Author: Barbara

I’m sure of it. It’s not that Donald Trump is afraid of Vladimir Putin. That the latter has the goods on the former. It’s not that Donald Trump owes Vladimir Putin. For, for example, putting his thumb on the scale during the 2016 presidential election. And it’s not that Donald Trump colludes with Vladimir Putin on something suspect – say, multi-million dollar property deals.

It’s that Donald Trump is in love with Vladimir Putin! It’s not clear anyone else has ever been an enduring object of Trump’s affections – not Ivana (wife #1), not Marla (wife #2), not Melania (wife #3).  Not any of the other scores of women with whom he in some way scored. Maybe his daughter, Ivanka, but, then, she’s off limits, or she should be.

So… no wonder Donald is stuck on Vladimir. No woman has ever captured the American president’s heart. And there’s hardly ever been anyone quite like the Russian president. Finally, someone worthy of the superlatives of which Trump is endlessly fond. Putin is “terrific.” Putin is “fantastic.” Putin is “the greatest.”

Well, depending on your taste in leaders, Putin really is remarkable. Over his most faithful followers he exercises nearly complete control. Over nearby landmasses he feels free to seize them, or to try to, at will. Over his political opponents he wields the equivalent of a political, or literal, pick-ax. And over the Russian people he casts a spell so great that in March of next year he is certain to win a fourth term in office. A full, six-year term that would make his 24-year tenure (including four as prime minister) the longest by any Russian leader since Stalin. Can you blame The Donald for losing his heart?!

Trump is so smitten by Putin he won’t tolerate anyone saying a bad word about him. Trump is so smitten by Putin he himself won’t cast even the slightest aspersion. Trump is so smitten by Putin he goes the extra step – he picks up the phone just to hear the man’s voice, the mellifluous tones of his precious pet, Vladi. Be still my beating heart.

There’s just one small flaw in their relationship. It’s not clear that it’s reciprocal. It’s not clear that Vladimir loves Donald nearly as much as Donald loves Vladimir. In fact, some say the Russian plays the American like a fiddle.

I woke this morning to political pundits feverish with excitement. Feverishly excited by – in some cases exercised by – the unanticipated victory of Democrat Doug Jones over Republican Roy Moore in the special election for Senator from the state of Alabama. Almost without exception, though, the pundits are fixating on the race. On how and why and where exactly Moore lost, and on how and why and where exactly Jones won.

But what I found enthralling in the last 24 hours had nothing to do with the race per se. Rather it had to do with the consequences thereof. I refer particularly to the content of what Jones said in Birmingham last night, in a speech to his supporters immediately after he was declared winner.

Jones began in the usual way – by profusely thanking his family and friends, his campaign team and political supporters. Then he continued in the usual way. He spoke verities and niceties and even homilies that under other circumstances would be unremarkable. But, given the temper and tone and tirades typical of what emanates now from the White House, what Jones said sounded fresh and refreshing, assuring and reassuring, calming and comforting – a reminder of why all my life, until recently, I was proud to say, “I am an American.”

Jones: “This entire race has been about dignity and respect.”

Jones: “This campaign has been about the rule of law.”

Jones: “This campaign has been about common courtesy and decency.”

Jones: “This campaign was about finding common ground and reaching across.”

Jones: “As Dr. King liked to quote, ‘The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ Tonight, tonight, ladies and gentlemen, tonight, tonight in this time, in this place, you helped bend that moral arc a little closer to that justice….”

What a relief! What an enormous relief.

A witch is a female who is thought to have evil powers.

A warlock is a male witch – a man who is thought to practice witchcraft.

Originally the term “witch hunt” was used to describe the search for and subsequent persecution of witches. Now, more broadly, it is used to describe the search for and subsequent persecution of any individual or group that is unorthodox or unpopular.

I coin the term “warlock hunt” specifically to describe what for two months has been rather a relentless search for and subsequent persecution of men charged with harassing or assaulting women (and, sometimes, men).  This movement or wave has generally been applauded for being a long overdue corrective to a culture that since time immemorial has tolerated men behaving badly – which is a position I support.

However, groups without leaders – groups that consist in the main of furious followers – risk becoming a mob. Risk taking on a mob mentality. So, lest the current corrective backfires, at least two distinctions should immediately be made:

• Distinction # 1: Between a man who is a sexual harasser or abuser and a man who is a bounder, a swordsman, a Lothario.
• Distinction # 2: Between a man whose sexual harassment is merely offensive, and a man whose sexual harassment is downright aggressive.

The history of change triggered by the powerless taking on the powerful is checkered. Sometimes virtue rapidly prevails. Other times there is blood on the floor and many years passed before wrong is righted. The sooner “The Silence Breakers” take a more nuanced approach to their search for justice, the sooner their search will be rewarded.

