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Prefatory Note: My choices for 2025 Leader of the Year and 2025 Follower(s) of the Year reflect my political preferences. They are for government that is reasonably democratic and decent.

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I define followers by their rank – not by their behavior. Followers have little or no power, authority, or influence. This contrasts with leaders who have all or most of the power, authority, and influence. Because of this difference, followers usually – though as this post will show they do not always – fall into line.

How do I distinguish between power, authority, and influence?

• Power is A’s capacity to get B to do what A wants by any means necessary, including force.
• Authority is A’s capacity to get B to do what A wants because of A’s superior rank, status, or credential.
• Influence is A’s capacity to get B to do what A wants, usually by persuasion, of B’s own volition.   

Followers matter as much as leaders. There is no leader without at least one follower. Moreover, followers matter when they do something, and they matter when they do nothing. If a follower, say, an American who is eligible to vote but does not, it makes a difference. Further, just as there are times when leaders matter more, there are times when followers matter more. Such as in the event of a revolution, when people who are powerless wrest power from people who are powerful.

This year I name not one but four Followers of the Year. I identify four individuals who, despite their relatively low levels of power, authority, and influence have, in 2025, nevertheless have had a significant impact on American politics. Each of the four has challenged their nemesis, President Donald Trump. And each of the four has put a chink in Trump’s generally formidable armor.

My Followers of the Year are in opposition to my Leader of the Year.  Trump dominated American politics in 2025, but he did not dominate them completely. Other people played a part – four of which are singled out in this post not because they followed. But because despite their weakness in comparison with Trump’s strength, they resisted. Unlike many other Americans – including many who themselves had large or even enormous reserves of power, authority, and influence – these four had the fortitude to voice their opposition to Trump and to act on it.

The four Followers of the Year are in two pairs: the first two are theorists, the second two are activists. The first two primarily write: they use the written word to try to persuade their readers to see the world as they do. The first two do however also speak. In 2025 they used media to spread their word and make their case. The second two Followers of the Year do not so far as we know now write and only one occasionally speaks in public. What they do is organize. This year they organized massive demonstrations whose source of energy was fierce opposition to the American president.

• Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder – 2025 Followers of the Year

Until a few years ago, few people had heard of Anne Applebaum. While her name is still not widely known, she is at the forefront of public intellectuals who came out early and vociferously against Donald Trump. From the beginning of his political career, she worried that he could and would become an authoritarian, a type of leader she knew well because she had studied it at length and in depth.

The same can be said about Timothy Snyder. Snyder too harbored grave doubts about Trump early on. Doubts that similarly grew out of his in-depth studies of leaders who were autocrats and fascists, tyrants and dictators. Additionally, pointedly, years before the time of Trump, both Applebaum and Snyder had the same regional expertise: Eastern Europe including Russia and what had been the Soviet Union.

For decades Applebaum has been in the front ranks of American journalists. She worked at The Economist and The Washington Post; now she is on the staff of The Atlantic. She is also a highly regarded author of, among other books, Gulag: A History, for which she won a Pulitzer Prize. Gulag, nearly 700 pages long, is a dark, relentlessly grim history of Soviet prison camps under the dictatorial, paranoid leadership of Joseph Stalin.

Snyder is an academic, a professor of history, now at the University of Toronto, previously at Yale. He too is author of several books, one of which bears similarities to Applebaum’s volume on the gulag. Snyder’s is titled Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. It too is highly praised and is, as its title suggests, dark, grim.    

Given the similarities between Applebaum and Synder – in their personal histories (both have spent long stretches living in Europe); in their professional interests (both have spent long stretches writing about the same region); and in their political attitudes (both are highly attuned to any hint of authoritarianism) – we should not be surprised that both are at the forefront of those who oppose President Trump.  

Synder led the charge, beginning early in Trump’s first term to sound a warning. In 2017 he published a small book titled On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. The book is as its title suggests: a set of instructions on how to stop from happening in the United States what has happened in other parts of the world. Specifically, a slide from democracy to autocracy, even to tyranny. Snyder never mentioned anyone by name in the book – an implied neutrality that might in part explain why On Tyranny has sold remarkably well. Nearly a million and a half million copies since the book was published.

Applebaum’s clarion call came a few years later, in 2020, in a book titled, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Unlike Snyder’s it was not so much an instruction as an exposition of, to quote the title of a chapter, “how demagogues win.” Applebaum pointed out that to remain in power not all dictatorships rely on mass violence. Instead, some depend on “a cadre of elites to run the bureaucracy, the state media, the courts, and, in some places, state companies.” These elites defend their leaders at all costs “however dishonest their statements, however great their corruption, and however disastrous their impact on ordinary people and institutions. In exchange, they know they will be rewarded and advanced.”

Both Applebaum and Synder continue their mission not just as writers and speakers, but as activists out to reach large numbers of people. They post blogs and appear on podcasts, and both can be seen regularly on television. Neither are likely ever to have power. But they draw on their authority, their intellectual authority, to exercise influence.   

• Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin – 2025 Followers of the Year

Unlike Applebaum and Snyder, whose names are known to some people, Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin are names known to nearly no people. Which seems on their part to be deliberate. By remaining in the background, they foreground Indivisible. What, you might ask, is “Indivisible”? It is an organization that, according to its website, defines itself as a “grassroots movement … with a mission to elect progressive leaders, rebuild our democracy, and defeat the Trump agenda.” For now, though, Indivisible’s mission is more single tracked. It is to resist Trump. It is this resistance that has, in the last year, motivated astonishingly large numbers of people to join its cause.    

