"I am absolutely positive that most leaders wish to avoid confrontation among their senior people, particularly in front of them. And that's a serious weakness. I think every leader should force his senior people to confront major issues in front of him."
- Robert McNamara critiquing Vietnam War decision discussions within the Johnson White House, of which he was a part, in a Sunday 18 October 2009 article in the Washington Post.
In the Bob Woodward and Gordon M. Goldstein article regarding Johnson administration machinations around critical Vietnam decisions, both then Secretary of Defense Robert Mcnamara and Johnson's National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy are quoted regarding their opinion that there was not enough open discussion in the Johnson White House. Before he died in 1996, Bundy was quoted as saying: "The principal players do not engage in anything you can really call an exchange of views...That was prevented by [Johnson], and the process he used was really for show and not for choice."
More and more in my consulting work, I've been speaking to leaders about the necessity of challenging the status quo. This is critical at every level of an organization, including, as Bundy and McNamara imply, at the highest levels.
Unfortunately this level of candor is relatively rare.
There are many reasons leaders fail to cultivate an atmosphere where open disagreement breaks out freely. For leaders whose leadership purpose is to aggrandize themselves, disagreement represents an unacceptable challenge. Disagreement then strikes at the very foundation of their own leadership. Other leaders who may not be so narcissistic still resist disagreement because of the mythology of the leader's omnicompetence. The leader, in their mind, always must be the smartest player in the room. Consequently, entertaining open disagreement implicitly challenges that assumption.
In contrast, the smartest leaders aren't threatened by candor. They don't view themselves as the ones who must have all the answers. These leaders view themselves primarily as skillful facilitators. With dual commitments to both the best perspective on the present reality and the most effective action decision to make to maximize the organization's impact on the future, these leaders look to their teams to work together in a way that will sift out the best approaches.
Patrick Lencioni in his The Five Dysfunctions of a Team addresses the need for open dialogue within leadership teams when he addresses another reason leaders shy away from conflict. He writes, "One of the most difficult challenges that a leader faces in promoting healthy conflict is the desire to protect members from harm. This leads to premature interruption of disagreements..." (p. 206).
In contrast, leaders that nurture an atmosphere of candor are simply expressing internally a characteristic of external leadership: a willingness to challenge the status quo. In their influential book The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner present challenging the process as one of "the five fundamental practices of exemplary leadership."
The business leader who speaks most eloquently about the need for open candor in my opinion is Max DePree. For DePree, the mature leader is ready at a moment's notice to subordinate his thinking to that of another. In his Leadership Jazz, the former CEO of Herman Miller writes, "Effective leaders encourage contrary opinions..." (p. 15) . Leaders "abandon themselves to the strengths of others" (p. xxi) and, in a marvelous turn of phrase, are "vulnerable to the skills and talents of others" (p. 131).
It is an open question for historians whether a different leadership style might have helped the Johnson White House handle the Vietnam War in a way more beneficial for United States' interests, but there's little doubt that a more open dialog in the administration would have made a more successful negotiation of those troublesome waters more likely.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Robert Caro: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
On my Facebook account, I had posted:
"Just found out that is planning to publish the fourth and last volume of his magisterial The Years of Lyndon Johnson in 2012. The first three volumes comprise the best biography I have ever read. When Caro publishes his final work on LBJ, he will have been writing about the US's 36th President for over 30 years."
Some of my friends subsequently wondered why I would be so drawn to a work about such a controversial figure. It's certainly not because of his sterling moral qualities.
Caro became interested in LBJ after writing his Pulitzer Priz winning The Power Broker, which covered the life of Robert Moses, perhaps the most important developer in 20th century New York. What fascinated Caro was what he learned about the exercise of power through his study of Moses. It was this interest in power that led Robert Caro to then begin studying the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Caro had a distinct advantage as Johnson's biographer. Johnson died relatively young at the age of 63 in 1973, not long before Caro began his research. Accordingly, there were a multiplicity of eyewitnesses still alive who were not constrained in their candor by the presence of a living ex-President. The wealth of detail that was therefore made available to Caro gave him the ability to craft an interesting psychological portrait of the man. I'm not sure I've ever read a more complete biographical treatment.
