Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay, everybody, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for checking in wherever you are in the world. I have a returning guest today, Dr. Keith Grint. And, he has been a professor emeritus at Warwick University since 2018. He spent 10 years working in various positions across a number of industry sectors before switching to an academic career. His first undergraduate degree, sociology, was from the Open University in 1981, and his second in politics from the University of York in 1982. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1986. He was a junior research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford University, between 1985 and 1986 and a research fellow there from 1986 to 1987. Between 86 and 92, he was a lecturer in sociology at Brunel University. And between 1992 and 98, he was a fellow at Templeton College, then a university lecturer in organizational behavior at the School of Management, Oxford University. Between 1998 and 2004, he was a university reader in organizational behavior at the Saïd Business School and director of research there between 2002 and 2003. And from 2004 to 2006, he was Professor of Leadership Studies and Director of the Lancaster Leadership Center, Lancaster University School of Management. He then was a Professor of Defense Leadership and Deputy Principal of the Shrivenham campus at Cranfield University. He was a Professor of Public Leadership at Warwick Business School from 2009 to 2018. He is a fellow of the International Leadership Association and a professorial fellow of the Australian Institute of Police Management. He is also a founding co-editor with David Collinson of the Journal Leadership and co-founder of The International Studying Leadership Conference. I had a wonderful time at that this year, by the way, in Copenhagen. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2012, and is awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science, Warwick University 2013. He received the chief constable's commendation for contribution to police leadership in 2018, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association in 2018. Sir, that's a lot of dates. You have been a busy, busy man for quite a long time studying this thing called leadership. And today, we're going to talk about some of your latest work on resistance. But before we jump into that, what else is new, sir? What's going on?
Keith Grint 2:28
Well, in terms of all the things that I've done, it's because I'm very old. So, there's a direct connection between those two things. What's going on? I'm now writing a book, which is probably going to be about followership. The paper I'm currently writing is about the English Civil War. I’m looking at a group called the Levellers. And a series of debates called the Putney debates, where the English army tried to design a new constitution just after the first Civil War. They involved common soldiers and junior officers as well as senior officers in trying to work out what the country should look like, and how they should get beyond the Civil War. So that's what I'm currently dribbling on about.
Scott Allen 3:09
Interesting. Okay, so I want to start there in a way. You define leadership, management, and command. And I want to make sure before we jump into this conversation; leadership, management, command. And then is there any kind of unique perspective that you bring on the followership definition? So, let's go through those four, if we could, just as we kind of begin to enter into our conversation around resistance.
Keith Grint 3:36
Okay. So the easy one first is my management. I take management to be the organization of what are called tame problems, problems that we already know how to solve. So, they're basically about technical skills and devolving responsibility down to those people that know how to do them. I take command to be a coercive control mechanism useful in situations of some kind of crisis where you basically have to command people, shout at them, get them to do whatever. House is on fire, no time for discussion now, just get out of the house. And, in that context, I take leadership to be associated with wicked problems. So, the model of leadership that I use in this context is about collaborative leadership. So I restrict it to the collaborative approach, rather than the other kind of leadership. In terms of followership, I'm not sure about defining it, I think I'm going to probably define it by suggesting that it's the anvil upon which leadership is usually broken. So, if you assume that leadership is something that you can't really understand, in and of itself, it has to be understood in the context of followers, then it’s the followers that determine whether leadership is going to work or not. So, I'm using it on that basis. The resistance I'm taking as a mechanism by which people A) resist leadership, but also, I'm going to suggest that actually resistance comes before leadership. So, you only need leadership because you're assuming there's going to be resistance. If there wasn't going to be resistance, you wouldn't need to lead people, you could just manage them. So, there's something kind of inherent in here about the role of resistance, which is fundamental to an understanding of why we need leadership sometimes.
Scott Allen 5:17
Well, I now imagine that followership would be consistent across the three domains: command, management, and leadership. Would that be accurate?
