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Leadership – whether as theory or practice – is plagued by problems of semantics. I have written about this before, for example, in an earlier post in which I lamented that in the academy, though nowhere else, the words “leader” and “leadership” are presumed preceded by the word “good.” We assume without question that leadership classes and programs … are dedicated to promoting leadership that is good. I went on to add that this would be fine IF the leadership industry did not thoroughly ignore leadership that was bad.*   

Even definitions are problematic. The words “leader” and “leadership” have not tens of different definitions but hundreds. The words “follower” and “followership” are even more confusing. For example, in my lexicon followers are defined not by their behavior but by their rank – which is to say that in my lexicon followers do not always follow.**

I raise the issue today because of my most recent post in which I wrote about the newly resigned University of Virginia President James Ryan, and the soon to be retired Republican Senator Thom Tillis. I observed that both were “leaders forced out by a leader [President Trump] more muscular than they.” Then I added that both were followers “who reluctantly followed where Trump led.”    

All true – but it does present a problem of semantics, or maybe logic. How can a person be, simultaneously, a leader and a follower? Part of the answer is context. A person can be a leader in one situation but a follower in another.  The longtime CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon, is one of the most admired leaders in corporate America. But would I want him to lead me down a treacherous mountain path? Unlikely.  

Another part of the answer is rank. Like all great apes, humans live in groups, groups that are organized hierarchically. So, say you are somewhere in the middle of the group, and say this group is an organization. Chances then are good that you will have some subordinates, some people to lead and manage. Chances are equally good that you will have some superiors, some people who lead and manage you. Which is why it would be correct to say that within the organization you are, simultaneously, a leader and a follower.

It’s complicated. When it comes to leadership and followership it’s more than occasionally necessary to hold two apparently contradictory ideas at the same time.

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*https://barbarakellerman.com/language-of-leadership/

** See, for example, Barbara Kellerman, Followership (Harvard Business School Press, 2008).

Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States is the title of a small, highly influential book published in 1970, written by economist Alfred O. Hirschman. For a student of leadership and followership it provides a marvelously parsimonious model of the choices available to followers dissatisfied with their leader. They can choose privately, quietly, to quit the group. They can choose publicly, noisily, to quit the group but, at the same time, to voice their objection. Or they can choose, despite what they think and feel, to remain in the group.

This past weekend we had two examples of followers who chose to exit – and to voice. In both cases their leader was President Donald Trump. And in both cases the followers were leaders themselves who nevertheless concluded that whatever their own power and authority, it was dwarfed by that of the nation’s chief executive. Need evidence that Trump is a strongman? Read on.

The first example was the resignation under pressure by the President of the University of Virginia (UVA), James E. Ryan. UVA is one of the nation’s most prestigious public universities. Ryan, then, has held one of the most prestigious jobs in American higher education.  Nevertheless, when the White House decided it wanted him to leave – because he was slow to dismantle policies promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion – leave he did. The administration had a couple of cudgels to wield – among them the threat of withholding large amounts of federal funding from UVA, and continuing investigations by the Justice Department. Still, when Ryan succumbed it was a shock.

Excerpt from Ryan’s statement:

I am writing, with a heavy heart, to let you know that I have submitted my resignation as President of the University of Virginia…. I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job. To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld….

If this were not so distinctly tied to me personally, I may have pursued a different path. But I could not in good conscience cause real and direct harm to my colleagues and our students in order to preserve my own position.

The second piece of evidence of against Trump – or for him, depending on your point of view – was the announcement yesterday by Republican Senator Thom Tillis that he would not run for reelection.  Tillis chose to withdraw now from his next race (in 2026) because he knew that if he did not, he would be primaried – forced out of North Carolina politics by MAGA Republicans who detested his occasional resistance, such as now, to the president’s budget bill, to the Oval Office. Tillis is not, though, going quietly. He is exiting all right, but he is also speaking to the “hypocrisy in American politics.”

