Philosophers and Kings

The Roman Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus said, "I believe a good king is from the outset and by necessity a philosopher, and the philosopher is from the outset a kingly person."  The Greek philosopher Plato believed in a utopia ruled by a philosopher king and wrote in The Republic that "Until philosophers rule as kings or those who are now called kings and leading men genuinely and adequately philosophize, that is, until political power and philosophy entirely coincide…cities will have no rest from evils…there can be no happiness, either public or private, in any other city."

We are living in a turbulent world.  Let's take a brief look at what confronts today's leaders: The pandemics of COVID-19, racism, and violence, Climate change, Political division and unrest.  The issues that we face as leaders are not going away anytime soon.  The entrepreneur and former Icelandic presidential candidate Halla Tómasdóttir suggests that "Hard times often precede great awakenings. If we choose to meet this moment with courage, humility and collective leadership, hope will overcome fear, hate and violence. It is up to us to confront the crisis of conformity in leadership.  In a recent TED talk ("The crisis of leadership --- and a new way forward"), Tómasdóttir explains this "crisis of conformity" further by saying, "It's a crisis of conformity when we continue to do business the way that we always have, yet the evidence is overwhelming that the world needs us to change our ways."  She goes on to say that leaders must be ten times bolder in the ways that we lead.  We can start by embracing philosophy.

The U.S. Army recently developed a leadership framework of "Be, Know, Do".  "Be" refers to character, "Know" refers to the knowledge, skills, and abilities (expertise), and "Do" refers to the application of leadership by influencing, operating, and improving.  The "Be" in this leadership framework encompasses the following key values:

L         Loyalty

D        Duty

R        Respect

S        Selfless Service

H        Honor

I         Integrity

P        Personal Courage

Whenever a leader is faced with a serious challenge, dilemma, or crisis, it's helpful to fall back upon the teachings of some of the philosophers of the past through self-reflection and introspection.  David Brendel refers to the "SANE" mnemonic in his Harvard Business Review article "How philosophy makes you a better leader".  The "SANE" mnemonic draws upon four key questions from the Western philosophers Socrates, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and the Existentialist Sartre:

Socrates: What is the most challenging question someone could ask me about my current approach?

Aristotle: What character virtues are most important to me and how will I express them?

Nietzsche: How will I direct my "will to power", manage my self-interest, and act in accordance with my chosen values?

Existentialists: "How will I take full responsibility for my choices and the outcomes to which they lead?

I am not advocating for one brand of philosophy over another (I have found the Stoic philosophers to be the most useful for me).  My point is that the lessons of philosophy can help us confront the challenges that we face as leaders in this rapidly evolving and turbulent world in which we live.  The concept of the "philosopher king" will help us be "ten times bolder" and overcome the "crisis of conformity", so that we can move forward and change the world.

Different worlds

As I stated in my last post, I just returned from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand with our son.  It was absolutely incredible.  It's always good, I think, to experience different cultures and different ways of thinking.  We were there for two weeks, and it took us at least a week to figure out some of these differences.  For example, when someone in New Zealand asks you if you would like a biscuit, they actually mean a cookie!  When you order lemonade in New Zealand, there's a good chance that they will hand you a glass of Sprite.  There's no such thing as ordering something To Go.  Instead, you order it Take Away.  And most important (for me at least), when ordering coffee in New Zealand, there's no such thing as a regular coffee black (without cream and sugar).  The closest thing is called a Long Black, which is really a shot of espresso with additional hot water.  

One of the other major differences we experienced is that New Zealanders drive on the wrong side of the road!  Actually, it wasn't all that difficult, especially since the steering wheel is on the right side of the car and not the left (see the picture below):

Basically, you just have to remember that the driver is always on the inside lane, which is the same in every other country around the world, including the United States.  Truthfully, getting used to the fact that I had to use my left hand (as opposed to my right) to shift the car into Drive or Park was more difficult than driving the car on the wrong side of the road.

