Kellerman comments…
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As an orator Michelle Obama last night in Chicago was brilliant.
As an orator Barack Obama last night in Chicago was excellent.
In his speech were brief references to Donald Trump’s presidency, including this one. “We have seen that movie – and we all know that the sequel is usually worse.”
A friendly amendment. If Obama had read my recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse, he would know that the sequel is always worse!
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There’s a very good British film from 2010 titled “The King’s Speech.” It was not about a great orator. Rather it was about a boy with a stutter who grew into a man who, unexpectedly, became king. George VI. The film centers on how Bertie, as he was known to family and a few close friends, learned to master his stutter so that he could deliver a speech, on newfangled radio no less, without badly embarrassing himself.
One of the reasons the film was strong was its focus on the importance of public speaking. Of being able to speak in front of other people, ideally powerfully and persuasively.
In the old days speaking in public was a skill that was widely esteemed, and learning it was frequently mandatory. Now not so much – or even not at all. Most Americans are not required to practice public speaking, nor do we particularly value good public speakers. President Joe Biden has never been an especially strong speaker, nor has, for instance, the Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Chuck Schumer, or his Republican counterpart, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Moreover, leaders in other sectors are hardly ever seen by the public, and even less often heard. How many of us have heard a single syllable uttered by legendary Starbucks founder, Howard Schultz? Or Mary Barra, for a decade now CEO of General Motors? Or Disney’s well-known CEO, Bob Iger? Or the president of Harvard University, Alan Garber? Or Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York? Or Charles Q. Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
Pity that. For though it’s too often forgotten and nearly always underappreciated, great oratory is a great art. Moreover, for leaders it’s a skill of potentially supreme importance. The power to persuade, to inspire, to motivate, to teach, to move people to tears or to get them to laugh – these and then some are exceedingly effective tools in any leader’s arsenal.
I write this today for a reason. For last night’s meeting of the Democratic National Convention featured some exceptionally strong speakers who roused the crowd to hoot and holler thier approval. The speakers and their audience were as one, the latter galvanized by the former to electrifying heights of energy, enthusiasm, and excitement. Among others… Hillary Clinton never spoke better. Nor did Raphael Warnock. Nor did Jamie Raskin. Nor did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
And I defy anyone to listen to Ashley Biden’s introduction of her father without being emotionally ensnared in what she was saying and how she said it. The president’s daughter identified herself as a social worker – not ordinarily a profession associated either with public speaking or with the exercise of power. But the woman knows how to hold a crowd – a leadership skill if every there was one.
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The timing of her resignation was unexpected. But her resignation was not. Remarkable if you look back on it that she lasted this long. Of course, this long was only a year. It was just over a year ago that Nemat Shafik became president of Columbia University – and already she’s out.
Her presidency was difficult and divisive. It was not terrible – I don’t want to exaggerate. Moreover, to an extent she was a victim of her circumstances, tensions over the conflict in the Middle East running especially high at Columbia, in the heart of New York city. Still, Shafik’s leadership was not adroit – she was not attuned to the temper of her time.
She took her time resigning, pulling the plug just weeks before the start of the new academic year. Likely she finally concluded that the handwriting on the wall was indelible. That her future at Columbia was highly unlikely to be better than her past. So, she quit, effectively from one day to the next.
Dr. Nemat Shafik’s presidency of Columbia University says a lot about leadership in America in the third decade of the 21st century. It’s not an indicator or a harbinger, of course. But to dismiss her sorry story as irrelevant or unimportant is to miss the big picture.
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Note: For Parts I, II, and III of “Leadership in America – the Case of the Campus” see the links below.
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I looked it up. “To preside over means to be in charge of something” – such as an activity or event. Similarly, whoever presides is in “control of” or “responsible for” the activity or event. Sounds a lot like the word “leader” – often defined as the person in “a position of authority and control.”
The question this raises is how much – if any – credit is due French President Emannuel Macron for what by every account were the stunningly successful Paris Olympics? Did he lead the Olympics? Did he just preside over them? Is there in this case a meaningful difference? Does Macron get any laurels for what transpired during the 16 days of “the remarkable Olympics”? Or was he just a bystander, an observer of what happened, not a participant in making it happen?
Here is what we know. There is unanimous agreement that the Paris Olympics ended as they began – “with a raucous spectacle before a joyous crowd.” There is unanimous agreement that the Olympics were “a miracle of detailed planning and execution.” And there is unanimous agreement that on account of the Olympics the French are experiencing “a new self-confidence” and a “core of pride” at their accomplishment. But the achievement was not merely technical. In a country that for years has made headlines because of its fractiousness, the Olympics testified to French inclusiveness.
Macron was not literally the leader of the French Olympics. Literally they were led by a man named Tony Estanguet, president of the Paris Olympics organizing committee. It was he and his team who were responsible for the specifics: for the day-to-day, years-long planning of what turned out a singularly spectacular event. But does this mean that Macron deserves no credit at all for presiding over the event? For leading the country within which the spectacular took place?
I am including in this post links to three of my previous pieces about Macron – the man I consider the exemplar of liberal leadership in the 21st century. The exemplar of how hard it is to lead during a time in which even the best and brightest of liberal leaders are resisted by their reluctant and recalcitrant followers.