Except from Tillis’s statement:

When people see independent thinking on the other side, they cheer. But when those very same people see independent thinking coming from their side, they scorn, ostracize, and even censure them.

Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don’t give a damn about the people the promise to represent on the campaign trail. After they get elected, they don’t bother to do the hard work to research the policies they seek to implement and understand the consequences these policies could have on that young adult living in a trailer park, struggling to make ends meet.

As many of my colleagues have noticed over the last year, and at times even joked about, I haven’t exactly been excited about running for another term. That is true since the choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theater and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with [my family]. It’s not a hard choice and I will not be seeking reelection.

Though their circumstances were different, in the end Ryan and Tillis were the same. Both were leaders forced out by a leader more muscular than they. And both were followers who reluctantly followed where Trump led. Finally, while both did voice their concerns, Ryan will be out this summer and Tillis next year.

          If a leader wants to lead a follower the leader has three wellsprings from which they can draw. The first is power. The second is authority. And the third is influence.

          Presuming that “A” is the leader and “B” the follower, here the definitions and distinctions.

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

In the past, leaders in America were able to draw on all three. Leaders in government and business, in the military and the media, in religion and education, whatever their sector, had the benefit of abundance. So, occasionally they drew on power; frequently they drew on authority; and regularly they used influence to get their followers to do what they wanted them to do.

These were of course applied in different ways and different measures by different leaders. Longtime CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon is a different leader in a different time from longtime CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch. As is President Donald Trump from President Jimmy Carter. Still, the essentials remained the same. Power, authority, and influence were available to leaders who wanted to lead.

But leadership is not a person, it is a system with three parts, each of which is of equal importance. Leaders, and followers, and contexts. The last is why it’s likely that leadership in America will forever be different from leadership in China.

Context though is not just about place. It is also about time. So, leading in America in the year 2025 is different from leading in America in the year 2000 and very different from leading in America in 1975 or 1950. Changes in technology are an obvious example of how times change, and of how these changes impact how leaders lead, and followers follow.

But I write here about something less obvious. About how one of the three wellsprings to which I referred – authority – has been, though not completely depleted, greatly reduced. Authority is far less valuable a resource for leaders, especially for leaders in America, than it used to be.

Specifically, position and rank still matter. They especially matter in the workplace where subordinates are still inclined to fall in line behind their superiors. What matters less though than it did is status. We are less in awe of those more highly situated than we used to be. But what matters much, much, less than it did is credential. Whatever credential we have, whatever our claim to knowledge or expertise, it is no longer so important, nor does it any longer entitle leaders to lead followers.

In 2017 Tom Nichols wrote a book, The Death of Expertise, in which he pointed to a trend. “Not only,” he wrote, “do increasing numbers of lay people lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence…. This is more than a natural skepticism toward experts. I fear we are witnessing the death of expertise itself.” A similar point was made by Gil Eyal, in his book, The Crisis of Expertise.

Recently were two articles that lent the argument further credence.  In the New York Times piece, “The Expert Class Joins the Endangered List in Today’s Washington,” David Sanger wrote: “The most dangerous occupation in Washington these days is being an expert.” As Sanger points out, not just denigrated but dismissed in the last several months were government experts in the military, national security, intelligence, aviation, cybersecurity, veterans’ issues, public health, you name it.

An article in The New Yorker by Daniel Immerwahr, “Doctor’s Orders,” focused on Americans’ increasingly widespread resistance to experts who are doctors and scientists. Even in the recent past we trusted them. Now not so much. Robert F. Kennedy. Jr., President Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services, is a cause or maybe a consequence of the syndrome. He adheres to beliefs that mainstream science discredit and espouses ones that are marginal. Kennedy is suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry, supports unproven and unsanctioned drugs, and makes wild accusations against members of the medical establishment. Whatever their errors and failures, when science and medicine are attacked, when experts in any field are excluded or derided, and when the vice president of the United States says we must “honestly and aggressively attack the universities,” it’s safe to conclude the authority of the credential has bit the dust.     

