Author: Barbara

In the old days – say two, three, four years ago – I used to feel I had to prove my point. I used to feel I had to make a case for the proposition that the world was changing. That leaders were getting weaker and that followers – others – were getting stronger.

Now it’s rather like shooting fish in a barrel. Now it’s so screamingly obvious that leaders are lesser than they used to be, it would seem the case was closed.

This is not of course to say that leaders are irrelevant or unimportant. It’s obvious that leaders still matter. Just this week a potentially historic arms control agreement was reached between the leaders of Iran and the leaders of the world’s major powers, an understanding that would have been impossible to broker without the men at the helm.

However, leaders in both Iran and the United States remain vulnerable between now and the end of June to having the deal undone by a host of emboldened opponents, who want nothing so much as to unravel the accord their leaders laboriously stitched together.

Moreover the furor that engulfed the governors of Indiana and Arkansas in the last week, and then forced them both immediately to backtrack while simultaneously eating crow, was a reminder that if you happen to pit leaders against followers on an issue about which the latter feel fervently, the former likely will lose.

Nor are the pressures confined to leaders in government – a truism to which Lufthansa’s CEO Carsten Spohr could be the first to testify. He was too quick to claim in the aftermath of that Germanwings (a Lufthansa subsidiary) crash in the Alps that the pilot and co-pilot were “100% airworthy.” Only a few days later did we learn that years ago were signs the co-pilot was anything other than 100 % airworthy, and that, in fact, it was he who was solely responsible for the crash that claimed the lives of the 150 people on board the ill-fated airliner.

It’s not clear that Spohr will ultimately be forced out as a result of this tragedy. But the attacks on him personally and professionally must be making his life miserable. Fairly or unfairly Spohr is being held to account for what would appear to be mismanagement at lower levels of the organization long before he even became chief executive officer. A German newspaper based in Dusseldorf, where the plane was headed, was typical – it minced no words. It said that Lufthansa’s admission that it had known of the co-pilot’s mental health problems was a “helpless attempt to prevent company chief Carsten Spohr, with his fatal words ‘100 percent flightworthy’” from appearing “as a liar ripe for resignation.”

The benefits of being a leader can clearly be many. But, just as clearly, so now can be the costs. Leaders have become fat targets for followers bent on venting their frustrations.

 

My most recent book – Hard Times: Leadership in America – was published in October by Stanford University Press. The book explores the impact of context on leadership and followership.

Beginning February 3, I started posting in this space excerpts. They appear here in the order in which they appear in the book.

Excerpt from Chapter 7 – Organizations

“In spite of unanticipated consequences…, and in spite of unending debates about the various virtues and deficits of the flattened hierarchy, in the past several decades the conviction that at least somewhat flatter is at least somewhat better gradually took hold. In 1980, fewer than 20 percent of companies on the Fortune 1000 list claimed at least some sort of team management structure. By 1990, it was 50 percent, and by 2000 it was 80 percent. Obviously, not every organization adapted in ways that ultimately were meaningful. Moreover, even now many and maybe even most organizations retain rather a rigidly hierarchical governance structure – not so distant from [Max] Weber’s original conception. Gradually, however, there evolved the conventional wisdom that even the most hidebound organizations would do well to be somewhat flatter in the future than they had been in the past. Even the most hidebound organizations were advised to ‘flatten their informal channels of communication and influence, which all management theory admits are as important … as an organization’s formal structures.’”

 

We think of leadership as a relational act. It assumes that at least one leader, and at least one follower, in some way interact. We further think of leadership as an intentional act. It assumes that the leader deliberately, willfully, intends for follower(s) to go along.

But what if both these assumptions sometimes are wrong? What if leadership is not always a relational act, at least not in any detectable way? And what if the follower goes along, though not, or, at least, not necessarily, because the leader deliberately intends for followership to take place?

