Deleting Elon Musk Pt. I:
Reflections on Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind & Organizational Leadership
This past week, the internet exploded with volatile reactions to Elon Musk’s purchase of the social media giant Twitter. Granted, the social media platform probably has an outsized influence on cultural conversations due to its reputation as the preferred communication site for the media elite, but perceptions are almost always more important than reality – and Twitter is perceived by many as being highly influential.
This is why the company has been under fire in recent years. In its efforts to tamp down on the spread of disinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic, many believed their approach constituted an overreach. Suspending the New York Post for its coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal during the 2020 presidential election is often cited as one of its more egregious acts of censorship – especially now that other journalistic outlets report that there is substance to the coverage.
And so SpaceX and Tesla billionaire mogul Elon Musk rides to the rescue with a posse of investors, shooting trolling tweets left and right (quite literally in an ideological sense), promising to restore the value of free speech on Twitter with his $44-billion-dollar take over.
Afterward, many on the left reported seeing drops in their followers on Twitter while many on the right claimed they saw increases, suggesting that his purchase of the platform was causing people on the left to delete their accounts while those on the right jumped onto the platform now that it was under new leadership. And more than a few people seemed to corroborate this on alternate social media sites like Facebook – posting that they had jumped off the Twitter boat now that their ideological arch-villain was captaining (or pirating) the vessel.
But who knows if this is really what happened? The changes in subscribers could have been part of a periodic purge of fake accounts and/or an update to the Twitter algorithm. It’s yet another example of how difficult sensemaking can be in our digital age.
However, this situation does underscore how relevant Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is today, a decade after he published the book to explore how moral psychology can inform our understanding of the increasingly volatile political and cultural divisions in the United States. Having recently finished listening to the audiobook, I came away with the following thoughts about how his research should inform our understanding of leadership and leadership training.
Leadership is Always About Morality & Ethics
In part three of the book, Haidt touches on the Transformational v. Transactional leadership continuum in relation to his research on moral psychology. Transformational leadership describes a set of interpersonal behaviors leaders can use to build strong relationships with followers. Transactional involves using a more carrot and stick approach to move people to complete desired tasks.
Though Haidt’s review of this framework is cursory - treating both sets of leadership behaviors as a binary rather than as part of a continuum of behaviors - his use of this particular leadership framework to discuss the intersection of morality and leadership is fitting.
James McGregor Burns, the leadership scholar whose 1978 Pulitzer Prize winning book Leadership, helped introduce the transactional/transformational leadership continuum into the scholarly literature on leadership studies, argued that ethics and morality were foundational to good leadership. As he stared: “transformational leadership demands commitment, persistence, courage, perhaps selflessness and self-abnegation.”
It’s important to note that Burns was speaking about political leadership, which for certain has a deeply moral dimension. While battles over so-called culture war topics clearly involve moral and ethical belief systems, economic policy – which lawmakers probably have the most control over – is deeply informed by morality and ethics. As President Joe Bident says his father once told him: “Don’t tell me your values. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you your values.”
And yet, I think we could all agree that leadership is a moral undertaking no matter whether it is in a political setting, a corporate boardroom, a non-profit headquarters, a city counsel meeting, or the provost’s office at a college or University.
But how do leaders determine what is moral or ethical? And probably more importantly, how to followers determine what is right and wrong? Haidt’s answers to these questions highlight the cultural polarization all people in leadership positions must navigate today.
The Elephant in the Organization
Let’s meet Edgar. He prides himself on his analytical disposition. He doesn’t brag openly about it, but his inner voice often brags to himself about how he is always able to maintain a measured disposition. Then one day, Edgar logs onto social media and sees a picture of a woman being harassed by protesters as she enters an abortion clinic in Nevada. Without checking the source, Edgar shares the story on social media with a message condemning the protesters. He says they all should be flogged. Later, he finds out the picture was taken out of context by an internet troll. The image was actually of a woman who murdered her fiancée and stuffed his body in a barrel, and the protesters were members of his family – understandably upset over the light sentence she received. Edgar feels embarrassed and deletes his post.
We’ve all been Edgar at some point. Admit it.
As creatures who evolved to believe many illusions about our conscious experiences, we mistakenly believe that we are ruled by the analytical parts of our brains when in reality it’s the emotional part of our minds that really holds the reins.
Haidt uses the metaphor of the elephant and the rider to describe this cognitive relationship between the analytical parts of our minds and the emotional. As analytical riders, we think we are in control of the beast we are saddled on, but one emotionally charged trigger like a provocative headline or inflammatory tweet will quickly show us how much control the elephant really has over us.
How many people really analyzed their decision to delete their Twitter accounts this week and how many just responded to a visceral impulse based on their dislike of Elon Musk?
Haidt argues that despite the rational, scientific, Enlightenment ideas we think inform our responses to the world, we are actually not very analytical creatures. We first intuit our responses based on our emotional reaction and then devise a post hoc argument to support our response. Evolution has not wired us to be truth seekers. It has wired us to be argument winners.
This metaphor is also used in Smith & Ford’s 2020 book Motivating Self & Others. They use the rider and elephant image to stress the point that we may not even be aware of the values that motivate us. To help readers identify the values that are really motivating the elephants they’re riding, they provide an assessment of personal goals you can take that may lead to some surprising results.
From a leadership perspective, it’s important to take time to be mindful about the values that propel you to take action - and those that motivate your teammates. The values motivating you may not always be clear to you. And they may not always be clear to your teammates either. By completing the personal goals assessment, you can help improve your sensemaking about how to keep motivating yourself – and what you can do to motivate the people on your team.
It will also help you understand why people may react to things that happen within an organization the way they do. Since not everybody comes to an organization with the same moral dispositions, understanding all the ways people may make sense of the world morally is an important leadership tool - especially if you want to influence them.
In the next edition of this Substack, I’ll continue delving into how Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind can inform approaches to organizational leadership – and help us make sense of reactions to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
Daniel Tarker, MFA, Ed.D. is a consultant specializing in leadership and organizational development. Learn more about his learning and development services at danieltarker.com