The course that I currently teach at the Harvard Kennedy School is titled, Leadership System – Leaders, Followers, and Contexts. As the title implies, the course gives no more weight to the study of leaders than it does to followers – and to contexts. Regarding the last, I am forever preaching the virtues, to leaders, of being 1) contextually conscious; 2) contextually expert; and 3) contextually intelligent.

I was gratified to read, therefore, that increasingly I’m in good company. According to a recent article in the Financial Times, business schools especially are coming to recognize that “geopolitical events shape the environment in which businesses operate” and that, therefore, familiarizing their students with these environments is of paramount pedagogical importance.*

This might not seem like rocket science. But, as a rule, leadership training and development focus on individuals, not on the context(s) within which these individuals must, perforce, function. Always was ridiculous – and is even more ridiculous now when, as one professor put it, the importance of geopolitics is so obvious, courses on the subject have transitioned from being “nice-to-have” to “must-have.”

Leadership learners of every stripe would be well advised to take a cue from their corporate counterparts. It is impossible to lead even reasonably wisely and well in this world without having some semblance of understanding it.

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*https://www.ft.com/business-education

It’s been difficult. It’s been difficult as a putative expert on leadership not to write regularly about Donald Trump. He’s screamingly obvious grist for my mill – which is precisely why I’ve resisted the temptation. Why I’ve focused on subjects other than the American president, who inexorably violates not laws, and rules, but norms.

But on occasion someone else writes a piece about Trump that is so well written, and that so completely reflects my own point of view, that I’m tempted to tout it. Today is an example. Ezra Klein’s “The Normalization of Impeachment” is strongly recommended. (Link below.) It’s a piece that I wish I had written. But since I did not, I am glad that someone else did.

Full disclosure: I’m a betting woman – who bet some time ago that President Trump would not serve out his full first term in the White House.

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https://www.vox.com/2017/11/30/16517022/impeachment-donald-trump

One of the enigmas of the human condition is how it happens. How it happens that the worst type of leader can cling to power year after year after year after year.

Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe – who finally, yesterday, at the age of 93, was compelled to resign – is just the latest case in point. He began his career as a public official a hero, an anti-colonialist, a nationalist and activist who played a role in the transition from British-ruled Rhodesia to the sovereign state of Zimbabwe. But he presided for decades over Zimbabwe’s evolution from a country with a large reserve of human capital and a well-diversified economy, to being sub-Saharan Africa’s basket case. Early this century land reform accelerated what already had been a steep decline: GDP plunged 45 percent in a decade, and farm production collapsed to two thirds of what it was ten years  earlier.

Mugabe was, moreover, a tyrant, a despot, a totalitarian dictator known for nothing so much as demoralizing and even terrorizing his people, while aggrandizing himself and enriching his coffers. For at least a quarter century this man’s leadership had nothing whatsoever to recommend it. Quite the contrary – it was so bad it was evil.

Still, it took decrepitude to get him out. It took being a nonagenarian for his grip on power to be weakened to the point where others mustered the courage finally to force him to quit.

Predictably, when Mugabe’s resignation finally came there was “wild jubilation in parliament,” followed almost immediately by celebratory crowds jamming the streets of major cities. The Guardian reported “Zimbabweans raced up and down the wide boulevards of the capital as the sun set, honking car horns, waving flags, singing, dancing, cheering.”

Which is where mystery manifests itself. Why do followers put up with leaders who obviously are atrocious and who manifestly they detest? Year after year after year after year? I get that these leaders control the levers of power – which is how they strike fear in their followers. Which, in turn, is exactly why it’s up to us to assure we never allow democracy to morph into autocracy, which has a proclivity to morph into tyranny.

         One of the most significant changes for all businesses since the financial crisis is consumers are more demanding and expect to know more about you. They are more questioning of all authority…. You are no longer in control of your message.

Steve Easterbrook, CEO of McDonald’s, who, after four years of shrinking profits, is being credited with turning around the company’s fortunes.

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         Nelson Peltz narrowly won a seat on the board of Procter & Gamble Co … an embarrassing turn of events for a company that weeks earlier had claimed to have defeated the activist investor…. The uncertainty of the P&G vote was magnified by the large portion of shares held by small investors, leaving both sides scrambling for support from some 2.5 million shareholders instead of just a few dozen who typically control such votes.

Article in the Wall Street Journal (11/16/17) describing how it happened that P&G’s management team was stunned, was slammed, by small, heretofore generally powerless, investors.

When Jacqueline Kennedy was First Lady, she seldom spoke in public. And when she did, it was in a breathy whisper, more evocative of a young girl than a mature woman.

But to her husband, John Kennedy, she was an enormous political asset nonethless. She never failed to look picture perfect, her singularly lovely face set off by elegant, expensive clothes that graced her slender body. More to the point though, she was obviously not a lightweight. Though during her brief tenure in the White House, she was still young, in her early to mid-30s, she managed to make a mark.

