Hubris creates a perception of oneself as a giant and others as minions. This distorts the individual’s sense of goals and decisions.
-Christoph Loch
They say that pride comes before a fall, but in business, it also often triggers the collapse. History is littered with examples of corporate giants who were, according to subsequent post-mortems, felled by bad decision-making, brought on by excessive self-confidence, arrogance, and pride. In the final analysis, the word “hubris” crops up again and again.
Now board directors and senior managers from around the country are being invited to find out why. A conference in Cambridge this week will explore the perennial problem of hubris in leadership, and attempt to offer some tips designed to school the participants out of repeating others’ past mistakes.
Entitled “The Intoxication Of Power: Leadership and Hubris”, the event will involve presentations from experts in business, management and academia, all of whom have examined what it is about leadership that distorts a person’s thinking and character, inflates their ego, and frequently causes them to make rash and damaging decisions as a result.
It will include analysis of the relationship between senior executives, and the mechanics of sycophancy in the workplace. There will also be a presentation of psychological research which suggests that humans may be hard-wired to make dubious decisions about the future, and that CEOs could learn a thing or two from crows, which are much better at forward planning.
In addition, there will be a workshop inviting the participants to contemplate and discuss the implications of hubris both for their companies and for themselves.
The conference today (Thursday, 19 September), is being organised by Cambridge Judge Business School - part of the University of Cambridge - and the Daedalus Trust. The latter is dedicated to the cause of trying to understand problems of hubris, and was set up “to raise awareness and understanding of the changes in individuals, groups and whole organisations that can come with the exercise of power”.
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Image: The conference will examine the effects that the projected fantasies of subordinates have on managers when the latter begin to believe in them.
Credit: 01228 by Victor 1558 from Flickr
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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