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At least I hedged my bets. Though in my 2012 book The End of Leadership, I described Egypt as perhaps the most important example of the promise of the Arab Spring, I did add that it was “too early to conclude much if anything about the recent upheavals in the Middle East.” Still, I, like many others, thought it possible if not probable that what was happening in Egypt was foretelling a future in which authoritarianism in the region would be out, and democracy in.  

To the contrary. The Arab Spring foretold a future all right, just not the one that the throngs in Cairo’s Tahrir Square (as well as many of the experts) originally envisioned. As it turned out, no country was more of a harbinger of the recent trend toward total control by leaders of followers than Egypt.

The current president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, is far more of an authoritarian than was his three decades-long predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. In fact, Sisi is not an authoritarian leader, he is a totalitarian one. He governs with the assistance of a small, secret, claque of advisors, mostly military men. He controls every institution and organization of government, including the courts and intelligence agencies.  He reaches into the nation’s economy, to keep under his baleful eye every center of power that could possibly compete with his own. He completely contains the media, old media and new, threatening with imprisonment anyone who in any way dissents. He dominates the arts, to be certain to staunch the free flow of information and ideas.  And he has set himself up as an exemplar to be emulated – in order to exclude everyone and everything remotely alien and everyone and everything remotely threatening.

History attests this cannot last. There will come a day when the roof blows off the house that Sisi built. Till then though, Egypt remains a dangerous place for anyone unwilling slavishly to toe the line.  Till then though, Egypt remains a grim reminder that movements and moments like the Arab Spring can as well morph into cruel ironies as great victories.

I didn’t write it. He did, Friedman. In his April 3^rd column in the New York Times, titled, “The U.K. Has Gone Mad.”

“I also get what it means to be a leader in the 21^st century.

What do the most effective leaders today have in common? They wake up every morning and ask themselves the same questions: ‘What world am I living in? What are the biggest trends in this world? And how do I educate my citizens about this world and align my polices so that more of my people can get the best out of these trends and cushion the worst?”

On March 18^th the Wall Street Journal published the most recent figures on CEO pay.

Highlights: 

• In 2018 most CEOs snagged a hefty pay raise. Median compensation for 132 chief executives of S&P 500 companies was $12.4 million. This was up from $11.7 million in 2017.
• The median year to year increase for CEOs was 6.4% – even though most companies had shareholder returns that were decidedly less than stellar.
• During the same period, wages for those the Journal describes as “ordinary workers” also rose. However, they didn’t rise nearly as much. Average hourly pay for nonsupervisory workers was up 3.5 % from a year earlier.   
• One of the most highly paid of corporate leaders was Robert Iger, Disney’s famously successful CEO saw his paycheck rise 80% – from $36 million in 2017 to $66 million in 2018.

Nor are private sector leaders a breed apart. Many if not most prominent public sector leaders are similarly wealthy, which similarly separates them from those they lead.

• Vladimir Putin is worth an estimated 200 billion dollars
• Donald Trump is worth an estimated 3 billion dollars
• Robert Mugabe is worth an estimated 1 billion dollars
• Emmanuel Macron is worth an estimated 31 million dollars

Given what almost always is an enormous disparity in wealth between leaders and their followers, one might think that some leaders would lead on precisely this issue. That they would voluntarily reduce their income in order to level the playing field at least somewhat. In order to reduce at least somewhat the yawning gap in financial assets between them, the privileged few, and everyone else, the unprivileged many.

Since the financial crisis, one of the most insidious sources of friction worldwide is the divide between those who are rich, especially those who are exceedingly rich, and those who are not. Ironically, it is precisely on this issue that good leadership is lacking. Not just leadership as public policy. But leadership as personal commitment. Leadership as role modeling. Leadership by example – in this case by taking a sizable cut in take home pay.     

Once upon a time, long, long, ago, the Americans and the British were united. They were united within – within the United States and within the United Kingdom. And they were united without. Against common, outside, foes, notably Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And for each other, with each other, the Americans and the Brits celebrating their common language, their “special relationship,” and their shared Anglo-American heritage.

