Five Leaders Forged in Crisis, and What We Can Learn From
Them
· AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Leadership Under Fire
Interview
by Dina Gerdeman
In the
early 2000s, Nancy Koehn was socked with one personal blow after the next
within a three-year period: Her father dropped dead suddenly. Her husband
walked out and a terrible divorced ensued. And she was diagnosed with breast
cancer.
As these
“big hunky blocks” of her life were falling around her, the business historian
says she reached for the collective writings of Abraham Lincoln.
“I was
feeling vulnerable, and it was a personal search for some sort of clarity and
redemption,” explains Koehn, the James E. Robison Professor of Business
Administration at Harvard Business School. “I was struck by all that Lincoln
was carrying, and I thought, ‘Nancy, you think you have problems. Look at
Lincoln!’”
Koehn set
out to write a book about the former president, inspired by his remarkable
leadership as he persevered in his fight against slavery. He did so despite the
weight of many Civil War losses on his shoulders and personal tragedies,
including the death of his son. But, after four years of "sniffing and
snooping,” it occurred to her the world didn't need another Lincoln book.
Koehn
realized she had more to say about how great leaders were made, and Lincoln was
just one shining example. She decided to pull into the fold other leaders who
had gripped the attention of her students in her courses at HBS: polar explorer
Ernest Shackleton, abolitionist Frederick Douglass, Nazi-resisting clergyman
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and environmental crusader Rachel Carson. The result,
about a dozen years in the making, is Koehn’s book Forged in Crisis:
The Power of Courageous Leadership in Turbulent Times.
Each of
the extraordinary people Koehn chronicles found themselves at the center of a
great crisis. Shackleton was stranded on the ice with his men in the Antarctic.
Lincoln was on the verge of seeing the Union fall apart. Douglass, an escaped
slave, was dodging capture by his former owner. Bonhoeffer was secretly working
to bring down Hitler while attempting to evade his own arrest by the Nazis.
Carson was racing to finish a book about the dangers of pesticides before
cancer silenced her.
Each
person faced long odds of success, each was filled with fear, dread, and
uncertainty, and yet each found the inner strength—rooted deeply in the need to
fight for the greater good—to carry on.
The book
urges readers to peer into the past and find inspiration from five people who
managed to accept their failures, steady themselves, and overcome great
obstacles to make their mark. It’s a call to action for future leaders: “Read
these stories and get to work,” Koehn says in her introduction. “The world has
never needed you and other real leaders more than it does now.”
Yet, the
book is also more than that. Like a warm cup of tea on a cold, rainy day, it’s
an antidote to those times when we all feel overwhelmed by our own
struggles—work-related or personal. Koehn herself certainly knows that feeling.
“Lincoln
taught me a great deal about the possibilities of growth in the midst of
crisis," says Koehn, whose research focuses on how leaders craft lives of
purpose, worth, and impact. “When I’m scared or confused or besieged with
problems, I think, ‘What would Bonhoeffer do?’ I’ve had other people say to me,
‘Here’s what I was dealing with, and this is why Rachel Carson really spoke to
me.’ The ability for a story from history to help someone when they are
emotionally vulnerable and confused is deeply gratifying. Each of these people
triumphed—after they failed—and they made a great difference in the world. We
can learn a lot from their stories.”
In this
interview with HBS Working Knowledge, Koehn delves into the many
leadership lessons readers can take away from the five subjects she profiled.
Dina
Gerdeman: As a slave, Frederick Douglass feared his master, but then something
shifted in him the day he decided to physically fight back. You say that
confronting your fears head on allows you to find your core strength. I imagine
this is as true for the people you write about as for the entrepreneur looking
to start a business?
Nancy
Koehn: When we’re dealing with our worst fears, it’s hard. I call it the 2 a.m.
cold sweats, where you think: How am I going to get through this? Every leader
knows these moments, and the people in this book experienced those.