Many American leaders are in positions of leadership precisely because they are experts. When their claim to authority is based on their expertise which, however, now counts for little or even nothing, their authority obviously is weakened.

It’s one of the reasons why leading in 21^st century America is not just difficult but thankless. Ever ask yourself why just last year CEO turnover rates reached record levels?

No one – certainly not the organizers – anticipated it. They were a motley collection coalescing for the occasion. The occasion was “No Kings Day” which even a few days before only a plugged-in few had even heard of. The day was a random Saturday in June. There was no program or agenda. And there was no single designated center or speaker. It was all rather loosey-goosey, slightly haphazard and lightly organized, more of an experiment in political movement than a political movement.

And yet. And yet it turned out to be some five million strong. It turned out either the largest political demonstration in American history ever or among them.

For all its anonymousness and amorphousness No Kings Day did have one central organizing principle. It was vigorously, decisively, and unambiguously against President Donald Trump. It was to put a stake in the ground – to demonstrate to the American people generally and this leader particularly that large numbers of his followers were as fiercely angry as deeply unhappy with most everything he was and most everything he did.

It took a while for dissenters in numbers to be seen or even heard. Moreover, where they, we, are headed from here is not clear. Still, for those among us who fret about the future of American democracy it was a splendid display and heartening day. It was a real-time reminder of how good followers can stand up to a bad leader.     

Last year I came out with a book titled, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers. The book was a warning. It warned that without exception – unless and until they are stopped or at least slowed by something(s) or someone(s) – bad leaders become worse leaders.

This progression is universal. This progression is inevitable. This progression is inexorable. This progression is ubiquitous. Always and everywhere bad leadership – like every other malignancy – starts small and then it gets larger. It grows, then grows more, and keeps on growing unless and until finally it is excised. If, on the other hand, it is never removed, it will transform what was original into what is unrecognizable.

The term “tipping point” seem at odds with this process. Because it implies change that is major not minor, tipping point further implies change that is sudden. But when “tipping points” are defined as a series of small changes that in time become larger and more significant, they can be seen as integral to the progression in which bad leadership becomes worse.

The United States is, then, at a tipping point. For just six months into his second term, President Donald Trump has let loose force. He has let loose force not abroad – about which he is skittish. He has let loose force at home – about which he is decidedly not skittish.

The most obvious evidence of this is of course in California. Though you and I might differ about the specifics of the situation in Los Angeles, we might nevertheless agree that federalizing the national guard and sending in 700 marines to maintain order in one square mile of the city is overkill. But I refer not to California. I refer instead to Washington DC where this weekend a an imposing military parade will take place, ostensibly to celebrate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, oh yes, the 79^th birthday of the commander in chief.  

I don’t like the idea of showy military parades under any circumstances – they are associated with autocracies not democracies. However, my objection is not to the parade per se. Rather it is to what Trump said in connection with the occasion. Yesterday he threatened that anyone who protests his parade will be punished. “People that want to protest will be met with big force,” the president said. These are people “that hate our country. They will be met with heavy force.”

Which is precisely why the United States is at a tipping point. Twice in one week Trump has made clear that he sees the American military as his military. To be used when and how sees fit, no matter the law, no matter the Constitution.

If you think this is the end of it, think again. If you think, for example, American elections will be exempt from Trump’s infractions, think again. If the president gets away with using the miliary for his purposes this week, think what will happen next. Think leadership from bad to worse.  

The title of this post is the subtitle of a book by Post. Specifically, it is the subtitle of a book by Jerrold M. Post, titled Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World. As I was looking through the book this morning I found myself stopping at chapter 9. It’s titled, “Narcissism and the Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship.”

Post died a few years ago. But he had a long, prolific career as a psychiatrist, academic, and analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. In all three roles he applied his expertise in psychology to politics, especially as it pertained to people in positions of political leadership, including heads of state.  

