Robert Gates on Leadership

Over at the Commentary Contentions blog, Peter Wehner reprints some passages from a speech that outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates gave to the graduates of the U. S. Naval Academy. Link here.

At a time when the male of the human species is increasingly subject to withering criticism for bad and sometimes appalling behavior, it is refreshing to read about the positive side of the masculine ethos.

As it happens, Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield comments on the same question here.

I have posted a bit about commencement advice, and I find that Gates’ words are among the more interesting and compelling that I have seen.

While touching some of the most salient, and not self-evident points about leadership, Gates also offers a primer in basic ethical principles.

He begins with self-confidence, which should not be confused with self-esteem or the other kinds of self-puffery that the therapy culture has been promoting.

Gates explains: “Self-confidence is still another quality of leadership. Not the chest-thumping, strutting egotism we see and read about all the time. Rather, it is the quiet self-assurance that allows a leader to give others both real responsibility and real credit for success. The ability to stand in the shadow and let others receive attention and accolades. A leader is able to make decisions but then delegate and trust others to make things happen. This doesn’t mean turning your back after making a decision and hoping for the best. It does mean trusting in people at the same time you hold them accountable. The bottom line: a self-confident leader doesn’t cast such a large shadow that no one else can grow.”

A good point, but who do you think he had in mind when he was talking about the “chest-thumping, strutting egotism” that refuses to stand in the shadow? Could he be referring to his boss?

Next, courage: “A further quality of leadership is courage: not just the physical courage of the seas, of the skies and of the trenches, but moral courage. The courage to chart a new course; the courage to do what is right and not just what is popular; the courage to stand alone; the courage to act; the courage as a military officer to ‘speak truth to power.’

“In most academic curricula today, and in most business, government, and military training programs, there is great emphasis on team-building, on working together, on building consensus, on group dynamics. You have learned a lot about that. But, for everyone who would become a leader, the time will inevitably come when you must stand alone. When alone you must say, ‘This is wrong’ or ‘I disagree with all of you and, because I have the responsibility, this is what we will do.’ Don’t kid yourself—that takes real courage.”

What better advice could he give to Annapolis graduates? First, that leadership has a vertical and a horizontal dimension. Team building and consensus are well and good, but eventually someone has to take charge. Don't get suckered into thinking that organizations can function effectively by following the circle-of-feelings model.

Also, Gates emphasizes that true courage does not involve macho displays of derring-do, but the ability to stand alone as a leader, to chart a new course, to set a new policy, to do what is right even when it is not expedient, and to risk disagreeing with those who have more power.

Then, Gates addresses integrity: “Another essential quality of leadership is integrity. Without this, real leadership is not possible. Nowadays, it seems like integrity—or honor or character—is kind of quaint, a curious, old-fashioned notion. We read of too many successful and intelligent people in and out of government who succumb to the easy wrong rather than the hard right—whether from inattention or a sense of entitlement, the notion that rules are not for them. But for a real leader, personal virtues – self-reliance, self control, honor, truthfulness, morality—are absolute. These are the building blocks of character, of integrity – and only on that foundation can real leadership be built.”

Integrity means following the rules even when you don’t have to, even when you can get away with not following them. It means having strong character, an ability to overcome all personal considerations in order to identify fully with your mission.

And then there is common decency: “A final quality of real leadership, I believe, is simply common decency: treating those around you – and, above all, your subordinates – with fairness and respect. An acid test of leadership is how you treat those you outrank, or as President Truman once said, ‘how you treat those who can’t talk back.’

“Whatever your military specialty might be, use your authority over others for constructive purposes, to help them – to watch out and care for them and their families, to help them improve their skills and advance, to ease their hardships whenever possible. All of this can be done without compromising discipline or mission or authority. Common decency builds respect and, in a democratic society, respect is what prompts people to give their all for a leader, even at great personal sacrifice.”

This is a variant on an old principle. If you are looking for a job you should know that you will be judged according to how you treat the waiter in the restaurant or the company receptionist.

People who lack decency talk down to their subordinates, because they can get away with it.

Always keep in mind, that if you fail to treat your subordinates with respect a time will come when you need them to do something for you, and you will discover that they are not there.

Snow Job

To expand on the concept of leadership, I am happy to link John Baldoni’s analysis of the leadership of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. Link here.

As we all know, Michael Bloomberg has been considered a model of mayoral competence. So much so that he has seemed to be contemplating a presidential run.

Or, at least, he was until he got himself involved in the Ground Zero mosque controversy and started sounding more like a pretentious scold than a great leader.

The recent blizzard that hit New York and the rest of the East coast might have been a great opportunity for Bloomberg to show off his leadership.

As Baldoni notes, crises bring out the best and the worst in leaders. For Bloomberg it was a bad few days. He seemed to have no control of the city workforce, he became petulant and nasty, and he left a goodly part of the city unplowed for days on end.

Given that Bloomberg has been known for his Nanny state campaigns to ban smoking and transfatty acids and salt… the picture of him fumbling the response to a metropolitan disaster will stick for quite a long time.

On the contrary, Cory Booker was doing more than supervising the snow removal. He was also down in the trenches, helping out stranded motorists, delivering needed supplies, tweeting about the progress of the cleanup.

The gesture was largely symbolic, but as Baldoni says, even though mayor does not have to be out there shoveling the snow, he does need to show his city that he is in charge.

And, of course, the work has to be done in a timely and efficient fashion. If Michael Bloomberg were out there shoveling snow in Queens while the rest of the city was reeling under the weight of the storm, his efforts would have elicited a wavelet of sympathy but no confidence in his leadership.

How to Influence People

However much it thinks it owes to psychology, traditional psychotherapy has never said anything relevant or interesting about how to influence other people.

Therapy has traditionally promoted a self-involved, introspective mindset and thus has ignored the kinds of issues that concern leaders, managers, and coaches.

In the old days therapists pretended that they were respecting everyone’s personal autonomy and would never try to influence anyone to do anything at all.

