Daddy Issues

 

There is a local Singapore joke that states that we are a very Christian country – we were run by the Father, the Son and the Holy Goh. This is a reference to our first Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, his son and our current Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Hsien Loong and the Holy Goh is our second Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong.

This joke was most relevant in the period between 2004 and 2011, when our current Prime Minister ruled alongside his father as the “Minister Mentor,” and his immediate successor as “Senior Minister.” The “Holy Trinity” of Singapore politics seemed to work until the 2011 election when a public that had been facing rising costs started to question why our government’s job creating abilities seemed limited to the top. The Father has since died and the Holy Goh announced his retirement from politics. With these two events, one might say that the appropriate Christian analogy to describe our political scene can be seen through Netflix series – Lucifer, which shows that the Devil was merely the first being to have “Daddy Issues.”

I’m not suggesting that our Prime Minister is “devil like” in his behavior but like the character of Lucifer from Netflix, he’s struggled to deal with his father’s legacy. While one has to credit the first Mr. Lee for doing many things right, he made one key mistake, which was to allow himself to be turned into God. Instead of fading away after his retirement in 1991, the elder Mr. Lee plonked himself into the cabinet of his successor, Mr. Goh Chok Tong as senior minister and more worryingly in the cabinet of his son, as “Minister-Mentor,” which sent the clear message to the world that ministers in Singapore needed to b mentored. The late Mr. Lee used to make it a point to say, “I’m no longer in charge,” which the rest of us understood to mean, that he was very much in charge.

The inability to let go, has unfortunately remained beyond the grave. Although it’s been five years since the elder Mr. Lee passed on, the living Mr. Lee has failed to live beyond his father’s legacy. Policies and tactics that worked well in the 1960s are repeated with the hope that they will have the same results. One only has to look at the continuation of defamation suites and attempts to silence bloggers with libel laws.

Unfortunately, Mr. Lee’s inability to let go, even from beyond the grave has set a sad example for the rest of the nation’s leaders. Somehow, everyone in a position of power felt that they only had value of they never let go.

In many ways’ leadership is similar to parenting. A good leader needs to know when to be there and when not be there. Like a parent, a leader needs to prepare his or her people to be able to function and even thrive without them.

It’s like with children, you look after them by feeding and clothing them but you also need to train them to survive and eventually you have to let them succeed or fail on their own merits. As I often find myself saying to my kid – “What happens to you if I drop dead?” She says I should drop cursing myself but being aware of my own mortality focuses my mind on the fact that I have a responsibility to the kid to ensure that she has the ability to live and even thrive when I’m not around.

My former boss, Mr. PN Balji, founding editor of the Today Newspaper took great pride in the fact that the paper turned a profit after his tenure as CEO. His argument was that he had seen the paper through its stage of development and positioned it in a place where it could operate at a profit.

I think of bosses in the SME sector who have the habit of reminding employees that they would be “nothing” without the boss. Employers are as a rule of thumb inclined to use the tactic of “without me you would be ….”as a means of getting employees to do more for the same.

However, if one looks at the situation from a parental point of view, reminding someone that they’d be nothing without you is a failure of leadership. It implies that you failed in your ultimate duty as leader to train your people to the point where they could survive without you.

I think of my own parenting experiences and my ultimate line with my kid is “what happens to you if I drop dead?” Her usual reply is that I’m not allowed to curse myself. However, I find that reminding myself of my mortality helps reminding me that I have a duty to my kid to ensure that she can survive and thrive without me.

Lee Kuan Yew did many things right. However, he failed in this crucial respect. He kept telling Singaporeans that they needed him and leaders trained in his current mold to survive and prosper. When a parent says that this type of thing to a grown-up child, it’s a sign of failed parenting. Likewise when a leader of a nation says that, it’s a sign of failed leadership.