What Real Leadership Looks Like

I’ve been teaching leadership at San Diego State University for 20 years now and attempting to practice it for the better part of the last 63 years (since I started college). Over that span of years, I’ve been an infantry NCO in the 82nd Airborne Division, a corporate CEO multiple times, a management consultant, mentor, board member, entrepreneur, jury foreman, and teacher. In addition to holding the leadership role myself, I’ve also had the good fortune to observe other leaders – both good and bad – up close.

The older I get – and the more I reflect on leadership – the more I find myself focusing on a few fundamentals that I think represent the core foundation of an effective leader’s behavior.

At a time when the U.S. is in desperate need of effective leadership, I thought it might be worthwhile to review a few of those principles.

The first fundamental is essentially a direct lift of a quote from Max DePree’s book, Leadership Jazz: “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” This, in turn, requires the ability to accurately size up one’s environment and the courage to level with one’s followers about the implications. Winston Churchill comes to mind as someone who, in the early days of the Battle of Britain with the Nazi armies just across the Channel, found a way to explain the stakes without the barest coating of sugar – and yet left his countrymen encouraged and resolute.

The ability to engage in some critical thinking helps in the task of assessing reality. And by critical thinking, I mean mature, sophisticated reasoning leavened with the recognition of the possibility of error and self-delusion. Ideology and intellectual arrogance are its polar opposites.

The furthest thing from a critical thinker is the “true believer” (see Eric Hoffer on this one), the zealot blinded by his own certainty and often dangerously intent on compelling conformity with his own views.

The second fundamental is an almost genetic bias for action: an inability to remain dormant in the face of either problem or opportunity; a refusal to by-stand. Intelligence is not enough, nor is wisdom: you have to be capable of pulling the trigger on meaningful action.

I am often astounded by the otherwise highly intelligent people I’ve observed – who hold clear positions requiring leadership behaviors – who are unable to take the step from recognition of the need for action…to action itself.

The final factor in effective leadership that I want to include in this short piece is the whole notion of accountability. I include it as much for its current absence on the American scene as for its importance.

The sure sign of avoidance of accountability is the use of the passive voice, as in “mistakes were made,” or “the gun went off.” Accountability means that you own your decisions and their outcomes.

In a 1989 book about World War II, Paul Fussell related the story of Dwight Eisenhower’s behavior on the eve of D-Day in 1944:

“…entirely alone and for the moment disjunct from his publicity apparatus, changed the passive voice to active in the penciled statement he wrote out to have ready when the invasion was repulsed, his troops torn apart for nothing, his planes ripped and smashed to no end, his warships sunk, his reputation blasted. ‘Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops.’ Originally he wrote, ‘the troops have been withdrawn,’ as if by some distant, anonymous agency instead of by an identifiable man making all-but-impossible decisions. Having ventured this bold revision, and secure in his painful acceptance of full personal accountability, he was able to proceed un-evasively with ’My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available.’ Then, after the conventional credit distributed equally to ‘the troops, the air, and the navy,’ came Eisenhower’s noble acceptance of total personal responsibility: ‘If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.’”

Using these three hallmarks – defining reality, a bias for action and taking accountability – it becomes hard to find anyone in American public life at the moment that might qualify as an effective leader.

In fact, one is tempted to say that our operative definition of leadership nowadays is: “The wealthiest person we can stomach for 18 months of groveling over-exposure during a political campaign”…hardly a promising formula.

Judging by the dynamics of American political campaigning – particularly on the national level – one might conclude that not only do the American people not want an unvarnished tour of reality, or an invitation to purposeful action, but that they’d prefer to be coddled, praised and told comforting lies about their mythic uniqueness.

Of course, the times and our national predicament call for nothing less than mature leadership. Ideally, that leadership would emerge at all levels of society, local as well as national. It would call a spade a spade, initiate and inspire action, and hold itself accountable for results.

What’s in the way of that happening?

The barrier, the cork in the bottle if you will, is our sclerotic political culture, which has deteriorated into a cash and influence-driven race to the bottom of the relevance curve by the lifers in both political parties.

When you look up the word “leader” in the dictionary, Mitch McConnell’s photo does not appear. Neither does Nancy Pelosi’s.

I’ll pass over current White House incumbents in embarrassed silence.

The bad news is that history is not likely to put itself on hold in hopes that we’ll get our act together.