Before the Olympics France was stuck in a political quagmire – stuck with a newly elected Parliament so badly divided it was not clear how a governing coalition could be formed. After the Olympics this did not change. The quagmire did not magically disappear, nor did French fraternity magically reappear. But for at least one brief shining moment Paris, “the City of Lights,” shone as brilliantly as ever in its history. How it’s possible to deny the French president considerable credit for the enchantment escapes me.
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This piece is far longer than any of my previous posts – going back over a decade. I wrote it as an article, but in the end I could not think of a publication – not a journal, or magazine, or newspaper – for which it would be suitable. So… I’m self- publising it!
The essay explores why liberal leaders, especially but not exclusively liberal political leaders, find it so difficult to lead. To get others to follow. The last section suggests what liberal leaders can do to get their constituents – their stakeholders, their followers – to cooperate.
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The evidence is everywhere. It is difficult and sometimes impossible for leaders in liberal democracies to lead – to get enough of their followers to do what they want them to do while providing them with sufficient sustenance and satisfaction.
Liberal leaders face an uphill battle. In the United States, for example, is a declining respect for authority and expertise; a declining belief in the American Dream; a declining sense of community and commonality; and a declining faith that democracy, in tandem with capitalism, can cure what ails us. The struggle not just to be the center of attention but literally to lead – to get others to go along to create change – applies not just to political leaders but to leaders in every sector.
To, for example, leaders in higher education. Not long ago, presidents of American colleges and universities were quintessential examples of how being in a position of authority in an institution of authority commanded respect. Those days are over. As they would be the first to testify, leaders in higher education can’t take anything for granted, least of all their immunity from being attacked by their stakeholders, most of whom, in the old days, simply followed where they led: faculty and students, administrators and alumni, boards of trustees and government officials, parents, and donors. Small wonder their tenures have shrunk. The average time in office for a college or university president has decreased from 9.1 years in 1975, to 8.5 years in 2006, to 5.9 years in 2023. Moreover, most of these presidents are planning to remain in their posts for no longer than five years.
Similarly, members of the U.S. Congress: for good reason this year will be an especially high rate of turnover. (By mid-2024 54 members of the House had announced they would not seek reelection.) And, similarly, leaders in the corporate sector, where CEO turnover rates “spiked” in the first quarter of 2024. By one account CEO churn in March 2024 was the highest it had been in the two decades since such measurements were taken. For women the figures are especially high. Women leaders in the private sector are now more than twice as likely as men to leave their posts within two years of their appointment – and four times more likely to last less than 12 months.
Nor is the high rate of leader turnover confined to the United States. For further evidence of how leading in democracies has become more difficult and tenuous, consider the United Kingdom. Margaret Thatcher was prime minister for eleven years (1979-1990); John Major for seven years (1990-1997); Tony Blair for ten years (1997-2007); and David Camerion for six years (2010-2016). Since then, the turnover rate at 10 Downing Street has greatly accelerated. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson lasted only three years, and Liz Truss a strikingly skimpy six weeks. Rishi Sunak became prime minister in October 2022 but because his approval ratings were bad and getting worse, he felt obliged to schedule another election earlier than anticipated, which he badly lost. The leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, immediately promptly took his place.
Of course, Sunak is hardly alone. Leaders of democracies more generally are similarly unloved. At the end of 2023, fewer than 20 percent of Germans were either satisfied or very satisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz. 69 percent of French disapproved of the way their president, Emmanuel Macron, was doing his job. And only about 35 percent of Americans approved of Joe Biden’s performance in the White House. Further, the right and in some cases the left have been strengthened in recent years, the right in the United States under the banner of Donald Trump, and in Europe under leaders like Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; French opposition leaders Marine Le Pen and her protégé Jordan Bardella; the once marginalized right wing leader in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders; the founder and leader of Portugal’s new (2019) populist party, Chega, Andre Ventura; and of course, Hungary’s Viktor Orban. Germany meanwhile has seen a significant rise in the appeal of its far-right party, the AfD, which since 2023 is Germany’s second largest.
It’s impossible to prove cause and effect. But it’s no stretch to presume that the difficulties and dissatisfactions now routinely associated with leadership in liberal democracies have an impact. These include leaders, especially but not exclusively political leaders, who are widely disliked and distrusted, followers who tend toward reluctance and recalcitrance, and political, economic, and social problems resistant to obvious solutions. These include unchecked immigration, persistent inflation. economic insecurity, income inequality, and threats associated with climate change and global instability. Moreover, when leaders are perceived as too weak and the context is confounding and confusing, people feel untethered and uncertain. So, they search for something different. Specifically for leaders who seem stronger and surer, more likely to be able to control what seems out of control, and to provide the safety, security, and community that people crave.
Liberal leaders have had a hard time for some time. According to Freedom House the decline of global freedom has continued, uninterrupted, for nearly two decades. In 2023 political rights and civil liberties were curtailed in 52 countries; they were expanded in only 21. This is not to suggest that liberal leaders are doomed. It is however to predict that unless and until we develop a deeper understanding of why and how relations between liberal leaders and their followers have changed in the 21st century, and a clearer sense of how the former can more effectively lead the latter, we’re likely to remain in a cycle that has continued uninterrupted for almost two decades.