Given my interest in followers rivals my interest in leaders, I have occasionally gravitated to Post’s work. For he more than most understood that leaders do not operate in vacuum, in isolation. Necessarily they interact with and absolutely depend on their followers.   

Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World was published in 2004, long before the Time of Trump. Still, what Post wrote, specifically about charismatic leaders and their followers, is as timely as relevant.    

For the purposes of this discussion, I will assume that President Donald Trump is a narcissist. He has never been formally or professionally diagnosed as such. But for at least the last decade he has been labeled a narcissist by experts and laypeople alike, both seriously and casually. The parallels between Trump and his followers and what Post has to say about charismatic leaders and their followers are in any case striking.

To be clear: being narcissistic and being charismatic are not one and the same. Not all people who are narcissistic are charismatic, and not all people who are charismatic are narcissistic. Still, according to Post, the “narcissistic personality helps us understand the nature of the charismatic leader-follower relationship.”

Here nine Post points for interested readers to consider:

• Charismatic leaders require a “continuing flow of admiration from their audiences to nourish their famished selves.”
• Central to charismatic leaders’ ability to “elicit admiration is an ability to convey a sense of grandeur, omnipotence, and strength.”
• Charismatic leaders “convey a sense of conviction and certainty to those who are consumed by doubt and uncertainty.”
• Analyses of speeches by charismatic leaders reveal a good versus evil, strength versus weakness, “all or nothing polar absolutism.”   
• Such either-or categorization, with charismatic leaders on the side of the angels, “is a regular characteristic of their evocative rhetoric.”
• Post quotes eminent psychiatrist Heinz Kohut who found that certain types of narcissists “display an apparently unshakable self-confidence and voice their opinions with absolute certainty.”   
• Followers of charismatic leaders are characterized as “ideal-hungry personalities.” They experience themselves as worthwhile “only so long as they can relate to leaders who they can greatly admire.” Followers like these are “forever” searching for leaders who are “idealized figures.”
• Charismatic leader-follower relationships can yield outcomes that are “destructive,” as in the cases of Adolph Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they can yield “powerful transforming social movements” as in the cases of Mahatma Gandhi or Mortin Luther King Jr.    
• Charismatic leaders must be seen in tandem with their followers. Therefore, the word charisma does not properly apply to the leader; it applies to the leader-follower relationship.

On the assumption that Post made a good case, finally an irony. Long one of the most lacerating charges against Trump is that he is a narcissist. It is, however, precisely this narcissism that could explain his tight grip on the many millions who follow where he leads.

This grip is not, however, necessarily permanent. It just seems that way.

In my most recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers, one of the cases I examined most closely was that of Martin Winterkorn.* Winterkorn was the CEO of Volkswagen during the infamous scandal known as “Dieselgate.”

Under Winterkorn’s leadership Volkswagen regularly, and over a period of about eight years, defrauded customers, regulators, competitors, and the public. The company knowingly installed software in millions of vehicles deliberately designed to test more environmentally friendly than they really were. The scheme continued until it didn’t. Until it was stopped by authorities after being alerted by outside investigators who discovered the crime.

Though the wrongdoing became known a decade ago, up to now only a handful of people have been held to account. Winterkorn has not been among them. He faces criminal prosecution – but so far, he remains a free man.

Still, it’s not over till it’s over. Just this week two former Volkswagen directors were found guilty in a German court of fraud. Two were sentenced to several years in prison – but Winterkorn was not among them. This time his case was separated from the others because his lawyers claimed health issues precluded his appearance in court.

Poor Martin.

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* Oxford University Press, 2024. https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Bad-Worse-Happens-Festers/dp/0197759270  

The above-named piece was in good part about the silence of “leaders” in Donald Trump’s America. Specifically, that of chief executive officers of major corporations who in their behavior toward Trump are not leaders but followers. Alarmingly like Republican members of Congress, the captains of American business and industry are so subservient they are servile.   

