In the coming weeks and months, I will deliver – on this site – a short course. A short course on the classics of the literature on leadership. It will draw on my edited volume, Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence (McGraw-Hill, 2010).
To say that I love this book is not to be immodest. For what I love about it is the evidence it gives of great literature on a subject of great importance. Leadership. I annotate each entry – but the book is not mine. It belongs to the great writers – from before Confucius to after Carson – whose work constitutes it.
Each of the relevant posts will consist of the following. First, a few of my own remarks. Second, short quotes from the preeminent thinkers and writers who comprise the collection.
Tomorrow I will begin at the beginning. With Lao Tzu (Laozi), the Chinese philosopher who, approximately 2,500 years ago, wrote the Tao Te Ching.
Today a few words about the criteria used to assemble the collection. Each entry had to be a classic of the leadership literature – which raises the question of how “classic” was defined. My criteria:
Each entry had to be either about leadership or an act of leadership.
Each entry had to have literary value.
Each entry had to be seminal. It had to change forever what we thought and, or how we behaved.
Each entry had to be universal – applicable not just to a single nation or even region but worldwide. Applicable not just to a single sector but to every sector.
Each entry had to be timeless – enduring or, as it applied to recent entries, apparently enduring.
Buckle up. You’re in for a great – if occasionally bumpy – ride!
President Donald Trump famously loves the trappings of royalty. The evidence is everywhere – from his now gilt and gold Oval Office to his unprecedented military parade to his plans for an extravagant, vaguely evocative of Versailles, White House ballroom.
No mystery there, Trump admits it. He boasts about it! Earlier this year, in response to, of all things, his administration’s attempt to stop New York City’s congestion pricing, he posted about himself, on Truth Social, of course, his own media platform, “LONG LIVE THE KING!” Nor did the White House rest there. It reinforced the message, recirculating it on Instagram and X, along with an illustration of Trump wearing, you guessed it, a crown.
The response to his half-jest, half-serious claim to being American King was No Kings Day. Held on June 14th, it was organized by a loose coalition of anti-Trump followers, groups deeply alarmed by what they perceive as Trump’s proclivity to power. Power that is centralized. Power that is centralized and that can be exercised in ways reminiscent of royals. Of royals when being a royal was not just symbolic. When it meant being in control, preferably control that was complete.
No Kings Day turned out either the largest or among the largest single days of political protest in American history. Moreover, estimates made by the Crowd Counting Consortium indicate not just that turnout was huge – somewhere between 2 and 4.8 million people participated – but that it was widespread. Nationwide were some 2,250 different actions.
Media tend to focus either on Trump or on Trump’s legions of servile followers. Sometimes they also cover instances of resistance – though only when they are dramatic. This week was widespread coverage of the admittedly remarkable display of anger directed against former Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. She made an appearance in her own district only to be stopped from even delivering her remarks by angry crowd that booed and jeered her straight off the stage.
Less attention, much less attention, is paid to protests that are peaceable. Even when, as in the case of No Kings Day, turnout is huge. It’s true that in and of themselves demonstrations like these, no matter their size, do not create significant change. In fact, if No Kings Day had any impact whatsoever on the Trump administration, I did not detect it. But no leader should ever underestimate the power of followers. Especially not when they have a common cause about which they feel very, very strongly. I therefore predict first that resistance to Trump will continue to grow. And that, second, in tandem with even a moderately effective leader of the opposition, Republicans will soon be brought down. Brought down even in next year’s congressional elections – if, that is, they are reasonably free and fair. If.
Imagine if you can, you’re Volodymyr Zelensky. Imagine that in early 2022 you were president of a large country, Ukraine, that suddenly suffered a major military attack by your much larger neighbor, Russia.
Imagine further that for the last three- and one-half years you’ve been trying with every fiber of your being and virtually every hour of every day to manage the impossibly difficult situation in which you and your country continue to find yourselves. Fighting a dirty war against very long odds, suffering significant death and destruction, and coping not just with your enemy but with your ostensible friends.
