The High Mach..................

Are great leaders High Mach's? Is it a personality trait that successful leaders require?
Machiavellianism is, "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct", deriving from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince) and other works.
Machiavellian and variants became very popular in the late 16th century in English.The word has a similar use in modern psychology. Machiavelli, according to the popular view, although this is disputed at least in part by most Machiavelli scholars, held that people were by nature untrustworthy, malevolent and self-serving, and thus those in power could only maintain their position through exploitative and deceitful actions.
Strangely, one person, who came closest to Machiavelli's definition was a woman. She grew up in a palace filled with intrigue & deceit, where defeat was death. Cleopatra, the much vilified Egyptian queen, known for her legendary beauty was the epitome of brains and courage. She used her great skills to keep her kingdom of Egypt independent, amidst great political uncertainty and a rampant Rome.She married two of the most powerful Romans of the time- Julius Cesar & Mark Antony. When she was ordered to meet Mark Antony at 'Tarsus', she skilfully manipulated him to come aboard her skiff on the Nile. Imagine doing this to the most powerful man in the world, at the time! Her skillful maneuvering was the order of the day, till it all fell apart at the Battle of Actium where, she & Mark Antony were defeated in a Naval engagement, off Greece, by Octavian Cesar.
It's easy to dismiss the Machiavellian approach to running organisations in today's kinder, gentler world of new age, team-based management. Many believe ( privately ) that leaders can accomplish their goals only by being tough, manipulative, dictatorial, or paternalistic as the situation requires. Take this example of the manipulative and paternalistic style of management. ( It works & then it does not ) When Henry Ford set up his first plant, he was generous in providing for free schools, hospitals and subsidised food for his workers - something unheard of at that time. The "labour welfare" measures were then termed revolutionary and progressive, but Ford's approach was essentially Machiavellian (manipulative) in nature. His purpose was that his workers should have more disposable income so that they could turn out to be potential and captive buyers of the cars he produced. This met with some success. But to Ford's and the industry's utter surprise, the Ford workers one day went on strike as they found their owner was trying to be too much of a "paternalistic" manager by trying to control their lives through diktats such as one which said no worker's children could study in any other school but the one he had set up.
Why did Machiavelli recommend that a prince (read the CEO in the present context) must be ready to be cruel and devious? He himself gives the answer: in the long run, this is often kinder than to expose citizens (staffers in an organisation) to the turmoil let loose by a weak ruler. Even the worst of Machiavelli's critics should find nothing wrong with these arguments. After all, expediency is the name of the game in effective management.
His colleagues often derided one of the greatest business leaders of all times - GE's Jack Welch - as a modern-day Machiavelli. Listen to the Machiavellian ring in Welch's own words in 1982: "Managements that hang on to weakness for whatever reason - tradition, sentiment, goodness or their own weakness - won't be around in 1990". That explains Welch's vow to fix, close or sell any business that could not achieve market leadership. That meant layoffs - big ones - and by the end of 1982, GE squeezed out 35,000 employees, almost 9 per cent of the 1980 total.
Simple arithmetic done by Noel M Tichy and Stratford Sherman in their famous book Control your destiny or someone else will suggests why Welch took this step. "In 1982, GE's net income was $1.8 billion. Imagine that GE had not already terminated 35,000 employees. Their average salary and benefits of a little over $25,000 per person would have increased GE's pretax expenses by nearly $900 million". But while adopting this seemingly "cruel" style of management advocated by Machiavelli, Welch didn't forget the thinker's advocacy of a "human" face. Welch believed the victims of layoffs deserved compassionate treatment - not only generous financial settlements, but humane consideration of their feelings. He personally answered letters of complaint from laid-off employees, and directly intervened in cases of injustice that came to his attention. Executives who mismanaged the downsizing felt his wrath.
The past and present Machiavellis were only practising a dictum that has now become an all-too-familiar phrase in India: Labour reforms with a human face.
From Cleopatra to Jack Welch, we see a generous dose of Machiavellianism, coloring their personality! Are all of us to be High Machs? That's a choice that you have to make. Cleopatra committed suicide after Actium & Welch has been known to have had unsuccessful relationships at home.............