Author: Barbara

That leaders who lust can be lethal is a truism that applies, alas, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His lust for power has turned toxic.*    

Once upon a time Netanyahu was among the most gifted politicians in his country’s history. Smart, good looking and articulate; highly educated and well-traveled; expert and experienced not only in politics but in business.

For his excellence he was well rewarded. He served as Israel’s prime minister from 1996 to 1999. A decade later he became prime minister again, this time for twelve years, from 2009 to 2021. Moreover, during this entire stretch, when he was not prime minister, he held other prominent government posts, including Minister of Finance and leader of the opposition.

Things began to turn seriously south for Netanyahu in 2019, when he was formally indicted on charges including bribery and fraud. In June 2021 he was ousted from his post as prime minister by a coalition government.

It’s been said that Netanyahu remained in electoral politics after the charges were filed primarily to avoid the punishments and degradations of being found guilty. Who knows? Impossible to get inside anyone’s head. Whatever his ostensible reason for remaining in the game, he refused to leave the table. While his trial was ongoing, he continued to serve as leader of the opposition and, after yet another round of elections, in December 2022 he again became prime minister.     

This first year of Netanyahu’s most recent term has turned out the most disastrous in Israeli history. For many months the country has been under assault from within – its calamitous divisiveness the result of massive protesting against the judicial “reforms” put forth by Netanyahu and his notoriously right-wing, some argue facistic, cabinet. And now the country has suffered another assault, this time from without. An unprecedented attack by Hamas spotlighting an unprecedent failure of Israel’s vaunted intelligence apparatus.   

Netanyahu’s lust for power has led to unmitigated tragedy. Nor is this story over. The ultimate consequences of his so far endless tenure remain to be revealed.

I want to be clear here. The cycle of violence in the Middle East is the fault not only of Israeli leadership, but of Palestinian leadership, that is, the lack thereof; and of leadership at the top in every other country in the region and in many other countries around the world. But history will never let Benjamin Netanyahu off the hook. His insistence on remaining in power no matter the price to be paid will forever blacken his name.

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Todd Pittinsky and I define a leader who lusts as having “a psychological drive that produces intense wanting, even desperately needing, to obtain an object, or to secure a circumstance. When the object has been obtained, or the circumstance secured, there is relief, but only briefly, temporarily.” In Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy. (Cambridge University Pressi, 2020, p. 2.)

Sometimes demanding more money is just about money. But sometimes demanding more money is additionally about power – about getting more money and more power.

Similarly, sometimes demanding more power is just about power. But sometimes demanding more power is additionally about money – about getting more power and more money.

Though money and power usually are inseparable, the symbiotic relationship between them tends to remain unspoken. Unspoken because it’s much more acceptable to ask for more money than to ask for more power.

Wanting more money is easy to understand, and sympathize with, especially if income is blatantly unequal. More money can and usually does translate into living a better lifestyle – and it mollifies feelings of grievance.

Striking autoworkers have taken to the picket lines for several reasons. High on the list is that the CEOs of Detroit’s big three automakers are earning about 300 times more than the median autoworker. Not only is this gap in earnings egregious, but it’s also wider than most large companies nationwide. Not incidentally, the media industry, also beset in recent months by strikes, is similarly unfair. In 2021 Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav earned 2,972 what his median employee made – $246 million.   

But if the benefits of having more money are immediately obvious, what are the benefits of having more power? What does more power get you? It might of course get you more money, in which case the virtue of having more power is clear. But what if having more power is about nothing else than having more power?

Does the question apply to, for example, Matt Gaetz, the Republican member of Congress who, with special venom, is trying to unseat the Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy? If there’s money in this for Gaetz, it’s not immediately apparent. What is immediately apparent is that for Gaetz this is about power. Even if he fails to overthrow McCarthy, Gaetz has seized the national spotlight, thereby accruing more power than if he had remained merely a backbencher.