Indivisible insists that it collaborates with other, likeminded groups and organizations. Still, it is Indivisible that stands out. As do the two people who founded Indivisible and continue to lead it. Leah Greenberg and Ezra Levin came out of nowhere, or so it seems. Unlike Applebaum and Snyder who had authority based on their academic credentials, Greenberg and Levin had nothing. Initially certainly, no power, no authority, no influence. They met as undergraduates at Carleton College; some years later (in 2015) they married. Along the way they collected graduate degrees and worked several jobs. But when Donald Trump was first elected to the White House, they found their calling. They (and two other people) were so incensed, so concerned, that they drafted and posted an online document titled, “Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.” Their Guide went viral and a movement was born.

If Trump not been reelected, it’s not clear that Indivisible would have had much of shelf life. This is not to say that the organization had no early successes, it did. Moreover, after the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City it seems possible progressivism has a future in American politics. Still, Trump was reelected which explains why Indivisible was invigorated in a way its cofounders could never have imagined.   

I refer to the astonishing turnout for No Kings Day – an initiative that Indivisible spearheaded More than any other group or organization, Indivisible is responsible for the successes of two No Kings Day protests both of which took place in 2025. The first was in June when some 5 million people took to the streets to demonstrate against Trump. The second was in October when the number of ant-Trump protesters climbed to over 7 million. By no means did all those who took part support Indivisible’s progressive agenda. But what Indivisible did was first to organize and then to implement a remarkably impressive demonstration against the American president. The No Kings Day protest in October was either the largest or among the largest protests ever in American history.

Anne Applebaum married a Polish diplomat, so in 2103 she became a Polish citizen. Still, she was born in the United States and remains also an American citizen. Timothy Snyder spends a good deal of time in Austria and in 2024 was granted Austrian citizenship. Further, as mentioned, in 2024 Snyder moved from the United States to Canada. Still, he too was born in the United States and remains also an American citizen.

So, for the purposes of this post I consider that Trump is leader of Applebaum, Snyder, Greenberg, and Levin – and that they are his followers. All four are Americans which means that so long as Trump is American president they have no choice but to follow his lead, whether to impose tariffs, bomb boats off the coast of Venezuela, decimate the civil service, or demolish the East Wing of the White House. What distinguishes these four is that while each is obligated in most ways to follow the president’s lead in both domestic and foreign policy, each has found a way, an important way, simultaneously to resist him.

Which goes to show that while most of the time followers follow, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they resist – and sometimes the consequences of their resistances are significant.  In which case – not to complicate your life – followers become leaders. As did, to take a supreme example, Martin Luther King, Jr. He began his campaign for civil rights as a follower, as a righteous resister, and became in time himself a leader.

Prefatory Note: My choices for 2025 Leader of the Year and 2025 Follower of the Year – the latter will be revealed in a subsequent post – reflect my political preferences. They are for government that is reasonably democratic and reasonably decent.

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My criterion for 2025 Leader of the Year is the same as it was last year and the years before that. It is not which leader was the most ethical nor is it even which leader was the most effective. It is which leader had the greatest impact. In the past year which leader – more than any other – left their imprint on the time and place in which they lived and led?

This year the answer is obvious. I wish I could be novel, original. But the man makes it impossible. In 2025 no leader has had as seismic an impact on people and place as American President Donald J. Trump.

In theory I suppose this is arguable. The Financial Times designated Nvidia chief executive, Jensen Huang, as its 2025 “Person of the Year.” Huang is, of course, remarkable. Nvidia’s advances in technology have made its chips near indispensable not just at home but abroad. And Nvidia’s advances in business have catapulted the company to where it is now – the most valuable in the world. But Huang’s leadership has been over a period of thirty years, of which the last year has not, in fact, been the most remarkable.

Similarly other leaders such as China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin who have had a major impact. Both have been top dog for over a decade (in Putin’s case for over two decades) and neither stood out more this year than any other.

In the last twelve months especially Trump has had the greatest impact of any leader anywhere in the world. He was, of course, president previously, from January 2017 to January 2021. But that was then. The impression he made then was great, but not as great as this time around.  This time, this year, his thumb has been so heavy on the scale that he deserves the title, 2025 Leader of the Year. 

Leadership is not of course the handiwork of any single individual. Leadership is a system with three parts, each of which is equally important. The leader. The followers. And the context. Trump’s impact cannot therefore be understood apart from what has been up to now his famously loyal base. Or from Republicans in the House and Senate who until recently have stood by him as reliably as obsequiously.

Nor can Trump’s outsized impact be understood apart from the political system within which he operates – which in several ways is deeply flawed. Examples include checks and balances that are neither checking nor balancing; Supreme Court judges getting lifetime appointments; Montana having the same number of senators as California; and the few who are enormously rich having far, far more political clout than the many who are miserably poor.

Still, one of the hallmarks of the Leader of the Year is the degree to which they stand out from whoever else is a player and from whatever else matters. Trump is such a leader. Wherever he is, whenever he does anything or says anything, he sucks the air out of the room.  

Since Donald Trump returned to the White House in late January there is scarcely a single aspect of American life on which he has not left his stamp. Science and medicine; politics and economics; government and business; ideology and technology; education and religion; culture and the courts; money, media, morals and mores. His outsized impact has been felt not just at home but abroad. Abroad looks different now than it did a year ago – in good part because of Trump.

