Author: Barbara

In a book I wrote fifteen years ago titled, Bad Leadership, I described seven different types of bad leadership, one of which was Insular.

Insular leadership is when the leader and at least some followers minimize or disregard the health and welfare of “the other” – that is, those outside the group or organization for which they are directly responsible.

I described among others the case of Lee Raymond, who for years was chairman and chief executive officer of Exxon, the largest energy company in the United States. But while he was leading Exxon, Raymond was also the most powerful and outspoken oil industry executive against any and all efforts to contain global warming. Additionally, he had zero compunction about cooperating with repressive regimes. As Forbes put it, Raymond was “unapologetic about making deals with regimes that lean toward the diabolical.” But … was Raymond an effective CEO – good for Exxon and everyone directly associated with it, especially stockholders? He was.

Which raises this question: To whom are leaders responsible?  Are they responsible only to those who are their obvious constituents? Or do they bear some responsibility also to a wider public? Do leaders of, say, large publicly held companies have any responsibility at all for the general welfare? Or are they accountable only to those directly in their line of sight?

The question is always important, especially this week in the United States, where because of two recent mass shootings gun violence as a political issue is front and center, again. Writing in the New York Times, Andrew Ross Sorkin took a novel approach. He wrote what was, in effect, an open letter to Doug McMillon, who is CEO of Walmart, the largest seller of guns in the United States.    

Sorkin wrote, “You, singularly, have a greater chance to use your role as the chief executive of the country’s largest retailer and largest seller of guns – with greater sway of the entire ecosystem that controls guns sales in the United States than any other individual in corporate America…. It is your moral responsibility to see that it stops.” *

I am sympathetic to Sorkin’s point. But is he right? Is it clear that McMillon is responsible to Americans generally rather than to, say, Walmart stockholders specifically? If the latter is true, then the measure of what constitutes a successful CEO must change. For decades this measure primarily has been profits and stock performance. If profits are up and the stock goes up great, no matter the fallout. If, though, profits are down and the stock goes down, the CEO is likely to be in trouble, whatever his or her other virtues. For example, when the Harvard Business Review (HBR) ranks the “best-performing CEOs” it uses this measure: “financial returns over each CEO’s entire tenure.” To be sure, HBR now also “factors in” ratings on environmental, social and governance issues. But it’s clear that financial performance is the measure that matters much the most.

So, until our assessments are line with our values, nothing much will change. Overwhelmingly private sector leaders will shy from becoming involved in public sector problems because doing so is as likely to punish as reward them.

Back to Doug McMillon. What has he done in response to the two mass murders? So far he has given the order to remove from Walmart’s shelves violent video games. So far he has not given the order to remove from Walmart’s shelves so much as one gun.

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*https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/business/dealbook/walmart-guns.html   

For years, our attention has been drawn to the tension between “work” and “life.” Employers and their employees, superiors and their subordinates, leaders and their managers all have been told to focus or even fixate on how to jam the demands of a full-time job and the demands of a full-time family in a day with just 24 hours.  

Many countries and companies have responded to the dilemma, tried to address it by offering a range of family friendly policies and programs including part time, flex time, leave time, subsidized childcare, subsidized eldercare, and greater freedom and flexibility.  Women particularly have taken advantage of these offerings – far more often and for longer periods of time than men – though the problem of how to divide time and cope with the relentless demands, especially on families with young children, persists.

But the conversation is based on an unproven assumption – that balance is Nirvana. Balance in all things all the time. Leaders are encouraged to live a balanced life, to wit leadership expert Bill George, in whose view “balanced leaders develop healthier organizations.” More generally, followers as well as leaders are forever being encouraged to strive for work-life balance, all because of the conventional wisdom that balance is best.

Setting aside the question of whether balanced leaders are better leaders – a question that seems still open – is the matter of whether work-life balance is all it’s cracked up to be. Is it, for example, all it’s cracked up to be in the event either work or life is of primary importance? Is it, for example, all it’s cracked up to be no matter the circumstance at work or at home? Is it, for example, all it’s cracked up to be both at age 25 and at age 65? Or are there, personal and professional circumstances in which work-life balance makes no sense? Or even is detrimental as opposed to beneficial?

These questions came to mind recently, while I was reading the Financial Times of July 22^nd. In one part of the paper was an article by a Brigid Schulte, who directs the Better Life Lab at New America. Worried that gender equity had “stalled,” she advised companies to make work-life balance a “key performance metric.” But, in another part of the paper, was an article whose message was quite the opposite. It was a piece about the fabulously successful media mogul, Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg, it was reported, famously had a motto – “If you don’t come in on Sunday, don’t bother coming in on Monday.”