Include if you can in this miserable mess that you had just made a serious mistake – a bungled attempt to muzzle Ukraine’s anticorruption agencies – that cost you considerable support among your own people. And, finally, imagine that now you are on a global chessboard, straddling the line between being a pawn, moved around by others, and making a move on your own, like the royal you wish you were.
If you were Volodymyr Zelensky what you would be above all is tired. Deeply, utterly, and completely exhausted. Sleep deprived, peace deprived, bone weary, completely drained. Still dancing on the head of a pin but ready at any moment to drop.
If it’s any consolation, you would not be alone. While Zelensky’s situation is, obviously, singular, we know from the relevant research that leaders across the board are drained, feeling more stretched than they want to be or ideally should be. According to the executive coaching firm Vistage, “two-thirds of chief executives admit to feeling burnt out regularly, with nearly a quarter experiencing it more frequently or nearly every day.”
For some years leaders in all sectors and situations have reported the demands on them are far greater than they used to be. In a recent report, McKinsey CEO Bob Sternfels writes that in response to “an ever-shifting array of problems and threats,” CEOs are now “on the job 24/7.” Similarly, leadership coach Christina Harvey reports that “burnout has become a common theme,” with leaders themselves talking about it more freely than they used to.
The reasons for the changes – the increased demands on leaders and the increased pressures on them to perform to the max – are multiple and some are familiar. I would single out three: first, the rapidly changing, largely unfamiliar, and sometimes frightening technologies; second, the changing, coarsening culture and the changing, coarsening media landscape; and third, the types and numbers of stakeholders to whom they are now, like it or not, responsible.
Again, this post is not to suggest that the demands on a leader like Zelensky can compare to the demands on other sorts of leaders such as chief executive officers. It is however to point out that most leaders are pressed in the present as they were not in the past. It is further to point out it’s a near miracle that Zelensky still walks and talks.
Leaders have power, authority, and influence. Or, at least, they have more power, authority, and, or influence than their followers. Vis-vis their leaders, followers are, then, at a disadvantage.
How significant is this disadvantage? Is whoever the leader impermeably strong? Are whoever the followers hopelessly weak? Or is the imbalance between leaders and followers within reason, in the natural order of things?
If the imbalance is extreme, the first question is does anyone care? Do the followers care that their leader is so relatively strong and they are so relatively weak? If the answer to this first question is yes, there is a second one. How can followers take on leaders who are far, far, stronger than them?
Even though President Donald Trump’s second term is still young, the question has already been asked as it applies to him, repeatedly. The answer has been elusive especially because some of Trump’s most prominent followers are not in any conventional sense of this word, weak. They have enormous resources which, however, they have been unwilling to tap into to stand up to the administration.
The roster of those who have been demonstrably weak is familiar. They include but are not limited to heads of law firms and universities; titans of business and media; and nearly every Republican who was elected and every Republican who was appointed. In each of these cases leaders have morphed into followers. They have kowtowed and caved, submitted and surrendered to an American president they seem to think all-powerful while they seem to feel, in comparison with him, powerless.
Similarly, Democrats have shown only faint signs of resistance. There are some exceptions, such as Governor Gavin Newsom, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. As well, there has been some civic resistance, for example, on June 14th, on “No Kings Day.” Still, while the occasion consisted of impressively large anti-Trump protests across the country, to all appearances they proved ineffective. In fact, if they made so much as a chink in the president’s armor, it’s impossible for the naked eye to see.
Ironically, many of the president’s most strikingly servile followers are themselves leaders. Moreover, some are leaders of among the most powerful of American institutions. What are they thinking? That they will strike a deal with the president that he will honor, indefinitely? That by kissing the president’s ring they will protect themselves against his ire, permanently? That the president is so singularly, so stunningly gifted at the art of the deal they are helpless in comparison?
Every one of them ignores the most fundamental rule of power dynamics. That for the weak to take on the strong – with even a prayer of doing so successfully – the weak must unite. They cannot, simply cannot, stand alone.
