Category: Digital Article

Since the so-called Arab Spring people with power and authority intent on obliterating their opposition have learned a lesson: there is one way – only one way – reliably to do it. Crush it. Squelch it. If need be wipe it – wipe your opponents – off the face of the earth.

• Do I need to remind that after more than two months of protests against Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro more than 40 people have died and countless others have been wounded?
• Do I need to remind that the second of the recent Ukrainian revolutions, which led to the ouster this winter of President Victor Yanukovych, resulted in a power grab by Russian President Vladimir Putin, the consequences of which increasingly threaten the stability of the European continent?
• Do I need to remind that the attempt to destabilize the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has had consequences that are direr, more destructive and deadly, than anyone a couple of years ago could even have begun to imagine?
• Do I need to remind that just this week in Egypt – the cradle of the Arab Spring – more than 680 members of the opposition were sentenced to death? You read that right – in one swoop nearly 700 opponents (mostly but not only Islamists) of the current government were condemned by the judiciary to die. Though it’s not yet clear the sentence will be carried out, it’s mind-bending nevertheless.

There is more to be said about all this – much, much, much more. And in the fullness of time I will. Suffice it for now to point out that in many places around the world the reaction to people power, to follower-power, has been leader-power. Leaders hell bent on holding on to what they have use whatever the tools at their disposal to eliminate, literally if necessary, their political opponents. Followers, meanwhile, ordinary people, have in many if not most cases yet to discover how to use their newly empowered selves to the best of their own advantage.

• I wrote Bad Leadership (published in 2004) because I never did understand why we focus laser-like on developing good leaders – and ignore altogether the perennial problem of stopping or at least slowing bad leaders. For all our recent interest in leadership studies and leadership development, the question of how good people can rid themselves of bad leaders remains unaddressed. The problem pertains across the board – in each of the different sectors, everywhere in the world.

  This will be my last blog for at least one month. While I hate to end even for a time on a sour note, in light of the latest news it’s impossible not to speak to Syria, and to Russia, and to the nexus between them and the West.

  Three bullet points will suffice to make my argument.

  • The world has stood by and done effectively nothing while Syria has descended, for over three years now, into calamity and cruelty on an unimaginable scale. Unlike in times past, when the argument could be made that we did not know what was happening when it was happening, in this case we all know everything. Technology has rendered the excuse of ignorance obsolete. And yet the world has stood by, been a bystander to murder and torture; disease, death and destruction; and to a leader, Bashar al-Assad, who palpably, manifestly, is bad to the point of being evil.
  • The West – particularly the American President, but by no means only the American president – saw fit to try to work with the Russian president to try to constrain Assad. Specifically, despite ample evidence that the Russians were undermining American intentions not only in Syria but elsewhere in the world, the Americans saw fit to strike a deal with the Russians over ridding Assad of his chemical weapons.
  • What the West – particularly the American president, but by no means only the American president – did not recognize was that for Russia this was a strategic move, aimed over the long run not at weakening its client in the Middle East, Assad, but at strengthening him. And so it has come to pass. Assad is stronger now than he was when the deal over chemical weapons was struck. Moreover, there is ample evidence that Putin’s land grab in Ukraine has further emboldened the murderous Syrian tyrant, encouraging him to run, if you can believe it, for reelection notwithstanding his wretched reign.

  What can we conclude?

  Three more bullet points:

  • Good to be clear-eyed about bad leaders. They never morph into good unless they are forced by someone somehow to do so. This means that either that they must be compelled to behave in a way that to them is unnatural. Or that they must be deposed.
  • Good to be clear-eyed about what works and what does not. Bad tactic to break bread with leaders who support bad leaders. No good leader should ever support a leader who supports a bad leader.
  • Good to do something as opposed to doing nothing. History will not be kind to those who stood by and did nothing while Syria burned.

   

An article in the New York Times a few days ago had the following headline: “Wave of Sexual Abuse Allegations for Private Schools in Britain” (3/16/14). On one level it seemed not much new – more revelations of sexual molestations. Specifically, more cases in which older men in positions of authority preyed on young boys who had been placed in their charge.