Two days later after I posted my piece the New York Times published a review of a book written by Peter Hayes. It was titled, Profits and Persecution: German Big Business in the Nazi Economy and the Holocaust.

Here is an excerpt from the review, written by Max Chafkin.

Hayes convincingly shows that German businessmen were skeptical of the Nazis, but tended to approach Hitler’s rise with an eye to the bottom line, seeking to preserve their financial advantages within the regime and, in doing so, slowly acquiescing to its most insidious demands. His book is both horrifying and riveting, in part because the rationalizations offered by business leaders will sound eerily familiar.   

I rest my case.

Monday, May 26, 2025. In the United States of America, it’s Memorial Day, a federal holiday that honors those who died serving in the U.S. military. By extension, it’s also a day to ruminate about what it means to us, to each of us, to be an American.

One could argue that of all the liberal ideas and ideals that undergird the American experiment none is as foundational as liberty. According to the U. S. Constitution, our right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is unalienable. Patrick Henry’s line, “Give me liberty, or give me death” is as much of a clarion call now as it was 250 years ago. And the Statue of Liberty remains in the present as in the past: a colossus in New York Harbor emblematic of its name.

However, liberty is realized only if it is exercised. If Americans do not exercise their freedom that freedom is an abstraction. Pretty on paper but irrelevant. Irrelevant not only to the powerless but to the powerful. Specifically, liberty is irrelevant to leaders who choose not to use it. No matter how much power, authority, or influence an individual has, if they decide to be passive as opposed to active, to stay silent rather than to speak up, then liberty lies fallow. In which case liberty – like a muscle that has atrophied – is as useless as pointless.   

So far, during President Donald Trump’s second term in office, America’s corporate leaders have been even more reluctant than they were during his first to speak truth to power. They stay silent even when the president says or does something that not only threatens their business but drives them nuts. Such as on tariffs, a subject on which Trump bobs and weaves as rapidly as regularly. Still, even leaders whose businesses are most directly affected by Trump’s every move are fearful. Fearful of invoking Trump’s wrath lest he retaliates not just against them but against the companies for which they are responsible.

A few weeks ago, the CEO of Mattel, Ynon Kreiz, said on CNBC that he did not intend to move manufacturing to the United States. When word of this reached Trump, he was furious. He threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on Mattel’s products, commanding the company would not “sell one toy in the United States.” Then Trump gilded the lily. He added, “I wouldn’t want to have him [Kreiz] as an executive too long.” In response to these sorts of warning shots, Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld told the New York Times that it was prudent for chief executives not to challenge the administration. He added that which I incessantly point out – to effect change corporate leaders must take collective action.

Though America’s corporate leaders have enormous clout, in their relationship to Trump they are virtually without exception followers. Followers who are servile. Followers who have been cowed not just into submission but into silence.

Which returns me to how pointless liberty is unless it is exercised. To which the titans of corporations would reply their hands are tied because their first responsibility is to their shareholders. Shareholders who would be threatened by even a single potshot from the White House.

Jamie Dimon has been CEO of JPMorgan for 20 years. On his next birthday he will be 70 years old. Tim Cook has been CEO of Apple for 14 years. On his next birthday he will be 65 years old. What would happen if these two leaders acted like leaders not followers? Especially if they did so in concert. If just one time they opened their mouths and said what they really think and feel about the Trump administration as opposed to remaining mute.

From Dimon and Cook’s long history in business, and from their deep familiarity with financial markets both at home and abroad, we can safely surmise that not everything that Trump has said and done in recent months is to their liking. Apple particularly has been a favorite Trump target. But publicly Cook has remained deaf, dumb and blind, failing to make a single public statement that might irk the president. But… if the likes of Cook and Dimon believe that they cannot, given their positions, speak truth to power maybe they should resign their positions. It’s why I single them out. They have had all the power that anyone could ever want. And they have all the money that anyone could ever need. What’s left for them other than to exercise the liberty that rightfully is theirs?

