Author: Barbara

You a theatergoer? You like your histrionics dramatic? Comedic? You into carefully crafted staging, precisely designed costuming, maybe a large cast proudly preening before an audience of millions? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, do I have a show for you!

To call last night’s State of the Union occasion kabuki is pushing it. But it’s not too much to say that it was much more about style than substance, much more about medium than message. Every single actor had a part to perform and was hellbent on playing it to the hilt. Every single actor knew that while the moment felt important the evening would soon be forgotten. And every single actor knew that while the spotlight was on the star of the show – whose speech was of course scripted by wordsmiths other than he – behind the scenes were drumbeats. Drumbeats signaling from, for example, the House and Senate, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New York’s Southern District, courtrooms in Washington, New York, and Virginia. Drumbeats signaling that this State of the Union was dramatically different from nearly all which preceded it, and that to normalize it was to betray American fealty to divided government and the rule of law.    

A few days after posting my most recent blog, on Colin Kaepernick (“The Last Shall be First”), was, coincidentally, an interview in the Harvard Gazette on why civil resistance works. (Link below.) The interview was with Professor Erica Chenoweth, who has long studied the question of why nonviolence is more effective a strategy of change than violence.

Chenoweth named four elements key to a successful nonviolent campaign:

1. Participation that is large and diverse. Kaepernick? Check.
2. Some elites who are supportive at least some of the time. Kaepernick? Check.
3. Variation in the methods of protest. Kaepernick? Check.
4. Resistance that stays sturdy and sustained. Kaepernick? Check.

The success of Kaepernick’s protest is not a slam dunk. But the silence of his gesture continues to ring in our ears. His protest continues to hover over football. And his supporters continue to remain as steadfast as furious. For all the Super Bowl hoopla, many Americans refused to watch, such as film director Ava DuVernay, who accused the National Football League of “racist treatment” of Kaepernick.  

Stay tuned. Football season is over. But this story is not.      

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Why nonviolent resistance beats violent force in effecting social, political change

I have no idea where he is today… watching the Big Game from home, from a friend’s house, at a bar?  I don’t, in fact, know much of anything about him. But I do know this: that while Tom Brady will live forever in American sports history, it is Colin Kaepernick will live forever in American political history.

Kaepernick’s now fabled gesture – a silent act protesting the police shootings of unarmed black Americans – has had a resonance that probably he never originally imagined. Two years later today’s Super Bowl happening is still reflecting the depth of Kaepernick’s impact on the American psyche. Not on the field – he’s not even playing pro ball these days. But during the Super Bowl’s fabled half time show, which will be greatly diminished by acts of solidarity by, among others, Rihanna, who refused to perform, reportedly citing Kaepernick as the reason why.

Instead of standing for the national anthem, as he was of course expected to do, Kaepernick kneeled, publicly, visibly, even ostentatiously. It was brilliant stroke that would’ve done the giants of nonviolent resistance proud – and that likely will forever linger.

It’s rare in corporate America for two at the top to take each other on – in public. In a brawl that’s becoming increasingly up close and personal; increasingly nasty and even ugly; increasingly consistent and persistent. In short, now there’s no mistaking it: Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, and Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, hate each other!

They’ve been fighting for years, ostensibly about how their respective companies use consumer data. Facebook famously vacuums user data to power its advertising business, which, despite a recent slew of negative publicity, continues to print money. Apple, equally famously, claims to take the high ground – it objects to the commoditization of user data while loudly protecting the privacy of its customers.

But, it’s one thing for these two behemoths to take each other on because of their ideological differences – one man, one company, believes one thing to be right and good and true; while the other man, the other company, believes another thing to be right and good and true. What’s unusual about this situation is how personal this fight has become. What began as a difference of opinion has escalated into something considerably more. Man-to-man fighting; tit for tat combat; trading barbs that increasingly careen from professional quarrel into personal insult. For those among you who best like their wrestling in the mud, stay tuned.            >

Starbucks mogul Howard Schultz has announced he’s considering running for president as an independent. The mere thought horrifies the chattering classes, the majority of whom want nothing so much as to dump Trump. They worry that absent major changes to the electoral system, a Schultz candidacy could siphon enough votes away from the Democratic nominee to bestow on the incumbent a second term.     

True. But the signal problem with a man like Schultz running for the nation’s highest office is that he’s a rank amateur. He’s a total novice at government service which should be – but apparently is not – an immediate disqualifier.   

It’s less outrageous than it is nuts. We wouldn’t dream of hiring someone with no experience whatsoever as a plumber to repair our toilet. We wouldn’t dream of paying someone to cut our hair who had no experience whatsoever with a scissor. We wouldn’t dream of having someone drive our car who had no experience whatsoever behind a wheel.

