Selfish Leaders

Tito ruled Yugoslavia for almost 40 years. After he died, the economy started falling apart until his country eventually disintegrated in a series of bloody civil wars. But while Tito was alive, everything seemed to be fine, so the older generation believes he was a good manager.

One Slovenian entrepreneur told me I should not consider myself a good manager if I go on a vacation and my phone doesn’t ring all the time. On a different occasion, I heard a local CEO use a popular outdoor activity as an analogy for leadership: to him, a leader is someone who climbs the mountain faster than the people he is leading.

All too often I hear managers of this region “complain” how their inboxes are full and nothing ever works when they are not around…

I don’t think we understand leadership.