US Presidency: Qualities Needed in a Leader

The recent debates for the American Presidential nomination are revealing some important leadership qualifications.

We might all vote for a different gift mix and quality set whenever we vote for a leader but there are some popular leadership requirements emerging:

Wet Feet
After the early ‘crush’ with Barack many devotees are reaching the conclusion voiced by African American, Harry Murphy, who said that Obama “needs to get his feet a little wetter.” For key leadership positions people like freshness and vitality but the untried neophytes are overlooked in favor of those with more experience under their belts.

Tortoise Features
The almost contradictory tortoise-like features of a hard shell and a soft body offer a desirable combination. A smiley, warm, nice guy countenance is a help but the soft, vulnerable heart seems more important and genuine. This was supremely evident when John and Elizabeth Edwards announced the news of her breast cancer which followed the tragic death of their son Wade. Hilary Clinton also demonstrated vulnerability when fielding questions about the difficulties of coping with her husband’s infidelity.

But Hilary has also exhibited a toughness that has been tested like steel through fire. Joe Mazzarese, a United Auto Works organizer, highlighted this gift when he said about Clinton, “If I was going to get into a fight, even in a war, I’d want her in my corner.” Years in the White House as partner of the President, stacks up as runs on the scoreboard of experience.

Scars
Obvious scars might be things that a plastic surgeon might want to erase but for potential leaders scars are valuable marks that attest to strength, courage and the ability to handle pressure. Sometimes these are literal scars won in battle or heroic adventure. Other times the emotional scars have been won in leading people through catastrophes like 9/11 and its aftermath.

Wet feet, warm demeanor, vulnerability, toughness, inner steel, battle scars—yes, all wanted in the one person. It’s not much to ask of a leader.

Geoff Pound

For an article that sparked this posting see Ronald Brownstein, ‘The Tough, but vulnerable, front-runner,’ LA Times, 13 June 2007.

Image: Leadership Possibilities.

Mother Teresa: The Power of Moral Authority

In our generation, no one has demonstrated the power of moral authority more than Mother Teresa. She embodied her vision. She never required anyone to do anything she had not already done herself. Skeptics threw rocks at her theology but never her character. And for that reason, the stone throwers always came off looking rather foolish.

Her vision was to establish an order of nuns whose sole purpose was to care for those who live in conditions unworthy of human dignity. In 1948 she cast her vision to the Vatican and two years later the Missionaries of Charity was officially sanctioned by the Church. Their charge was to seek out and care for the poor, abandoned, sick and dying.

Consistent with her vision, Mother Teresa chose the streets of Calcutta as her parish. It was there that she unintentionally carved for herself a reputation that would win the respect of the world.

In 1952 she and her Missionaries of Charity received permission from officials in Calcutta to use a section of an abandoned temple for their first enterprise: a home for the dying. Mother Teresa referred to it as Nirmal Hriday. Here, the poor of Calcutta who often died alone in the streets could find comfort and cleanliness in their final hours.

It didn’t take long for word to spread that a group of Catholic missionaries had taken up residence in their neighborhood. Hindu priest were uncomfortable with a missionary organization so close to their temple. They petitioned city authorities to relocate their hospice.

On one occasion, priests from the Kali Ghat Temple led a large delegation to the Nirmal Hriday and demanded that the missionaries leave immediately. It is reported that Mother Teresa came out and personally addressed the crowds with these words: “If you want to kill me, here I am! You can merely behead me but do not disturb my poor patients.”

Eventually an opportunity arose for the Missionaries of Charity to demonstrate the sincerity of their call and the purity of their motives to those who had eyed them suspiciously. It is an opportunity most would have missed.

It came to Mother Teresa’s attention that one of the Hindu priests was in the advanced stages of tuberculosis. Because his illness was untreatable, he had been denied a bed in the city hospital.

In an unprecedented gesture of kindness and grace, Mother Teresa brought the dying priest to Nirmal Hriday then she personally cared for him until the day he died. The Missionaries of Charity then carried the priest’s body back to the temple for Hindu rites.

This event captured the hearts of the people of Calcutta. Mother Teresa’s willingness to live out her message broke down the theological and cultural walls that separated her from the people she had come to serve.

Source: Andy Stanley, Visioneering (Sister’s Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 1999), 186-187.