They imagined that patients would have flashes of insight in which they would discover what they really, really wanted. The theory told them that when an idea appeared in a flash of insight it belonged wholly to the patient.

They were wrong. How many times have you suggested something to someone, only to have it rejected out of hand? And how many times has the same person, a few months later, announced that he just had a new idea, an idea that came to him spontaneously, that is his and his alone, but that is exactly the same as the one you had suggested before?

Therapists have been so married to the fiction of individual autonomy that they failed to notice that people are always offering us advice and guidance. The goal for human adults is not to free themselves from influence, but to learn how to evaluate different suggestions and to choose the best one.

As long as therapy ignores this aspect of human behavior, it will continue to produce self-indulgent narcissists.

By now someone is thinking that, in truth, therapists really do aspire to exert influence over their patients. Their protestations of innocence are really covering a darker purpose.

However much therapist avoid any suggestion about what a patient should or should not do, therapists do want fervently to control their patients’ minds. They want their patients to think the right thoughts and to feel the right feelings.

To take an obvious example, no one was ever said to be cured by Freudian psychoanalysis if he did not become a true believing Freudian.

Out in the real world, you will need to learn how to manage, to lead, and to coach. All of these involve persuading people to do what needs to be done, because, as Dwight Eisenhower said, they want to do it.

The business world is not about enhancing your self-esteem and helping you to feel good about yourself. It is about how well the job gets done.

If you are managing or leading or coaching, your goal should be to bring out the best in your people, to induce them to do the best job.

According to Harold Scharlatt you can do it even if you do not have a lot of authority. Link here.

Here’s his defining point: “Influence is, simply put, the power and ability to personally affect others' actions, decisions, opinions or thinking. At one level, it is about compliance, about getting someone to go along with what you want them to do. But you often need genuine commitment from others to accomplish key goals and tasks.”

Scharlatt wants to study how you, as a manager, can move people from “resistance to compliance to commitment.”

He emphasizes situations where your authority is limited, but I believe that your authority is always more limited than you think.

Most people tend to resist the counsel of others. They are correctly hesitant to do what you say just because you say it.

A leader needs to overcome that resistance to produce compliance. But that is not enough. He also needs to persuade his staff to work their hardest and their best to ensure that the policy or the plan or the strategy will be implemented successfully.

Here’s how Scharlatt recommends that you go about it.

First, you need to command your brief. You need to know what you are talking about; you need to persuade everyone that you have grasped all the details of the situation; you need to present your decision in terms of facts and information; you need to have considered all other options and objections; and you need to reference what is best for the company.

You cannot impose a new plan on the grounds that it feels right or good, or because you proposed it, or because you  hope it will work.

Within the leadership/management/coaching paradigm confidence is not about having confidence in yourself, but about how much confidence you have in others.

When a good leader presents a new plan, he must show that he is fully confident that his staff can implement it. He might even suggest that they should try to improve on it.

A new plan should not be a take-it-or-leave-it proposal.

How do you show confidence in others? By giving them the maximum latitude to do their jobs as they see fit.

You cannot do it by criticizing them and finding fault with their performance. Nor can you do it by telling them that they are great when they are not.

And certainly you cannot do it not by micromanaging the project, looking over their shoulder, communicating an anxious anticipation of all the mistakes they are going to make.

Nice Guys Finish First

Lord Acton famously said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Freud tried to explain power by constructing a myth. In his narrative, the first human social organization was led by a primal father who possessed all of his horde's women. His sons, being thus deprived of female companionship, banded together, murdered the father, consumed his remains, and divided up the women. Then they all became petty tyrants in their own domestic domains.

This to introduce the question of power. How do you get it? What happens to you when you get it?

Do you gain power by being forceful, ruthless, and strong? Do you gain power, as Machiavelli said, by being feared or do you attain the highest office by being well liked? If Machiavelli was wrong, the road to power might lie in being nice, likeable, congenial, considerate, and outgoing.

Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, Jonah Lehrer reports that scientific research tends to contradict Machiavelli. Nice guys get ahead better than people who make a show of ruthlessly lusting after power, or who are willing to walk over anyone to gain it. Link here.

Lehrer quotes Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner saying: "People give authority to people they genuinely like."

Note well that Keltner is saying that power, as in authority, is something that people give to you. It is not something that you take, either by murdering and replacing the person who has it, or by tricking others into giving it to you.

If power is not given, and if it does not respect the people who have given it, it becomes despotic and abusive.

When someone abuses power, whether by lording it over his subjects or by arrogating all women for himself, others will certainly try to remove him from power. Not because they lust after the same kind of despotic power, but because they believe that power should be exercised, not abused.

Why do nice guys finish first? Largely because when you are not so nice, and when you are willing to take power by whatever means you can, people will recognize your lack of character and shun you.

Yet, psychologists tell us that when nice people gain power they quickly become much less nice.

In Lehrer's words: "Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of power. The very traits that helped leaders accumulate control in the first place all but disappear once they rise to power. Instead of being polite, honest and outgoing, they become impulsive, reckless and rude. In some cases, these new habits can help a leader be more decisive and single-minded, or more likely to make choices that will be profitable regardless of their popularity. One recent study found that overconfident CEOs were more likely to pursue innovation and take their companies in new technological directions. Unchecked, however, these instincts can lead to a big fall."

But is this essential to the nature of power? Is it lying in wait, ready to be activated as soon as the plaque goes up on the executive office? Is there a basic human instinct to abuse authority and exploit others, or is something else going on here.

Surely, we can find examples that demonstrate the paradox of power. You do not have to look very much further than the current occupant of the White House. Our president seems so completely blinded by his own power that he has lost touch with the American people... with their wishes, their needs, their interests, and their opinions.

Barack Obama acts as though he has seized power by tricking the people and can only hold on to it by force of will. He acts as though he has taken power, not as though it was given.

Of course, Obama is not rounding up the interns for pool parties, as John Kennedy did. And he is not harassing women, as Bill Clinton did. He is not abusing the power of his office the way Richard Nixon did. There are different aspects of the paradox of power. Not everyone abuses power in the same way.

