“A ruling class has got to have a strict morality, a quasi-religious belief in itself, a mystique.” –George Orwell

George Orwell was referring to world leaders when he used the term ruling class, but ruling class can also be applied to the supervisors of our cubicle, our softball team, and our daughter’s music class. We’ve all seen the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to our beloved leaders. We’ve witnessed leaders who just appear born to lead, those who seem to be perpetually learning, and those even your daughter’s preschool classmates can suss out. At some point in our lives, we think we can we spot a good leader in our business meetings, in preschool parent-teacher conferences, and in shopping mall. We think we can just spot those characteristics necessary to lead good us.

Can a Human Resources representative (HR rep) for a Fortune 500 corporation spot those characteristics better than us, to select their company’s leaders of tomorrow? HR reps tell us that they can spot their candidate five seconds after they enter the room? I used to think that was a good thing, as I thought it spoke to the years of experience the HR rep had in interview rooms. I thought there were intangibles that she could spot that I couldn’t. The question I have now, based on my experiences with the poor to awful supervisors they’ve chosen for teams I’m on. I should note that they’ve made some quality decisions over the years, but their batting average would not land them in the hall of fame. If this HR rep can spot a quality leader five seconds after they enter a room, how often is she convinced by characteristics that are symbolic as opposed to substantive? Is there a quality that HR reps look for, or is it all based on intangible and indefinable determinations?

For those not born with magical, born leader qualities, self-help guides list off a number of quantifiable qualities of leadership that anyone and everyone can memorize for an interview, but a qualified HR rep should be able to see through all that to the core of a person to determine if they are a leader.

If the HR rep is attempting to look beyond a self-help list of qualities to the true man, what is it they are looking for? Are they looking for the charismatic qualities of a leader, and can these qualities be faked throughout an hour-long interview? This degree of charisma could arguably be called a person’s leadership mystique.

Can a quality candidate fake indefinable qualities the self-help guides teach us? What are self-help guides, but a way to assist those lacking in natural leadership qualities into projecting a leadership mystique? Some of us memorize a few Churchill quotes and go into that interview with the idea that we, too, can be leaders of men and women. Then the HR rep sees right through us, and they hire the other guy. What happened?

Did that person project that image better than we did? Is it easier for an attractive person to project that image? Is it easier to convince another of leadership qualities if that person is in great shape, freshly groomed, well dressed, male or female, of a certain ethnicity, and born into a certain economic class? Or does the HR rep go into the series of interviews with a mindset that specifically goes against archetype definitions of a leader to prove that they can better spot a leader? Is it a series of lies, façades, and mindsets, or can an HR rep truly spot a qualified leader in one hour-long interview?

I’ve worked in corporate America long enough to know that even the most solid, experienced HR rep, with their breadth of experience in interviewing people, cannot see through a façade that candidates have created for them before that interview started. Some candidates are simply better at constructing a façade than others, and most people, HR reps included, cannot see through it. I’ve witnessed too many eventual managers —put through the grueling, three tiered interview process— come out as incompetent, dishonest people, to continue to believe that HR reps know more about the leadership mystique than I do. I’ve witnessed it so often that I can’t help but believe what one of my managers told a friend of mine: “If you want to get anywhere in this company, lie your ass off!” This leader turned out to be the worst employee I’ve ever worked with, and I’ve worked in the fast food industry. How did she get through the grueling three-tiered interview process? First, she was great at answering questions quickly and confidently. Those answers involved lies, half-truths, exaggerations, and deflections to successfully construct an image, and mystique, about herself that made great impressions.

I’ve had too many poor managers, and I’ve worked with too many poor non-management types, and upper level employees, to continue to believe that there is something more than the search for an unquantifiable mystique at play. The first question an HR agent must ask themselves in the post-interview grading process is can a candidate think fast on their feet? Yes, if they are good liars. There is a reason that a leader must be a good liar, and it has everything to do with perpetuating the myth of their own mystique, and the mystique of the company at large.

