REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP

THE ORGANIZATIONAL

FOOL: BALANCING

A LEADER ’ S HUBRIS

The fool speaks, the wise man listens.

— African proverb

Introduction

Hubris is a recurring theme in leadership, for the obvious reason that
power is often accompanied by excessive pride and arrogance. Many
leaders take for granted that they can transgress rules made for common
mortals. But how does one go about pointing out the symptoms of
hubris? How can a leader be prevented from getting trapped and seeing
only what he or she wants to see? How can we fi ght the regressive forces
inherent in leadership? And how can we tackle them in an organizational
setting?
I would like to suggest that an effective way of dealing with these
issues is a modern interpretation of an ancient role, that of the fool. In
playing the role of mediator between leader and followers the fool can
become the antidote for hubris in disseminating deep communication,
that is, going beyond the directly observable, and consciously or uncon-
sciously seeking out the basic signifi cance of events and making them
clear to all (Geertz, 1973, 1983 ; Kets de Vries and Miller, 1987 ).

The role of the fool

Historically, the person who took such a role vis - à - vis the king was the
court fool. By this, of course, I don ’ t mean an idiot, someone stupid or

CHAPTER 6