Think, for example, of great scientists and mathematicians, such as, say, Copernicus and Einstein. Presumably they had an interest in persuading others of the veracity and validity of their ideas. But they did not, so far as we know, undertake their endeavors for this primary purpose. Their primary purpose was not to lead, but to discover. Their primary purpose was the thing itself –it was not to engage or persuade others.

Still, in time, others went along. Others followed their lead. Others came to recognize that at least in one critical way, Copernicus and Einstein were superior and they were subordinate. Of course these two men were geniuses, so how might this apply in circumstances more mundane?

We know by now that leadership in the second decade of the 21^st century is difficult to exercise, specifically in situations that are more democratic than autocratic. We further know that in every group or organization there are at least some people who have little or no interest in leading and managing; they prefer not to engage with other people, but rather to be autonomous. They prefer to be left alone to do their own work.  In fact, experts often fall into this category. They are specialists whose primary purpose is to perfect the projects to which they in particular are dedicated.

The question then is, how do people like these get compensated in systems that specifically reward leaders and managers? In most organizations, even those that proclaim flat hierarchies, career advancement, along with money and power, is equated with becoming a leader or manager. But, becoming a leader or manager requires intentional interpersonal engagement, which clearly does not suit many men and women with proclivities and capacities unrelated to emotional intelligence. How then to reward these people for who they are, rather than penalize them for who they are not?

A couple of years ago, Rackspace, a U.S. based cloud-computing company, came up with an answer to this question. Rackspace had a problem that was by no means unusual: members of its technical staff frequently felt themselves inadequately compensated, and so defected to other companies. Rackspace’s rewards, in other words, were going in the main to men and women in positions of leadership and management, not to the technical experts who were, after all, responsible for making the trains run on time – in fact, for making the trains run at all.

Rackspace’s response was to come up with what it called a “technical career track” (TCT). It was a way for those who did not want to lead other people nevertheless to play a leadership role. This particular leadership role was not tied to excellence in interpersonal engagement, or for that matter to intentionality, but to excellence in a particular area of expertise. So far, though TCT is still in its early stages, it is proving promising. As one person put it, a designer of data storage systems, “I now know it’s possible to lead by using my knowledge to push what we can do for customers, rather than by managing people.”

What he has come to understand is that of itself good work can be good leadership. It’s a model that, however counter-intuitive, we would do well to bear in mind. One could argue, in fact, that a way of leading that does not depend  on intentionally engaging followers has at this particular moment a particular appeal.

 

For more on the TCT in Rackspace, see: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1c08b5b4-cc87-11e4-b5a5-00144feab7de.html#axzz3VayXfmQE

 

 

 

 

My most recent book – Hard Times: Leadership in America – was published in October by Stanford University Press. The book explores the impact of context on leadership and followership. 

Beginning February 3, I started posting in this space excerpts. They appear here in the order in which they appear in the book.

Excerpt from Chapter 6 – Institutions

“Differences among and between generations confirm, not disconfirm, that what I am describing is a phenomenon much more likely to be enduring than evanescent. That fact is that young people are even less disposed than their elders to trust people in positions of authority – leaders of institutions…. It is of course possible that people change over time – become more trusting as they age. It’s equally possible, even probable, that succeeding generations will have even less confidence in American institutions than do their immediate predecessors.

American institutions are not now what once they were. Or, at least, they seem to us in the present not to be what they were in the past. Perhaps we romanticize what’s long gone and demonize what’s here and now. However, from the perspective of a leader trying to get others to follow, to go along, it does not much matter. The bottom line is that even the best and brightest of the leadership class are now saddled with a reputational problem. Both they and the institutions for which they are responsible carry an albatross – skepticism, even suspicion – that cumulates to a considerable, cumbersome burden.”

For years I have written about how technology has changed the lives of leaders – complicated their lives, made it harder for them to lead and manage, emboldened their followers to attack, often anonymously, in ways they never would have done previously.  Still, the enormous impact of technology on the dynamic between leaders and followers remains insufficiently studied, poorly understood, and widely unappreciated.