What’s
interesting about this critical moment for Douglass: You see a man who’s been
made a slave, and he’s scared of [the overseer], but he's not going to succumb
this time. He steps into it. Bonhoeffer talks about killing himself, then
learns how to step back from the edge of caving in. He is quaking in his boots
when he is interrogated [by Nazis]. And the next time, he's a little less
scared. Lincoln talks a lot about doubt and despair, but he learns how to
manage it.
These
people squared their shoulders and took a series of small steps into the fear.
Each step you take makes you a little stronger and a little braver, and that
means that the next baby step is easier than the one before. The people in my
book keep on keeping on and walking into the fear—until the winds have died
down and they know the storm has passed for them.
At times,
leading an organization is about an ongoing encounter with one’s own fears and
the fears of one’s people. A lot of leaders who take on the amount of
responsibility and accountability that goes with being the CEO of a major
company will encounter fear and have to figure out how to deal with it.
Some of
our alumni who are business leaders have said, I knew it was going
to be really hard, but I took that first step and the next step, and after a
difficult journey, the impossible was made possible. They understand that
ordinary people can make themselves capable of doing extraordinary things.
It’s not
easy. Turbulence is all around us, and that creates more fear. I think of Merck
CEO Ken Frazier, who resigned from the president’s manufacturing council
because he didn’t believe the president was speaking with integrity .
Gerdeman:
You say in the book that great leaders live by “right action.” Can you explain
what you mean?
Koehn: If
you read all five stories, you realize that part of what fuels each of the
protagonists, when they're most vulnerable or confused or in a fog of doubt, is
the mission. The goodness of what they're trying to do gives them each the
energy to take the next step. It’s not like they wake up and are born with the
genes of Jesus or that they have been endowed with a prophet's sense of
purpose.
Shackleton
is chasing fame when he goes to the Antarctic. Carson wants to be a
best-selling author. It’s a narcissistic quest that gives way to the
realization of a larger moment and a sense that they can make a worthy
difference to other people. They stumble onto the goodness of their
contribution and the possibility of service to others, and the narcissistic
quest disappears in that discovery.
Carson
realizes: "DDT is a big deal. I've got to wake people to the dangers
here." Shackleton says, "I've got to save my men." Lincoln says,
"We can't have this loss of life in the war without cutting out the cancer
of slavery."
I say to
my students: “Don’t give up looking. You have a bigger purpose, and the search
for that purpose can take you somewhere astounding.” Our Millennial students
and our alumni want to answer that call. So many values we hold dear as a
nation are up for grabs right now in a newly prominent and frightening way, and
this is a call for action.
Gerdeman:
Shackleton is an example of someone who worked quite a bit on team-building. He
made a point of connecting personally with his men, and he also knew the way he
carried himself could make the difference in whether his team survived. Can you
talk about why team-building is important?
Koehn:
Without Shackleton’s ability to foster cohesion among his team, those folks
wouldn’t have survived. It started with how he selected people for his team. He
hired for attitude and trained for skill.
And then
he knew how to manage his worst enemies, the naysayers. He couldn’t fire the
people who doubted him and spread pessimism and negativity because they were
all on the ice together, but he kept the naysayers close, so he himself could
contain them. At the same time, he was managing the energy of his team in other
ways. Once the ship had been down for months and supplies were running low, for
example, Shackleton ordered up double rations to raise the men’s spirits by
feeding them. Each evening after supper, he walked around to the men’s tents at
night to play cards or tell stories.
All of
Shackleton’s actions were intended to make his men feel they were a part of
this band of brothers that together could not fail. And, when he himself walked
out of his tent in the morning, he made certain to appear confident and to show
up with positive energy, even when he harbored his fears and doubts himself.
Gerdeman:
Even when Bonhoeffer was in prison, he woke up at a certain time, exercised by
pacing his cell, and pinpointed certain times for reading and writing. What is
the importance of focus and discipline—and is it harder today with all of our
distractions?
