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In the last few days were two articles in the New York Times about the still remarkably low number of women at the top. In both was an element of surprise – as if by now women leaders should no longer be so few and far between.

The first was titled, “Women Dominate at Law School, but Not at Law Firms.”* It painted a “bleak picture for gender equity among leadership roles,” pointing out that though women now constitute more than half of current law school graduates, their share of equity partnerships remains at 20 percent. Moreover, in recent years this number has not ticked up one whit.

The second article, long and prominently featured, was titled, “Why Women Aren’t C.E.O.s.”** It focused on women who came close to the top, but then for various reasons “didn’t quite make it.” The sample here was select: women who were singularly successful but who never reached the highest rung. Which raises the question of why?

As usual, men got most of the blame. Not all of it. Some women, it was reported in the second piece, “are not socialized to be unapologetically competitive.” And many women – more than half of those who earn M.B.A.s – drop out of the full-time work force within a decade. Still, in the main the problem was said to be men. “Men remain threatened by assertive women.” And men get “extremely jealous.” And men think, “If I kick her, she’s not going to kick back.” And men create a climate in which the bias against women, while subtle, is “more pernicious than blatant discrimination.”

It’s amazing to me how after all these years, two to three decades at least, of wondering why the overwhelming majority of leaders remain men not women, the answers are still so conventional, so mind-numbingly repetitive. Mind you, this does not make them untrue. Men do, for example, remain threatened by assertive women – as I can attest! But to treat this issue as fundamentally psychological or sociological or organizational or structural or personal or interpersonal or behavioral is to miss the point entirely. The roots of this problem go all the way down, to the deepest level of what it means to be human. Of what it means to be a human animal – a mammal – which for most of human history meant males go out to hunt for food while females hang back to tend to their young.

To understand the role of sociobiology in the problem of women and leadership is not to say it is insoluble. But, it is to attack the problem from a different angle entirely.

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*https://www.google.com/search?q=Elizabeth+Olson%2C+%22Women+Dominate+at+Law+School%22&oq=

El&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i59j0l3.1703j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

**https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/21/sunday-review/women-ceos-glass-ceiling.html

Poland is among the more striking recent cases of countries taking a sharp turn to the right. For more than a decade it was the pride of Eastern Europe: an exemplary example of a country recovering from decades of communist stasis, with a thriving economy, a growing middle class, and a political sensibility closer to America than to Russia.

But, over the last two years Poland has changed.  Under the right-wing leadership of the Law and Justice party, the government has shifted sharply, away from democracy and toward autocracy.  According to Freedom House, an independent watchdog group, in the last couple of years the government has, for example, interfered excessively in the affairs of public media, and placed increasing restrictions on speech regarding Polish history and identity. Retreats like these “have collectively contributed to increased self-censorship and polarization.”

Things came to a head this week, when Poland’s parliament approved a measure, by a vote of 55 to 23, that would have drastically reduced or even eliminated judicial independence by, among other measures, putting the Supreme Court under the control of the governing party.

The European Union (EU), of which Poland is a member, made its opposition clear. It warned that the EU was “very close” to asking its member states to “issue a formal warning against Poland” over its attempts to subject the judiciary to political control.

But it was not the EU that suddenly motivated Poland’s President Andrzej Duda to announce today that he would veto the two bills that threatened judicial independence. It was the Polish people. Polish people protesting by the tens of thousands in more than 100 cities across the country – expressing their anger over the prospect of a return to rule by autocrats.

Still, today’s presidential veto notwithstanding, this battle is by no means over. Poles who prefer democracy over autocracy will, likely for years to come, have to fight for what they think right.

Mitch McConnell is a Republican Senator from the state of Kentucky. He has served in the Senate since 1985, and as Senate Majority leader since 2015. Susan Collins is a Republican Senator from the state of Maine. She has served in the Senate since 1997.

Collins is known as a smart, sensible, and solid senator. But McConnell is known as among the most clever and cunning of senators, a so-called Master of the Senate, credited with being super-savvy about the legislative process. The more startling, then, that on the most important of all recent congressional initiatives, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), McConnell lost and Collins won. He wanted Republican repeal and replace measures to pass. She did not – they did not.