Does this prove that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely?

I am not entirely persuaded. Look at it from a different angle, angle that does not seem to show up on the psychological tests.

Ask yourself how people gain power? Do they rise to positions of authority by a slow, step-by-step walk up the corporate or political status hierarchy? Or are they been projected into positions of authority because they have the right breeding or great oratorical skills?

Have they had a lot of practical experience with people who  actually exercise power or do they only know what they have read in books and seen in movies?

I would contend that the further you have been from real people exercising power the more you will lack role models and be reduced to emulating fictional characters.

A man who has worked his way up through the ranks is going to wear the mantle of power very differently than the man who has leaped over everyone else to assume a position for which he is neither qualified or suited.

Most corporate leaders must work their way up through the ranks. The same is certainly true of military leaders. It is not true of political leaders.

Thus, we have seen presidents to whom the paradox of power does not seem to apply at all. Think of Dwight Eisenhower or George H.W. Bush.

Other presidents were propelled into the presidency without the required background and experience. John Kennedy won the presidency on the basis of his good looks and eloquence. He was hardly the most qualified politician or the most distinguished member of Congress.

Strangely enough, the presidents who immediately followed Dwight Eisenhower-- Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon-- all demonstrated the paradox of power. Albeit in different ways.

Do you think that it was a coincidence that they were all junior officers during World War II. Did they feel that somehow they had not worked their way up the ladder? Did they feel that they were unworthy of following a commanding general like Eisenhower?

I would maintain that the paradox of power really applies for the most part to people whose acquisition of power represents too great a leap over people who have earned their positions in the chain of command.

From Prophet to Predator: The Al Gore Story

The more we learn about it, the uglier it gets. Now that we have more complete information about what Al Gore was doing to massage therapist Molly Hagerty in that Portland, Oregon hotel room, the great prophet of environmental doom is looking more and more like a sexual predator.

For a report on the incident, see Byron York's column here. For the Portland Police report, follow this link. For the latest from the National Enquirer, see here.

We recall that Gloria Steinem once gave new meaning to misogyny by defending Bill Clinton's sexual assaults on the grounds that he took No for an answer. Conveniently, Steinem overlooked the testimony of Juanita Broaddrick, because when you have to choose between the cause and a woman's word... then clearly you cannot trust the woman. One can only wonder what she would say about Al Gore, a man who clearly did not take No for an answer. My guess: she will have nothing so say.

Admittedly, I am not qualified to judge the truth or falsity of all of the so-called "settled science" about global warning. Surely, a movement that wants to shut down most industry in order to save Nature became far more credible when it made Al Gore its most prominent spokesman.

To me global warmism has always seemed a little too close to being a cult. It offers apocalyptic pronouncements that would better be found on placards; its proponents sound more like prophets than scientists; it has worked too hard to discredit and silence global warming skeptics.

Such is not the stuff that science is made on.

But you do not need to know anything about science to evaluate the most obvious point. Tomorrow's weather and the next century's climate are not the stuff of scientific fact. Tomorrow's weather is at best a hypothesis; the world climate a century from now is not scientific fact... it is prophecy.

Surely, it might happen that the earth gets warmer. But it also might happen that the earth gets cooler. What might happen is not the same as what must happen.

Anyway, once he lost the presidential election Al Gore apparently did not know what to do with himself, so he rebranded himself into a prophet of environmental gloom and doom. He made a fortune doing this, won an Oscar, and was awarded a Nobel Prize. Truth be told, Al Gore morphed from respectable and responsible public official into a media celebrity.

In the process, of course, his 40 year marriage to Tipper fell by the wayside. As I've suggested, you cannot be married to a cause and to a person at the same time... unless the person is as fervent a believer in the cause as you are.

Let's grant that the old Al Gore was not a sexual predator; he did not assault massage therapists for refusing to service his chakras. If that is true, then it would seem that sexual predation is an occupational hazard that accompanies iconic celebrity. It seems to tag along when you become a "mighty prophet, seer blessed."

Do cult leaders feel entitled to do what they please, no matter whom they hurt? Do women find such men irresistible, to the point where they consider it an honor to be used for such a man's pleasure? Or do women feel that they are showing a greater commitment to global warming if they sacrifice their intimacy to please the prophet who is going to save the world?

One thing is reasonably certain. As Andrea Tantaros said yesterday, Al Gore's Oregon misadventures were certainly not the first and only time that something like that had happened. Perhaps on other occasions the women were more willing participants. Perhaps some of them had thought that coming forth would subject them to the kinds of abuse that were heaped on all of the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual indiscretions and worse. Or perhaps they had simply decided to sacrifice themselves for the cause.

Why did massage therapist Molly Hagerty not see to it that Al Gore was prosecuted? Well, as one of her fellow liberals told her: "... just suck it up; otherwise the world's going to be destroyed by global warming."

Someone remind me here about why liberals always tax conservatives with stupidity?

Whatever you believe about global warming, it seems that we are dealing here with overheated brains. How does an intelligent and sentient being come to imagine that the only person standing between us and environmental Armageddon is Al Gore?

It is truly amazing that people can feel the need to shut down their rational faculties in order to feel like they belong to the latest cause.

Clearly, the science of global warming is neither affirmed or refuted by what happened in that Portland hotel room. Just as clearly, thinking people would do better to give the matter some serious reflection. If the people who are promoting it are not acting like men and women of science, that should tell you something about their ability to deceive and defraud.

Any time anyone tells you to sacrifice your dignity for a cause, you should immediately recognize that something is seriously wrong.

God Is in the Details

Strangely enough, there are two famous quotations about details. One says that God is in the details. The other says that the Devil is in the details. Not surprisingly, they are not saying the same thing.

The first suggests that if you look closely at the intricacies of a thing or a problem you will find God. The second means that if you try to work out an agreement down to the last detail you will start having devilish difficulties.