This piece is a post not a book. So instead of delving into the specifics of his impact on domestic politics and policies, I will single out two aspects of his character that have left their mark on the American people. Presidential character matters. While it is impossible precisely to define character, and equally impossible precisely to describe how it matters, we know from historical experience and contemporaneous evidence that the president’s persona impacts who we, we Americans, are, what we think, and how we behave.

After discussing the impact of two aspects of Trump’s character on the American people, I turn to his impact on American foreign policy. Obviously, I can only skim the surface of how in the last year Trump’s world view has changed the world in which we live. Still, this brief discussion will demonstrate how Trump has used the power and authority of the presidency to turn the ship of state.

The President’s Character – Trump’s Transgression

Never in American history has a president been so badly behaved. It would be tempting to describe him as a toddler unleashed but that would shortchange the seriousness of his offenses and the outrageousness of his coarseness. Between his penchants for corruption and retribution, his proclivities to lying and fabricating, and his tendencies to vulgarities we, the people, have had our hands full. Our hands are full trying to hold to our shared history and common decency; to our past progress toward civil rights, women’s rights, and gay, lesbian and transgender rights; and to the American Dream that recedes as I write. The disappearing American Dream is not of course all Trump’s fault. It’s more that sympathy with, and empathy for those less fortunate than he is not part of his persona. Most of his politics, policies, and preferences bend toward those already securely at the top, not toward those in the middle and certainly not those stuck at the bottom.

To say the president behaves badly does not begin to capture his lack of class and deficiency in decency. Two recent examples. A couple of months ago Trump tweeted an AI video of him in a fighter jet dumping feces on cities crowded with anti-Trump protesters. Upon which a White House spokesperson went on gleefully to post the president defecating “all over these No Kings Losers.” A couple of days ago Trump tweeted his response to the murders of Rob and Michele Reiner, a message less shockingly crass than shockingly heartless. It was so bad that even some otherwise slavishly loyal Republicans felt obliged publicly to distance themselves.

The point is that Trump can’t stop. He can’t stop himself from being that toddler unleashed, from being that bad boy trapped in the body of a visibly aging man. He can’t stop himself from debasing himself, defiling his office and dragging the American people down with him.

Do the president’s transgressions affect us? While it’s impossible to prove a direct connection between cause and effect there is evidence that Trump has had a deleterious impact. According to a 2025 Pew Research poll almost half of Americans think that we are ruder than we used to be, with nearly a fifth saying that we are a lot ruder. Moreover, the coarseness of our political discourse is one of the two reasons cited – the other is social media – for the decline in civility.

Leadership experts speak about the importance of role models – about how good leaders are good role models. Which of course implies the converse – that bad leaders are bad role models. It explains why one of the best-known legends about George Washington is about him as a six-year-old admitting to his angry father that he cut down his cherry tree. George was said to have said, “Father, I cannot tell a lie… I cut the tree with my hatchet.” His father’s response was to embrace his young son, declaring his honesty worth more than a thousand trees.

Trump of course is famously a fabricator – he has told tens of thousands of lies over the course of his political career and he continues to do so. Did Fred Trump forget to tell his boy Donald that truth telling was good and lying was bad?.

The President’s Character – Trump’s Aggression

President Donald Trump likes fights.

Trump enjoys watching fights. Literally. Such as those that take place in the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Octagon, that eight-sided chain link cage in which one mixed martial arts expert is hellbent on dominating another mixed martial arts expert. (Mixed martial arts, I should perhaps add, is described as “an extreme combat sport.”)

Trump enjoys picking fights. Goading other people into taking him on by taking them on. By insulting them in the extreme and calling them names; by labeling them outsiders hellbent on destroying the American way of life; by challenging those who have the temerity to disagree with him; by seeding disputatiousness and divisiveness between and among individuals and groups; by threatening revenge and retribution; and by taking on his opponents both in the courts and in the court of public opinion.

Trump enjoys provoking fights. To him the halls of justice are a battle ground, a familiar one as he has been litigious lifelong. Just this week Trump sued the BBC for 10 billion dollars (for defaming him and violating Florida’s Unfair Trade Practices Act). And just this year the Trump administration was sued over 500 times, a figure that is “drastically higher” than the average.

Nor is Trump averse, at least in theory, to fighting to the death, the death, that is, of others. When several members of Congress recently reminded those serving in the American military that they could refuse to obey illegal orders, Trump called them – they included among others Senator Mark Kelly, previously both a navy captain and an astronaut – “traitors.” Nor did Trump stop there. He went on to add that traitorous behavior was seditious behavior. And that seditious behavior was “punishable by death.”

Trump is so fond of fights that he is prone to pardoning those who engage in them, no matter how illegal, immoral, or outrageous their behavior. On January 20, 2025, his first full day back in office, Trump granted clemency to the nearly 1,600 people involved in offenses relating to the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol. And on December 1, 2025, President Trump pardoned Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernanez – who had been serving a 45-year sentence for drug trafficking and firearms offenses – which Trump knew full well would provoke outrage not just among Democrats but also some Republicans. 

Again, the impact of Trump’s disposition to aggression is impossible precisely to calculate. Still, it’s a mistake to underestimate it. Research shows that the president’s “hate speech and demonization of Non-whites, mainstream media, and oppositional politicians, and his implicit and explicit praise of violence” lead to increased verbal and physical attacks, including in schools.* It is presumably no accident then that “since the beginning of Donald Trump second term in January, acts of political violence in the United States have been occurring at an alarming rate.”**

The President’s World View – Trump’s Expansionism

President Donald Trump’s lust for money is threaded through his world view.*** Money is what Trump lusts for – money is far more important to him than power. To Trump power is a means to an end: the end is not power per se but power as way of making money. Money is also far more important to Trump than ideology – in this case liberal democracy. It’s not so much that democracy is unimportant to Trump as it is irrelevant, sometimes even an impediment.