Why? In part because the supposedly crafty McConnell made a major mistake at the outset. He chose not to invite a single woman to participate in working group meetings on repealing and replacing the ACA. That’s right. Though he claimed to have “everybody at the table,” in fact McConnell’s 13-member working group consisted exclusively of white males. As foolish as outrageous – an egregious error that cost him dearly. When time came to push for a vote on repeal, three Republican senators declared publicly that they would not support any bill that legislated repeal but not replace. All three were Republican women, led, arguably, by Senator Collins, who, from the outset, made her misgivings clear.

Michele Swers has written a very good book – Women in the Club – on gender and policy making in the Senate.  Had McConnell ever taken a look at the book he would’ve understood how excluding women from policy making, especially on an issue such as health care, was bad business. Since “gender affects the policy priorities of individual senators and the intensity of their commitment to issues,” keeping women out of the room while ACA decisions were being made was strategy idiocy.* McConnell should have known that the days when women in America can be excluded altogether, without men paying a price, are over. As Susan Collins might, in her understated way, be the first to testify.

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*Women in the Club: Gender and Policy Making in the Senate, University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 231.

Yesterday’s blog was about how uncertain a leader’s legacy, depending largely, though not entirely, on the leader’s successor. As of last night, it seems the cornerstone of Barack Obama’s legacy, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), will remain in place. Despite having control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, the Republicans were unable to repeal “Obamacare,” not to speak of replace it.

This raises the question of why? Given how strong their position, why were Republicans unable to do what they had repeatedly and relentlessly sworn to do for two years?

The ACA proved difficult and, likely, ultimately, impossible to dislodge for many reasons that include but are not limited to: 1) lack of transparency associated with the repeal and replace process; 2) widespread public disapproval of the replacement bill; and 3) difficulty in retracting any public benefit once it’s been granted.

I would argue though that there’s a single overweening explanation for why the ACA still stands – President Trump. Trump eagerly and effectively undid a slew of other Obama initiatives. The ACA, in contrast, he mouthed off about – but that was pretty much it. All Trump did to kill Obamacare was to announce that he was waiting, “pen in hand,” to sign the repeal and replacement legislation that Mitch McConnell was supposed magically to navigate through congress.

Everything we know about what it takes to enact major legislation of this sort tells us that presidential leadership – presidential wheeling and dealing, presidential back-slapping and hand-holding, presidential pleading, promising and threatening – is essential. Critical to the success of a controversial and complex legislative initiative, especially one on healthcare. Without relentless presidential involvement, repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act was, in other words, never in the cards.

Truth is that large parts of Obama’s legacy were undone because his successor was determined to undo them. Truth is that the ACA remains the law of the land because if his successor was determined to repeal and replace it, there was scant evidence to this effect.

Once upon a time, long, long ago I led an organization. I thought I was good at it, leading the organization to places that were new and different, initiating and implementing ideas that were widely appreciated and applauded.

After a time, I went on to do other things, foolishly thinking that what I had accomplished would stay accomplished. Was, in effect, engraved in stone, destined to stay in place if not exactly in perpetuity then, at least, for some years.

Wrong. No sooner was I out the door and replaced by someone else, brick by brick what I imagined my legacy was largely dismantled. Never since to be restored or replaced by anything like it. I should’ve known better – but I did not. I was not then but am now aware of how fragile a leader’s legacy. To be sure, it is not always fragile, not always vulnerable to the vicissitudes of change. But sometimes it is – depending largely though by no means entirely on who is the leader’s successor.

Since President Barack Obama moved out of the White House, he has had no choice but to stand by while President Donald Trump undid much of his predecessor’s handiwork. Notwithstanding Obama’s eight years in the Oval Office, in just half a year Trump has already discarded large parts of Obama’s legacy.

At this writing, the fate of the Affordable Care Act is uncertain. But this much is certain:

• Obama’s sweeping trade deal? Cancelled.
• Obama’s global climate change accord? Inapplicable.
• Obama’s diplomatic opening to Cuba? Diminished.
• Obama’s rules on the environment, labor, financial protections, internet privacy, abortion, education, and gun rights? Many already reversed.

It remains to be seen which of these two presidents will have the greater long-term impact. It’s certainly possible that Trump’s successor will resurrect some of what Obama originally effected. Moreover, whatever the ultimate consequences of what these two leaders did or did not do, in the end it’s the people, voters, who decide. Still, leadership’s deep dark secret is, however seemingly successful, often as not it’s only temporary.

