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Nearly no one was surprised that Sepp Blatter was reelected yesterday for a fifth term as president of FIFA. This in spite of the fact that a few days earlier the long-held and widespread suspicion that FIFA – the association responsible for governing international soccer – is riddled with corruption was at least preliminarily confirmed. Fourteen FIFA officials were charged by the U.S. Justice Department with racketeering, wire fraud, and money laundering. So far Blatter himself faces no legal charges. Nevertheless, at a minimum, he has presided for seventeen years over an organization that has scandalized and degraded the world’s most popular sport.

The mystery is not that Blatter is, at the least, miserably incompetent. The mystery is that he was reelected in spite of his screamingly obvious failings. We should not, in other words, be astonished when a bad leader is hell bent on remaining in place. We should be astonished when a bad leader’s followers make the deliberate decision to keep him in place, even when their motivations for doing so seem on the surface to be apparent.

Of course any student of history knows how dreadfully difficult it is to dislodge even the most evil of people in positions of power. Once leaders and yes, managers as well, have secured their status, somehow disposing of them, getting them out, pushing them aside, is dreadfully difficult, no matter how malevolent their transgressions or the extent of their incompetence.

What pains me particularly is how little the leadership industry has to say about all this. How fixated it is on developing good leaders – how ignorant it is about stopping or at least slowing bad leaders. This is not to say that no one has studied bad leadership; some have. But our numbers are woefully small, which is one reason why bad leadership is as little understood now as it was then, at the inception of the leadership industry some forty years ago. We should be embarrassed – even ashamed.

 

They both led organizations that presided over iconic sports.

They both led organizations that by many measures were stunningly successful.

They both transformed the sports over which they ruled.

They both were ultimately corrupted by the color of money.

They both were enabled by numberless followers – who themselves contributed to the corruption and cronyism.

They both were protected by numberless followers – who themselves contributed to the corruption and cronyism.

They both were Europeans who led in a limbo in which no individual or institution held them accountable.

They both operated in a context that shrouded them in secrecy.

They both led their organizations for far too long – about two decades.

They both got away with being bad leaders until they were some 80 years of age.

Finally they both had to be pushed from their perch – neither walked willingly away from the positions of power that they seemed to feel rightfully were theirs.

Put directly, Sepp Blatter, the tarnished president of FIFA, the governing body of soccer, has a predecessor in the world of global sport, another leader who not long ago started strong and ended humiliated.

His name is Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 1980 to 2001.  In my 2004 book, Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters, I wrote extensively about Samaranch, concluding that:

“As the years went on, as Samaranch presided over the nearly complete transformation of the IOC from sports movement into commercial giant, the original Olympic ideal faded…. The negative impact of the infusion of corporate capital on the Olympic movement and its parent figure, the IOC, became increasingly evident. For all his early accomplishments, Samaranch was unwilling to check the growing costs of his relentless drive for more money and greater expansion. And so by the time he resigned as president, the reputation of the IOC had become badly tarnished, many of his IOC colleagues had been discredited, and the games themselves had become no more, if no less, than global sports extravaganzas.

Over time Samaranch had grown careless. His increasingly exclusive focus on financial expansion caused him to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to problems ranging from enveloping commercialism to … growing corruption. His ignorance of these problems gradually evolved from inattention to rank mismanagement and incompetence. His refusal to address the IOC’s increasingly long list of troubles bespeaks a man whose insatiable ambition ultimately intruded on his capacity for good decision making and sound judgement.”

Sound familiar?

 

In his nine years as Prime Minister of Macedonia – a country now riddled with failed institutions, ethnic tensions, and murderous conflict – Nikola Gruevski morphed from a man once considered reticent and insecure to a megalomaniacal tyrant. It remains unclear how to explain this miserable metamorphosis.

What is clear is that it is not unusual. Tyrants, dictators, the most atrocious of autocrats, seem at a distance to be made not born. This is not to say that rigorous biographical analysis does not yield a childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood that in some ways foreshadows the murder and mayhem yet to come. Rather it is to say that to all outward appearances even the worst of the lot tend to start life in ordinary, and in some number of cases even promising, ways.

Adolph Hitler wanted to become a fine artist. He turned to politics only after being rejected twice from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. Nor was he the only member of the Nazi elite with other, early ambitions. Joseph Goebbels, for example, Hitler’s acolyte and notorious Minister of Propaganda, studied history and literature and wrote his doctoral thesis on a 19^th century German romantic writer.

