Avoiding Tragedy: a lesson in Leadership from Aristotle's Poetics

Our tendency as human beings, no – it’s more basic than that – as organisms, is to keep repeating what works.  Only when it stops working do we, by nature, try another behaviour.  The trouble with that pattern for leaders is that it can lead to tragedy.  The stakes are too high for a leader to wait for failure before broadening his options and making a deliberate choice.

In this article we learn that Aristotle never really espoused the theory of “the tragic flaw” that brings good men down, but saw that even the best of us make mistakes, and that often our mistake is to misapply what we do BEST!

What is the “tragic flaw”?

The tragic flaw.  We remember it from high school English class. A heroic character has everything going for him, but one defect, one vice leads him into disaster.  It’s supposed to be a theory derived from Aristotle’s Poetics, his little book on tragedy and epic, but it really comes from Hamlet.  The character, that is, who muses:

So, oft it chances in particular men
That for some vicious mole of nature in them,...
By the o’ergrowth of some complexion...
Or by some habit, that too much o’er-leavens
The form of plausive manners, that these men,
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,...
Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault.  (I, iv, 23-36) 

Now this is not a bad idea, that great people may have one vice that spoils their reputation, as the Danes’ drunkenness apparently besmirches their national character in the play.  But this is not what Aristotle said, and even Hamlet doesn’t say that it will lead to their downfall, only to a bad reputation.

So what did Aristotle say about the cause of tragedy?

“The only possibility left, then, is for tragedy to be about the man who is in an intermediate position.  Such a man is not outstanding for virtue or justice, and he arrives at ill fortune not because of any wickedness or vice, but because of some mistake (amartia) that he makes.”  (translation by Renford Bamrough:  The Philosophy of Aristotle, p.421)

A person like us, who is in a position of leadership, because he is human and not perfect, makes a mistake.  This is why tragedy inspires pity and fear in us - pity, because he doesn’t “deserve” the horrific consequences of his mistake, and fear because he is no better or worse than us, so might not we suffer the same fate?

Leaders overdo what they do best.  The example of Oedipus.

So what kind of mistakes do leaders make that can have such “tragic” consequences?  Let’s examine one of the models that Aristotle himself was working from.  The best of the fifth century tragedies that survive is probably Sophocles’ Oedipus the King.

Here was a great King.  He had single-handedly rescued the city of Thebes from the plague of the Sphinx, through his courage and his cleverness at solving riddles. In fact, independence and cleverness had always been his strengths, since that day as a youth when he heard the terrible prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother.  He resolved then and there to outwit the oracle by never returning home.  Young as we was, he set out on his own to make his way in the world.  He had the courage alone to face the band of men at the intersection of three roads, and the confidence to assume the vacant throne of Thebes when he was welcomed as a hero after outwitting the Sphinx. 

When a new crisis arises - a plague hits the city - King Oedipus relies on those strengths that had always worked for him in the past.  He works alone, as always, taking his own counsel and relying on his own judgement and skill as a problem-solver to find out the source of the impurity that has infected his city. And find out he does, but only after, having killed his father and married his mother, he alienates the best men of the city and drives his wife to suicide. How?  By being bold. By being inquisitive.  By being authoritative and by being fearless.  By applying all the strengths that made him King, he makes himself wretched.  His “mistake” was to take what had always worked before and apply it again, but this time in the wrong situation, with disastrous results.

The Corporate Leader - tragedy waiting to happen.

Scary?  It should be.   How many leaders have you encountered who have narrowed their repertoire as they have gained success, until as CEO they have only one or two arrows in their quiver? These are the leaders that fall precipitously when conditions change, or move to a new company and self-destruct within months, leaving the press to wonder what happened.

Our tendency as human beings is to keep repeating what works.  Only when it stops working do we, by nature, try another behaviour.  The trouble with that pattern for leaders is that it can lead to tragedy.  The stakes are too high for a leader to wait for failure before broadening his options and making a deliberate choice.

What do you think?

Does this ring true for you? Have you seen the tragic effects of a leader misapplying his or her strengths? Has it happened to you personally? We’d love to hear your stories of real life leadership tragedies and your ideas about how we can avoid them.