Keith Grint 5:30
So, the essence of the book that I'm trying to write at the moment is to suggest that we have a kind of utopian and dystopian version of followership. The utopian version of followership is when you have… So, when you have a wicked problem, and you're using leadership, I'm suggesting that what you want is followers who are constructively dissenting. So, they don't necessarily agree with what you're trying to do, but they agree with where you're trying to go. And they will tell you when they think you're going wrong. The tame problem is when you want people who are technical experts just to get on with the job. In a utopia, those are the kinds of people you want. The coercive one requires you to comply and doesn't require you to resist. This isn't a time for resistance or questioning; this is the time to do what I've just told you. That's the kind of utopian model in the leadership head. But, in the dystopian model, which is the opposite, I'm suggesting sometimes, when you're looking at a wicked problem, what you get is followers that avoid taking any kind of responsibility for where you're going, which probably leads you into the wrong area. In terms of management, when you get people, you get followers who are more than willing to follow rules that don't make any kind of sense. So, they're overcompliant with the regulations. And then, in the coercive dystopia, really going back to my previous book about mutiny, for example, where the followers are under no circumstances going to comply with your coercive modes. So, at the moment, I'm looking at six chapters looking at those kinds of things, plus an introductory theoretical chapter and a conclusion.
Scott Allen 7:00
Okay, so let's go to this place of resistance, kind of lay the groundwork for us. I know you've done a teeny little bit of it so far, but lay the groundwork for this concept of resistance; I'm really, really interested in this.
Keith Grint 7:12
Okay. So, in terms of the definition, I'm arguing, like most of my work, that this is yet another what we call essentially contested concept, that we aren't probably going to agree on what resistance is. And there's no point in us trying to thrash out to get to a consensus because there probably isn't going to be consensus. We don't need a consensus, all we need to know is what do you think it is or what I think it is, and then we're going to have a discussion about it. It starts with that framework. And then I suggest that resistance isn't good or bad; it just happens to exist. It's just there. It's almost always there. Then it runs into an argument about how it depends upon leadership in the first place. So, leadership depends on resistance and vice versa. Then I suggest that you can't really explain the success or failure of resistance just by looking at resources. There’s something well beyond that. And part of that resources is how people, whether they're leading the resistance or leading the opposition to the resistance, whether they're actually very good at leadership, management, and command. And I think a lot of the material that I'm working with suggests that if you want to explain any of this stuff, you just have to focus on leadership. And my suggestion is, that simply isn't good enough looking at the leadership issues, you also have to look at the coercive mechanisms and the management mechanism. So, for example, the first big chapter, three kind of subchapters on this, looks at resistance to Roman imperialism. So, I'm looking at the resistance of the goals, and resistance of the Germans and the resistance of the Brits, these are all against Julius Caesar or Varus, those kinds of the era. And I'm suggesting that one of the reasons very few people managed to resist Rome is because they didn't have the logistical capabilities that the Romans had. So this is a management task. Ultimately, it's a management task. And because they were so good at this, they were so good at logistics; they could basically outlast just about anybody who tried to defy them. So,m in the two of the examples, they just basically outlasted the resistance. And the only one that didn't work was in Germania of a guy called Arminius, as the Germans called him, who led the Germans to the defeat of the Romans. And that basically stopped the expansion of the Romans into Germany. So, the Romans never got really beyond the Rhine. And they didn't get beyond the Rhine because the German tribes A) united, which was unusual. And B) led the Romans into an ambush in the middle of a forest. They didn't fight them out in the middle of a field. Nobody could basically resist the Romans in the middle of open space because their fighting capabilities and management capabilities were so good, but you could beat them if you knew what they were good at. Arminius was the only person, really, in this particular era that managed to defeat the Romans. So, in each of the cases that I’m looking at and all the case studies, I'm trying to look at not just the leadership capacities of both sides but also their coercive capacities, whether they could actually control followers, and their management tactics and their resources therein. So, it's trying to look through those kinds of things. And I look at various different examples. So, there are a couple of chapters on slavery. There are a couple of chapters on resistance at work. And there are two chapters on resisting the Nazis, one of which is actually German resistance