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By chance they’re both named Elizabeth – Elizabeth Holmes and Elizabeth Cheney. Holmes is, of course, the now thoroughly disgraced founder and CEO of Theranos, who was recently found guilty on four counts of fraud. (On other charges she was found not guilty, and on still others the jury was unable to reach a verdict.) Cheney, who is called Liz, is, of course, the congresswoman from Wyoming who is one of two Republicans on the House committee investigating the January 6^th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

To have followed Holmes’s career and, recently, her trial, is to be amazed by how she was able to do what she did. She started her company as a college dropout with no experience and no expertise. Still, she managed to persuade people that she could and would revolutionize the Big Business of testing blood.

How did she do it? How did she get rich and powerful people to give her buckets of money initially to fill, and then to replenish the coffers of her startup? How did she get members of the media to make her a superstar? How did she convince otherwise clever mentors, customers, and workers that she really was onto something, that she really would deliver what she promised?  

Holmes used her feminine wiles to sell her wares. Is it politically correct these days to talk about such attributes, especially in a leader? Probably not. But let’s get real. Despite her lack of experience and expertise, Holmes was able to raise almost a billion dollars for Theranos. Which must raise the question of how she did it. She did it on the strength of her public persona which was uncommonly appealing, attractive, especially to older men who early on supported her startup with large sums of money and gave her credence by lending her their names. (Nearly from the get-go her board, for example, was peopled by luminaries, again, mostly older men, who, it should be added, knew nothing about blood-testing.)

Holmes was alluring in the traditional sense. She was tall and blond; young and pretty; classy and composed; articulate and energetic; well-dressed and well put together; and she famously had large, unblinking eyes plus a voice that was uncommonly deep. When Holmes entered a room people noticed. When Holmes spoke people listened. When Holmes was on the cover of Fortune, people paid attention. And when Holmes promised, repeatedly, without much if any hard evidence, that she would change the world, people believed her. They bought what she sold because they wanted to hitch their wagon to her train.

The other Elizabeth, Liz Cheney, is altogether different. She seems to do what she can to distract from her femininity. This is not to say that she is plain, not at all. Rather it is to say that she never ever draws on what I earlier referred to as feminine wiles. Cheney dresses simply and straightforwardly, and wears little or no makeup. She speaks in a flat voice, with no emphasis or modulation. She virtually never smiles or pulls people in by any other part of her public persona. She is the opposite of obviously ingratiating, the contrary of obviously charismatic. It is, however, precisely this absence of any other sort of appeal that compels us to listen to what she has to say.

Cheney has other assets. Not only her illustrious father, Dick Cheney, the former vice president who, until recently, was a powerhouse in the Republican Party. But, additionally, her formidable mother, Lynne Cheney, about whom I wrote last year. (https://barbarakellerman.com/leader-mother-lynne-cheney/ ) Moreover, unlike Holmes, Cheney has experience and expertise. A graduate of the University of Chicago School of Law, she is personally and professionally exceedingly well equipped to play the part she has chosen for herself – Republican renegade.

Of course, Holmes crashed not on account of her style, but on account of her substance, her lack of it. Her house it turned out was a fantasy, a fiction. It was made of cards.

Cheney in contrast has long relied entirely on substance – on the whole truth and nothing but as she has seen it. For years this meant she toiled in relative obscurity, a conservative Republican from a rural state with no special claim to fame, certainly not on the national stage. Now though things are different. Because she is one of only a handful of Republicans not only to separate herself from former president Donald Trump, but forcefully to condemn him, repeatedly, she is front and center of our national politics.

Liz Cheney is matter of fact in her manner. And she is matter of fact in her facts. At this moment she is the most interesting woman leader in America. At this moment she is the most interesting leader in America.    

2021 was a good year for leaders who are autocrats. By comparison leaders who are democrats seemed hapless, feckless, disappointingly unable even to persuade large majorities of their own people that democratic systems are superior to autocratic ones.  Democratic leaders have, moreover, been unwilling to stand up to dictators around the world – leaving them mostly free to do what they want when they want.

Because the United States was the model of a democracy, it is now the most glaring example of a democracy as disappointment. Democracy as fractious and fractured; as unable to pass even legislation supported by most of the American people; as plagued by extreme inequity in income and opportunity; as riddled with petty players intent on undermining even that most fundamental of all democratic rights, the right to vote; and as led by a leader in trouble. One year after taking office President Joe Biden’s approval rating is close to an historic low.

