Exploring the Consequences of Prolonged Leadership

What happens when leaders stay in power for too long? Join me, Nico Van de Venne, as we unravel the profound impacts of prolonged leadership in both politics and the business world. Taking inspiration from a compelling LinkedIn post by Geert de Grande on Bart de Wever’s extended political tenure in Belgium, we venture into the often-overlooked consequences of long-term authority. From "founderitis" to "CEO disease," discover how continuous power can lead to hubris syndrome, affecting decision-making and organizational health. You'll learn how unchecked confidence can morph into recklessness and how this dynamic can ripple through entire companies.

In this episode of the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast, we dive deep into a study from Kellogg, Northern, revealing how leaders who are constantly hyped up may become dangerously self-oriented. We discuss the pitfalls of prolonged leadership, such as micromanagement, overconfidence, and resistance to change, which can result in burnout or depression for leaders and their teams. Emphasizing responsible leadership, I advocate valuing the expertise and opinions of team members to foster a more inclusive and collaborative environment. Tune in to uncover strategies to balance power and responsibility, ensuring a healthier and more productive workplace.

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:04 The Impact of Long-Term Power
• 5:37 The Pitfalls of Prolonged Leadership

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds, you just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within, opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment out of your business and life. And today's episode. I'm your host, nico van de Venne, confidant to successful CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with today's subject on power.

Speaker 1: 0:56

This past week, I had a very interesting comment or a post that was shown on LinkedIn by somebody that I've been following for quite a while. He's a writer, journalist and he is working for ReStory. His name is Geert de Grande, d-e-g-r-a-n-d-e, and he was talking about the elections, and I know that there's plenty of elections going around, not only where I live, in Belgium, where the political landscape is already very challenging. I know there's elections going on in the US and things have kind of stirred up over there, but what I found very interesting about what he was writing is one of our political leaders, bart de Wever, has been in office for quite a while he's been the party head for almost 20 years and he's been the mayor of Antwerp for 12 years. And the question he was asking is how does this affect this form of power? Because if you have an idea of how Belgium is created, or split it up, or exists, exists, or whatever we can call it political wise, we have three different languages, which means that we have three different governments, or the languages alone, and they have a separate institution for the capital, brussels, the two country zones, flemish and French, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, it, french, etc. Etc, etc. It's a completely crazy in my mind. It's a crazy environment of too many politics and too many well, let's not go.

Speaker 1: 3:01

There was his idea of asking that one question of what kind of influence does this have, the power and the continuous power that has been with this person for so long? I take up this person now, for instance, Bart Vever, but I was asking myself the same question when I read the post how many founders end up in a position where they've been running a company for so many years that they come up to a point that this might be a negative impact on their existence within the company? And, as most of you know, I use the terms founderitis and CEO disease as terminologies to indicate that leaders who are successful might be one of the reasons why sometimes their company stagnates or why employees leave or why there is dissatisfaction with their leadership. And one of these things does come up with founderitis, and it comes down to another symptom called hubris syndrome, which is hubris syndrome for lack of a better word is a form of self-confidence that can afflict a leader in a way that they become reckless or irrational iners, or used to their position that they think they know best and I'm not saying they don't. Sometimes it's true that if you've been in a position for so many years, that you have a very good view of what's the best for your company, but there is something that becomes hidden from somebody who has hubris too much hubris, because hubris in itself has an advantage as well. You know, it's a form of self-confidence coming from success, um. But the problem is when it goes over to becoming irrational decision making, um, that is solely driven by by the idea that you're invincible or superior.

Speaker 1: 5:37

So I was doing some research on this and I came up with, of course I I called in my beautiful friend Luna, who's also a team member and is my AI assistant and I asked the question tell me about founderitis and hubris syndrome, and I got a very beautiful um outcome of that research that helps me consider what's going on in either political environments or company environments. So I went. I went a little bit further um based on on here's post, and what I found um was a study from from kellogg, northern, where they had set up a test with some people who were on one side telling so they were going to tell them that they have a certain power level, so they were a leader or something um who become really in in groined in that role. So they were kind of hyping up uh, that person and on the other hand, they were just leaving other people. So the other other test group, um as, yeah, normal employees, let's say so, people that were not hyped up, they were just left in their own position and what came out of it was they wanted to see what the effect was of the hyping up and they asked the persons the different groups, two different groups to write the letter E on their forehead and something amazing happened because I was really astonished when I read this.