As I wrote in The End of Leadership, in democratic societies leaders are becoming weaker and followers stronger. Hence the title, “the end of leadership.” In some ways this shift in power and influence is good, and in others bad. It certainly contributes, mightily, to our democratic dysfunctions – including to the current food fight in Congress. But it also contributes, mightily, to rectifying previously existing imbalances.

Case in point: the movement for player empowerment in college sports. Imagine this a generation ago: the Dartmouth College men’s basketball team petitioning the National Labor Relations Board to unionize! Startling, yes, surprising, no. For these players are only the most recent in a growing line of those taking on the old model. The model in which student-athletes gave their all to their schools – but their schools gave them little or nothing in return. No money and no power.

On the surface, what these players want is money. It was only two years ago that the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) finally agreed to allow its players to profit from their prowess. But beneath the surface this is also about power. Players are sick and tired of not being able to cash in on their contributions. And they are equally sick and tired of not being treated like enormous assets – which clearly, they are.

Motivations matter. It matters whether people are motivated by money, and, or power, and, or something else, such as safety and security. Motivations matter especially to those of us with an interest in who leads and why, and in who follows and why. For what drives us – and how strongly – determines what happens.

Follower power. This tale of two women is about follower power. About how two women with little or even no power took on men with so much power they were nearly unbridled.

The first of the two women was Frances Haugen. She was the whistleblower at Facebook who (in 2021) disclosed her identity on 60 Minutes. Haugen revealed she was the source of internal documents disclosing that Facebook knew some of its algorithms were causing great harm, notably to young people. She further told of a Facebook program designed to curb misinformation and other threats to national security, but that was dissolved after the 2020 presidential election. Haugen said what she saw at Facebook “over and over again was that there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook. And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interest, like making more money.”

The second of the two women was Cassidy Hutchinson. She was the whistleblower in the administration of President Donald Trump, who was an aide to his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Hutchinson came to the nation’s attention when she complied with a subpoena to testify before the January 6^th committee charged with investigating the attack on the US. Capitol. Previously Hutchinson had been a loyal member of Trump’s team, course-correcting only after the violence that unfolded on January 6^th. To explain her about face, she too invoked feelings of patriotism, specifically her loyalty to American democracy. She told the committee that she regarded the January 6^th attacks on Mike Pence as “unpatriotic” and “un-American.” And she testified that “we were watching the Capitol building getting defaced over a lie.” All this has just been reinforced, and then some, in her new book, tellingly titled, Enough.    

Do Haugen and Hutchinson have anything in common that might explain their extraordinary bravery? Their willingness to risk their well-being to publicly defend the United States of America from its economic and political excesses?

They do.

• Both are women. Both are women in a time when men still continue to hold the most powerful posts in American business and politics.
• Both are young, or relatively so. Haugen was about 35 when she went public with her disappointment and anger. Hutchinson was about 25 when she did the same.
• Both were anything other than members of coastal elites and undergraduates at anything other than elite schools. Haugen graduated from the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering. Hutchinson from Christopher Newport University.
• Both were starry eyed optimists early in their respective careers. When Haugen joined Facebook, she thought that “Facebook has the potential to bring out the best of us.” When Hutchinson started working in the White House she was, by her own testimony, “transfixed” by Trump and wanted nothing so much as to be his “loyal foot soldier.”
• Both came quickly to the conclusion that whistleblowing could and would be their way of trying to save the nation – and trying to redeem themselves. Haugen and Hutchinson are similarly a throwback to a time when civics and civility mattered far more than they do now. And when American ideals and idealism were threaded through the fabric of our national discourse.

None of this is to say that the weak shall inherit the earth. Rather it is to point out that being apparently weak – lacking obvious sources of power – does not preclude being remarkably strong. When Haugen worked at Facebook, and when Hutchinson worked in the White House, they were, by every measure. followers. They were certainly not, by any measure, leaders. Still, by daring to speak up and speak out they changed the nature of the conversation. And, maybe, the course of history.   

Go into a bookstore, look online, and you’ll see many, many, many books on leadership – online they’re available by the thousands. However, the word “evil” virtually never enters the leadership literature. As if leadership that is evil, as if the conception that leadership can be evil, never crosses our collective mind.