I am not defending Katzenberg’s personal or professional choice – or his leadership style. What I am defending is the position that balance and bliss are not the same. That while balance might work best for most, it does not necessarily work best for all.

Whereas the Republicans have at the helm a charismatic leader – Donald Trump’s ability to attract attention and admirers remains remarkable – the Democrats have at the helm no leader at all. This became clear again today, when they proved incapable, completely incapable, of using Robert Mueller’s testimony to significant effect.

Part of the reason obviously was that Mueller failed persuasively to present either himself or his report. But part of the reason was that none of the Congressional Democrats have the magnetism to pull us into their orbit.

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, leader of the House Judiciary Committee? For all his reliability and resolve, I don’t think so. Congressman Adam Schiff, leader of the House Intelligence Committee? For all his insight and intelligence, I don’t think so. Even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi – cautious to a fault and dithering ineffectually on impeachment – doesn’t cut it. As she proved again today, when she spoke after the proceedings were over, she’s the leader in name only. She’s failed completely – though in fairness it’s not clear she’s even tried – to capture the public imagination.

The same can be said about the candidates for the Democratic nomination for president. For the moment there’s too many of them – who can remember each of their names, not to speak of distinguish the one from the other? And for the moment not one stands out, stands head and shoulders above the rest because he or she is so obviously convincing and compelling. Even the front runners – Biden, Sanders, Warren, Harris – have yet to prove they can cut it. Have yet to prove they could conceivably take on Mr. Charisma and be the one left standing. Meantime it’s Trump who continues to hold center stage. It’s he who continues the star of the circus.

We in the leadership industry are responsible – at least in part.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for the miserable mess that is American politics.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for the diminution and degradation of American political culture.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for the fact that not since the advent of political polling have our leaders been as disliked, disrespected, and distrusted as they are now.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for sending the message that leaders can be novices – completely inexperienced, altogether inexpert, and wholly untested. As was Donald Trump when he was elected president of the United States.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for sending the wrong message. For sending the message that learning to lead is simple – that it can be accomplished as quickly as easily.   

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for not sending the right message – that learning to lead is hard. That learning to lead involves each of these three: leadership education, leadership training, and leadership development.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for not getting our act together: for not cooperating and collaborating, among ourselves, to agree on a core curriculum, to set minimal standards, and first to aspire to and then to achieve professionalism.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for failing to develop a widely accepted and deeply respected analogue to the Hippocratic oath.

We in the leadership industry are responsible at least in part for the fact that America’s followers – the American people – have never been taught that good leadership absent good followership is not only improbable but impossible.   

Megan Rapinoe is just getting started and already she’s being compared to Billie Jean King and Muhammed Ali. Two other athlete-activists who left an enduring mark on American sports, American politics, and American culture.  

My guess though is that Rapinoe will turn out different. Only time will tell, of course. All I can do is imagine what she’ll be like ten, twenty years from now. But to listen closely to what she says and to how she says it is to witness a woman who is being nothing if not deliberate, and who is doing nothing if not preparing in the present for her future. For her future as a leader. I don’t mean a leader just in sports, which already she is. Or a leader just in the fight for equal rights, which already she is.  I mean a leader with a capital “L.” A leader in the largest sense of this word – a leader of, say, the United Nations or the United States.  

King and Ali were reactive: they reacted to the situations in which they found themselves. Rapinoe is similarly reactive – she does respond to cues from the contexts within which she is situated. But, additionally, she is proactive. She ventures forth, looks as far into the distance as she possibly can, and then dares to report what’s broke and to tell us how to fix it.

Rapinoe is riding the wave. She is intensely aware of the incredible, indelible, moment in which she finds herself – and intensely aware that it was she who, more than any other single individual, is credited with creating it. But she is also smart enough to be inclusive in her accomplishments; she is also ambitious enough to plan for when her career as a (soccer) player is over; and she is also tough enough to take on, even now, anyone anywhere who has the temerity to get in her way. Megan Rapinoe is no ordinary star athlete. She is a leader who will, in time, almost certainly become more influential and, ultimately, consequential.  

An assassination is a murder. But the word “assassination” is usually reserved for the murder of a prominent person – often a politician picked off for political reasons.