Most of the evidence we have on this is anecdotal – stories that testify to the tyranny of technology but that do not facilitate a framework for looking at power in particular.  Still, every now and then leaders come along who memorably detail the impact of the changing technologies on their capacity to control the action.

So it is with Morton Schapiro, who previously was president of Williams College, and who for the last six years has been president of Northwestern University. In a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal titled “The New Face of Campus Unrest” (3/19), Schapiro wrote eloquently about how the explosion of social media has disrupted campus life “to a level unforeseen in the digital dark ages” little more than a decade ago. Schapiro points out how “dealing with campus community members on Facebook, Twitter, You-Tube, Flickr, Tumblr, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, Vine and Yik Yak has become a high-stakes challenge.” He describes how during a class, previous authority figures, namely professors, were attacked on Yik Yak, a smartphone app that allows people within a limited geographical range to share anonymous messages. He describes students using social media to post racially offensive comments. And he describes the high level of divisiveness among university officials on the question of how exactly to respond to these sorts of on line offenses, even at the highest levels.

Above all Schapiro describes a leader, himself, caught too often between the proverbial rock and a hard place. “Any attempt to hold people accountable for what they say will rile up the ‘free speech at any cost’ advocates,” he writes, “but any defense of First Amendment rights will lead to campus unrest and hand-ringing. So where to draw the line?” Later he asks … “So what’s a president to do?”

No easy answers here but in the end Schapiro turns, as I now invariably do, to context. “The context of an incident matters,” he concludes, “and it is near impossible for outsiders to glean the facts during the public battles that ensue after a high-profile event. College community members deserve to be in a safe and supportive environment, and it is our job to nurture that environment.”

 

Of the good number of American men who were leaders, whose reputations were tarnished in recent years by scandal, no one was more foolish, or more egregious, than General David Petraeus.

The list of highly placed men who have been hoisted, so to speak, by their own petard is long. Moreover many of these men were perfectly idiotic in the level of risk that they took by engaging in practices that, if disclosed, were bound deeply to humiliate them. But Petraeus was singular, first because his vaulted position as the most esteemed and admired military man of his time seemed etched in stone; second because as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency he held a post defined by trust; and third because his fall from grace was occasioned not only by his betrayal on a personal level, but by his betrayal on a professional one.

Our proclivity has been to position Petraeus alongside other leaders whose lust and, or, love, did them in, at least temporarily, men such as Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, and Mark Sanford.  But what Petraeus did was materially different. He was guilty, by his own admission, not merely of adultery, which presumably is his business, but of providing his lover (and biographer) with notebooks that contained classified information. This, presumably, is our business. The nation’s business.

What he did, in other words, was an outrage. His was an outrageous abdication of responsibility as one of America’s most highly placed leaders. Nevertheless, the government has chosen to give him no more than a slap on the wrist. What’s even scarier, or, at least more offensive, is that we, the American people, seem ready to give him a pass as well. The White House recently admitted it is consulting with Petraeus on the situation in the Middle East, and the Washington Post just quoted him as guru on how dangerous is Iran. It’s clear that now that the legal case against him is in effect settled, Petraeus is staging a comeback.

I’m modestly into forgiveness. And I’ve written extensively on America’s apology culture, especially as it applies to leaders. But some things leaders do are not forgivable. Providing your lover with access to some of the nation’s secrets is one of them. It’s obvious Petraeus does not himself have the grace to retire from public life. So what we should be doing is not engaging him – but retiring him ourselves.

 

 

 

 

My most recent book – Hard Times: Leadership in America – was published in October by Stanford University Press. The book explores the impact of context on leadership and followership.

Beginning February 3, I started posting in this space excerpts. They are in the order in which they appear in the book.

Excerpt from Chapter 5 – Economics

“So why does it seem that economic leadership in twenty-first century America is in a class by itself – that difficult for leaders in general to exercise? First are the complexities of modern capitalism. On a theoretical level they are difficult if not impossible to master; on a practical level they are difficult if not impossible to tame.