I wish I could say this insight is uniquely mine. It is not. Not only does the evidence of history testify to the power of numbers it also confirms that when leaders divide their followers, they conquer them. It’s a mystery that, for example, the leaders of top law firms such as Paul, Weiss and Simpson Thatcher did not join hands to resist the Trump administration, any more than did the leaders of top universities such as Columbia and Brown; any more than did the leaders of top tech companies such as, just this week, Apple and Nvidia. So eager were they all to stand alone, not to cooperate or collaborate with each other, that they opted instead to cave. Individually to follow Trump – not collectively to resist him.
Sometimes I can’t resist temptation. In this case to return to the old debate about the importance in history – or lack thereof – of great men.*
A word about the words. “Great” does not here mean good. It means having an enormous impact. Changing the course of history.
“Men” does, though, does mean men. Why men? Because now as before leaders are, overwhelmingly, men. Not women. Overwhelmingly leaders are men in every country and culture, and in every sector. For all the progress that women have made in recent decades, equity at the top still eludes them, us. Likely, moreover, it always will.
That though is another conversation. Here I return to the point of this post. Which is to suggest that though we live in a time – the time of Trump – in which the debate seems if not dead, then on life support, we cannot resist it. It’s why Daniel Immerwahr raises it in a recent piece in The New Yorker.**
He reminds us that the most famous voice denying and decrying the importance of great men was Leo Tolstoy’s. Tolstoy argued that to “ascribe historical agency to figures like Napoleon was akin to seeing a herd of cattle and concluding that the cow in front must be in charge.” What Tolstoy believed instead was “that social forces, not men on horseback, decide the fate of nations.”
Immelwahr writes, importantly, correctly, that academia is also hostile to the idea that leaders matter much if at all. “The scholarly tendency has been to devalue choice and chance as historic factors. War and revolutions might feel chaotic, but they happen for reasons rooted in economics, ideology, geography, and climate. The doings of generals, in this view, are froth on the waves.”
This in his review of a book just out, by Scott Anderson, titled King of Kings. The book is about the Iranian revolution (1979) in which three men were of overweening importance: the Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi; the Iranian cleric and revolutionary, Ruhollah Khomeini; and the president of the Unites States, Jimmy Carter. They more than anything or anyone else explain what happened and why.
All this at a moment when the importance of great men seems indisputable. I admit to a bias. My interest in leadership is lifelong. Moreover, studying it, writing about it, teaching about it is what I do. But… I approach leadership systemically. I do not focus solely on leaders. I pay equal attention to followers and to the contexts within which leaders and the followers are situated.
I am arguing therefore that the longstanding great man debate is artificial. Of course great men matter! The evidence that they do is overwhelming. This does not, though, mean that Tolstoy was wrong. He was not, he was right. Context matters. It matters every bit as much as do leaders – and followers.
Far more than any other single individual or single anything else, Vladimir Putin has recently dominated events in Europe. Far more than any other single individual or single anything else, Donald Trump has recently dominated events in the global West. What these men do when they meet tomorrow in Anchorage, how they act and interact, what they say and do not say, what they decide and do not decide will be enormously significant. This is not to say that no one and nothing else is. Rather it is to underscore that sometimes great men matter. A lot.
Turns out that notwithstanding the title of their widely praised 2007 neo-Western – “No Country for Old Men” – the filmmakers got it wrong.* There are lots of countries for old men! Lots of countries for men who are not just old but who have great power. Presidents and prime ministers who run the show without many or even any to challenge or second guess them.
This post was prompted by a piece in the Financial Times by Janan Ganesh titled, “The World is Run by Old Men in a Hurry.”* Ganesh’s point was that age, instead of serving as a deterrent, serves as an accelerant. Instead of leaders who are old being more careful and cautious, they are leaders in a hurry. He writes: “The problem with aged leaders is not their health…but their incentives. As well as not having much time to leave a mark, they won’t have decades of retirement in which to suffer the … penalties of any disastrous act committed in office.”
