How to Be a Leader

I don’t remember if I shared this story, so I apologize if it isn’t fresh.

We often are forced to undergo corporate-style trainings at work. The most recent one was on leadership, a word I have come to detest.

“Everybody can be a leader!” we were told.

I’m a well-known grouch, so I had to pipe up.

“Of whom?” I asked. “If everybody is a leader, who is left to be led?”

“Everybody should lead everybody else!” the facilitator chirruped. “Any choice you make in life is an opportunity to show leadership.”

I was getting grumpier by the second.

“I chose what to have for lunch today,” I said. “Is that leadership?”

“Yes!” squeaked the facilitator, brightening up. “If you chose to eat healthy, that can inspire others. And that’s leadership!”

“How would others know what I chose to eat for lunch?” I persisted.

An uncomfortable pause settled in. Then, the facilitator perked up.

“You could post it on social media and show leadership that way!” she explained.

“Excuse me, I apologize,” chimed in an older professor. “Do I understand you correctly that we were asked to gather here in other to be told to post pics of our meals on Insta?”

By this time, the walls of the room were shaking with laughter and the workshop was soon wrapped up.

People keep saying this doesn’t happen at their universities. But it does, all the time. They don’t know it because they aren’t in an administrative role. Get into administration, and it will start happening. The higher your role, the more of this crap you get. If you haven’t been able to get a crucially important meeting with your Provost for months, I can pretty much guarantee that it’s because she’s in leadership workshops and manifesting trainings all day. There’s gay leadership seminars, non-binary black leadership seminars, all sorts of thing. There’s absolutely nothing particularly black or gay about them. They are all standard neoliberal drivel about the importance of downsizing, cutting costs, and getting the remaining workers to do the job of three fired colleagues while looking excited about it.

I have told the above story to exactly zero people out of the 30+ I supervise. To them, it doesn’t happen. But to me it does every other Tuesday of each month and twice as often June through October.