Ben White had this thing, didn't he, up until recently of constantly

pulling the gloves and the shirt and pushing and tapping and generally

just irritating the goalkeeper.

And I said it's gamesmanship, but it's not sportsmanship.

It's all about winning regardless of the cost, how ugly it

is, or how unfair it is.

I remember the 70s when games were really hard, you know, Billy

Bremner and these guys would be having punch ups on the pitch.

But that was in the spirit of the game.

It comes down to the referees being proper, sincere and

honest arbiters of the game.

And it seemed that that particular game, the referee lost control very

quickly which comes down to the subject that I'm guessing you guys are going

to touch on at some point during our conversation today, leadership.

The referee has to be, at some point, a leader of the way the game's played.

And that man in the Villa West Ham game wasn't.

He showed no strength of character, he made strange decisions that were

borderline or certainly from the outside appeared biased, but they were definitely

inconsistent and one of the things I think you can't have in anybody that's taking

charge of something is inconsistency.

Is the referee leading the game or is he managing the game?

I think the referee is about managing that we uphold certain standards.

Is that management or is that leadership in your view?

I was thinking about this on the way in because I didn't have time to,

to comment on it, but I noticed your post this morning about leadership.

I found it interesting because I like to listen to myself, because, I find

myself quite an interesting person.

Some of the knee jerk reactions that I come out with I do wonder

where it comes from sometimes.

The first thing I thought, when, when, when I saw your post, and

I wanted to comment, but I just didn't have time to get out of the

house was, well, how do they know?

How does anybody know where a leader is?

How do the people that are answering this questionnaire know where a leader is?

And then it made me think, and I had a little bit of a chunter to myself on the

way in the car, what makes a good You

need to record these and make these a podcast.

I'd get locked up, mate.

Well, I started to think, well, hold on a minute, what makes a good follower?

If the people that are saying that they need a good leader, are so clued

up as to what makes a good leader.

Surely they must also know what a good follower is.

When you talk about the referee, I think in all situations,

there's the question, right?

Leader of what?,

is the referee a leader, well, he's not a leader of the football teams,

clearly, but he is the person that is supposed to uphold the integrity

and the principles of the game.

In that regard, I would say he is what you might call an ethical

or a moral leader on the pitch.

One would like to think, so I would compare a football

referee to a rugby referee.

And the interesting thing about rugby referees is that you can hear

them talking in a lot of cases.

Some of the conversations that they have with players, I find very

interesting because you will often hear them invoking the spirit of the game.

This is not how we want to play this game, is it lads?

You see that in rugby and I find that fascinating because you try

that in football and you get, you get laughed off the pitch.

But I would suggest that when somebody says, is the referee a leader?

Well, the question is a leader of what?

When somebody says to me, I find it fascinating the entire conversation around

leadership, because we look around the world at the moment, you point to one

good leader, is Mr. Putin a good leader?

I don't know, certainly some people think he is.

Is Mr. Trump a good leader?

Well, there's a lot of people that think he isn't.

Mr. Starmer?

Well, slip of the tongue.

In our country, for instance, you say to somebody, name a good leader, and

they'll point to Mr. Churchill probably, because he saved millions of lives,

and, and I think with good reason.

But you couldn't call him a moral or ethical leader, because some of his morals

and ethics were seriously questionable.

The question is, well, what are they a leader of?

And the thing is, you know, you, you imagine Mr. Churchill

trying to lead us through.

You have to remember that the followers of Mr. Churchill, his subjects

or whatever you want to call him were very different people to the

people that you see around us today.

How do you lead that completely different country of people?

You know, look at Tony Blair, leader of the country for years.

Some people thought he was the best person ever.

And yet he took us into a war costing millions and millions and millions

of pounds, certainly thousands of lives, all based on a lie.

Was he a good leader?

I don't know.

Was he a leader of?

I think that's the question.

The referee certainly, I would suggest, is, at least in theory,

a moral or ethical leader.

It's a can of worms there, isn't it?

You've, you've, you've opened a can of worms there, Rob.

I think there's two sides to this, right?

If I can just dip into the manager versus leader.

The referee as a manager or leader, I think from a technical perspective, he's

there just to do a job that he's qualified to do, which is run the game by the rules.

Be fair, be equitable and all of those kind of things.

Obviously he's a human, he's emotional, he's impacted by situations.

So he's got to rise above that where he can and be really

professional under high pressure.

make decisions and deal with the consequences of those decisions, whether

they're the right decisions or not, should be technically good enough to do the job

because he's been appointed to that game.

So I think it's a technical job that doesn't require him to lead anybody else.

Maybe his team of assistant officials and the fourth official and all of that.

That's probably his team.

He's in charge of that to a degree.

But again, it's management.

They're not developing new skills in the game.

They're actually just applying existing knowledge.

They're not building capacity.

So I think it's a management task.

However, as soon as we introduce the idea of ethics that Clark's talking

about or values or morals or, or something, there's a, Immediately my

sort of antenna immediately goes, Oh, there's some sort of leadership challenge

going on here because alluding to the difference between rugby and football,

where it's very clear how those two games differentiate themselves by the capacity

for each sport to run itself in public.

Rugby does it brilliantly.

It's all in the open.

There's a much higher degree of respect between players and officials.

There's almost a collective shared set of values that people have

agreed to adhere to and aligned to.

That gets played out publicly because they have conversations

about it and football resists it because it's entrenched in the game.

It's a far more international game now than it ever was before.

So all of these old stiff upper lip British high standards that

we used to uphold, the game's changed in that regard that the

Italian leagues played differently.

There's a lot more simulation.

For example, I don't want to stereotype people, but let's assume the referee

is authentic, unbiased fair in his intentions and he's trying to run

a good game the way he sees it.

Of course he might be influenced by the emotions of the situation, who knows.

But let's, let's assume he's got his game in full control.

The idea that he could, in a window of 90 minutes get his leadership challenges.

I would say is how do I get these 22 players and the staff

on the sideline and the subs that are going to come on in a bit.

How do I get them to collectively adhere to the way I think the game should be run?

By the rules, the sense of fair play with a sense of goodwill and not wanting

to harm each other, you know, whatever it, whatever it might be, there's an

inherent expectation that everybody on that pitch through the referee should

be able to uphold and adhere to these principles that the game demands.