Ganesh points out that more than half of the world’s population and much of its land area and military might are in the hands of men who are older than Ronald Reagan when he first became president. (He was 69.) These men include China’s Xi Jinping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey), Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and of course the American near-octogenarian, Donald Trump.
I like that Ganesh turns the conventional wisdom on its head. Which is that instead of doddering, shuffling along, these leaders are determined, rushing to get things done. (Watch it, Taiwan!) But he does not take on the big question. Why is it that leaders like these, leaders who are old in an era when most of the world’s population is young – the global median age is under 31 – not only get into positions of power but stay in positions of power? (Putin and Erdogan have been glued to their seats for over two decades; Xi and Modi for over one.)
To an extent the answer is systemic. Most leadership systems favor those familiar with them precisely because they have been around for years. But in a time defined above all by galloping advances in technology, it’s worth noting how we are led by leaders who might know many things, but technology is hardly ever among them. If in five- or ten-years we wake to a place near unrecognizable or even near uninhabitable, it will be because for most of the first half of the 21st century we have been led largely by men who have no conception of the capability of technology. The average age of a U.S. senator is 64. The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is 40.
In many if not most autocracies followers have few options. Changing the leadership class in Russia or China, even in a less autocratic country such as Turkey, is heavy lifting. But what’s our excuse? How did it come to pass that America’s previous president was so frail he was finally forced to withdraw from running a second time? And how did it come to pass that the country’s present president is twice as old as his average constituent?
Again, in part the answer is systemic. But in part it is not. In part it is because in the United States public service is poorly rewarded. It is poorly rewarded professionally, politically, personally, and financially. Being a public servant – becoming a public sector leader – used to have several compensations. Now it has far fewer – and they are harder to come by. So young people are turned off while old people, old men, continue to rule our roost.
Forget the antiquated aphorism “Follow the Money.” Instead, adopt “Follow the Follower.” If you do, you’ll get closer, much closer, to what matters most.
The scandal resurrected around the decidedly dead Jeffrey Epstein is a quintessential example of how followers matter as much as leaders. For how this story ends will be determined not by the American president, nor by any other individual, nor for that matter by any branch of government. It will be determined instead by a collective composed of American voters – the collective known as MAGA. By Republicans across the country who have been deeply and unwaveringly devoted to President Donald Trump but who in theory, if not yet in practice, could be dislodged from their base.
I am not predicting it. What I am predicting is that what Trump does or does not do in the coming weeks will matter little if at all. Instead, the impact of the Epstein scandal, if ultimately any, will be determined by ordinary people who up to now have been reliable MAGA loyalists. It will be determined by Republican followers of whom Republican leaders have been, for fully a decade, seriously scared.
In yesterday’s post I discussed the success of President Donald J. Trump. Success as measured by how effective he has been, notably during the first six months of his second term, at getting done what he has wanted to get done. At shaping what he perceives as the nation’s agenda – and at what everyone agrees is the nation’s conversation.
But in my previous post the phrase “getting it done,” referred to just one way of judging a leader. One way of judging their performance – and them – “good” or “bad.” There is however a second way, one that uses a different measure altogether. The first measure assesses a leader based on their effectiveness. How skilled are they at accomplishing what they set out to accomplish? The second assesses a leader based on their ethics. The first measure then is primarily about means, while the second is primarily about ends.
The cleavages in this country are not about the first. Many Americans who dislike Trump would agree that he has been a “good” leader in that he has been effective. But they would argue, and they do, that Trump is not ethical. Effective, arguably yes; ethical, decidedly no.
As I wrote elsewhere, humans are not widgets. “We are complex being with complex motives and incentives and we behave in complicated ways. What this means among other things is that many of us, perhaps most, are in some ways good and in some other ways not so good.” People who think Trump can do no wrong are resistant to the conception of complexity – of shades of gray as opposed only to black and white – as are people who think Trump can do no right. It is precisely this resistance to complexity that explains why Americans who loathe Trump cannot begin even to imagine anyone admiring him much less being a rabid fan. And vice versa.
