Who is your corporate jester?

Every court had a jester who could speak truth to the king. Modern organizations need people who can challenge groupthink and bring honest perspectives to leadership.

The higher you rise, the fewer people dare to tell you the truth—until one day, you realize too late that your silence is not respect, but the sound of your own isolation.

None of us is immune to the dynamics that come with power. How often has history proved that powerful people become bad listeners, arrogant, and behave in a superior fashion over time? Just look at the classic corporate examples that we all know from Enron (USA) to Ahold (Europe). And if we look back a little further in history and think about the fall of Louis XVI and the French Revolution. I'm sure that you have examples of this from your our own lives. I do. Perhaps it’s even happening in your company at this moment?

Key takeaways

• You need to consciously create space for dissenting voices in your leadership circle, because power has a way of silencing the people who tell you what you need to hear most.
• If you don’t have someone in your organization who can call out uncomfortable truths without fear of retribution, you’re at risk of becoming isolated and surrounded by yes-men.
• Leaders who ignore the warning signs of isolation—like the gradual disappearance of candid feedback—are setting themselves and their companies up for the kind of downfall history has shown us time and again.

Democracy is a beautiful thing. We should cherish it. The system protects against corruption. In politics, you can often be in charge only for a maximum of eight years. But not so in corporate life. Many leaders are in power for much longer than eight years. Or just think about family-owned businesses that are in power for generations!

If you are in power today, how do you orchestrate to hear what you need to hear? Who addresses the elephants in your room? This is not obvious! What we often see is that the people speaking up to the boss gradually disappear. No-one really knows what happened, but we can all feel it in our gut! Something is off. People aren’t stupid. They watch these things happen. The people that are left behind quickly learn that it’s better to shut up if they want to keep their job. You see this happen again and again. In politics and in companies.

Leaders get isolated and end up with having only yes-men around them. Sooner or later, it all comes down with a big crash. Perhaps not today or tomorrow, but it will come down someday.

In the 16th and 17th century we had a solution to provide a counterbalance for this: the jester. The jester had the privilege to mock and to make fun of the people in power. Such as the British royalty and Royal Courts. With humour they told the truth. They said the things that needed to be said. But, and this is crucial, without being punished. This tradition goes back even much further. Variations of the jester were already in place with the Aztecs and the Chinese. In ancient Rome, they already had the Italian version of a jester: the balatrone.

There is a large privately owned Dutch IT company called AFAS that employs a Corporate Jester today. The guy is paid upfront by the company. His job is to say whatever he wants to say. More than that: this is exactly what they want him to do! My questions for you are.

Who holds up your mirror?

For how long are you in power?

Who tells you the things that need to be said in your boardroom?

I don't know if it needs to be a jester or not to play this role. It can also be a consultant, a coach, HR, a non-executive board member or someone else trusted. To be the jester as an insider is possible, but more difficult. It's a little easier for a trusted outsider. Jester or not, to everyone in power today, I want to scream: ORCHESTRATE YOUR OPPOSITION. AND LISTEN CAREFULLY TO WHAT PEOPLE ARE TELLING YOU!

Let me know your thoughts.

Power without honest dissent is a trap; the strongest leaders are those who invite the jester to speak truth to the throne, before history does it for them.

Over to you.