Following leader can be best plan

The adage, "put not your faith in princes", is heard occasionally around organisations. It is usually less a guide for future action than an explanation of a disappointment. It is spoken with a knowing sigh rather than as a strong exhortation. Princely leaders disappoint. "Better to make your own way, let your work speak for itself, for politicking will end in tears."

But if a leader is really to lead, is it not required for those who are being led to put some faith in the leader? The problem of trust, and legitimisation of the leader, goes to the heart of what it is to be a leader, and it has applications in politics as much as business. Prof John Kay pointed out recently in a Financial Times business "agony column" for executives that a newly-promoted chief executive has to do some things to mark symbolically the difference between him as leader and his former colleagues as the led. A leader is always different.

Where does this leave the led, the rest of the organisation? It is taken as given nowadays that the hierarchical, authoritarian model of organisation is not appropriate in a highly-skill, modern economy. People will just not live with it. Yet business organisations are also problematic if they are thought to be entirely flat. They never are flat. A business is virtually incapable of being a democracy, but nor is it capable of being a galley slave ship. In between, there is a need for trust between the leadership and the led. Employees in a business have staked some, if not all, of their livelihood on the success of the business, yet they cannot really check for themselves that the whole organisation is going to continue to function. The exception is where key employees can easily change jobs, for example in some software companies, where the business can be at the mercy of a few star designers. That situation is relatively rare.

The same issue of trust arises in public life. We are to vote on two referendums on May 22nd, one on the Belfast Agreement and other on the Amsterdam Treaty. There has been criticism that people are being rushed into voting on complex matters and that the full text of the Amsterdam Treaty hasn't been made available to every household. Of course, the referendums confirm that, politically, we are ultimately a flat organisation, a democracy.

However, there's a tinge of fundamentalism in the idea that we should all, for that reason, read all the texts of both agreements before voting one way or another. Can it be wrong for a voter to say, "If it's good enough for Seamus Mallon, it's good enough for me and I'm voting yes"? Or for John Hume, Bertie Ahern, David Trimble, John Bruton, Gerry Adams, whoever. You can be intelligent and still follow a leader. Having first voted for political leaders, it seems reasonable that we can intelligently trust them.

In fact, if political leaders, just as business leaders, do not seek and acquire people's trust, they are not leaders at all. In the business arena, such a chief executive is a mere holder of a title, the occupant of a nice office and the driver of a swanky car. Politically, the counterpart is a slave to opinion polls and media image, destined to leave no stone turned. Both types are useless. We need leaders, which must mean that we need to choose to be led sometimes.

How people's trust is acquired is critical, since it could be done fraudulently by the abuse of commercial, marketing techniques, better known as mere propaganda. This is the problem, not so much trusting leaders in itself.

Most cultural and political critics give little respect to those who choose to follow and admire leaders. Instead, it is intimated, the sheep, the "party faithful" are to be pitied. The better alternative, by implication, echoes a Calvinist religious purism just as each believer had to read Scripture for himself alone, each self-respecting voter ought to read the Belfast Agreement and the Amsterdam Treaty for him or herself. Put not your faith in princes, priests nor the Referendum Commission!

It is no surprise that this purist individualism is not the sort of outlook that lends itself to a productive working life in modern business organisations. It is not the outlook of a team player. Nor should it be the only way we are permitted to act as self-respecting voters. Sometimes, putting a bit of faith in certain princes is the most intelligent thing you can do. Oliver O'Connor is an investment funds specialist.