Recently was an assassination about which most Americans never heard. Never heard though it occurred in a country that is, or it should be, one of America’s closest and most important allies. Never heard though it triggered in the staid, stable Financial Times an editorial with a decidedly alarming headline, “German Radical Right Threatens the Survival of Democracy.”  

Everyone who pays attention to these things knows that in the wake of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to admit into Germany a million or more immigrants, refugees, seekers of safe havens, has been a political resurgence of Germany’s extreme right wing. For obvious reasons such a resurgence in Germany particularly has historical resonance. But, additionally, contemporaneously, in the last several years has been a surge in rightwing activity not just virtually, online, but actually – in the streets and in the corridors of power.  

Still, the assassination on June 1^st of a popular politician, Walter Luebcke, by a single shot in the head fired at close range, is another matter entirely. Given it was the first murder of a politician by a rightwing extremist in Germany’s postwar history, it is not too much to insist that though attention has not been paid, attention must be paid.      

The difference is of significance. Laypeople are murdered, leaders are assassinated.  

Yesterday was one of those days. Impossible to follow the news without being reminded of just how much the world has changed, even in the last ten years. It’s not that leaders have become less important. It’s that followers have become more important. Important to the point where focusing on leadership to the exclusion of followership is to focus wrong.

• The previously promising presidential campaign of the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg, has been derailed, possibly permanently. Derailed by African American residents of South Bend, furiously protesting the fatal shooting of a black man by a white police officer.
• The dictatorial leader of Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, suffered his most stinging defeat in years. In consequence, Erdogan has lost, at least for now, electoral control of Istanbul, by far Turkey’s most consequential city.
• The protests in Prague were the largest in the Czech Republic since 1989. Well over 200,000 people took to the streets to demand the resignation of the country’s prime minister, Anrej Babis. Babis has long been accused of corruption and malfeasance. Signs are anger against him has reached a boiling point, a point at which sweeping change transitions from request to requirement.  

I cannot foretell the future. It’s possible that all this sound and fury will in the end among to nothing. But, it’s just as possible that Buttigieg’s heyday is over. That Erdogan’s heyday is over. And that Babis’s heyday is over.

Women and Leadership – Redux (June 2019)

Women and leadership – it’s one of my running themes. And why not? Among the reasons to continue the conversation:

• While during the last couple of decades more women have secured positions of leadership, the number of women at the top remains low, very low. This applies to virtually every place on the planet.
• While during the last couple of decades the amount of ink spilled discussing women and leadership has been, shall we say, abundant, change continues more incremental than impressive.
• While the situation remains static and our fretting about it does the same, the heart of the matter, the beating heart of the matter, is still being sidelined.  

You forget what I wrote was the heart of the matter – the beating heart of the matter?  It’s babies. It’s that women bear babies and men do not.

Some stats:

• In recent years American women have increased the amount of time they spend on their jobs.
• American women who work outside the home spend an average of seven hours and 20 minutes each day on the job.  
• American working women spend about a half-hour more each day than American men on household chores such as cleaning and cooking.
• American working women with young children spend about two hours a day on tasks related to childrearing. American working men spend less than an hour and a half per day doing the same.  
• In 2018 American women worked longer and played less than they did in 2017. They also slept less. *

Some facts:

• Pregnant women who carry a baby to term reach the same peak levels of endurance as Ironman competitors.
• Human mothers have the biggest children and the longest pregnancies of all apes.
• Over 80 % of new mothers start out breastfeeding their children.
• Breastfeeding is usually a positive experience for mother and child. At the same time, it makes demands on the mother, physical and psychological, that are not easily compatible with full time employment. These demands include time and energy, special attention to nutrition and caloric intake, and the need for enough rest and adequate sleep.

Those of us who still wonder why, despite the many high ambitions and the many good intentions, the number of women who lead continues to remain comparatively low have only to look at the whole truth. A truth that includes the impact on women of being solely responsible for bearing the baby and birthing the baby – and then largely responsible for raising it.  

And oh, then there is this!

In the United States today are nearly 12.6 million single parents raising over 21 million children. Of single parents only 16 percent are fathers. Which means that approximately 84% of single parents are mothers. Still wonder why so few leaders are women?   

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*Theses figures are from the annual U. S. Labor Department Time Use Survey.

