Managing in the New World of Work - Assignment Example

Lack of Emotional Intelligence : Reason Behind Hitler’s Fall Introduction: History is a witness to the fact that whatever transformation take place in the civilized society, it has been brought about by a power of single person. Whether it is politics, corporate world or religious reforms, the change has always been a result of a bold, powerful and innovative thinking of one person. However, it doesn’t mean that others did not think about the need of a change. They did. What they lacked was the intensity and the emotional strength to bring the change. The one who not only thinks but also feels strongly the need of the transformation and makes millions of people to believe in his thoughts and plans and makes them to follow his path is a leader. A leader is a person who has the power to drive millions of people in the direction that he intends to walk and to join him in the journey towards the destination that he intends to reach. A leader is the one who take the responsibility of transforming the society. Life is paradox, and so are the good elements of life. Leaders are the ones who bring about the most needed change in the society. Human beings like to believe that change is always for good. Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, Kennedy and Martin Luther King were leaders who fought for the justice and equality in the human race. However, leaders like Idi Amin, Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot are some of the examples of leaders who because of their egomaniacal desires, were the source of death for millions of people. These leaders start their journey as a reformer and later, as they become powerful in the structure of the society, unleash their evil intentions and become a curse to the humanity. Adolf Hitler was one such leader who proved to be the most heinous nightmare that humanity can ever imagine. Leadership: The power of a leader has always been a topic of interest. There are many theories which study the traits of a leader and try to find out what personality traits are needed to be a good leader and what traits work as a source of failure. There are different theories proposed through which we can understand what makes a leader successful and what makes a leader to fail. Different people have different personalities and emotional patterns and so different leaders have different styles of leadership. They have unique sense of interacting with people which make them so powerful. This has led to the evolution of different theories explaining different styles of leadership and different actions that leaders take. Situational Theory : Situational theory believes that the leader should change his leadership style according to the situations surrounding him. This includes the people, their needs, mood of the people surrounding him and the overall scenario. A successful leader is able to maintain his position only when he changes his behavior, style and goals according to the situation (Burke and Cooper 2004, p1) Hitler failed miserably in this criteria. He was not able to adjust to the environment and was not able to accept that his psychopathic whims and fancies are ultimately going to make him a failure. Today the world is changing fast and constantly. To keep up with the changing times, people have to mould themselves according to the change and work accordingly. Leaders who do not change themselves according to the situation fail to sustain their position and success. Styles of leadership : 1. Charismatic Leadership : ( Charismatic Leadership n.d.) This style of leadership assumes that the leader has to create charm and attractive personality so the people admire him and follow him. A leader can gather the followers only when he believes in himself. Rather than attracting people through authority, he creates an aura of grace and magnetism and hence people get attracted towards him and follow him. Charismatic leader understands the importance of dramatization of the his image and hence creates an environment of enigma, power and divineness. Charismatic leaders know that if they are not endowed with physical gifts, they will have to change themselves in such a way that they become attractive, their behavior is noticed as unique and their words are delivered in such a forceful manner that they create a huge impact on the mind of the audience. Adolf Hitler had adopted many different styles of leadership to reign Germany. His adoption of Swastika as a symbol of Nazi Party, his practice of raising a hand in salute to the party, his uniform and his dramatic body language were all the methods of creating a larger than life image. 2. Transactional Leadership: (Transactional Leadership n.d.) Transactional leadership is a leadership style which believes that the behavior of a person can be controlled by the reward and punishment method. It is based on the psychology of behaviorism. Transactional leadership style is hard on the followers or the subordinate as they are considered responsible for the task assigned without really caring about how the follower is going to complete the task. Hitler used this style by creating terror in the minds of people through Gestapo. The terror of Gestapo was so deep in the heart of the people that if they learnt that the Gestapo was looking for them, they used to commit suicide. This punishment was not only for the Jews population but also for the non-Jews (Victor, 2000, p1). Millions were murdered in cold blooded way for not following his orders and punishment was as if the way of life. If we apply this style of leadership in today’s corporate scenario, it can be understood that transactional leadership is not a positive style. It creates a desire of reward in the employee every time he works hard and rather than getting him motivated from inside, the motivation is created from the material desire. This increases the cost to the company as apart from the salary and the bonuses, the company has to manage the cost of the rewards which goes on increasing with the increasing difficulty of the goals (Transactional Leadership – Outdated? N.d.) . 