A good, somewhat dishonest manager will never tell you, for example, that they haven’t heard about the latest update on the company website. A more honest manager might tell you that they’ve never heard of the update and ask you to relay it to them. The dishonest manager may have a stock answer at such a point, and it’s often something along the lines of, “Why don’t you tell me what you think it is.” The manager may also look the information up later. They both arrive at that same point of knowledge, but the manager who maintains the mystique better has learned how to fib their way through a scenario like this one to uphold the mystique by never letting you see them in a temporary moment of vulnerability.

We perpetuate this myth by what we say about the manager after we return to our desk. If the manager was forthright and said she didn’t know about the update, we return to our desk with this salacious bit of information about the leader. We all seek to poke holes in their myths at every opportunity. We feel better about ourselves in lieu of the fact that we now know that our emperor has no clothes. It’s the American way to dress down our leaders, but there is also a part of us that feels a little uncomfortable with the fact that our leaders have notable holes in their garments. This is why the perpetuation of the myth is so important. This is why it’s important that the honest manager tell you that she’s heard about the latest update when she hasn’t.

It’s important, because if the good, dishonest manager successfully preserves the mystique, the employee will go back to their desk and tell their co-workers, “She said she knew about it, but I know she didn’t.” That co-worker might then question the employee’s assessment of the leader, until the employee begins to question their own assessment. “Why did I feel the need to question their leader’s leadership qualities?” they might ask themselves. “What does this say about me that I felt the need to do that?”

The obfuscation that the dishonest manager employed feeds the myth, so that it can survive another day. The employee finds that they are actually more comfortable in a world where questioning leaders exists without substantial proof of the leader’s vulnerabilities, and everyone walks away satisfied.

Does anyone know how to define leadership qualities are on a case by case basis? No, but you know it when you see it. It’s a certain mystique that they have constructed and maintained over time, be it honest or dishonest.

Another manner in which the mystique is perpetuated is in the grading process. The leader is in charge of the grading of the performance of their employees, and their method of grading will provide the employee the most tangible proof of their myth. If the manager grades that employee poorly, the employee feels less substantial and a greater need to prove themselves to their leader in the next quarter, even if the poor grade doesn’t portend eventual dismissal from the company. On the other hand, a better grade means a better chance at promotions and raises, but it’s more than that to us. We want their approval, and if they give us a poor grade, we find ourselves doing whatever it takes to please them and the way they want things done. A poor grade only enhances their leadership mystique to us.

Some of the grading process is based on tangible qualities, such as production numbers, but in many instances —in my corporate America experience— the process is often more arbitrary than many of us know.

Employees, in my most recent employment experience, were graded on a scale of one to five. Fours were given to the best, most outstanding employees, and twos were given to those employees most in need of assistance. I know what you’re thinking, you think the grading scale went from one to five. Well, I’ve only heard of one case in which an individual received a one in a particular category of their employer’s assessment. The supervisors were discouraged from giving ones, even in cases where the employee probably earned it. I’ve also heard of more than one instance in which an employee received a five in an individual category, but those instances were so rare that they should be considered anecdotal. The supervisors were also discouraged from giving out fives, because, I can only assume, that they feared the employee might not strive as hard in the upcoming quarter. We, almost all of us, received scores between two and four, and we all believed, as former NFL coach said, “You are what your scoreboard says you are.” We all believed we were the accumulated score of three-point-five, and we were all on the “strive to be a five” quest that may have been our carrot on the stick to be better employees. As the next case will prove, however, these arbitrarily low scores may have also fed into the leadership mystique of those who scored our work.  

Whether he was making a conscious effort to poke a hole in this area of the myth of leadership or not, one particular supervisor in our company, we’ll call him Pete Abernathy, decided to give every one of his employees fives across the board. Pete stated that he genuinely believed that every one of his employees were “five” employees. He had a team of eleven employees, and we could all argue that the idea that Pete Abernathy couldn’t possibly have eleven five star employees, but he genuinely believed it. Pete Abernathy was chastised for this action by our company. The company forced him to go back and change the scores to lower scores.