Those days are over. It’s not that we no longer have anything in common. To the contrary, we do. It’s just that what we have in common is not unity, but disunity. The most striking thing about the American people these days is not the ties that bind them, us, but the fights that divide them, us. The fights over people and politics, over private preferences and public policies. Similarly, the most striking thing about the British people these days is not the ties that bind them, but the fights that divide them. Fights that focus on Brexit but that cut to the core of British history, British identity, and the British economy.

By now President Donald Trump is thoroughly distrusted and intensely disliked by a large percentage of the American people. By now Prime Minister Theresa May is thoroughly disrespected and largely disregarded by an even larger percentage of the British people. But this is not about them, our leaders, it’s about us, their followers, the American people and the British people.

It’s easy enough to dismiss the times in which we live as atypically fractious. But, it’s just as easy to see them as harbingers. Harbingers of a future that does not bode well for those among us who are democrats – with a small “d.”

Two signs I don’t like. First, however you look at it, the Brexit mess represents a threat to the European Union. Which is to say that it threatens one of the single most successful political experiments in history. Second, there has been the presumption that democracy is necessary to prosperity. But, in the last few years, this assumption has crumbled. It’s now evident that countries rated “not free” can provide their people with high standards of living. Which means that in the future, as opposed to in the past, democracy will have to stand, or it will fall, on its own merits. Merits such as the freedom from fear to speak your mind.

Both the US and the UK are suffering from failures of leadership. If failures of followership follow, we’re done. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”    

Several times a year the Financial Times ranks different types of programs that provide a business education. Recently it published its most recent MBA rankings in FT Business Education: Global MBA Ranking 2019. *

Most people look for the rankings themselves, though they tend to contain few surprises, and these generally are small. For example, Stanford Graduate School of Business ranks first this year, as it did last. Harvard Business School moved up several slots, from 5^th place to 2^nd, while Instead slipped from 2^nd to 3^rd and Wharton from 3^rd to 4^th. Notably, CEIBS (China Europe International Business School), based in Shanghai, rose from 8^th place to 5^th, putting it securely in the top tier of business schools worldwide. (This is the first time in CEIBS’s history that it has two programs in the top five; its EMBA program is also ranked 5^th in the world.)

While the rankings may be their major attraction, each of these FT publications contains other nuggets for those of us with an interest in how top business schools teach top students how to lead. In 2019 three themes stand out.

First is a strong emphasis on change – not only in business schools but in those, such as the FT, making assessments about what business schools should aim to accomplish. One such shift is away from the laser-like focus on money (“how much do graduates earn?”) to a broader conception of the public good, one that includes the needs of the “wider society.”

Second is a rethinking of the curriculum. There seems finally to be a greater understanding of the importance of context – specifically the idea that it is impossible to separate business from politics. As one professor from Oxford’s Said Business School put it, “Geopolitics are becoming more and more important, both in the western and emerging market spheres.” This explains, he adds, why “students are feeling a need” to learn to “navigate” the political waters.

Finally, time to discard the outdated idea that all business schools care about are students with hard skills in subjects such as math, economics, and computer science. This is not to say that hard skills don’t count; rather it is to point out that soft skills increasingly do as well. At the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth prospective students are expected to demonstrate their “niceness.” The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business places an emphasis on how incoming students will “interact” and “communicate.” And applicants to the Yale School of Management are asked to subject their soft skills to a “behavioral assessment…administered by the Educational Testing Service.”

What do these changes tell us about learning how to lead in top tier business schools worldwide? That no one – no individual or institution – has it nailed. Which is precisely why what MBA programs look for when they admit students, and what they do with these students once they get there, remains regularly in flux.

Some flux is necessary – things change. But other flux is not. There are or there should be some components of a leadership curriculum that are evergreen.     

