Author: Barbara

I have seen the future for women leaders in the United States of America – and it’s not Hillary Clinton. Clinton might well become the next American president, the first female American president, but she will do so under a cloud. Notwithstanding the unmitigated ardor of her most fervent supporters, the totally of Clinton’s record is too tarnished for any electoral victory to be entirely celebratory.

Michelle Obama is different altogether. She is unfettered by her political past, which is precisely why she represents the political future.

She is known to have disdained politics before, during, and after her husband entered the political fray. Moreover after she became First Lady, her previous professional accomplishments notwithstanding, Obama spent most of her time behind the White House curtain. Most of her time in the White House she emerged from behind that curtain only to look great and engage in a few activities, every one of which might have been undertaken by First Ladies of a generation or two, or even three or four, ago. Michelle Obama even rejected the part that Jacqueline Kennedy and other predecessors played – that of supremely skilled White House hostess, using the perks of the presidential perch to grease the wheels of politics in Washington.

But during the last half year of her husband’s presidency, Michelle Obama has, for whatever reasons, metamorphosed. As the direct result of two sensational speeches – the first delivered this summer at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, the second delivered yesterday, on the stump in Manchester, New Hampshire – she has willfully and deliberately catapulted herself onto the national stage. Moreover, she has done so in her own right, on her own manifest strengths and merits.

It is impossible for me to believe that when her husband’s time in office is over, she will revert to where she was until recently. Michelle Obama has tasted the fruit of political influence, which usually is irresistible.

This year’s Nobel Prize for Peace was awarded to Colombia’s president, Juan Manuel Santos. There was just one small problem. The peace deal hammered out under his leadership to end the world’s longest running war – between the Colombian military and Marxist guerrillas – had just gone up in smoke.

How had it happened? Santos had turned greedy. Basking in global approval, including by such luminaries as Pope Francis and President Obama, and reveling in what appeared considerable Colombian support, Santos called for a plebiscite. Despite a long history of national strife on precisely this issue, and despite no need for voter approval to make the peace deal official, Santos was certain he could win and then revel in electoral approbation.

Santos was wrong. He lost. Colombians who voted rejected the peace deal, 50.2 to 49.8 percent. Like Britain’s David Cameron, who was similarly spectacularly unsuccessful in trying to score public approval for a policy he particularly favored (remaining in the European Union), Santos was sure he could win public favor, only to be proven delusional.

On paper, direct democracy seems immensely appealing. It gives voters, ordinary people, the opportunity to say yay or nay on particular policy issues. What could be better? What could be more democratic than having the likes of you and me participate in collective decision making?

Turns out national plebiscites (sometimes called referendums) frequently come out badly. For reasons ranging from who turns out to vote, to how much information voters can secure, to reducing complex choices to simple yes and no answers, they can be risky and even dangerous, ironically undermining the democracies they are intended to secure.

Leaders who use plebiscites for whatever ostensible reason should be viewed with suspicion. For followers who vote in plebiscites cannot reasonably be trusted to do so wisely and well.

So, here’s the question. Why is this monstrous Trump embarrassment different from other monstrous Trump embarrassments?

Why has this monstrous Trump embarrassment prompted the Republican establishment to cluck-cluck about his gross, offensive behavior when other examples of his gross, offensive behavior produced only stony silence? Why has this monstrous Trump embarrassment incited the likes of Utah’s Representative Jason Chaffetz to declare, “I’m out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president,” when other examples of Trump’s gross, offensive behavior did not? Why has this monstrous Trump embarrassment forced him finally to apologize for behavior that was gross and offensive when other similar such behaviors resulted in no mea culpa whatsoever?

So, here’s the answer. This monstrous Trump embarrassment was about sex. Get it? It was about sex.

The humiliation of women?! Give me a break! Trump has humiliated women on countless previous occasions. Just as he has humiliated or tried to other groups who failed to live up to his imagined white, Christian, slim, masculine/feminine ideal – Muslims and Mexicans to take just two screamingly obvious examples.

Aggression against others?! Give me a break! Trump has incited aggression on countless previous occasions, at his rallies, on the stump, references to guns and shootings and violence par for his course.

Using foul language?! Give me a break! Should we be surprised – shocked, shocked, shocked? – that this course, vulgar individual has used course, vulgar language in what he thought the privacy of a personal conversation?

