The Fool is Among Us

The jester Stańczyk. Painting by Jan Matejko, 1862

The Fool invites us to look under the masks, to become more conscious and to live more freely.

In Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, when the boastful soldier and courtier Parolles says that he has found The Fool, the licensed clown Lavatch replies, ‘Did you find me in yourself, Sir?’ (Act 2, Scene 4). Somehow, we are all fools, and we all wear masks. The Fool invites us to look under the masks, to become more conscious and to live more freely.

An attempt to spot The Fool

As a generic archetype representing the fundamental creative urge, still holding all potentials, The Fool moves between play and seriousness and takes various and multiple shapes according to specific needs.

The Fool has been jestering at least since classical antiquity and the ancient Orient, in countless manifestations of folklore, theater, literature and public life. The Fool was the buffoon and laughter-maker of ancient Greece and the Middle-Ages, the court jester of medieval Europe, praised by Erasmus, a.k.a. the “Prince of the Humanists”, and the village-idiot in Russian lore.

Around the globe, The Fool takes the shape of the coyote in Native American mythology, the signifying monkey in African American culture and the fox of the Chaco people in South America.

The Fool has been incarnated in various individual characters throughout the ages, such as Vidusaka, the good-hearted and trusted friend of the hero in the Sanskritic tradition and Twisty Pole, the emperor’s dwarf jester of the Qin dynasty, who acted as a social safeguard, by providing a corrective to the pretentious vanity of officialdom. Nasreddin Hodja, the Seljuq witty satirist, sometimes wise, but often, too, a fool, appeared in thousands of stories that usually had a subtle humour and a pedagogic nature; he has frequently been compared to the northern European trickster Till Eulenspiegel, whose name translates to “owl mirror” and who has been playing practical jokes on his German contemporaries, exposing vices at every turn, at least since 1515. Harlequin, the Italian nimble and astute servant of the 17th century commedia dell’arte and the ingenious hidalgo, wandering knight, Don Quixote, also personified The Fool.

The Fool played “hide and seek” in almost every Shakespeare’s play and it’s not always obvious to know who the real fool was. The Fool has appeared as a deuteragonist in almost every Disney movie, an eccentric, playful and mirthful little meerkat, a kind and ditzy royal blue tang or the wise Jiminy Cricket. Bugs Bunny, famous for his flippant and insouciant personality, and Joker, the notorious prankster, the chaotic counterpart to Batman’s strive for order, seem both to have been influenced by The Fool.

In modern stories, The Fool sometimes shows up as a goofy looby, bringing comic relief, like Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Jim Carey and Will Ferrell in their most famous movies; nearly every film they are in, they play The Fool. The seemingly fools may look stupid, but not all of them are as naïve as they may appear at first glance (Columbo, the awkward and unfashionable homicide detective, and his small, beat-up, ill-painted, 1959 Peugeot 403 Cabriolet).

To mask himself, The Fool also dares to sometimes appear without being fun or funny at all, as in the U.S. television drama series Billions (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, …). Wendy Rhoades, M.D, a trained psychiatrist, is a beautiful jester and a dominant trickster. She works as a self-possessed and loyal in-house performance coach for an ambitious billionaire, manager of Axe Capital, a hedge fund company.

“This is why you are here. Because when fearless leader forgets every once in a while that he does need to fear the almighty, you bring him back to himself. You restore equilibrium.” — Mike Wagner, COO and right-hand man of Axe Capital’s CEO, to Wendy Rhoades (Billions, s04, e11)

At the same time, Wendy Rhoades is the loving wife of an U.S. Attorney who has a particular distaste for wealthy white-collar criminals and who tries by all means to bring down Axe Capital. Loyalty is complex, it’s not solely a cognitive reality, but also an emotional one that resonates with love, expressed as an action verb.