Joseph Stalin published poetry and won a scholarship to the leading Orthodox Seminary in Tbilisi.

Mao Zedong originally studied to become a teacher.

Radovan Karadzic received his degree in medicine and went on to become a practicing psychiatrist, with a subspecialty in depression. He was also, like Stalin, a published poet.

And Bashar al-Assad, held largely responsible for the deaths of some 300,000 Syrians and for the largest refugee crisis in a generation, was also a practicing physician, in his case with a specialty in ophthalmology.

Is there a lesson to be learned here? Not about individuals, maybe, but about groups. Clearly we cannot predict with any certainty which individuals will evolve from being apparently ordinary to obviously fiendish. What we can say for certain is that this evolution does not take place in a vacuum. It is allowed by others who, for whatever constellation of reasons, tolerate and even enable it.

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I posted a blog lamenting the leadership industry’s single-minded focus on single individuals. I argued instead for a more holistic or systemic approach, one that takes into account those who are other than the leader, and also the contexts within which the relevant players are situated.

Later in the day I was reading the Financial Times and came on a piece titled, “Horses for courses that gee up working relationships.”* The article described part of a two-week executive training course that had been organized by the London Business School for partners from the consulting firm AT Kearney. The idea was for these executives to earn the trust of selected horses so that they might lead them around the arena. Why? “For participants to learn about themselves and the unconscious signals they send to clients or colleagues, or indeed horses.”

I have nothing against horses. Or for that matter against equine “guided learning.” Rather the question is this one. How is the time for learning leadership allocated?

The course described in the article is two weeks in duration. Does two weeks of executive learning even make sense? Is two weeks enough time in which to accomplish anything that will endure and is somewhat substantive?

Even assuming that the answer to these questions is yes, how best to use the two weeks? Has it been demonstrated that spending some of this precious time on equine guided learning is optimum? Might this same amount of time be better spent another way? Better spent thinking not about the self or about the “unconscious signals” we send, but about the other? Better spent learning about complex problems that defy simple solutions?

Just asking.

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*http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7fcee4e8-e83d-11e4-baf0-00144feab7de.html#axzz3aIrpLzGJ

As anyone who knows my work knows by now, I am disenchanted with the leadership industry’s single-minded focus on single individuals.

Why? Because the results of this approach have been disappointing. We have not succeeded in developing leaders equipped to meet the demands of the 21^st century.

Why? Because the problems of the 21st century are more complex than the education and training that we provide. In other words, a systemic approach to leadership development would be better, far better, than simply training our lens on select individuals.

Thinking about the world as a system comprised of different parts – rather than as a place in which only one part (the leader) pertains – is not new or original to me. What is different is the idea that this systemic approach should be embedded in, embraced by, the leadership industry.

The leadership system as I describe it is simple – it has only three parts. The leader. The followers – or the others to whom the leader in any way relates. And the context – or contexts (plural), within which both leaders and followers are located.

I do not argue that every systems approach should mimic mine. What I do argue for is a clearer understanding of the ways in which power is shared, and of the ways in which the system itself determines how.

To wit, this excerpt from a recent article by Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, titled “The Milwaukee Experiment.”*

“One of the difficulties of criminal justice reform is that power is spread so diffusely though the system. ‘Criminal justice is a system, and no one person or group is in charge of it,’ Alfred Blumenstein, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University, told me. ‘You have legislators who decide what’s a crime and establish the range of penalties. You have judges who impose the sentences. You have police who decide whom to arrest and you have prosecutors who have wide discretion in what cases to bring, what changes to call for, and what sentences to agree to in plea bargains.’ Each of those participants has contributed to the rise in incarceration.”

I rest my case. For now.

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*http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/05/11/the-milwaukee-experiment

 

My most recent book – Hard Times: Leadership in America – was published in October by Stanford University Press. The book explores the impact of context on leadership and followership.

Beginning February 3, I started posting in this space excerpts. They appear here in the order in which they appear in the book.

Excerpt from Chapter 8 – Law 

“Though it is little noted and even less understood, it seems obvious that the ubiquity of the law in twenty-first century America must have an impact, does have an impact, on leadership in twenty-first century America. It is not too much to say that the long arm of the law reaches leaders in government, and in business, and in nonprofits such as schools and hospitals, and in virtually every conceivable area of American life. Even religious leaders, who until relatively recently were generally immune to prosecution in the nation’s courts, are now vulnerable.