This sort of scandal has become by now familiar. Best known of course is the series of similar stories that hit the Catholic Church at the start of the last decade. Once it came out, courtesy of the Boston Globe, that the archdiocese of Boston had long tolerated or at least not excluded to the point of exile predatory priests, the dam broke. To this day the Church has not fully recovered from the damage done by priestly misconduct if not criminal wrongdoing.

It turned out – no surprise – that the Catholic Church was by no means alone in concealing the problem. Schools were, are, another repository of similar behaviors. For example, a scandal starring “Prep-School Predators” tarnished the well-known and highly respected Horace Mann School in New York City which, it was recently was revealed, had “a secret history of sexual abuse” (New York Times, 6/6/12).

One of the things that makes these sort of stories mesmerizing to many is the question of why now? Why after many long years of silence is the truth coming to light at this moment in time? The article about child abuse in British schools makes clear that dozens of men are only now “breaking decades of silence.” Similarly, a former headmaster was only recently convicted molesting some of his students – over fifty years ago. What’s with the time lag?

A British lawyer involved in one of the cases gave the answer.  “You had deference,” he said. He went on to add that in the past when teachers were discovered abusing their charges they were moved on, quietly. Schools like churches would do anything they could to avoid public embarrassment and damage to their reputation. And parents like parishioners either did not know – or they too would do anything they could to avoid rattling the relevant cage.

Now though we’re bolder and braver. Now people in positions of authority cannot count on our deference. This significant difference holds true everywhere in the world – except where it does not. If leaders threaten their followers they, we, will tend now as then to shut up.

      

I have written as ardently as anyone about the impact of technology on patterns of power, authority, and influence. And I have written as ardently as anyone on how technology is changing relations between leaders and followers. In The End of Leadership I wrote that “in the last thirty, forty years changes in leadership and followership have been the result of two phenomena in particular: the first is cultural change and the second is technological change, advances in communications technologies that led to more information, greater self-expression, and expanded connection.”

But the current crisis in relations between the U. S. and Russia, between the West and Putin’s putatively resurgent Russian empire, amounts to a crash course in where technology falls short. Come to think of it, it doesn’t fall short, it fails us altogether. Technology is nowhere when it comes to managing human relations in ways that leaders can meaningfully use or practically apply, at least in world affairs.

For all the changes in science and technology, the American foreign policy establishment is back to reading tea leaves, to doing what it did during the Cold War when the best it could do was to practice Kremlinology. What exactly was Kremlinology? It was no more really than educated guesswork on what was transpiring in top Soviet circles, guesswork on what motivated the likes of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev, and on what they were likely to do from one week to the next. In fact, Kremlinology was so weak a field of study that it failed categorically accurately to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union, which happened in the historical equivalent of the blink of an eye.

So it is now with the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin – it’s back to guesswork. The best that the best and brightest can do is to estimate what motivates the man and what he is likely to do, in this case from one day to the next. In this game of guesswork, the remarkable, revolutionary advances in technology help not one whit. It’s why the best and the brightest cannot begin to agree either on what exactly is happening now or on what exactly should be our next steps. And it’s why politics is nothing so much as a reminder that the course of human affairs is determined by nothing so much as the human condition.

Anticipating by a few years the now ubiquitous apology culture, in 2006 Harvard Business Review published an article I wrote titled, “When Should a Leader Apologize – and When Not.” I noted then that for leaders to apologize is “a high stakes move” – for them, for their followers, and for the organizations they represent. “Refusal to apologize can be smart, or it can be suicidal. Conversely, readiness to apologize can be seen as a sign of strong character or as a sign of weakness. A successful apology can turn enmity into personal and organizational triumph – while an apology that is too little, too late, or too transparently tactical can bring on individual and institutional ruin.”