In the real world, The Fool can easily be spotted in the Arts. Andy Warhol, who adopted the guise of a fool in public, making his own apparent lack of competence and intelligence into an elaborate ruse, became a figure without precedent: a man whose self-conscious naivety has had truly revolutionary impact beyond the Art world (Cresap, 2004). Among countless others, let’s mention Joana Vasconcelos, who was the first woman and the youngest contemporary artist to show her work at the major annual contemporary art exhibition in the Palace of Versailles. One of her recent exhibits (Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, 2018), I’m Your Mirror, presents a giant Venetian mask made up of overlapping baroque mirrors, through which visitors are invited to look from the inside or the outside, never losing sight of their own reflected image.

In the Fashion business, it’s difficult not to think of Alessandro Michele, the current creative director of Gucci, with his freaky long-haired looks of a Merovingian king, who supposedly exclaimed, backstage, after one of his shows: “I’m happy I was born as a hybrid.” Influenced by his own fascination for the Gucci archives, antique textiles and clothes, “his first collection in 2015 looked like the kids had joyously raided their grandparents’ closets.” (Riche, October 8, 2018). Alessandro Michele has brought back the Italian brand to the top of its game, pushing with some sheer bravery fashion boundaries, playing with a youthful phantasmagoric world, desecrating unapologetically so many of the codes of the brand (Ellison, February 21, 2018). He has succeeded to nudge the Gen Z into his world and Gucci has become a new teen slang word to mention anything cool and highly coveted.

Let’s also mention Hedi Slimane, the former creative director of Dior Homme, often characterized as being androgynous, who invented a new masculine look and opened up the field of possibilities for men’s wardrobe, before moving on to stoke the flames of the Saint Laurent’s spirit, “a bit of a dangerous mystery, a quirk, a shiftiness” (Betty Catroux, quoted in Guillaume, 2020). In early 2018, Hedi Slimane was appointed as the artistic director of Celine and in November 2018 he topped the annual list of Vanity Fair’s “50 most influential French people in the world”.

“The Slimane woman is provocative with an air of freshness and eternal youth. With a high level of openness to experience, the Celine woman is a risk-taker and wears a variety of contrasting textures and colors.” — Yenia Hernández Fonseca, August 10, 2019
Hedi Slimane has always been “interested in the ‘beginnings’, in the idea of the first suit, the pleasure and the young desire of a first jacket, a jacket for going out, some kind of tailoring for man devoid of statutory character, far from the constraints and conventions of the banker’s suit.” (Benaïm, September 25, 2018). Younger, Hedi Slimane dreamt of being a journalist. Now, he “documents” the era through his work.

In the infotainment business, some comedians seem to incarnate The Fool by giving their performances an increased level of social and political consciousness, going beyond traditional comedy, viewed as solely an aesthetic or entertainment medium (Weaver & Mora, 2016), like Trevor Noah, the acclaimed contemporary stand-up comedian and commentator of U.S. politics and Seth Meyers, the NBC’s late-night TV host. In an interview with CNN’s Van Jones on June16th, 2018, Seth Meyers made it clear: “Comedians are very good when they call things out for exactly what they are.”

And what about in the corporate world?

The Fool in the corporate world

Paul Birch, a British executive, worked at British Airways for seventeen years, from mergers to marketing, before spending his last eighteen months as an official “corporate jester”. In the spring of 1994, inspired by an article about the character of The Fool in King Lear, Birch imagined a role who would question authority, promote honesty, and approach problems in creative ways. Relying on the tolerance and support of BA’s CEO, Birch made suggestions about the architecture of the company’s headquarters and it is told that he encouraged managers to chase one another with water guns to promote creativity. Most importantly, Birch said the things that most other people inside BA were afraid to say.

“The main role of the Jester is to challenge. The humour is just the tool.” — Paul Birch, quoted in Firth and Leigh, 1998

The Fool must have whispered to Paul Birch’s ear that it’s often his humor that would allow him to speak truth. As Oscar Wilde once said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”

Paul Birch’s role was not to solve the problems, but to use various tricks “to change the state of the group”, to help alleviate the pressures that problems were causing among team members. Birch supposedly said, “You need to create a state in which employees’ve got the commitment and the courage to do something. You want to build organizations where everyone sees provocation as one of their essential roles. Too many leaders are saying, “Why are they questioning me?” or “That’s none of their business.” (Heffernan, 2011).

