Is the tenure of a leader becoming ‘nasty, brutish and short’?

When Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham announced that they intend to challenge Keir Starmer as prime minister, it felt like the start of a depressingly familiar loop. A leader who had made many great-sounding promises failed to deliver and lost the trust of the public. The public demands he quit, and he may soon be replaced by another leader who also makes impressive pledges.

During the past decade the UK has seen this loop many times. There have been five leaders of the UK government – an average of one leader every two years.

It is tempting to think that the rapid turnover is a quirk of the British system. It is not. People have become increasingly impatient with leaders in all walks of life – from coaches of professional sports teams to CEOs of large businesses to the leaders of political parties.

In our book, The Art of Less, Mats Alvesson and I argue that an important step is giving up on some of the fantasies of leadership. For example, there are often unrealistically high expectations of leaders to deliver on multiple fronts, and to do it quickly.

And when they fail, the public has become more intolerant and uncivil. There is also more willingness to push leaders out and look for an alternative. But this hasty search for alternatives often makes no difference to performance. In some cases, it can actually lead to worse outcomes.

To borrow a phrase from 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, the tenure of leaders has become increasingly nasty, brutish and short.

1. Nasty

In many spheres of life, there are elevated expectations of leaders. People expect them to work on dozens of objectives quickly, and to a very high level. One study found that in the 1950s the CEO of a large US company typically had five to seven major goals. By 2014 that number was between 25 and 40.

In sport, coaches not only have to deliver a string of wins. They also need to ensure the team is commercially viable, grow the fanbase and develop players. And in politics, party manifestos have grown from a few hundred words at the beginning of the 20th century to tens of thousands today. These lengthy and complicated manifestos increase public expectations – but they can also increase the scope for voter confusion and disappointment.

The many (often unrealistic) goals that leaders sign up to often leaves them facing nasty tensions. Sometimes delivering on one objective means they cannot achieve another – cutting taxes, for example, often means cutting public services too.

2. Brutish

When leaders face unrealistic expectations, the public can quickly become disappointed with them. This can rapidly tip over into hostility. In the past, a sense of deference usually ensured that authority figures only faced tough questions after extreme institutional failures. Today, hostility and incivility has become routine.

This hostility can be found in declining public trust in leaders. PR firm Edelman has reported a long-term decline in trust and rise in grievance in most major public institutions around the world and the people who lead them. Trust in representative political institutions like parliament has been declining throughout developed countries since the late 1950s.

Recently this has spilled over – a study by the UK electoral commission found that 70% of election candidates had experienced some form of abuse. And another study by the UK parliament found that 96% of MPs who responded had experienced threatening language or behaviour.

Leaders in business are often targets of online trolling and death threats. In sport, coaches of professional teams are now routinely subjected to extensive online abuse. According to one recent study this online abuse is rising at a rate of about 25% a year.

3. Short

Leaders have increasingly short shelf-lives. CEOs of large US companies currently spend about 4.8 years in the role, while a decade ahead ago the median was six years. The tenure of managers of top English football clubs was about four years in 2012. A decade later that number had halved to two years. Now it is closer to 18 months.

The tenure of a political leader in the UK has also been decreasing. Between the second world war and the election of Tony Blair in 1997, the average length of service of a prime minister was more than seven years. Since then it has been under four years – with some very short-tenured PMs.

This increasingly rapid change in leaders is usually driven by an impatient search for better performance. However, one meta-analysis of more than 13,500 changes in CEO found that leadership change at the top led on average to a short-term performance dip followed by no significant impact on performance in the longer term.

In elite sport, studies have found that although changing manager might bring a short-term bounce, the club’s performance typically reverts back to the mean within a season.

But it can address one problem that failing political parties face – leader credibility. This can lead to a short-term improvement. But it typically does not address underlying issues such as policies, economic conditions and a government’s capacity to deliver.

Kinder, civil, patient

There is a danger that both followers and leaders are locked into a game of rapid change that makes no one happy. Followers have heightened expectations that cause would-be leaders to seek approval with unrealistic promises.

Perhaps if we actually want better performance from our institutions – whether businesses, sports teams or governments – we might need a different approach. Leaders might need to be kinder to themselves, and the public may have to set fewer, more realistic objectives.

Being civil to leaders doesn’t mean blind deference. Rather it highlights that delivering results takes time, effort and trade-offs. We may all need to be a little more patient. Disposing of leaders if they are not instantly delivering results might feel decisive, but it can also fuel longer-term problems.

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Andre Spicer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.