I hope you can appreciate that experiencing a different culture, even one that in actual truth is fairly similar to our own, is a great educational experience.  Our diversity is what makes us strong.  As former President Jimmy Carter said, "We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic.  Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams."  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."  The first step in achieving Dr. King's vision is to actually escape the narrow confines and learn and experience life in a different way. We had a lot of fun in New Zealand, but the most important part of our trip was the experience of a different world.

“Live more. Fear less.”

All of us (well, maybe not all of us) have irrational fears.  Someone in our family is terribly afraid of birds and other winged creatures!  I am absolutely terrified of heights.  I'm not sure where this fear started exactly.  I remember a time growing up when I was working on a roof in the Appalachian region as part of a youth group excursion trip (an early version of "Habitat for Humanity").  I fell off the roof, but safely landed on the very soft ground (mud actually).  As they say, my pride was hurt more than my body.  Perhaps that is when I became afraid of heights.  I just don't know.

Well, the English playwright Shakespeare wrote, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."  I don't know if I would quite put it like that, so I like the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt better.  She once reportedly said, "Do one thing every day that scares you."

My son and I just got back home from a once-in-a-lifetime trip to New Zealand.  His work paid for most of the trip, and I was lucky enough to be able to go with him!  The country is absolutely amazing in its beauty!  While in Queenstown, he convinced me to go Bungy jumping with A.J. Hackett Bungy New Zealand!  Apparently, Queenstown is the home of bungy jumping, so I guess this made sense.

Bungy jumping, or rather the idea of jumping from a height while tethered to a rope first originated on the island of Vanuatu, where young men ritually jumped from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles as a test of their courage.  Apparently, this was the inspiration for the modern concept of bungy jumping developed by entrepreneur A.J. Hackett.  The first commercial site for bungy jumping was the Kawarau River Gorge suspension bridge in Queenstown.  Here's a picture of the bungy platform on the bridge (taken with my cell phone right before we made the jump):

It's only (only) 43 meters high!  The A.J. Hackett Nevis Highwire Platform, the third highest bungy jumping platform in the word, is three times as high at 134 meters!  Anyway, we decided to go ahead and make the jump from the Kawarau River Bridge (I will say it was due to historical reasons, but I'd be lying).  The worst part was shuffling out to the edge of the platform, but I have to admit that the jump was a lot of fun.

One of my daughters asked me if I would ever do this again.  I told her that I absolutely would - it was an incredible thrill.  Once I got past the fear of being on the edge of a platform so high above the river, the rest was an amazing experience.  And if I had let my fears rule the day, I would have missed out on an incredible thrill of bungy jumping.

Will I make this a hobby?  Nope.  But I was proud that I conquered my fear.  Like Eleanor Roosevelt said, ""Do one thing every day that scares you."  Not only will you expand your repertoire of experiences, learn something new, or actually have fun, but you may also find that your fears were unwarranted.  The marketing slogan for A.J. Hackett's company states it best - "Live more.  Fear less."

Learn to follow, then learn to lead...

Several years ago, a couple of business school professors, William Litzinger and Thomas Schaefer sat down with a group Army officers, all of which were either teaching faculty or recent graduates from the United States Military Academy at West Point.  The two professors asked a very simple question, "Since developing leadership is what this place is all about, how do you go about doing that task?"

The Army officers' collective answer was surprising in both its simplicity and its message.  "We begin by teaching them to be followers."

As it turns out, this concept has been around for a really long time!  The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote in his book Politics wrote, "Who would learn to lead, must, as men say, first of all learn to obey."  In other words, good leaders start out as good followers!

It should be fairly obvious (but I will mention it anyway) that in order to be a leader, individuals need to have followers.  According to the visionary management and leadership expert Peter Drucker, "The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers."  Of course, it's not quite that simple.  

Take, for example, a new Army captain who is newly promoted to be the company Commanding Officer (CO) and is now responsible for the roughly 200 soldiers in the company.  Suppose that the CO never actually leaves company headquarters and gives orders to the rest of the company only through subordinates.  Technically, the CO has followers, but does that make the CO a leader?  I would argue that it does not.

Ralph Nader once said that "the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."  And that is absolutely true.  However, as the former business school professor and leadership expert Warren Bennis observed, leaders are only as effective as their ability to engage followers.  What is the best way to engage followers?  Be a good follower.