“Why would you think that is unfair?” I asked the friend who told me about this event, and how he thought that this manager should be forced to adjust his scores.  

“Because it’s unfair to the rest of us,” the friend said. My friend was a true believer in the system, but he had no idea how correct he was, or on how many levels he was correct. 

The “all five” scores, for every employee on Pete Abernathy’s team, was unfair in an arbitrary nature, because the eleven employees who were on his team were arbitrarily chosen to be on his team. They were the lucky ones, because that they were arbitrarily assigned to a supervisor who would arbitrarily score them so high, and the rest of us were unlucky that we weren’t arbitrarily assigned to his team. We were arbitrarily assigned to a team with a supervisor who arbitrarily assigned us lower scores. Except they didn’t arbitrarily assign our scores. They followed their manager’s order.

Pete Abernathy created a huge problem in the company, because he exposed the myth to we “three” employees that our threes were arbitrarily considered by our arbitrary supervisors, or that they had a cap on their scoring that would merit scrutiny if they went to an extreme. The message that we threes learned is that our company’s scoring process is not a precise measurement of our ability.

A science teacher once told me that it’s scientifically proven, or mathematically if we want to delve into the probability of rations, that the correct answer to most multiple choice questions is often ‘C’. Thus, our managers may have taught our supervisors that it can be difficult to find a perfect quantitative and qualitative score for eleven employees every quarter, so when it doubt go ‘C’, or in our company’s case, three, when scoring an employee’s performance. Three might not get us much of a raise, we realized, but at least we’re not a two. We walked away satisfied, not happy, but satisfied that we would, at least, have a job for another quarter.

Pete Abernathy unintentionally exposed the myths and mystiques to at least one employee, me, because I asked the question, ‘Why strive to be a five when it’s pretty obvious to me that I was arbitrarily assigned to a supervisor who only gives out threes?’ If I have a supervisor who follows the company’s unspoken rules, to the letter, and they feel the need to abide by the rules inherent in the leadership mystique by arbitrarily giving out threes, what’s the point of busting my tail for the company.

“Keep your own records,” a friend of mine said when he was put in a position to deliver me my supervisor’s scores for the quarter.

“So, you’re saying that these scores I received are set arbitrarily low?” I asked.

“What evidence do you have to prove your supervisor wrong?” he asked. I didn’t have any, and I told him so.

“Keep your own records,” he repeated. “Keep your accomplishments in a spreadsheet that you can present them at the time of grading, and then present them if you decide to dispute their scoring.”

It’s all arbitrary.

The overriding point of the naysayers occurs in response to this flood of information, and it is nestled somewhere in the idea that we all need something, or someone, to believe in. As the information piles in to suggest that our federal government is either corrupt, incompetent, or something that we should remain skeptical about, we learn that our state government may be as corrupt, and that our local government is full of incompetency. Learning these details from an informed skeptic might illuminate us, but we maintain a certain level of detachment from it, because we hate politics, and we think most political discussions don’t hit home. When we question the method of operations of the company we’re employed in, however, or the supervisors or managers that we’re employed under, it hits close to home, and we begin to question our personal beliefs in a way that makes us feel a little uncomfortable. 

I spoke to a number of coworkers about this issue, as I was obsessed with it. Their natural inclination was that I received a poor score for the quarter and my conspiracy theory was built on bitterness. When I freely told them what my accumulated score for the quarter was, and how it proved my point by being equal to theirs, their “C’mon!” smile faltered a little. When I told them the Pete Abernathy story, they didn’t enjoy listening to my story anymore. They gave me obvious signs that they didn’t enjoy talking about this topic.

If we can believe in nothing else, even ourselves, we want to believe that our company knows us, and that they put forth due diligence into properly evaluating us, and judging where we stand among our peers. We understand that it’s difficult, based on the size of our company to always be exact, but we want them to be as exact as humanly possible.

“Okay, I got it!” one of my co-workers said when I wouldn’t stop pounding my points home.

