There is a systematic problem that faces all leaders and people in power. The people around them are afraid to tell them painful truths.
It doesn’t help that people who reach high leadership positions more often than not have outsized egos, and are already unduly confident that they are wiser than those around them. And some have a tendency to “kill the messenger”, which further constrains the people around them.
So it is not surprising that presidents and prime ministers and CEOs and kings are so often wholly out of touch with the real world. They tend to surround themselves with people who will tell them what they want to hear, whether it is true or not, and they tend to systematically purge from their court people who challenge their thinking. It is a problem inherent in leadership, and we see examples in public life all the time.
The position of the royal fool has sometimes been an answer to this problem. According to some histories the royal fool could – gently – tease the king and tell him painful truths, so long as they were offered as entertaining verses or songs or jokes. And since the royal fool was by convention assumed to be simple minded, whether he really was or not, whatever he said could not affront the king’s dignity.
We no longer have royal fools, but the wisest leaders will assure that their immediate advisers include people who are not afraid to tell them when they are wrong, or to tell them bad news, or to challenge their reasoning, and they will treasure such people above those courtiers who just seek to ingratiate themselves.
Unfortunately, we have few wise leaders in the world.
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