No, what’s different here are Trump’s overt, blatant, utterly direct references to sex. To women’s sexual parts, to his own sexual preferences and proclivities, to his previous sexual encounters and experiences, to his explicit pleasure in what to him is sensually and sexually stimulating.

Notwithstanding all that’s come before, it’s sex that’s finally threatening to break this camel’s back. Which goes to show Americans remain Puritans.

Conventional Wisdom #1: Leadership at Wells Fargo has been bad. In one of the biggest rebukes ever to the head of any financial institution, CEO John Stumpf has now been required to forfeit some $41 million, as punishment for doing wrong. For presiding over a bank that misled and even defrauded countless customers.

Conventional Wisdom # 2: Having women as members of boards is good – good for business and good for society more generally. Gender balanced boards, we are told, result in “better productivity and organizational effectiveness.” Moreover, women board members “are more likely [than men] to consider social, ethical, and environmental effects of business.”*

Well… guess what. To every rule there really are exceptions. Take the case of Wells Fargo. Its board was a source of pride particularly because of its gender diversity. Women make up 40% of Wells Fargo’s board, twice that of the typical S & P 500 company. Additionally, at least two of these women had extensive experience in consumer banking. One was a member of the Federal Reserve Board from 2008 to 2013. The other was director of banking and finance for the State of Nebraska from 1987 to 1991.

We are likely never fully to know how it happened that Wells Fargo went badly astray. What we do know though is this. That while women are now widely reputed to “change how boards work,” that while women are now widely reputed to provide boards with procedural virtues such as “enhanced dialogue,” “better decision making,” and “higher quality monitoring” of management, it ain’t necessarily so.**

At the least, the famous, now infamous case of Wells Fargo should give us pause. Should remind us that having a high percentage of women on any given board is no guarantee whatsoever of good company behavior.

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*Quotes from Ivana Vasic Chambers, “Evidence Back the Benefits of Equality,” Financial Times, September 29, 2016.

** Quotes from Laura Liswood, “Women Directors Change How Boards Work,” Harvard Business Review, February 17, 2015.

Are Americans really, really ready to elect a woman president? Given what’s happened in recent weeks, I’m really, really not sure.

We’ve had fifty different explanations for why in one month’s time Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers have gone way down, while Donald Trump’s have gone way up. One or two months ago Clinton was comfortably ahead in most of the most important battleground states. Now Trump leads her in states like Ohio, and is tied with her in states such as Colorado and Pennsylvania. One or two months ago Clinton seemed the near certain winner of this endless, relentless race to the White House. Now, at most, she’s slightly ahead. Are any of the explanations provided so far adequate to the task of explaining his rapid rise and her precipitous decline? What really, really gives???

All along the assumption has been that in 2016 being a woman would not disadvantage Hillary Clinton. After all, she had run for the presidency eight years earlier, and had come close to winning the Democratic nomination. And, after all, Americans had elected a black man to the White House. And after all, we’re well into the second decade of the 21^st century – surely we’re past gender bias.

In truth though, the evidence for this is scant. To the contrary. The evidence is that women at the top are still few in number – only 4 % of Fortune 500 CEOs are female which, at last count, means that 96% are male. And the evidence is that Americans still equate leadership qualities more with being masculine than feminine.

In 2007 Alice Eagly and Linda Carli, both experts on women and leadership,  wrote, “The unique pressures placed on female leaders derive in part from the relation between stereotypes about leaders and stereotypes about women and men…. People consider men to be agentic, possessing traits such as ambition, confidence, self-sufficiency, dominance, and assertiveness, whereas they consider woman to be communal, possessing traits such as kindness, helpfulness, concern for others, warmth, and gentleness. And how are leaders perceived? … Leaders are thought to have more agentic than communal qualities. As a result, stereotypes about leaders match quite well with stereotypes about men.”*

Ring a bell? Sure, it’s 2016, not 2007. It’s a decade later, we must’ve evolved since then! Really? Have we changed much, if at all? Or do we still think of leaders as more properly male than female? Or do we forgive things in Donald Trump that we would never in a million years forgive in a female candidate? Or do we hold Hillary Clinton accountable in ways that far transcend any standard we have for her male counterpart?

Just asking. On the morning of this first presidential debate – where she will have to be letter perfect or be perceived as having failed, and he will be forgiven anything short of a national disaster – I’m just asking.

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*“Overcoming Resistance to Women Leaders” in Barbara Kellerman and Deborah Rhode, eds., Women and Leadership: State of Play and Strategies for Change (Jossey-Bass, 2007), pp. 127, 128.