This emphasis on, dependence on the legal system as, so to speak, the court of last resort is a peculiarly American phenomenon. Americans have more adversarial legalism: we depend more than other people in other countries on lawyers and lawsuits, on tort actions, and on legal actions against administrative agencies. This explains why so many American leaders think that they have no choice but to “lawyer up,” to make certain that they have their own legal experts to protect both them and the institutions for which they are responsible, against legal liability.

America’s uniquely litigious culture is directly responsible for complicating and constraining the lives of leaders – if only because it takes time and consumes resources …. Attending to litigation or to the possibility thereof, or both is an important part of what leaders are paid now to do.”

 

The pollsters did a lousy job of forecasting yesterday’s British general election. Instead of a close race between the Labour Party and its leader, Ed Miliband, and the Conservative Party and its leader, Prime Minister David Cameron, the incumbents won a decisive victory. As I write and tradition dictates, Cameron has already met with the Queen. And as I write and convention suggests, he has already returned to 10 Downing Street and reiterated his intention. He will govern as prime minister of “one United Kingdom.”

Just one problem. It’s not clear that this can happen. It’s not clear that Cameron can continue to preside over the United Kingdom as we have known it – which includes Scotland.

On the face of it he has defied the odds. By winning another electoral victory he has gone against the conventional wisdom, which is that in the 21^st century democratic leadership is not only notoriously hard but famously unrewarding. But … what kind of prize is it that Cameron has actually won? Will yesterday’s victory turn out historically hollow?

Setting aside the numberless uncertainties that plague every head of state, for sure Cameron’s capacity to lead is threatened twice over. First is the mounting pressure in Scotland for independence – in spite of his constant conciliations and concessions. Labour was nearly wiped out yesterday in Scotland precisely because of the surging Scottish National Party. Which is why it cannot possibly be confidently predicted that when Cameron finally leaves office he will still be presiding over “one United Kingdom.”

Second is that Cameron has committed himself to conducting an in-out referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union. Again, this is not a circumstance of his own choosing. Just as he would wish away surging Scottish nationalism, so he would wish away the referendum on participation in the European Union. But he cannot. He has been unable in both cases to control the momentum for change, which is precisely why his remaining tenure as prime minister is likely to be more sobering than uplifting. Yes, David Cameron has won reelection. But his moment in the sun will be short-lived. Odds are good that by the time he leaves office England will be a country further diminished.

Until now Sheryl Sandberg – COO of Facebook, author of the blockbuster hit Leaning In, and activist– had it all. At least she seemed to. She seemed to have led a life of unvarnished good fortune: great success from an early age; material wealth beyond imagining; good health and good looks; and recognition, even adulation, and love. In fact, as she became in recent years not only a leader in American business but a leader in America more generally – especially of women who were professionally ambitious and similarly intent on having a family including children – Sandberg became something of a household name, familiar to anyone with an interest in issues relating to women and leadership.

Sandberg though had a flaw. She was too perfect. Everything about her was perfect – her professional life and her personal life. If there was even a single fly in her ointment it was not apparent. And so her activism, especially on behalf of women in the workplace, was somewhat suspect. She was or so she seemed an elitist – how could she possibly know anything about the travails of mere mortals? How could she – flanked on the one side by her immediate superior, the iconic Mark Zuckerberg; and on the other by her model husband and the model father of their two young children, Dave Goldberg – possibly relate to the rest of us, beset as we all were, we women particularly, by typical travails of everyday life?

All this has now changed. With Goldberg’s sudden death last week at age 47, Sandberg’s apparently perfect life has been shattered. At least for now, and for years to come, her purpose in life will be to stitch a new life – for herself, and for her son and daughter.

It is impossible to predict the ultimate impact of this tragedy on Sheryl Sandberg. But here is what we do know. Great heroes, great leaders in life and legend, endure trial by fire. As Joseph Campbell wrote in his classic, The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

“The hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder. Fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

This then is not to say that Sheryl Sandberg will eventually emerge triumphant from her descent into Hades, into the underworld, or other world. Instead it is to point out that heroes, heroines, great leaders, are frequently familiar with having had to achieve “a decisive victory” over “fabulous forces.”