What’s the matter with Schultz that he thinks he can be leader of the free world just because he was leader of a coffee company? What the matter with us that we think an unmitigated neophyte like Schultz should be given the time of day?

Hate to say, “I told you so.” But I can’t resist. I can’t resist reminding that in my previous blog I pointed out that, inexplicably, even those most affected by the government shutdown had been content to be quiet for over a month. Content to “accept the hand they were dealt without disrupting the lives of others.” Content instead to “shut up while being shut down.”

Predictably, once this changed so did the dynamic. Once the apparently powerless seized power by refusing reliably to show up for work, the leadership class, including the previously impervious president, caved.

It was aviation industry workers, especially air traffic controllers, who turned the tide. As soon as it became apparent that thousands of travelers had been obliged to endure significant delays, and that airports were threatening to turn chaotic if normal operations were not immediately restored, it was over. Within hours President Trump announced a deal to reopen the government.

An vivid reminder that power and influence are fluid – that they reside entirely in the hands of leaders only if followers are enablers.

It’s a reflex. When things go wrong, we mindlessly blame those at the top. We blame leaders for whatever our misfortunes – and for their wrongheadedness, their misguidedness, their cluelessness. So, in the case of the government shutdown, depending on our point of view, we fault President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and, it goes without saying, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi.

But what if we took just a bit more time and trouble to see leadership for what it really is. Leadership is a relationship. Leadership is a relationship that requires at least two people: one leader and one follower. Which is why it’s as impossible as illogical to isolate the one from the other, to blame leaders entirely for what goes wrong while exonerating entirely followers.

In the case of the government shutdown, who are the followers? To keep it simple I’ll put them into just two groups: first, the public at large; second, the approximately 800,000 government workers who have been directly and dramatically affected, who have showed up at work but not been paid.

Which raises the question of how these two groups have responded to the longest government shutdown in American history. The answer? By and large they, we, have done nothing. We the people have, mostly, played the part of bystanders. Federal employees have, mostly, played the part of victims. Only in the last few days are we starting to hear steadier drumbeats of protest – from, for example, the FBI Agents Association, the Coast Guard Commandant, and Kentucky union leaders representing prison workers – but the impact of these isolated instances so far has been low. Put simply, followers, even those who’ve been shafted, have, generally, been willing to accept the hand they’ve been dealt without disrupting the lives of others.

Contrast this to what happened last week in Los Angeles, when over 30,000 public school teachers went on strike, effectively shutting down one of the nation’s largest school systems. What they did was so intrusive and even injurious to the city and its citizens that within 6 days the strike was settled, with teachers getting significant concessions.

It’s a conventional wisdom that the heyday of the American labor movement is long since over. Which is just one of the reasons why those of us in the Leadership Industry have a responsibility to teach the theory of followership along with the theory of leadership, and the practice of good followership along with the practice of good leadership.

 

Who is a great leader?  The answer is, of course, “it depends.” It depends on what we mean when we say, “great.” It depends on what we mean when we say, “leader.” And it depends on whether who is asking the question and who is giving the answer share values somewhat similar.

But, every now and then someone comes along who breaks this general rule. Who by virtually every definition of the word “leader,” and by virtually every definition of the word “great,” and by virtually every conception of what is meant when the words “great” and “leader” are paired, fits the bill. Such a man died this week. His name was John Bogle.

Though he lived a long time, and though his impact on the American consumer was immeasurable, Bogle’s was not a household name. Mostly this was because his interest was not in fame or in wealth, and because he eschewed any kind of personal aggrandizement or professional ostentation. Nevertheless, among those who pay attention to how ordinary people protect their assets in the generally rapacious financial services industry, Bogle’s name was legend. He is the man credited with devising and then popularizing the low-cost index mutual funds that put billions more dollars into the pockets of millions more people. People who would otherwise have been charged high fees for services that were somewhat similar – though riskier as well as more expensive.

By the time he died, index funds, once tagged “Bogle’s folly,” constituted almost 50% of all mutual-fund assets. But the ultimate measure of the man is not quantitative, but qualitative. Personally, he was of the highest integrity, an exemplar of a man with a strong moral compass. Professionally, his contribution was transformative, enabling generations to save efficiently and to achieve financial security.

John Bogle was by any conceivable measure great. And he was by any conceivable definition a leader.

 

If the Leadership Industry has a purpose, it is, ostensibly, to improve leadership. To develop leaders in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors who are ethical and effective.

Leadership has been a growth business primarily in the West, in liberal democracies in which countless groups and organizations have poured countless sums into countless other groups and organization that profess to teach how to lead.

