Hero leaders aren’t as central to navigating complexity as we think. Which raises interesting questions about how to achieve social and organisational change...
The take-over of Sandton traffic direction duties by the indigent was one of many strange scenes to pock-mark South Africa’s winter of rolling blackouts. At several of the biggest two and three lane intersections in the country (generally around the Fourways area) a mix of beggars, car guards and street entrepreneurs were in the middle of it all, telling motorists when to start, when to stop, when to go.
Sandton is one of the wealthiest few square kilometres in Africa, and the bulk of its drivers function entirely within air conditioned bubbles. Hustling at its intersections thus demands unusually high performance levels, relative to the Jozi norm. A year or two ago jugglers dominated traffic intersections, and in 2021 and 2022 the trend has been pantsula dancing. Regardless, most motorists remain uninterested. And yet, the same seemingly cauterised souls have followed the flow guidance offered by Sandton’s street community during blackouts exactly as they would a traffic officer’s.
Fuel vs Friction
Sandton’s curious blackout intersection scenes make me think of the organizational psychologist Loran Nordgren, who focuses in his work on the difference between ‘fuel’ and ‘friction’ when it comes to influencing group behaviour.
Nordgren describes the classic ‘fuel’ approach to team motivation, where a leader throws more gas on the fire by articulating grand, compelling ideas, and inspiring the troops along the way. The fuel mind-set dominates organisational culture, and has for decades. We thus accept without too much thought the ubiquitous presence of leaders asking more of the team, cajoling and exhorting with a battery of carrots and sticks.
But Nordgren’s work, which studies how we behave in the real world, questions whether adding more fuel is the best way to improve team performance or influence group behaviour. His research suggests that reducing the practical friction people experience in their work and / or social interactions is a more effective approach. The point is subtle, but important. Most of us are already sufficiently motivated. And our actions say that what we value most of all is a way to do what we need to without having to expend too much intellectual, emotional or social energy.
Simply put, smooth-out the path people are travelling, and their performance levels jump. A smoother practical experience is also likely to accelerate desired changes in group behaviour.
Less resistance is powerfully motivating
According to ‘fuel’ thinking, the scenario playing out at Sandton intersections is impossible. Not only do indigent traffic marshals lack the required technical skills, they also don’t have the social authority necessary to ensure a single brick-faced Porsche driver will obey them. Conventional wisdom says the only way members of the Sandton street community could do what they do during blackouts would be for them to receive extensive training and ‘upskilling’. For them to be led, in other words.
And yet here we are. And there is a simple explanation. For most motorists, ignoring someone standing in the middle of a dead-light intersection and waving their arms in a directional fashion is much harder than simply flowing with what everyone else is doing. Once other vehicles are following the stop / go instructions, to reject the same instructions creates immediate friction, whereas to submit reduces the same friction levels.
Viewed from this lens, Sandton’s intersection weirdness is simply an instinctive following of the path of least resistance. And the weirdness isn’t that weird, really. Most of us simply want to get through life with as little stress as possible.
The most effective future leaders might be pragmatists
For those aspiring to leadership, there is a clear lesson here. Give a team a leader who removes the friction from their lives, and you will steadily win loyalty. Give them a visionary boss desperate to lead them into battle and you’re probably unlikely to earn more than half a jaundiced ear. Of course, this doesn’t jibe very well with the current global resonance of bombastic populist leaders (corporate and government), which illustrates, yet again, the fascinatingly wide gulf between what we think, how we vote, and how we actually function in the day-to-day.
Another more nuanced point also emerges. We tend to orientate our view of ‘how things work’ at an organisation, or in a social setting, around hierarchy. So, a company culture consultant will spend hours, weeks or months working with the C-Suite and their immediate underlings to ‘audit’ the team and understand how it functions. But this approach risks missing many deeper dynamics. An equally valid way to understand an organisation’s culture is to interact with the security guard, the receptionist and the cleaners. Ten minutes of back and forth with the people who run the ship in a practical sense will generally tell you as much, or more, about organisational health as a consulting process. In my experience, such conversations are very effective in casting light on who might actually steady that ship in times of crisis.
Nonetheless, the hero leader trope is one of the most deeply rooted narratives of all, and we still respond powerfully, and highly instinctively, to the idea of either leading, or being led. It will surely take many more power cuts before we accept the fact that in socially fraught times it is often those with the ability to just get through who offer the most value.
Links
South Africa’s load-shedding traffic heroes
Work 2.0: The Obstacles You Don’t See
The Human Element: Overcoming the Resistance That Awaits New Ideas by Loran Nordgren