In my book Bad Leadership, I identified seven different types of bad leadership – of which Evil Leadership was one. I defined it this way:

The leader and at least some followers commit atrocities. They use pain as an instrument of power. The harm done to men, women, and children is severe rather than slight. The harm can be physical, psychological, or both.

I cannot say that since Bad Leadership came out our reluctance to explore leadership that is evil – to consider carefully this pox on the human condition – has subsided. We do see evil leadership. We do lament evil leadership. We do condemn evil leadership. And sometimes we even intervene to stop evil leadership. But nearly never do we call it out for what it is – leaders and some of their followers using pain as an instrument of power. And nearly never do we treat or attack it as we should – as a social, or societal, or sociological disease that can be and often is as lethal as some of our physical diseases.

To the general rule that the word “evil” is nearly never a modifier of the word “leadership,” nor nearly never applied to a particular leader, are rare exceptions. One such was a few days ago, in New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s column titled, “I Saw Firsthand How Much Is at Stake in Ukraine.” I was gratified to read that he used the word “evil” because there is no better word in the English language to describe Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked attack on Ukraine – or Putin himself.

I want to be clear. Friedman does not call Putin evil, refer to him as an evil leader or evil man. Rather he writes this: “What Putin is doing in Ukraine is not just reckless, not just a war of choice, not just an invasion in a class of its own for overreach, mendacity, immorality, and incompetence, all wrapped in a farrago of lies. What he is doing is evil.” Later Friedman adds that “what is so evil beyond the death and pain and trauma and destruction…  is that the last thing humanity needed was to divert so much attention… to respond to Putin’s war.” (Italics added.)

There is a distinction between saying that a person is evil – and saying that what a person does is evil. They are not the same. The first is a blanket indictment of a person’s character – an indictment of the whole. The second is an indictment only in part – a judgement rendered of what someone does, not of who someone is.

Leaders cannot be understood except as part of a system – the leadership system.  This system has three parts, each of which is of equal importance – leaders, followers, and contexts. Putin’s war against Ukraine cannot therefore be separated from the man himself. Or from his followers – ranging from close aides and acolytes to tens of millions of ordinary Russians. Or from the contexts within which the war was launched – for example the historical context within which Russia and Ukraine have been entwined not for decades but for centuries.  

Still, the systemic approach does not let the leader – in this case the aggressor, Putin – off the hook. While a word such as “evil” must be used judiciously, very, very sparingly, on occasion it’s apt. We have no trouble calling out flat out past leaders who were evil – leaders such as Hitler and Stalin. We should do no less in the present. If American leaders more directly labeled Putin “evil,” American followers would more unanimously support President Biden’s endgame. Defeating President Putin without question.

Leaders of companies with a recent history of scandal have a special obligation. They are obligated – or they should be – to lead their companies ethically as well as effectively.

Companies that fall into this category are, for example, Volkswagen. Its reputation was badly tarnished eight years ago when it came to light that it had long installed in its vehicles a defeat device, or “cheat device,” deliberately intended to mislead on emissions. Also Wells Fargo, some of whose executives are only now paying for their roles in a scandal that burst into the open in 2016, when the bank was revealed to have created millions of fake accounts not for the benefit of its customers but for the benefit of Wells Fargo. And, more dramatically, Boeing, when two of its 737 MAX airliners crashed within five months of each other (in 2018 and 2019), killing 346 people.

What happened at Boeing was not only the most dramatic of the corporate scandals, but it was also the most tragic. In direct if inadvertent consequence of what happened at Boeing, and did not happen, hundreds of people died.