Kim Peters and Alex Haslam wrote (see "Research: To be a good leader, start by being a good follower"), "...the key to success in leadership lies in the collective we not the individual I."  They go on to define leadership as "a process that emerges from a relationship between leaders and followers who are bound together by their understanding that they are members of the same social group.  People will be more effective leaders when their behaviors indicate that they are one of us, because they share our values, concerns and experiences, and are doing it for us..."

Peters and Haslam published a study in the British Journal of Psychiatry with the title "I follow, therefore I lead: A longitudinal study of leader and follower identity and leadership in the marines".  They conducted several leadership assessments and interviews of 218 male Royal Marine recruits over the course of 32 weeks of basic infantry training.  They found that recruits who considered themselves to be leaders were also seen by their commanders as leaders.  However, the rest of their fellow recruits did not see it that way.  The recruits who saw themselves as followers were the ones who ultimately emerged as leaders!

Perhaps not surprisingly, the commanders often envisaged a specific leadership phenotype (see my last post "Diamonds in the Rough") and rated the recruits who fit this phenotype as having the most leadership potential.  Again however, the other members of the group just did not see it that way.  As it turned out, the recruits who were rated as followers by both their fellow recruits and commanders were the ones who actually emerged as the leaders of the group.  

Hopefully I convinced you in my last post that there is no such thing as a leadership phenotype.  Now, I've expanded that discussion to include the observation that in order to be a good leader, you must first be a good follower.  In a future post, we will discuss how to be a good follower!

Diamonds in the Rough

Shortly after starting medical school, I applied for and received a U.S. Armed Forces Health Professions Scholarship.  During the summer between my first and second years of medical school, I attended what was then called Officer Indoctrination School (OIS, which is affectionately known as "knife and fork" school), now known as Officer Development School (ODS).  The school is one of five officer training programs at the Navy's Officer Training Command located in Newport, Rhode Island.  

The purpose of ODS is to provide Staff Corps (physicians, nurses, chaplains, lawyers, etc) with the education and training necessary to prepare them to function in their role as a newly commissioned Naval Officer.  The 5-week course covers areas including Naval Leadership, Naval Administration, Naval Organization, Sea Power, Military Law, Military Indoctrination, Naval Warfare, and Damage Control (see a video of Damage Control training aboard the USS Buttercup), as well as providing a basic introduction into the fundamental aspects of leadership through case studies and instructor led leadership scenarios.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time at OIS.  These experiences have been the subject of or at least mentioned in a number of my previous posts (see "You know what to do", "Tap Code", and "12 O'Clock High" for a few of my favorites).  I suppose it also helped that I learned to sail and became certified in scuba diving during my time there!  And most importantly, shortly after graduating from OIS, my wife and I were married and went on our honeymoon!  Needless to say, it was a great summer.

Our brigade (all of my classmates were fellow medical students who were in the scholarship program) was divided into six companies of approximately 20-30 officers (a big difference between OIS/ODS and some of the other officer training programs is that the students are already commissioned officers).  Our company was led by a Lt. Commander in the Nurse Corps (as the Officer-in-Charge, or OIC), assisted by a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant.  Each week, our OIC selected our company leader and assistant to help her coordinate the training and classroom activities for the week.  She would rotate who would serve as the leader and assistant based upon our performance (and level of interest, of course) during the previous week.

There was a small group of us who were perhaps less seriously engaged as the rest (see my previous comment about learning to sail and getting certified in scuba diving).  We did what was required, of course, but we also made sure that we were having fun doing so.  For the fifth and final week of our training, our OIC decided to let the rest of our company elect the leader and assistant.  She assumed that the company would vote for who they thought had been the best leader or the most engaged for the preceding four weeks of the program.  More or less as a joke (or punishment), the class selected two of us who were part of the group that had fun.  I was selected as the assistant, and one of my new friends was selected as the leader.  Our OIC was pretty worried and told us so during our first meeting of the week.  I remember her telling us, "Surprise me!"

