Author: Barbara

My book, The End of Leadership, came out in 2012. While the title was somewhat hyperbolic, I did mean it to suggest that leadership as we had known it had changed, likely forever.

My book Hard Times: Leadership in America, which came out in 2014, argued that the end of leadership was as much about context as it was about leaders and followers. Specifically, it was about how 24 different components of context made exercising leadership in 21^st century America difficult.

Nothing has changed since 2012 – in fact, as predicted, if you want to lead your task is even harder. Two reasons stand out. The first is followers – particularly our own profound, pervasive dislike and distrust of the system within which we are situated. The recent numbers are numbing. Between 2000 and 2015, the favorable rating of Congress plummeted 18 points; the presidency 16 points; even the Supreme Court 17 points. Nor does the private sector do better. Businesses and banks have had similar drops in public approval. Of course the reasons for this are as complex as numerous. Suffice it here to say that no quick fix is in evidence, which means that anyone who wants to lead in America – or for that matter in any democratic system – must for the foreseeable future do so in an atmosphere that is hostile.

The second reason leadership now is more difficult to exercise is because our attitude toward leadership per se has hardened. Since the establishment of the Republic, America has always had an anti-authority culture. Our revolutionary origin and ideology made certain of that. But, it is also true that in recent years leading has become even trickier. We know by now that command and control and pyramidal hierarchies are out. And we know by now that shared or distributed power and flattened hierarchies are in. What we know less well is the degree to which this trend has solidified – and to which it is being reified by younger generations. Demographics matter. Younger followers demand more than did their predecessors: they expect their leaders to be more transparent, and more forthcoming, and more equitable toward those ostensibly beneath them.

None of this should surprise us. For several hundred years of western history power has devolved, from those up high to those down below. Moreover technology – especially social media – has accelerated this trend. What it does suggest, though, is that anyone who would teach leadership, and anyone who would learn it, should be acutely aware of the hardships associated with leading in a climate as frail and fraught as this one.

Last week was an article in the Wall Street Journal headlined, “Companies Want to Know: How Do Workers Feel?” (Link below.) Golly, gee, I thought, isn’t that sweet?! As least some employers care about the well-being of their employees.

Silly me. I should’ve known better. Overwhelmingly, when companies want to know “how their workers feel” it’s not about the well-being of those in their employ, it’s about the well-being of the companies themselves. In fact, the overriding reason followers are given short shrift in the leadership literature is because the leadership literature is itself mostly targeted at the corporate sector – which cares more about corporations than it does about those who people them.

A moment into reading, I realized that this article was no exception. Self-interest drives the interest in knowing how workers feel. “Sentiment analysis software” is being used to uncover employee sentiments on issues ranging from diversity to promotion because in this competitive hiring market – especially in certain industries – companies are motivated to keep their workers happy in order to keep them in place. Twitter is an example. “Making sure that we know what employees expect out of their experience at Twitter and the degree to which we’re living up to those expectations is incredibly important to us,” said Twitter’s director of people systems and analytics.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Businesses are not only entitled to act in their self-interest, they are expected to do so. But just once I’d like to read an article about a company that wants to know how its workers feel for reasons less selfish and more altruistic. Just once I’d like to read an article about a company that wants to know how its workers feel just so that it can make them feel even better than they already do.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-do-employees-really-feel-about-their-companies-1444788408

When Americans vote for president they do not actually vote for president. Instead they select presidential electors who, in turn, select the president. Moreover, we have scant chance directly to register our policy preferences. Instead we are obliged to leave this to our legislatures, including at the federal level, where Congress decides, or not, on our collective behalf.

By and large this is typical of democracies: legislators pass legislation intended to implement particular policy choices. One could argue that this works well when the legislature works well. But when it does not, when it is polluted by money and infected by dysfunction, as is the case now with Congress, the system itself must be corrected.

There is no obvious comparison between the United States and Switzerland. The two countries are different in nearly every important aspect – save one. Both are functioning, or supposedly functioning, democracies. The Swiss, however, have long had a tradition in which they themselves – not their elected officials – decide on political outcomes. In Switzerland no measure becomes law unless its citizens explicitly approve it – which explains why on average the Swiss go to the polls four times a year. Four times a year they vote on several issues at a time. Similarly, there is a procedure by which they can propose their own public policies. As a recent piece in USA Today pointed out, all it takes for this to happen is a petition with 50,000 signatures presented to the proper authorities. (Link below.)