I could have used either proverb as the title of this post. Given that it's Sunday and Father's Day, my better judgment recommended siding with God.

History credits Flaubert with, "God is in the details." Prize winning physicist and wise man Richard Feynman suggested two possible meanings. The first: "nearly everything is interesting enough if you go into it deeply enough." The second: "No problem is too small or too trivial if we really do something about it." Link here.

Feynman's first interpretation says that if you put in the time and energy to get into the details of a problem you will be rewarded. This is another way of saying that virtue-- here the virtue of a work ethic-- yields rewards. Even if the only reward is that the problem or the thing will thoroughly engage your interest.

Feynman's second interpretation offers sound advice. It implies that we should not dismiss problems as too small or too trivial for our attention. We should try to solve them. Problems are there to be solved, not to be ignored.

Small problems solved do not become large problems. When you are too lazy to look into small problems, or when you think that they are beneath your pay grade, they are much more likely to become large problems. Leave a small problem alone to fester and it will eventually turn into a crisis that is beyond your ability to control.

When we come to the adage, the Devil is in the details, we are dealing with something quite different. I hesitate to say that it is simply a polar opposite of the saying about God.

People say that the Devil is in the details when they are talking about an agreement between two parties. The parties might agree on the larger outline of the agreement, or on basic principles, but when it comes to applying those principles to specific situations, they find themselves at loggerheads.

How do you solve a problem when the Devil is in the details? By being detail oriented, by paying close attention to each small aspect of the agreement. You have to love detail and you have to master detail to avoid the problems that arise when negotiation moves into specifics. Someone who thinks that all the real work has been done when two parties arrive at an agreement in principle is simply not doing his job.

When we enter the realm of details there are no short cuts. It's all hard work, and it's all about putting in the extra time.

I would add a point that we can witness in the news every day. Having a command of the details of the situation is essential for leadership and effective management.

Being in charge means knowing, in detail, what is going on. It does not means mouthing platitudes or shifting blame to others.

When you say that you are responsible for handling a crisis, you are obliged to demonstrate a command of the details. The most relevant example today is Gov. Bobby Jindal's management of the Gulf crisis. Jindal is extremely oriented toward detail.

On the other side, our president disappointed even his most fervent supporters by failing to show any command of the details in a scripted address to the nation. When you can't put details in a script, you are seriously disinterested in them.

And then, we have the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward, who testified before a Congressional committee a few days ago and could not answer any specific or detailed questions about the oil gushing out of a broken pipe on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

When it comes to public hearings, we all know that Congresspeople are all grandstanding and no substance. And yet, if Hayward had wanted to neutralize the theatrics of the hearing he could simply have shown that he had studied the situation and mastered the facts. He did not have to offer solutions; he did not have to affix blame. But he should certainly not have kept passing the buck, trying to wash his hands of theproblem by stating that people on a lower level of the corporate hierarchy were making the decisions.

Slogging your way through the details serves another useful purpose. It diminishes your tendency to jump to a conclusion, to construct a narrative that comprises some, but not all, of the facts, and to shift the blame to your enemies or your underlings.

How to Lead

I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about leadership. It is all the more important when our leader-in-chief is such a poor leader.

As of now, this is not partisan sniping; it is the general political consensus.

Criticism might warn you not to emulate President Obama, but it does not tell you how to lead effectively.

This morning I was reading some great columns by Robert Sutton about what makes for a great boss. Link here.

Sutton arrived at his leadership principles by interviewing effective leaders and the people who work for them. His ideas are generated from the bottom up.

There are far too many good ideas in his article to cover in a single post. For today I will examine the first quality that makes for good leadership. Which Sutton calls: knowing what it feels like to work for me. He elaborated on this point in a further column. Link here.

Clearly, Sutton is not telling leaders that they need to go around feeling everyone's pain. If this had been yet another call for empathy it would not merit my or your attention.

Since every leader knows that he sets an example for others, thus, that his mood and attitude become the gold standard for his company, he takes time and care to present the qualities that he wants to see more of.

People emulate their leaders. Good leaders know it and behave accordingly.

But that is not exactly what Sutton is getting at here. He has something else in mind: Good bosses, he says: "... devote real energy to reading expressions, noting behaviors, and making constant adjustments to help their people think independently and express themselves without reservation."

This is not just a great leadership skill; it forms the basis for all effective interpersonal communication.

A good leader, Sutton is saying, will constantly adjust his conversation, his attitude, and his comportment in order to be sure that his staff, his employees, even his colleagues always feel that their views are respected. He might have added... to be sure that all those who work for him will be motivated to do their best work.

If you are a leader and no one is willing to give you bad news or to offer new ideas, the chances are very good that you have created the wrong kind of atmosphere in your office.

If a staff member has difficulty talking to you or expressing himself fully then you are probably doing something to make him feel that his views are not respected, and thus, that you simply do not care to hear what he has to say.

Just as conversation is not about expressing your feelings or thoughts willy nilly, regardless of how they will affect anyone else, so leadership is not about giving orders and telling people what you think regardless of how they will affect your team.

You want your team to function optimally, so you care more for the reactions you are eliciting than how it feels to get things off your chest.

Evidently, person-to-person, face-to-face conversation facilitates this aspect of leadership. When you are in someone's presence and are looking him in the eye, you can more quickly tell how well you are doing. If you see that you are losing him, or that he is starting to feel intimidated, then you must quickly revise your conversational tactic.

People who are good at public speaking try to develop this facility. They are constantly reading the audience reaction; counting the number of people who are nodding off or heading for the exist. If they see that they are losing their audience they shift gears, go off script, turn off the teleprompter, and try to engage their audience before it is too late.

Anything less than face-to-face conversation adds degrees of difficulty. It is easier to read the panoply of gestures that you can witness when you are talking with someone directly than it is to grasp the reaction of someone who is talking on the phone, or via email, or texting.

Remarkably, Sutton's advice flies in the face of the kind of conventional wisdom that the therapy culture has been purveying.