Trump’s lust for money explains his sudden passion for cryptocurrencies. It explains his newfound interest in parts of the world such as the Middle East (think Saudi Arabia) and South America (think Argentina). It explains his continuing reluctance to back Ukraine and to break with Russia’s rapacious Vladimir Putin. (A peace deal friendly to Putin would open the door for major money-making opportunities in resource-rich Russia.) It explains his lack of interest in promoting democratic values around the world. It explains why he makes few if any distinctions between America’s allies and its enemies. It explains his bromances with top tech leaders who themselves have major global interests. It explains how he and his family have been able to amass staggering wealth in recent years including some $1.8 billion just since he was reelected. Finally, Trump’s lust for money explains why the best way to think of Trump is not so much as an autocrat as an oligarch. Autocrats and oligarchs are often in bed together, and sometimes they are one and the same. Trump though has never been much interested in politics except as it affects him, and he has never been much interested in, or knowledgeable about government. No, Trump’s lust has always been for money, and it still is. Not withstanding that he is now leader of the United States not The Trump Organization. 

Under Trump’s leadership, the United States is now “operating in a new economic order in which the federal government is no longer just a referee, a regulator, or even a customer. It is now the senior partner, the lead investor, and the ultimate arbiter.”**** Under Trump’s leadership decades of American tech policy have been reversed. For example, it used to be American foreign policy not to sell its advanced technologies to its adversaries. Now this policy has been reversed, the starkest example of which was only recently when Trump announced that he had freed Nvidia to sell its second most powerful chip to China. Under Trump’s leadership capitalism in America is turning into state capitalism, maybe even crony capitalism which means the government is starting regularly to intrude on, and intersect with, business, not infrequently Trump’s family business.

Trump’s beloved tariffs are another example of the intersections to which I allude, between the public sector and the private one, and between domestic policy and foreign policy. Trump touts tariffs as money makers for America’s coffers. The monies though are made by charging Americans higher prices for foreign goods. Moreover, the impacts of tariffs on America’s relations with other countries is almost always deleterious. This includes relations with allies ranging from Canada to Australia, with every country in the European Union, and with India, now the most populous country in the world.

Perhaps the best evidence of the importance of money to policy is in a document that represents Trump’s world view – a world view in which economic policy and foreign policy are essentially one and the same. I refer to the recently released 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), which was crafted by the president’s closest foreign policy advisors, and which naturally reflects the his views.

Those who have studied the NSS have been struck by its disinterest in America’s promotion of democracy; by its dismissal of, if not even disdain for America’s longtime allies in Europe; by its lack of focus on great power competition, including with China; by its emphasis on the importance of countries in the Western Hemisphere (think Venezuela); and by its unaccustomed even atypical attention to economics, which is to say to money. Michael Froman, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, summarized the point this way: “The NSS represents the ultimate triumph of economic – or commercial – interests and tools. Openly transactional economic dealmaking is a key organizing principle for U.S. foreign policy under Trump 2. 0.” 

Trump is as he deserves to be – 2025 Leader of the Year. But people change and so do the circumstances within which they are situated. So, who knows what this year’s leader of the year will look like one year from now? Chances are good that the strongman, this strongman anyway, will be far feebler than he is now.

The interesting question though is not how he will be, but how we will be. Will the Trump Effect be permanent? Or will he be more quickly sidelined than now imagined?

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* Brigitte Nacos, et al, “Donald Trump: Aggressive Rhetoric and Political Violence, in Perspectives on Terrorism, Volume 1, Issue, 5.

** Robert Pape, “We May be on the Brink of an Extremely Violent Period in American Politics,” New York Times, June 22, 2025.

*** In Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy, Todd Pittinsky and I define lust as “a psychological drive that produces intense wanting, even desperately needing to obtain an object, or to secure a circumstance. When the object has been obtained or the circumstance secured, there is relief, but only briefly, temporarily.” Then the cycle starts again. (Cambridge University Press, 2020, p. 2.)

****Andrew Ross Sorkin, “Deal Book,” New York Times, December 11, 2025.

The relationship between leader and follower is sometimes entirely benign. And, sometimes, it is not. It is entirely benign when both leader and follower benefit from the relationship and when the interaction between them is pleasant. It is not entirely benign when one or the other, the leader or the follower, does not benefit from the relationship and, or when the interaction between them is unpleasant. 

In relationships between leaders and followers that are not entirely benign, fear can and often does play an important part. Typically, fear matters when the follower wants to do something or not do something that the leader demands, wants or expects. In which case the leader threatens to harm the follower, either explicitly or implicitly, unless the follower is compliant.

Atypically but not so infrequently it’s the other way around. The follower threatens to in some way hurt the leader unless they do what the follower demands, wants or expects. I recently posted a piece in this space – titled “The Tail That Wags the Dog” – about how American voters (followers) can and often do control their elected officials (leaders) to the point where the latter are afraid of the former. Afraid that they won’t reelect them to office.      

Fear induced in followers by leaders with more power and authority than they can range from being mortal to being mild. A follower can be deathly afraid of their leader or only slightly afraid. In the workplace a superior can threaten – again, explicitly or implicitly – to fire someone or to deny them a raise. In the commons a superior can threaten to kill a follower who refuses to follow as, for example, Adolf Hitler did during the Nazi era.  Or a superior can threaten to slander a follower as, for example, Donald Trump does, including Republicans running for office who are not a thousand percent loyal.