I am hardly the first to suggest that America would benefit from more direct political participation. In fact, doing away with the Electoral College is a frequently proposed political reform. Which raises the question of why Americans are so resistant to change – even now, when 21st century technology would enable direct democracy to be easily tested. Historically have been two clear reasons. First, we are loathe to tamper with our own history. Every time anyone proposes a constitutional convention we break out in a national sweat. Second, direct democracy seems to us unwieldy. This country is so large, and so populous, and so diverse, governing by increasing participating seems a recipe for chaos.

But what we have now is just not good enough!  Truth is that unless we do something nothing will change. Truth is that to be paralyzed by the present political fecklessness is to be doomed to perpetuate it.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2015/10/14/switzerland-power-belongs-people-referendum/73829884/

ALL WE ARE SAYING IS GIVE PEACE A CHANCE….

John Lennon – who would have turned 75 years old today.

In the mid-1930s Winston Churchill was a political outsider. This did not stop him from delivering to parliament a series of stunning speeches in which he, nearly alone, warned against Hitler.

In 1936, in consequence of the Nazi build-up, but still three years before Germany invaded Poland, Churchill said this:

Two things, I confess, have staggered me, after a long Parliamentary experience, in these Debates. The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position on the whole outlook of the world. Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House of Commons to react effectively against these dangers. That, I am bound to say, I never expected. I never would have believed that we should have been allowed to go on getting into this plight, month by month and year by year….

What, I wonder, would Churchill say now? What, I wonder, would Churchill say about the Russian autocrat, Vladimir Putin, who in the last year and a half has transformed the political and military landscape first in Europe and now in the Middle East – while the West failed “to react effectively against these dangers.”

It is inconceivable to me that he would remain mute. It is inconceivable to me that Churchill would not warn that Putin’s appetite, just like Hitler’s, “may grow with eating.”

What is conceivable to me is that history will repeat itself. What is conceivable to me is that now as before the United States and its allies will be too pusillanimous to preclude in the present a future that is fearsome.

What’s happening in Congress right now boggles the mind. The very idea that the position of Speaker of the House is going begging beggars belief. The incumbent Speaker John Boehner is desperate to quit. His apparent heir apparent Kevin McCarthy has dropped out of the running to succeed him. And another obvious choice, Paul Ryan, insists (at least for the moment) that he has no interest in taking the job.

This is not a crisis of leadership. It is a crisis of followership. The reason being Speaker seems so dismally daunting is because unlike in the old days, when the position had some power, some authority, and some influence, the Speaker now has no power, scant authority, and precious little influence.

Why? Because many members of Congress – especially but by no means exclusively House Republicans – are hellbent on doing their own thing. Many members of Congress have no conception of what it takes to make a good group capable of doing good things. By their refusing to go along with leaders who do not echo their views, we the American people ares stuck with a joke of a legislature – one that smacks more of a banana republic than a great nation.

Those of us in the leadership industry share some of the blame. By overemphasizing the importance of leadership, and underplaying the importance of followership, we devalue what is essential to being functional.

On September 30^th the Wall Street Journal had a separate ten-page section entirely devoted to “Women in the Workplace.” It drew heavily on the findings of a “major new study of women in the workplace that was conducted by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co.“ The study, in other words, had the imprimatur of some of the best brands in business – Sheryl Sandberg and McKinsey.

The subject of motherhood came up in the section – but only episodically and tangentially. Moreover the idea that gender differences – say, pregnancy and lactation – might have some bearing on the fact that “a majority of women say they would rather not grab the brass ring” was not even considered. Interestingly, according to the study, women do want promotions. Being a mother seems to “increase their appetite for winning promotions.” But, when it comes to the top job, to exercising leadership in a big way, women demur significantly more often than men. (Only 43% of women said they want to be a top executive, compared to 54% of men.)

The question of course is why. In a piece with her byline, Sandberg responded to the question in three ways. First, she wrote, the drop-off of women in senior ranks is because “they face more barriers to advancement.” Second, she argued, it is because “women are twice as likely to believe their gender will make it harder to advance.” And third Sandberg conjectured it is because of stress. The “leadership ambition gap” is because the path to senior positions “is disproportionately stressful for women.”

Sandberg and others are careful to point out that the research does not suggest that women with children are notably less interested in taking on leadership roles than women without. What they do not do is to tell us the reason for this: that in the most fundamental ways all women are alike, whether or not they have a child. This continuing refusal – or is it denial? – to admit into the gender discourse genetic differences continues a crying shame.

In the wake of yesterday’s mass shooting in Oregon, it was again reported that the overwhelming majority of such killers are men, not women. Women nearly never engage in such behavior for any reason, including mental illness. Which again raises this question: what if any are the differences between the genders?