To get my audiences thinking, I’ll sometimes ask, “Who’s the greatest leader in the world”? Before they can respond with the name of someone who’s six feet under, I’ll hasten to add, “The leader has to be living – alive not dead.”

Until recently, the single name that almost everyone in any group agreed on was Nelson Mandela. As soon as his name was mentioned, everyone in the room seemed to concur: he was the greatest of all living leaders. But, Mandela has now passed, which leaves people stymied. Who is the greatest leader of all? Different people come up with different candidates – none of which elicit widespread agreement.

Asking people to identify the single greatest leader is, of course, something of a mind game. It is, nevertheless, an interesting exercise, if only because it reveals how small is the number of leaders widely considered “great.”

Still, I have my own current candidate for such an honorific – Bill Gates. Gates was one of the greatest leaders ever in technology. And, more recently, he is, along with his wife, Melinda Gates, one of the greatest leaders ever in philanthropy. A twofer unlikely soon to be rivaled.

Still, how you measure “greatness,” or even how you define it is fungible, flexible, malleable, variable. Open to interpretation and different points of view. If, for example, being a “great” leader is thought to depend only on the leader’s being effective, not on his or her being ethical, then names other than the likes of Gates come to mind – such as, now, inevitably, that of Vladimir Putin.

The degree to which Putin has accomplished what in his wildest dreams he perhaps imagined is stunning – even stupefying. Setting aside Crimea and Syria and the revival of European nationalism and populism, there is this. Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has derailed America’s political system.  Russiagate makes it even more difficult than it already is for Washington effectively and efficiently to function. Putin has at least partially paralyzed American politics which might – or it might not – make him the “greatest” leader in the world.

How to learn to lead in a time when leadership, generally, is in decline? How to learn to lead in a time when leaders, generally, are distrusted and disrespected? How to learn to lead in a time when leadership education, training, and development have so obviously fallen short?

The old model of leadership development is vividly exemplified by General Electric’s legendary management training center in Crotonville, New York. Since 1956, when GE bought the leafy 59-acre campus, every one of GE’s chief executives, most famously Jack Welch, has invested heavily invested in the idea that people in high places could learn to lead and manage, and that they could do so best in a sanctuary or retreat of some sort, especially one controlled by GE for its own particular pedagogical purposes. The fact that GE has not, for years, performed particularly well, has not deterred GE’s own leaders and managers from clinging to a model of leadership development that is nothing if not comfortably familiar.

The question is, how long will this apparently blind faith in a pedagogical template of questionable value persist? As Andrew Hill, writing recently in the Financial Times put it, “The GE way… is starting to look like an expensive, even anachronistic exception to the methods used by many companies to shape their future leaders – if they bother shaping them at all.”*

Hill does not focus on the question of metrics, on the question of how we can conclude with any degree of certainty that a leadership program is effective. Rather he points out how leadership roles themselves have changed. He raises the question of why, in an era of “looser networks and frequent job-hopping,” any company would bother to maintain its own leadership development program, especially if it was expensive.

The point of this piece is not to dwell on the anachronistic aspects of General Electric’s leadership programs. Rather it is to say that in-house leadership initiatives are diminishing in number – but that the effectiveness of what replaces them, for example, executive programs, remains still unclear. What is clear is that the appetite for learning to lead remains large. “A 2016 survey of millennials by Deloitte found that 63 percent of employees born since 1982 said their leadership skills were not being fully developed.” Which is precisely why leadership educators and experts should reassess in a major, meaningful way what learning to lead should consist of. All I will add at this point is that Plato thought that learning to lead was a process that took not days, or weeks, or months, or even years. It took decades.

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*FT Big Read. Leadership, June 23, 2017.

Drip, drip, drip. Strip, strip, strip.

One by one. Apparently inexorably. In increasingly large numbers, the titans of capitalism, the masters of the universe, the emperors of corporate America are being stripped of their royal robes.  Left to stand naked – embarrassed and exposed like mere mortals.

This was foretold by a few, though not by many. See my own book, The End of Leadership (2012), and Mois Naim’s The End of Power (2013). We both foresaw that leaders in the 21^st century – leaders everywhere, leaders of every stripe – were going to experience hard times because others (e.g. followers, stakeholders, constituents) were gaining on them. Now the leader’s time of trouble is here – unless he (or, rarely, she) is an autocrat, in which case he squashes like a bug those who would squash him.