Trump, it should be added, is sui generis. Never in America’s political history has the fear factor been as important to the leader-follower dynamic as it is now. Specifically, the fear of if, and how, and to what extent Trump will retaliate if a designated target does not do what the president demands, wants or expects. Fear has become so important a factor in American politics – up and down the ladder of power – it has been normalized.

Political violence in America has escalated and politicians routinely report receiving death threats. After Trump called former Republican House member Marjorie Taylor Greene a “traitor,” she reported receiving a “pipe bomb threat on my house” and “several death threats on my son.” Less drastically but still, university presidents worry that the administration will impose on their institution draconian cuts in funding. Chief executive officers kowtow to the president because they are scared that their company will pay if they do not. And cabinet members fawn as relentlessly as cravenly over Trump, intimidated by what he might do to them if they are other than worshipful acolytes.

The Financial Times’s Edward Luce reports that most of his sources have come to insist on anonymity. Why? Because of their “fear of jail, bankruptcy, or professional reprisal.”  Because of their fear that Trump will take “revenge” should their names become known. Similarly, the New York Times’s Noam Scheiber asked why, “leaders in the media, law, and finance [were] failing to stand up more forcefully to what many inside these industries say are abuses of presidential power?” He went on, “Fear is the most obvious answer. They are scared that the president will do more damage if they try to resist, scared that he may even target them personally.”

Many of Trump’s relationships testify to how fear can factor into the dynamic between those who have more power and authority and those who have less. But the point is a broader one. Which is that while Trump is an outlier among American presidents, he is not an outlier more generally. Fear frequently plays a part in the leader-follower dynamic – personally and professionally as well as politically. Most of us were occasionally afraid of what our parents might do if we did not do what they told us to do. Most of us were occasionally afraid of what our teachers might do if in some way we misbehaved. And even as adults most of us are occasionally afraid of what our managers might do if we disappoint them or frustrate them or in some other way displease them.

So, while it’s heartening to be told that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, truth is that fear is intrinsic to the human condition. Intrinsic to the dynamic between those who are more powerful and those who are less. 

As indicated in my post of last August 21, I am giving a very short course, specifically on this site, on the classics of leadership literature. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The posts will be drawn from my edited collection, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). While here I can provide only short bursts of texts, my hope is they prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

Today’s leadership literacy classic is in Part II of the book, Literature as Leadership. The idea that writing can be an act of leadership at first seems astonishing. But it is not, or it should not be. After all, writing is communicating. It is using words to send a message, in this case about change. Specifically, every writer in this section of the book was a leader. An intellectual leader who sought to create change by making a case so convincingly that people would feel compelled to act.

The eight men and four women who fall into this category all set out to right what they deeply believed was a wrong. Remarkably they did. Moreover, they wrote so well that we read them still.

Today’s writer as leader – or, if you prefer, leader as writer – is Thomas Paine. Paine was born in England – but he was among the fiercest and certainly most articulate defenders of American independence from the British crown. His revolutionary tract, Common Sense, was so widely read, and so incendiary, that it was called “the match that lit the revolution.”

Context always matters. So, no surprise that Common Sense was published in just the right place at just the right time – in Philadelphia, in 1776. Most Americans still had to be persuaded that the fight for American independence from Great Britain was worth the cost. After all, as I wrote in the above-mentioned book, “their ties to England were close and long-standing, their future as a separate state was uncertain at best, and they did not hunger for war against His Majesty’s troops.”

Paine though had no doubt. He was fervent and fiery in his conviction that England was rapacious and that the colonists would be far, far better off on their own. If they declared their independence from the British crown.

Paine was, as was the previous writer-as-leader in this series, Mary Wollstonecraft, a figure of the Enlightenment. He, though, was an in-your-face radical. A rabid revolutionist who used his pen to trigger fear and loathing in his readers, fear and loathing so overwhelming that they would be ready if not eager to overturn the old order and build an entirely new one.

Paine’s pen was so fluid and persuasive he was the envy of his contemporaries. Benjamin Franklin believed that the impact of Common Sense had been “prodigious.” Benjamin Rush declared that the treatise seemed to have “burst from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced.” John Adams was envious, complaining to Thomas Jefferson that history would “ascribe the American Revolution to Thomas Paine.” And Jefferson, no slouch with a pen himself, effectively conceded the point. “No writer has exceeded Paine,” Jefferson admitted, “in ease and familiarity of style, in perspicuity of expression, happiness of elucidation, and in simple and unassuming language.”

Excerpts from Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776,

• I have heard it asserted by some that as America has flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is necessary towards her future happiness…. Nothing could be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty.

• But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young nor make war upon their families.… This new World hath been the asylum for persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their descendants still.”

I know. A good number of our political leaders are Black. And a good number of them are prominent. Reasonably well known not only to America’s political class but to Americans generally. Former Democratic nominee for President, Kamala Harris; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries; Maryland Governor Wes Moore; Georgia’s Senator Raphael Warnock, South Carolina’s longtime House member James Clyburn – they and then some are Black leaders who have made it to the highest rungs of American politics.

But perhaps because they are so firmly entrenched in the political establishment not one among them is known by the wider public as a fighter fighting the good fight with the benefit of widespread support. Fighting the administration of President Donald Trump with millions in tow as it diminishes African Americans, neglects them and tries to hobble them by reversing voting rights secured more than a half century ago during the presidency of Lyndon Johnson.