You think you had a rough week? In comparison with whom?

• Andrew Cuomo. Once touted as a likely Democratic candidate for president, the governor of New York has fallen on hard times. This past week more of the same. Faced with what the Wall Street Journal described as “scathing allegations” about his administration in a federal criminal complaint, Cuomo blithely insisted that he was conducting business as usual. Really? This while no fewer than nine people with close ties to the governor were charged by federal prosecutors with bribery and extortion. If this were the first time Cuomo smelled of scandal, it would be one thing. But it is not.
• John Kerry. It’s not often that an inordinately well-intentioned public official fails so repeatedly and resonantly. But Kerry has done it again. Once again he has tried as hard as he knew how to bring about a semblance of peace or, at least, a cessation of hostilities, only to fail miserably. This time of course in Syria. This time his humiliating failure was punctuated by the worst bombing of Aleppo – already the most wretched of all cities – since the start of the five-year-old civil war. John McCain described Kerry’s efforts to pursue a deal with Russia as “intrepid but delusional.” The latter has only four short months left to prove the former wrong.
• Paul Ryan. He’s turned craven. The Great White Hope of the Republican Party, the man who dared for an instant to withhold his support from the Republican nominee for president, has turned mute. Hedging his bets as Donald Trump has morphed from likely loser to within striking distance of the White House, Ryan has clammed up. It’s especially disappointing because we have every reason to believe we know how Ryan really feels. Because once upon a time not long ago Ryan chastised Trump for making a racist comment. Because once upon a time not long ago Ryan questioned Trump’s commitment to Republican ideals. Because once upon a time not long ago Ryan knocked the nominee on a regular basis. Because once upon a time not long Ryan was man enough – you should pardon the expression – to put his money where his mouth was. Now the reverse is true. Now Ryan puts his mouth where his money is.

No wonder we’re disheartened. Seems the good guy of the three was tilting at windmills.

James B. Stewart’s column in today’s New York Times about the Wells Fargo case is so solid, there’s no need for me to reiterate his argument.  (Link below.) I will however extract from his piece eight salient points, all of which pertain to bad leadership.

• Wrongdoing at the highest levels of Wells Fargo seems so clear, it has the virtue of providing the Justice Department with an unusual opportunity to put its money where its mouth is. To hold one or more corporate leaders accountable for their misconduct.
• Accountability for misconduct – in this case defrauding customers on a depressingly large scale – will be semi-achieved only if individuals are held responsible. It will never be achieved if only institutions are held responsible.
• To dismiss 5,000 people at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy for wrongdoing endemic to the corporate culture, is more reprehensible than doing nothing at all. It’s scapegoating – the powerful deflecting blame onto the powerless.
• Fraud is frequently difficult to ferret out. Not in this case it isn’t. One of the virtues of this case is that the charges of criminal wrongdoing are easy to understand.
• Corporate misconduct is easier to prosecute when political and public outrage are visible, palpable, formidable.
• Corporate misconduct is easier to prosecute when a single individual takes the lead. In this case a highly visible senator, Elizabeth Warren, an expert in financial services and also consumer protection, is the perfect attack dog. Her assault on Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf during Tuesday’s congressional hearing was lacerating, devastating.
• Warren’s attack on Stumpf had virtue of containing specific recommendations. She demanded he be criminally investigated, by both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, And she called for his resignation. (In the wake of Tuesday’s hearing, Stumpf did in fact resign, albeit only from his role as adviser to the Federal Reserve.)
• As usual, to follow the money is to have our anger stoked even further. Between 2011 and 2015 – right while the “epidemic of bogus account openings was in full swing” – Stumpf earned over $100 million.

Those of us who are card-carrying members of the Leadership Industry would do well to study what happened at Wells Fargo. Not only is it edifying, it is sobering. A sobering reminder of how little we know about bad leadership, and of how ill-equipped we are to stop or even slow it. If Stumpf and the now “retired” former head of retail banking at Wells Fargo, Carrie Tolstedt, end up paying a price for what took place on their watch, we’ll have cold consolation – which is, however, better than no consolation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/23/business/wells-fargo-tests-justice-departments-get-tough-approach.html?_r=0

If anyone out there resembles me – has as much of an interest in bad leadership and followership as in good leadership and followership – check out these two corporate cases. First the emissions scandal at Volkswagen – a story that broke a year ago. Second the sales scandal at Wells Fargo – a story that broke in recent weeks. Both will go down in the annals of the history of business as leadership and followership gone miserably wrong. Here five key questions that pertain to both companies:

• Where on the organizational hierarchy does responsibility lie?
• Who should still be punished – Wells Fargo has already fired more than 5,000 employees; but no one at or near the top has paid any sort of price for tolerating or even encouraging fraudulent practices – and for what exactly?
• How did the wrongdoing start – and morph over time into a toxin that poisoned the entire corporate culture?
• What does this tell us about the gaping hole between ethics in theory and ethics in practice?
• What can be learned from these cases – and what can be taught based on these cases?

