Stuff the inspiring types – find me an anti-role model

I am tired. Not just from being at my desk too long and staying up too late (though both are true). It’s something altogether different: inspiration fatigue.

I discovered my malaise after receiving an email offering to introduce me to inspirational women. I hit delete. This is a difficult time of year. Ahead of International Women's Day, inspiring women come out in droves. But, in fact, inspirational men and women are with us all year – at conferences, as after-dinner speakers and in books, urging us to take control of our careers and reach for the top.

“Inspirational”, as applied to business figures, sums up many of the things that are wrong with the modern ideology which frames work as a quasi-religious experience.

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As my friend looked at her boss, she realised he was her anti-role model. She never wanted to become like him

On my desk is a motivational book by Ben Williams, a former drug addict who became a marine. In his book, Commando Mindset, he writes that inspiration can "be fun and make you feel good. An inspiration can make you punch the air with excitement. But it can also be sobering."

In other words, inspiration is whatever you want it to be.

Recently, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton wrote The Book of Gutsy Women, in which they describe heroic figures "with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done".

I can see that Hillary is gutsy and even (whispers), inspirational. But I fail to see what I could learn from her daughter, aside from the realisation that being born to American political royalty gives you a huge advantage.

It is inspirational women that I find particularly irksome.

Alternative model

With the emphasis on success, they put a gloss on difficult workplace issues – like the gender pay gap. As Shani Orgad, author of Heading Home: Motherhood, Work, and the Failed Promise of Equality, puts it: "The trouble with role models is that they individualise and personalise issues." It's all about the plucky individual, rather than focusing on changing the structures of the workplace.

An inspirational label puts pressure on the role models, too. Inevitably they are inundated by requests for mentoring, to speak at events, to do work beyond their actual jobs.

Elisabeth Kelan, a professor of leadership and organisation at the University of Essex, warns her students against seeking for inspirational women. "I normally encourage women to pick more specific behaviours to emulate, like the way they lead meetings, mentor their team or have dinner with their children. These composite role models are more concrete and realistic."

May I suggest an alternative? An anti-role model.

These are un-spirational people who show you the path to avoid. There are those who teach the perils of perfectionism, or not to be vile to colleagues. A friend has learned from their manager never to belittle their team and hold them back. "Their progress doesn't detract from your own," she says, but the reverse.

Another friend told me that she left her company and thanked her boss, who she couldn’t wait to escape. “What did I do?” the boss asked, fishing for compliments.

Feeling of use

As my friend looked at her boss, she realised he was her anti-role model. She never wanted to become like him: exhausted, overworked and trapped by their job. In that moment, she felt vindicated by her decision to leave and grateful for the un-spiring lesson.

When I look back to the people who have made a difference to my career, it’s not inspirational figures kicking butt and all the other slick empowerment mantras but ones that spotted potential in me, gave me opportunities, or, better still, a pay rise.

One only needs to listen to former Arsenal footballer Ian Wright’s interview on BBC radio’s Desert Island Discs to be reminded of the importance of such people.

It was moving to hear him talk about the teacher who took him under his wing. “I don’t know why he chose me but he did,” Wright said. “He gave me responsibility . . . It was really good, I just felt important. He just gave me a sense of feeling like I had some use.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2020