Koehn: We
certainly have distractions, but I don’t think it’s necessarily tougher to
focus today. When Lincoln was president, for example, he had hundreds of
citizens lining up at the White House to speak to him, many with issues that
needed executive attention. His office was at the center of the war effort and
he had no joint chiefs of staff, so he had scores of military issues swirling
around him at all times. He also had to deal with constant political
pressures—in Congress and with the states. While all this was happening,
Lincoln was the focal point for enormous amounts of vitriol and hatred stirred
up by the war. He didn’t have Twitter or television, but the sixteenth
president kept in close touch with politicians and ordinary Americans through
his speeches, letters to editors, individual communications to citizens,
including his weekday office hours [in which anyone could line up to see the
president], and ongoing visits to the battlefields. So we may think modern
leaders have a lot coming at them, but it’s hard to argue the leaders in the
past, like Lincoln, were not similarly besieged.
There’s a
great seduction to our iPhones. I often say to executives that they’re like our
lovers. We keep them close; we depend on them; we even stroke them; we’re
anxious if we’re not near them. Most of us have some small or large addiction
problem with our technology. But, at some point, leaders need to turn away from
their inboxes and newsfeeds and Twitter notifications and realize that they
don’t contain all the answers, and that they often prevent us from seeing a
range of important things.
One of
the other critical lessons in the book related to focus is that making a big,
worthy difference is never about the 10 things in front of a leader; instead,
it is about one or two or three key issues. And with all the stuff coming at
leaders so much of the time, we have to be reminded of that.
Before he
became president, Lincoln gave a lecture to law students saying that if he
could swing the jury to one or two of the points that really mattered to the
case, he could give away the rest of the points to the opposition. This makes
for smart negotiation tactics—disarm your opponent by relinquishing the points
that you don't need to keep while holding onto the essential issues—but it is
also a leadership mantra.
Gerdeman:
The leaders you write about have these “gathering periods”—times when there may
not be any great outward progress, but they gather their tools and experiences
and find the strength to take the next step forward.
Koehn:
Yes, all of the people in this book had these periods in which they were not
checking off a lot of items on life’s to-do list, and they weren’t seeming to
make a great difference in the external world. Lincoln spends six years
practicing law and keeping himself informed about politics. He is watching the
cauldron of slavery gather to a rising boil, but the resume isn’t crowded in
those years. Shackleton is waiting for the ice to break up. Carson is working
at the Fish and Wildlife Service, but not accomplishing a great deal on what
today we might call her bucket list.
What’s
happening to these people during these moments? They are investing in themselves.
They’re learning a great deal about their thinking and possible contribution to
the great events of the day. Those periods of not accomplishing things
externally were, instead, about building their equipment inside—emotionally,
intellectually, and in some cases spiritually—to be ready for their moment.
They’re not losing sight of the big picture and the stage on which they’re
going to make a big difference. These are people who commit to getting better
from the inside-out.
These
gathering years are important for our Millennial students to understand. Your
moment doesn’t always have to happen in a dramatic, made-for-the-movies way
when you’re 27. You prepare yourself for the next big move you’ll make, but you
can’t make that move until you understand the stage.
Gerdeman:
You talk about Rachel Carson’s struggle to find that work-life
balance—something many working women relate to. It’s important for leaders to
take care of themselves, right?
Koehn:
Rachel was so careful about understanding the natural world and bringing this
understanding to a larger audience. She understood organisms and what made them
thrive. But she didn’t turn that same care and attention to herself. She gave
and gave and gave to others and to her work without consistently feeding and
watering herself very well.
Today, we
know a lot more now about the relationship between emotional duress and
diseases like cancer than medical science did in the early 1960s when Carson
was writing Silent Spring, her magnum opus. But, I will always think that
Rachel’s battles with breast cancer were partly related to all the years she
worked so hard and did so much giving without much refueling. For several
decades, she was the primary breadwinner for her family as well as being an
important caretaker for the same people.