What Black Americans lack is not so much a political leader as a sociopolitical leader. A leader of a movement that cuts across every dimension: color and gender; state and city; county and class. What Black Americans lack is a leader like the exalted Martin Luther King, Jr. – and like Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, John Lewis and others who were able to cut through the usual divides to form a strong, largely unified and nationally grounded movement on behalf of a cause fervently believed to be worthy. It might be argued that the Reverend Al Sharpton has tried to fill the gap. But whatever his achievements he has not secured the support required to forge a sociopolitical movement that is cross-cutting. That is large, wide, powerful and sustained enough to make a difference.

Among the most massive protests in American history were in 2020, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter it was estimated that between 15 and 26 million people participated in massive demonstrations not just against police brutality but for equal rights more generally. Interestingly, they were largely spontaneous. Which is to say that they were largely leaderless. No single leader or cluster of leaders was seen then or has been seen since as organizing the protests, as leading or even managing them. Which goes a long way toward explaining why they did not so much fizzle out as simply subside, diminish and then vanish. For all their gargantuan size the palpable anger at Floyd’s murder did not translate into anything further than limited, and all too often short-lived, attempts to curtail police brutality.

So here we are now, one year into Trump’s second term, with evidence mounting that he is out to curb “the other” however “the other” is defined. So far as Black Americans are concerned the greatest impact is likely to be on their right to vote and to have their vote count equally. Here a few lines from a recent piece in The New Yorker by Jelani Cobb: “What seems clear is that striking down Section 2 of [the Voting Rights Act] will almost certainly result in a landscape in which minority voters, particularly African Americans in the South, wield less political power than they have at any point since 1965.”* (Italics mine.)

Trump will not be stopped from shaping the nation as he sees fit either by the Congress or the Courts. It’s possible he will be slowed by the results of the 2026 midterm election. Possible. But meantime it’s probable that to African Americans especially, to their civil rights, to their voting rights, damage will be done. Wherever they have gone then – Black leaders – past time to find them. To identify them – and to call on them to identify themselves – lest we all fall down a rabbit hole from which it will be difficult to climb out.

*Civil Wrongs” in The New Yorker, November 10, 2025.       

Israeli journalist and author Ari Shavit describes a “dangerous bacteria.” A bacterium so malign that it infects virtually every Israeli – hobbling Israeli politics, even threatening the Israeli state. Shavit calls it “Bibisis.” It refers to Israelis’ obsession with one person. With their longtime leader and Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, widely known as Bibi.

Shavit describes Netanyahu as a leader who is, and has been for years the axis around which everything in Israel turns. And who is, and has been for years the individual around whom everyone in Israel pivots. Every Israeli has a fiercely held view – either they are for Bibi or they are against him, either they are forever Bibi or never Bibi.

To Americans the symptoms of Bibisis are familiar. Since 2015, when Donald Trump first declared his intent to run for president, we suffer from a similar syndrome. We have been as obsessed with Trump as Israelis have been with Netanyahu. For a decade now near everything in American politics has been seen through the prism of Trump. He has dominated the American political landscape, and opinions about him are fiercely held. Either for Trump or against Trump, either forever Trump or never Trump.

For all the similarities among most liberal democracies – such as the sharp swing to the right in virtually every country in Europe as well as in the United States – among their leaders are enormous differences. While Netanyahu and Trump are similar – they share traits and characteristics of standard strongmen – they have little in common with most of their European counterparts. Leaders like Britain’s stolid Prime Minister Keir Starmer, or France’s elitist President Emannuel Macron, or Germany’s colorless Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The Brits, for example, are no more consumed by Starmer than Americans were with Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

No less a connoisseur of consciousness than Sigmund Freud was baffled by our capacity to become obsessed with a single individual, a single leader. “How is it possible,” Freud asked in his final book, Moses and Monotheism, “that one man can develop such extraordinary effectiveness… can stamp [his] people with [their] definite character and determine [their] fate for millennia to come?”

Bibisis might then be unhealthy, even dangerous. But it is not an anomaly. Anymore than what Americans call “Trump derangement syndrome.” The syndrome is not an official medical diagnosis. But the term does get its own Wikipedia entry, and it does describe an obsession of sorts. A negatively held view of Trump that is so strong, and so persistent, that the person who holds it is seen by some, especially those who don’t share it, as deranged.

Which it is not. Instead, Trump derangement syndrome is like its approximate Israeli counterpart, Bibisis. Both testify to our capacity to be in thrall to our leaders. To the capacity of some leaders to dominate and subordinate their followers beyond what seems to those not similarly disposed to be sensible or maybe even sane.

For fifteen years I have written about – and stressed the importance of – followers. I have never claimed that they are more important than leaders. I have claimed that they are as important as leaders. I have claimed that you cannot think intelligently about leaders without thinking about followers. And I have claimed that you cannot be an effective leader without taking followers into account at virtually every turn.  

What’s been happening in American politics in recent weeks merits my follower-fixation. Followers have been the tail that’s been wagging the dog – which makes leaders the dog. For followers have been driving the action while the ostensible leaders – notably Republicans in the House and Senate – have been scurrying to catch up.    

First some semantics. As it is used here the word “leader” refers to a person who is in a position of authority. As it is used here the word “follower” refers to a person who is not in a position of authority. Ergo, as these words are used here, leaders are Congressional Republicans, and followers are their constituents.  

So, what’s the chain of command?