One in which liberty and democracy, individualism, and egalitarianism have come under increasing threat and, not by happenstance, one in which authoritarianism in countries such as China and Russia, has become increasingly oppressive and repressive. Strongmen like Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin understand that if they do not rule with an iron fist, they might not rule at all. For followers everywhere are more inclined and better equipped to pounce than they used to be – which is precisely why, if liberal leaders want to lead, they must learn some lessons. First, leadership is not a person. It’s a system. Second, times change – and people change. Third, because the present is different from even the recent past, liberal leaders must develop new skills. What worked reasonably well in the last quarter of the 20th century does not work reasonably well, certainly not well enough, in the first quarter of the 21st.
THE LEADERSHIP SYSTEM
Leaders usually are at the top of a hierarchy and, or, possessed of a title that gives them power and authority. For example, a president or prime minister; a board chair or chief executive officer; a superintendent or principal; a priest, pastor, rabbi, or imam.
Typically, we credit leaders when things go right and blame them when things go wrong. It’s why so many Americans are convinced that if Donald Trump is reelected president, it will mean the end of American democracy. But to attribute to one person so much explanatory power is an example of what’s been called the “leader attribution error.” It’s the proclivity of people to think that leaders have more impact than they really do – a mistake we make for several reasons, among them it simplifies a world that otherwise we experience as impossibly complex.
Obsessing about single individuals is not, then, especially helpful. Better to think of leadership as a system that consists of three parts, each of which is of equal importance, and each of which interacts with, and has an impact on, the other two. The first part is the leader. To say that leaders are not all-important is not to say that they are unimportant. The second part is the followers. Leadership is, after all, a relationship – there is no leader without at least one follower. And the third part is the contexts, the multiple contexts within which leaders and their followers are situated.
Whatever our reluctance to do what our leaders and managers want us to do, most of the time we go along to get along. We are raised to follow and praised for following, first by our parents, then by our teachers, then by our bosses. Moreover, typically it’s easier to follow than to resist. Resisting, at school, for example, or in the workplace, or even in the public square consumes resources such as time and energy, and it can be risky. Withal, what’s essential for liberal leaders to understand is that liberal followers – people who live in democracies – are different now from what they were not just two hundred years ago but twenty years ago. In the last two decades liberal followers have become more entitled and emboldened and more disposed to resist than they were in the past. To oppose power, to disrespect authority, and to reject expertise.
Remember the old days when every Republican member of the House of Representatives would, essentially blindly, follow the lead of every Republican Speaker of the House? Or remember what happened after the pandemic when most employers (leaders) told most employees (followers) to go back to work – in the workplace. Some said fine, they were good with it. But large numbers of others, especially office workers, said no. They had become accustomed to working from home. They preferred to work from home. And many were glad to be spared what previously were long, costly commutes. Moreover, they did not buy that returning to the office five days a week was necessary. So, large numbers of these ostensible followers refused to follow the orders of their ostensible leaders. In the end their numbers were so large their resistance became known as “the great resignation.” The result? A sea change in the American work week, which for many office workers is now, apparently permanently, hybrid. (In 2024 about 50% of remote-capable employees are hybrid.)
It’s not, however, only liberal followers that have changed. So have the contexts within which they and their leaders are situated. The America in which prominent politicians were expected mostly to tell the truth is different from the one in which lying by public officials has become normalized. The America in which one of the two major parties has nominated for president someone who so far survived two impeachments, four criminal indictments, civil judgements both for sexual abuse and business fraud, and guilty verdicts on 34 counts of felony is different from the one in which such a scenario was unthinkable. The America in which news was based on hard information and derived from the same sources is different from the one in which facts are distorted and disputed, misinformation and disinformation are rampant, and the news is siloed. The America in which fewer than two in ten Americans trust the federal government to do what is right “just about always” or “most of the time” is different from the one in which this figure was twice or even three times higher.
Two changes particularly pertain to the leader-follower dynamic. The first is changes in culture: in democracies the distance between those at the top and those in the middle and at the bottom has shrunk. It’s smaller now than it used to be. For example, the old style of corporate leadership and management was all about organizational pyramids, executive suites, and command and control. The new style of corporate leadership and management is all about flattened hierarchies, empowerment, participation, networks, and teams. Similarly, the old style of teaching and learning reflected the power and authority of the instructor. Now the distance between teachers and learners has very nearly collapsed. Despite grade inflation and courses that are less demanding, students in the present feel more, much more, entitled than they did in the past to question or challenge their instructors. Similarly, symbolically, in the paleolithic era my students called me “Professor Kellerman” or “Dr. Kellerman.” No longer. In the last decade or so more likely it’s simply, “Barbara.”
Changes like these are not superficial. They reflect democracy in the third decade of the 21st century when deference to people in positions of authority is more the exception than the rule, certainly in the United States. And they further reflect that experience and expertise are no longer so highly valued. (In 2016 Americans elected as their leader someone who, in governance, lacked both.) Once upon a time we deferred virtually automatically to experts, for instance to physicians whose word we took as gospel. Now we pocket their instructions and then we second guess them not by getting another opinion but by getting another ten thousand opinions, online. The prominent physician, Dr. Anthony Fauci, became emblematic of the denigration. Whatever Fauci’s merits or deficits, never in the past would members of Congress have publicly pilloried a scientist and public servant who by then (2024) was retired and 83 years old.