to the Nazis. And the other one is the Dutch resistance to the Nazis. And then, I look at resistance to military racism and military patriarchy in the Second World War. So, the Red Tails, the 332 fighter group, were the African American fighter pilots in the Second World War. And, on the gender side, I'm looking at the women pilots in the British Air Transport Auxiliary, who had a similar kind of issue to deal with. The penultimate chapter is about resisting contemporary colonialism or imperialism. So, there's a chapter on the British in the layer in the 1950s. And then the Americans in Iraq, primarily, I don't really concentrate on the Brits, I concentrate on the Americans because it's a more interesting story in terms of where the resistance in Iraq came from. And then the final chapter or conclusion, I'm looking at what I call voiceless subletons. So, most of this material that I'm looking at has been printed, or published, or recounted before. So, all the voices that are not there are worth bringing up. What is it that we don't know about all this stuff that I've just talked about? And then the final chapter looks at the rhetorical tropes and defensive privilege. So, I kind of switch the lens from looking at those who are resisting to looking at those who are resisting the resistance on what kind of arguments did they make? So, for example, what kind of arguments did slaveholders make to resist those people trying to overcome slavery? And there are really common tropes across, not just slavery, but even contemporary debates about how people say, “Oh, we shouldn't be doing this because of whatever it happens to be.”
Scott Allen 12:09
Yeah. Well, this conversation, and if you're willing to explore some other areas, that would be wonderful. I just mentioned that when we began our session today, I was at the International Studying Leadership Conference in Copenhagen. I don't know if you've been to the Museum of Resistance; it was just an absolutely fascinating experience to just file back because it was the story of how the Danes reacted to the occupation. And the people who gave their lives and put their lives on the line, whether it was ferrying Jews to other countries, it was just a fascinating experience because I had not been exposed to the material in that way before. And it's interesting here. So you've got the management, the leadership, and the command. And are there instances where maybe one of those was missing or was less than? I think of a contemporary example right now and let me know if this is taking us in the wrong direction, but I think of it Ukraine. How will Ukraine resist the power of the mighty Armed Forces of Russia? Do they have the leadership? Do they have the command? Do they have the management to withstand it? And I imagine, from a leadership standpoint, that is their ability to galvanize large factions of other countries to help support. That would be the leadership challenge, on one level, at least, correct? How do you think about that puzzle through the lens of your work?
Keith Grint 13:44
So, I think you've identified the leadership issue really well. And Zelenskyy seems to me to be a pretty good leader in terms of generating that support. But the big problem that the Ukrainians have is actually about management. It's about the logistics that they can't secure enough artillery shells, as a prime example, or they can't secure enough missiles. And particularly in terms of what the Americans are currently doing, or what the Congress is currently doing in terms of not allowing support for Ukraine to go through. So, I think this is a really good example of you have to get all three of these things in line for this to work. And, whereas, if you swap over and look at what Putin was doing, well, he has most of the coercive abilities that he requires. But that coercive ability is dependent upon a kind of social contract with the population which says, If you comply with my coercion, I will A) Win this war. And B) Protect you. And the recent outburst of terrorist attacks on the theater is a good example of just how fragile that might actually be. If you get an array of attacks, and your promise to protect people is no longer the case, then people will start to think, “Well, if you can't protect us, why would we acquiesce to your coercion?” The other element of this I think is trying to think about what happened in the very beginning of the war or the special military operation. Thousands of Russian men, in particular, left the country. It always strikes me as a good issue: if you prevent people from leaving, what do they do? Do they comply, or do they resist? And once you allow people to escape, then you undermine some of the resistance. So, this is the kind of Hirschman’s exit voice and loyalty mechanism. Whereas, if you prevent people from exiting, the possibility of them using their voice is much greater. But if you allow them to leave, then the voice disappears. Which is why some of the European nations that border Ukraine stopped Russia stopped some of the Russians from escaping on the assumption that if we don't let you escape, you have to do something about your own population, about your own leadership, rather than just sit out the war and wait for it to go away. So, I think you can use the model to think about not just historical cases, which are most of mine, but actually contemporary arguments about who might succeed in this and how long it will go on.