Where the therapy culture tells us not to concern ourselves with how we look to others a good leader is constantly aware of how he looks to others.

Where the therapy culture has tried to teach people, under the guise of free association, to say whatever comes to mind regardless of the effect it will produce on others, good leaders are constantly adjusting their speech in order to ensure that their listeners feel respected and valued.

Which means that many forms of therapy are going to undermine your leadership skills... in a very serious way.

So, Sutton tells both actual and potential leaders to ask themselves to ascertain how it feels to work for them. He is not concerned with the leader's knowing how it feels to be in charge, to be on top, to give the orders... but, how it feels to be one of those who is reporting to the boss, who is receiving the orders, and who has just been put down for offering an opinion in a meeting.

This is easier said than done. It reminds me of the experience of editing your own writing.

Bad writers tend to believe that however they feel while they are doing the writing is a sign of how good or bad it is.

They develop a form of self-delusion, in the sense that they ignore the effect their writing might or might not have on an outside reader.

A good writer always edits his writing. He does so by first putting it aside. He needs to break out of the mindset he was in while he was writing. Then, after a time, he can hopefully return to it with fresh eyes. A good writer is a good editor, and being a good editor means being able to read as though he were someone else.

Knowing what it is like for someone else to read your writing strikes me as similar to knowing what it is like for someone else to work for you.

It is an interesting psychological state, an ability to get out of oneself, and to put one's hopes and feelings to the side. And it also involves a considerable level of humility, to say nothing of an ability to tolerate considerable psychological pain.

If you start asking yourself what it feels like to work for you or what it feels like to read your writing, then I promise that you will have to tolerate many moments of pure and utter embarrassment.

Call them cringe-worthy moments, if you like. They are times when you read something that you wrote and say to yourself: How could I have written such a thing? Or, what was I thinking?

When you are a leader, and you start asking yourself how it feels to work for you, you will have many moments when you become positively horrified about how bad you look to outside observers and about all the difficulties you have place in the path of your best employees.

Obama's New Transparency

It looks like President Obama missed one of the basic leadership lessons, so let's run through it again.

If all your friends are jumping out of their skins imploring you to show some anger, your subsequent display of anger will look fake, forced, and theatrical. It will make you look like a follower, not a leader. What else would you look like when you are following directions?

Worse yet, you risk looking like a marionette. Even worse than that, you start looking like a marionette at that mortifying moment when the audience sees that someone else is pulling your strings.

Call it a moment of transparency, when people see through the ruse and the imposture, when everyone discovers that you are really not up to the job.

So, here's the second leadership lesson. When you take advice from film directors and drama critics, from Spike Lee and Frank Rich, then you do not even know what your job is. The presidency is not theater; America is not a stage; and the president is not just another starring role.

For those who still clong to their hope the moment of transparency occurred yesterday when President Obama appeared on the Today Show with Matt Lauer and tried to rationalize his leadership of the Gulf oil crisis with these, now famous, words: "And I don't sit around talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."

It's an astonishing statement. It takes your breath away. For one, the group of experts Obama has been talking to has not included the CEO of British Petroleum. Minor lapse, that. For another, what kind of leader thinks that exercising authority involves knowing "whose ass to kick."

Where to begin with this hopeless verbal muddle? When you have the time and the leisure to prepare a statement showing you at your best, why not use the White House speechwriters, and let them fashion something that seems coherent.

In a sentence Obama dispenses with leadership by persuasion and leadership by example. He reduces leadership to kicking ass... a vulgar expression that suggests that leaders force other people to do what they want them to do.

So much for the composed and confident leader who was going to lead the ship of state into the darkness of an uncertain future. And so much the cool, calm, collected leader who dazzled the nation by seeming to keep his head when the financial crisis broke.

Apparently, all of that cool was simply a ruse, a convenient way to cover up the fact that he didn't have a clue.

Worse yet, when you show that you are not in charge of your own emotions-- because you seem to put them on and take them off on cue-- you are not going to persuade anyone that you are managing the crisis.

By now most people know that Obama is inexperienced and naive. He follows the entreaties of film directors because for him the presidency is theater, not reality.

Being inexperienced he did not earn his way to the top. He was vaulted to it, skipping over the intermediary steps, the ones that would have helped him to build confidence and character, that would have allowed him to learn how to lead by actually leading.

As someone who has been thrust into a role for which he had no real preparation, Obama must, in the depths of his soul, know that his presidency is an imposture. And the one thing that impostors fear more than anything is transparency. Not the kind of transparency that the White House touts as a governing philosophy, but the kind that allows people to see through the ruse and understand that it's all been staged.

Juan Williams on Crisis Mismanagement

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday Juan Williams offered one of the clearest and most succinct-- and high concept-- explanations of what wrong with Obama's leadership.

In Williams' words: "... when it comes to the crisis, when it comes to the gulf oil spill, the wars, the recession, they [the Obama administration] feel as if it's being imposed on them, rather than taking the helm. I think that's what Americans are sensing right here. ... Are you able to handle a crisis in a convincing way that inspires confidence? And so far the president hasn't done that."

This does not require too much commentary, but surely the difference between competent and incompetent crisis management is that the incompetent manager acts as though the crisis is being imposed on him while competent manager takes charge, seizes the challenge, even to the point of making it look like he has been waiting for it.

Coaching Lessons: Ineffective Leadership

Some of these lessons might feel familiar, but I want to review them here. How better to grasp a point than to consider it from different angles. Today, I want to comment on Mike Myatt's excellent post about the traits that define ineffective leadership. Link here.

To develop your own leadership capacity you should start by choosing the right leader to emulate. Often this takes considerable effort. Our natural tendency is to emulate our leaders, regardless of whether they are good or bad. When your leader is a bad role model, it takes more analysis, more intellectual effort, to resist the temptation to imitate him. Given how unnatural it feels to defy the impulse to imitate an ineffective leaders, some quantity of emotion will always be involved.