 

 

Published hard on the heels of the Second World War was one of the most influential books of the post-war period. Titled “The Authoritarian Personality,” it was co-authored by a group of social scientists, led by the preeminent Theodor Adorno, intent on exploring and explaining how Hitler had happened.

The book essentially concluded that there were certain personality characteristics that comprised authoritarian types. It further concluded that these types had long been prevalent in Germany, even in the Germany family, which had made the German people especially vulnerable to an authoritarian, even tyrannical, leader such as Hitler.

While Germany’s political culture now is of course entirely different from Germany’s political culture then, the image of the German leader or even patriarch as authoritarian has never gone fully out of fashion. Last week, however, it was dealt what finally might be a fatal blow.

The chairman of Volkswagen, Ferdinant Piech, was ousted in what amounted to a palace coup. Why? Because in spite of his impeccable lineage (he is a descendent of Ferdinand Porsche), and in spite of his earlier excellence as head of the car company, and in spite of his long history of winning power struggles, this time, at age 78, Piech was hoisted by his own petard. He was ousted by members of his board who finally were fed up – fed up with his high-handed and arrogant ways, fed up with having to put up with his aloofness and ruthlessness, and fed up with standing by and saying nothing while he did what he wanted to do how he wanted to do it. When Piech tried unilaterally to dump CEO Martin Winterkorn, the board rallied to the latter and ditched the former.

As soon as key shareholders and stakeholders confronted Piech to say that they had lost confidence in him, he, apparently as stunned as he was infuriated and humiliated, promptly resigned.  He was, of course, not literally the last authoritarian German – but among leaders he was one of the most prominent. With Piech out of the picture the species  – the German leader as authoritarian leader – is further along the way to becoming entirely extinct.

 

Leadership types look at life through the lens of the leader. It is the leader who is said to create change. It is the leader who is said to control the action. It is the leader who is said to be the agent of historical causation.

How flimsy this is as an explanation for how history happens has been evident again in Baltimore – as it was in Ferguson, the site of the first in a recent series of violent protests against the persistence of racial injustice in 21st century America.

Dissecting these outbreaks in the usual ways – by pointing to leaders – is wholly and woefully inadequate. Who has been a leader in Baltimore? The Mayor? The Police Commissioner? The State’s Attorney for Baltimore City? The various legislators who sought to intervene? Sure, they’ve been the ones in positions of authority. But have they been in any obvious way leaders? Have they been in any consistent way able to frame the situation to enlist followers? For that matter, what about the followers – those without any obvious sources of power, authority, and influence? Have they been the ones controlling the action? Has this been a case of power to the people, power to the powerless? Have usual followers morphed into unusual leaders?

In fact they have – but likely only temporarily. Those who control the streets do for a time control the action – others respond to what they do. But their moment in the sun is usually – not always, but usually – brief. More often than not when the protesters have gone home, the situation reverts back to what it was before. Baltimore in the late 1960’s was a hotbed of racial unrest. And, in response, were in fact numberless government programs and private/public partnerships intended to create positive change.

But, in time, over time, it became clear that the changes were inadequate to the task at hand. The task was so enormous because the change that was required was systemic. It was not about a single individual or a single institution. It was not about developing good leaders or about enlisting good followers. It was, it is, about coming to comprehend that broken parts comprise a broken whole – and that enduring change requires that the whole, the system, be fixed.

Loss of jobs. Abandoned homes. High rate of poverty. High rate of single parent families. High rate of high school dropouts. High rate of crime. High rate of infant mortality. Low rate of life expectancy. Predatory banks. Mass incarceration. Limited access to decent housing. All these issues and then some have a disparate and disproportionate impact on certain groups, most obviously in Baltimore African-Americans.

What’s the lesson to be learned – by the leadership industry particularly? There are two. The first is that because these broken parts are integral to the broken whole, they all need repair. It will not suffice to tackle only education, or only health, or only housing. The second is that systemic repair is not amenable to leadership as we conventionally preach and practice it.

It is not that the problems are irremediable, immune to human intervention. Rather it is that in order to fix them we need to develop in our leaders a depth of contextual intelligence and expertise that far exceeds that which we typically think of as leadership development. What we are talking about here is educating for leadership in ways that are much more extensive and demanding than those that are conventionally conceived. What we are talking about here is learning Baltimore – and learning America. This will require not only acquiring skills, but information and insight into how the system has worked, historically, and into how it works now – politically, economically, and socially.