08th September 2011 | Posted in Books, How to be a Leader
This post is one in a series where I am I’m going to take each of Sarah Bakewell’s twenty attempts at Montainge’s answer to the question ‘how to live’ and re-interpret them as an answer to the question ‘how to be a leader’. If that baffles you (and if you haven’t read the rest of the series, why wouldn’t it?), you can read my explanation here. You can find earlier posts in the series under the ‘How to be a leader’ category in the navigation bar to the left.
Q: How to be a leader? A: Question everything
Heresy is a strange concept for the developed world in the 21st Century. With religious wars a near-constant in his lifetime ‘though, asking the wrong questions was worse than supporting the wrong Glaswegian football team in 
the wrong pub on match day for Montaigne. While he seemed to mostly avoid trouble during his life, part of his legacy was to cause heartache for many philosophers who followed him, particularly those whose thinking began with Christian values. Descartes drove himself to the edge of madness wrangling with Montaigne’s scepticism. Blaise Pascal spent decades infuriated with his constant questioning. While they admired him more than their predecessors, Voltaire, Neitzche, and TS Eliot all wrestled with Montaigne’s writings through their lifetimes. His collected essays were officially banned by the Catholic Church between 1676 and 1854, an act which probably ensured their commercial success just as much as Radio 1 banning the Sex Pistols in 1977.
Why? Because he questions everything.
Montaigne wasn’t some Medieval punk but a more infuriating opponent altogether for the religious fundamentalists. For them, questioning is caused by doubt. Doubt is the opposite of faith. And doubt is the Devil’s work. Like a distracted shopper in a crowded market, Montaigne stops, prods, sniffs and moves on to leave the puzzled merchant to wonder what flaw has been discovered in their beautiful fruit. This lightness of touch and characteristic shrug of the shoulders is probably what saved Montaigne from burning at the stake in his lifetime and the lack of dogma has surely contributed to his lasting fame. A philosopher who hates philosophy. A Medieval Christian who is prepared to consider that his cat may have a better idea of life than his own. A politician with a genuine lack of personal ambition. In later years, TS Eliot would describe arguing with Montaigne’s ideas as the equivalent of fighting fog with a hand grenade and it’s easy to see why. He seems to believe in everything and nothing at the same time. The only consistent thread to his work is the most simple one: ‘All that I know for sure is that I know nothing’.
No one who deals with people can doubt the power of questioning. From Socrates onwards, questions have always been the tool of discovery, learning and personal growth. As with everything else, ‘though, taking the techniques of the social scientist and placing them in the commercial world brings risk as well as reward. Questions aren’t neutral in business because they come with a purpose and the purpose is usually to coerce. To persuade. To influence. Unlike Montaigne, the salesman who asks what you’re looking for in your product isn’t doing so with a detached interest and a nonchalant shrug. She’s asking so she call tell you why hers is better than the one down the road. Sadly, the manager who asks her what her objectives are isn’t asking neutrally either and this misapplication of the power of ‘what?’ dogged my early management career. Having fastened quickly on the idea that theory x and y needed to coexist, having enthusiastically moved from John Adair to something more subtle and varied as a management style, I got stuck on the idea that pretending to have an open mind was my job. Stuck in the style of giving those that they manage the freedom to do as they’re told is the end of their development for many managers I’ve worked with and for over the years and there’s no denying that it can breed personal and organisational success. Doing what you’re told and getting others to do the same is a pretty safe way to middle-management heaven.
But of course that isn’t the right answer. Not really. It isn’t even the right question and it isn’t even asked of the right person. The question is not ‘what are you going to do?’ or ‘how are you going to do it?’. The question is ‘why?’. And it needs to be asked up the line, not just down. And it needs to be asked of yourself, not just those that you manage. And it needs to be asked with care because the modern equivalent of Montaigne’s alleged heresy is an organisational heresy that is no more popular. From the Board Room to the analysts calls, there’s only so much fundamental questioning that the commercial world can take from it’s leaders before constructive scepticism becomes pointless sophistry.
And so it is with those that you lead. They need you to be an organisational heretic sometimes but they also need to see, hear and smell a clear direction. The important thing is that the future they subscribe to isn’t yours or the organisations, but their own and demonstrating faith in them while engaging in constructive doubt about the future is a difficult trick to pull off. Embracing ambiguity, encouraging doubt while continuing to show faith in those that you lead and deliver organisational performance takes some doing. Which is why I guess Montaigne’s record as a leader is chequered, at best. If it’s hard to fight fog with a hand grenade, it must be even harder to try following it.
So to those that lead, I say question everything. Ask the right questions of the right people. Question yourself more than others and never doubt that questions have the power to be the Devil’s tridents as well as the harps of the angels.