Image: Mother Teresa.

General Douglas MacArthur: A Leadership Style with Style

In this story--President Harry Truman meets General Douglas MacArthur. The occasion is MacArthur's advance across the 38th Parallel in Korea, a move that is viewed as beyond what the President has authorized, and one that seems destined to turn a defensive intervention on behalf of South Korea into a true war:

"[Truman's] lack of pretense and blunt manner worked against him, standing in stark contrast to Roosevelt's consummate elegance. ...His early life had been filled with failure, and ... as he wrote [his wife] Bess in 1942, 'Thanks to the right life partner for me we've come out pretty well. A failure as a farmer, miner, an oil promoter, and a merchant, but finally hit the groove as a public servant--and that due mostly to you and Lady Luck.' ...

"Far more than most generals, [MacArthur] held to the view that the commander in the field was the decision maker--not merely tactically, but strategically as well. ... He was brilliant, talented, petulant, manipulative, highly political, theatrical, and given to remarkable mood swings. ... He was addicted to publicity and fame; he went nowhere without his chosen coterie of journalists and photographers. It was virtually impossible to take a photograph of him that was not posed; he was aware every moment of where the light was best, of how his jaw should jut, and how the cap could be displayed at the most rakish angle. ...

"In late October, [Truman] arranged a meeting with MacArthur at Wake Island. The two men were not a natural fit. Long before Korea, Truman, the good old- fashioned unvarnished populist, had written a memo on the dilemma of dealing with MacArthur: 'And what to do with Mr. Prima Donna, Brass Hat, Five Star MacArthur. He's worse than the Cabots and the Lodges--they at least talked with one another before they told God what to do. Mac tells God right off. It is a great pity that we have to have stuffed shirts like that in key positions. ... Don't see how a country can produce such men as Robert E. Lee, John J. Pershing, Eisenhower and Bradley, and at the same time produce Custers, Pattons, and MacArthurs.' That, of course, was before they even got to know one each other."

Source: David Halberstam, The Fifties, Ballantine Books, 1993, pp. 20-22, 80-1, 85.
Used with permission from Delanceyplace.com 03/12/07 which sends subscribers and excerpt each day. (Delanceyplace.com

Giuliani on Leadership: Seeing For Yourself

While mayor, I made it my policy to see with my own eyes the scene of every crisis so I could evaluate it firsthand. It was a lesson I learned from a detective named Carl Began. Back when I was a young assistant U.S. Attorney, Detective Bogan investigated many of the cases for our office. He always underlined the importance of seeing things with your own eyes, saving that all kinds of things would suggest themselves—the alibi witness could not possibly have slammed the door of the red building because the red building had a revolving door, and so on.

Rudolph W Giuliani with Ken Kurso, Leadership, (London: Time Warner, 2002), 4

Image: Rudy Giuliani.

Bridge Building Leadership

In writing about ‘bridge-building leadership’ Mark Gerzon tells this story:

When Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon met in early 2005 in the Red Sea town of Sharmel-Sheik, Photographs flashed through global media and cyberspace of these two gray-haired adversaries shaking hands across a table. What the photographs did not show, however, were the two other men seated at the table who helped make the handshake possible: Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and King Abdullah II of Jordan.

The cameras were naturally pointed at the leaders from the two opposing sides, not at the "third side" that had helped to build that they could cross. Would the meeting lead, ultimately, to enduring peace? Would the two statesmen, supported by two more, create a new road map for reconciliation? Would this bridge lead to genuine, sustained innovation? In both this conflict and many others, the answers to these questions are not predetermined. They depend, in part, on how strong the bridge is on which the adversaries are standing. Only Abbas’s and Sharon’s peers, two fellow heads of state, were strong enough to bring them to the table.

Mark Gerzon, Leading Through Conflict: How Successful Leaders Transform Differences into Opportunities, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 196-197.

Image: King Abdullah II of Jordan and Hosni Mubarak.

Leon Fleischer: ‘Leader Who Doesn’t Waste out Time’

The leadership guru, Warren Bennis was keen to interview Leon Fleischer, a prominent pianist and conductor. Fleischer kept turning Bennis down for an interview so Bennis attended musical festivals and left notes under his dressing room door but still he remained unsuccessful! One day in downtown Aspen, Colorado Bennis offered two of the cellists a ride to the festival. When he questioned them about Fleischer, one of them said, “I’ll tell you why he is great. He doesn’t waste our time.”