Speaker 1: 7:36

So the people that were hyped up and in a sense, became self-oriented wrote the E as if they could read it themselves. So they were writing it like you would write it on a piece of paper on their forehead. So if you would take it away from the forehead, they would able were be able to read it as a normal e. You know capital e and the other group of people who were not hyped up, who were in the group and discussing things. They were asked the same questions and they wrote the E in the reverse sense. So they wrote it as if you would stand in front of a person. You would read it, you would be able to see the E as a normal E written down, be able to see the E as a normal E written down. And what came out of this test was that the people who wrote it so they can read it themselves when they took it away from their forehead, were self-oriented. So they continued a little bit with questioning and so on. So they were self-oriented and the people who were tested in the group and not hyped up were other oriented.

Speaker 1: 8:49

So it came down to becoming a form of selfish uh, into and and, well, selfish and and non-selfish, and I found that that was an amazing test. I was thinking of how could could you hype up a person so much or well, it could be externally, but internally as well and get them to the point where they get this hubris syndrome becoming self-oriented? And, yeah, it was interesting to understand what power can do with somebody. So, yeah, I continued to research a little bit. It was interesting to understand what power can do with somebody. So, yeah, I continued to research a little bit and looking at founderities and looking at those terms, and then hubris counteract these symptoms or this attitude is making the person that is in the leadership role a lot more responsible for their decisions, so that they feel the impact of what's going on.

Speaker 1: 9:58

And many founders who've gone to grow their company to a certain size have become distant from their employees or the ideas of others, so that they have come to a point where they're taking decisions that have impact on the total company and who might even have a negative impact on the total company. So that was something that I found extremely interesting. Being a founder myself and being in a successful position, many times I've noticed that, come to think of it, I made decisions sometimes that might have had impact on maybe people that I work with, customers even that might not have come out very positive, let's say, um. So it's something to be very aware of how long-term power in a certain position can influence your decision making, and it's probably not only decision making, but there's a lot of other levels that could create an impact.

Speaker 1: 11:08

Because I think if you look at Founderitis by itself, one of the major symptoms that comes out of that is becoming a control freak, your resistance to change, becoming a micromanager, becoming overconfident, becoming a micromanager becoming overconfident and this does not end or bode well for the founder, because at some point you become so ingroined with all these details and all these different things that are changing but you're resisting them, and so on, that you come to a point where the pure burnout or even worse depression or anything like that could come to a point where the pure burnout or even worse depression or anything like that could come up, and that does not have a very good influence on your company. So that's one of the reasons that I really love working with founders who've come to a point that they realize like, say, for instance, that you see a lot of people leaving your company or you get a lot of resistance from your employees when you take a decision because you didn't really listen to their point of view or their input. And when you're in a leadership role, you are not there to just take decisions. It's not because you own the company and you're master and controller that you just should do whatever you want, because you're working with a group of people that has each individually their expertise. And it is something very interesting if you activate people in their best position, in their best expertise, let's say and then go from there and do the leadership from that point of view. So not just saying you know I'm taking decisions, people just have to listen to me. No, it's turning this whole thing around and taking the time to listen to their opinions and their expertise.

Speaker 1: 13:10

I've mentioned this before in other episodes, where I sometimes say I'm the dumbest person in the room, and I am not. Of course. I'm not the dumbest person in the room. I'm well aware of what's going on and what the different steps are that are being done by the people I work with, what the different steps are that are being done by the people I work with. But it's a way of saying this is an open space. Tell me what you think we should do or what's your point of view of our next actions, and I think that's very important for not only becoming a good leader, but also letting go of some of this micromanagement and the control freak, because it limits your possibilities.

