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The Nature of Leadership
In December of 1776, the American Revolution was teetering on the brink, so George Washington asked his friend Thomas Paine to write something that might inspire his troops—something that would take their minds off their bleeding feet and empty bellies and the probability of defeat. Thomas Paine responded with his famous essay, The Crisis:
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value…
Washington ordered that The Crisis be read to the troops, every single one of them, on December 23, 1776.
It’s been said that we beat the British because British soldiers fought for the King and our people fought for freedom.
Honore’s working definition of leadership is this: the art and science of influencing others to willingly follow. The key word is willingly. In the New Normal, willingness is everything. That’s because the old command-and-control system just doesn’t work anymore.
Fear and self-interest are short-term motivators, and leaders have long-term problems. Command-and-control is a dead letter for leaders.
As soldiers would put it, the leader’s audio and video have to match. If the leader talks about discipline, but doesn’t demonstrate discipline himself, he won’t have followers. Ultimately, people are looking for somebody who is respectable – not just somebody who’s loud.
If you want followers to follow wholeheartedly and permanently, you have to give them something to aspire to. Something they want as badly as you do. Something that gives them reason to willingly follow.
Remember, what saved our emerging country during the Revolutionary War was leadership. What will keep it strong today is leadership.
Good leaders need not always be at the front of the formation, but they always figure out where they are needed most. Being at the right place at the right time is what a leader does.
The First Three Lessons of Leadership
When Honoré was about to graduate from Reserve Officer Training School in 1971, one of his teachers offered a simple though profound lesson in leadership. You can be successful if you do three things:
- Learn to do the routine things well.
- Don’t be afraid to take on the impossible.
- Don’t be afraid to act, even if you’re being criticized.
Do routine things well. Don’t fear the impossible. Act in the face of criticism. Those are the first three lessons of leadership that every leader should know.
When a follower can easily select a different job, a different senator, a different ideology, only genuine personal engagement with the mission and the leader will keep a constituency together. There’s an easy way to keep followers following – tell everyone what they want to hear. It’s called pandering and it works, up to a point. That point is reached at exactly the same place as mission failure. Pandering leaders are just like Tooth Fairies: No one ever sees them, what they deliver isn’t worth much, and there always comes a time when people stop believing in them.
Today, leading from the front means accepting responsibility for one’s decisions. It means being willing to say: “This is my decision. I stand by this decision. And I will take all the criticism that goes with it, because the opportunities we may get from doing this will be consistent with what we want to do as a country.” When in charge, take charge. When you have the opportunity to make a difference, make a difference. And every now and then, check to make sure you still have followers.
If you’re the leader, you have to be sure everyone behind you sees the vision. They have to see where you want to go. That’s why, as a leader, your job is to make sure the purpose stays visible, attainable, and worth running toward.
No great change comes without leadership and sacrifice. During difficult times the leader must be visible to his or her people.
The New Normal
On December 1, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln delivered “The New Normal” message to Congress:
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
The whole world has access to everything. In the Philippines, 7 percent of the population is connected to a sewer system, but 73.6 percent of Filipinos have a cell phone. When you hear “the whole world is connected,” it means that the majority of humans can see what all the other humans are up to.
Leaders can use information technology for good or ill, but in either case, the New Normal requires not just familiarity but proficiency with rapid information transmission. One of the demands of leadership in the New Normal is to make sure your constituency knows what they need to know, despite what others are saying.
We think of America – the pundits certainly talk about America – as if there were two streets, Wall Street and Main Street. That’s wrong. There are three streets: Wall Street, where the rich live; Main Street, where the middle class live; and Railroad Street – the street in the part of town most prone to flooding, with rickety houses, that gets the least amount of city maintenance dollars – where the poor people live.
If we don’t care whether the people on Railroad Street get what they need to improve their lot in life, if we ignore their education and health, and let them rot, they become disengaged from the economy. Then they create their own economy, sometimes a criminal one. In far too many cases, the thinking can be summed up this way: “I’m going to go out and get mine. I’ll sell dope if I have to, and I’ll go take mine.” That creates a dangerous climate for everyone, which is why our country puts so much money (and emotion) into law enforcement.
