In her recently released book, Bulldozed, Australian journalist Nikki Savva writes about a strange singing ritual that takes place around the dining table of Australia’s Governor General, David Hurley. Savva writes:
‘Guests were alerted to the expectations of their hosts by his wife, Linda, who would announce: “I believe that singing is a gift we give to one another.” The Department of Foreign Affairs began forewarning new ambassadors of the Hurley tradition before they made the trek to Government House.
‘“You Are My Sunshine” was a hot favourite. Guests were told to face the person next to them to sing the final chorus. Sometimes it would be the familiar tune with new lyrics written by Mrs Hurley that would be printed on the back of menus and handed out to guests. No one had an excuse not to sing along. Hurley was punctilious about this ritual he had initiated, even though some guests found it awkward or embarrassing.’
David Hurley is Australia’s Head of State, the man with the power to dismiss the Prime Minister if he so wished to. How is this allowed to happen? But we do not need to go as high as the highest office in the country to find such strange behaviour. After a combined four years in state and federal government, I have seen my fair share of it first-hand.
There is a certain kind of bureaucrat that I came across quite a bit in government. They are usually middle manager-types, but sometimes you find them higher up the food chain. A defining trait of these people is their certainty that the story of the time they met a well-known politician is the height of raconteurship, and that everyone they meet would love to hear the story. And if you hear it once, I can guarantee that you will hear it again, and again and again, as if the power held by the object of their story somehow reflects on them in the retelling. It doesn’t, but they do not seem to know this.
But those storytelling behaviours are just bizarre and tedious. I once worked in an office where the Executive Director was renowned for using the C- word and it mattered not who was around; young or old, male or female. At an official dinner with a visiting government delegation from Morocco, I was seated at the same table as this person, along with some Moroccan government ministers and other notables from the Australian business community. At one point in the dinner, from across the table the Executive Director asked me how I was. I responded I was fine and in turn asked how he was. I expected a standard, formal dinner-appropriate response. But what I got, loud enough for everyone at the table to hear, was, ‘I’d be fine if I could push that c--- off a f---ing cliff.’ The C he was referring to was his boss, the Chief Executive of the department.
A few years back, after running years of experiments, psychology professor Dacher Keltner, found that ‘subjects under the influence of power … acted as if they had suffered a traumatic brain injury—becoming more impulsive, less risk-aware, and, crucially, less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view.’ It is the last point that I find particularly relevant: less adept at seeing things from other people’s point of view. Because this is exactly what is occurring when you are forcing guests to sing “You Are My Sunshine” to each other, when you are telling the same story that nobody cares about on a loop, when you are referring to people as c---s at the dinner table. It is a total lack of awareness of what is appropriate and how other people will view that.
If you and I know that these things are not appropriate, why then don’t the people in positions of power know it? I’ve often wondered if the positions they hold cause the traits to develop, or they get to hold these positions because of the traits? Keltner’s study answers this question. Keltner found that it is the feeling of power that causes the brain to switch off its usual mechanisms for self-control and restraint. The parts of the brain that are supposed to pick up on other people’s signals and receive feedback start to shut down.
Interestingly, the subjects in Keltner’s study weren’t actually powerful people, they were just students made to feel powerful and that was enough to change how their brains functioned. What makes people feel powerful in the workplace is subordinates mimicking their actions, laughing at their jokes, agreeing with them no matter how bizarre their premise is, praising them for no reason, asking to be told again about the time they met some politician - in short people not telling them the truth is causing brain damage in the powerful.
If there was one thing that truly broke me in government, it was the complete absence of truth from the workplace. Bad behaviours were condoned through the complicity of blind eyes and silence. Ridiculous behaviours were treated as normal when they should have been resisted for the sake of common sense (and here I am thinking of a Trade Minister demanding his department find him an elephant to ride whilst on a trade mission to India). You see so much craziness going on unchecked that you start to doubt your own sanity.
For me, the truth spurts forth like blood from a severed femoral artery. It’s uncontrollable. Sometimes I wish it didn’t, that I had some kind of filter because sometimes it goes horribly wrong. Like the time a business contact introduced me to her colleague. At our next meeting she asked me what I thought of her colleague. I may have expressed my low opinion of him in more diplomatic language if she had included the fact that her colleague was also her husband. But she didn’t and the truth came out.
On 27 June 1940, Clementine Churchill, wrote a short note to her husband Winston:
‘My Darling,
I hope you will forgive me if I tell you something that I feel you ought to know.
One of the men in your entourage (a devoted friend) has been to me and told me that there is a danger of your being generally disliked by your colleagues and subordinates because of your rough, sarcastic, and overbearing manner. It seems your Private Secretaries have agreed to behave like schoolboys and “take what’s coming to them” and then escape out of your presence shrugging their shoulders…you won’t get the best results by irascibility and rudeness. They will breed either dislike or a slave mentality.’
We all complain about our bosses, but to some extent we are responsible for their behaviours when we become submissive, when we become unchallenging, when like the private secretaries we just shrug our shoulders and take what’s coming. There is always a good reason to keep our heads down and get on with it, to not ruffle feathers but there are also good reasons to speak up, to tell the truth.
Winston had a few things on his mind the day that he received that note from Clementine. Germany had just completed the occupation of France and an invasion of the United Kingdom looked likely. But I get the feeling that, regardless of the situation, Clementine wasn’t one to hold her tongue, or sit around the dining table singing “You Are My Sunshine” at the behest of her dinner hosts. Unlike Churchill’s private secretaries who chose not to tell the truth to Winston, Clementine did speak up and Winston was better for it, as we all are when we hear and speak the truth.
I usually ask readers and listeners to like the post after they finish, if indeed they did like it, but this week I will ask you to send it to someone you know is having crazy boss issues, or if you are feeling really brave, send it to your own boss. And if you have any questions about anything I have written here in Out of Office, pop them in the comments. This week I am feeling extra-truthful. As always, thanks for reading.
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