*FT.COM/MBA

Really bad leaders can do really bad things. Really bad followers can do the same. Really bad followers can enable really bad leaders to do really bad things.

Adolf Hitler is an historical example. If he was going to lose the war and be pushed from power, he would have Germany lie in ruins. His followers went along – they aided and abetted his destruction of their country.

Bashar al-Assad is a contemporaneous example. If he was going to lose control and be pushed from power, he would have Syria lie in ruins. His followers went along – they aided and abetted his destruction of their country.  

Any potential parallels come to mind?   

At another moment in time this would’ve been a big story. But, at this moment in time, it’s gotten buried in all the other ostensibly even bigger stories. Still, it’s a big deal. It’s so big a deal that attention must be paid.

Two days ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an article with this headline: “Chinese Hackers Attack U. S. Navy, Report Says.” Well, I thought, so what else is new? Yet another story about how China got the better of America in cyberspace.

Turns out the item was not in the least routine. Turns out the Navy and its industry partners have been “under cyber siege” by the Chinese, with consequences that threatened, according to the Navy itself, the U. S. standing as the world’s preeminent military power.

How could this have happened? How could one of America’s armed services be, apparently, so woefully underdefended against an attack that frequently was foretold?

I have no claim whatsoever to military expertise. And I have no claim whatsoever to technological expertise. But I do have some claim to leadership expertise. To expertise in how to educate, train, and develop leaders. Here then is what struck me.  The Navy’s own review of what happened is “especially scathing in its assessment of how it addressed cybersecurity challenges.” Naval officials “were faulted for failing to anticipate that adversaries would attack the defense industrial base and not adequately informing those partners of the cyber threat.” (Italics mine.) In other words, in my words, naval leaders are still learning the old-fashioned way. They are still being taught to focus too much on themselves, and too little on everyone else and everything else. In the third decade of the twenty first century this antiquated approach to learning to lead has got to change – lest Americans continue to be played for suckers.

Everyone familiar with the leadership literature knows that, overwhelmingly, it’s about leaders not followers. Even now, when to people like me it’s screamingly obvious that followers matter as much as leaders, leadership experts continue to focus laser-like on those at the top. Those in the middle and at the bottom are still largely ignored.

The few among us who do study followers tend to divide them into groups. Why? Because followers are like leaders. They are different one from the other, so thinking of them as one, as a single clump, makes scant sense. The capacity to distinguish among followers is of considerable urgency now, during the presidency of Donald Trump, when on the one hand large numbers of Americans see him as a dangerous would-be dictator, while on the other hand large numbers of Americans see him as a splendid specimen of a politician, well suited to be chief executive.

Let’s be clear here: even in the immediate wake of Michael Cohen’s explosive testimony against him, President Trump’s approval ratings did not drop. They stayed essentially the same: 45% of Americans still approve of the way he is doing his job. While this seems baffling and even frightening to many other Americans, all of us should be clear eyed. Trump’s followers remain remarkably, even stunningly, loyal – however badly he behaves in the present and however badly he behaved in the past. So far at least, none of it makes much of a difference.

Who exactly are Trump’s followers? Who exactly follows a leader who, whatever his assets and deficits, manifestly lies and cheats and steals? Who exactly are those among us who approve of a chief executive whose character is so deeply flawed, and whose commitment to the rule of law is so manifestly tenuous?

For the purpose of this discussion I divide Trump’s followers into just two groups. The first consists of those who have concluded that it’s in their interest to remain in a relationship with Trump best described as transactional. Transactional relationships involve an exchange of some sort, in which leaders and followers trade favors, implicit or explicit, on the assumption that both sides stand to benefit. During the time of Trump, the clearest examples of this are those of his followers who believe most strongly in the Republican agenda, for example, in nominating strict conservatives to the supreme court. In this group are also congressional Republicans. No doubt some are true believers – they think Trump is terrific. But, no doubt others are not true believers. They do not think Trump is terrific. Still, they feel it’s in their political interest to pretend – to pretend they strongly support the president because doing so will enhance their chance of being reelected.  

