About managerial distrust and deceit
...and why that is just one reason why no government should be run like a business and no rich-to-excess business mogul should be revered
Screwing up my own chances of paid work one post at a time, I posted a six-post reply on Bluesky after a billionaire’s known distrust of workers reared its ugly head again. And now I’m making it worse by elaboratinng on it in a full-length Substack post.
Any suspicions of fraud may be nothing more than grandstanding to intimidate. Any suspicions that the alleged paranoia on display is fueled by substance use is for others to comment on.
But for the past thirty-ish years I’ve worked in jobs ranging from cleaner to c-level executive assistant (and a variety of jobs in between), and it’s taught me enough about management to (1) not pursue it as a career, and (2) comment on it, irrespective of (1).
Warning: The following text contains generalisations
Barely managing
From my personal experience, I’d say that every corporate (or other organisation) level has its managers, executives and directors with job-appropriate skills and confidence. These are, generally speaking, the people who are not afraid to put trust in workers and tend to operate from a “we are all adults here” perspective.
Unfortunately for most workers, there are also plenty of managers, executives and directors who lack the skills and feign confidence (except, perhaps, for any misplaced beliefs that they are smarter than others, better than others, more deserving than others). Yet at the same time, they tend to express their own individual thoughts and opinions as representative of a group (“We think that…,” “Everyone likes…,” “No one does…”) as if to mask their particular blend of insecurity and sense of superiority.
Bad leaders justify misconduct and reckless decisions by euphemising them (e.g. “telling it like it is” and “making tough decisions”) and, in turn, those euphemisms are then used (both by them and their sycophants) to justify status, wealth, and other rewards claimed.1
Like cheaters, they probably think “everyone does it.” Like abusers, they will have or claim a position of power over others and use it inappropriately, yet blame victims, others or circumstances when called out or found out in ways where plain denial is not an option. Like conspiracy theorists, they may make up their own explanations for everything they don’t understand.
Every suspicion or accusation held or brought against others is, in essence, likely a confession of sorts. Whether they are aware of it or not, they are distrusting of others because they cannot be trusted.
Self-serving chaos agents
Someone in a newly-acquired or newly-appointed position of leadership who almost immediately starts vigorously kicking down at people (metaphorically speaking) and/or rigorously shaking up (metaphorically speaking) should be considered a chaos agent. The only interests and objectives they have come to serve are their own.
“In meetings, he fretted about what he called ‘ghost employees’ who might be collecting paychecks from the company without earning them. Before [the company] sent out any payments, it needed to conduct an audit to ensure all its employees were real.” 2
“[A] significant number of people who are supposed to be working … are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all! In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks.”34
This is how someone thinks when they project their own lousy work ethic/routine/habits on everyone else and it's especially common among the least productive managers and executives who themselves contribute little or nothing tangible to a corporate entity's output.
When they tell you they work [insert stupidly high number of] hours a week, they include the chauffeur-driven rides into the office and elsewhere, the golf outings with other industry big wigs, the dinners, the lunches, the fitness classes, massages, gaming sessions, time spent reading/posting on social media, and any other occasion to indulge themselves and/or waffle about other people's actual work (and call it networking).
Their deep work sessions as boasted about in "habits of successful people" magazine spreads are the few hours they sit quietly, probably to look at spreadsheets and reports created by others about work done by others. Executive time? That’s the nap time to make up for “only sleeping 4-5 hours” each night while retaining the bragging rights.
They need you to know they are exceptionally busy and you are rather useless5 and that is why your pay sucks and theirs doesn't, either because they are fully self-aware about all the aforementioned yet persistent in maintaining the status quo, or because this is how their own and their peers’ corporate working lives have always been and they are (mostly or entirely) oblivious to the existence of people whose jobs involve actual work and whose charitable activities involve actual acts of charity/philanthropy (i.e. without a personal gain or benefit). If they don't see it, it doesn't exist; if they do see it, they assume it's posturing.
