By Mike Hoban
Election season is here in the U.S. and candidates for local, state and national offices are out stumping for votes. So if the democracy thing is such a great idea, why not elect our bosses at work? And why not vote for our most senior organizational leaders?
Preposterous? Perhaps. Impractical? Way so. But it’s also a provocative question which can lead to interesting conversations at the neighborhood barbecue gathering about what we would value in our leaders if we could indeed vote them in or out of their positions.
And before being too dismissive, let’s recall that there are some quasi-democratic traditions in the workplace. In Germany, there is a law which provides for the arrangement called “co-determination” (Mitbestimmung), in which worker representatives are elected to the Board for all companies with more than 500 employees. Other European countries have Works Councils with similar employee representation. Closer to home, in many Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) in which the company shares are owned by the employees, there are provisions for elected employee advisory boards. And then-UAW head Douglas Fraser served on the Board of Chrysler Corp. in the early 1980s as a union representative.
Voting of leaders also comes into play with professional or affinity associations, co-ops and unions. With publicly traded companies, the Board of Directors is elected by shareholders in a balloting process. And let’s not forget that most athletic teams elect team captains from the peer group and in a few organizations with empowered teams, peers elect their team leaders.
So there are many successful examples – Mitbestimmung has been in place for over 35 years - of how the voting process is used for electing organizational or team leaders. However – and this is a big “however” – none of those examples are about electing someone’s day-to-day manager and all of the dynamics that go with it, such as positional power, decision making authority and accountability. With all of the elected representative examples above, it is about representation, which focuses on policy and organizational choice-making. Peoples’ direct supervisors or company leaders are not elected in those organizations. And the team captain role on athletic teams is largely an honorary or ceremonial role with no true decision making authority.
But for just a few blog-minutes, let’s play that fun game called “What If?” What if we could elect our bosses, what kind of a person would you vote for to be your manager or to lead the company? With public office elections, voters sometimes describe their ideal candidate in rich detail but then behind a closed curtain punch the ticket for someone else who might not be so ideal, but someone who can represent their personal interests more effectively.
So how would those personal interests and preferences play out at the workplace ballot box for you? How would you balance your personal preferences in a boss with what might be best for the overall company? Would you re-elect the boss you have if he/she were up for election? Of course, it also depends on who else is running and whether negative campaign ads were permitted.
It’s an interesting and provocative question and young newbie employees without much workplace context would likely tend to have very different ideas about who they would elect as a boss. Ask some young ‘uns that question and listen to what they say about it.Many would probably like the possibilities of voting for one’s boss as it aligns with their “open source” and free-to-act generational value system.
Finally, check out this blog, which raises a similar question – who in your company besides your boss would you like to work for. It makes you think about identifying effective leaders in your organization.
Mike Hoban is a senior consultant for Development Dimensions International (DDI).
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