leader behavior Archives - Leading Virtually

Humans of New York: An Illustration of How IT is Affecting Leadership

Surinder Kahai — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 20:11:00 +0000

My two decades of research on leadership and information technology (IT) has led me to believe that people think that leadership is not affected by IT and, consequently, the way in which leadership has worked in traditional and formal settings would work online too. Or they may believe otherwise but they lack specifics and wish to know more. Finding a good story that shows how IT can affect leadership and to which others can relate is challenging. A recent story makes this job a little easier. It is that of Humans of New York (HONY) and its author, Brandon Stanton. HONY appears on various social media including Tumblr, Instagram, and Facebook. I am focusing on Facebook because that is where I most clearly see how leadership is impacted by technology.

Every day Mr. Stanton posts 3 to 4 pictures of individuals, young and old from different walks of life, whom he encounters when walking in the streets of New York. Each picture is accompanied by a brief story or quote. By his admission, Mr. Stanton has walked thousands of miles and stopped ten thousand people to photograph them. Last October, he published a New York Times bestseller with four hundred of his pictures. He hopes to continue taking and posting pictures for a long time. Mr. Stanton’s work has been described as beautiful, a celebration of individuality, and a tribute to the spirit of New York.

Mr. Stanton has amassed a huge following from all over the world. Though he did not set out to become a leader, he has become one — he is able to engage people and influence them in a way that appointed leaders would give anything for. What is really illustrative of Mr. Stanton’s leadership is the community he has enabled. When you view any HONY post, you see a healthy conversation in the form of an extremely large number of likes and comments. You find people sharing stories that illustrate the triumphs and travails in their own lives. Many other jump in to congratulate those succeeding and to support those facing challenges. It is not uncommon for those commenting to amass a large number of likes and comments themselves.

What makes Mr. Stanton a leader? What has helped him become one? Mr. Stanton’s leadership role can be seen in how he is helping others make better sense of the world around them and how they fit into it. He writes posts that others find as touching because they can identify with them. They see something about their own lives in the posts. It may be a personal triumph or challenge. HONY’s stories evoke basic human values of care and concern for others irrespective of their race, nationality, gender, and other characteristics. People feel good when the stories make them feel human. A post and the ensuing conversation may remind people of something that may be missing from their lives such as a relationship, the love of someone, or being with someone they love. By being validated and knowing that they are not alone in how they feel and what they experience, readers feel empowered.

Mr. Stanton has also become a leader by stimulating others to think differently, thereby disrupting existing patterns of thought and behavior. Recently, Mr. Stanton embarked on an eight country UN sponsored tour. As part of that, he visited and posted stories of Syrian refugees camped in Jordan. These stories are unlike those of the fighting in Syria and its victims, which usually evoke feelings of horror. Some readers say that by observing the stories of others, they have learned more about what being human means — more than what their school books have taught them. Others mentioned how the tragic stories were breaking their hearts. Many remarked how fortunate and grateful they are for what they have in their lives. Some noted the resiliency of the human spirit.

One can also see Mr. Stanton as a leader in the ‘swarm like’ emergent behavior he enables. After Mr. Stanton makes a post, his followers collectively address the post without any external coordinating mechanisms or any explicitly posted rules. Occasionally, you notice conflict when posters counter others’ interpretations. For most part these conversations remain respectful. But when some cross the limits of respectful behavior, others jump in to control the conversation and prevent it from going out of control.

So, what does HONY illustrate about IT’s effect on leadership? It illustrates that technology enables the emergence of unappointed, informal leaders who have a powerful influence over others. The networking, viral communication, and widespread reach enabled by technology makes it more likely for those with an appealing vision to be discovered by people from different corners of the world. These individuals are not ordered to follow the leader. They do so because they feel an emotional connection to the leader, the leader’s vision, and the leader’s work. The leader is passionate about her/his vision and is constantly modeling it through actions shared via technology. After stimulating action, the leader gets out of the way. The followers, with the help of technology, take it up upon themselves to share their thoughts, their interests, and become leaders in their own right. There is no top-down system through which leadership is exercised.

This effect of IT is not restricted to the non-corporate setting only. It can occur in and is relevant for all types of settings. In today’s highly complex and dynamic environment, leaders cannot take it all upon themselves to interface with the outside world or even those within their own organization. A leader cannot be at all the places demanding attention. Not only is the pace relentless but the variety of issues is too large for one supreme leader to be able to handle all events in a timely and competent fashion. An emergent, self-organizing system, such as one envisioned by the US Intelligence Agencies, is needed. Others will have to be empowered to rise, respond, and engage others to rise too. Smart leaders create conditions for others to emerge as leaders and then get out of the way. They create an emotionally engaging vision that others can relate to readily. They share their vision, model that vision, and stimulate a conversation among their followers. They don’t try to control the events. Instead, they become facilitators who remove the barriers and make it easy for others to make their contributions towards the leaders’ vision. The followers then take off. Some emerge as leaders themselves.