Over time, people at BA began to say, “You have a right to get involved.”, but soon they started to tell him, “You would say that, wouldn’t you? That’s your role.”, and Birch’s inputs began to be ignored (Sittenfeld, 1998). The game was over for him. He was categorized as a buffoon or, maybe, his spirit had permeated the corporate culture and his help was no longer needed. That’s when Paul Birch resigned — “That’s all Folks!” or turned into a scapegoat and was sent away — “You’re fired!” — by the new CEO, according to another version of the same story.

More recently, at the dawn of the 21st century, on the West coast of The United States, Eunice Azzani celebrated her 20-year anniversary with Korn/Ferry International, one of the world’s top executive search firms. Her business cards must have made reasonable reference to her title of Vice President, Managing Director and Senior Client Partner, but on assignment she could also proudly call herself a farmer in a field of hunters — executive headhunters, that is, a California-improved Texan and a pushy broad. She is remembered as an outspoken and courageous professional, who did not shy about offering contrarian views. Many of those who crossed her path have acknowledged that if there were a chart detailing the many outstanding women and minority professionals whom she had placed into prominent positions, it would show that she helped shape the leadership of both nonprofits and corporations in the Bay Area. She held leadership positions on numerous boards and was known to be a passionate advocate for any organization she served. Her mantra was: “If you’re not standing on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” (Mieszkowski, November 30, 1998; Huss, April 17, 2005).

Can you feel the energy of The Fool?

Eunice Azzani mentored countless women and men, including Denise Brosseau, the CEO of Thought Leadership Lab, honored by the White House (under the Obama presidency) as a “Champion of Change”. It was Eunice Azzani who recommended her to surround herself with a “personal board of directors”, to help her cope with life adversities (the sad truth that nobody’s life is perfect), to hold her own and keep going toward her goals and dreams.

The members of Denise Brosseau’s trusted advisory group didn’t know they were part of a team, they may never have even met; it included the husband of one of Denise Brosseau’s friends, a well-connected former colleague and a former boss, who shared her career interests and was pushing her outside her comfort zone.

“They have provided excellent advice on career and life decisions or have been a shoulder to cry on. Of course you can hire a coach or a therapist (and for long-term issues, I highly recommend it), but for the day-to-day decisions and challenges that we all face, a personal board of directors is more efficient.” — Denise Brosseau, February 25, 2014

The Fool had taken on the appearance of a “sounding board”.

And what about in your own daily organizational environment?

To welcome The Fool or not to welcome The Fool?

When The Fool is welcomed in the corporate court, in a relationship of trust between a ruler and one of his partners, even if only for a moment, The Fool permeates their state of mind and a new beginning is given a chance. As The Fool confronts their hubris and reinforces their capacity for reality testing, key questions start to emerge about the way things are done. The Fool prevents them from doing foolish things and acting out is replaced by reflection, to paraphrase the late Dr. Freud. It can feel strange and confusing for executives who are trained to be in control and who have been alone with their thoughts for a very long time, but also empowering; The Fool brings great potential and latent creativity, it becomes possible to be innovative and enthusiastic again.

Hopefully, they succeed to take themselves less seriously and start to look at themselves in the elevators’ mirrors, face-to-face. Who are they, what have they become? They focus more closely on interpreting events, actions and, above all, themselves (what is truly important to them, what do they irrationally fear — maybe since early childhood, how their actions affect others, …); self-awareness is encouraged as the key to the process of behavioural change.

Between the poles of transparency and of glimmering, which are contrary concepts, The Fool creates a space where different levels of reality coexist and where the tension between binary oppositions builds a larger unity that includes them. Subjectivity and objectivity finally meet. In this liminal zone, no need for the usual 24/7 restlessness, as The Fool dances, sings — “I am the Hidden Third!” and helps restore the balance of Reality (Nicolescu, 2012; Nicolescu, 2016).

Leaders develop a “reflective mindset”: they become more reflexive, aware of their own state of mind and emotions, of their prejudices and preferences, and better at remembering, drawing together strands of thoughts and experience (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2004).