The laws of the game say this is how the game should be played.

The referee is there to uphold them.

So in a sense, there's a leadership challenge there, but it's an impossible

one for the referee to navigate.

He might send someone off to try and set the tone.

He might book someone early to try and set the tone, or he might let the game flow.

Because that's what the fans want.

And he's a bit old school.

He thinks, Oh, we'll let a couple of crunching tackles

go, but we'll calm it down.

You know, he might have some conversation with the players.

So that's the sort of interpersonal skills or, or the feel for the game

that the referee might have that may be inconsistent between him and

the next referee, but when we're talking about a shared set of values.

If I'm manager A and I think, right, we're going to, we're going to really

push the boundaries there against Villa in the first 10 minutes, because

there might be a bit of a soft touch.

If we go and clatter a few people and we get away with

it, we're onto a winner here.

Look what's happened to him before.

Depending where we all sit on that, on our own belief systems to

whether that's ethical or unethical is the referees in the same boat.

The laws of the game shouldn't fluctuate.

But the individual will go.

I'm a bit old school.

Don't mind a bit of a tit for tat in the first 10 minutes.

As long as no one's going to get the leg broken.

Might let a little bit go.

Whereas somebody else might go, Hey, bang, do that.

So I think there's a leadership component to it because.

The capacity to align people to a shared belief in how something should be done,

I think is what leadership is all about.

I just don't think it's the referees, within the referees capability to

do that on any given day in such a short window of opportunity.

I think the game as a whole needs to agree what that looks like,

including the refs, including the coaches, including the players.

If anything, I think it's a coach driven thing.

Leadership is in the hands of the coach around the ethics

and are we going to play?

Are we going to be squeaky clean and, and succeed and win the

fair play award at the season?

Cause I know teams have been pilloried.

The fans will go nuts if the team's finished mid table, but they

won the fair play award because they didn't get stuck in enough.

You know what I mean?

Where to actually mobilize a whole football movement towards acceptance

of what a good value set should look like on the pitch is really difficult.

I don't think that's the referees job, but I think there he is the one that

has to uphold the ethical standard first and foremost, and then draw the line

so he knows when somebody's crossed it.

In my current thinking and understanding, I see a manager as

being like a steward of certain values.

It's holding people accountable to a certain level of performance.

I see the role of the manager is about congruence.

Everyone on the same page, this is what we demand.

I would see a referee as a kind of a manager, the, the leadership has come

from FIFA and everyone else who's agreed these are the standards that we play by.

The referee is then the manager says, look, you're falling below

the standards we've agreed to, these are the rules, whatever.

A leader would be either someone who's wanting to change the game

or the coach who's, who's wanting to develop the team and lead the

team to, to something different.

And accepted whether we think it's a good referee or not.

He's passed a certain standard to be a referee, so he's got the

technical know how to manage the game.

I think he's managing the game.

My point around leadership is when there's a challenge to grow, Capacity to believe

in something or sharing our intention.

It becomes an immediately leadership challenge because if

people are not on the same page, then they need to grow together.

Otherwise they'll grow apart.

There's no alternatives, one or the other.

Isn't a manager a leader,

Tony?

Not necessarily.

For me, only if there's new capacity to be built.

Leadership is required when we haven't we haven't faced this before we're going

into something that we actually need to rely on each other to grow through.

I think leadership's

required then.

The reason I asked that question, Tony, and I ask your forgiveness

for this, but I'm sort of talking a little bit tongue in cheek because you

guys know my thoughts on leadership.

That is nowhere near as necessary as people think it is.

And it's certainly not clearly from our conversation.

It's not something that can be nailed down particularly easily.

When you look at a football pitch, for instance.

The levels of leadership in the various aspects of the game are constantly

changing and they're all over the pitch.

The other night with Villa and Westham, the leader of the football

team, the Aston Villa football team wasn't even at the side of the pitch.

He was consigned to the stands because, the laws of the game

said that he'd been naughty and he couldn't stand near the pitch.

But he was a leader.

The captain's armband was changed around a couple of times as subs came on.

There were various leaders there.

I mentioned the referee as a particular type of leader regarding morals and ethics

because these things all come into play.

This was sort of my point really, when I saw, Rob's, and you're

both completely right, obviously, in what you've just said.

I'm sort of being a little bit of a smart ass when it comes to

the question of what is a leader.

When you asked the question about leadership regarding your questionnaire

this morning, my thought was, how long is a piece of string?

Leader of what, under what circumstances, let's say, for instance you've got a group

of people, let's say you have 10 people that are professional bridge builders.

All they do is build bridges all day.

Who's leading?

You know, these guys all know their jobs.

They slot into their positions to do what needs to be done.

When somebody turns up and says who's in charge here,

they'll all point to somebody.

So there is a leader.

I'm not pretending that you guys don't know that leadership

in most cases is situational.

Of course it is.

It depends on the circumstances and what aspect of the current

project is being focused upon.

My question is, when we talk about leadership, I think we very often

forget the other side of that coin, and that is who's being led.

The current climate and the questionnaire that Rob posted on LinkedIn this

morning was posted in an environment, LinkedIn, that professes to know

what a leader is and to constantly be telling the world how they should be.

I'm asking myself, who are these people that are telling

everybody what a leader should be?

And I'll tell you what what I think the answer is.

The first thing that came to my mind, because I have a weird mind, was Moses,

Going up to the mountain to talk to God, whether this happened or not is

irrelevant, you know, it's allegorical.

But Moses went up the mountain and he came down and all the people that

he was apparently the leader of were all dancing around some golden cow.

And he said, right I'm going to kill you all because you weren't good followers.

You followed another God.

Now, the reason this came into my mind was, we look at him as and ask ourselves

whether he's a good leader or not.

But what about all the Muppets on the ground dancing around the cow?

They might say to Moses, you're not the sort of leader that we want.

You've got to let us dance around this golden cow, because

that's what we want to do.

And he will turn around and say, well, how are we supposed to get

to the promised land then if you're constantly dancing around golden cows?

Who's in charge of this flipping thing then?

Therein lies the problem.

Because LinkedIn is basically a bunch of people dancing around the golden

cow, demanding that leaders don't kill them when they, when they find

them dancing around the golden cow.