Again, for the purpose of this essay I’ll set this first group of followers aside and turn to the second. To those followers who really are true believers – who are nuts about Trump, who greatly admire him, and who remain in the thrall of this leader in particular. I refer, for example, to those who attended last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in part to hear the president speak.

Eugene Robinson, columnist for the Washington Post, described the president’s inordinately long (over two hours) CPAC speech as “rambling and incoherent.” The president, Robinson wrote “raved like a lunatic and told crazy, self-serving lies from start to finish.” Robinson, a reasonable centrist, was, obviously, appalled by what he witnessed – less perhaps by Trump than by Trump’s reception. As CNN later described it, the president “did not disappoint.” The crowd hung on his every word, cheered his every trope, and throughout was “wildly enthusiastic.” At CPAC in any case, Trump’s minions could not get enough of the man they came to adore – their leader.

What’s going on here? Why are so many ordinary Americans – who presumably teach their children to be good people – so taken with a man who violates the most fundamental of American norms? Norms such as integrity, decency, empathy. Reasons have been given aplenty. We know by now some of the demographics that pertain – I need not repeat them here. Moreover we know by now that Trump is a bad ass – he is our national id; he is our collective bad boy; he dares to misbehave in ways the rest of us would never dare to. Ironically, these are his attractions. His miserable manners. His flouting of the rule of law. His deliberate disassociations from principles with which America has been associated since the beginning of the Republic.

So that which strongly repels some of us, strongly attracts others of us. Attracts some of us Americans with a pull so magnetic, so hypnotic, that they and Trump have forged that rare thing – a genuinely charismatic relationship.

The word “charisma” has long been bandied about rather freely. Celebrities are easily described as having charisma.  Leaders are easily described as having charisma. And people to whom we are especially attracted are easily described as having charisma. But, in its earliest incarnation, the word “charisma” had a special meaning. Originally it was an ancient Greek word meaning “gift” – a gift from the Gods. “Powers that could not be explained by ordinary means were called charismata.” Later the term was picked up by the Christian church to describe talents such as prophecy, wisdom, and healing that were “believed to have been bestowed by God.” And, still later, it was picked up by and ultimately popularized by the renowned German sociologist Max Weber, who conceived of charisma as one among three sources of authority. Weber also thought charisma rare, a singular quality that set a few men (yes, men) apart from everyone else, enabling them to be seen as “endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least… exceptional powers and qualities.”*

Charisma then, real charisma, is exceptional, unusual, infrequent. It is extra-ordinary. More to my point, though, is charismatic leadership. It too is exceptional, unusual, infrequent. It too is extra-ordinary. Charismatic leadership is not so much about the leader, or for that matter about the followers. Rather it is about the relationship between them. It is the relationship that is key – the relationship is all. According to political scientist Ann Ruth Willner, charismatic leadership is a relationship between a leader and a group of followers that has the following properties:

1. The leader is perceived by the followers as somehow extraordinary, special, sometimes even superhuman.
2. The followers blindly believe the leader’s statements or seem to – no matter how outrageous or obviously false.    
3. The followers unconditionally comply with the leader’s directives for action.
4. The followers give the leader unqualified emotional commitment.**

Clearly the one does not exist without the other: leaders do not exist without their followers. More specifically, charismatic leaders cannot exist without their followers. Similarly, followers of charismatic leaders are deeply dependent on them – such followers rely on their leaders not only to provide direction, but to make meaning. Charismatic leadership is characterized above all by the symbiotic relationship – the intensely dependent and interdependent relationship between leaders and their followers.

Trump and his diehard followers fall into this category. They are an example of charismatic leadership and, if you will, charismatic followership. This explains why Trump loves nothing so much as to appear before large crowds of his fierce, fervent, and fevered devotees. And, this explains why those of us who are other than his fierce, fervent, and fevered devotees will continue to be deeply disappointed. For no new information, no Truth with a capital T, will ever change the minds of those who rank among the president’s most ardent disciples. The thing to bear in mind between now and the next presidential election is that relationships between charismatic leaders and their followers never break of their own accord. They crack only when the context within which they are situated compels them to do so.

