Gridlock in Washington and Albany. Panic on Wall Street. Scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. Futility in the face of ecological disaster.
Some would say that the thread that runs through each of these disparate problems is a crisis in leadership.
“There”™s a huge void of leadership in today”™s world at all levels, and we”™re seeing it in a dramatic way in the political arena,” says Bill Mooney, president of the Westchester County Association Inc. in White Plains, an advocacy group for businesses and nonprofits.
Part of the crisis lies in the elusive nature of leadership itself. As with pornography, people have a hard time defining leadership. But they know it when they see it.
“Leadership is not what people mean it to be,” Mooney says. “It”™s not about being a good administrator. It”™s not about being a good manager. Great leaders are not good administrators. They”™re not good managers.
“What they have is this emotional intelligence. They have the art of the compromise, the art of making bold decisions, the art of service. A great leader puts himself or herself not in front of the issue but behind the issue.”
Bill LaPerch, CEO of AboveNet, agrees.
“Management you can learn in business school,” says LaPerch, whose White Plains-based company provides flexible, high-speed communications infrastructure to corporations in 16 global markets. “Leadership gets into people”™s values. A great leader provides the kind of environment where people understand the mission and objectives so well that they get things accomplished without you even having to ask.”
That environment has to aspire to inspire.
“What”™s really driving the crisis is the failure of our leaders to paint an aspirational picture,” says Partha Bose, author of “Alexander the Great”™s Art of Strategy” (Gotham Books, 2003) and a onetime Westchester resident. “The reason Alexander could conquer the (Persian Empire) as quickly as he did was that he not only created a vision of global expansion but got thousands of people to buy into it.”
Of course, it may be easier to do this when you”™re an autocratic ruler. (See sidebar.) And when you don”™t have armchair warriors second-guessing your maneuvers.
“I”™m not sure we”™re in any crisis of leadership,” says Dr. Leonard S. Schleifer, founder and CEO of Regeneron, the rising biopharmaceutical company in Tarrytown. “In our times, the interconnectedness of the world we live in leads to the magnification of things, good and bad. And the rapidity of communication means that what happens in Greece happens on Wall Street.”
“The preparation of some leaders has not kept up with those changes,” says Col. Michael J. Meese, professor and head of the Department of Social Sciences at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. “Leaders have to put a premium on the short-term response with long-term deleterious effects.”
Meese criticizes the handling of Wall Street”™s 2008 meltdown by both the Bush and Obama administrations as an example of a knee-jerk response producing “buyer”™s remorse.” The same administrations, however, took a more nuanced approach to the surge in Iraq, says Meese, an Iraq War veteran. He also praises New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and police Commissioner Raymond Kelly for their “principled” position on terrorism. (West Point is home to the Combating Terrorism Center.)
“Leadership is creating things that are not necessarily good for your own self,” Bill Mooney says.
On the flipside of that reasoning, the counterproductive CEO may oppose a merger that is actually good for his company because he fears losing power.
“People don”™t know how to push themselves from the table,” Mooney says. “But in corporate life, I found that whenever I took a back seat, I wound up in a better position.”
Mooney learned that lesson when he was one of the top 25 managers at Chase Manhattan in the 1980s, running the branch system and overseeing thousands of workers. After the stock market crashed in ”™87 and the company had a bad year, then-president and CEO Arthur F. Ryan decided that raises and bonuses would start with employees at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder, and if there were no money left for the top, well, so be it.
“That made a profound impression on me,” Mooney says. “Leadership is service, unselfishness.”
But when leadership turns arrogant or is absent, the faithful shrink.
“It affects innovation, it affects the ability to draw new clients and customers,” author Partha Bose says. “People shy away from risk-taking, from building new enterprises. They don”™t want to venture too far out.”
At AboveNet, they”™re doing anything but stagnating. And yet, CEO LaPerch says, there is a sense of circling the wagons:
“With government intrusion ”“ talk of more regulation, higher taxes ”“ it”™s as if they don”™t trust us to make the entrepreneurial, capitalist decisions. It”™s not a team situation. It”™s an us versus them.”
If the digital world has provided the climate in which leadership has faltered, perhaps it can also offer a paradigm for a new horizontal model to replace the old vertical structure, experts say.
“Where people are finding more leadership is in those around them,” says Marsha Gordon, president/CEO of The Business Council of Westchester. “Women are very suited to forging these collaborations.”
It”™s not just women. In accepting the Entrepreneurial Success Award from The Business Council at the recent 2010 Westchester County Business Hall of Fame dinner, Regeneron”™s Schleifer gave a poignant speech in which he thanked his staff, along with that windmill-tilter, Don Quixote.
“In a business organization, I”™ve never believed a monarchy or a dictatorship is the way to go,” Schleifer says. “Leaders have a responsibility to build consensus around them. There”™s no question in my mind the secret to my success is to surround myself with people more talented than I am.”
Teamwork is the key, and while there”™s still no “I” in team, there is individual accountability.
Says Gordon: “You have to become the leader in your own life.”
Is a great leader necessarily good?
It”™s a question that has confounded historians and hero-worshipers alike, for the qualities that are the hallmarks of leadership ”“ specifically the ability to create, communicate and execute a vision ”“ belong to some of the world”™s most haunting monsters.
Hitler ”“ still everyone”™s favorite bogeyman ”“ knew how to mobilize a nation around a central idea. So did his adversary Joseph Stalin, which led Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to draw a sharp distinction recently between Stalin”™s wartime victory and his crimes against his own people.
It”™s a fine line that blurs easily. Former state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was a state leader for decades: a Korean War veteran, a boxer and seemingly always smiling. Now he”™s a convicted felon whose leadership skills have been exposed as rooted in corruption.
“Rarely do you get to a leadership position without many redeeming qualities,” says West Point Professor Michael Meese.
Sometimes there is no distinction between the great and the good. AboveNet CEO Bill LaPerch is an admirer of Jesus, who told his followers that to be first you must place yourself last.
He also admires President Ronald Reagan and Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Meese ”“ son of Reagan”™s Attorney General Edwin Meese ”“ also favors Reagan, whom he says was a more nuanced leader than was previously thought, and another general, Ulysses S. Grant, for his multifaceted approach to the Civil War and its aftermath.
Regeneron CEO Leonard Schleifer is inspired by Leonardo da Vinci, whose range of interests was as astonishing as his array of talents.
Clarification:
The page 1 photo in the May 17 HV Biz showed Col. Michael J. Meese, who teaches at West Point, with Gen David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command. While Col. Meese reflected on leadership for the article, he did not comment on Gen. Petraeus and Petraeus was not part of the story.
The Business Council of Westchester”™s Marsha Gordon looks to onetime Israeli prime minister Golda Meir ”“ for her awareness of her own shortcomings and ability to assemble a team of talents with different perspectives.
All of these people have drawn praise in certain quarters and criticism in others.
