Five Leaders Forged in Crisis, and What We Can Learn From
Them
PART II
·
AUTHOR
INTERVIEW
Leadership Under Fire
Interview by Dina Gerdeman
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.
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5-leaders-forged-in-crisis-and-what-we-can-learn-from-them?cid=spmailing-22164410-WK%20Newsletter%2009-26-2018%20(1)-September%2026,%202018
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