“Reflect” in Latin means to refold, which suggests that attention turns inward so that it can be turned outward. This means going beyond introspection. It means looking in so that you can better see out in order to perceive a familiar thing in a different way (…).” — Gosling & Mintzberg, November 2003

They come to accept their ambivalence and discuss what they have not dared to address before, to eventually foster real transformations; “outcomes are insight, understanding, learning, growth and development.” (French & Simpson, 2010, p. 1868).
The Fool helps them embrace their seemingly conflicting identities and integrate the multiplicity of who they are, to become individual and collective subjects, in the tradition which they have inherited, enriched and modified, to accept better the debt that they owe to those who have preceded them as well as to future generations.

Below the surface of material and theoretical abundance, in the shadows of the corporate hallways, The Fool confronts them with questions of meaning, to help them grow beyond a life endured as a mere succession of renunciations, for life to continually invent and reinvent itself. The feeling of having no future vanishes and future prospects are reappearing.
They may eventually feel a stronger sense of personal responsibility for the organization’s fate, which contributes to purposefulness. They may even come to realize that the purpose of life is to live for others.

The Fool becomes the creative urge that helps senior executives incarnate and express their own leadership more freely, in their relationships and in their daily environment.

Do you feel the presence of The Fool around you?

Are you ready to welcome The Fool?

Illustration: The jester Stańczyk during a ball at the court of Queen Bona in 1514, troubled by the news that the Russians have captured the city of Smolensk. Stańczyk (circa 1480–1560) was the most famous court jester in Polish history, employed by three Polish kings. Painting by Jan Matejko, 1862.
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References
Cresap, K. M. (2004). Pop Trickster Fool: Warhol Performs Naivete. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Firth, D., Leigh, A. (1998). The Corporate Fool.Oxford: Capstone.
French, R., Simpson, P. (2010). The ’work group’: Redressing the balance in Bion’s Experiences in Groups. Human Relations, 63, 12, 1859–1878.
Gosling, J., Mintzberg, H. (2003, November). The Five Minds of a Manager. Harvard Business Review, 1, 12.
Gosling, J., Mintzberg, H. (2004). Reflect Yourself, HR Magazine, 49, 9, 151–156.
Heffernan, M. (2011). Willful Blindness. Why We Ignore the Obvious at our Peril. New York: Walker Publishing.
Nicolescu, B. (2012). Stéphane Lupasco, le surréalisme et le subréalisme. Topique, 2,119, 35–44.
Nicolescu, B. (2016). The Hidden Third. New York: Quantum Prose Inc.
Sittenfeld, C. (1998). He’s No Fool (But He Plays One inside Companies). FastCompany, 19, 66.
Weaver, S., Mora, R. A. (2016). Tricksters, humour and activism. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 19, 5, 479–485.
Internet References
Benaïm, L. (September 25, 2018). Hedi Slimane’s First Celine Interview. Retrieved from https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/people/hedi-slimane-interview-celine
Brosseau, D. (February 25, 2014). 4 Habits Of The Most Resilient People. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3026817/4-habits-of-the-most-resilient-people?cid=search
Ellison, J. (February 21, 2018). Gucci AW18 review: Alessandro Michele meets his monsters. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com/content/3c212b6a-1725-11e8-9e9c-25c814761640
Fonseca, Y. H. (August 10, 2019). One Year On: A Psychological Look Into Céline vs Celine. Retrieved from http://www.tpof-thepsychologyoffashion.com/industry-articles/old-celine-new-celine
Guillaume, H. (March 3, 2020). Betty + Anthony = YSL. Retrieved from https://www.lefigaro.fr/style/betty-catroux-anthony-vaccarello-yves-saint-laurent-20200303
Husss, M. (April 17, 2005). Twenty years of ‘standing on the edge’. Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2005/04/18/editorial2.html
Mieszkowski, K. (November 30, 1998). Careers — Eunice Azzani. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/35789/careers-eunice-azzani
Riche, R. (October 8, 2018). How Gucci Killed Versace. Retrieved from https://www.watchonista.com/articles/opinions/how-gucci-killed-versace