Peter Robison wrote the definitive account of the causes and effects of the two crashes, Flying Blind: The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing. His conclusion was that the Federal Aviation Administration had “abdicated much of its oversight to Boeing itself.” And, even more disturbingly, that the culture at Boeing had “rotted.” That under then CEO Dennis Muilenburg, “Boeing had reinvented itself into one of the most shareholder-friendly creatures of the market. It celebrated managers for cost cutting, co-opted regulators with heaps of money, and pressured suppliers with Walmart-style tactics.”*

Given this dismal recent history one would think that Boeing’s current leadership team – every member of Boeing’s board and every one of Boeing’s top leaders and managers – would be especially alert to anything that smacked of carelessness, casualness, or callousness. Anything that did not convey the message both to those inside the company and to those without, that whatever the mistakes management made in the recent past the present would be different. In the present Boeing would be above reproach.

No such luck. I was astonished last week to read in the Wall Street Journal that Boeing’s two top executives were apparently oblivious to the mood of the moment. Apparently unaware of the temper of the times in which workplace issues – especially, post-Covid, the issue of hybrid work – were front and center. The Journal does not normally dig up dirt on America’s corporate elite. I surmise then that the editors found this story irresistible, or egregious, or both.

Boeing’s Chief Executive Officer, David Calhoun, started to work from home during the pandemic. The problem is he never stopped. He simply did not return to the office, continuing instead to work from one of his two homes, either his “sprawling waterfront house” on a lake in New Hampshire, or his other house “in a gated South Carolina resort community.” According to records obtained by the Journal, to accomodate Calhoun Boeing’s fleet of private jets made more than 400 trips to or from airports near his homes in the last three years. Not a good look.  

 Similarly, Boeing’s Chief Financial Officer, Brian West, who also does not usually go to Boeing’s headquarters, now located in Arlington, Virginia. Instead, West needs just five minutes to get from his home in New Canaan, CT to a small, newly opened Boeing office – which just happens to be also in New Canaan.

None of this would matter so much if we were not now consciously post-Covid. Now not in a time during which Boeing is itself urging its workforce to get back to the office. Some of its employees are back in the office full time; others are permitted to work remotely or to go hybrid, into the office some days, work from home the others.   

The Journal article was just that, it was an article about Boeing, it was not an editorial. Still, the piece was opinionated, strongly opinionated. It pointed out that while it was not unheard of for a CEO to live and work remotely, far from the office, it was unusual. It quoted a management professor saying that Calhoun and Davis were clearly “out of step with the general messaging from corporate America,” which was encouraging everyone to get back to the office. And it pointed out that Boeing was also an outlier among its peers – for example, the CEO of rival Airbus regularly worked from the company’s headquarters in Toulouse.

“People are pissed they’re being told to get their butts to the office,” said a union official representing some of Boeing workers. No wonder. Their boss is working from home while many of them are not. Their boss is earning $22 million a year – any of them doing the same?

Shame on Boeing’s board for tolerating leaders who do not labor every day, in every way to restore the company’s honor. Shame on Boeing’s leaders for doing less than their best to boost the company they purportedly represent.

“People are pissed”? Really? The wonder is they are not more pissed than they are.

*Doubleday, 2021, p. 6   

Franz Kafka’s famous story, Metamorphosis, is about Gregor Samsa, a salesman who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably become a bug.

Mike Pence’s famous story, also called “Metamorphosis,” is about himself, one kind of politician who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably become another kind of politician.

Mike Pence was Vice President to Donald Trump’s President. In that role, Pence was Trump’s stunningly reliable, astonishingly indefatigable, and stupefyingly unsurpassable Enabler. In my book, The Enablers, I wrote about Pence in part as follows:

Pence [felt he] had no choice. So long as he remained vice president to Trump, he could not risk disagreeing with him, distinguishing himself from him, certainly not in public, not once. Trump’s demand for, need for, fealty was absolute, so before all else it was Pence’s fulltime job to fall into line. [Moreover] part of his job description was to praise the president tirelessly, extravagantly, and effusively …. But Pence’s decision to lash his political fortunes to those of Donald Trump would prove costly. History is not likely to treat Pence kindly. He will be viewed as an enabler, an abject subordinate who, among his other failings, not once corrected or contradicted the president’s numberless lies.*

That was Pence then. Pence now is something different. Of course, unlike Gregor Samsa, Pence did not metamorphose overnight. It took him months, years even, fully to grasp, at least for public consumption, the man he had served so subserviently for so long.