The second change with an enormous impact on the leader-follower relationship was in technology. Whatever the specifics of the new technologies, from the revolution in information to the revolution in artificial intelligence, what matters to liberal leadership is that in democracies they empowered followers more than leaders. It’s the opposite of what happened in autocracies, where governing regimes have harnessed the new technologies to their advantage. As in China where people with power and authority – specifically in the government and in the Chinese Communist Party – can much more easily and thoroughly than previously monitor and control those without.
But in democracies it’s different. People without power or authority have greater access to information than they used to. People without power or authority have more opportunities for expression than they used to. And people without power or authority find it easier to connect than they used to, cheaper and faster. All of which is why technologies in democracies enable if not encourage this sequence: information prompting expression; expression leading to connection; and connection resulting in action. Information that results ultimately in action is not of course new. But the ease and speed of the sequence is. The recent wave of pro-Palestinian protests at colleges and universities began almost immediately after October 7, 2023, and quickly spread to 500 U.S. campuses.
To understand why we are where we are and how we got here – weaker leaders, stronger followers – it does not, however, suffice to focus only on the present and the recent past. Reaching into the more distant past is required.
THINGS CHANGE
Figures of power and authority once were gods and goddesses; kings, queens, emperors, and empresses; popes, priests, and monks; and, rarely, hero-leaders such as Abraham, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. It’s why Confucious advised “the sage,” Plato advocated a “philosopher-king,” and Machiavelli counseled the “the prince.” But beginning with the Enlightenment – an avatar of which was John Locke, born in 1632 – ideas about the rights of the governed as opposed only to the rights of the governors, began to change.
Previously were a few harbingers: for example, the Magna Carta, which imposed some limits on England’s King John, was signed in 1215; and Martin Luther, who in 1517 famously challenged the absolute authority of the Catholic Church by reputedly nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of a church in Wittenberg, Germany. But it was the ideas associated with the Enlightenment that stuck, that changed forever our conception of how leaders and followers can and should relate.
Locke, for instance, conceived of a social contract in which governors derived their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and which stipulated that if a leader did not sufficiently satisfy his followers, he could be recalled. Nowhere was Locke’s influence greater than on the American continent. As historian Bernard Bailyn pointed out, it was not simply the great virtuosos of the American Enlightenment such as John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who drew on his ideas, but an entire revolutionary generation. “In pamphlet after pamphlet American writers cited Locke on natural rights and on the social and governmental contract.”
By the time the Enlightenment was in full flower, Locke was dead. But he foreshadowed what throughout the Western world were upheavals in political thought, in government and culture, and in the arts and sciences, especially as they pertained to patterns of dominance and deference. Another historian, Peter Gay, observed the Enlightenment broke through “the sacred circle,” the interdependent and all-powerful relationship between Europe’s aristocrats and the potentates of the Catholic Church. It was precisely this intrusion that heralded the end of one era in relations between leaders and followers and the beginning of another. The American and French Revolutions were no more, and no less, than testimony to the radical changes in Western thinking that had already taken hold.
The most striking aspect of this thinking – which in America and France prompted revolutionists to overthrow the old order – was its anti-authority ideology. To this day the American political system and its political culture reflect their deeply rooted antagonism toward government; their ambivalence toward leaders; and their prejudice against power. “Opposition to power,” wrote political scientist Samuel Huntington, “and suspicion of government as the most dangerous embodiment of power, are central themes of American political thought.”
In short order the ideas of the Enlightenment spread, first in Europe and the United States, then globally. In the West, arguably nothing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries testifies to the changes in what was thought right as dramatically as the liberation of slaves and serfs, and the emancipation of women. Similarly, and not by chance, in the nineteenth century Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels penned The Communist Manifesto, a pamphlet that, like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, published some 75 years earlier, was fully intended to foment revolution. In the case of The Communist Manifesto, by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, by the have-nots against the haves.
It’s not hard to see how, gradually and then suddenly, in fits and starts, those without power or authority came to believe that they deserved more, that they had a right to more and a right to fight for more. And how, conversely, again, beginning with the Enlightenment, those with power and authority were increasingly obliged to surrender some of what they had. In fact, by the 20th century, Enlightenment ideas such as democracy, equality, and liberty had spread globally to, for example, India, where Mahatma Gandhi led a nonviolent resistance movement to secure India’s independence from Great Britain. In time, these same ideas reached the Gold Coast, where Kwame Nkrumah led the quest for independence, resulting in Ghana’s becoming, in 1957, the first African colony to be liberated from British rule. 1960 was the “Year of Africa” during which seventeen more African nations secured their freedom from colonial rule.
In time, these same, originally Enlightenment ideas continued to expand in the United States, this time to other groups that came to see themselves as powerless or, at least, as insufficiently powerful. During the 1960s and ‘70s and into the early 1980s, were a series of “rights revolutions” including the Civil Rights movement, the Women’s Rights movement, the Gay and Lesbian Rights movement, even the Animal Rights movement. These movements continued the momentum that while sometimes it stalls or even reverses – to wit the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, revoking American women’s right to bodily autonomy – over time has been sustained. The Stonewall Riots, a catalyst of the Gay Rights Movement, were in 1969. But it took until 2015 for the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states.
What then can we conclude from this snapshot of history – specifically the last several hundred years of Western history – as it pertains to relations between leaders and followers? First, power has shifted. Liberal leaders have less power than they used to and followers more. Second, liberal leaders have less authority than they used to. Title and credential, rank and status, experience and expertise – the value of each has been reduced. Third, because their power and authority are less, liberal leaders have fewer ways to reward their followers when they follow and fewer ways to punish them when they do not. Which is why if they are to lead, and to last, liberal political leaders especially must change with the changing times.
