Bad Leadership – How to be a Harbinger of Danger

By Barbara
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In recent months has been a growing list of people warning about Donald Trump. Warning about who he is and what he would do if elected president a second time.

The list to which I specifically refer is not just any list. It is a special list composed of those who know him best because while he was president they worked alongside.

The reasons for their cautions range from Trump’s being a threat to democracy to his disdain for the truth to his being ill-informed and incurious. To say the warnings are singular in that they are unprecedented is evident. To say that based on everything we have long seen and repeatedly heard they have the ring of truth is equally evident. What is less evident is why given the experience and excellence of these Trump-dissidents the sound of their alarms has been muted. Rather than ringing through the land loud and clear they’ve been hard to hear.       

Who are they, these dissidents? Generals and admirals. National security advisers. Cabinet members. Trump’s vice president. They are Americans in the highest echelons of their leadership ranks and yet. And yet their voices have not carried, they have not broken through.   

Which is not to say they have had no impact whatsoever. Maybe, cumulatively, they made a modest difference. But they should have made more. We should have been shocked to the core when someone like retired U. S. Marine Corp General and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said that Trump had “nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” But we were not. Why not?

  • Because Americans are inured to Donald Trump – nearly immune to who he is and what he says and does.
  • Because Americans are anyway deeply divided.
  • Because of all the chatter and clatter – all that clamor coming at Americans every day and night.  
  • Because of when the criticisms were leveled. The harshest by far were leveled years after Trump left office. Too late.
  • Because of how the criticisms were leveled. If you’re going to speak out think how best to be heard. Retired U. S. Army General Mark Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff including during the last two years of Trump’s presidency, told journalist Bob Woodward that Trump was a “fascist to the core.” Woodward then dutifully reported what Milley said. But Woodward channeling Milley is far less powerful, far less likely to resonate, than Milley saying whatever he has to say directly.

Today’s news cycle is a fierce and ferocious competition for attention. To break through you must speak very, very loudly, and very, very clearly, and very, very early. If you are too leery and too late there is no chance your voice will be heard as it should.

Posted in: Digital Article

Published by Barbara

Barbara Kellerman was Founding Executive Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, a member of the Harvard faculty for over twenty years, and a Fellow at the Center for five years. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, Uppsala, and Christopher Newport Universities, as well as at Dartmouth, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She also served as Director of Graduate Studies at Fairleigh Dickinson, and as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the University of Maryland. Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. (in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala University she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and is author and editor of many books including Bad Leadership; Followership; The End of Leadership; Professionalizing Leadership, and Leadership from Bad to Worse. Kellerman has appeared on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Reuters, and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and Harvard Business Review. She has spoken to audiences all over the world including Berlin, London, Moscow, Melbourne, Sao Paolo, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Toronto, Kyoto, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Sydney, and Seoul. The title of her next book is Why We Follow Leaders – and Why We Don’t. It will be published in September 2026 by the University of Toronto Press. Kellerman regularly posts at https://barbarakellerman.com/articles/

2 comments

  1. don’t believe that any of the major political parties in this wonderful country inherently oppose compassion and integrity. But there are times when certain politicians do stand against these values. What, then, of universities that have publicly committed themselves to such things as cultivating compassionate, engaged citizens? Can they remain silent when faced with a presidential candidate who openly threatens these core principles? If such institutions truly aim to foster empathy, integrity, and courage, must they not engage and challenge the perspectives that erode these qualities?
    If education at these universities is about forming citizens, not just graduates, doesn’t their duty to justice and mercy outweigh the fear of appearing partisan? Surely for them, silence in the face of clear ethical danger is not as much prudence (though that stance IS financially prudent) as it is complicity.

  2. As far as I am concerned of the Republicans & the National Security Establishment only Liz Cheney & Adam Kinzinger really stepped up & tried to break through the noise to speak to the American people. Tragically what Cheney & Kinzinger said did not matter. Living in my Blue Bubble, I am shocked by the result.

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