When the former Bear Stearns boss Jimmy Cayne walked out of the ailing Wall Street bank in 2008, “he claimed there wasn’t a dry eye on in the house”. That’s not how staff remember it. Indeed, in his book House of Cards, William Cohan observes that Cayne was heartily disliked. That contrast was recently explored in experiments conducted by Sebastien Brion of the IESE business school. The results “will come as a big shock to business big cheeses, but to no-one else”. Brion found that those in positions of power “were convinced the others were on their side”. Yet lowly participants were often so antagonistic that they formed alliances against the powerful, “even when it was not in their financial interest to do so”. The bosses, meanwhile, remained “blissfully unaware of the forces working against them”.
(From an Editorial in The Economist).

People who get to the “top” are, generally speaking, not the touchy-feely type. Driven by ambition, and willing to betray and bully their way to fortunes, they are seldom liked. It is part of the mechanism of capitalism. The employees have to lump it.

But there is another, Epicurean way. The boss who consults and listens, then makes a decision, making the employees feel they are respected and can make suggestions, is a boss who will inspire loyalty and improve the results of the company without threats and sackings. Moreover, the staff turnover will be lower, the institutional memory better, and the experience of longer-serving staff will be a key asset. Epicureanism stands for valuing people and their ideas.

A statement of the obvious? Yes, but it isn’t obvious to many bosses. Epicureans have to be decisive, but also take their employees with them in a cooperative spirit, or eventually, like Bear Stearns, it will surely fail.