This picture is doing its rounds on the internet in an attempt to demonstrate the difference between the Boss and a Leader. The setting of the cartoon appears to be in ancient Egypt and shows two different teams that are busy with the building of the Pyramids. Obviously some artistic freedom is exercised to hint towards modern life as I am pretty sure the ancient slave masters did not sit in a 20th century office chair.
Picture 1 depicts the authoritarian boss directing the hard working employees to pull harder. In the 2nd picture the boss gets of his chair and joins the team and leads from the front. Most of us recognise the difference between the guy who demands a lot of work that he is not prepared to pull some weight himself and uses a “whip” to get the job done. We also recognise and appreciate the boss who rolls up his sleeves and jumps in to help. This is the typical mainstream understanding of leadership and management. Management is about planning, organising and controlling. The job of the Leader is getting the team to pull together to achieve the organisational goals.
Despite the prevalence of these different types of leading and managing in our modern workplace, the majority of modern employees it is said are still disengaged. The Gallup institute quotes an engagement figure as low as 13% of employees worldwide.
A possible explanation could lie in the fact that in both pictures the work performed by the team is done in aid of the aggrandizement of the Pharaoh. In modern times the intent of the typical organisation is the aggrandizement of the shareholder. The thematic states “If the benevolent intent of the group is not worthy of the suspension of self-interest then it cannot seek to mobilise unconditional behaviour”(ES). While it is not incorrect to have a selfish goal for your organisations (it is after all a free economy) the implications are that you should not expect unconditional behaviour a.k.a. employees who go the extra mile, have the organisations goals at heart and are fully engaged. This insight does then hint at an explanation of what is happening to the engagement statistics, or does it?
So before we become victims of our circumstances in Egypt, we have to also recognize that there is always the possibility of personal growth regardless of the setting. The intent of the Pharaoh is not your intent. The system you live in does not define you. We also cannot judge the organization’s “intent” while your own intent is not pure. Paradoxically if it was, you could not complain about it, because you would know that the intent of the other is no business of yours. Our malaise about the state of the world is that we subconsciously recognise our own flawed intent in the intent of the other. “The world we experience is a reflection of the register of our own internal dialogue.” (ES)
Ultimately there is only control over the self. The answer to the question of why disengagement is so prevalent is more likely that modern man does not deliberately seek to understand himself and address the nature of his internal dialogue. The modern working man therefore cannot see things as they are.
If you saw things as they are you would understand that you can find happiness and fulfilment in “Egypt”, because that is function of your intent. By not seeing things as they are you are colluding towards your own unhappiness. This is the way of the victim and the immature.
The marble blocks that life throws at you, is your gift to hone your maturity, intent (your job is to recognise it as such) and skills so that when Moses (opportunity) arrives you are ready for a journey to the Promised Land.
This realisation does however, propose a different dilemma. Does this mean employees need to leave Egypt in search of the Promised Land? The “obvious” solution to the problem would to leave the security of life in Egypt (kospotte van Egipte) and seek a livelihood elsewhere, free but at risk of going hungry.
Now I am pretty sure there were Slave masters in Egypt that were much more successful that others that only used whips as motivation. There must have been slave masters that would have attempted to perform their task with more compassion and less brutality as their compatriots.
Seen from the slaves point of view, a commitment to performing their work well as what the moment allowed is all that they could do. Doing a shoddy job would not have helped the circumstances.
What it could do is that their physical strength and positive attitude must have helped them during their eventual journey to the Promised Land. They could not have known that Moses was soon to be sent by God to lead them. You also do not know when a modern day Moses might turn up and create a journey for you that required focus, skill and a positive attitude. You cannot know this. A lot of the Israelites died before the eventual exodus. They were approximately 400 years in captivity. The point that wants to make is that freedom is about choice.