Nor is the United States alone in its democratic descent. According to Freedom House, 2021 was the 15^th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. Countries experiencing deterioration “outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.” India is a striking, example. Once touted as the world’s largest democracy, in 2021 Freedom House concluded India went from being “Free” to just “Partly Free.” This because the Hindu government “presided over rising violence and discriminatory policies affecting the Muslim population.”  Prime Minister Narendra Modi did his part by muzzling the opposition and cracking down on those who anyway dared to dissent.

Meanwhile the autocrats had a good year. Men – they are all men – such as China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and, yes, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Xi has swept China and now Hong Kong with his persona, his politics, and his policies. Effectively leader for life or, at least, so long as he wants, to all appearances he gets his way if not all the time then most of the time. Not a single domain lies beyond Xi’s grasp, not politics or economics, not education or culture, not the media or academia, not domestic policy, or foreign policy. Everything and everyone are being blanketed if not suffocated by the Chinese Communist Party, which Xi has revived as his primary instrument of power.      

Putin, meanwhile, has become Xi’s mini-me. Ever more repressive and oppressive, within Russia he has airbrushed history; demolished, or locked up most of his opposition; and tightened still further the reins of his power. He too wants to be leader for life and is doing what he can to give himself the option. Without Russia Putin has managed to drive the West nuts, most recently in Ukraine. Why is he making trouble on Russia’s Western flank? Because Putin longs to restore the old Soviet empire. Because Putin distracts from domestic politics by stirring up foreign politics. Because Putin wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the United States. Because Putin wants to prove his manhood vis-à-vis the European Union. Because Putin wants to prove his manhood vis-a-vis NATO. Because Putin fears being outdone by that other dominant autocrat, Xi.  Because Putin yearns to go down in history as one of the greatest Russian leaders of all time.  

Autocrats are not confined to the political realm – no reason they should be. The most outstanding example of an autocrat in the corporate realm is of course the inevitable, perennial Mark Zuckerberg. He too had a banner year – swatting away whatever came at him, ending 2021 more powerfully positioned than ever.  Notwithstanding an onslaught of damaging and widely publicized revelations about what Facebook had done in the past – courtesy of whistleblower Frances Haugen – Zuckerberg spent most of his energy on preparing for the future. His company’s name change – from Facebook to Meta Platforms, Inc. – was emblematic of where he was at. “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!”

Once autocratic leaders are entrenched it is difficult if not impossible for followers to dislodge them. It’s why stopping them early on is critical, even essential. The insidiousness of incrementalism – unless, of course, you yourself lean not democratic but autocratic.  

Every year, researchers at the Drucker Institute (of Claremont Graduate University) compile a list of what they consider America’s best-run companies. This year’s list was published on December 13 by the Wall Street Journal, in a separate section on the “Top 250.”

Peter Drucker, after whom the Institute is named, has been called the “father of modern management.” His writings and teachings were prolific, and even posthumously (he died in 2005) his ideas remain influential. The Drucker Institute draws on his work to measure corporate effectiveness according to five criteria. They are 1) customer satisfaction; 2) employee engagement and development; 3) innovation; 4) social responsibility; and 5) financial strength.

This year the top five best-run companies are:

1. Microsoft
2. Amazon
3. Apple
4. IBM
5. Intel

What stands out initially is the top five are all the same breed – tech giants. What stands out secondarily is that two of the top five are led by successors of founders, in one case an immediate successor, in another an almost immediate one.

Microsoft’s CEO and now chairman, Satya Nadella, did not follow Bill Gates. Gates’s longtime associate, Steve Ballmer, did. He was CEO of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. But the consensus is that Ballmer’s tenure was less than lustrous, which is why Nadella’s gets credit for returning Microsoft the top of the tech hierarchy. By the above measures and then some, he is one of the great corporate leaders of our time. 

The same holds for Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, who has led the company since 2011, when he took over from company founder and guru, Steve Jobs. It was Jobs who appointed and anointed Cook as his successor. In fact, it was Jobs’s last miraculous, humungous accomplishment at Apple, for Cook has turned out a master manager. He is, like Nadella, is a chief executive officer for the ages.  

What’re the odds? What’re the odds that one great leader will be succeeded or nearly so by another great leader? They are not high. For greatness is by definition rare. Which is why betting that a company or any other entity will hit on two in close succession is a long shot – a very long shot.   

In an article I posted on May 7, titled “Leadership… and Mother’s Day,” I predicted that, awful as it might sound, Covid will in some ways be good for women. Specifically, I wrote that there are some women for whom Covid will eventually be professionally advantageous.

Most of the reports about how the pandemic has had a great negative impact on working women than men are about women who are not in upper-level management. They are about women who are in the middle and at the bottom of the organizational ladder.