In my last blog of the above title, posted on August 24, I wrote (along with Deborah Rhode) that while the existing explanations for why so few women exercise leadership are not incorrect, they are insufficient. “They do not take into account the most simple, yet most powerful, of all explicators: nature. It is women not men who carry children from conception to birth. And it is women not men who breastfeed.” It seems hard to believe, we continued, “that these gender-based differences – physiological and psychological – have no bearing whatsoever on the perennial problem of getting more women to lead.”

The implication is that women might not want to lead as much as men for several reasons, in particular the attention they need and want to pay their children. While there is no mention of children in a recent article titled “Men Want Powerful Jobs More than Women Do” (link below), it is possible if not probable that the findings reported therein relate. The study suggests that women are simply less eager to gain power and, by extension, to exercise leadership, than their male counterparts. Think of it as a cost/benefit calculation: women perceive the costs of professional power as being higher than do men, and the benefits of professional power as being lower.

Interestingly, the anxiety about reporting these findings is palpable even in the article – which describes them as “potentially controversial.” The authors of the piece (all three are women) worry about being seen as biased because they suggest first, that there are differences between men and women and second, that some of these differences might be innate. (One of the authors  describes being “booed” at recent conference.)

One of the great scientists of the last half century was Edward O. Wilson, who coined the term “sociobiology.” Notwithstanding his greatness, maybe because of it, in the 1970s and beyond he was castigated for claiming that certain human behaviors – including the mother/child bond – were genetically based. There were differences, Wilson posited, between men and women that could not be explained either on the basis of nurture or of culture. Since then, some progress has been made. Catherine Dulac, another Harvard scientist, speaks openly now, without fear of being ostracized, about “sex typical behaviors,” including those relating to both aggression and parenting.

Still, so far at least the conversation about women and leadership remains stunted. It is fixated either on female psychology, or on the male-dominated workplace. But by excluding the information, the idea, that relevant differences between the genders are genetically based, we confine the conversation to what is politically correct.

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/men-want-powerful-jobs-more-than-women-do

To all appearances, the happiest man in America last week was John Boehner, who announced his resignation both as Speaker and as a member of Congress with evident relief – even glee.

With a zip in his step and a song on his lips – “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah, Zip-A-Dee-A” – Boehner gave every indication that he was more than “entirely comfortable” with stepping down. He was thrilled! Which raises the question of why. Why was Boehner that happy to be quitting a post that he had sought and then fought to keep, one to which he had aspired life-long?

John Boehner happens to be a poster-child for my claim that looking at leadership through the lens of the leader is misguided to the point of mistaken. If your intention is to look at leadership carefully and comprehensively a different approach is called for – a systemic approach. Do not, in other words, think leadership. Do think leadership system!  The leadership system is not complex. It has only three parts – each of which is, though, of equal importance. The leader is no more critical a component than the other two: the followers (or others), and the contexts within which both leaders and followers are situated.

As will be seen in the following excerpt, I used John Boehner to illustrate the systemic approach in my most recent book, Hard Times: Leadership in America. The book was published in fall 2014. Of course I could not know then what I know now: that by fall 2015 Boehner would be fed up being a victim of the system.

“The so-called crisis of American leadership is much less about leaders themselves and much more about the complex context within which they are expected to operate. Let me give an example – John Boehner. Boehner, a Republican, became speaker of the House of Representatives in January 2011. Beginning on day one he found it difficult to do what he was elected and expected to do – to lead. He found it difficult if not impossible to collaborate with both the Senate and the President. More to the point, he found it difficult if not impossible to lead even House Republicans, his own putative followers in his own chamber.

Was this because Boehner was himself so woefully inept, so utterly clueless that he lacked the capacity to get his House in order? …. Or was there another reason? Was it due instead, or at least in addition, to the circumstance within which Boehner found himself? Was it due instead, or at least in addition, to Washington’s inordinately discordant political culture?

…Right around the time he was elected speaker the context changed. The emergence of the Tea Party, seemingly out of nowhere, altered the Republican Party in ways that Boehner was not prepared for or equipped to contend with….By 2010 Washington had changed and the House had changed right along with it.”

• Did you know that Australia has had five prime ministers in five years?
• Did you know that the recently humiliated and rapidly resigned CEO of Volkswagen, Martin Winterkorn, was known to be particularly autocratic and micro-managerial?
• Did you know that in addition to Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein having (blood) cancer, so in the last few years did the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, James Dimon, have (throat) cancer, and the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet, have (prostate) cancer?
• Did you know that the power-hungry president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not only has expanded his power at the expense of the rule of law, but has lectured Turks on what to eat and how many children to have?
• Did you know that Bank of America shareholders lost this week and CEO Brian Moynihan won, when the former failed to stop the latter from keeping the titles of both Chairman and Chief Executive officer?