At the top would appear Republican President Donald Trump. Immediately below would appear Republicans who serve in the House and Senate. But appearances can be deceiving. Increasingly Congressional Republicans are distancing themselves from the President. Increasingly they are taking issue with what he says and does. And increasingly they are defying his orders or just exiting his orbit.

Disputes between Republicans in Congress and the MAGA Man in the White House are multiplying. Tariffs, redistricting, the Epstein files, Ukraine, boat strikes in the Caribbean, and status of the Secretary of Defense (or War), are emblematic of the larger point. That growing numbers of prominent Republicans are refusing to march, like automatons, in lockstep behind the chief executive.

How did this happen? Who’s driving the action? Who really is leading and who really is following? The answers are simple. The electorate is leading; the elected are following. While it’s true that American voters are without authority – they are, so to speak, ordinary people – they are not without power and nor are they without influence. In fact, they have both. American voters have the power to reward their elected officials – and the power to punish them. American voters can decide to reelect members of Congress – or they can decide not to reelect them. Moreover, American voters have influence. They can for example influence their peers, other voters, to vote one way or another. They can give money to their preferred candidates and causes. And they can, and do organize, they can marshal their numbers to affect changes in policies and politicians.

Once the honeymoon is over every American president tends to lose popularity. But some lose it more dramatically and precipitously than others. Trump is an example. As The Economist summarized it, “No recent president has fallen so low so quickly as Donald Trump.” The most recent Gallup Poll confirms the point – it has the president’s approval rating at 36% and his disapproval rating at 60%.

Is it any wonder that Republicans in Congress are starting to wake from their Rip Van Winkel-like nap? Is it any wonder that they are starting to play the dog to their constituents’ tail?   

As indicated in my post of last August 21, I am giving a very short course, specifically on this site, on the classics of leadership literature. (See the post for how “classic” is defined.)

The posts will be drawn from my edited collection, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010). While here I can provide only short bursts of texts, my hope is they prompt you to dig deeper.

The selections are grouped into three parts. Part I comprises classics About Leadership. Part II is a compilation of Literature as Leadership. And Part III consists of selections by Leaders in Action. Leaders who have used words – written, oral, or both – as instruments of leadership.

Today’s classic is the first entry in Part II of the book, titled, Literature as Leadership. The idea that writing can be an act of leadership initially seems astonishing. But it is not, or it should not be. After all, writing is communicating. It is using words to send a message, in this case about change. Specifically, every writer in this part of the book themselves was a leader. A leader who sought to create change by so persuasively making a case that people would feel compelled to act. The eight men and four women who fall into this category all set out to right what they deeply believed was a wrong. Remarkably, they did – they changed the world. Moreover, they wrote so well that we read them still.

Today’s writer as leader – or, if you prefer, leader as writer – is Mary Wollstonecraft. She is the first of three women in this section, each of whom were compelled to lead women to a different place. A place in which they were not just permitted to be but encouraged to be stronger and more independent than they were at the time of writing.  

All writers must be read in the context of their time – Wollstonecraft arguably more than most because above all she was a figure of The Enlightenment. Which is to say that she like her luminous contemporaries – such as writer and revolutionist Thomas Paine – was the product of a period during which absolute power was moving away from those at the top and toward those in the middle and even at the bottom.

For most women the world that Wollstonecraft knew was exceedingly difficult. Children, for example, belonged to their father not their mother. Since divorce was impossible, this meant that if a woman had the temerity to leave the man to whom she was married, she had no choice but to leave her children behind. Marital rape was moreover legal – though in 1782 a law was passed that required husbands who beat their wives to use a stick no wider than a thumb.

Wollstonecraft was nothing if not ladylike. She wrote with delicacy – though her style should not be misunderstood. Beneath what might seem to the contemporary reader language that was formal and sometimes even flowery, was a message of fierce urgency. All women, Wollstonecraft warned, especially young women, should take care not to be misled by the flatteries of men. All women should be schooled. They should understand that only by being educated could they protect themselves against the danger of being discarded by a man. For men would deny them strength “both of mind and body.” Men would flatter them at first, but then, later, discard them as carelessly as they would a faded flower. To be clear: Wollstonecraft was not a man-hater. Rather she was clear-eyed about the plight of women and hellbent on doing what she could to lessen it.

From “A Vindication of the Rights of Women,” Mary Wollstonecraft, 1792.

• The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers which are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity.

• My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone., I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists – I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings who are only the objects of pity and that kind of love, which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.

As I define it, the leadership industry is about a half century old. Before about 1980 the interest in leadership was strong – to wit Confucius’s sage, Plato’s philosopher-king, Machiavelli prince, Locke’s legislator, Lenin’s revolutionary, and Arendt’s totalitarian. But it was sporadic. Only since about 1980 has there been an industry built on the supposition that leadership can constitute a pedagogy. Specifically, that leadership can be taught and learned not on a small scale but on a large one. That leadership can be taught to and learned by many different people in many different places in many different ways by many different types of instructors.