There are cures for complexities. Or, at least, ways of making them less daunting. But in an America in which higher education is widely disrespected, extremity is widely rewarded, and nuance widely derided, cures can be considered worse than the disease.
Which raises this question: If Trump is “getting it done” what is the “it”?
Who might this leader be? President Donald J. Trump. Say what you will about Trump, six months in he’s gotten it done. He’s done most of what – during the interregnum (between his first and second terms) and the 2024 presidential campaign – he said he would do.
In this limited but not unimportant sense we can say first that he is a man of his word; and second that his political skills are astonishing. They are that effective.
Trump has managed to keep most of his followers following in lockstep behind him, including his base, virtually every elected and appointed Republican official, and the Supreme Court. Moreover, in just a half year he and his administration have bent somewhat to their will a long list of American institutions including the media and academia; medicine and the military; business and finance; political culture and popular culture.
Trump leaves his thumbprint on everything that engages him or even briefly catches his eye. Will the Washington Commanders change their name back to the Washington Redskins? I have no idea. The point is that because of a message Trump posted (yesterday) on Truth Social – “The Washington ‘Whatevers’ Should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team” – this morning people are talking about it. Trump does not just shape the nation’s legislation he shapes the nation’s conversation.
One of the first books I wrote was titled, The Political Presidency: Practice of Leadership.* The question I sought to answer was how presidents got things done given that power in the American political system is divided.
America’s political culture has, traditionally, been anti-authority, anti-leadership. At the nation’s inception was a revolution which, by definition, was anti-establishment. In any revolution anything that smacks of the old order is intended to be torn down and replaced by something entirely new. In this case instead of an all-powerful distant king, a resident president, George Washington, himself a revolutionary, providing the original template.
Historically virtually every president has found that getting stuff done in the nation’s capital is difficult. Of course, the separation of powers, checks and balances were put in place for just this reason: to serve as a restraint, as a constraint, on the executive.
It is also accurate to say that over the two and a half centuries of American history executive power has waxed and waned. In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, prominent historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. came out with a book titled The Imperial Presidency. As its title suggests, even then Schlesinger thought the executive had become too powerful, at the expense of both the legislature and the judiciary.
The Political Presidency sought to answer the question of which skills were important for presidents to have in a political system such as ours? One in which leadership is famously difficult. How many times did we hear over the years that Congress was “gridlocked”? Well, no such problem now. During the first half year of Trump’s second term what he wanted from Congress – and for that matter from the Supreme Court – he got from Congress. Moreover, most of the nation’s legislators seem to consider the idea that they have a constitutional role to play in, for example, appropriations, antiquated.
So, what does Trump have that none of his predecessors did? What wand has he waved to get what he wants when he wants it, notwithstanding the constraints that stifled or at least stumped nearly all his predecessors? To these all-important questions here I provide just three necessarily brief answers.
The first is personal. Trump is a buccaneer and an entertainer. He looks like both and acts like both. He has a strong, sometimes even magnetic effect on those disposed to be in his orbit.
The second is systemic. It is impossible to understand what Trump accomplished by fixating on him and him alone. In addition, it’s essential to understand the changing nature of the American people and of the America within which we are situated. Neither is what it was even a generation ago.
The third answer to what Trump has that none of his predecessors did, at least not to this extent, is power. The word “power” has many meanings, and it is used in many ways. Here it implies fear. Trump has the power to instill fear in people, power that he freely uses. Exactly what are his followers afraid of? To this question the obvious reply applies especially to members of Congress: they are afraid that come the next election they will primaried by an unflaggingly loyal Trump supporter, and that therefore they will lose.
Anything else? Any other reason to be afraid of the American president?
It’s been my recent habit to post a piece on July 4th.* This year I’m going back to basics – specifically to free speech.
The first amendment to the Constitution reads in part “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech.” But… it’s one thing to be free to have your say, it’s another to say it in a way that other people hear it.