Deciding whether or not to emulate a leader requires a close analysis of inadequate or ineffective leadership. Myatt designates eight areas where leadership can become ineffective.

The first and most important is character. He makes the important point that many good qualities do not count in the assessment of character. Myatt declares that: "It doesn't matter how intelligent, affable, persuasive, or savvy a person is..." weak character will do him in.

I quoted that line because I find that it describes our current president very, very well. We could not hope for a more intelligent, affable, persuasive, and savvy president. And yet, we find ourselves with a thoroughly inadequate leader.

What do we mean by character? Character begins with keeping your word, doing what you say and saying what you will do. When a political candidate dissimulates his plans for the future in the interest of getting elected, when he is willing to say anything to anyone, then he has failed the test of character.

The second crucial aspect of character, as Myatt presents it, persuading people that he is making decisions based on what is best for his country or his company. A leader with character gives everyone confidence that his interests are identical to theirs.

If it appears that the leader is acting to aggrandize or enrich himself at the expense of his company or his country, he lacks character. If he seems more interested in his political viability than in doing what is best, he lacks character. If he is more loyal to his ideas than to the best interest of the group, he will be showing weak character. If his decisions seem consistently to favor one group over an other, then he will divide his staff or his constituency.

Myatt's second point reflects what John Baldoni called "earned authority." (My comments here.) In Myatt's words: "Someone who has consistently experienced success in leadership roles has a much better chance of success than someone who has not.... unproven leaders come with a high risk premium."

No company would ever be so foolish to choose a leader who had not proven himself in other leadership roles. The marketplace would exact a serious penalty for such dereliction.

And yet, our nation just elected a president who had never held a leadership position at all.

Next, Myatt posits that a good leader must have good communication skills. You might be thinking that, if Obama is good at anything, he is good at communication.

Let's qualify it and say that Obama is great at a certain kind of communication. He offers us soul-stirring and eloquent pronouncements, most of which, on close examination, are empty platitudes. Obama's oratorical style seems perfectly fitted to the pulpit, but not to an executive. Communicating to your parishioners, in the name of God, is not the same as communicating to your fellow citizens or your constituents.

Leadership is not about offering a religious conversion experience. It is not about clever quips and sound bites; and it is certainly not about offhand dismissals of your opponent's point of view.

Such is Obama's communication style. It worked wonders during the campaign, but, as of now, it has not been wearing well. Obama, as is his wont, is blaming it on the media and Steve Jobs.

One sign of a leader's character is that he does not indulge in the narcissistic exercise of blaming his own failures on forces outside of his control.

For a leader, communication means being sure that everyone knows exactly where you stand on the issues. It also means, as Myatt says, that you can demonstrate that you respect everyone's point of view. Anyone who thinks that leadership is about pushing people around, forcing them to do what you think is best for them, is not going to lead effectively.

This dovetails with another important point. Myatt says that leaders need to be flexible and to adapt. By that he means that leadership is not about embodying a persona, but about doing what is needed to achieve a goal.

A leader must be good to his word. He will fail if he maintains the same persona in any and all circumstances.

Sometimes your people will need a kick in the pants. Sometimes they will need empathy and consolation. A good leader does what it takes to motivate his team. An ineffective leader does what it takes to make him feel like a leader.

Myatt's final point has an interesting resonance: "Leaders not attuned to the needs of the market will fail. As the old saying goes, if you're not taking care of customers, someone else will be more than happy to."

Company leaders recognize that they are dealing with a competitive marketplace. Whether that marketplace contains consumers or clients, these have a free choice, to buy your product or to buy someone else's.

In politics the marketplace is the ballot box. It is no surprise that Obama's ineffective leadership has dissipated the better part of the good will he enjoyed in January, 2009. New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts election results have shown a severe erosion of the Democratic party's support.

Strangely enough, Obama has acted as though it did not happen, as though the verdict of the ballot box and the job market need not concern him.

You have to wonder how much complacency is built into the investor psyche today because investors are taking their cues from Obama's attitude. After all, we all tend to imitate our leaders, whether we like them or not, and whether we know it or not. And we are far more likely to understand our reality by taking a cue from Obama's chronic insouciance than from the anger of the Tea Party.

Coaching Lessons: When Everyone Is Watching You

When you imagine that everyone is watching you your first thought is not very positive. It sounds like you are being exposed, are being spied on, or are being subjected to intrusive surveillance. When Jeffrey Zaslow wrote that we live in an age of humiliation, he was describing a culture where social media have made offered up far too much of our private lives for public consumption. Sometimes, without our consent. The upshot is that we are living in a culture of shamelessness. Link here.

Someone once said that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, so it seems just that young people, who led the way in exposing too much of themselves, would be starting to discover the value of privacy. As the New York Times describes this morning, the "tell-all generation" is learning to keep personal details out of the public square. One can only wish it is a burgeoning trend. Link here.

(I will mention in passing that I prefer the label, "tell-all generation" to gen-X, gen-Y, and millennials.)

Today I want to take this notion of being exposed and place it in a very different context. Writing about reputation management-- always a great subject-- Prof. Daniel Ames of the Columbia Business School said this about the role of executive: "For leaders and managers, who are almost always highly visible and under scrutiny, even a small and seemingly unforgivable slip up can be judged harshly. It reinforces the need for managers to be mindful that they are always on stage." Link here.

This sounds a bit strange. By definition, leadership involves being watched by large numbers of people. Leaders are constantly being scrutinized, but they are also being emulated. Once you become a leader you will become a role model, and once that happens, your good character traits, to say nothing of a few of your quirks and foibles, will be imitated, for better or for worse.

Wanting to be a leader involves believing that you can be a very good role model. You believe that if people emulated your behavior they would be bettering themselves.

As young people discover that it is best to keep their private lives private, one must hope that they do not conclude that they do not want to be subject to any scrutiny at all, that they never want to be looked at or looked up to.

This view of leadership implies that a leader must exercise rigorous discipline. A leader is identified entirely by his role. Since his private thoughts, feelings, and experiences are irrelevant to his leadership function-- in fact, were they known they would detract from it-- he is obligated to keep them to himself.