This why no government should be run like a business and no rich-to-excess business mogul should be revered like they're some kind of exceptionally good or clever superior human being. The secret to their success most likely lies in inherited wealth/privilege/power, exploitation, deceit, luck, or a combination of those. The greater public interest, such as a society in which everyone thrives, is not in their interest; they would benefit more from maintaining (or even extending) wealth inequalities and power imbalances.
Some will acknowledge their (comparative) advantage(s) and apply those and themselves to public service in such a way that they serve the public. But those with an established reputation of coming out of the gate serving chaos are clearly only interested in a definition of public service where the public serves them and their interests.
Disclaimer
I am not claiming everyone with (relative) power and/or wealth did/does not work hard and/or is undeserving of what they are have. But what experience has taught me and what the examples used in this post are showing is the reverse: plenty of people in any position of power over others and/or wealth will claim that people without their level of power and/or wealth did/do not work hard (enough) and are therefore less deserving or undeserving of having much if anything.
And it doesn’t really matter if they only think it and don’t exclaim it, or if they only do either/both to merely justify their own comparative advantage(s) over others or for more malicious or nefarious reasons… whatever the intentions, the impact is the same.
My writing won’t change this
My reach is limited and I certainly won’t be able to influence those who benefit from being in positions of relative power or wealth. I have worked hard all my life but I have nothing materially to show for it so I will not be afforded any authority when I write. I know that.
But if I can get just one person who, like me, comes from that comparatively disadvantaged position, to understand that sycophancy towards and support for anyone who exorbitantly benefits from wealth inequality and power disparity will most likely do us more harm than good… that would be grand.
We can persist in our relentless hard work and undying hope to improve our own lives and the lives of everyone and everything we care about. We can persist in our aspirations for and dreams of a better and more comfortable life to come. We can persist in our personal ideations (or delusions) of future success and wealth.
But I need us all to at least have a modicum of sense and understand that voting, speaking, acting, or social-media-posting against our own interests and against the interests of anyone potentially more vulnerable than us will never benefit us.
Even if we feel we can be certain and confident that metaphorical leopards will never come to eat our faces, let’s help prevent anyone’s face being eaten by leopards by never enabling or endorsing any face-eating leopards whatsoever.
Above all, let’s not trust anyone who actively sows distrust.
Further reading:
"Self-Made" Is a Myth: It’s a myth that justifies wealth inequality (Teen Vogue, 2018)
Kiss up kick down (idiom applicable to any social interaction where one person believes they have power over another person and believes that another person has power over them)
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I wonder if this warped thinking is why some corporate HR departments ‘resolve’ internal misconduct complaints and disciplinary procedures against staff members in leadership positions by promoting them.
Source:
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Side note: Instances of people receiving pay for a job they’re not doing exist but are so rare, they tend to make the news and usually in the context of a criminal or private prosecute being brought against them, where the costs associated with doing so may be greater than the original cost of the unmerited pay.
Any suggestion that every large organisation has swathes of fraudulent employees is laughable, anyway, but the two quotations above relating to one person making the same unevidenced assertion twice, years apart, because they failed to learn is… telling.
Telling because the only lesson this person took from the first time seems to be that they got away with once so they might as well do it again, and that is something I blame other people for enabling. People witnessed what the bull did in the china shop and responded by holding the door open for the bull to enter another china shop.
Telling, also, because the person knowingly and willingly ignored or dismissed the damage they caused the first time around. That is a person expressing they want to cause harm, they’re malicious, and that’s on them (but also: enabled).
Side note: If those ‘highly successful people’ books, websites and newspaper/magazine articles make you feel inadequate, you can change that by having wealth and privilege to begin with and using it to buy labour and claiming it as your own: outsource work and errands from waking you up to making your coffee, cleaning your home(s), getting your groceries, doing your laundry, taking over every (child)care task, buying and preparing every meal you consume, to turning down your bed each night and writing flattering articles and your memoir about how you are self-made and succesful and “doing it all”). Just be born with a comfortable level of wealth already. /s