Leadership has become, in short, a vast money-making enterprise. “Leadership Industry” is then no more than, though also no less than, my catchall term for the now countless leadership centers, institutes, programs, courses, seminars, workshops, experiences, books, blogs, articles, websites, webinars, videos, conferences, coaches and consultants claiming to teach people how to lead – usually for money and sometimes for a lot of money.*

In recent years the leadership industry has not slowed. To the contrary, it has continued to grow, notably in the private sector where “executive education has evolved from a small cadre of on-campus leadership seminars into a multi-billion-dollar global industry” that ostensibly “equips senior managers, entrepreneurs, and high potential talent with the insight and agility demanded by today’s volatile marketplace.” It is projected that by 2029 the annual investment in global executive education will exceed $74 billion.**  

Hard for me here to convey how deep or widespread is the apparent belief – I write “apparent” because I cannot say how deeply held is this belief or even if it is genuine – at least in the private sector that leadership programs pay off. For notwithstanding the level of the investment, are statistics that would seem to question the supposition. For example, “only 10% of people are natural leaders” and only another 20% “show potential with proper training.” And “trust in managers dropped from 46% to 29% in just two years (2033-2024).  And despite the humungous sums of money that have been poured into leadership development over the last several decades, some “77% of organizations [still] lack sufficient leadership depth at all levels.”***  

For the sake of this discussion, I am not, however, taking issue with the proposition that business investment in leadership development pays off. Here I raise another matter. Specifically, if we’re so good at developing leaders in the private sector – or, at least, sufficiently good to merit enormous investment in their improvement – why does the same not apply in the public sector?  

To be clear, trust in leaders in the private sector is low. We do not find them models of rectitude. In fact, the most obvious indicator of their professional success – money – is also an indicator of their personal greed. But at least we can admire how high they can climb.

Not so leaders in the public sector – for them there is scant admiration of any kind. Not only do many leaders in the public sector seem to us to be unethical. Many leaders in the public sector seem to us to be ineffective. They fixate on raising money for their own campaign coffers; they quarrel with each other, endlessly; they cling to their posts for years on end, well past their sell-by date; and they are seen as not especially interested in serving the public good, if not even corrupt. To summarize findings from two years ago by the Pew Research Center: “Elected officials are widely viewed as self-serving and ineffective.” In short, Americans of all stripes despair of a political leadership class that for decades now has proven itself miserably poor at getting things done and equally poor at persuading their constituents that well-intentioned public service is other than largely dead and gone.

None of this is of course to say that the leadership industry is to blame for leadership cohorts that are little admired and less respected. The dislike, disrespect, and distrust of political leaders that we see in the United States is widespread, evident in most other democracies as well as in ours. It is however to ask yet again why the leadership industry continues to be indifferent to its lack of adequate impact. There are of course some successes to which it can point. But let’s get real – they are a drop in the proverbial bucket. If we leadership experts and educators did things right, we could have and would have a far, far greater positive impact than we do now – and have had over the last fifty years. As it stands we make a difference only at the margins, more’s the pity.

I have written about the disappointments of the leadership industry for years. Equally I have written about how to start making what’s wrong right. It’s not rocket science. The template for how to get better at what we do is out there. But we’ve not had the will to lead the way.  

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*For more on my take on the leadership industry see two of my books: The End of Leadership (HarperCollins, 2012) and Professionalizing Leadership (Oxford University Press, 2018).

** From “100 Interesting Facts and Figures about Executive Education 2025,”

*** From Sean Linehan, “29 Eye-Opening Leadership Development Statistics 2025” in Exec.

You got a candidate for the title? There are lots of them out there – lots of leaders in lots of situations who are stretched to the max.  

But I challenge you to beat my nominee for winner of the dubious honor. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Since Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, the pressure on Zelensky has been extreme and without letup. Moreover, while it has been unrelenting from day one, it has never been greater than at this moment.   

A quick look at the dynamic from a systemic point of view – specifically at the leader, at the followers, and at the situation.

The Leader

Zelensky, previously a comedian and entertainer, has not had much to laugh about and not much to entertain him for nearly four years. Navigating the war within Ukraine and outside it, especially in Europe and vis a vis the United States, has been a Herculean if not Sisyphean task. If Zelensky has had any respite from the pressure I haven’t heard about it. His level of stress must be sky high. His level of fatigue, mental and physical, must be off the charts. He must be at the point or past it of burnout. Zelensky is not an old man, he is 47 years old. But I wonder how long he can take the pressure – and how long he should take the pressure? Will it be it time in the coming months for him to step back – to let another leader lead the charge?

The Followers

Think of it. President Zelensky has to manage his own team. He has to be symbolic and substantive leader of the Ukrainian people. He has to marshal leaders in Europe such as Germany’s Friedrich Merz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Poland’s Donald Tusk, and Hungary’s Viktor Orban. And effectively every moment of every day he has to placate the elephant in the room, the wildly unpredictable rogue elephant, Donald Trump. You try it. You try leading any of these individuals or groups and see how far you get. Even Zelensky’s most proximate constituents, his own people, have needs, wants, and wishes impossible at this time to satisfy. They are exhausted from the war; depleted from having to meet its incessant demands; and deeply affected by the toll it has taken. And now they are beset by another scandal, another corruption scandal that is contributing still further to the drain on what is left of their resources.

The Situation

It has been almost impossibly fraught since day one – since Russia violated every international norm by invading Ukraine. One could, however, make the case, and I do, that for President Zelensky the situation has never been as high stakes as it is at this moment. This is a leader trapped between the proverbial rock and hard place. Dammed if he does and damned if he does not. As David Ignatius wrote a few days ago in the Washington Post, Zelensky now “confronts the most agonizing choice of his presidency.” If he trades land for peace some number of Ukrainians will never forgive him. But if he does not the war will continue. Either way neither he nor his people will have any guarantee that the menace to the East – Vladimir Putin – will not strike again again.       

Leaders under great stress do not lack for advice. It is suggested, for example, that they prioritize self-care; delegate; reflect; take breaks; get exercise; and sufficient sleep. But … what’re the odds are that Zelensky routinely receives 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night?