Second, even the experts, such as the president’s economic advisers, cannot compensate for whatever the executive’s deficiencies. When Obama was elected, neither he nor his vice president, Joe Biden, had any demonstrable economic experience or expertise….

Third, economic leadership is difficult to exercise because power is diffused, divided between, among others, the president and the Congress, the White House and the Federal Reserve, the Federal Reserve and the financial services industry, and the public sector and the private one. There is no single lever of power.

Fourth the economy has gone global. What happens in the United States affects what happens elsewhere in the world. And what happens elsewhere in the world affects what happens in the United States.

Finally, economic leadership is so difficult to exercise because of democratic followership – “because the grave problems of American public finance will not yield to the populist solutions that command political and public support.’”

 

 

My most recent book, Hard Times: Leadership in America, makes the case that context matters. That leadership cannot be understood separate and apart from the context within which it is exercised.

The interesting thing is that every now and then someone comes along who makes the case at least as well as, or maybe better than, I do. One such is David Brooks, who in a recent column in the New York Times listed some of the contextual constraints on leadership in America – specifically on political leadership at the federal level.*

His point was that times have changed – that the political climate in Washington has changed so greatly in recent decades it’s barely recognizable. Here’s how he put it:

• It used to be that senators did not go out campaigning against one another.
• It used to be that senators did not filibuster except in rare circumstances.
• It used to be that senators did not routinely block presidential nominations.
• It used to be that senators did not write letters to hostile nations while their own president was negotiating with them.
• It used to be that presidents did not push the limits of their executive authority.
• It used to be that presidents did not go out negotiating arms control treaties in a way that did not require Senate ratification.

It used to be, in other words, that Washington was once a kinder, gentler place within which to do the nation’s business.

Notice the total absence in this analysis of any single individual. This is not about President Barack Obama, nor for that matter is it about Senator Ted Cruz. Rather it is about how all leaders in the nation’s capital are encased in a context that to an extent they shape, but that to an even greater extent shapes them.

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*David Brooks, “Hillary Clinton’s Big Test,” New York Times, March 13, 2015.

 

What must happen to tarnish a reputation? What must happen to push a person off a pedestal? What must happen to turn an icon into a human?

To cast doubt on the secular sainthood of Abraham Lincoln is the rough equivalent of casting doubt on the glory of the American flag. It just isn’t done, or, at least, it isn’t done now and it isn’t done in public and it isn’t done by anyone who would claim even a modicum of political correctness. After all, Lincoln preserved the Union and he abolished slavery – both achievements that place him, properly, in the American pantheon.

But to place a person in a pantheon does not mean – or it should not mean – that he is, for all time, above reproach. That he is so perfect he is ossified, so fully encased in marble that he is untouchable.

Off and on over the years I have wondered about the number of dead during the American Civil War. This number has always seemed to me to be humungous, proportionately certainly, so big as to be beyond imagining. But, then, I am anything but a Civil War historian, or even any sort of an expert on American history. And so I never said much about it, or even asked much about it, not to speak of ever having written about it – until now.

Here though is what I do know. I do know that when you read these two sentences, as I just did a few days ago, they ought to give pause. “The Civil War’s death toll was catastrophic.  At about 2% of the population, the equivalent today would be something like seven million gone.”*

Seven million gone in today’s numbers– seven million Americans dead! As a point of comparison, 2% of Americans died during the Civil War; well under half of one percent of Americans died during World War II.  Was there, then, nothing else that President Lincoln could have done? Did he have no recourse other than the course he chose?

Clearly the conventional wisdom is that the answer to this question is no. There was no other way for Lincoln both to preserve the Union and abolish slavery, at least not in the early 1860s, other than to further the war and have Americans endure its calamitous costs. Still, I, perhaps naively, cannot help but wonder if this conventional wisdom about our lionized leader necessarily holds true.

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*Martha Hodes, Wall Street Journal, March 7-8, 2015.

 

Blog suspended for at least one to two weeks.