Johnson attracted Caro's interest because while Johnson's presidential legacy is uneven, largely due to the Vietnam War, many considered him to be the most effective Senate Leader in history. Caro eventually came to this conclusion and fellow Johnson biographer and historian Robert Dallek (who has a sturdy one volume treatment of LBJ that covers his presidency, for those who don't wish to wait for Caro) has concurred. Caro details Johnson's career as Senate Leader in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Master of the Senate.
It is Lyndon Johnson's talent as a leader that's captured my interest. Much of my consulting practice revolves around helping leaders maximize their own specific talent set in their performance and Lyndon was masterful in his ability to influence.
Talent is amoral. It can be used for either good or ill. It can be exercised from good motives or from bad motives. Accordingly, Caro presents Johnson as a man with both good and bad motives. On the plus side, Johnson had a genuine motivation to help the disadvantaged. Caro, whose biographies are highly critical of LBJ, details how as a young man Johnson was motivated to help his Mexican students when he was a school teacher near the Mexican border. Similarly, Johnson is considered by many to have had the second best presidential record on Civil Rights, second only to Abraham Lincoln.
And so while there are far many other biographies that are more instructive when it comes to personal integrity, nevertheless Caro's ongoing magnum opus has much to teach us about how to influence and lead others, though those lessons must not be garnered uncritically.
"Just found out that is planning to publish the fourth and last volume of his magisterial The Years of Lyndon Johnson in 2012. The first three volumes comprise the best biography I have ever read. When Caro publishes his final work on LBJ, he will have been writing about the US's 36th President for over 30 years."
Some of my friends subsequently wondered why I would be so drawn to a work about such a controversial figure. It's certainly not because of his sterling moral qualities.
Caro became interested in LBJ after writing his Pulitzer Priz winning The Power Broker, which covered the life of Robert Moses, perhaps the most important developer in 20th century New York. What fascinated Caro was what he learned about the exercise of power through his study of Moses. It was this interest in power that led Robert Caro to then begin studying the life of Lyndon Baines Johnson.
Caro had a distinct advantage as Johnson's biographer. Johnson died relatively young at the age of 63 in 1973, not long before Caro began his research. Accordingly, there were a multiplicity of eyewitnesses still alive who were not constrained in their candor by the presence of a living ex-President. The wealth of detail that was therefore made available to Caro gave him the ability to craft an interesting psychological portrait of the man. I'm not sure I've ever read a more complete biographical treatment.
Johnson attracted Caro's interest because while Johnson's presidential legacy is uneven, largely due to the Vietnam War, many considered him to be the most effective Senate Leader in history. Caro eventually came to this conclusion and fellow Johnson biographer and historian Robert Dallek (who has a sturdy one volume treatment of LBJ that covers his presidency, for those who don't wish to wait for Caro) has concurred. Caro details Johnson's career as Senate Leader in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Master of the Senate.
It is Lyndon Johnson's talent as a leader that's captured my interest. Much of my consulting practice revolves around helping leaders maximize their own specific talent set in their performance and Lyndon was masterful in his ability to influence.
Talent is amoral. It can be used for either good or ill. It can be exercised from good motives or from bad motives. Accordingly, Caro presents Johnson as a man with both good and bad motives. On the plus side, Johnson had a genuine motivation to help the disadvantaged. Caro, whose biographies are highly critical of LBJ, details how as a young man Johnson was motivated to help his Mexican students when he was a school teacher near the Mexican border. Similarly, Johnson is considered by many to have had the second best presidential record on Civil Rights, second only to Abraham Lincoln.
And so while there are far many other biographies that are more instructive when it comes to personal integrity, nevertheless Caro's ongoing magnum opus has much to teach us about how to influence and lead others, though those lessons must not be garnered uncritically.
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