Whatever their actual response is, they unknowingly inform the skeptic that they do not want their personal foundation shaken up in such a manner, and they prefer to draw a line in questioning the idea that that which we used to define ourselves against mediocre employees cannot be based on a “Fudge” in the system in which we all operated. The alternative is too random. They need to believe in the system, even after it’s pointed out to them that the apathetic guy that sits next to them just received the same arbitrary scores that they did. They need to believe in something, so they choose to reject all that we’ve said, and they prefer to believe in all the illusions, delusions, and the mystique of leadership that they are fed on a day-to-day basis.

The cynical portion of my brain can’t help but think that the grading process was also created to provide distance between the follower and the leader to strengthen the mystique of the manager, leader, and score decider. A “five guy” may think he’s two steps away from the leader, and he may think less of the manager in that light, but a “three guy” knows he has a lot to work to do if he ever wants to consider himself on par with his leader.

“I’m only a three?” I asked, after receiving my evaluation in a one on one. I worked harder for that company than I’ve ever worked for a company in my life. “Actually,” my supervisor said, “You are a 3.8, but the grading process requires that we round down.” I was confused. “So, a 3.99999 is still a three?” The supervisor had a half-smile, “A three point eight is great. You should be proud. It puts you in the upper tier. It means you have fewer areas of concern than a 3.00 employee might.”

That supervisor tried to enhance her leadership mystique by basically saying, even though I gave you arbitrarily low scores, I’m on your side. I am very pro you, and I will go to bat for you, even if I know my arbitrary declarations basically put us on a superior vs. inferior plane.

The Orwell quote, “The ruling class has got to have a strict morality, a quasi-religious belief in itself,” placed the focus on the leaders, but in my experience the role the followers play is just as vital to maintaining the mystique. Leadership requires that we followers believe that “our” leader has qualities that we don’t. If we believe that our leader exhibits the qualities we assign her, we may see it as in our best interests to kiss her coccyx in a figurative manner. It’s my contention that kissing coccyx is a function performed by two relatively innocuous individuals for a mutually agreed upon result that benefits both parties involved. The person that a follower chooses to assign such characteristics achieves that level in a vicarious manner, and while they may enjoy ridicule or skepticism directed at leaders, or the systems those leaders abide by, most followers do not enjoy it directing at “their” leader for it undercuts one of their primary functions. If we dare to expose them it also undercuts us in a strange way, because if we are effective in our pursuits we may be left with nothing to believe in. 

We all love that guy who questions everything when it comes to the federal government, and the president in particular. That’s just kind of the American way, and a tradition that –at the very least– dates back to our colonial forefathers mocking and denigrating King George. Mocking state and local leaders is “Okay” too, because “Because they signed up for the gig. They should’ve known they were signing up for performance scrutiny.” When we criticize our boss at our company, and the whole manner in which our company operates, and we do it in an effective manner with uncomfortable evidence that holds up under scrutiny, it makes us so uncomfortable that “Okay, I got it!” comes out with a level of force that reveals how much we don’t really want to hear this. 

The leadership mystique requires both the leader and the follower to understand their respective roles, but that dynamic is precariously balanced on respect, trust, legitimacy, and a number of other factors. Both parties know that scrutiny will be part of the game, as will the jokes, and the playful derision behind the boss’s back, but that’s mostly a fun part of the game. When we’re done with that game, both parties know that as disgruntled as the follower might be, the system is fair and merit-based. When some “busybody” comes along and seriously challenges the foundation of that system and our relationship with our company, we don’t want to hear it. If the boss feels forced to address it, she’ll do so with an, “It’s not true,” and we accept that answer so quickly that it’s obvious that that’s the answer we wanted to hear. Another part of our eager acceptance of her reply is that we live with this notion that our system has already been properly vetted by those in the know, and they drained of it any skepticism in their boardroom meetings. The final problem is that if we believe the busybodies of our system who exhaust us with their skepticism, is if they find an argument that could undermine the system we operate in, in our beloved company, we’ll have nothing left to believe in.