Women higher up, though, are likely to have a different experience – a very different experience. They are likely be advantaged… by the hybrid model that is the future of the American workplace….

Men with power will not now dare challenge women with power on the issue of working remotely. This means that women leaders will feel newly entitled to work from home part of the time and to maintain flexible schedules.

Time has confirmed my prediction. In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Harvard economist Claudia Golden, an expert on women and work, wrote the move back to the office has been slower and more uncertain than many had predicted. But, she went on to add, some changes are already crystal clear.

The new normal will be different from the old. More Americans, especially the more educated ones, will have greater flexibility in both when and where they work….

We will have reduced the price of flexibility, increased the productivity of flexible jobs, enhanced couple equity, and reduced gender inequality.

A silver lining for women? More like gold.  

Goldin does not single out women leaders as special beneficiaries of the changes in how we work. She does, however, write that “the more educated” women, as well as men, are those who will benefit most from the new professional paradigm.

Her point then is the same as mine. It is women at higher levels of management who have the most to gain from our newfound hybrid habits. Given that even women toward the top do significantly more caregiving and housekeeping than men, it is the female of the species who will be the biggest beneficiaries of any changes that ease their work/life balancing act.     

Howard Schultz is among the greatest corporate leaders of our time. Founder and, for years, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Starbucks Coffee Company, he more than anyone else can claim credit for what became a coffee culture not just in the United States but worldwide. For his efforts Schultz has been well rewarded. He ranks among the wealthiest Americans, with an estimated worth of well over $4 billion.

One of Schultz’s particular points of pride has always been his ostensible concern for those in his employ. In his 2011 book titled, Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, he referred, as he always did, to Starbucks’ workers as “partners.” And he pointed repeatedly to how he cared for his partners, how he fostered a company culture in which they felt valued. When partners “feel proud of our company – because of their trust in the company, because of our values, because of how they are treated, because of how they treat others, because of our ethical practices – they willingly elevate the experience of each other and customers, one cup at a time.”   

But as it turned out, when some of Schultz’s “partners” wanted to extricate themselves from his clutch – wanted to free themselves from an employer they did not totally trust – he was not happy. The beneficent leader was not happy in the least with his recalcitrant followers.

Schultz is now formally retired from Starbucks. But he remains one of the company’s largest shareholders – and a looming presence. When it became clear that Starbucks baristas in Buffalo were hellbent on forming a union, Schultz swung into action. He did what he could to stop them striking out on their own.

The media has long seen Starbucks as an enlightened employer. Which for years, in some ways, it was. Still, whenever it came to collective bargaining, whenever Schultz’s “partners” wanted a measure of independence, the company was antipathetic, paternalistic. What Starbucks all along had really wanted, what Schultz all along had really wanted, were not “partners” but junior partners.

Starbucks did what it could to dissuade its Buffalo baristas from forming the first labor union at any of its American cafes. So did Schultz, who went so far as to invoke the Holocaust in arguing against unionization. (“Only a small portion of prisoners in German concentration camps received blankets,” Schultz told Buffalo-area employees, “but often shared them with fellow prisoners. What we have tried to do at Starbucks is share our blanket.”) All to no avail. As one barista activist put it this week, exulting in the vote to unionize, “We’ve done it, despite everything the company has thrown at us.”

Imagine that. Daddy’s aged out, the kids are grown up, and some decided to leave the nest.

Sometimes it happens that leaders once revered are no longer. Think, for example, of General Electric’s erstwhile CEO, corporate superstar and superman, Jack Welch.

Similarly, it happens, though less often, that leaders once revered are abjured. Rejected, renounced, repudiated, and finally disgraced. This week it’s happening not once but twice – once yesterday, once today.

Yesterday the City Council of Charlottesville, VA voted to donate a once dominant statue of legendary Confederate General Robert E. Lee to an African American heritage center. The center had made plain its intention to melt down the bronze monument and transform it into an entirely new piece of public art under the name, “Swords into Plowshares.”

So much for Lee – a man once seen by legions as a leader to be greatly admired.

Today will be a different sort of drama. The CEO of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, will testify before a Senate Subcommittee on the impact of Instagram on children and teenagers. The problem for Instagram is that today’s hearing will be hard on the heels of revelations the company’s own researchers found its app was harmful to large numbers of users, especially teenage girls. Said one slide summarizing the findings, “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls.” Said another, “Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.”

Instagram is owned by Facebook (Meta). For well over a decade Facebook has been led by two people: founder, chief executive officer, and chairman Mark Zuckerberg; and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg.

