told me: ‘You’ll only ever get promoted to a role you’re slightly underqualified for.’ I’ve thought about it a lot. Perhaps that’s why middle management is synonymous to poor management in many places: there are the people who were too good for their previous role but not good enough to be management. So that’s where they stay, causing issues with their incompetence and insecurity. Please note that this isn’t ALL middle managers. I’ve been blessed with more skilled ones than bad ones. And this post is more about the unwilling leaders than the willing ones, not that the latter are necessarily any better than the former.
I think many leaders are insecure. Maybe their bosses are bad managers and don’t set clear expectations and so the issues trickle down. Maybe they were promoted too quickly. Maybe they’ve got a particularly difficult team to run. Maybe they have low self-esteem. Whatever it is, I think no one wants to be caught with their pants down. I suggest that one reason to why leaders-by-title don’t want to visibly (or traceably) lead is the fear that they’re the laughing stock of the organization; that the cape they’ve been donned with upon taking the title of a leader in fact turns their clothes see-through, and all the people can see they’re butt-naked but are too bashful or fearful to point that out.
Your title tells people around you a lot about you, both in absolute and relative terms. It sets expectations towards your expertise and power. Do not disregard or dismiss the power that a senior title gives you. Do not abuse it – never use it to make life miserable for those below you in the hierarchy. But do not make the mistake of not leveraging that power. It’s like a language: if you don’t use it, you lose it.
Sidetracked 