Bennis ultimately secured an interview with Fleischer and watched him work through rehearsals and performances. He linked the way he saw him work with that simple statement, “he doesn’t waste our time.” Every moment Fleischer was before the orchestra, he knew exactly what sound he wanted. He didn’t waste time because his intentions were always evident. What united him with other musicians was their concern with intention and outcome.

Bennis goes on to assert that the first competency in leadership is the management of attention. The trait most apparent in effective leaders is their ability to draw others to them, because they have a vision, a dream, a set of intentions, an agenda, a frame of reference.

Such leaders manage attention through a compelling vision that brings others to a place where they have not been before.

Geoff Pound

Image: Leon Fleischer

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Rudolph W Giuliani, in his book on leadership, makes these observations about leaders, not getting blogged [I did mean bogged!] down in the detail:

In 1959, the architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said in the New York Herald Tribune that "God is in the details." Amen to that. Knowing the "small" details of a large system leaves a leader open to charges of micromanaging.

But understanding how something works is not only a leader's responsibility; it also makes him or her better able to let people do their jobs. If they don't have to explain the basics of what they need and why they need it every time they request more funds or different resources, then they are freer to pursue strate­gies beyond simply spending what they're given.

No leader can know everything about a system. A confident one won't hesitate to seek advice—publicly and privately—from those more expert in an area affecting the enterprise.

Rudolph W Giuliani with Ken Kurso, Leadership, (London: Time Warner, 2002), 46.

Image: Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The Rare Quality of Magnanimity

The U.S. Presidential race is hotting up but I like Michael Gawenda’s report on the good grace in which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have conducted themselves over the weekend:

“HILLARY CLINTON and Barack Obama hugged and he even planted a kiss on her cheek as they stood together on a stage in Selma, Alabama, the scene of the infamous Bloody Sunday civil rights march of 1965.”

Electoral campaigns can quickly get dirty with candidates putting in the knife or knocking others down in the quest for self-promotion. But Gawenda, the Sydney Morning Herald Correspondent in Washington D.C. noted today, not only the enduring charisma of Bill Clinton but his wonderful magnanimity:

“But the show-stopper was Bill Clinton, who stepped forward to make his first speech of his wife's campaign to loud cheers. He was just "bringing up the rear because the good speeches have been made by Hillary and Barack Obama", he said. Ostensibly in Selma to receive a civil rights award from the city, he said: "I don't think former presidents should get any awards because the job is reward enough. I am just happy today. I am happy to be in Selma any day."

“No one watching Mr Clinton could fail to see that he remains an extraordinary politician, with a charisma that makes everyone feel he is speaking just to them.”

“Mr Clinton, who the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison once described as America's first black president, remains incredibly popular among blacks, a southern boy who understood - and still does - black hopes and dreams.”

"Isn't it a high-class problem we have", Mr Clinton said, smiling at his wife and searching around for Senator Obama who was standing behind him. "Who to vote for when we like them all so much."

Source: Michael Gawenda, 'Charismatic Clinton remains the star of the show with blacks,' Sydney Morning Herald, March 6, 2007.


Image: Bill Clinton

Surround Yourself with Good People

In a personal reflection, Carey College Principal, Paul Windsor, writes of how he is seeking to grow in wisdom as a leader.

He recounts how he was on a flight with one of the greatest leaders that New Zealand has ever had, the renowned Sir Wilson Whineray, a successful captain of the All Blacks.

At the 55 minute mark of a 60 minute flight Paul plucked up the courage and asked the great captain, “What is the key to being an effective leader?”

There was a lengthy pause….

Then Whineray said, “Surrounding yourself with good people.”

Geoff Pound

Source: Paul Windsor, Learning about Leading, Paul’s Blog, 20 December 2006.

Image: Wilson Whineray.

Leadership and the Entertainment Factor

"Odd that mankind’s benefactors should be amusing people. In America at least this is often the case. Anyone who wants to govern the country has to entertain it. During the Civil War people complained about Lincoln’s funny stories."

Source: Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, Penguin 2000, New York, 1.

Image: ‘Lincoln’s funny stories.’