California spends $90,000 per death row inmate every year. It costs less than half of that to put a kid through Harvard University for a year. I use that contrast for a reason: There’s a direct relationship between low reading scores and criminality in later life. That’s why in some of our poorer states and in some of our bigger cities, leaders are looking at the reading level of fourth grade minority boys to figure how many prison cells they’ll need in 10 or 20 years.
Our culture has lost touch with education as a way to raise oneself up.
The uneducated are an economic liability. Education makes you more valuable to society. Educated people are a form of capital. Uneducated people are unrealized human capital. Educating kids does more than give them a chance at life, like it did for Honoré and so many others. It makes them functional in the economy.
Right now, the U.S. is importing nurses and doctors because we’re not educating enough in our own country to take care of our own population. And on top of that, we’re outspending most other countries on education – and getting worse results.
Today’s leaders should know that anything they say, everything they do, can be on every web-based device on earth seconds after they say or do it.
The Global Environment
The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population and consumes 25 percent of its resources. What of the other 95 percent of the population? Of the approximately 7 billion people in the world today – of which the U.S. has 314 million – about half live on less than $4 a day.
The culture of poverty exists all over the world, and so does the response to it: violence. Poverty and the culture it creates can even foster terrorism.
As a retired general in the United States Army, Honoré confidently asserts, “Military power is probably the most inefficient method of resolving an issue.”
Military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Honoré argues that war is the failure of politics. The day the U.S. invented and used the nuclear bomb was the day we could no longer afford to fail in politics.
Many of us don’t want to learn about the cultures outside our borders. The desire to isolate ourselves is an easy temptation, but it’s limiting. Isolation makes us less intellectually curious. The military has learned the danger of that attitude twice in recent years – once in Iraq and again in Afghanistan. Your servicemen and servicewomen have come to realize that a clear understanding of other cultures and customs is essential in the New Normal.
Our future and our safety are not in becoming more isolated. Our future is in becoming more global. The Gallup Organization is doing a 100-year World Poll. They’re a few years into surveying the whole world and have already come up with some key findings. First, what everyone in the world wants is a good job.
Angus Deaton, a respected Princeton economist, thinks that if the West wants to send aid to emerging economies we shouldn’t send checks, we should send doctors and well-diggers.
Helping developing countries develop businesses is even better. Military solutions should always be solutions of the last resort. Wars cause new problems, often worse problems.
Open society tells you that if you want to be successful, you get an education. You work hard and the country will provide the security and the opportunity you need. Closed societies, like the oppressive regime in North Korea, emanate from the communist culture that says everybody is in it together, shares alike, and is rewarded the same. Of course, it never works that way. In closed societies, a few people get all the power, most of the people do all of the work, and only the powerful prosper.
Everything starts with a good education. What drove Honoré’s generation was the certainty that if you got an education, nobody could take it from you. You could literally do anything you wanted if you got an education.
The New Normal is teaching us that education not only changes individuals, it changes countries. Countries that provide equal education for boys and girls are the ones that will succeed to the greatest degree now and in the future.
When government, media and academia work together, cultures shift. What the world needs right now is a shift toward education.
Your mission as a leader in the New Normal: Grow your organization. If you’re a business leader, your mission is not to guide your organization through the New Normal, but to grow it in the New Normal.
Your Job is Now Your Mission
The Army says a mission is a specified task that is to be accomplished in a stated time frame and with a purpose. A mission is not a task you do before clocking out. If people don’t understand the significance of what they do and its impact on others, they don’t have a mission. They just have a job.
Workers will feel their job is a mission only if their leaders believe it and explain it. If you know your mission, you know your purpose. In the business world, a lot of leaders bend over backward to tell their people what their tasks are, but they don’t explain how those tasks fit into the overall mission of the organization. As a result, people don’t know their purpose, which means they’re only peripherally aware of the organization’s strategy.
When people know the purpose of their tasks and how that purpose fits the mission, they become engaged. They become empowered.
Strategy speaks to the purpose of why we are doing what we’re doing. Tactics are the arrangement of who’s going to do what, when and where.