3. Transformational Leadership : (Transformational Leadership n.d.) As the name suggests, this leadership style is adopted by people who genuinely care for the people and their progress. Leaders who accept this style of leadership are energetic, positive, visionary and people centric. Their goals are people oriented and hence people find it interesting to work with them. Transformational leadership believes that the leaders are not just the motivators but also the participants. They set an example through practice and are always ahead of the team. They believe doing first and then motivating and driving others to action. They are emotionally intelligent, take the responsibility of their actions and are committed to their goals. Hitler was not able to adopt this style as he was selfish, maniac and wanted to be a dictator rather than be a transformer. This style of leadership is the best style for any organization as it makes people do their work with enthusiasm, energy and positive attitude. People are happy to work with transformational leaders and so job satisfaction is the highest. This increases the productivity and hence achievement of the goals is easy. However, the most important aspect of any leadership style is the emotional aspect of the leader. The emotional pattern of the leader plays a great role in the development of the leader and decides his fate. Emotional Intelligence: According to Cooper(1997) “emotional intelligence is the ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power of emotions.” Emotions are the driving force behind any action ( Gill 2004, p73). There are many people who think that they need change in their life. Most of the people suffer injustice and violence as they do not feel deeply enough to act on the change. Dulewicz and Higgs (2000) attributes decisiveness as the important aspect of emotional intelligence. The intensity of the feeling gives the strength to the thought. An emotionally driven thought turns into action. Leaders are emotionally intelligent people. They know how to use their emotional intelligence in interacting with people and drive them to action by putting great emotions in their speeches and talks. Hitler was very skilled in this aspect. He knew that he can make people believe that Germany needed change and only he can give them that change. His speeches had extraordinary intensity and energy. His body language, gestures and words were intelligently used to make people believe in his goals and follow him. However, the distortion of the emotions and his egomaniacal fantasies drove him to his failure and ultimately his fall. The Rise and Fall of Adolf Hitler: Adolf Hitler is remembered as a leader who was intelligent but cruel, psychopathic, cold blooded and egomaniac. Right from his childhood, he was emotionally and socially maladjusted human being. His behavior was unpredictable and bizarre. He never made friends and was always indulged in whims and fancies which he believed firmly to be true. Hitler was desperately in need of identity. When he joined the Nazi party in 1919, he was a homeless and idle man and was trying to find some means to let an outlet to his fantasy world (Victor 2000, p6). He had a desire to transform the society totally and to conquer the whole world and remove the Jews from the face of the earth as he believed that Jews were responsible for his condition. Hitler had a lonely and emotionally unfulfilled childhood. His childhood experiences had mad him to crave acceptance. Hitler was great orator. He would enthrall the audience with his words. He had an enigmatic personality and his words had a hypnotic power over the listeners. His pathology and his intense desire to create a new Germany had captured the minds of the people(Hanfstaengl and Toland 1994, p5). He had a charm in his personality that attracted masses. He was very intelligent and was successful in pulling huge crowds to his gatherings with the dramatic, fervent and intense speeches. He had a strong motivating power that hypnotized people into believing every word he said. His political ambitions coupled with his ability to convert the crowd to his beliefs made it possible for him to gain an important place in the party. His destructive powers were also evident in the fact that he used to disrupt the meeting of the opposition by sending thugs which he had gathered to destroy the other parties. ( Stokes n.d.). His style of leadership was charismatic. Hitler started everything from the scratch and virtually from a state of an unknown human being , he became the ruler of Germany. He was not guided, not trained and not initiated into believing anything that he believed. It was all his creation, his dogma, his belief and hence his actions( Fest 2002, p3). His strength was his nature of believing in himself and his ideas so firmly and rationally that he was called crazy( Fest 2002, p4). Hitler was obeyed by the people of Germany and even though many of his colleagues and people working with him hated him, they could do nothing in front of his terror which was planned and unleashed by the genius and intelligent mind of his( Fest 2002, p7). Hitler had reached a egomaniac state of mind. His leadership traits were given away to selfish and maniac desires of being the king of the world. He started removing people from his path, people who had served him, people who had walked the evil path of mass genocide with him and people who were there when he needed them to get to his psychopathic ambitions. By the