Time to be a bastard?

Two days ago, I read an article that seemed to give me an important tip on how to be a good manager. The article was the latest management column by Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times.

Those of you who want to read the whole column, should go here. For the rest, let me summarize it in one sentence: good managers should be bastards. Actually, that’s not fair. Kellaway doesn’t use the word “bastard” anywhere in her column. The word she uses is “insensitive”.

Kellaway reports on Jon Moulton, a financial manager who had listed his three most important characteristics as determination, curiosity and insensitivity. Kellaway found the first two a bit boring (or “ho-hum” as she put it), but described “insensitivity” as “the single most sensible word that I’d seen on the flabby subject of leadership in at least a decade”.

Kellaway suggests that, “insensitivity is essential to survival in business” and puts together this bit of reasoning: “CEOs must sleep. Insensitivity is vital for sleep. Therefore, CEOs should be insensitive”.

Kellaway doesn’t deny that sympathy and other “emotionally intelligent” feelings can be useful at times for managers. But being sensitive, she argues, can prevent you taking the necessary action and cause you sleepness nights after you have.

I regard this as utter nonsense, as I do most pieces of generic advice. First, let’s deal with the issue of sleep. I know plenty of people in responsible positions who, for many different reasons, have problems sleeping at times. I’ve had them myself.

Of course, long periods without sleep can cause many negative reactions, including irritability, concentration problems and the inability to take decisions. But I’m not convinced that the odd sleepless night, during which a manager chews over the pros and cons of difficult decisions — including being sensitive to the human consequences — ever did anyone any harm.

Managers might like to think that insensitivity to human consequences makes for better decisions, in order to justify their actions. But that doesn’t mean it’s true. Where is the scientific evidence? Without that evidence, this is just another simplified management bullshit theory — the sort that Kellaway spends most of her time attacking.

The most bizarre part of Kellaway’s argument relates to the fact that few women make it to the top of management. This shows, she argues, that emotional intelligence, which women allegedly have bucket loads of, is a disadvantage when it comes to a management career.

What clichéd drivel! Come on Lucy, you can do better than that. But at least you provoked a reaction — and not only from me, no doubt.