SECOND QUARTER OF THE 21ST CENTURY
To be a liberal leader is to respect the rights and opinions of others, most obviously followers – stakeholders, constituents. Above all, this means avoiding coercion as an instrument of compliance. But for liberal leadership to work – for work to get done – there must be an implicit agreement. A social contract between leader and follower. The nature of this contract depends, of course, on the context. A social contract between an employer and an employee is different from one between a major and a lieutenant is different from one between a senator and a constituent. Similarly, we expect a social contract between and among people in Argentina to be different from a one between and among people in Canada or China.
In all cases though must be the shared understanding that for the whole first to survive and then to thrive requires first, organization; second, cooperation, and third, agreement. Organization clarifies and conveys who is expected to do what and when. Cooperation is a lubricant – it implies rights and, as importantly, responsibilities. Finally, there must be agreement that a few will lead, which means the rest must be, not always but mostly, willing to follow. It’s what the early twentieth century German sociologist Robert Michels identified as the “iron law of oligarchy.” Michels’s “law” was that all groups and organizations (other than those that are small) will ultimately, in the interest of efficacy, be led by a small elite, by leaders. Which means that the rest must be willing to follow. Again, not always, but mostly.
How, then, in a time when people in liberal democracies are reluctant to follow, can liberal political leaders be effective? How can they get enough people to go along enough of the time to get most or at least much of the work done? And how can they leave their followers at least intermittently satisfied as opposed to chronically unsatisfied?
To respond to these questions two replies, the first is about strategy. Strategy requires political leaders to paint a big picture, a picture that persuades followers they will get most of or at least some of what they want and need. This though is not easy task in a time in which Americans – to take the most obvious though by no means the only example – are, for good reason, persuaded their country is dominated by an elite that is exceedingly, excessively rich and powerful. And when approximately two thirds of Americans perceive themselves as being less well off than their parents.
In his book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, Martin Wolf notes that precisely because capitalism is not delivering the security and prosperity that people expect, there is a widespread loss of confidence in democratic governance. Leaders in democracies, then, have a big problem, a strategic problem. As I noted in my own recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse, we live in a time during which not only is democracy in decline, but capitalism is in question. This means that for liberal political leaders to succeed, to lead, in the second quarter of the 21st century, they must be able to accomplish one task above all. They must be able to persuade enough of their followers that they will be treated fairly. That the system is not rigged against them.
Given the heft of this strategic lift the leader’s tactics – tactics used to secure compliance – are of the utmost importance. To get followers to do what they want them to do, all leaders have three wellsprings from which they can draw: 1) power; 2) authority; and 3) influence. Power is the capacity of A (the leader) to get B (the follower) to do what A wants, if necessary, by force. Authority is A’s capacity to get B to do what A wants, based on A’s position, status, or rank. And influence is as it sounds: A’s capacity to persuade B to go along with what A wants of B’s own volition. In the past, power and authority were leaders’ main mechanisms of securing compliance. In autocracies they still are. But as we have seen, in democracies their availability and utility have been greatly diminished. This means that more than before the success of liberal political leaders depends on their ability to influence – to gain compliance that is voluntary.
The idea that influence is important is not new. One of the best-selling books in American history is Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. First published in 1936, it was not intended as a manual on how to be an effective leader; rather it was a self-help book targeted at ordinary people who wanted to be personally or professionally successful. Another classic on the subject is social psychologist Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Originally published in 1984, Influence has sold over five million copies and been translated into 41 languages. Both are books that liberal leaders should look at even now – especially now.
For example, Cialdini’ found that influence is based on several key principles including 1) reciprocity – we are more likely to do what someone wants us to do if previously they did us a favor; 2) consistency – we not only want to be consistent but to appear to be consistent; 3) connection – it’s more likely that we’ll do what someone wants us to do if there is a personal connection between us; and 4) liking – we are more disposed to go along with someone we like than dislike.
For all its apparent virtues, sometimes the word “influence” gets a bad rap. It can evoke images of hard sells, propaganda, subliminal messages, manipulation, even mind control. Influence can further imply a Machiavellian intention, a self-interested effort to change to our advantage another person’s attitude or behavior. Which is, of course, true. That’s what “influence” means: the capacity to affect, even change another person in accordance with our preference without the use of force or by pulling rank.
But whatever we might think of influence as a leadership tactic, the fact is that liberal political leaders have few other arrows in their quiver. If they are to lead, to get other people to go along with what they want and intend, influence is the name of the game.
Most Western leaders seem blasts from the past – out of step somehow with the temper of the times. As the cast of characters testifies, this is not just a matter of age. Joe Biden and Donald Trump are old; but Rishi Sunak, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron are not. Still, they all seem past their sell-by date; and they were or are all unpopular with their constituents. British Prime Minister Starmer too comes across as buttoned up, lacking energy and excitement. But as he is new in his job we cannot now (summer 2024) know if he can sustain his popularity or majority.