Logistics is the science of movement – the movement of people, material and information. Tactics and logistics are what make strategy happen, the what that has to be done, who is going to do it, and how it has to be done. Without tactics and logistics, strategy is just a lot of hot air.
You have to have alignment among your strategy, your tactics and your logistics or your mission is in real trouble. Leaders have to have a clear description of the what, why and how of operationalizing strategy.
A leader’s job is to decide what needs to be done, who should do it, how they should do it, and then supervise the way it’s done. That does not mean leaders are the only ones with brains in their heads. Subordinates have some ideas, too – sometimes the best ideas.
In the New Normal, companies are a lot better off if their people understand what has to be done and why, and if they have some leeway to make some decisions regarding the how.
People can’t internalize the what, why and how if they aren’t allowed a little self-agency to do it. Internalizing what, why and how connects people to the purpose of the organization.
People are a lot more understanding when they see the leader as an action figure rather than a figurehead. People are looking for leaders who are clearly aligning strategy, tactics and logistics. That’s as true in business as it is in politics. Leaders have to get those three things right. That’s their mission.
We in the U.S. have to not only recognize the worst-case scenario, but we need to be able to plan and take actions that help mitigate it. One function of leadership is to get people to do what they ought to do, even when they don’t want to. Leadership fails to do this when its confidence exceeds its competence.
Decision Superiority
To get the right outcomes and to make the right decisions at the right time, we need more than leadership. We need decision superiority.
Whoever sees first, understands first and acts first has decision superiority – and it makes all the difference. That’s why the first three principles of leadership are so important – doing the routine things well, being willing to take on the impossible, and not fearing criticism. These elements put leaders in a position to take decision superiority when the opportunities arise.
Bill Gates’ company came out with the Windows operating system in 1985, and 10 years later 80% of the computers in the world were using the program. Gates, like many of the world’s most noted leaders, demonstrated decision superiority. Microsoft took decision superiority because the company saw first, understood first and acted first.
Throughout U.S. history our people have demonstrated a culture of innovation and creativity and a willingness to take on the seemingly impossible. One of the most dramatic examples is the U.S. space program that placed men on the moon in the summer of 1969.
What we demand of ourselves now is what we live with later, for good or bad. Living well and long is a matter of personal responsibility. It’s also a matter of decision superiority. Part of taking decision superiority is accepting the responsibility that goes with it. Our free market system is based on people doing what they say they’re going to do.
Everyone with good sense knows there isn’t enough law to prevent people from doing stupid or unethical things. But when they do, they need to pay for it. That’s one of the points of regulation – to hold violators accountable. Free markets can’t survive when no one is held accountable for what he or she does.
Followers must be accountable for their actions as well. Many social and business leaders have retreated into a risk-averse decision-making process and rejected decision superiority in favor of plausible deniability.
If leaders have the best of intentions, more often than not things turn out well. And even if they don’t, the courage to make a decision can garner a lot of goodwill.
In the U.S. we have an innovative culture and environment that supports critical thinking and inventing. Living well and long is a matter of personal responsibility.
The True Purpose of Business
Cheaper-and-quicker is the wrong model for business in the New Normal. It’s not competitive, because anyone can get something cheaper somewhere else. Cheaper, better and quicker nearly destroyed the American automobile industry.
Many modern leaders have come to this same conclusion, and from there they have figured out the real purpose of business: to solve problems. Find the right problem and solve it – and get rich in the process! It’s a lot smarter, and financially healthier, to sell what people need rather than what people want.
The most effective means to retain customers is to treat them like patients on life-support – as though their very survival depended on you. In other words, give them very close attention and take care of their needs as they relate to the goods or services sold by your company. Top-flight customer care means your whole organization needs to listen closely to your customers. You have to do your homework. You have to know practically as much about your customers’ business as they do.
For the culture of great customer service to become an integral part of your company’s normal business operation, everyone in the organization must be onboard with it. You can’t remain in the survival mode indefinitely, because if you’re not growing, you’re falling behind.