It is Sandberg who is relevant to this post because it is Sandberg who positioned herself as a feminist icon. Her 2013 book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, was a mega bestseller, and the nonprofit organization she founded, “Leanin.org,” was, is, dedicated to offering women “ongoing inspiration and support.” Now, however, it turns out she, apparently knowingly, has been running a company that, to maximize profit, has done significant damage to teenage girls.

Facebook continues to play down the negative effects of social media on teens. It further continues to hide the results of its own research. How then can Sandberg reconcile such corporate posturing with her self-painted portrait of someone who provides women and, presumably, girls, “ongoing inspiration and support.” She can’t.

So much for Sandberg – a woman once seen by legions as a leader to be greatly admired.   

In the 2010 film “The King’s Speech,” Colin Firth plays the future King George VI, who recognizes he must try to gain control over his lifelong stammer. Though he knew he would not be required to speak often – British royalty speaks publicly only infrequently – he understood how important it would be for him, as the king of England, to speak with authority during the national crisis that was Britain’s declaration of war on Germany, in 1939.  

American presidents have long understood their political system, in which power is divided among the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary, requires they have the capacity to persuade. Theodore Roosevelt famously spoke of the “bully pulpit” – he knew the office of the presidency provided him with best possible perch for propagating his policies. Moreover now, in the third decade of the 21^st century – given the American people are especially fractious and contentious; and given the fierce competition among information, misinformation, and disinformation – the president’s ability to use his post to sell himself and his program is more important than ever.

Like all leaders, presidents can exercise influence in different ways. However, none are nearly as important as the capacity to communicate. In the case of the American president this communication is generally in the form of speech. Leaders speak. Ideally, followers listen. Not for nothing was Ronald Reagan called “the great communicator.” He was especially skilled at connecting with his audiences, informally and in prepared speeches, on television and in person. When it came to the spoken word, Reagan in his prime was pointed and adroit, sometimes spontaneous, usually charming, often funny.

For those among us who dread the idea of Republicans regaining control of Congress in 2022, not to speak of the White House in 2024, the fact that President Joe Biden is the opposite of the great communicator – he is instead a reluctant and poor communicator – is, or should be, of utmost concern. Biden virtually never faces a roomful of reporters, and he rarely even gives one-on-one interviews. Moreover, when he speaks, he usually reads from a script previously prepared.

What’s going on here? Why is this once famously loquacious leader now reduced to shying away from the people and the press except in the most rigidly controlled circumstances?  I don’t rightly know. But I assume he avoids public speaking because he and his aides are afraid. Afraid he will make a verbal gaffe, or factual error from which he will find it difficult if not impossible to recover.

I get it. Joe Biden is diminished in recent years. Since the death of his son Beau in 2015, he is not what he was once – a happy warrior. Still, the president must be more willing than he has been to take a rhetorical risk. Like George VI he must do what it takes to prepare himself, train himself if necessary, for speaking in public when the occasion demands. Which it often does. For Biden’s failure to use the bully pulpit to better effect will, I fear, cost him, and the American people, dearly.  

There is another, broader lesson here. In the third decade of the 21st century leaders in liberal democracies don’t have many arrows in their quiver. Those they do have must, then, be employed to maximum effect.

     

The leader who controls the narrative controls the country – or the company, or community, or the context or the culture. What is exactly is the narrative? In this case it’s the story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

Of course, being it’s a story it can change. Over time stories change. Over time stories change because we change them. More precisely, they get changed by leaders – or, sometimes, followers – with the power and/or influence to rewrite history.

We study history on the assumption it is written in stone, based on facts impossible to refute. But not only is a lot of history based not on facts but on fictions, a lot of history is vulnerable to being reframed, or reshaped. Reframed or reshaped sometimes to achieve greater accuracy – and sometime to achieve greater control.

In the last year the American narrative was twice over heavily pressured to change. First, former president Donald Trump has tried repeatedly to persuade the American people that what happened in the 2020 election is not that he lost, and Biden won, but that he won, and Biden lost. All Trump is doing is trying to control the narrative – which in this case would require rejecting the facts, denying the truth.

Second, is the recent but already impactful “1619 Project,” which demands the American people reframe history, so it starts not at the usual, traditional time, the year 1776, but instead in the year 1619. Since 1619 is when the first enslaved Africans landed in the English colony of Virginia, beginning the historical narrative then as opposed to 150 years later means weaving the consequences of slavery, and racism throughout the entirety of American history, of the American story.

