Speeches by Nduati

I have always watched the same thing in my free time. Recently, however, I decided that I would like to get recommendations for new shows, and one of you gave me two. The first one was The New Girl, and I hated it immediately. The second one was Love, Death and Robots. This one I loved—particularly the second episode of the third season.

It is about a crab monster that invades a ship, kills the captain and a few other crew members, and then goes down into the galley of the ship. Even though the second mate (the second in command) was the most competent person on the ship, he suggests they be democratic by using lots to pick a new captain, and they pick the huge guy. In brief, they find out that the crab monster wants to be taken to an island full of people so that it can feed on them. Everyone except the second mate wanted to do this. So he manages to get the only gun on the ship and, starting with the big guy, feeds the crew to the crab. He eventually kills the crab by burning down the ship.

I loved the story because I could see some similarities between me and the second mate. It’s not because, a few weeks ago, when I took a 700 km road trip to the south of Ethiopia, my seatmate irritated me so much that I would have gladly fed him to a crab monster first. It is because, when I took the leadership assessment, like the second mate, I was both democratic and authoritarian, and I have seen this play out in real life.

But as much as I resonated with him, I kept asking myself: why did I think his actions were right? What is the reasoning behind it? Because it might be fiction and animation, but what he did was pretty crazy.

Let me use a pretty crazy situation to illustrate what I realized.

Remember that 700 km trip to the south? It was five days long, and on the second day we got to the base of a hill that had a lake at the top. It had been raining all day, but I wanted to climb it. Seven out of the twenty-something people present also wanted to climb it, and so we did. We started at about 6 p.m., and it was meant to take 45 minutes. Because of the mud, however, it ended up taking us four hours.

We got to the peak and started our way down in pitch darkness at 8 p.m. If there is a crab monster in the south, it was probably hiding in the dark forest. You could fall and break a bone, their might be animals or there might be humans – the most dangerous animal there is.

But I was chill. At first, I was democratic. I just wanted to get back to our camp, so I let everyone do whatever they wanted.

But I quickly realized that when there is a figurative crab monster lurking in the darkness of a forest, you do not have time to be democratic. In a crisis, you trust your competence and then use the best leadership style at your disposal. In my case, it was a form of authoritarian style.

You see, I quickly noticed two things. First, we would all get lost if we continued moving the way we were. Second, I was the most competent hiker there because I was the only one who could see the problem.

Let me give you a picture. I was somewhere in the middle of the column going down. There was a guard with a gun at the front and another guard with nothing at the back.

There was a girl who kept pushing the front guard to move faster and faster ahead. This meant we were becoming spread out, and in the dark underbrush of the forest it was easy for us to lose our way.

So at some point, I decided that I would be the leader, and I got one of the people to tell the front guard not to listen to the girl. 

That night I learned two Amharic words. Gundān because ants were bitting us. I also learned the word Koi because as we proceeded, I would watch how spread out we were. If we were too spread out, I would shout, “Koi… Koi,” and the front guard would stop. We would all catch up and then proceed together.

We did this until we got back to the camp safely.

While I did not feed my hiking mates to the crab monster, the first mate and I did have the same goals. His was the safety of the many people on the island that the crab monster wanted to be taken to, and mine was the safety of the seven people I was with on that dark mountain. And when faced with an emergency, we trusted in our competence and made use of the best leadership style at our disposal.

So it will be with you when you are faced with a crisis while leading a team. Will you freeze up in indecision and doubt? Or will you trust in your competence and lead with the best style you have?

Because when there is a crab monster in the galley, the only inexcusable thing you can do as a leader is to do nothing.