Wells Fargo CEO, John Stumpf will be testifying this week before a fired up Senate Banking Committee. Good. Moreover, the bank has already agreed to pay a fine, and enter into an enforcement agreement with regulators. Also good. Volkswagen will pay much more dearly. Costs to the company for cheating on emissions tests are already calculated at over $20 billion. Even better.

Still, this sort of public purification will teach us nothing. For us in any enduring way to extract benefits from the costs will require two things. First, some leaders, some individual high flyers, will have to pay a visible, palpable, price. Second, we must get to the dark, dirty bottom of what happened as if our lives depended on it. Which, of course, they do.

Very few living American leaders have been able to retain their dignity. Very few living American leaders have been able to stay widely respected and deeply admired. Very few living American leaders have been able to remain clean while swimming in dirty waters.

An exception has been former Secretary of State, and Four Star General Colin Powell. An exception until now. Now that his e mails have been hacked, his veneer has been stripped bare. Not that he’s been knocked off his pedestal altogether. But he’s askew, his perfect persona rendered imperfect, less elegant, judicious, and moderate than he had led us to believe.

Apart from describing Donald Trump as a “national disgrace,” and apart from describing Hillary Clinton as “greedy” and filled with “unbridled ambition,” there’s something about Powell’s calling two of his former colleagues (Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney) “idiots” that’s unseemly. Not wrong, mind you, but unseemly –  unbefitting a man like Powell who has regularly been seen as being above the fray, the fray presumably beneath him.

So we reap what we sow. Another American leader bites the dust. Another instance of changes in culture and technology twinning to tarnish a man who spent a lifetime polishing his exterior.

Intermittent fixtures of this blog have been posts titled, “Putin Patrol.” But today’s “Putin Patrol” piece is unlike every other “Putin Patrol” piece. Up to now they have all reeked of fear and loathing. Today’s is a departure – it amounts to an inordinately reluctant tip of the hat.

I, like most Americans even dimly aware of his record, have nothing but contempt for the man of whom John McCain memorably said, “I looked into Putin’s eyes and saw three things – a K a G and a B.”  However, as an inveterate student of leadership, I cannot help but acknowledge Vladimir Putin’s exceptional leadership skills.

Unlike Donald Trump, who admires Putin for being strong at home, I do not. What’s most impressive about him is his exceptional capacity as a strategic player abroad, on the global chessboard. Wherever he has detected weakness, in the US, in Europe, in Asia, he has exploited it, with few exceptions to his considerable political benefit.

It’s hard to recall where Putin was just five years ago. On the global stage – nearly nowhere. Russia had been weakened and Putin was a bit player, puny in comparison with his most obvious counterpart, President Barack Obama. Since then though it is Russia’s influence that has greatly grown, while America’s has badly shrunk.

How did this come to pass? It began when Obama pulled back from his own “red line,” in Syria. When after a year of threatening “enormous consequences” if Syria used chemical weapons, Obama blinked, he backtracked, he backpedaled.  Instead of risking unilateral action against the Assad regime, Obama, operating from a position of weakness, in consequence of his failure  to make good on his threat, brought Putin into the diplomatic process. To broker a deal that would get Assad to destroy his chemical weapons, Obama desperately needed Putin’s cooperation. Which explains why the former opened the Pandora’s Box that let the latter get out.

Since then Putin’s power in foreign affairs has expanded exponentially. Wherever he saw that a door might be ajar, he pushed it open, usually (though not always) to his considerable personal and political benefit. In Crimea. In the Middle East. Most recently, ironically, in the United States, where Russian hacking has already intruded on the presidential campaign – and could become downright insidious.

To those (like me) who see leadership as being value free – inherently neither good or bad – Putin could be described as being in an important way a “good” leader. He is not ethical. But as a global player he sure as hell has been effective.