end of 1945, he was alone on the thrown and listened to no one. He became the dictator of Germany by creating and forcing his principles, dogmas and beliefs not only to the German people but people all over the world( Fest 2002, p8). He, as one of the colleague had said, had become like a mad dog running wildly everywhere and biting everyone to show his power, his hold and his dictatorship( Fest 2002, p3). That is where his fall began. The world wanted him dead as they realized that an evil force is active through a human being. Countries who hitherto did not care for his atrocities and animal instincts, started fearing his megalomaniac desires and when they felt the same threat hovering above their head, they started taking action. Hitler’s emotional life was strong force behind his madness. Emotional intelligence is extremely necessary for a leader. The leader has to be emotionally stable and positive to keep the faith and the trust of the followers. However, Hitler was a man whose emotions were distorted and who did not care even slightly before killing millions of people. The roots of this emotional coldness were in his childhood, his failure to accept the truth of his identity and his habit of blaming others for his failure. Hitler very shrewdly kept his past a secret( Fest 2002, p13). He hardly made friends and liked to be perceived as an enigma. His desire for dramatization and creating an aura of mystery led to him remaining distant and aloof. He was very intelligent, planned every move in advance, no action was taken without any motive and there was a strong desire to punish others. He was a sadist who found strength in his whims and fancies of conquer ring the world. By the age of thirty five he had created a rigid cocoon around himself and was unapproachable to his friends, colleagues and followers( Fest 2002, p13). This was where the demise of his leadership began. A leader should always be there for people. He should be open to people who follow him and serve him. When Hitler started keeping away from them, he invited the fall of the evil empire that he had built. The empire started crumbling and under the empire, Hitler started crumbling. The heinous crimes that he had committed started haunting him and the same mental genius that led to his power and reign, got distorted and created fear and aloneness in him. He started shunning public presence and was not open to anyone. He created his own mental world and lived in it. His leadership was a failure as he lost his control and his mind became wild and fearful at the same time. Hitler’s past that he had tried to cover for a long time was in danger of being brought in open( Fest 2002, p14). The fear of the revelation of the truth of his past was very upsetting for him. The drama, the aura, the mystery and the enigma that he had created around him was in the danger of being exposed. This aura was his life. This evil was his life. He was standing on the pillars of mystery, genius, cruelty and dogmas that he had created. When everything that he had created started falling apart, Hitler started falling apart and losing the hold. The truth was not his support but the false enigma and the psychological world that he had created was his world. When this world was shattered, he was shattered and was not ready to face the truth. He wanted it to be hidden from the world and could not face the world with the truth. The fact that he was an illegitimate child, from a poor farmer family and had failed in education was in the wake of being exposed. Hitler hated this ( Fest 2002, p15). His childhood was full of fantasies and escapes from the reality where he built his own world and believed that the world needs to be changed( Fest 2002, p21). He got one of his friends killed with the fear of being exposed. He wanted to make the world believe that he was a creator of the dogmas and the rules that he had proposed and that he had built the empire on his own( Fest 2002, p14). Adolf Hitler was a leader who was never able to accept the truth of life. He always lived with the false and ultimately, when he was no longer able to hold the charismatic image that he had created, he killed himself. Mental conflict always leads to failure. Hitler failed to understand this and hence failed miserable. On the morning of April 3rd, between 2:30 to 3:30 PM, Hitler pulled a trigger of a gun and shot himself to death ( The death of Hitler 1997). A man who had raised an empire in spite of failures, abandonment, poverty and loneliness in the childhood, became a victim of madness and ultimately failed as a leader. A successful leader is someone who is true to himself and to the world. References: Burke, R., and Cooper, C., 2004, Leading in Turbulent Times: Managing in the New World of Work Blackwell , MA (U.S.A.) Fest, JC, 2002, Hitler Harcourt Inc. FL, U.S. Gill, R. 2006 Theory and practice of leadership  Sage Publication : London Hanfstaengl , E, and Toland, J 1994, Hitler: The missing years Arcade. Leadership Styles, Situational Leadership Available at [June 22, 2009] Leadership Styles, Charismatic Leadership Available at [June 22, 2009] Leadership Styles, Transactional Leadership Available at [June 22, 2009] Leadership Styles, Transformational Leadership Available at < http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/styles/transformational_leadership.htm> [June 22, 2009] Stokes, P. (n.d.), Phil’s World War ii Pages, A biography of Adolf Hitler, Available at [June 22, 2009] The History Of Place Holocaust Timeline (1997), The Death Of Hitler, Available at [June 22, 2009] Victor, G, 2000, Hitler: The Pathology of Evil Brassey’s, VA, U.S. What is transactional leadership, n.d. , Transactional Leadership - Outdated? Available at < http://work911.com/leadership-development/faq/transactional.htm > [June 22, 2009] Read More