I posted Take One of “Democracy in a Petrie Dish” on September 9, 2016. (Link below.) It was about how and why anyone with an interest in the necessary tension between autocratic leaders and democratic followers should pay close attention to the events in Hong Kong. Now, over two and a half years later, my point remains the same. Since 2014 Hong Kong has been an experiment in democracy – an experiment in whether it’s possible for Hong Kong’s relatively powerless few to bring to their knees China’s inordinately powerful many.

Since that initial post on Hong Kong the situation has changed. China has become even more stringent and less tolerant of political dissent. Moreover, its leader, Xi Jinping, has evolved from being an authoritarian to a totalitarian. At this point, he uses the Chinese Communist Party to maintain complete control over the Chinese people, while having secured for himself the constitutional right to remain leader for life.  

In consequence of this change, most experts have come to conclude that China will continue to squeeze Hong Kong to the point where its democracy is extinguished. Of course, they are likely still to be right. So far China has not been shy about exercising its muscle and so far, while the people of Hong Kong have resisted, they have not done so fiercely enough, constantly enough, and in enough numbers to stop the Chinese behemoth.

In the last couple of weeks though, things have changed. The balance of power between the people of Hong Kong and the government of China has shifted – at least slightly, at least for now. The protesters in Hong Kong have been so great in their numbers, so united in their resistance, and so passionately dedicated to their cause that at this moment they are prevailing. Their government – led by Carrie Lam, who is pro-Chinese – has backtracked, back-peddled, apologized and suspended as opposed to implemented, for now, an onerous proposed extradition law.

Since 2014 – since Hong Kong’s so-called “umbrella revolution – I have thought of it as a test case. If Hong Kong falls, from somewhat independent democracy to totally abject autocracy, the future in places such as Taiwan, and in fact in China itself, looks grim for anyone seeking to loosen the reins of government control. On the other hand, if the people of Hong Kong successfully stave off the Chinese authorities, there’s no telling the direction of totalitarianism.

This is a long game, not a short one. The importance of winning at any given moment should not be exaggerated. But it is a game of sorts – a contest of utmost consequence.   

Democracy in a Petri Dish

Of all the conundrums confounding relations between leaders and followers, none is as daunting as bad leadership. Bad leadership traps both leaders and followers in a vise from which neither is able easily to escape.

The leader behaves badly and then, typically, behaves even more badly. His followers are stymied – sometimes divided, invariably frightened. Frightened of the consequences of doing something and frightened of the consequences of doing nothing. And so generally they opt for the latter. Being a bystander is easier than being an activist – less draining and demanding, less unsettling and unnerving.

But when bad leadership becomes worse leadership, followers must act.  If they do not, they are complicit in their own suffering. Americans have got to this point. After putting up with President Donald Trump’s rampant ignorance and outrageous malfeasance for two and a half years, time has come for every sentient citizen to put up or shut up.

Followers differ one from the other: they have different wants, needs, and wishes, and different resources and responsibilities. They are moreover situated in different contexts and they face different circumstances. Here I refer to a specific set of followers: those in the opposition and those best positioned to act against a president who has affronted our norms and violated our laws. I refer specifically to two categories of Democrats: those serving in the House of Representatives and those running for president of the United States.

In both cases women are the obvious leaders of the opposition, obvious leaders of opposing followers. First is Nancy Pelosi, who ought finally to throw caution to the wind. And second is Elizabeth Warren, who was first among Democratic candidates to call for Trump’s impeachment, and who was quick to repeat that call last night, in the wake of the president’s saying he would do again what he did before, accept information about an opponent from a foreign government. But Warren should do more than speak out. She should put out – she should take the lead in organizing at least some of her opponents in the race for the White House in order to present a united front. A united Democratic front for impeachment of the sitting Republican president.  

The United States of America was forged in the crucible of opposition to bad leadership. Opposition so fierce it culminated in a revolt against the king of England. But, to get to that point, followers needed leaders filled with fury so great it fueled them for months and more months, and finally for years. No one ever said upending bad leaders was easy. It’s not. It’s hard. Really hard. But, it’s not impossible.

Thomas Paine’s revolutionary tract, Common Sense, published in 1776, has been described as the match that lit the Revolution:

Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offence, yet I am inclined to believe that all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation may be included within the following descriptions. Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men who cannot see; prejudiced men who will not see; and a certain set of moderate men who … will be the cause of more calamities to this Continent than all the other three….

According to Paine then, of all the followers of bad leaders it is moderates who do the most harm. In the current situation moderates so pusillanimous they would fail to impeach a president who, as attested to by every scintilla of evidence, deserves nothing else and no less.