Most corporate commanders are unable any longer completely to control their troops . Their titles no longer protect against assault or attack. Their positions no longer are vaulted or impermeable. They status no longer is high or mighty. And their opponents no longer are awed or cowed.  In other words, as the New York Times’s Nelson Schwartz put it, “the baronial C.E.O is in decline.”* He is being stripped of his trappings.

Several years ago, I posted a blog titled, “Top Ten List – Why the Decline of the CEO.” I gave ten reasons why corporate leaders were prey to conditions over which they had “little or no control.”

• Large activist investors.
• Small aggressive investors.
• Bossy boards.
• Split Governance.
• Long arm of the law.
• Social media.
• Aggressive public scrutiny.
• Invasive flattened hierarchy.
• Volatility, uncertainly, complexity, and ambiguity.
• Altered ideology.

Now the drumbeat is faster and louder. Now it’s obvious to anyone paying any attention that corporate leaders are like political leaders – deeply vulnerable to the temper of the times and to opponents hellbent on dethroning them. “General Electric,” writes Schwartz, “is just the latest storied name in corporate America to show its leader the door. Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, had been in the job for less than three years when he was fired in late May. Two weeks earlier, Mario Longhi of U.S. Steel abruptly stepped down.” Nor are newer companies, relative upstarts, immune from the trend. Two weeks ago, the brains behind Uber, Travis Kalanick, was forced to resign; several months earlier Marissa Mayer, who for years had been dangling, was finally formally severed from Yahoo.

The diminishment of leaders inevitably raises or it should, these questions. What are the implications for the leadership industry? And how should it adjust to a time when leaders are significantly less elevated than they used to be?  I will provide some responses to these questions in my next post.

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*Nelson Schwartz, “Decline of the Baronial CEO,” June 18, 2017.

Imagine a thought experiment in which the following transpired:

• A black man who is candidate for president derides his single female opponent for the nomination, “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that?!” (Donald Trump talking about Carli Fiorina.)
• A black man who is candidate for president charges a female actress and comedian with being “disgusting, both inside and out.” With being a “slob” who “talks like a truck driver.” (Donald Trump talking about Rose O’Donnell.)
• A black man who is candidate for president labels a former Miss Universe “Miss Piggy,” claiming she had gained a lot of weight, and “Miss Housekeeping,” presumably because she was Latina. (Donald Trump talking about Alicia Machado.)
• A black man who is candidate for president describes a female television anchor, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” (Donald Trump talking about Megyn Kelly.)
• A black man who is candidate for president boasts on tape about being a sexual predator. “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything…grab them by the pussy.” (Donald Trump talking to Billy Bush.)
• A black man who is president of the United States demeans a female television host for her “low I.Q.” and mocks her for having bled “badly from a face-lift.”

Given the fraught history of race and sex in America, it’s impossible to imagine candidate Barack Obama, or President Barack Obama, getting away with what Donald Trump has been allowed. It’s a singularly striking, and dreadfully depressing example of white privilege.

In April, I posted six separate blogs under the general heading, “Trump/Testosterone.”  This then is the seventh in the series.

It’s based on a recent article in the New York Times titled, “Men are so Hormonal.”* Without getting into the science of the findings – think orbitofrontal cortex – they amount to a caution pertaining to men who take testosterone supplements. Of course, I have no idea if Donald Trump is now taking, or ever did, testosterone supplements. But, as my recent posts on “Trump/Testosterone” made clear, the incumbent American president puts a premium on manliness that is extreme. Even to the point of making public – on the “Dr. Oz Show,” no less – his own putative testosterone level.

Suffice it here to say that the article points to recent scientific findings that show a correlation between testosterone supplements (high testosterone) and unnecessary and even foolish risk-taking. Excessive risk-taking is not good in most professions, in, say, cab driving or day trading or child caring. But it could fairly be said to be especially bad, even dangerous, in leading.

“Confidence can spur a person to action, to take risks,” the article concludes. “But we should all be more aware of when confidence tips into overconfidence, and testosterone supplements could encourage that. Ironically, these supplements might make someone feel bold enough to lead but probably reduce his ability to lead well.”

Anyone come to mind?

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* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/24/opinion/sunday/men-testosterone-hormones.html?_r=0