But,  on this particular morning, the morning of January 16, 2019, the evidence that the Leadership Industry has succeeded at its primary task – improving leadership in countries such as the United States and Great Britain – is woefully lacking. The fabled Anglo-American alliance is nowhere so apparent at this moment as in the crisis of governance that is traumatizing them both.

It is easy enough to blame others – the Russians, to take the most obvious example – for the mess in which we find ourselves. It is similarly easy to blame single individuals such as Donald Trump for his corruption and ineptitude, and Theresa May for her cluelessness and clumsiness.

But the crisis of democratic governance is primarily internal not external. And it is systemic – that is, it is about leaders, and about followers, and about the contexts within which leaders and followers are situated in the first quarter of the 21^st century.

The Leadership Industry has, so far, been demonstrably unable and, or, unwilling, to address the complexities to which I allude. It has continued to skim the surface. It has continued to avoid the hard work that is necessary if ever it is to make a significant difference. And it has continued to suffer standards that are far, far, lower than they should be.  Until these things change, the Industry has no hope of contributing in a meaningful way to stilling the waters that roil many if not most Western democracies.

 

 

 

Lesson # 1: Leaders matter – especially when they are, simultaneously, exceedingly highly positioned and inordinately disruptive. Trump sucks oxygen. He has wormed his wayward ways into our political system, into our national culture, and into our collective consciousness, and we have not, so far anyway, figured out how to dislodge him.

Lesson # 2: Followers matter – especially when they are Bystanders in situations screaming for intervention. Trump’s unfitness for the American presidency has been allowed to continue courtesy of Republican Senators who, by standing by and doing nothing while the chief executive continues to mislead and mismanage, have proven crass and craven enablers.

Lesson # 3: Contexts matter – especially when emergencies arise to which they are not accustomed and for which they were not designed. The American political system has many virtues. But grounded as it is in democratic norms and in constitutional conventions that include divided government, it is neither disposed or equipped to rapidly remove even exceedingly bad leaders from high political office.

Lesson # 4: Character matters – especially in democratic systems that at this moment in time are unusually vulnerable. In the last ten years, the number of democracies has decreased; while the number of autocracies has increased.  It is of paramount importance then that democratic leaders model the values in which democrats profess to believe. These include, minimally, a commitment to the rule of law; a commitment to facts as opposed to “alternative facts”; and a commitment to national security.

Lesson # 5: Personality matters – especially as apparent in temperament. I use the word “temperament” to denote sense and sensitivity, security and stability. President Trump inadvertently reminds us that unlike bad leaders, good leaders are sensible in their approach to the issues they face; sensitive to the problems of others; secure in who they are; and stable in their response to the tasks with which they are charged.

Lesson # 6: Knowledge matters – especially in leadership posts that are highly complex. America’s chief executive is broadly in charge of managing America’s domestic policy – and America’s foreign policy. Trump’s astonishing ignorance in both domains is a reminder if we needed one that selecting a leader who is both deeply uninformed, and strikingly incurious, is a mistake the American electorate should never repeat.

Lesson # 7: Experience matters – especially in leadership posts in which the stakes are extremely high. The nature of the experience can vary. When Mike Bloomberg became mayor of New York City his work life had been in business, not government. But Bloomberg was, and still is, an exception to the rule. In coming from nothing and making his way to the top he had proved his exceptional intelligence and remarkable competence. Trump, in contrast, was his father’s creation, and a demonstrably inept one at that. The more closely we examine Trump’s preparation for the American presidency the more it falls comically, tragically, short.

Lesson # 8: Support matters – especially political support but personal support as well. During his time in the Oval Office President Trump has been largely, strikingly, alone, rather like Richard Nixon. His band of brothers and few sisters has been narrow, and most have been short-lived. The best and brightest of the professionals have by now mostly left the White House, while those who remain, such as Jared Kushner and Steven Miller, owe their longevity primarily to their fealty. Additionally, unlike most other First Ladies, there is no evidence that Melania Trump has been a pillar of either political or personal support to her husband.

Lesson # 9: Bad leaders matter – especially when they lead a group, or an organization, or a nation that is of great consequence. It matters that the president of the United States, still the so-called leader of the free world, is so inept, and so corrupt. It matters to countless numbers at home – and abroad. It matters to America’s allies, who have been warned by having Trump in the White House. It matters to America’s adversaries, who have been warmed by having Trump in the White House.

Lesson # 10: Professionalism matters – especially in contrast to a leader who is a beginner, inexperienced and uninformed. The New York Times recently called the “Trump Shutdown” a “Tragedy of Errors.” The paper pointed to, among others, the president’s failure to know how divided government works; his failure to understand the costs of playing only to his base; and his failure to grasp how members of congress might come to collaborate.  The implicit instruction? Never select, never elect, an amateur to do a professional’s job.