Since then for a leader to apologize has become a commonplace. So commonplace that on February 3 New York Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote “it seems that just about every day a chief executive, politician or other prominent figure is apologizing for something.” Sorkin, who along with Dov Seidman decided to institute an “apology watch,” went on to note, “The age of the apology is clearly upon us…. It has become de rigueur, an almost reflexive response among leaders to a mistake or, worse, a true crisis.”

As if to prove the point, in the last few weeks alone there have been apologies from a wide range of public figures, including Target’s chief executive Gregg W. Steinhafel, JP Morgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, General Motors chief executive Mary Barra, not to speak of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, venture capitalist Tom Perkins and, of all people, basketball superstar LeBron James (for using the word “retarded,” which he called a “bad habit”).

Nor is the apology culture confined to the U. S. To the contrary, it’s not far from being a global phenomenon. Just this week the Dutch financial giant ING felt obliged to apologize when it announced – in response to a public outcry – that it was retreating from a plan to serve ads to its customers based on their banking habits. In an open letter to all ING customers CEO Nich Jue wrote: “We have not been clear enough about the sensitive topic of customer data, causing an avalanche of worried response from our customers. These responses clearly demonstrate that there are a lot of questions and concerns about the protection of customer data, for which I sincerely apologize.”*

What then is the irony to which I refer? It is that those leaders who are apologizing are, at the least, responsive to the preferences of others. They are responsive to their stakeholders, to those who in some way are their followers or constituents. But there are other leaders – those ironically, paradoxically, who have the most to apologize for – who remain silent. Who never apologize, who never will apologize, who would rather die than be caught apologizing.

Any names come to mind?

*I am grateful to David Vermijs for pointing out to me the example of ING.

 

 

I never put all that much stock in the idea of the glass cliff. The suggestion that women leaders are more likely than their male counterparts to lead organizations that in some way are in trouble struck me as being somehow paranoid – as if women didn’t have enough on their hands getting to the top in the first place.     

The term “glass cliff” – a riff on the metaphor of the “glass ceiling” – was coined by Professors Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam of the University of Exeter in 2004. Their research led them to conclude that once women break through the glass ceiling to top leadership roles, they are anything but home free. To the contrary: they are more likely than men to be leaders in situations that for some reason are precarious – which means that they are more likely than men to fail at their appointed task.

I admit it: I could not help but think of the glass cliff when it became clear in recent weeks that General Motors was in trouble – in big trouble. If not necessarily with customers, certainly with regulators and safety advocates.

Mary Barra became CEO of G.M. only in January, when a big fuss was made over the fact that she is the first female CEO of a major American automobile company. However, what we did not know then and do know now is that G.M. was poised on the brink of a considerable crisis. We did not know then but do know now that not only has the car company been forced to undertake a major recall (some 1.6 million vehicles), but it might well be found ultimately liable for some 300 deaths resulting from a faulty ignition switch.  

This drama at G.M. will take years to play out. But this much is apparent even now. Instead of being able to focus on building the company, Mary Barra will instead be distracted if not derailed by what has already become a major institutional scandal. The chances are good that when she took the position of chief executive she knew what was in store. It’s hard to believe that she was completely blindsided by the impending crisis. Still, what should have been an exemplar of a woman in a position of leadership seems more evidently an exemplar of a woman precariously perched – on the edge of a glass cliff.    

 

 

 

 

 

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned ruthless tyrant?
• Crimea’s opposition is being threatened and silenced?
• Russia’s opposition is being threatened and silenced? 
• Members of the media are being threatened and silenced?
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has gone from being a wolf in sheep’s clothing to being, without any apparent compunction, a wolf?    