I think we rose to our OIC's challenge.  We made sure that our company had a great week to close out our training, but we also made sure that we had fun doing it.  One of the areas that our OIC prided herself on was teaching her company to march/drill in formation.  We made sure that our company won the brigade-wide march/drill competition, which was held the day before graduation.  Afterwards, we celebrated with a softball game and barbecue that we put together.  We led by example (which required us to "up our game" significantly), and we finished the week strong.  By the end of the week, our OIC met with us and told us that she was surprised and impressed.  She told us, "I completely underestimated you both.  You did a fantastic job leading the company this week."

We often think that leaders should fit a certain mold or phenotype.  The stereotypical leader is someone who captures our attention the moment they enter the room.  According to this line of thinking, leaders should be charismatic, visionary, and inspiring.  The truth is that there isn't a single, dominant leadership phenotype.  We often find leaders in unexpected places - the so-called diamonds in the rough.  These "unexpected leaders" are the often the individuals who nobody believed would emerge as a leader of a group.  These individuals are often quiet, introverted, and otherwise nondescript (the "wallflower stereotype"), but as the case above shows, they could also be the individuals who don't necessarily want to be the first to step up to the plate.

As Matthew Collier writes in his blog post "Unexpected Leadership", "Past performance in just about any skill is not necessarily a predictor of future leadership greatness."  He talks about two historical leaders who suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves in a leadership position (Ulysses S. Grant, who was placed in overall command of the Union Army during the Civil War and Harry Truman, who became President after Franklin Roosevelt's death in office).  Neither individual had, at least to that date, what anyone would call a successful career or demonstrated the qualities necessary to be a great leader.  Yet, they both showed great leadership during some of the most difficult times in our nation's history.

The author and poet Solange Nicole said, "A diamond doesn't start out polished and shining. It once was nothing special, but with enough pressure and time, becomes spectacular."  You never know where you will find the future leaders in your group, team, or organization.  Don't write off someone just because they don't fit your classic leadership stereotype - you may lose out on a diamond in the rough.

"Barbecue sauce"

If you've been following my blog in the last year or so, you will appreciate the fact that I am a big fan of the television Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso.  Apparently they just started filming Season 3, which may possibly be the final season of the show!  I certainly hope not.  It's a great show, and I've posted themes and lessons learned from the show in a number of posts in the past (for example, see a couple of my favorites "Be a goldfish!", "Believe", and "Football is life").

My wife and I recently started watching the first season again (okay, maybe I made her re-watch the first couple of episodes).  I came across another great leadership lesson in Season 1, Episode 8 "The Diamond Dogs" .  Without getting into specifics on the show itself, by this point in the show, the other characters have at least started to warm up to Ted, and the players on AFC Richmond are responding to his leadership style.  Rupert, the ex-husband (and former owner) of Rebecca (who is now the owner of the team) challenges Ted to a game of darts.  As he approaches, he says, "Do you like darts, Ted?"  Ted responds with, "Oh they're okay."

It's the classic hustle.  Rupert thinks that he will easily beat Ted and wages 10,000 pounds as a bet.  Ted counters with his own bet.  If Rupert wins, he can pick the starting line-ups for the last two games of the season.  However, if Ted wins, Rupert has to stay away from the stadium for the last two games.

Rupert takes an early and seemingly insurmountable lead in the game.  In order to win, Ted has to score a two triple 20's and a bulls-eye with his last three dart throws.  Before he throws the first dart, he begins his soliloquy.  You can watch the video here or read the transcript below:

“Guys have underestimated me my entire life and for years I never understood why – it used to really bother me. Then one day I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall there and it said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ I like that.” (Ted throws his first dart and scores his first triple-20.)

“So, I get back in my car and I’m driving to work and all of a sudden it hits me – all them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything all figured out, so they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me – who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious, they would’ve asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’” (Ted throws his second dart and again scores a triple-20.)

“To which I would have answered, ‘Yes sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age ten until I was 16 when he passed away.’ Barbecue sauce.” (Ted throws a double bullseye to win the game.)

