What is demagoguery? In Ancient Greece, demagogue literally meant a leader of the people. Over the centuries, the meaning changed and has come to represent a person who appeals to greed, fear and hatred, stirring up revolt based on prejudice and bias.
What is demagoguery? In Ancient Greece, demagogue literally meant a leader of the people. Over the centuries, the meaning changed and has come to represent a person who appeals to greed, fear and hatred, stirring up revolt based on prejudice and bias.
Anyone who makes or puts to use popular prejudices that can skirt from the fringes of religious intolerance to social misbehaviour in order to acquire power is a classic demagogue. Rabble-rousers whose primary objective is to gain power are demagogues and they should not be confused with those who are simply good and/or inspiring orators.
Corporate leaders, like political leaders, also have to be great communicators of visions and ideas. To do so, they need to make an effort to not end up sounding or acting like demagogues, which would result in the loss of their credibility. The CEO and his/her team cannot make promises they cannot deliver. The leader has to ‘walk the talk’. Wisdom is achieved through action, not through mere thoughts or statements.
Corporate leaders do not have the prerogative or privilege that politicians have to make tall and false promises and still get away with it. Any attempt to do so by a corporate leader would render him in the limbo of forgotten memories. The corporate sector punishes within a financial year if budgetary targets (promises) made to the board are not met, though a leeway of around 10 per cent is usually allowed.
Even windfall profits have to be explained in terms of why they were not anticipated. Was an opportunity that already existed when budgets were being made missed and the firm got lucky or are the unexpected profits truly an outcome of changing market dynamics and conditions? If profit-making activities are put on the table for dissection, readers can imagine what the boardroom atmosphere would be if losses were being reported.
The environment is akin to an inquisition. Pure rhetoric has no place in business. Commitments made have to be achieved. Great leaders throughout history have tended to inspire loyalty and confidence in their followers through their performance, which forms the basis for the effectiveness or reach of all future speeches or promises. Great leaders also tend to lead from the front and are seen in action, walking the talk and not all talk. They convince their followers that they share the same fate and will rise or fall together.
The classic example of demagoguery is where the leader, often a politician, flaunts his personal and often ill-gotten wealth and then cries hoarse about how deeply concerned they are about inflation, unemployment, malnutrition and poverty. They have no solutions but claim to possess them anyway, knowing that they are being untruthful. And the beauty of this demagoguery is that the followers/audience also know that they are being fed with lies and falsehoods and they still vote them into positions of power and authority.
The minds of the populace are frozen, numbed, intoxicated and filled with the opium of wishful thinking. Politicians are not afraid of putting truth to the gallows. Should any corporate leader even attempt to think of doing the same he/ she will surely fall. To expunge the attending rhetoric to any statement of objectives requires tact, skill, vision, self-belief, confidence and an unmatchable intelligence. All of this and much more must be present in a leader.
Corporate leaders can only articulate their dream or vision with clear directions for the workforce on how to reach a certain milestone. A dream devoid of action is like building castles in the air. This is the forte of the politician but not of business leaders. In business, we are trained to make no commitments without availing the opportunity to focus on planning. The major outline of what is required to be accomplished is plotted first and is followed up by finding sources/avenues to use to reach the target.
Whilst planning, one must be careful to ensure that the CEO and the team do not get bogged down by an information overload, leading to paralysis by analysis. All information must be sifted without loss of focus. Managers/leaders who do not lead from the front have a limited shelf life. Leading demands possession of the ability to do what you expect your followers to do or at least have the intellect to collect the best resources to plug personal inadequacies.
All leaders will have several inadequacies -- if they hide them by not doing anything, they perish. Those who know and recognize the presence of their deficiencies and make attempts to plug them are respected. Politicians, on the other hand, make a comedy of sorts pretending to know everything under the sun. Bringing people together, must not be mere rhetoric; it must be real.
This skill is required in a leader regardless of the field. This is achieved both by words of inspiration and by action, laced with hard work. Business leaders need not be good orators or beguiling demagogues. They just need to be people that match their words with actions.
The writer is a senior banker and a freelance columnist.