This is the issue.

That's brilliant.

So, what I forgot to say earlier was the one word that jumped out was trust, I

think the question of what is a leader and the question of what is leadership

are two different questions and people probably get mixed up in all of those

notions, but in order to lead anyone, you need their permission to be led.

And you can only do that if you can build trust.

This formal authority where you do what you're told we're going here.

And so if you think about the military, we just have to do what

we're told when we're told to do it.

And there's a reason why all of those rules exist.

There's no choice in those circumstances, you just got to

go when you're told to go right.

Whereas when you're in a situation where those rules haven't been established.

Those rules need to be created.

Let's say you need people then to buy into an idea that requires a bit of leadership.

That's less about management that requires, oh, I'm navigating

some complex territory.

I need to understand these people.

even the person who's in charge may not know what the hell they're doing.

So that's a situation where leadership is required, where it

comes from and how it then manifests is where the challenge lies.

That's where people can start to define themselves as having

some leadership capability.

Aside from this, it's sort of informal authority.

How do I gain your trust to believe in my ideas and to tackle

it this way is, I think, an example of somebody demonstrating

some some leadership capability.

I look at it that there's three levels of authority.

There's positional where you've been given this, but the

people don't really follow you.

There's relational because you've built the relationships and the trust.

But the biggest one is moral.

When you go back to Churchill.

The first time I ever thought about this was I had this discussion with

Matthew Ward, one of the very early.

Podcast, I think he came just after you, Tony and he said, churchill's a leader.

So all these people are calling themselves leaders who are really managers.

You're a manager, not a leader.

First off that the LinkedIn environment is leader sounds better.

So it's like what people are bragging a little on their CV.

It's like, make your CV look the best.

So I'm a leader, not a manager.

Then people call themselves leaders.

So in my post, when I'm writing stuff, I think manager, but I know that

people refer to themselves as a leader.

So I, I use the terminology and in the way that we use that terminology, we

dilute the meaning of what leading is.

And what a leader is.

I've looked at who are great unifiers.

Churchill is one.

But Churchill only while there was a war.

There's certain attributes of certain leaders that fit with certain contexts.

When there's a war, you want someone who's quite dogmatic,

quite strong like Churchill.

Recently I've just been listening to a book about De Gaulle because I don't know

if you know the, the story of De Gaulle, I didn't realize until quite recently,

but France agreed peace with Germany.

They were signing an arm armistice.

And De Gaulle was a lowly general.

He'd had some encounters with Churchill and Churchill respected him, and Churchill

put him on the BBC and De Gaulle said, no.

There is a France.

And what's happening in France.

Agreeing peace with them is wrong.

All those that see themselves as French come to me.

And that was the resistance.

There was a number of resistance, but I was hoping that de Gaulle would

have all the qualities that you think a unifier would have, you know, like

he'd build these relationships, he'd treat people well, he'd lead the moral,

you know, he was just an arrogant ass.

He was like, I am France.

You can't disagree with me because I am France.

But again, like Churchill, he was kicked out soon after.

He was a wartime prime minister, president doesn't always fit with, with peacetime.

So I think.

there is an element of the right leader for the right situation.

The fact that you just mentioned somebody there who clearly

not a nice person, not a person that you would envy being, let's say.

And I think of somebody like Gandhi, he was not a wartime leader, but he

certainly unified his people, but apparently was not a very nice person

at all, certainly not to his, his wife.

The reason I, I disagree with you, Tony, actually, I wasn't taking

issue with what you was saying and I apologize if it came across that

way, my point was, I can't agree with this, this idea of getting permission

from the people that you're leading.

Because that assumes that the people that you're leading are rational

human beings, and there's no such thing as a rational human being.

We like to think that we are, but I would argue even all of the decisions

that we make, tend to be made apropos whatever situation we find

ourselves in and then justified later.

There are scientific studies that show we make decisions not necessarily based

on emotion, but certainly instinctive reactions to situations that we make.

And then we rationalize them afterwards.

And when I, when I say that there's no such thing as a

rational human being, that's not to criticize the entire human race.

It's just a fallacy to think that we are able to make these rational decisions

in any given moment which is why, whilst it is the best form of government that

we have around at the moment, democracy has some serious flaws because you're

giving the power of the vote to some people with some very questionable

perspectives on life, from all spectrums of the political demographic.

It is the only way that we've found so far that works, but to give everybody

the opportunity to have an equal say in what gets done has some drawbacks.

And this idea that a leader can only lead with the permission And

that speaks directly to this analogy that I mentioned about Moses.

It's not what I'm saying though, Clark, just to be clear, if

I've been designated role of leader.

I've got some formal authority.

It's like you vote a politician.

The majority of people vote Keir Starmer in because they had

the choice of two effectively.

So they went with him.

They voted for the agenda, they voted for what the promise was.

And then of course, weeks later, months later, things don't quite

seem the same as what they were.

Now people have lost confidence.

Okay, so he's in, he was the leader of the opposition.

He won the prime minister's seat from a position of authority, now

has got the ultimate authority.

The ultimate position of power and now people may not give him

permission to lead them anymore.

They may change their vote at some point down the track.

What I'm alluding to is if I'm not got the position of formal authority,

so we have to grow new capacity in a new way together as a collective.

If it's Rob yourself and I are going to go on some quest together, and we're

not sure who's going to take charge, for example, at some point, as we look

into each other for to find this new way of doing what it is that we might

be doing, then one of us may suddenly assume to take the lead, let's say.

It's almost a prerequisite that the other two of us will think that that's okay.

Yeah, I think this is great.

We think Clark can lead us through this.

There's still more work to be ironed out as to who's going

to lead us to this next thing.

There's some informal authority that can be built that where people will

give the non designated leader some, some permission to take them somewhere.

Exactly right.

And that I, that was the point I was going to make.

I agree with you in that regard.

When we talk about permission, my point was simply that in any given

situation, let's say for instance, there's 20 people in a room and suddenly

there's a bang and there's a commotion outside, nine times out of ten people

will look at somebody for an answer.

That's the permission.

That's you tacitly giving permission.

Yes, exactly right.