In ancient Greece and Rome rhetoric was considered a cornerstone of a good education. And in the United States it used to be. Public speaking, or as it was sometimes called, speech training, was typically part of the American curriculum. In fact, in colonial times, training in speech was thought almost as important as instruction in Greek and Latin. Moreover, through most of American history great orators were usually, ipso facto, great leaders. For example, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Now things are different. Few 21st century Americans can claim mastery of oratory. While “communication” is standard in leadership curricula, few in public life speak in a way that others find compelling. Further, few understand that speech is the most important tool in the leader’s toolbox. How to persuade others to do what you want them to do without conveying your message? To convey what you want to say is not, of course, just about style. It’s also about content. Still, many was the time when former president Joe Biden had a good message to send but he did not – likely because he believed he could not. He could not communicate in a way that got people to pay attention.
Communicating is different now from what it used to be because attention has become a scarce commodity – the competition for our attention is relentless. For the last decade or two social media has swallowed our time and now there’s AI. The New York Times recently reported that “as generative artificial intelligence has exploded over the last two years, the technology has been used to demean and defame political opponents and, for the first time, officials and experts said, has had an impact on election results.” Still, so long as humans are not entirely replaced by robots if we communicate and connect and how – especially how leaders communicate and connect with their followers – matters.
The miserable message-sending surrounding the resignation of James Ryan, President of the University of Virginia, is an example. Ryan was effectively forced out by the Trump administration. For those who believe that universities should be free of political interference, Ryan’s essentially obligatory resignation was sad as shocking. Equally bad was that Ryan was hung out to dry alone. No one – not a single member of UVA’s board, not a single public official – stood beside him when he announced he was leaving. Nor did anyone seize the occasion to send a message: that notwithstanding the long hand and iron grip of the American president Ryan had been a good leader worthy of his post.
Do these people grasp the importance of speaking truth to power? Instead of folding in silence. Do these people grasp the importance of trumpeting the truth, loudly, clearly so everyone can hear? Instead of folding in silence.
People were shocked when Zohran Mamdani came out of nowhere to clobber former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City. Why? Did they not note what happened?
In the months before the election Cuomo was nowhere to be seen while Mamdani was everywhere to be seen. Not just everywhere seen but everywhere heard. Mamdani benefited greatly from his sophisticated use of social media. But while his run for mayor seemed new and different, in fact it was curiously, amusingly, old and familiar. He campaigned in person, one on one, face to face, in what seemed every street and alley of New York City. In his invariably dark suit, white shirt, and knotted tie he cut an immediately recognizable figure, speaking to whoever would listen, delivering a message that, whatever you think of it, grabbed people’s attention. Here, finally, was a candidate who visibly and audibly hit the ground running.
Contrast his dynamism with the miserably poor communicators who now lead the Democrats in Congress – Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries. OMG! No matter how smart and sensible their message is, they are so poor at sending it that no one listens. On their watch ethical boundaries have been erased and accountability has been dismantled. But whatever the Democrats’ moral outrage, as a party, a group, and as individuals they have proven incapable of packaging it in a way that gets the nation’s attention. Jeffries’s last ditch effort yesterday to claim center stage – as the White House was about to extract exactly what it wanted from Congress, the passage of its “big, beautiful” spending bill before July 4th, Jeffries delayed the final vote by speaking on the floor of the House for nearly nine hours – was the approximate equivalent of a final cry from the fast-sinking Titanic.
Donald Trump provides an interesting contrast. No one would claim him a brilliant speaker. Nor would anyone say his content is compelling. Quite the opposite. It tends to be mangled and jumbled, vague and imprecise, full of flights of fancy and outright lies. Still, Trump makes himself available to the press and the public it seems every hour of every day. To his benefit he is a relentless hog for attention – tirelessly, and, yes, effectively, selling both himself and his wares. Even during the interregnum, while Biden was in the White House and Trump was out, the former was scarcely seen while the latter was in full view.
Freedom of speech is what we make of it. Americans should however be clear. When democracies are threatened silence is notgolden. Speaking truth to – and about – power is step one. Step two is speaking it so that others hear it.
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