Bruce Springsteen is a different animal. I do not compare him to the likes of Dimon and Cook. Springsteen is a leader – but another sort entirely. A leader who has never had to play the part of a follower. Who has always believed he was at liberty to tell his truth. So, it’s liberating to see and hear him put his money where his mouth is. To take on a man who cows near everyone else into denying what rightfully is theirs – liberty.

Here is Springsteen last week at a performance in Manchester, England.

Liberty. Leaders who don’t use it lose it.   

The word “leader” has some four hundred different definitions. Some focus primarily on position, others primarily on behavior, and still others primarily on impact. Here I define a leader as an agent of change. A leader leaves an imprint.

The word “great” is similarly murky. What do I mean by “great” – a “great leader”? A leader who is exceptionally good? Or prominent? Or significant? Or impactful? I mean the last – a leader who is not just exceptionally but singularly impactful. Which in my lexicon means sometimes good, but sometimes bad.

For many years when I asked groups to whom I was speaking who they thought was the greatest living leader, their answer usually was Nelson Mandela. They assumed that I was asking which living leader was both exceptionally effective and exceptionally good. But after Mandela died (in 2013), when I asked the same question, most people were mute. They could not name a single living leader who they thought “great.”      

Then often as not they would train the question on me. “Who,” someone would ask, did I think “the greatest living leader?” To which I replied and still do, “Bill Gates.”

Gates was in the news again this week. He announced that his enormously well-endowed and impactful foundation, the Gates Foundation, would spend some $200 billion over the next twenty years – and then would close.

Normally Gates no longer makes headlines. But not for a moment for approximately the last half century did the man fall off our radar. His announcement this week was, then, just a reminder of how immensely successful he has been, how hugely wealthy he has become, how astonishingly innovative and generous his philanthropy, and of how his foundation, especially though not exclusively through its medical and scientific interventions, has saved and improved the lives of many tens of millions.

Gates’s greatness is evident not just in one domain but in two that are totally different. At about age 20 he cofounded Microsoft, one of the most successful companies in American history. As the subsequent decades testify, he was astonishingly brilliant at technological innovation and not just at starting a business but at running it. Several decades later, during approximately the second half of his adult life – Gates will turn 70 later this year – he proved himself equally remarkable in another arena entirely, philanthropy. He was exceptional not just at giving away humungous sums of money but in deciding how to give these sums away, and as importantly in persuading other mega-rich to give their money away.

Bill Gates is no saint nor is his foundation flawless. Gates might have dabbled during his marriage and his fleeting association with Jeffrey Epstein did him no favors. Moreover, his foundation has been accused of sins ranging from being too dominant to taking advantage of tax breaks.

Still, as mere mortals go, Gates is great. Greatly gifted, greatly curious, greatly hardworking, greatly disciplined, greatly dedicated, and greatly civic minded. Gates would be the first to admit that he won what Warren Buffet called “the ovarian lottery.” As the recently published first volume of Gates’s autobiography testifies – the book is called Source Code; I recommend it – he was born not just white and male but also to highly accomplished, comfortably situated, loving and smart parents. As a child, adolescent, and young adult, he had every advantage. But his early history also makes clear that he was preternaturally smart from the start, with an almost uncanny ability to focus laser-like on that which captured not so much his mind as his imagination.

Two women in Gates’s life made enormous contributions, especially to his greatness as a philanthropist. The first was his exceptional mother, Mary Gates; the second his exceptional, erstwhile wife, and mother of his three children, Melinda French Gates.* While his mother died relatively young, his wife was his decades-long partner in what became as consuming a passion for Bill Gates as Microsoft had been – how to give away enormous sums of money as wisely as well.

Bill Gates has been threaded through American life for decades. So, we’ve taken to taking him for granted. But he is a very, very rare bird. A leader who is great in the very best sense of this word.   

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*The Gates Foundation was originally named the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. After their divorce, the name was changed.