So when I disagree with this idea of permission, my point was simply

that there are situations in which a person won't rationally hand over

authority to somebody, but under the right circumstances, they immediately

want somebody that they can turn to.

This is why I brought this subject up in the first place, because leadership

as a concept, certainly from my perspective, it seems to be being

framed these days by the followers, which I find profoundly interesting.

It's the people dancing around the golden calf that are telling

Moses how he should lead.

That implies that Moses needs their permission to lead them.

In actual fact, and I've proven this to groups of people in my work, because

you can create a situation in a work environment, certainly in a training

environment, and certainly amongst managers when, when they're talking

about this idea of leadership, when you present a challenge, And then you

just stand and look at them because they will all look back at you and say,

right, what do we do when you then say, I don't know what you're asking me for.

Then you start to understand how people automatically want to pass

on accountability for a situation, responsibility to somebody else.

And this is why the whole idea for me.

of leadership is such a problem that, to me, the idea of the followers or the

people following the leader describing what a leader should be is anathema.

It's ridiculous.

It's basically the football players telling the referee what

the rules of the game should be, and it's a complete nonsense.

There are situations in which in times of heightened stress when people will

basically do anything they're told because they don't know what to do and they will

hand over authority to somebody that seems to know what they're doing, but when there

is no stress around, everybody suddenly has to decide what Moses should be doing.

And we want to dance around this car, so you're clearly not leading us properly,

because we want to dance around this car.

This idea of permission, you know, we live in a country, for instance,

where the police, police the nation by consent, but where's the consent?

Most people are not happy with the way the police run, run the show these

days, but in the absence of any other alternative, people just go along with it.

For me, the way most leadership happens nowadays, at the moment, is that in

the absence of any better alternative, you know, oh, here's Stalman, okay,

nobody likes him, and you know, the bloke's got the charisma of a wet fish.

All right.

If we take the idea of formal and informal authority, if you've got

a police officer who's got the formal authority to apply the laws of the land.

The police officer who has the ability to build informal authority and trust

and engage and do it that way is always going to get more traction.

They can build more capacity between themselves and the community that

they're serving by growing trust in the way that they speak to people.

In the way that they manage themselves in the way that they uphold their integrity

and their all of those types of things.

A president who is able to not just rule the people because he's got the

job, but, but actually engages with the people, understands what they

want, and, and tries to work with them, for the betterment of everybody, is

always going to be revered more than the one that just assumes a position

of power and, and starts to do what they do for whatever reason they do it.

Because they're in service, aren't they?

We trust them to, to serve us.

Whether it's in our local constituency or it's all, all

the way to federal government.

We hope that they will do what they've told us they're going to do.

I think it's difficult when you look from permission and I

don't think it's about permission.

We don't need permission.

We need commitment.

Because if you're going to make a change, you need people to follow you.

And people are only going to follow you when they're committed to the idea.

It's not about getting their permission.

It's about getting their commitment.

I'm not a good follower.

I won't follow someone blindly.

I spent my whole school career school life rebelling because you

can't tell me where I'm going to be.

Yet.

If I trust someone, I trust someone's ethics, their integrity, and that they

know what they're doing more than me.

You know, when I see someone with a system or of something that I

want to learn, I'll learn that.

That's the permission.

You can be voted in from democracy, but mostly more than half of people haven't

voted for you, haven't voted you in.

So the key to get in change is getting people to commit to your ideas.

A prime minister actually, and even the president doesn't have a lot

of power because the checks and balances, they have to get voted and

ratified by the house of commons, the house of lords, the king eventually.

They can be stopped at a number of points.

Obama talked about how little he could do because everything he did was

blocked because he was a Democrat while it was a strong Republican Senate.

So it's about the ability to agree on a way forward.

In wartime and, and what I've realized from looking at these

leaders, De Gaulle was horrible.

He just didn't like people and he was like, I am France.

You can't disagree with me.

They tried to honor him.

And he said, how can you honor France?

Martin Luther King didn't need to be a great person and didn't need to have

great relationships because he has such and Empowering vision the same of Gandhi.

When you've got a great movement that everyone agrees in, like end slavery

civil rights Equal rights these kind of things you have such moral authority

that you don't need the relationships.

People might not like Martin Luther King, but they still

stand for the same thing on.

When you use the

example of us three

going off on a quest, we don't necessarily need a leader.

We need someone with an idea on each stage.

There's going to be different challenges.

It's the ability to have that discussion.

And I think when we, when we have these discussions, I don't think

there is a leader, but I think through sharing ideas and from what

we're doing is refining so that we may or may not come to an agreement.

My insight from, from conflict is that basically there's an agreement there, but

there's a lot of stuff that's in the way.

And I think when you look at personality conflicts, it's not the

personality that we conflict with.

It's the neurosis that people have dealt with to deal with

under stress that people react to.

Ultimately, you know, I sometimes look at you.

If you go back to the early caveman, there was a small group.

How did they agree things they didn't necessarily, you know,

generally there is a leader.

But sometimes it's just we agree to do something.

So there's a thing though, Rob, that's interesting when you mention the

vision there, the idea of having a vision that people follow, because if, for

instance, a leader had the vision that we're going to kill all the people we

don't like, for instance, Hitler, Stalin.

I was trying to skirt around actually saying it, but You know,

Kristallnacht and, and, and all the things that happened from, you know,

sort of 1933 onwards, it became fairly clear that here was a vision.

Here was an idea for the future of a country that was questionable at best,

downright evil, most people would say.

Yet, He led millions and millions of people, and so if the idea is a bad

one, does that make the leader, who's carrying out this vision, a good leader?

This is the point for me, of the followers framing what leadership is all about.

Because basically, that man was telling the people what they wanted to hear.

He was giving them a vision that they wanted.

It was stupid.

It was downright evil.

But nobody, and this goes back to our question of the football game.

The referee stands there, theoretically, and says to the players, Listen,

we all know the laws of the game.

You are going to try and break some of them.

But you don't want them broken against you.

So I'm going to uphold to the best of my ability, not just the letter

of the law, but the spirit of the law so that we can have a good game.

He is thereby for me, more of a leader than anybody else on the pitch, because

he's a leader on behalf of the spirit of the game, the principles of the game.

And, and I know that a lot of people might say, yeah, but

that's not what the game's about.