But now, finally, his metamorphosis is complete. In a speech he delivered two days ago, Pence devoted himself entirely to separating himself once and for all from his former boss, his previous puppeteer. The former vice president spoke of what he now calls the “fundamental” and “unbridgeable” divide in the Republican Party – between traditional conservatives like himself on the one hand, and populists such as Trump and his clones on the other. It was a time for choosing, Pence said, echoing a phrase of Ronald Reagan’s. A time for the Republican Party to choose between traditional, long venerated conservatism or the “siren song of populism.”    

So, what are we to make of Pence’s metamorphosis? Why did he – if he even did – have a change of heart? Are we to take his flip-flop seriously? Does anyone care?

First, why the apparent change of heart? He would deny that he has changed – he would insist that it is Trump who is different. To which there is an element of truth. Trump is far more dangerous a leader now than he was when he first asked Pence to run as his vice president. Even during his time in the White House, Trump went from bad to worse. His incitement to insurrection on January 6, 2021, was a logical, even predictable, outcome of what had come before. So, if Pence did not see Trump for what he was especially during the last year of his presidency, Pence was being willfully blind.

Second, are we to take Pence’s flip-flop seriously? Yes. I do not doubt that Pence now is more comfortable in his own skin than he was while serving as Trump’s Toady-in Chief. What we’re seeing in the present is in keeping with Pence in the past, the more distant past, before he lashed himself to the man who would be his downfall. Pence as a member of Congress, and Pence as Governor of Indiana was deeply conservative. He was never, however, on the fringe, at the extreme, a far-right populist.  

Finally, does anyone care who Pence now is or what Pence now says? Not really. As I predicted, history has not treated Pence kindly. Even members of his own party largely ignore him, treating him as someone more marginal than consequential. Pence has become the quintessential example of someone who did too little, much, much too late.

From 2016 to 2020 Pence was so abject a follower he was an Enabler. From 2020 to 2022 he was so timorous a follower that despite the January 6 chants of “Hang Mike Pence!” he still did not separate himself fully and forevermore from the man who was his leader. Only recently did Pence finally complete his metamorphosis. Only recently did he wake one morning to find himself transformed into someone different.

Pence will never be an impressive leader. But at least he is no longer a pitiable, even pathetic follower.

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*Barbara Kellerman, The Enablers: How Trump’s Team Flunked the Pandemic and Failed America (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Pp. 171 ff.    

A coup d’état or, coup, is the overthrow of a government by illegal means. Usually, though not always, coups entail some violence, and usually they are executed by small groups, often members of the military.  Recently has been a spate of coups, specifically in Africa. But they are by no means confined to a single continent or region of the world. In fact, Donald Trump’s attempt to forestall the peaceful transfer of power from his presidency to Joe Biden’s, has frequently been referred to as a “failed coup.”  

Though a coup is generally thought of as the overthrow of a government, what coups really are, or at least more precisely are, are overthrows of leaders. Of single individuals, heads of states, and of their allies and aides, all of whom represent the old order that must be deposed. Generally, at least the leaders, now perceived as the old guard, are murdered, or imprisoned, or held under house arrest, or in some other way permanently eliminated or removed. They are no longer, in other words, free to go about their business for the obvious reason that they represent a threat, likely an indefinite one, to those who had the temerity to forcibly overthrow them.

“Coup d’état” is a French term that refers, literally, to a coup against the state. To a blow against the existing government, or a strike against it, or a hit against it in the attempt, if necessary, a violent attempt, to upend it. To overturn the old or at least the previous order in favor of a new one.

However not all coups are the same. And they are not all executed against leaders of a state. Now the word “coup” can be used more broadly to, for example, refer to corporate leaders who have been pushed from their perch suddenly, and without their consent, and by a small group determined to remove them from their positions of power.