As Ames pointed out in his article, it does not take a lot for a leader to compromise his good name and reputation. A slip-up, a gaffe, a momentary lapse in decorum can make it vastly more difficult for a leader to establish his credibility.

How has the therapy culture viewed leadership? Have its values and precepts prepared you to assume the role of leader?

In large part, this culture has convinced people that discipline involves repression, and that you can only actualize your true self when you let it all hang out. Anyone who buys this value system will have forfeited his leadership potential. And he will also have gone a long way to forfeiting the respect of his friends and family.

The therapy culture did everyone a disservice when it undermined the value of discipline in favor of the values of spontaneity and creativity.

(A side comment on discipline. A recent study of 8th graders found that self-discipline is a better predictor of academic success than IQ. Via Simoleon Sense; link here. Obviously a child with a very high IQ and low discipline will still outperform a child with low IQ and high discipline, but the study does explain why some very promising children do not perform well while other students who do not score as high on IQ tests do better than expected. The difference is the level of discipline, and the adherence to a strict work ethic.)

Leadership involves being in uniform. But it also means that you can become your role. If a general's uniform is stained, if his tie is untied, if his cap is on backwards... then everyone who sees him will think that something is wrong. They are going to direct their concern to his person and away from his leadership. When your troops start asking what's the matter they are going to be less motivated to follow your orders, no matter how good they are.

When your appearance and decorum express a lack of discipline they are telling your troops that you might be making decisions based on your personal needs, and not the needs of your soldiers. Even if your decision is for the best of the group, your personal appearance will say otherwise.

It is not enough for a general to present a proper public appearance. He must be thoroughly comfortable in his uniform. He must look at though he is wearing the uniform, not that the uniform is wearing him. His public face must be who he is; it must not seem to be a mask.

In a culture of shamelessness people obey different values, those that are most fitted to celebrity. Whether or not therapists know it, when they encourage people to express their feelings openly and honestly, to become part of a tell-all generation, they are encouraging them to become like celebrities.

The difference between a general and a celebrity is that a celebrity does not get noticed in the tabloids unless he exposes some intimate or private matter. Celebrities draw attention to themselves by making inappropriate or idiotic remarks, or by showing more of their anatomy than discretion allows. They attract the eye of the paparazzi because they might at any moment be caught off guard. And since celebrities are notoriously undisciplined, both on and off screen, they are very likely to oblige.

What then does it take to be a leader?

First, a willingness to be in the public eye... even if the public is your staff.

Second, the discipline to maintain decorum at all times in all public situations.

Third, the knowledge that good conduct will promote social harmony.

Fourth, the confidence to be fully comfortable in a public role, to identify with that role.

Fifth, the conviction that the public role is not a mask but is who you really are.

Terrorism Comes to Times Square; Bloomberg Fails to Lead

Crises provide leadership opportunities. After 9/11 Mayor Giuliani became a national hero. After last Sunday's failed car bomb attack in Times Square, Mayor Bloomberg became a national joke.

For now, let's stop laughing long enough to think about what happened.

Lacking any information about who was involved, Bloomberg went on national television... not to lead, not to express anger that his city had been attacked, not to stand tall and resolute against a continuing terrorist threat... but to demonstrate his mastery of politically correct thought.

A reasonable, and perhaps less intelligent, man would have suspected that the perpetrator was a Muslim extremist. 99% of the world's car bombs are set off by Muslim terrorists.

Given the evidence, Mayor Bloomberg declared that the responsible party was anything but. He sounded like he was channeling the Daily Kos, playing Charley McCarthy to Markos Moulitsas's Edgar Bergen. Here is what he told Katie Couric: "If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or someone with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill, or something... There is no evidence that it's tied in to anything else. It looks like an amateur job done by at least one person." Link here.

As though it could have been done by less than one person.

Bloomberg could not have made any less sense if he had tried.

As we know, President Obama has been peddling the line that the Tea Party demonstrators, coupled with conservative talk radio and right wing bloggers, has been fomenting violence. It has simply been laying down a predicate that it might one day be able to use to discredit the loyal opposition.

As it happened, the administration had learned from its mishandling of the Christmas Day panty bomber, and did not jump to any conclusions about the Times Square bomber. It did not have to do as Bloomberg will have to do: eat his words.

You cannot provide leadership in a conflict if you do not know who the enemy is. You cannot lead if you are afraid to name the enemy. You cannot lead your city or your nation in a fight against Islamic terrorists if all your attention is directed against the threat posed by those big, bad Tea Party activists.

As I suggested, Bloomberg's views were identical to those of the leftist blogosphere. The Daily Kos took a poll that yielded results that would have warmed Bloomberg's heart. Link here. Most of those who participated believed that the bomber was a militia type or a Tea Party activist. I do not believe that any of them reached the level of intellectual abjection required to label it a protest against Obamacare.

Once the bomber had been identified and captured, leftists across the nation were wiping the egg off their feace. Not without regrets. As MSNBC host Contessa Brewer confessed: "There was part of me that was hoping that this was not going to be anyone with ties to any Muslim country." Link here.

In reality, the bomber hated George Bush and was strongly opposed to the war on terror. And this would make his intellectual fellow travelers who, exactly?

Of course, bloggers and other commentators have every right to offer fledgling theories. That is their business. Those who inhabit the extreme left work very hard to advance a narrative which says that when Muslim terrorists attack the country and murder its people, the first thing we should do is self-censor any and all references to Muslims, and then to declare war on those who are really responsible: Republicans.

Clearly, Democrats have been exploiting this narrative. They made themselves the anti-war party in the last election, and, even today, the Obama administration seems to have an allergy to calling Muslim terrorists Muslim terrorists.

And yet, once a Democrat became Commander in Chief, expediency dictated that the Democratic Congress cease its opposition to the war. Such is politics. And, we must add, the Obama administration reacted well to the Times Square car bomber.