The game is about winning, but at what cost,?

If the referee, Clark, if the referee has had that dialogue, so if

the referee has pulled the captains together and, and, and said that,

I'll pull the teams together before.

Conceptually, everybody goes into that

game

knowing what the rules are.

Yeah, they do.

But they also know that every referee is different.

Oh, we've got this guy, he's a home banker.

We're going to get nothing.

You know, those discussions happen in every game.

Oh, we're going to get nothing out of this guy.

We always get bad Right, so all of those pre existing notions exist.

It's a brilliant analogy that you, that you make, if the referee pulls them

together before the game and says, look, and says exactly what you said, that's

leadership because he's trying to get two groups of factions who are going to

be in conflict for the next two hours.

He's trying to get them to at least go about it with a shared code of conduct,

and I know that the code of conduct exists, but already before they've

even started, they're coming at it, as we all do, through our own lens,

through our own perceptions, through our own experiences, all of that.

But I think his, he is demonstrating leadership if he says, this is how

we're going to do things today, guys.

Are you with me?

Then it's clear.

We've got a shared intention about how this game is going to be managed.

We're all

arguing in favour of each other.

We're all singing from the same hymn sheets.

Because this goes back to this idea of, of permission.

But also trust, as Rob says, and consent, because the point I'm trying to make about

we need to look at who the followers are.

Let's say, for instance, you've got a dozen people in a situation

and it's all going pear shaped.

And everybody's saying, what do we do?

And they look to somebody and they say, you're the one.

lead us out of this situation.

And that person then turns around to them and says, No, I'm not leading you.

You're not going to do what I say.

Why should I lead you?

And they say, Well, we've got nobody else.

At that point, the leader then says, and I'm talking metaphorically because I

think all leadership situations involve a level of this, where the person says,

if you want me to lead you, what are the parameters within which we should operate?

For instance, can I tell you what to eat, what to wear, what

names you should call each other?

No, of course not.

So what are the parameters?

We are trying to accomplish X. In pursuit of that goal, I want to quote

Rob, a certain amount of blind loyalty.

You may not know exactly why I'm doing something, but if you

question everything that I say, we're never going to get anywhere.

So to, within certain parameters, for instance, in the game of football,

within the rules and the spirit of the game, I expect you guys to, to listen

when I say that's not happening or we're going to be doing X, Y, and Z. Okay.

And it's not a matter of authority then, it's not a matter of formal authority or

permission or anything, it's basically, if you guys all agree that we need to

accomplish X, for instance, beat the Germans in this war, then I need you

guys to go along with, and that's my point, I need you to be good followers.

If you want me to be a good leader, then you need to be good followers, will it?

We'll agree what the terms of that arrangement is, but under that situation,

you then need to do, to do your part.

The problem that we find so often now is that the people dancing

around the golden calf, they're saying to Moses, no, no, no, no.

Hold on a minute.

We want to dance around this golden calf.

And Moses said, but that was not part of the agreement.

Well, we've changed the agreement.

Well, all right, pick your own flipping leader then.

Because we had an arrangement and now you're going against it.

This is the problem with leadership.

And one of the reasons that that particular referee had such a bad

game was because he personally didn't have the personal integrity to

stick by what he was supposed to be.

He was there to uphold the laws of the game, and he didn't

have the ability to do that.

If, for instance, we look at somebody like Tony Blair, who I detest beyond

measure, because he was so weak that he allowed another country to

persuade him to do something against the interests of his own people.

Then for me, he was going against the agreement that he'd

made with the British people.

He had said to them, I'm going to lead you as a country for the

interest of our country, not this other country who's bigger and

more powerful and got more money.

And I happen to like him and I want to be his mate.

I'm going to do a book tour when I, when I leave office.

He was working against the interests of his own people.

So he was working outside of that arrangement.

And in all leadership situations, there is a tacit agreement that the leader will

behave in a certain way and the followers will also behave in a certain way within

the parameters that they've agreed to.

Unfortunately, most people, and you look on LinkedIn, are all the people

that supposedly know what a leader is.

They, they haven't got a clue.

And the reason they haven't got a clue is because they, they are looking at it

from the perspective of the follower, who doesn't want to have any accountability

for their part in the arrangement.

And this is a problem that we have now with leadership.

I had this exact situation in a factory where I was told we were

making some change, I was told by the general manager, you can't do that.

You can't tell these guys to do X, Y, and Z. I said, but that is their job.

You know, I'm not even asking them to do something beyond their normal role.

I'm asking them to do their job.

It's as simple as that.

Ah, yeah, but the circumstances of this and the current climate

and COVID and da da da da.

Well, then don't pay them if they're not doing their job.

Or if you're going to pay them, expect them to play

their part in the arrangement.

You know, we, we talk about things like quite quitting and all that sort of stuff.

It's great to have these conversations about how people

feel about the current arrangement.

But at the end of the day, if you've entered into an agreement with a

leader, then be a bloody good follower.

End of rant.

You can talk about leadership and you can talk about all of these things, but

fundamentally it comes down to character.

It comes down to the clarity of your identity, of who you are, of

what you believe in, what you stand for, what your philosophy is, and

that I think sets the boundaries.

Where there is problems is where there is either a lack of character, lack

of those foundations, lack of a sense of identity and a sense of mission.

We can have all the qualities in the world though and be in a situation

that doesn't require leadership.

So the characteristics don't define the leader.

They certainly define the person and they certainly help to

build that informal authority.

They help to build trust.

People will trust that more implicitly because of those characteristics, but

in itself it doesn't define that we can meet the challenge that we're facing.

Like if I've got all those fantastic characteristics, but I've got is

an idea that's rubbish and I still want to go and do it regardless.

Then that doesn't make me a great leader.

It just means I'm a great bloke with no idea.

Isn't

that the idea?

Of course, it's important to have good character and sound character.

But in itself, it's not leadership.

It's different from that.

If you've got the character of integrity and you know, your idea isn't

working then you have the integrity to say, I'm not the right person for this.

So those characters is the self awareness of knowing when you're, when you can

contribute something and when you can't.

A good example of how leadership might is to look at a parent,

the responsibility of a parent.

I think one could reasonably say that a parent is a leader, mother or father.

And they both have slightly different roles, but there are

certainly overlapping for sure.