About Bob Chapek, for example, the former chief executive officer of Disney, I could reasonably say that he was removed by a coup. He was in any case pushed out of his post from one day to the next, entirely by surprise, and against his will, and by a small group, in this case Disney’s board. Further Chapek was immediately, instantly, replaced by a successor. To be sure, Chapek was given a golden parachute. But getting out immediately, and completely, and forevermore was part of the deal. He was never to darken Disney’s door again.

During the first quarter of the 21^st century Africa has been the epicenter of coups against the state. In the last decade alone have been 22 such coup attempts on the African continent. And in the last six years 11 coups were successful, for example in Chad, Mali, and Guinea. Moreover, early this summer, in July, was the forcible overthrow of the government in Niger. And late this summer, in August, was the forcible overthrow of the government of Gabon.

In Africa, certainly in parts of Africa, coups have become almost normalized. While all coups are different, in Africa they tend to have these things in common: economic deprivations and democratic discontents. However, for those among us with an interest in leadership and followership they represent a larger trend – one in which more uneasy than ever lie the heads that wear the crowns.   

In all American history, for example, a grand total of three presidents have been impeached. Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. Notably, three of the four impeachments were in the last 25 years and, notably, Trump was impeached twice during his single term as president. Continuing the quickening, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy recently said that the next “natural step” was to open an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. And Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene announced that she would “not vote to fund the government” unless the House voted on a Biden impeachment inquiry.

Whatever your opinions of the recent impeachments, or threats to impeach, the syndrome’s the same. You don’t like the leader you have? Get rid of them by any means necessary – and replace them with one you do.

Lebanon is a small country – its population is fewer than 6 million. Still, as recently as the 1970s, it was punching far above its weight. It was known as the secure, and mountainous, “Switzerland of the Middle East. And its capital, Beirut, was known as the liberal, and fashionable, “Paris of the Middle East.” Which makes Lebanon’s vertiginous descent into rampant corruption and relentless chaos almost impossible to comprehend.

How did it happen? There are several reasons, of course, among them Lebanon’s malevolent neighbor, Syria, and, for more than two decades, its malevolent president, Bashar al-Assad. But no single explanation is as powerful as Lebanon’s own leadership class which, by wide agreement, has been an unmitigated disaster. By leadership class I refer specifically to its political and economic elites, both of which have been on the whole miserably inept – and atrociously corrupt.

They have been somewhat inept and corrupt since Lebanon’s inception in 1943. However, their power to wreak havoc has waxed and waned over the years, culminating only in recent years in such a disastrous lack of competence and rectitude that it sometimes seems hope is lost. The country’s infrastructure is crumbling. Inflation is out of control – in April it was almost 270%. There are electricity outages and water cuts. Garbage is piled in the streets and the environment is being degraded. The economy is stagnant if not crippled. Political unrest and civil disorder range from intermittent, to frequent, to constant. And at any given time, sectarian friction is on a continuum from dysfunctional to deadly.  

Arguably no single leader personifies the overall wretchedness of Lebanon’s leadership class as vividly as does the former governor of its central bank, Riad Salameh. Salameh was governor for thirty years. He was repeatedly reappointed to his post by Lebanon’ Council of Ministers, each time for a six-year term. By the time he finally, just recently, exited his post, he was the world’s longest serving central banker.

For much of his tenure Salameh was praised for helping to steady his country during its frequent times of economic crisis. However, he is now being charged with a litany of financial crimes, for which he is being investigated in the United States and Europe, as well as in Lebanon. Salameh is accused of engaging in financial practices “to the detriment of the state.” They include money laundering, engaging in fiscal fraud, and embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds.  In addition to his personal corruption, he is now regarded not as Lebanon’s financial mastermind or, as he was sometimes known, as its “magician,” but as the architect of its misery. As the Financial Times (FT) recently noted, at the “root of the current rot” were decisions that Salameh had been making for years.

Which raises these questions. Why was he reappointed, over and over again, for three decades, to his post? Was everyone in Lebanon unable to see what was happening? Was the entirety of the political establishment and the rest of the financial establishment incapable of detecting either his obvious wrongdoing or his glaring stupidity? Or was their blindness, their collective blindness, willful, deliberate?     

