Now, making a dork of yourself can be a winning leadership strategy.
Being able to laugh at ourselves is the best guard against tyranny. This week British Prime Minister David Cameron admitted there are nits at No 10 Downing Street.
Not chinless Tory nitwits, guffaw, but the lice on his family's heads. His political foes seemed to think this was something to be embarrassed about.
But contrary to popular opinion nits can't jump from head to head - you have to have your heads jammed together for the nits to be transmitted. Trust me, I know about nits. So this is probably a sign that Cameron is a hands-on dad who cuddles his kids a lot.
On this side of world Prime Minister John Key made a bit of a goose of himself sashaying down a catwalk - although everyone seemed to glory in using the word "mincing". Key also admitted he thought Liz Hurley was hot.
Commentators seemed to think these two incidents were something to be embarrassed about. I don't agree. I think they're clever.
Just read some of the latest thinking from chin-stroking leadership academics. What we want in a leader has changed.
These days leadership is more focused on humility than it is on big-balls charisma.
I suspect Key's switched-on media minders know this - that's why they play up his aw-shucks candour. We crave anti-heroes. Goodbye Jack Welch and Larry Ellison. Hello Mark Zuckerberg and Vaclav Havel. Havel, who led the Czech Republic's Velvet Revolution, gave a dog-sniffingly submissive speech recently in which he talked about serving the cause rather than being in charge.
Leadership professor Ronald Riggio, of Claremont University, quoting leadership expert Jim Collins, says as followers, we are drawn to leaders who appear to be powerful and effective, but we should also seek out and support those leaders who have humility.
I don't have a PhD but I say people who are humble are prepared to make dicks of themselves. Both leaders are doing things at odds with the typical leader's personality; someone coldly narcissistic, controlling and incapable of maintaining normal family relationships or admitting they fancy the matoombas off Liz Hurley.
Normal people have silly vanities, and do downright cringeworthy things in public. Disordered people just do them behind closed doors - at Silvio Berlusconi's "dignified soirees" perhaps.
We should welcome leaders who are naff in public because usually it means they are straightforward and even empathetic.
Everyone agrees empathy is at the heart of effective leadership, but how does a leader understand the needs, feelings and passions of constituents or employees, in a genuine way, if they don't experience the great dumb messiness of normal life?
I have to concede that now everyone realises being a dork can be a winning leadership strategy, you do have to be on the lookout for annoying faux goofiness from leaders, faked so they can look like they are without artifice. Richard Branson is a master at it.
But I'd still say having a nit comb should be compulsory for a prime minister or a CEO.
Because being able to laugh at ourselves is the best guard against tyranny.
dhc@deborahhillcone.com