First, her remarkable, atypical beauty made her a style icon. While this might now seem a frivolous credential, in the early 1960s it was not.  Even by Inauguration Day, Mrs. Kennedy’s dresses, suits, coats, gloves, shoes, purses, and hats were admired and copied not only in America but in much of the rest of the world as well – including in what then was the Soviet bloc. The First Lady’s grace and beauty were so strong an attraction they were a magnet – a magnet as political asset.

Second, Jacqueline Kennedy brought taste and class to the presidential mansion. Not only did she function in the long tradition of First Ladies who had the imagination and determination to use the White House to their husband’s political benefit, she updated and upgraded every social occasion of any consequence. What gave White House entertainments during the Kennedy years their special éclat, their class, was, perhaps more than anything else, the guest list. It was studded with great names, particularly from the worlds of art, music, and literature. Carl Sandburg was there, as was Igor Stravinsky, as was Aaron Copeland and Leonard Bernstein and Robert Frost and Andrew Wyeth -and so on. Seldom in American history was the White House as stunning a repository of the best and brightest, the most gifted and talented.

Third, Jacqueline Kennedy took it on herself to refurbish, to restore, the White House. This though was no ordinary home improvement. Not by a long shot. Mrs. Kennedy approached the task with the utmost seriousness of purpose, firm in her resolve to make the White House worthy of the name, the president’s residence. Congress was persuaded to designate the executive mansion a national museum. Personal campaigns were undertaken to secure treasured gifts of furniture and art to enhance and even ennoble the cause. And various commissions were formed such as, for example, the White House Historical Association, to assure the presidential mansion would be worthy of its fabled history. “Every gallery and museum in the country,” it was said, “was laying its treasures at Jackie’s feet for her to pick and choose.”* And when her work was well along, she did something that at the time was extraordinary. She took to television to serve as guide for an extended tour of the White House. The show was a personal triumph – the White House had been transformed, by her, into a museum worthy of America’s heritage.

Since Jacqueline Kennedy has been rather a long list of First Ladies, most of whom were in one or another way a national asset. Some greater, some lesser, but nearly all left an imprint that was to the benefit of the American people. Until now. Until Melania Trump.

I described Mrs. Kennedy’s tenure as First Lady in brief detail because in some ways Mrs. Trump is more like her than any other relatively recent predecessor. She looks great and says little. But, so far at least, the resemblance ends there. So far at least, Melania Trump has been all appearance, no substance.  So far at least, her contribution to the conversation has been zero, zilch, nada. So far at least, her husband has so completely sucked the air out of the room that she has gone missing.

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*Barbara Kellerman, All the President’s Kin, Free Press, 1980.

The moment in which we live is counter-intuitive: It is characterized by the rise of political authority on the one hand, and the decline of political authority on the other.  While they seem to exist independent of each other, each in its own parallel universe, they do not. In fact, they are interdependent, the one a function of or, if you prefer, a reflection of, the other.

In the last week alone, on his trip abroad President Trump met with three of the world’s most powerful strongmen, each more potent in the present than he was in the past: China’s Xi Jin Ping, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte.

Meantime, at home, Trump is being inexorably enfeebled, a victim of his own idiocies and idiosyncrasies, of his own callousness and corruption. But, he is also being weakened by the liberal democracy that constitutes his context. To its credit, this democracy features institutions that eventually will be his undoing. To its detriment, the process of this undoing is arduous and laborious, which is why, at the moment, America’s political system is partially paralyzed.

Nor is the US the only liberal democracy so afflicted. Brexit has not only fractured Britain’s political system, Teresa May’s premiership is “shaped above all by her weakness.” She is openly defied even by her own ministers, while the government more generally, including parliament, seems to have lost control. One close observer put it this way, “Eighteen months ago I wrote that Britain’s politics were starting to imitate those of Greece. At the time I might have admitted a certain hyperbole. Now I think the parallel understates the British condition.”*

All the while the world is watching. While the two most powerful and prominent liberal democracies struggle to balance deeply flawed leaders with deeply dissatisfied followers, growing numbers of other countries are turning to authoritarianism as a way of keeping the trains running and the lid on.

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*Philip Stevens, “Brexit Has Broken British Politics,” Financial Times, November 8, 2017.

By way of explaining why no blog for the past couple of weeks, there is this. Page proofs. I’ve been reviewing the page proofs of my forthcoming book, titled as above – Professionalizing Leadership. It will be published by Oxford University Press on or about February 1^st.

This is from the Introduction, titled “Learning Leading – Lame Undertaking.”

Professionalizing Leadership looks at a leadership culture that is as widespread as deeply entrenched. It looks at an industry that is enormously profitable but entirely unregulated. It looks at a pedagogical practice that falls stunningly short of any imagined ideal. And it looks at what can be done to bestow on leaders a semblance of the gravitas that we associate with professionals.