Scott Allen 16:04
Yeah. So again, in Copenhagen, I went to another museum. And they feature the activist group Pussy Riot. So you may be familiar with Pussy Riot?
Keith Grint 16:16
Yeah.
Scott Allen 16:18
In Pussy Riot, you have a loose collection of individuals; this exhibit was put on by one of the leaders. And she, for probably ten years, has been in and out of jail, in and out of prison. And it was just a narrative of this kind of arc of the movement that they're trying to spark. And it was just absolutely fascinating. So, one thing that I really struggled with is what's the difference between an activist and a leader? You have an activist, but does it become leadership once it's sparked into a larger movement? Would it truly facilitate some type of change? Would Greta Thornburg be a leader, or is she an activist? And I think that depends on the mind's eye, which is looking in many ways. But if it's not sparking a larger movement… Or you can go to Navalny, and that's interesting. That's an interesting case study as well. So, how do you think about those couple of different examples that I just threw at you? And I know that this is real-time improv, but I just really, really want to get your opinion.
Keith Grint 17:27
I think the problem is if we restrict leadership to organizational leadership. If we think about leadership as a leader of ideas, for example, you can be led by an idea without being led by an organizational leader. So this runs back to that notion of being essentially contested what counts as leadership. Years ago, when I used to teach undergraduates, I used to say, "You can be led by an idea, can't you?” Some of them would nod, and some of them would disagree. And I'd say “Well, for example, when I got married in about 1806, I wore a suit that had bell bottom trousers, and I thought I was the bee's knees, I thought I looked fantastic. That would be in 1974. I don't think I wore that suit ever again, and it was almost a brand-new suit. But it went out of fashion really quickly, so I never wore it again.” And I said, “So that's really weird. I think of myself as a rational person. But I was misled by the fashion leadership of the day, so I wasted a huge amount of money on a suit I only wore once. And what I should have done was kept wearing it because it was a perfectly good suit, but I didn't.” I said, “Does anybody else feel like that?” And they would all say, “No, not really.” And I said, “Well, if you look back at yourself, the photograph of yourself 30 years from now, you will say to your parents, ‘How on earth did you let me go out looking like that?’” We're not even aware of this leadership role that all kinds of things play in our lives. We are led by passions, by ideas, by prejudices, by all kinds of stuff. I think if we get beyond that, then going back to your question about Navalny, and Pussy Rio, I think, yes, they are leaders in their own right. The difficulty is, and we know this to be the case, that you really don't get a lot of organizational or social change unless you get a significant percentage of the population engaged with it. So, for example, in the French Resistance and the Dutch Resistance, you'd never get more than 10% of the population engaged. And neither the French Resistance nor the Dutch Resistance got rid of the Germans. The German Army was removed by the American and the British Army, not by the indigenous resistance. So, you can have people who are resisting but don't necessarily assume that it's going to make a huge difference to the overall plight of your country. That isn't to say that you shouldn't do it. And there is something else here. Well, there are a couple of things. One is because of the resistance of both of those countries, both leaders at the end of the war were able to say to themselves and to their population “Look how brave we were, look how many people were involved in the resistance. We never lost our pride; we never lost hope.” So, they kind of start the post-war era in an upbeat rather than, “Oh my God, we were defeated so easily by these people.” So, it serves as that kind of symbolic role. The other role that I think it serves, and I think it perhaps is just as important. So, the cover of the book, and in the theory of the book, I'm looking at the myth of Sisyphus, which is the Greek god who is condemned to push a boulder uphill forever on account of defying the gods and defying death. There is a nice kind of interesting argument in Albert Camus' book about Sisyphus, which talks about how this man is condemned forever to push this stone uphill and watch it topple down again. But we must imagine him smiling. And I think when you look at it in that way, what you see is Sisyphus is condemned. But the only way you can keep going is by just basically putting your finger up to the authorities and saying, “I don't care what you did to me; this is not going to stop me.” And I think a lot of the resistance, both in the Second World War that I've just been talking about, and generally speaking, is about people saying to themselves, and to those people that they feel to be oppressing them, “You are not going to break me. I may not win this battle, this war, but you are not going to break me, and that will give me some satisfaction in my life that I did not just comply with what you want me to do.” And I think lots of people getting themselves into that kind of position that actually resistance is required is necessary for your own self-belief, even if ultimately, it doesn't remove or extinguish whatever you think is oppressing you.