Speaker 1: 13:51

It comes down to leaving everything as it is, with the people that know what they're doing, and then, when you get enough information, you're still at the end of the line making the decisions, but the decisions are made with influence from others and they will feel much more fulfilled and much more engaged in your business. So if you just you're the only one taking decisions, you're taking away their opportunity to learn on how your company, between brackets, could run in your mind or potentially In a better way. You're learning how your company should be run by your experts, by understanding their expertise and point of view, when they are sometimes even closer to your customers, and where you learn from their expertise and then make better decisions, which improves your business and gets your product or service or whatever closer to your customer, because the experts have told you what your customer wants. Because one of the things that I've noticed in all the years that I've been in business the further away you become from your customer, the less you understand what they really need. The less you become attached or understanding of their position or their situation, the less that your business will grow. You just are so disconnected from the true question that your customer has put out there. So come to think of the whole story here.

Speaker 1: 15:40

If you're in power for such a long time, be aware that founder read is something that really could impact your business on a lot of different levels. And it's not, there's no fault here, there's no finger pointing or anything like that. This is just a point where you have to become aware of what the impact could be. If you stick to the same story from your own point of view the whole time, you will not get things to change in advantage for either the growth of your company or the growth of your customers, which automatically creates revenue and growth and success etc. Now that's accolade-oriented and money, financially and success-oriented. If you would change this completely into a point where you become a leader as a founder who listens to their employees and gives the employees the power to make their own decisions because they've learned about how you look at the future of your company, where you want to go with the story and so on, you yourself can be a little bit more disconnected from the day-to-day operational flow of your company and you can start orienting yourself to the pure essence, what you really love doing and what really gives you fulfillment. It's a completely different story, it's a completely different lifestyle, because you've been doing this so long, so many years. You've been in this founder position and you've been the one that's driving the company and you've employed all these people and they've all joined in on the meetings and all the discussions and so on, so they have become aware of what your idea as a founder is, on where you want to go with your company. Idea as a founder is on where you want to go with your company.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Don't, you know, step into the trap of becoming this control, micromanagement, resistant to change, um overconfident person that, at some point, is doing things that is no longer your passion, because you, you kind of roll into this role. You become, as first you start your company, with a passion for doing something specific. You love doing something specific. So you start up a company but at some point you're doing so many different things because you know as, as a starter or an entrepreneur, you you're not only doing your product, you're doing your marketing, you're doing your sales. You're doing your, your networking. You're doing so many, you do administration. You're doing so many different things that your way that sometimes your way is not the highway. It's actually, you know, that small um um road on the side of the road where there's so many potholes and stones and rocks and so on that you bump into, but you're going at 90 miles an hour and you just don't care. You're just driving through the potholes and you get yourself a big Jeep because then the suspension is stronger and so on. At some point that Jeep is going to hit such a big rock, which is called burnout, that you don't want to hit.

Speaker 1: 19:00

So, yeah, this one article kind of triggered something with me that came back to what I've noticed in business in past, in business in past. So that's what I wanted to give you today as an insight. So, if you want to detach yourself a little bit more from business, do a couple of these things and you'll feel a lot more freer to do what you really want. As a founder, you want to develop yourself in a certain way, et cetera. You want to feel more fulfilled instead of operational and doing everything and thinking that you're the only one knowing what to be done and so on.

Speaker 1: 19:49

You're not, to be honest, you certainly are not and, like I said, this is not a judgmental-oriented discussion. It is how it becomes this story. You didn't ask for this. You asked for a business. You asked to put your idea into the world and all the rest just comes up. It evolves in that direction because there are expectations and people look at you for guidance, but at some point, the crazy thing is, the people become dependent on your guidance, and that's not a good thing. That is not a good thing. People who become dependent on you are not individual thinkers. They are not there to improve your company. They're just there to execute, and that's not what you want. You want your company to run when you're not even there. That's what I wanted to bring to you today as a food for thought, food for action story. So thank you very much for listening and remember to jump from head to heart and feel the beat within. Have a great one. Bye-bye.