Plans crafted toward growth and solving customers’ problems are the ones most likely to see organizations through troubled waters.
Earning Your Subordinates’ Loyalty and Investing in Their Success
Honoré’s working definition of leadership is the art and science of influencing others to willingly follow. To accomplish this, to get willing followers, leaders need to do two things: they must walk the walk and they must inspire loyalty.
Good followers obey willingly because the mission is as important to them as it is to the leader.
After the Revolutionary War, George Washington was practically worshipped in America. Washington inspired that kind of response not because he won a war, but because he won his followers. Americans saw him as a real leader, the person to speak for them in their absence, to put their best interests ahead of his own, a man who saw the future and led them to it.
Followers recognize that leaders are necessarily imperfect. Accept your flaws – and demonstrate that you’re working on them – and you’ll inspire some trust. And if you inspire enough trust, you’ll attract loyalty.
Retired Army General Colin Powell once said that loyal followers will follow their leader if for no other reason than simple curiosity. (See my summary of his autobiography, It Worked for Me in Life & Leadership).
Strong leaders look for followers who are smarter and more capable than they are themselves – especially in areas where the leaders may be lacking.
This is an essential part of decision superiority: picking people for their potential and ability and not for their personality. Selecting followers for their potential and competence pretty well guarantees a variety of personality types, and not necessarily harmonious ones.
Besides those who are smarter than you, there are certain kinds of other people you should have on your team, including unambitious bureaucrats and bothersome contrarians.
- Good bureaucrats – and every organization needs them – get the forms filed, keep you conformed to safety laws, know where everything is kept, abide by the tax codes, and respond to customers promptly.
- Contrarians keep leaders from accepting “group-think.” Contrarians don’t just nod at everything you say; they point out what’s wrong with what you just said.
Here is one of the real benefits of picking good followers: They contribute to the success of the mission by picking good subordinates themselves.
Followers don’t judge their leaders on where they come from or necessarily what they look like. They score leaders on character and presence.
Save Your Best Leadership for When You Get Home
Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré writes, “A family is a team, and teams need leaders” – that is, parents who are devoted to parenting and teaching their children.
Some leaders prove the point that it is possible to win the world and lose your soul – and your family. Be careful that you don’t spend so much time and energy providing for your family that you lose your family.
Family has a mission, too: to work as a team. And just like a team in the business world, members have to follow willingly or they aren’t a team.
Parents are leaders; that’s their role in the family. Now, too often what we find in the corporate world is that people may have no problem executing a leadership role at work, but they fail to execute their role as a leader at home.
Lead your family, but don’t think—not even for a minute—that what works at the office will work at home. When you walk in your front door, you’re not in command; you’re in collaboration. It’s easier to move a rope by pulling than it is by pushing. That’s an aspect of positive, rather than negative, leadership.
You can be sure that if the standard is not clear, people will pick their own standard. And every time you ignore a mistake, you’ve just set a new standard. If you want your kids to be trustworthy, you have to be trustworthy. And for your family to trust you, your audio and your video have to match, as the Army says.
Over the years, Honoré has learned a way of teaching people how to announce bad news. It’s simple and straightforward: Just give them the bad news. Don’t hide it.
Everybody screws up. Leadership is figuring out what went wrong, teaching subordinates to avoid making that mistake again, and returning to the pursuit of the mission at hand. There are few mistakes so bad that we can’t recover from them.
There’s a saying in the Army that all the troops know by heart: I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade.
The mission of parents should be to build a family team. So families should have an ethos as well. Placing the mission first means my family is more important to me than anything else.
Never quitting means I’ll be beside you, no matter how long it takes you to become the person you’re meant to be. Never leaving a fallen comrade means regardless of what you do, I will always love you. I will come to get you.
If you fail in parenting, what you do at work doesn’t matter so much. But if you succeed in your mission of building a family team, you succeed at the most important responsibility you have.
Leadership is a calling, and a noble one. Leaders are vital to the ongoing success of our country, our society and our economy. Save your best leadership for when you get home. Be careful not to spend so much time and energy providing for your family that you lose your family. Leading at work is easy compared to leading at home.