In one sense we just got lucky. But, in another, the government mobilized rapidly and effectively to capture the terrorist.

How then does it happen that a man as supremely intelligent and capable as Michael Bloomberg can entertain such ridiculous ideas? Why is it that these billionaires-- think of George Soros-- are so vulnerable to the siren song of leftist thought?

If I had to speculate, I would suggest that they have arrived at the pinnacle of career success, and find that there are no more lands to conquer. When you have conquered the world of information, as Bloomberg did, become the wealthiest man in New York City, made yourself a good mayor of the city, what is left to do?

Perhaps these billionaires believe that after conquering the real world, the only world left to conquer is the world of ideas, a world filled with metaphysical entities. Many of them seem to want to take their place beside the philosopher kinds. After all, George Soros seems to imagine that he can gain more prestige by pretending to be a political philosopher than he does by succeeding as a hedge fund manager.

The problem is, in order to conquer the world of ideas, it appears that you need be accepted by the intelligentsia and the cognoscenti. As it happens, this is not true, but if you ask any intellectual he will swear that it is. And he will tell you that he holds the keys to the kingdom of ideas.

He will tell you that you need to belong, that you need to be one of them before you can stand out among them. You can do as Soros did and buy your way in, but you cannot do that if you are mayor of a city.

Your best bet is to make yourself the vehicle for propagating their ideas. Does it matter that the ideas that reign supreme in the world of the intelligentsia are often fictions masquerading as theories? Apparently not. You still need to demonstrate that you can help disseminate those fictions. Reality be damned.

As we see, painfully, those billionaires who seek to gain entry and even prestige among the intelligentsia are really babes in the woods, naive and innocent. They do not know the rules of the game or even the players. In the end they get exploited and manipulated and made fools of.

Before they begin their journey they should reread Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Coaching Lessons: What Does It Mean to Have Presence?

Woody Allen famously said that: "80% of success is showing up." And showing up means being present... when and where you are supposed to be. If you are present at 12th and Vine when you are supposed to be at 4th and Main, you are absent.

One's first experience of presence used to occur in the classroom. Your teacher called your name. You raised your hand and announced that you were present or here. If you respond present when the teacher calls someone else's name, that makes you too present, which means, present as a theatrical persona.

I wouldn't want to guess whether this practice is still in use, but it is a place to start. It is part, but not all, of what John Baldoni means when he says that you have to have presence if you want to be a leader. Link here.

Having presence, Baldoni says, means having good character. People who have presence work on building their character. How do they do it? By establishing a record of good behavior.

Good character will make you feel good about yourself, but feeling good about yourself does not mean that you have any character at all.

Presence is also your good name.

A child has a name. It designates him as a member of a group. He did not choose it. He may not even like it. Still and all, it is the means through which other people know who he is. And if no one else knows who you are, then you are not very likely to know it either.

An adult has a name that may or may not be good. When you show good character in your dealings with other people you establish your good name. When you defend yourself against slander and libel, you are asserting your good name. When you work hard to accomplish something you are building goodness into your names.

Obviously, presence is a good thing to have outside of the office. You do not want to enter a room filled with friends, family, or colleagues and have no one notice. You do not want people to treat you as inconsequential to whatever is going on. You do not want to be ignored or shunted to the side.

Above all that, you want people to respect your word. When you say something, you want people to listen, to pay attention, and to engage with you.

People who have presence are respected because they have accomplished things. Baldoni calls this kind of presence: earned authority. Your word about the project is respected because of your track record of accomplishment on similar projects. Your name is good because of your consistently good behavior.

Having presence means being able to get things done, to make things happen, to move the world. In order for you to be the one who makes things move, you need to be unmoved yourself. Whether or not Aristotle was right that the world was set in motion by an unmoved mover, the concept certainly applies to effective leaders. Emotional serenity, the ability to remain in control and composed when receiving criticism, contributes mightily to presence.

When Baldoni calls presence earned authority, he is distinguishing it from charisma. Someone who is charismatic is in constant motion, in constant emotional turmoil. True enough, he might get other people to do things, but most often he has to force them to do it.

Like our current charismatic president, he spends far too much of his time bad mouthing other people, calling them out, and treating them with disrespect. A charismatic leader uses his emotional intemperance as a means to draw other people into his drama.

A charismatic leader inspires love and devotion. He is not respected. He did not work his way up through the organization. He is far better at explaining why things go wrong than making them go right.

Presence involves achievement, but the achievement must be accompanied by humility. When you are present you have the quiet dignity that allows you to stand a little straighter, to speak more clearly and directly, to look people in the eye, to pay close attention to what they are saying, and to remain confident when faced by an emotional storm.

Presence requires self-control. Charisma involves emotional displays.

Presence matters for effective leaders because leaders are too often absent, remote, and distant. They act as though they are too good for the cafeteria, too important to rub elbows with the staff, too powerful to listen to the concerns of whose they lead. Moreover, their absence suggests that they are hiding from the world.

To offer examples of leadership presence, Baldoni writes of the CEO who eats lunch in the cafeteria, or who has a desk on the trading floor, or who spends time every day chatting with the workers on the shop floor. And he adds the telling example of the school principal who walks the hallways greeting his pupils by their names.

By making others present to you you make yourself more present to them.

If you are confident of your authority-- and this means, as Baldoni suggests, that you have earned it-- then you do not worry that lunch in the cafeteria will cause you to lose your aura. You will not think you are lowering yourself when you put your desk on the trading floor; you will know that you are elevating everyone else.

If a leader shows up once in the cafeteria he is not showing presence. He is looking like he is doing something someone told him to do.

If he shows up regularly, and establishes a rapport with his staff, to the point where they are comfortable talking to him, he will have asserted his presence, and he will probably have learned important things about his company.

If he is too distant, remote, and absent, he might have to go on a show like Undercover Boss to connect with his staff, but it is probably easier to spend part of every other day chatting with staff, learning their names, listening to their observations and ideas.

The more presence the leader gives to others the more he will have himself.