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*The quotes in this paragraph are from Jay Conger, The Charismatic Leader (Jossey-Bass, 1989).  

**These points are based on Willner’s book, The Spellbinders (Yale University Press, 1984).

Unless you believe that more than two dozen former staff members of Senator Amy Klobuchar made things up out of whole cloth and, or, unless you believe that many if not most of these people have a vendetta against superiors who are females, working for Senator Klobuchar is at best high stress. She appears a classic case of a “bad boss.”

Go online and you’ll see a gazillion entries on the subject, many of them checklists of what bad bosses typically do: they publicly criticize, they don’t listen, they are quick to get angry, they are ungrateful, they are unsupportive, they lack empathy, they micromanage, they disrespect, and they have little or no self-awareness. Sadly – for she seems otherwise a smart, sensible centrist – Klobuchar fits the bill. To all appearances she is a “petty tyrant.”  

Petty tyrants drive me nuts. There’s no excuse for them, none. Their realms generally are small not large. Their grievances generally are small not large. And the stakes generally are small not large. At the same time the harm that superiors can inflict on their subordinates sometimes is considerable. In 2015 Gallup found that more than half of those who quit their jobs did so on account of a bad boss. A healthy response, as bad bosses can cause all sorts of damage, from garden variety workplace misery to clinical depression to ulcers and high blood pressure.    

Why would anyone behave this way toward anyone else? Why would anyone be disdainful and dictatorial when it’s cheap to be nice? Real cheap. Cheap and easy.

I believe at least some of the charges against Senator Klobuchar are true. So there’s no chance she’ll get my support. I further believe that teaching leadership and management should be – above all – about preaching common human decency toward everyone/anyone, no matter their status or station  

Let’s say for the sake of this discussion that Amazon’s plan to expand to New York City in a Big Way was a good thing. Good for the city generally, and good for the residents of Queens (the borough where Amazon was to locate) specifically. Clearly, this was the strongly held belief of New York State’s Governor, Andrew Cuomo. Just as clearly, it was the strongly held belief of New York City’s Mayor, Bill de Blasio. The two men happen to agree on very little – and there’s plenty of evidence that they don’t much like each other. But on this issue, they were in strong accord. Notwithstanding the costs incurred, Amazon’s bringing 25,000 jobs to the Big Apple was certain to bring enormous benefits. It was a major coup both for the state and for the city.

Turned out that New York’s political leaders were every bit as surprised as Amazon’s corporate leaders when, instead of every New Yorker dancing in the streets when the news was announced, many were furious. Furious at the billions of dollars of tax incentives that Amazon had been promised. Furious at the disruption and gentrification that they were persuaded threatened their way of life. Furious above all that the deal had been reached without any of their input – without them even knowing what was going on. By the time New Yorkers found out what transpired it was too late. Case closed. Fait accompli. Done deal. “You don’t like it? Suck it up.”

Amazon’s leaders have been faulted for being too thin-skinned. Too hasty in their decision to quit the city as soon as the going got a little bit rough. But, what do they know? They’re based in Seattle. Seattle is not New York. And the people of Seattle are not like the people of New York. New Yorkers are demanding and demonstrative, purposeful and pushy, aggressive and action-oriented. Enough of them were enough angry at having been excluded from the decision-making, that they threatened seriously to derail or at least seriously slow the entire process. And so, Amazon’s leaders picked up their marbles and went home.

Assuming you supported the Amazon plan, its collapse was a bad outcome, with enough blame to go around. But the buck stops at the top. It is Cuomo and de Blasio who should have known better. It is these leaders who should have cultivated their followers, their fellow New Yorkers. Had they been paid greater attention, they could certainly have been convinced that whatever the downsides of Amazon’s planned expansion, the upsides far outweighed them.