Contrast these leaders with one cut from an entirely different cloth, Kamala Harris. While it’s impossible to tell how successful a leader she will be in the long run, we can say that her overnight metamorphosis into political superstar and Democratic standard bearer was as astonishing as extraordinary. By every obvious measure – the number of dollars she raked in, the number of volunteers she recruited, and polls indicating that she had reset the electoral map – Harris was remarkably effective remarkably quickly at getting people to follow her lead. Getting people to support her with a vigor and pleasure of which the 2024 presidential campaign had previously been completely devoid.
The question: How in the two weeks between her endorsement by Biden on July 21st, and securing enough votes from Democratic delegates to ensure her presidential nomination on August 2nd , was she able to accomplish what she did? The answer: By exercising influence.
Notwithstanding her tenure as vice president, at the national level Harris never had much power. Similarly, her authority, given the American vice presidency is not an authoritative post. Not only is it famously without clout, but Harris’s time serving under Biden was underwhelming. In no way did she stand out during his time in office until, with less than six months left of his term, she replaced him at the head of the Democratic ticket. It was precisely because she lacked power and authority, as soon as she knew she was running for president she had no choice but to deploy influence. Which she did, brilliantly.
To be clear, and to return to the importance of the leadership system, once Biden ended his presidential campaign, the context changed. Harris’s ability to exercise influence depended one hundred percent on the president’s withdrawal from the race and his subsequent endorsement. Which still leaves unanswered the question of what exactly she did to virtually immediately energize the electorate. To virtually immediately persuade large swaths of the American people that they wanted not merely passively to support her but to do so actively, to in some way put their money where their mouths were. Of course, part of the answer was, again, contextual. Her Republican opponent was Donald Trump who is not only disliked and distrusted by many Americans but intensely so. Still, Harris’s predecessor as Democratic standard bearer, Biden, inspired no ardor whatsoever. There was something about Harris that was not only entirely new but entirely different.
Harris had to act fast. Our attention spans are much shorter than they used to be. And she had little time before the Democratic National Convention to seal the deal. To make certain that she had no competition from within her own party. And to persuade Democrats that not only would she be a strong candidate, but one worthy of being president of the United States.
To understand her remarkable accomplishment it’s best to break it into two parts. Part I is what she is. Part II is what she did.
What Kamala Harris is. She is a woman. She is a woman of color, half Black American, half Indian American. She is young and vibrant certainly relative to Biden and Trump. She is appealing, beautiful and personable. She is a performer, knows how to deliver a line even when it’s trite. She is joyful, smiles easily, and conveys campaigning can be fun. She is purposeful, confident, energetic, and optimistic. And she is to boot a mold-breaker, radically different from any major party presidential candidate who came before her.
What Kamala Harris did. Given she had no power and precious little authority, she exercised influence, even became an “influencer,” social media among the mediums that sent her message. To understand how Harris did what she did we return first to some of Cialdini’s influence tactics: specifically, consistency, connection, and liking. Harris encouraged consistency: she tapped into everyone who was a regular Democrat and everyone who long had a strong distaste for her Republican opponent. Harris encouraged connection: support for her was unambiguous support for her core constituencies, Democrats generally and especially African Americans and women. And Harris encouraged liking: it was clear that she deliberately sought to seem ingratiating and upbeat.
Moreover, as exemplified by her appearance, she straddled the all-important line: not too feminine, not too masculine. She clearly wore some jewelry and some makeup, but not much. Her hair was always near perfect – the right length, the right style – and it was always the same. As were her clothes, which deflected attention by being unchanging. During her vice presidency, virtually without fail she wore a tailored pantsuit in a neutral color, both the jacket and the pants, her attire almost androgynous.
To list some of Harris’s influence tactics is to be aware of how many she employs. Storytelling, sense-making, and meaning making. Focusing on her different audiences and telling them what they in particular need and want to hear. Seeming accessible and relatable but not the neighbor next door. Conveying optimism without seeming foolish or unrealistic. And especially for a woman, straddling the line between seeming tough and too tough, between seeming active and assertive but not aggressive.
Bottom line: during a time in which liberal political leaders can no longer rely on power and authority, they must intentionally turn to influence. They must ask themselves which influence tactics are likely to be most effective with the individuals and groups they are trying to reach. And which influence tactics are likely to be most effective in the contexts within which they and them are situated.
The West has a strategic problem – “the crisis of democratic capitalism.” But liberal political leaders cannot wait for this problem magically to be addressed. In the present as opposed to in some far-off future they must learn to use influence tactics to persuade their followers they merit their support. Admittedly “influence” is a somewhat tepid word – unlike “power” which sounds far stronger. But influencing is not a tepid tactic. In an age in which liberal political leaders must fight not just for their followers’ loyalty but for their attention, influence is the only weapon liberal leaders have of which, in theory at least, there is an endless supply. If they are unwilling or unable to use it, it’s not just their loss but ours.
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Everyone who is other than willfully blind can see that the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris is off to a splendid start. A start so flawlessly executed that only the most churlish would deny the magnitude of her accomplishment. In just two weeks she electrified the Democratic base. In just two weeks she raised unprecedented amounts of money. In just two weeks she recruited an unprecedented number of campaign volunteers. In just two weeks she changed the trajectory of the polls in the Democrats’ favor. In just two weeks she identified a running mate who in his inaugural speech hit a home run. In just two weeks she changed the national conversation. And in just two weeks she roused an American electorate that previously was effectively moribund.
Which raises the question of how this happened. What changed so that a woman who just three weeks ago was largely invisible and whose reputation was, shall we say, less than stellar, became overnight a political superstar?