Scott Allen 21:39
Yeah. Which, of course, takes just incredible resilience, grit, and bravery. It's fascinating.
Keith Grint 21:48
Yeah. One of the things that came up, this is mainly coming out of the French Resistance -- which I wrote about but didn't publish, and the Dutch Resistance was the number of people, particularly women. So we have this overall image, and they had it in the Second World War, that resistance to the Germans was basically about men handling explosives, or shooting Germans, or doing some of the conventional notions of heroic resistance activities. But we also know that thousands of women were involved, too. They didn't necessarily involve themselves with the violence, which is kind of locked into this resistance approach, but they did other things. And so, for example, one of the things that French and Dutch women did if they lived by the coast was they would travel along the coast in buses, and they would take their knitting, and they would sit on the bus, and they would knit the entire journey. And what nobody knew, except them, was that they were knitting the defenses into their knitting pattern. So, they would knit kind of seven purl stitches for 70 meters, then they’d drop a stitch, which meant this is a bunker, then they’d do seven more purl stitches, or whatever it was they did, but each of their patterns indicated a different aspect of the defenses. Then, that pattern would be translated into a conventional notion and sent off to London so that they could map it properly. So, these are really mundane activities that not many people knew about, nor were they regarded as heroic. But, actually, they probably did more in terms of securing Allied victory than just occasionally blowing up a viaduct or destroying a telecommunications channel, which is how we normally associate that kind of resistance. So, there's something locked into here about the way that the gender aspect gets played out, as well as the heroic aspect. And really, we need to look more than the mundane aspects of people's resistance, which go on all the time. So, for example, slaves conventionally resisted all kinds of activities by simply not walking and not working very fast, which was immensely frustrating to the slave owners but actually very effective. So, you don't get to be a hero doing this kind of stuff, but it does inhibit how they're trying to exploit you. And I think there are some really important lessons in here about trying to understand what counts as resistance and who says it counts as resistance.
Scott Allen 24:10
My mind right now is going to like Mandela, or Gandhi, or Martin Luther King Jr. Obviously, you write about Haiti in the book and kind of highlight an example that's an important example that is often not well-known. But how do you think about Nelson Mandela when we think about this topic to the framework of how you're thinking about it?
Keith Grint 24:33
Yeah. So, just in terms of that kind of mundane aspect, Mandela notoriously refused to be hurried by his prison guards. And the title of one of his books is ‘A Long Walk to Freedom.’ And one of the aspects of the long walk is that he wouldn't walk very quickly. He did it on purpose to show who was in charge. So, in all light, the prison guards are in charge, but actually, he was in charge because he set the pace. And I think there are lots of examples of that where, actually, it's not so much the kind of heroic stuff that we conventionally assume, it's the much more mundane activities, and the mundane stuff is quite often either ignored or, when it happens, it's then downgraded. So, again, for example, in the British Air Transport Auxiliary in the Second World War that I'm looking at, here you have women pilots flying planes for the Royal Air Force, through the RAF, bomb factories to fighter bases or to bomber bases. And, in the first instance, they weren't recruited because women weren't supposed to be flying anyway. And then they were recruited, and they just flew trainer aircraft, never flew fighters because that was beyond the capability of women to fly fighter aircraft. Then, they flew fighter aircraft. And then they eventually ended up flying all kinds of heavy bombers. So, they flew Lancaster bombers, they flew B17s, they flew all kinds. But each time that happened, each time there was a kind of notch up in what women are allowed to do, and did it very successfully, then the RAF, and particular leaders within the RAF, then suggested that, actually, it was a really mundane task anyway because anybody could do it so it wasn't really all that heroic. Whereas previously, they argued the reason women can't fly bombers, for example, is because only heroic, strong men can fly bombers. And then women began to fly bombers, they said, “Well it can’t be that hard, can it?” So, each time this happens, there's a kind of retrospective downgrading of the activity into a mundane activity that was, at one point, only regarded as exciting and beyond the capabilities of women. There is something in all of this about not just what people actually do, but how people talk about what they did. And how the oppressors, those opposing the resistance, tried to downplay whatever was happening.