But as a parent, you are the leader of the kids, let's say, although there's

much more to it than that, because the family unit is, it's complex and

they're more involved than just a parent being in charge of the kids.

But let's just say as a parent, you could consider yourself the leader of that

family, in which case, would a parent ever have to do something or encourage or

instruct their children to do something that the kids might not want to do?

Well, yeah, all the flipping time.

And that's the point for me about leadership, because a leader

often has to get people to do things that they don't want to do.

And the question then comes down to, well, is it a good thing?

Is it the thing that benefits the unit, the family, the group as a whole?

In which case, the people being led would probably do well to ask themselves,

although I don't like it, is this for the betterment of us as a unit?

One of the problems, I see around me today is that, and you, you, you said

it, Rob, you're not a good follower.

Well, that's the problem.

In the world today, nobody's a good follower.

Everybody is an independent unit that won't be told what, what's

the best thing to do or the best way to go about doing something.

And yet, when we talked about Churchill, for instance, the, the country that he led

was a very different country to the one we, we, for me, I think the people in the

Second World War were a different breed.

They were, they, they were hardier than, as, as a group

of people than we are today.

I think that's fair to say, you know, many of them had grown up without shoes.

With almost no food the ideas around discipline were very different

then to what they are today.

Let's face it, most people probably got beaten on a fairly regular basis as kids.

So they were a different breed of people.

And yet that group of people who could quite easily say,

well, I'm not doing well.

I grew up in the first war.

I've, I've seen everything.

I'm tough.

Nobody's telling me what to do.

And yet.

You know, this nation of whatever it was back then, 30, 35, 40 million

people were a nation of good followers.

And to me, that's fascinating because we live in a world now.

Not just in this country, but predominantly, you know,

certainly Western parts of the world, where you have, let's be

kind, let's not call them soft.

They have more opportunities than, than have ever been available

in, in the history of the world.

And yet the average person is not particularly tough, doesn't need to be.

And yet they still say, no, I'm not.

Nobody's telling me what to do.

I'm not following anybody.

I have individual sovereignty over everything that I do.

You can't tell me what to do, but how can you lead those people?

They're telling the leaders how the leaders should be, and the leaders are

like, well, what, what should I do?

Shall I just do what you want?

Who agrees with parameters nowadays then?

So how a group of people should accomplish something.

I, I literally hear people at least once a day, usually several times a

day telling me how the world's going, down the creek without a paddle.

I don't think it is.

I think it's a great world.

I have enormous optimism because eventually at some point.

People will realize maybe we need to get our own shit together and stop telling

the leaders what they should be doing

and start being good followers.

I think you've nailed it there, Clark.

I think you've nailed it.

When you're in a team environment and you're the designated leader.

Let's say you've been given the position of manager, for example,

whether you can lead or not.

Is about to be defined in those moments.

So you've got a group of individuals who are looking blankly back at you as

you address them for the first time.

You're thinking, who are these people that I'm going to try and

pull together into this force.

I want to succeed on all these external goals that the business has set for

me, I want to be the guy that takes them to achieve what we want to

achieve, all of that sort of stuff.

Within it, you've got these people that you're talking about, that there's

immediate resistance to being led, there's self interest over collectivism,

individualism versus collective, all of those sorts of things are in play.

I think the leader defines themselves in those moments by finding the

capacity to bring that stuff together.

I think that's where leadership lives in those gaps between

the aspiration over here.

This is what we want to achieve together.

The reality is I'm standing there for the first time.

In front of you, rabble.

How the hell are we going to do this?

Because I've never led you before, you've never followed me before.

This is an almighty challenge.

For me, it's complex.

You're all complex.

You don't even know why you're doing half the things you're doing.

So, let's start talking about it.

Let's find a way forward so when we get up in the morning we can really enjoy

coming to this place and find some meaning in what it is that we're doing together.

Otherwise, back off and go somewhere else and, and, and go and take

your problems somewhere else.

I'll find somebody else who can do it.

That's the key.

That's the key.

I think they're in that.

There's their objective.

I've been tasked to take us there.

I don't have all the answers, but I'm not going to get there,

unless you lot come with me.

How are we going to do it?

I don't know.

Let's start talking.

Let's work it out.

Leadership lives in those gaps.

It's that conversation, whether that conversation

actually explicitly takes place.

Or whether it's just a tacit agreement amongst a group of people, according

to the laws that are already in place.

But that conversation is the key to what is or isn't leadership.

If, for instance, on Sunday, when Villapay West Ham, If the referee after 20 minutes

just walked off the pitch, I'm done.

I'm not doing this.

What would happen then?

Because he could turn around and say, hold on a minute.

There are rules and you're not following them.

I'm trying to enforce them.

And you guys are just arguing with me.

Play your own flipping game then, see how that works out.

And that conversation, what is it you expect from me?

And what is it then, in return, I should be able to expect from you?

Because if you say that you want me to be the leader, and I say

no, then what are you going to do?

You're going to pick somebody else.

Are they going to be qualified?

And are you going to have the same conversation?

Or is it basically just going to be a group of people saying, we

all want this, let's do this.

We all want to have Thursdays off, and we all want to sit around eating pizza.

Well, then you're going to fail.

Because you know, you, your purpose in life isn't to sit around eating pizza.

It's to accomplish something.

How is that gonna get accomplished if you are all sitting around

doing what you want to do?

So I'm gonna be the person if that's what you want to get us there.

But I expect X from you as well.

I need you guys to play your part.

This is the whole point of me being a miserable, chuntering,

grumbling person all morning, is this idea that the followers should

dictate what the leader should be.

Maybe if you guys are prepared to do your part, but, you know, what,

how often do you see on LinkedIn.

I'm a follower guru.

I, I can tell you how to be good subjects of your leader.

It doesn't happen, does it?

No, it's just all about the leader.

It's all on them.

Because then when it goes pear shaped, we can blame them.

Like they did to Moses.

I agree with where you're going.

And the point where I switched from thinking about conflict and

relationships to teams was the point where I realised that we have to unify.

We have a different world to say the second world war, but I

don't think people are different.

I think people are softer because the environment is softer.

But if people aren't following, you have to be a better leader, right?

So I'm a bad follower.