The above-mentioned piece leaves no doubt. It is widely assumed that Salameh will stay in Lebanon to avoid certain questioning and possible arrest abroad. “The arrangement suits Lebanon’s politicians.” Why? Because as one put it, “As long as Salameh stays here, he won’t squeal [on their secrets] and everyone stays happy.”   

Everyone, that is, except the Lebanese people who have suffered too much and too long at the hands of those ostensibly responsible for their health and welfare. It is an astonishment that the antidote to bad leadership, sad leadership, remains so elusive.

As the link below attests, for some time I’ve been interested in the question of how women’s bodies might impact their ambition and ability to lead. Specifically, do the physiological, physical, and psychological differences between women and men having any bearing on why still so few women in high positions of leadership and management?

Women and Leadership – Our Bodies, Ourselves

To explore this question more fully, I agreed to write a chapter for the second edition of a volume titled, Women and Leadership: Navigating Change from Ancient Times to the Present.*

Given that women menstruate, get pregnant, bear children, breastfeed, and go through menopause, and given that men do not, I have come to conclude it defies logic to assume that these distinction between the genders are irrelevant to the gap to which I allude. This especially applies because each of the above, say menstruation and menopause, is often accompanied by physical discomforts and psychological changes that range from minor irritations and limitations to symptoms that are more severe. All challenges from which men are exempt.

I have come further to conclude that unless women take this bull by the horns, which includes breaking taboos on what can be discussed publicly without shame or embarrassment, specifically in professional situations, it will be difficult if not impossible openly and honestly to address the question of why so few women at the top.

It does no one any favors to avoid the distinctions to which I allude. To pretend they do not exist, as if women’s bodies and men’s are the same, or that the differences between them are irrelevant to the matter at hand. They are not. Which is precisely why since men are more than content to avoid the subject, it’s up to us. It’s up to us – to women – to claim our bodies, to claim ourselves, and to claim the implications for women and leadership.

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*Editors are George R. Goethals, Crystal Hoyt, and Karen Christensen (Berkshire, 2024).

*   

This is my fourth summer post with the running title, “Leadership in Russia.” The previous three are here.

Leadership in Russia – Who’s the Dog? Who’s the Tail?

In an earlier piece I wrote that after the failed, finally half-hearted mutiny of Yevgeny Prigozhin against Vladimir Putin the latter was likely to follow his previous pattern. The suggestion was that Russia’s leader would take down Wagner’s leader by imprisoning him, poisoning him, or murdering him. Given that Prigozhin’s plane yesterday fell out of the sky leaving nothing behind but charred debris – including the remains of ten passengers – the path that Putin chose is clear. Everyone without Russia is near certain that he was responsible for the death of Prigozhin and, more importantly, everyone within is near certain as well.  

Once Putin launched his attack on Ukraine, he found himself on the horns of an unfamiliar dilemma. He needed someone. Putin badly needed Prigozhin. And Putin badly needed the political and, especially, military support of the group that Prigozhin led. The by now notorious Wagner group.

Putin tolerated Prigozhin’s increasingly overt upstart ways for as long as he did because Prigozhin’s brutality enabled Putin’s brutality. But once Prigozhin got too big for his britches, once Prigozhin threatened Putin directly, the latter concluded he had no choice but to shoot the former down, literally.  

So where does this now leave Putin? He got his revenge – and he sent a warning shot that no Russian could possibly miss. “Don’t mess with me or you’ll get your heart cut out and your head cut off.”

But make no mistake. Putin’s short-term win incurs long-term costs. First, in Prigozhin Putin lost an inordinately important if ultimately unreliable ally. Second, Putin cannot any longer count on the Wagner’s group’s powerful presence and invaluable contribution in Ukraine or, for that matter, in Africa, where it also importantly defended and expanded Russian interests. And third, manifest murder is a bad look. On the one hand Putin comes across as a tough guy willing to go for the kill. But on the other hand, he comes across as weak. As a leader who felt forced to assassinate a competitor.