I’ve often written about the leadership system. * How it’s the system that explains the dynamics of power, authority, and influence by looking at the leader in tandem. Specifically, the leadership system has three parts, each of which is equally important: 1) the leader; 2) the followers; and 3) the contexts within which leaders and their followers are situated.
The meteoric rise of Kamala Harris is a perfect case in point. Previously, say a month ago, she was of course prominent. A leader. She was, after all, vice president of the United States. But in no way did she stand out in that role, and there was nothing in her past that made most Americans see her as a political virtuoso. Similarly, followers, here the American electorate. A month ago, it was anything other than electrified. Committed Republicans were prepared in November to vote, again, for Donald Trump. And committed Democrats were prepared in November to vote, again, for Joe Biden. But by and large the American people were turned off and tuned out.
Which brings us to context – which in this instance is all-important. What changed two weeks ago was not Harris. She did not metamorphose overnight into an entirely different political creature. And, what changed two weeks ago was not the American electorate which is the same in early August as it was in early July. What changed was the context. Once President Biden announced that he was shutting down his campaign, and then further declared that he was endorsing Kamala Harris to succeed him, to head the Democratic ticket, the game changed. Her competition melted away and she was free to lead the charge, full speed ahead.
None of this is to take away from Harris. In the last two weeks she has performed virtually flawlessly. Rather it is to point out how astonishingly differently she is seen not because she is different. Or because we are different. But because the context within which she is situated is different. It changed. She did not. And we did not.
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*This is the article in Daedalus in which I first identified the leadership system.
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There is no moral equivalence in the just completed prisoner swap between the United States and Russia, none. Still, it would take a hard heart not to celebrate the release of a few trapped Americans, along with several others, all of whom had been locked up in Russia for purely political reasons.
Those released included the Russian dissident and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Vladimir Kara-Murza. To punish him for his resistance to the regime, Kara-Murza had been sealed in solitary confinement in a Siberian prison, serving out his ungodly, and for decades unprecedented, sentence of 25 years.
I previously posted twice about Kara-Murza, once on April 18, 2023; then again on May 8, 2024. Suffice it to say here that he has been, simultaneously, a follower and a leader. A follower by necessity, a leader by choice. As well, he has been the estimable successor to the most prominent Russian dissident of our time, the late Alexei Navalny.
In Kara-Murza’s honor, and in tribute to his release, I am reposting my previous pieces about him here.
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Any reason for a leader to feed a monster? For a leader to feed a creature that would devour him? If yes, I can’t think of it. I have no idea what possessed Joe Biden and his team to post his decision to quit the presidential race on X. X is of course the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the Democrats’ nemesis who is doing what he can to defeat them in the November elections.
I asked around about this and got no good answer. X, I was told, though diminished, is still the app of choice. The app people use if they want their shot to be heard around the world. Bunk! As if a traditional statement of resignation issued by the White House would be buried. As if no other social media platform would suffice.
In a piece posted to this site on July 19, “Leadership and Lucre,” I scorned the role of big money in American politics. I focused on Musk who had not only pledged to donate to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign humungous sums of money but who was saying what he wanted when on X to reach his 191 million followers. Musk, I wrote, “uses X to push and promote people and positions he prefers, and to demean and denigrate those he does not.” Just this week he lived up to his billing. Musk posted a manipulated video of Kamala Harris in which she says that Biden is senile, that she does “not know the first thing about running the country,” and that she, as a woman of color, is the “ultimate diversity hire.” Great, Elon. Message received.
Did Biden think that announcing on X would be without consequence? Well, he might’ve thought twice. As it turned out, the president did his nemesis a big favor. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Recent weeks show the potential Musk has at recapturing X’s place in the collective conversation. ‘Ride the information wave,’ Musk encouraged this past week, shortly after Biden made his announcement to exit from the race via X and other social media…. Biden’s post on X garnered more than 380 million views by the following day, and X was credited as being the place where some in the Biden camp learned of the decision.”
Was it predictable that the choice of X as the medium for an announcement that everyone was waiting for would impact X? Yes. Was it predictable that this impact would be positive? Yes. Why then did this leader feed this monster? Beats me.
Beware leaders. If you have power, and are highly visible, everything you do and say matters.
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As if by magic, America’s presidential campaign changed the instant it was effectively certain that Joe Biden was withdrawing from the race and Kamala Harris would succeed him at the head of the Democratic ticket. As if by magic, money from donors large and small suddenly started flowing into Harris’s campaign coffers. As if by magic Democrats were suddenly energized to volunteer for her campaign in startlingly large numbers. As if by magic Republicans were suddenly on the defensive, the man at the head of the ticket, Donald Trump, now the angry, unpredictable oldster and the man behind him, J. D. Vance, now the retrograde, far right misogynist. And, as if by magic, the polls suddenly changed in favor of the Democrats, not dramatically but perceptibly.
What explains the turnaround? How did it come to pass that Kamala Harris was transformed in an instant from second rate vice president to first rate presidential candidate? Was she really one thing one day and something entirely different the next? Or was it Democrats who metamorphosed overnight from depressed and disgruntled to eager and excited? Or was instead something about the context, the country, that changed so quickly and radically it explains what seems an entirely altered political landscape?