So there are 8 billion plus people in the world, right?

And we all have a different idea.

The idea that I'm a leader and you will do as you're told and you'll get behind me.

We've had centuries of these advertising campaigns are of don't be selfish.

Give up your self interest.

No one's going to do it.

It's biologically hardwired into us that we are selfish.

The reason that you have so much politics, the reason that there is so

much disengagement, the reason there is so much gossip, rumors, all of these things

that undermine teams is because if I see my self interest as doing something that

isn't for the team, I'm going to do that.

We can appeal to people to be more noble and whatever, but they aren't.

I realized people aren't good at joining together.

Traditionally there's been this whole thing of, okay, this is what we're doing.

The whole patriotism idea is based on your country matters more than you do.

And that may be if I agree with that.

For me, I'm not patriotic.

I believe where I was born was luck.

The idea of countries is someone made this whole idea of this is a nation.

This isn't a nation.

That changes all the time.

If I was born in Nazi Germany.

Okay do what's good for your country.

Well, i'm going to do something that's immoral and Leaders

should be held accountable that if they're doing something immoral.

People shouldn't follow them.

Because isn't that the way that you you stop having another holocaust.

Who decides what's moral though, mate?

We agree to something So this is, this is the thing that if you feel that

something's immoral, do you still do it?

If you, so there are hundreds of companies, pharmaceutical companies,

food companies, tobacco companies, oil companies, all of these people.

doing things that most people would say were immoral if they were transparent.

And yet people are going along with them.

And I think if you feel that something's immoral, I don't

think that you should do it.

So that's the key, I think, Rob.

What you just said there about the, the, the idea of being patriotic towards

a country because people follow this, this incorrect idea that the country

is more important than the individual.

I would say anthropologically speaking, the country is more

important than the individual because the tribe has to continue, whereas

the individual need not continue.

If we go back in history and, and forget countries because they're an

artificial construct, but groups of people have always gathered together

throughout history for the collective protection of the entire group.

And it's always been accepted for obvious reasons that the individual must

be sacrificed, if necessary, for the good of the continuance of the tribe.

It makes sense, because if we all just look after ourselves, then we're all

going to be gone within 50, 60, 70 years.

So the idea that the tribe is more important than the individual

has some basis in logic.

However, as you've just said, you, you can't decide which tribe you're born into.

So the idea that certain members within the tribe might be promoting

questionable ideals or practices, they have to be able to, and this is

probably one of the, the most important parts of leadership, have to be able

to, to be entered into a conversation.

We have to be able to say, I don't agree with this.

And the problem is, this does go back to this idea, and there's

a reason why I'm such a massive advocate of the idea of the 10th man.

Because somebody has to raise the question, hold on a minute, whoa, Jews?

Well, why all of a sudden have we just decided we're going to kill all the Jews?

Where did this come from?

Whose idea was this?

What have they done?

Somebody has to ask those difficult questions.

And then if you look at a tribe, you know, throughout history,

probably the average tribe was no bigger than a few hundred people.

They had elders who were considered wise by virtue of the experience that

they've gathered throughout the years.

That group of elders would probably make decisions by committee, although there

would be a chief, generally speaking.

But that person, and this is why I've always considered myself

much to most people's disbelief.

something of a monarchist, simply because that person lives their

entire life learning how to best serve the interests of the country.

Supposedly, theoretically, that's the idea.

It's a little bit like how on the battlefield, armies will have a standard.

In the middle of the battlefield because it's the thing around

which the rest of the troops can rally when things are going bad.

That's the thing that they look at.

If it's still there, if it's not fallen, we've still got a chance.

And that's, to me is the point of a figurehead within a, within a country.

The point that you make though is an important one.

That that person, whoever that person is.

has to be able to answer questions directed at them regarding

the path that they're taking.

And one of the problems that we find I keep hearing people talk about far right

activists around, you know, the news, the media talk about far right activists

and how terrible it is to be far right.

And I keep thinking, are there any far left activists?

Well, what are they doing?

If there's one extreme, there must be another extreme.

Why, why is nobody talking about, about these guys?

The thing is, throughout history, we talk about Hitler, but he killed

far fewer people than Stalin.

You know, I think it was 9 million versus 20 million, 20 million people killed,

and they were mostly his own people.

And the problem in all of these situations, and we look around that you

talk about people like Hitler and Stalin and Mussolini and Mao Tse Tong and, you

know, look at some of the leaders around the world without naming them now, because

I don't want to be killed in my sleep, but, you look at some of these people and

the problem with, with their leadership is that their methods cannot be questioned.

Nobody can question what, and you just said about Charles de Gaulle, I'm France,

everything that I want to do is right.

Well, as far as I know, nobody is right all the time.

So how can an imperfect, flawed person assume and ask all of their followers to

assume that they can't make a mistake?

Somebody has to be the court jester.

Somebody has to be the person that points out the emperor's And you close

and this is this is one of the problems with the idea of the follow up leadership

relationship, because as long as the followers are getting what they want.

And the leaders saying the things that the followers want to hear,

everybody's happy, even if they're all running over the edge of a cliff.

The idea of the 10th man is the person that says, hold on,

you're wrong and you're wrong.

You're flipping wrong.

You literally all and there's millions of you and you're all

going in the wrong direction.

We look at America at the moment.

There were two candidates for the rulership of the biggest, most powerful

country that the world has ever seen.

And they're both morons!

How does that happen?

How on earth does that happen?

I don't, I don't want to insult either of them.

They clearly are intelligent people.

However, I don't think they should be in charge of the most powerful

country in the world, either of them.

How does that happen?

Because basically that person got there by telling all the followers

what the followers wanted to hear.

Well, that's clearly not going to work, is it?

It's not for the betterment of humanity, it doesn't seem to me.

I agree with that and, and when I said that the leader needs to be better,

what I mean is and this is where the, the 10th man and the idea of the unifier are

the opposite ends of the same concept.

For the followers to follow, they have to have something that's better.

We all need something.

We all need the tribe.

We all need the family.

We all need ultimately some kind of connection to the whole world so that

the universe is bigger than than we are.

What people crave are things that they can get.

But what really makes people happy, what really satisfies people is what they give.

Deep down people really want to contribute.

