10 Leadership Lessons from Chernobyl

This year we have marked 35 years since the dramatic nuclear accident at the Chernobyl electric plant in Pripyat, Ukraine (ex-USSR).

Following some recent concerns amid increased levels of radioactivity inside of what used to be the Reactor 4 (completely sealed in 2017), I’ve taken a few hours to re-watch the HBO series covering this terrible accident.

Watching the unfolding events, as presented by HBO, I started to notice certain leadership traits (or lack thereof) and organizational flows that could be translated into lessons.

The rationale of pointing these lessons out is that they could be paralleled to present day corporate organizational structures and human dynamics.

I will not however tackle the scientific dimension, the environmental one or the huge economics of the accident. Nor am I going to slide into politics. I will be presenting the lessons as they are built around the main characters, based on their behavior and decisions in key moments.

There are two lead characters and a few supporting characters, consisting of a few scientists and a whole lot more of Communist Party members, including the former USSR President himself, Mikhail Gorbatchev.

The first lead character is Valery Legasov. At the moment of the Chernobyl disaster Legasov was the first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. As depicted in the HBO series, after the accident he was assigned to become a lead member of the government commission that was appointed to investigate the causes of the disaster and to manage the subsequent remediation plan.

Legasov has been portrayed as a well-seasoned scientist and a moral man, who occasionally played by the rules of the Party in order to get things done. 2 years after the accident and after having set the remediation plan on its course, falling prey to a guilty conscience and strong emotional pressure, he eventually committed suicide. The producers, early in the show, have introduced him while he was recording his non-censored views upon the accident and over the actions taken afterwards.

As he put it: “Well, I’ve given you everything I know. They’ll deny it of course, they always do”

What I believe to be some positive lessons derived from his character are:

1.     First, he was a well-trained professional and subject to meritocracy, although he used to refer to as himself a “na?ve scientist”. Based on his expertise and with the help of other scientists (commonly and anonymously personified into one fictitious character – Ulana Khomyuk) Legasov proposed and implemented critical measures within the Chernobyl recovery plan.

The key takeaway (especially for public service organizations) would be that it is the experts hired upon meritocracy whom are able to take them out of crises.

2.     Second, although in certain critical moments his actions were skewed by Party priorities (E.g., delivering a misleading report in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency assembly in Vienna), he never hesitated to challenge the status-quo (strongly defended within the Communist Party by the “apparatchik”) with the ultimate objective of saving as many lives as possible.

As an organization, allowing experienced employees the opportunity to challenge the status-quo is a healthy habit, especially when the organization skids under inertia.

3.     Courage. As a leader, courage, even coming at a cost, is crucial.

Being appointed by Gorbatchev to visit the burning & radioactive plant and to coordinate specific reparatory measures around the premises, Legasov did not hesitate to follow course, whilst understanding that his own life expectancy would be reduced to a couple of years.

On the “what-not-to-do” side of the story, we have been presented with Anatoly Dyatlov. Although not a lead character within the series, he was for sure a key player in the accident.

Dyatlov was back then the deputy chief engineer of the nuclear plant and on the night of the accident was leading the team of operators in the control room.

As portrayed by Legasov in his opening scene monologue, Dyatlov is the villain of the story: “All we want to know is: who is to blame? In this story it was Anatoly Dyatlov. He was the best choice. An arrogant, unpleasant man, he ran the room that night, he gave the orders and [had] no friends. Or at least not important ones.”

His responsibility upon the accident has been widely accepted within the scientific world as the main reason for the dramatic outcome (although not the only reason). Consequently, together with the other 2 plant managers, the following year, he was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Following Dyatlov’s character through the series of events, the producers this time  let us witness some negative leadership traits:

4. The most striking character trait was Dyatlov’s hubris – an increased level of professional arrogance and over-confidence, both culminating into a strong condescendence level toward his own team.

As a takeaway from this, I believe, and this goes without saying, that organizations should avoid hiring such leaders or at least install safety nets around them (E.g., validation of critical decisions by Board consensus etc.).

5. Although he seemed to outsmart his team in terms of expertise, Diatlov showed poor communication skills and lack of respect towards most of his subordinates. Just to display a testimony of his communication skills during the crisis moment: “You and Toptunov, you morons blew the tank”

Perhaps in today’s corporate world such a behaviour is unacceptable, but, needless to say, it is worth reminding every now and then that such behaviour puts the team in defensive mode, it demotivates them, hence their performance decreases.

6. In the panic moments of the accident, it was obvious that his team comprised rather junior, poorly trained staff. So, although he could not have been held accountable for improper staff selection, having poorly trained staff within his team, and letting himself get caught off-guard is a negative leadership trait.

Again, worth reminding that, eventually, it is the senior manager that is accountable for her team lack of skills. 

7. Lack of empathy towards his team members (visibly suffering from radiation exposure) is another negative leadership trait. And to make things worse, during critical moments, he even took the time to threaten some of his subordinates on career related consequences.

OK, maybe in crisis management there isn’t enough time for empathy, but it is these rare moments that allow true leaders to distinguish themselves and win their teammates’ respect and engagement.

Another important character, under a great interpretation by Stellan Skarsgard, is Boris Shchrebina. Schrebina embodies the “apparatchik” profile and, throughout the implementation of the remedial plan, he presents us with the ways of the Communist Party.

Around Scherbina’s character, the producers point out some flaws of the socialist organization:

8. Lack of cohesion among the plant leadership team (Bryuchanov, Fomin and Dyatlov), as presented in the first (emergency) meeting of the three, one hour after the explosion. Reading their dialogue in subtext, the dynamic is pretty straightforward, with Bryuchanov condescending his deputy Fomin, while Fomin and Dyatlov discretely tossing the responsibility back and forth.

Translating this example in today’s corporate world, the takeaway would be that a low level of cohesion among senior management (E.g., Board members) would prevent from attaining their strategic goals.

9. Under a socialist governance, we are shown that almost every decision is being filtered by Party officials (also called “apparatchik”), hence decision-making under such a multi-layered governance model is incredibly slow. 

So, organizations that want to be agile, either in positive / expansion scenarios or in crisis scenarios, should consider flat organizational structures.

10. Censorship and concealment of information as cornerstone of the socialist governance model. Starting from the plant managers and moving up the hierarchical ladder, up to the Party Secretary General himself (i.e., Gorbatchev), the general approach regarding sensitive information (in this case about the accident) is to withhold it, in order to “protect the interests of the State”

Drawing the parallel with corporate culture, yes, there’s always the temptation of preventing information from leaking, before the impact could be assessed and contained and, in most cases, it is quite the norm. And there are plenty of moments when even employees are being kept in the dark.

Nevertheless, the way companies handle externalities and / or crises, in terms of communication, has a strong influence on their brand awareness. Especially over the long run.

As a conclusion, I believe that it is worth reflecting on what happened at the Chernobyl power plant on the night of 26 April 1986 and afterwards, because behavioral and organizational patterns (good or bad) have a tendency of repeating themselves, even at present day.

Thus, by acknowledging and tackling such patterns, organizations would avoid making mistakes, maybe not at such a scale as Chernobyl, but still with significant material consequences.