Technology, especially social media, plays a critical role in enabling this type of leadership. For how else will the leader be able to engage a multitude of people beyond her/his immediate span of control? Engaging a lot of people and that too from different domains and walks of life is critical because it is not possible to predict the situation one will be facing in the future and thus anticipate who might be ready to emerge as a leader or simply participate. Only technology can enable such an engagement. Though HONY has been around for a while, it was only after it moved to social media where others and their actions could not be controlled that it really took off!

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Will public shaming on the Internet make leaders behave better?

Surinder Kahai — Tue, 10 Jun 2014 20:15:32 +0000

We had gathered with some friends recently and our discussion veered towards the Donald Sterling case. Someone wondered if the strong backlash on the Internet would serve as a lesson for leaders and inhibit them from misbehaving in the future. During the age when a person’s every move is a click away from being posted on the Internet, are leaders going to be more careful?

Two camps developed to debate this question. One side believed in the Internet’s power to curb leaders. I was in this camp. The other side believed that inappropriate behavior of the kind that Donald Sterling had engaged in is largely wired into people and public shaming on the Internet won’t make much of a difference. My wife was in this camp. The debate remained unresolved. That was the best I could hope for against my wife because the only other option was … defeat.

It is not uncommon for judges to punish misdemeanors or crimes by ordering public shaming. However, there is no evidence of whether public shaming works. As an academic, I turned to the scientific literature to see if I could answer whether the fear of public shaming on the Internet would curb leaders’ inappropriate behaviors. The answer I found provides more evidence to my wife that she’s always right. The Internet, according to my analysis, is unlikely to curb leaders.

There are models of human behavior according to which, prior to any behavior they might consider to be inappropriate, people consider the probability of getting caught and the resulting consequences. Greater probability of getting caught and more negative perceived consequences would lower the inclination to behave inappropriately. It is easy for a leader to see that the probability of getting caught is greater today due to the increased ability to capture anyone’s behavior. With the use of the Internet as an extremely potent weapon for destroying someone’s reputation in plain view of any intelligent leader, the increased negativity of the consequences of being caught should be obvious too. Thus, theoretically speaking, leaders would be inclined to curb their inappropriate behavior lest they be exposed and publicly shamed on the Internet.

But recent models of human tendencies suggest a more complicated picture. According to one study, people underestimate the social pain caused by acts like public shaming and ostracism unless they have experienced the pain themselves. While people can see that someone has undergone social pain, they are unable to gauge the actual extent of that pain. When asked to estimate the social pain they would feel if they were to experience an event known to cause that pain, people underestimate the pain compared to those who have actually undergone the experience. In psychology, this is known as the cold-to-hot empathy gap, or the tendency for people in a cold state (i.e., not experiencing the pain-causing event) to underestimate the effect compared to those in a hot state (i.e., experiencing the pain-causing event). Thus, just the knowledge of painful shaming on the Internet may not be ‘hot’ enough to curb a leader’s behavior.

One could claim that even though a leader has never experienced a particular pain-causing event, and thus underestimates the intensity of the social pain, that leader may still be inhibited due to greater awareness of the possibility of experiencing the pain. Thus, the leader may still be able to consciously stop the inappropriate behaviors from occurring. But this relies on self-restraint. And it assumes that one’s behavior is largely conscious or deliberate. The transgressions that leaders often get publicly shamed for are usually impulsive in nature. Think Donald Sterling’s racist rant or Anthony Weiner’s sexting. A study has shown that people suffer from what is referred to as the restraint bias, or the illusion of self-restraint during impulsive situations. Consequently, people tend to put themselves in tempting situations believing that they would be able to restrain themselves. Unfortunately, the belief of restraint is largely illusory and one just gives in.

Then there are those who may have previously committed a transgression and experienced the associated social pain. But due to an emotional deficit, they may experience the pain at a lower level which makes them more likely to commit the transgression again. Anthony Weiner’s repeated sexting transgressions, despite public shaming for earlier misbehavior, illustrates this emotional deficit.

A person may occasionally transgress due to another reason: ego depletion, or the exhaustion of the self-control reserve. According to a model of self-control, self-control is a limited resource that gets depleted with use during the course of a day. Exhausting this resource leaves one depleted and self-control on behavior requiring restraint suffers for the rest of the day. Knowledge of public shaming on the Internet does nothing to this reserve; whenever it is exhausted, restraint for the inappropriate act would be missing.

So what can we conclude from the literature? Essentially, awareness of the inflation of the pain or negative consequences of transgressions that make it to the Internet is likely to have little impact on a leader’s behavior. Thus, attempts, including one by a recent Wall Street Journal article, to make leaders aware that their roles are increasingly public due to the Internet and caution them are likely to go nowhere. Leaders are unlikely to straighten themselves unless they have previously been through the social pain associated with being exposed. Even in such cases, leaders who have emotional deficits or suffer from ego depletion are likely to succumb to their temptations.

Once again, my wife was correct. And, I have no problems with that.

I’ve always believed in the best person winning the argument!

xvltbjyl [test]

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