What I learned from conflict is that say you've got a couple and they're

fighting for their marriage or whatever.

And they're both fighting for their idea of what their marriage can be.

Neither of them has the full truth.

And this is where the 10th man comes in because the 10th man can pick apart

what's true from what's false, but there is the seed of truth in both of them.

What needs to happen?

This is what leadership needs to be is you need to take those two

contrasting ideas and through the friction, find what's true, what's not.

Then you have to raise to a higher level of thinking.

It's like Einstein said that every problem is solved at a higher level of thinking.

When I say the leader needs to be better, I mean, it's not necessarily

leader, but the idea that we get behind.

And then the idea that we get behind doesn't need to come from

the leader, but the leader needs to be the one that facilitates the

conversation, gathers the idea and ultimately has to get behind them.

What people will give up for is when say someone is patriotic and

they really believe in the country.

And I Take your point that if you go back to Braveheart or the

spartans or anything like that.

It was a real belief and this is our way of life.

This is what i'll give my life for.

When we have that idea And now I think that is what on a smaller notion is

that leaders and companies need to do is, okay, what do you come to work for?

You come to work for money, but what else?

What is it that you want?

What is it that you want to give to the world?

When we can get that idea and we encapsulate all of those ideas,

we can come up with a mini vision and that's what people get behind.

Not the leader, but the vision, and then where it can be helped.

That's what the commitment that you need to hold people accountable.

Yeah, what does it look like?

That's the, that's the question that you need to ask, right?

I'm just going to take you back, Rob, to the last bit that you spoke

about prior to Clark speaking, which was this moral compass idea, right?

So you work in, in a cigarette factory and you know that

cigarettes can kill people, right?

Every day you're going to work with this on your conscience.

Now you've got two choices.

You can stop doing it or live with the fact that you're

not living true to yourself.

Now that comes at a cost, right?

So lots of people don't have that choice.

to say, well, I'm just going to quit work because it's not

in line with my core values.

But it might not be easy to go and get a job somewhere else.

I've got a family to feed and those crises of conscience weigh heavily on people.

So they're doing something day after day after day.

That's inside themselves.

They're at war because they know it's not right.

And it's playing out in all sorts of ways, both inside and outside of work.

I'm sort of disengaged at work, but outside of work, I'm just carrying this

burden around that I wish I wasn't, but I don't feel like I've got a choice.

It's a whole different conversation.

We've talked about ethics and all of that sort of stuff today, the, the consequences

of following people even when we know it's maybe not the right thing to do.

So who are we then?

I think that's a great point.

Because the consequence of doing it, the cost to me for living, not true

to myself, not in an authentic way.

I carry that burden, right?

And it happens all, all the time.

That was the thing I picked up.

I just wanted to, Maybe feed that into another conversation.

What can we do about that?

You sort of followed a train of thought that I was having in my mind when

Rob was speaking this idea of a vision.

people will get behind an idea.

And whilst, as you say, most people are selfish, very often the most

selfish thing you can do is be selfless and work towards the benefit of

the group because then you benefit.

If you can imagine a tribe, let's say in prehistoric Britain.

There's let's say, 50, 000 people in the entire country.

And there's tribes of 200 people dotted all around the place.

Whilst occasionally they may come into conflict with each other, by and large,

most people's memories are of a time when things were good, when there was plenty

of food, when the weather wasn't so bad.

When there was no illness around and that then establishes for that group of

people, a vision of what good looks like.

This is what we want all the time.

Later on, for instance, as society grew and people came into more conflict,

those various tribes with their various visions could say to each other, look,

we keep fighting and killing each other, but it's to the detriment of both of us.

Why don't we come to some sort of accord where as a group of tribes, somebody

is in charge of all those tribes and says, listen, I will be the arbiter of

all of the disagreements between you.

We will become a country, but you guys can still be your own tribes as

long as you don't kill each other.

That then is offering a vision of what life might be like under that set of

circumstances where everybody realizes that the best way to get along is for

everybody to play their part in this bigger picture, this bigger vision.

And then if you, if you propel that forward into the future and say, well,

hold on a minute, That's all anybody wants is to live in peace, right?

So surely the leaders of the countries can come to some sort of agreement

where they say, hold on a minute, let's stop killing each other, right?

Let's stop bombing each other so we can stop making bombs, so we can put that

money into education and into agriculture.

Why hasn't that happened?

The only conclusion I can come to is that a lot of people don't want it to

happen because people make guns and bombs and vaccines and poisons and medicines.

So we can't seem to come to a situation where the mass of followers are finding

themselves a leader with a vision.

I mean, this is what's happening in America at the moment.

The Americans have found they believe a leader who is going to be acting

and he seems to be certainly trying to act in their best interests,

which makes sense as a leader, right?

And maybe then over time, you could start to get leaders with a similar

sort of common sense approach.

Encouraging each other to be to be more cooperative.

Maybe that that would end up with a vision because all anybody

wants is a world of peace.

Right?

And the only way to achieve that then is to stop those that are working against

the interests of the rest of the group from doing the things that they do.

So it means imposing some sort group wishes or the group's desires onto the

ones that want to be totally selfish.

My final point, Rob, is basically saying, no, you can't be an individual.

You have to be patriotic.

You have to be for the group and the problem we have today

is that nobody wants to do that.

But at the end of the day, that can be the only way that you achieve

the vision that most people want.

A lot of the reason for this destructiveness of wars

and whatever is bad leadership.

Someone says, okay, I can gain and I can lead people astray.

Donald Trump is looking after his own, but he's at a cost that

putting them at war with others.

So I'm going to steal Greenland.

I'm going to take this, I'm going to take that which is isolating them.

And I think.

It's bad leadership.

Like Tony said that, that people don't agree with it as a cost.

And I think that's where the burnout comes.

And I think it's bad leadership that creates more wars because

someone says, Oh, this is a better way and it's better for some.

There's gullible followers and this is probably a conversation

for another time, but somewhere we need to work out that process.

So followers are less gullible and, and self interested leaders don't

have as much influence as they have.

But the problem may not be the leaders, Rob, it may be the fact that

all of the followers want to do their own thing, because at some point,

we all have to sacrifice our desires for the benefit of the greater good.

And if nobody wants to do that, it's never going to happen.