Scott Allen 26:50
You have me on this mundane, a Gandhi that is just engaging in a hunger strike, fairly mundane at first, or the slaves walking slowly. I'm also thinking of a book based on the French Resistance, ‘All the Light We Cannot See.’ It's an incredible book, but there are a number of examples in that novel of a kind of mundane resistance. We're going to communicate through the loaves of bread, messages in the loaves of bread. But it's just so interesting. The creativity is fascinating on one level, but I guess my mind is always gone to the very public, the very outward, and to your point, the heroic versus a system of initiatives that actually begin to eat away.
Keith Grint 27:43
Yeah. You can see that manifest at the end of the war when the goal is to hand out the medals to the heroes of the resistance. Almost no women get any medals, even though about 20% of the resistance was actually women. But they don't get any other medals because he didn't regard them as sufficiently heroic to be given a medal. And in the book, he just talked about the light, but what you see is a guy on the radio talking about things, and he doesn't know whether he was listening to him. So it might just be, “I'm talking to myself here. These are really mundane activities; what am I supposed to be doing? Why shouldn't I do something heroic?” But actually, what he does is generate a really important symbolic element that encourages other people to engage in resistance.
Scott Allen 28:29
But do we have the leadership, the management, and the command? Do we have those three?
Keith Grint 28:37
In the resistance you're talking about?
Scott Allen 28:40
Yeah.
Keith Grint 28:40
Okay. Well, I think in terms of the resources, no, and particularly, if you compare what happened in Holland, sorry, in the Netherlands, to what happened in France. So, the French Resistance gets about 90% of all the air drops from the RAF, all the arms drops, almost all of them are sent to France, almost none of them are sent to the Netherlands. Partly, that's because the Netherlands resistance was broken very early on, and the Germans managed to infiltrate it. So they collect all the material that's been dropped. And secondly, the Netherlands is completely different geographically from France. So, France has got mountains and forests where you can hide large numbers of people. But the Netherlands doesn't have any of that. And just to compound that problem, the Netherlands is on the flight path from England to Germany. So, there are huge numbers of anti-aircraft batteries all over the country, so you can't just drop stuff. And that basically means that the Dutch resistance is basically on its own from day one. It doesn't have any of this support from the Brits or from the Allies at all, whereas the French Resistance gets huge amounts of support. So you can see what difference it makes? Well, it depends upon the management, the logistics, the kind of heroic leadership, and the coercive ability. So, quite often, you see a coercive approach taken by resistance groups when they decide to attack an occupier, knowing full well that the response to the attack will be the killing of many hostages. So people in London, and the goal, for example, are saying, “You must stop these individual assassinations of German officers,” all they end up doing is we lose 10 or 20 or 100 Brit citizens; it's pointless. Wait until the army gets there, and then we can do this. But the French Resistance has a strategy which says, “No, we are going to make French citizens choose. They are not going to sit on the fence and wait to see who's winning. You're either with us, or you're against us.” So they make them choose to be either with the resistance or not with the resistance. And that's a really interesting strategy about how you divide people. This is a coercive mechanism that they use to divide people up and say, “Are you on our side or are you on their side?” That's an important feature that comes in towards the end when there's a mass movement of resistance.
Scott Allen 31:08
Well, Keith, as we begin to wind down our time together today, I just want to say one thing and then I'll ask if you have anything else that you want to say about the book. But I have such respect for your work. It always takes me to the edge of my own thinking, whether it was our previous conversation about mutiny. And now you're exploring this dimension. And you always bring such a beautiful integration of history and leadership, and just a different lens through which we can make sense of some of these events throughout history. And I very much appreciate it. I just really, really do. So, thank you. And anything else you want to say about the book before I ask you my final question about what you've been reading?