I don’t want to exaggerate the point. The November election is still light years away and the outcome remains uncertain. But there is no question: Harris at the head of the Democratic ticket has changed the mood of the moment. The presidential race has been energized and the odds that the Democrats can hold on to the White House have improved.
To understand the transformation and how it happened with lightning speed let’s look at the three parts of what I call the leadership system: 1) leaders; 2) followers, and 3) contexts. In this case – not in every case but in this case – it’s best to look at them in the sequence in which I listed them.
First, the leader changed. The Democratic nominee for president went from being old and tired to being young and energetic. From being an old model, a white man, to being a new model, a multiracial woman. From exuding depression and defensiveness to exuding just the opposite, hope and change.
Second, in response to the first, a changed leader, followers followed. They changed. Democrats including elected officials, wealthy donors, union leaders, party activists, black interest groups, and ordinary voters went from being disinterested and disengaged to being enlivened and invigorated. They now saw Harris through an entirely different lens which explains why they were, suddenly, strongly motivated to support her. Again: Harris was not an especially visible or successful vice president, either as a leader or as a manager. She became a figure of the future only after it became clear that she even had a future – and a remarkably promising one at that.
Finally, given leadership is a relationship, between leaders and their followers, together they impact on context. America’s political landscape has changed because overnight there was a bond between Vice President Harris and large swaths of the American electorate. A bond so swiftly forged and, already, so strongly in place it could not even have been imagined a month ago.
Maybe it’s not magic. But the alchemy of leadership is mind-boggling.
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I have long been disappointed in the failure of the leadership industry clearly and consistently to distinguish between “management” and “leadership.”* Several experts have defined the words, ostensibly clarifying the differences between them, but none of their efforts have stuck. Moreover, institutions of higher education have continued to conflate and confuse “management” and “leadership” – to the point where mostly they are used interchangeably, as if they were synonymous, which they are not.
Whenever distinctions between “management” and “leadership,” the latter has usually been more highly valued – “leaders” favored over “managers.” For example, leadership expert Warren Bennis wrote that, “the manager administers, the leader innovates; the manager is a copy, the leader is an original; the manager maintains, the leader develops;” and so on.**
The issue – leadership versus management – came to mind again recently with so much attention on the Republican National Convention and on Donald Trump’s transformation of the Republican Party. In just a few years it became a MAGA party, a party of the right not the center, no longer the party of Ronald Reagan, now the one of Trump. In thrall to him and him alone. Despite his deeply flawed character and his multiple malfeasances, during the Republican National Convention Trump was an object of admiration, even veneration.
Which raises the question of how he rose from the ashes of electoral defeat, the subsequent insurrection, and a string of legal and financial setbacks. Rose to become King of the Republicans, and plausibly elected American President for a second time. The answer lies in Trump’s exceptional leadership – and in Trump’s excellent management.
While his leadership skills have gotten relentless attention, his management skills have not. We seem to assume Trump’s powers are so exceptional that his current kingship was almost to be expected. But it was not. It was the entirely unanticipated outcome of his management of small groups of people composed of his closest aides and advisors, and his brain trust. The word “management” then should be applied to Trump’s ability, largely behind the scenes, to assemble a team that has done a remarkably good job of resurrecting a man presumed by many if not most to be politically dead.
After his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, Trump hired a familiar operative, Susie Wiles, to oversee his political committee. She in turn built a team that included, for example, Chris LaCivita, a skilled political veteran prepared to dedicate himself wholly and completely to getting Trump back in the political mix. To make him for the third time, despite all his baggage, a viable presidential candidate.
Once this was accomplished, the party line, the Trump party line as opposed to the previous Republican party line, prevailed at every turn. This was evidenced before and during the Convention, notably as it pertained to Trump’s determination completely to control the party platform.
The task was left to a small group of fiercely committed Trump loyalists. The New York Times: “The Trump campaign decided it would go to every delegation in the country to handpick the people who would represent the campaign on committees for rules, credentials and the party platform. It was an enormous organizational exercise overseen by James Blair, the political director of the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee. A small team was set up to draft the platform. A speechwriter, Vince Haley, took the lead. There were only a handful of people on a list of those receiving the text.”
Once the text was drafted, Trump’s closest advisers reviewed it, cut it, and confirmed it conformed to his style and syntax. At that point Trump made his final edits. Not a smidgeon of work was left to be done at the convention itself. The thousands of delegates, a good number of whom were anticipating participating in crafting the platform, found there was nothing left for them to do. Everything had been done – so far as the party platform was concerned every “I” had already been dotted and “T” already crossed.
Is this highly effective leadership? Or highly effective management? Debatable, I suppose, especially since the words mean different things to different people. Still, seems clear that a small band of highly skilled and dedicated loyalists does not require superior leadership to make it a well-oiled machine. What it does require is superior management. In this case it required 1) Trump’s keeping his eye on the prize; 2) Trump’s recognizing that to win the prize work had to be done; and 3) Trump’s understanding that this work required him to recruit a small number of people who were exceptionally smart and exceptionally committed to his cause – his personal, political cause.
To his credit then, Trump has succeeded not only in leading his enormous, enthusiastic base. He similarly succeeded in managing a small group of activists and administrators who excel at sculpting a world in his image.
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*For an extended discussion of this issue see Barbara Kellerman, Professionalizing Leadership (Oxford University Press, 2018).
** Warren Bennis, On Becoming a Leader (Perseus, originally published in 1989).