The importance of controlling the narrative is not usually lost on clever leaders, especially not if they are persuaded that to control the present, they must control the past. Russia’s Vladimir Putin falls into this category. Just this week it became even clearer than before that his longing for the good old days, the days when Stalin ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist, has turned into a hunger. Apparently the Russian government is determined permanently to shut down the country’s most prominent human rights organization, Memorial International. Notably, the Memorial is specifically dedicated to preserving the archives of, the memories of, those who were persecuted by, tortured by, and liquidated by the totalitarian regime that ruled the Soviet Union from the late 1920s to the early 1950s.   

One could reasonably argue that in the long run the truth will emerge – or emerge again. But leaders hellbent on completely controlling the narrative don’t give a damn about the long run. It’s short run they care about – their time at the top, the longer the better.

“The Day the Music Died” is Don’s McLean’s phrase. He used it in his fabled 1971 song, “American Pie,” to refer to the sudden death, in 1959, in a plane crash, of three great American musicians, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and “The Big Bopper.”

The music died again, in a different way, four years later, on November 22, 1963. This was the day that President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed. Though we could not know it then, his death signaled the end of the Age of American Innocence.

When John F. Kennedy was elected, in 1960, more than 73% of Americans said they trusted their government most or all the time. Since then, this figure has continued to decline, so that now only about 25% of Americans say they trust their government most or all the time. Moreover, we now have a sharp partisan divide, depending on who controls the presidency. This year more than 35% of Democrats said they trusted the government; among Republicans the figure was only 9%.   

What happened in the interim is impossible to explain only by looking at leaders. But leaders do matter – at least some of the time. So when leaders in the highest of places are lost, or for some reason ignominiously defeated, their followers, in this case the American people, are unsettled. When the loss is repeated, over and over again, they become unmoored.

• President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963.
• The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in April 1968.
• Presidential candidate, and brother of the slain president, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in June 1968.
• President Lyndon B. Johnson decided against running for a second full term in 1968. (Because he thought he would lose.)
• President Richard Nixon was forced to resign in 1974. (Because of the Watergate scandal.)
• President Gerald Ford was unable to win the White House in his own right in the election of 1976.
• President Jimmy Carter was unable to secure a second term in the election of 1980.

Had the two Kennedys and King not been murdered, things might’ve been different. Had Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter not had presidencies that in critical ways failed, things might’ve been different. We’ll never know. What we do know though is that for many years American’s most prominent political leaders were on a losing streak – however defined. No wonder while the music died once in 1959 and then again in 1963, it took well over a decade to declare it not only dead but buried. Buried for what turned out the indefinite future.    

Since at least the late 19^th century historians have argued about the role of the “Great Man” in history. More specifically, they have argued about the impact of single individuals, leaders, on the tide of human affairs.

On the one hand have been those who think history is shaped entirely by leaders, by men and, recently, occasionally, women who stand out. And on the other hand, have been those who think leaders are like everyone else – mere pawns in game of what happens.

But every now and then comes along a leader who wants desperately to shape the historical narrative. Who wants not only in this life to be all-powerful, but who wants forever to be remembered as a Great Man. Such a leader is China’s president, and chair of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping.

For Xi, as for others of his ilk, persuading his followers that he is a Great Man has two distinct virtues. First, it enables him in the here and now more easily to exercise power, authority, and influence. And second, it secures his place in history. Clearly Xi is planning not only to ensure his place for all eternity, but to enshrine it.      

To refer to Xi as having created a “cult of personality” is not to capture his accomplishment. Better to imagine him etching his name in the tablet of Chinese history. So long as there is a China, so long will he now be remembered, along with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, as one of the greatest of China’s leaders ever.  

In the recently completed plenum of the CCP, not only was Xi himself elevated, but so, arguably more importantly, was his thought. His is now the “Marxism of contemporary China and for the 21^st century.” This means that until this maxim is undone, if it ever is, to attack him is to attack China’s national identity.

The CCP just issued its newest official history. More than a quarter of its over five hundred pages is devoted to Xi’s nine years in power. This is as clear a signal as any that for the indefinite future Xi will be at the center of Chinese political life, Chinese political thought, Chinese political education, and Chinese political culture. It also means that Xi is virtually immune from criticism, In one of the official accounts of the plenum it was stated that government officials must show “absolute loyalty to the core, resolutely defend the core, closely and constantly follow the core.” Finally, it means that so long as Xi wants to hold on to power, he will. At the Communist Party congress to take place next year, recent tradition will almost certainly be upended. Xi will be handed a third five-year term as party leader.  

The 18^th century historian and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, was the most eloquent, and ardent, of the proponents of the Great Man Theory of History. “Universal History,” he wrote, “the history of what men have accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.” Xi would agree.