Keith Grint 31:52
In terms of the book, so this goes on sale in August, I think it's about 40 pounds for the paperback. So, it's about $60. But I did see on Amazon the other day that there's one of my books up for sale for £1905, which is a book I wouldn't even recommend. But it's worth buying on that basis alone because at least my kids won't starve, and we'll be able to have Christmas.
Scott Allen 32:17
(Laughs) No Christmas in the Grint family without…
Keith Grint 32:19
Not unless this book gets sold.
Scott Allen 32:22
Are you selling it for the $1,000 or someone else?
Keith Grint 32:25
No, I don't know who it is, some crazy person. I don't know why you would want to buy it. I wouldn't buy it for £1905. Absolute madness.
Scott Allen 32:33
Well, what else about resistance really quick? Anything else on that topic?
Keith Grint 32:36
No, I don't think so. I think it's just one thing. So, I read Clive Cussler’s book called Gladiator, which is about Spartacus, years ago. And Cussler talks about where he got the law of detours. And he says resistance movements, and he's counting Spartacus as a resistance movement, are always screwed by a choice. It's impossible. And the choice is either you follow your ethics, and you allow yourself to be destroyed by the oppressor, who is not interested in ethics. Or you do what is necessary and take some very oppressive coercive decisions, which will hurt some people on your side. And that eventually ends up with you completely undermining what you were trying to do in the first place. So, it's a really pessimistic response to whether resistance ultimately works. And I think I kind of ended up with Sisyphus, and even if it doesn't work, it's still worth doing. Because otherwise, we just allow the horrendous people and the horrendous political movements to take over and destroy whatever it is we've got left.
Scott Allen 33:39
Yea. And I just finished Barbara Kellerman's book, ‘Leadership from Bad to Worse.’ Such a good read. Her question is, how do we stop this, and when do we stop? What are the indicators that this is not going in a good direction? And she highlights a number of different leaders, whether it's an organizational life at Theranos, or whether it's a country, Turkey, or China is another example that she uses. But just very, very interesting. And that resistance, and you're helping us think through a little bit more from a tactical standpoint, what does that look like? And is it done in time before it goes further and further down roads we don't want to go down?
Keith Grint 34:28
Yeah. I think there's something here about personal responsibility. Then, at some point, we'll have to get out of our easy chairs and do something.
Scott Allen 34:36
Well, sir, what has caught your attention in recent times? What you've been reading, listening to, or streaming? It could have to do with what we've just discussed, it may have nothing to do with what we just discussed. What might listeners be interested in, caught your attention?
Keith Grint 34:50
Oh world, almost all the books that I read are actually based upon the followership stuff that I've been doing. What's most intrigued me in the last few weeks has been the Shogun. The TV series ‘Shogun,’ which is just coming out. What I really like about it is I don't know much about Japan in the 16th century, but it just looks really authentic. It looks like they have really tried to make sure the hats and the way the people walk look right. And their language looks right. And it just strikes me as a really well-done TV series and the kinds of things that if there… If there are more of that, I wouldn't be writing books, I'd be watching television all day long. Luckily, there aren't more of those, so I'd end up most of the time writing and then occasionally stop and watch Shogun.
Scott Allen 35:40
Well, I will put that in the show notes. You are the second or third person who's mentioned that recently to me, so I'll have to check that out for sure. Well, sir, as always, very, very much appreciate your time. Thank you for challenging us to think in new and different ways as always. And I look forward to seeing you, hopefully, next November in Birmingham.
Keith Grint 36:01
Yeah. I'll be going to Birmingham. I wasn't very well this time for Denmark, but I'll be okay for Birmingham, so I'll see you there.
Scott Allen 36:07
I'm excited. Be well, take care.
Keith Grint 36:09
Thank you. Thanks, Scott.
[End Of Recording]