In some
ways, Carson’s dilemma was a particularly female one. Like many women, she kept
giving and supporting and fluffing and buffing the people she loved. She
focused on that and often neglected the fuel she herself needed. Sometimes
women need to put up boundaries and say, “No, I can’t do that” in the interest
of taking care of themselves. I think women often have a harder time doing this
than men. The feeding and watering and protecting of one’s energy is important.
Mothers are great leaders, but every mom knows what it’s like to run out of
gas.
Recently,
I was at dinner with a dozen high-ranking executives and someone said, “If you
as the leader flag, everything flags. Everything becomes vulnerable.” It’s really
important to remember that, especially for women leaders.
Gerdeman:
You mention that charisma and aggressiveness—two traits we often associate with
important leaders—aren't essential to making a big impact.
Koehn:
The stories in this book demonstrate that charisma and aggressiveness aren’t
essential characteristics for courageous leaders. Carson and Bonhoeffer were
not aggressive. Their cause and their sense of integrity created energy around
them that was compelling for others. Both of these people were also deeply
reflective. Carson was shy. Bonhoeffer was a man of fewer rather than many
words. But these people motivated others to do the hard stuff and work from
their better selves.
In this
context, one thing these stories can do is expand our idea of what a great,
effective leader is. We’re wedded to thinking that if someone is hard-charging,
quick-acting, compelling, and charismatic, those are the people we must follow
and elect and support. That’s not the whole story by any means.
Lincoln
was a good public speaker and people wanted to be around him, but he was
slow-moving. He was hardly hard-charging. People called him a country bumpkin
in his early years in the White House. He often looked at every angle of a
decision before making a choice. When the stakes were really high and the
emotions around an issue were charged, Lincoln often did nothing in the heat of
the moment. And this is a vital lesson for our time. Sometimes doing nothing is
the most powerful something we can offer in service to our ultimate purpose. If
we’re too aggressive and act quickly, we can sabotage our mission or make the
situation more incendiary than it needs to be.
Gerdeman:
You say in the book that we live in a moment when our collective faith in
government, business, and religion is waning. Do you think people have a
growing concern that we’re experiencing a void in great leadership?
Koehn:
There’s no question we have a leadership vacuum here. It’s not confined to the
executive wing. It’s also in Congress and across the political spectrum.
This void
is partly a result of the lapses of integrity and judgment and decency that
contributed to the financial crisis of 2008—and regrettably, many of these
lapses were never made right, just as many of the people responsible for them
were not held accountable. And this lowered standards for people in power in a
range of organizations.
At the
same time, we voters have become seduced by what I call “leadership bling”: by
who’s on the red carpet, who got rich quick, by who seems sexy and full of
charisma and decisiveness. All this interest in celebrity and wealth has kept
us from focusing on what really matters in the people we elect and follow and
that is people of strong and decent character, people who want to serve others
and advance the collective good.
As
citizens, we need to pay closer attention to these kinds of priorities, and
this means asking different questions, such as, how did a given individual
respond to adversity? That will tell us a lot about whether that person’s
master is the people or his or her own self-interest. We need to be much more
demanding of the people we choose to be our leaders.
Gerdeman:
And that’s something business leaders should realize as well?
Koehn:
Yes, courageous leadership is courageous leadership. If the leader of an
organization can find a worthy purpose, you inspire the people around you to
personify the kind of behavior needed to accomplish that purpose. And this
makes the company run better and the country run better.
One of
the things I have learned writing this book is that leaders come in all shapes
and sizes. School librarians can be effective leaders. So can firefighters and
chemo nurses and CEOs. And as our collective disillusionment with our national
officials grows, so, too, does our search for real leaders in other places and
other roles.
We very
much want to believe in courageous leadership. At a time when many of our
leaders are showing up as petty and divisive and disrespectful, the call to
lead with integrity and honor could not be louder.
One of
the messages of this book for executives and the general readership base is:
This is your moment to step on to the stage and lead from your stronger self,
because the world needs you now like it’s never needed you before.
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5-leaders-forged-in-crisis-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them?cid=spmailing-17069083-WK%20Newsletter%2010-4-2017%20(1)%20A-October%2004,%202017
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