 

• Protests in Turkey – against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan — are continuing? This week more than 100,000 people gathered in the streets and squares of Istanbul to express their rage and grief. Their rage was at a leader increasingly viewed as being an autocrat, and at a government increasingly viewed as being autocratic. And their grief was over the death of a 15-year-old boy who had died after being hit in the head by a police tear-gas canister.  
• Protests in Israel – against a government plan to compel more members of the ultra-Orthodox community to serve in the military – are beginning? This week some 300,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews rallied for their cause in the streets and squares of Jerusalem. The government meanwhile insists that it is intent finally on limiting what up to now have been wholesale exceptions from military service.           
• Protests in Venezuela – against the government and for the government – that have been going on for at least one month show no signs whatsoever of abating? Quite the opposite, in fact. The country is deeply divided with no solution or conciliation in sight. Positions are hardening, with many Venezuelans more not less inclined to accept the possibility that their country is heading toward a bloody face-off.   

    Ukrainians have not, in other words, been the only ones taking to the streets in recent months. The world over there is continuing evidence that ordinary people are feeling politically empowered – even though, as we see this weekend (the Crimean election), the products of protest are impossible to predict.  

In a piece published yesterday titled “The Leaderless Doctrine,” New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote in part the following:

“The Cold War was a competition between clearly defined nation-states.

Commanding American leaders created a liberal international order. They preserved that order with fleets that roamed the seas, armies stationed around the world and diplomatic skill.

Over the ensuing decades, that faith in big units has eroded – in all spheres of life. Management hierarchies have been flattened. Today people are more likely to believe that history is driven by people gathering in the squares and not from the top down. The liberal order is not a single system organized and defended by American military strength; it’s a spontaneous network of direct people-to-people contacts, flowing along the arteries of the Internet.

The real power in the world is not military or political. It is the power of individuals to withdraw their consent.”

Brooks was echoing an argument I made two years ago, in my book, The End of Leadership.

What’s even clearer to me now though than it was then, is that what best characterizes the world in the second decade of the 21^st century is what I will from here on in refer to as the “leadership gap.”

Here’s what I mean. The end of leadership, or the leaderless doctrine, best applies to institutions and systems that generally adhere to principles of democratic governance. Those institutions and systems that are less linked to these principles, not to speak of those that dismiss them altogether, are not similarly characterized by the end of leadership, or by being leaderless.

However…by and large these latter groups and organizations are led by leaders who in my simple parlance are “bad.” They are autocratic, tyrannical, or even “evil.”* They are not in any case, by any definition, democratic.

This gap – between leadership in democracies on the one hand and leadership in autocracies on the other – is nowhere so blatantly in evidence as it is in the contrast between Presidents Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin. Again, I refer here not to the men themselves, but to the situations in which they find themselves. One is, you might say, victimized by the context of leaderless-ness within which he perforce operates. The other enjoys, you might say, free rein. Of Putin it’s fair to say that he is a “bad” leader. But he is bad as measured by his ethics, not by his effectiveness. Of Obama you might conclude that he is ineffective; but there is no evidence whatsoever that during his presidency he has been in any way unethical. This difference between the two men is emblematic of the leadership gap that has increasing implications for, among many other things, international relations.    

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*See my book Bad Leadership for my definition of “evil leadership.”

 

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Imagine that you had just started a new job. Then imagine that just two months into your new job you were evaluated by a large number of people – the overwhelming majority of whom were in no position to render judicious judgment. And then imagine that the results of this evaluation were made public, available for anyone and everyone to dissect as they saw fit. No fun.

I’m no great fan of New York City’s new mayor, Bill De Blasio. But give the guy a break! Not necessary a scant nine weeks into his mayoralty to have a big, bold headline reading “De Blasio Approval Rating at 39% in Poll… Lower than Bloomberg’s at Same Point” (Wall Street Journal, 3/7/14).

Such constant, in this case also wildly premature, assessment is demoralizing, not only for those being assessed, for leaders, but for those of us doing the assessing, for followers. Americans are so skeptical of those in positions of political authority that those in positions of political authority are being undermined.  It’s become something of a vicious circle, to which incessant polling is contributing factor.

Next time you’re asked your opinion about someone who recently assumed political office, say you don’t know. Because you really don’t. Like any of us new to any task, it takes a while for others correctly to determine if we’re doing it well.