"Be curious, not judgmental."  As it turns out, Walt Whitman never actually said or wrote that (at least according to the experts).  But I think the quote is incredible regardless of who said it.  As Connie Whittaker Dunlop wrote in an article for the Forbes online magazine, Rupert should have been more curious (and less judgmental about Ted's dart skills) by instead first asking Ted (which is exactly the question that Ted suggested at the end of his soliloquy), "Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?"  However, while a significant improvement, this alternative question is still what is known as a closed-ended question, i.e. it can be answered with a simple "yes" or "no."  

A still better question for Rupert to ask would have been an open-ended question, such as "When was the last time you played darts, Ted?"  Or an even better question, "What's your best score in a dart game, Ted?" or "How good of a dart player are you, Ted?"

So one take-home message from this particular Ted Lasso episode is that leaders should "be curious" by asking more powerful questions.  The other important take-home message is that leaders should spend the time to get to know and understand the people that work for them, perhaps just as much (if not more) than the people that they work with and work for.  Take the time to ask questions.  Don't assume that you know or understand someone's skills, knowledge, or attitude.  Do not pre-judge.  Be curious.

"Barbecue sauce."

"People don't leave organizations, they leave bad bosses"

There is a commonly used statement in the management literature that has turned into a cliché - people don't leave organizations, they leave bad bosses."  I have found at least one article that suggests that while people do, in fact, leave bad bosses, it's not the number one reason that they leave organizations.  Jason McPherson at Culture Amp apparently gathered data from 175 different teams and found that in "good" companies, managers make a difference in whether an employee chooses to stay or leave.  However, in "bad" companies, good or bad managers make little to no difference to an employee's decision to leave.

Interestingly, a similar study conducted at Facebook (when it was still called Facebook) and found that people don't quit a boss - they quit a job.  But here's the catch.  The managers are the ones who are most responsible for determining what the job is like (at least at Facebook).  So it turns out that maybe people really do leave bad managers after all.  Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries explains it perfectly in the Harvard Business Review article "Coaching the Toxic Leader" when he says that leaders and managers "have the power to create an environment that allows people to grow and give their best - or a toxic workplace where everyone is unhappy."

Marcia Lynn Whicker first defined and popularized the term "toxic leaders" in her book Toxic Leaders: When Organizations Go Bad.  Whicker defined a toxic leader as an individual in a position of authority and responsibility who abuses the leader-follower relationship by leaving the team, group, or organization in a worse condition than it was when he or she first interacted with them.  Barbara Kellerman, writing in Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters described seven different types of toxic leaders:

1. Incompetent Leaders - Leaders who do not inspire or create positive change

2. Rigid Leaders - Leaders who refuse to change

3. Intemperate Leaders - Leaders who lack self-control

4. Callous Leaders - Leaders who do not care and ignore the needs of their teams

5. Corrupt Leaders - Leaders who lie, cheat, and place their interests above everyone else's

6. Insular Leaders - Leaders who disregard the health and welfare of those outside their immediate team

7. Evil Leaders - Leaders who commit atrocities and cause psychological or physical harm

In my last post ("We were soldiers once..."), I mentioned a book Hal Moore on Leadership: Winning When Outgunned and Outmanned co-written by Lt General Moore and Mike Guardia.  Lt General Hal Moore expanded provides what I thought is a great list of the different types of toxic leaders:  

1. Bully leaders - Leaders who inflict emotional pain, deliver threats and ultimatums, hurl insults, and invalidate the opinions of others

2. Narcissistic Leaders - Leaders who are arrogant and self-congratulatory to the point where the force themselves and their personality on the rest of the team and/or organization.  These leaders believe (wrongly) that they are the standard that every other leader in the organization should strive to emulate.

3. Divisive Leaders - Likely a subcategory of Narcissistic leaders, as they share many of the same qualities, these leaders channel their wrath or arrogance towards a specific person or group who they perceive as particularly weak or unfit to be a leader (based on their own definition and standards of leadership - see above description).  The Divisive leader often subjects these individuals to public humiliation, resentment, and ridicule until they leave the organization.

4. Insular Leaders - These leaders form cliques and go to great lengths to make sure that their "followers" (those loyal to the leader) are shielded and enjoy special treatment/privileges.  Conversely, those individuals who are outside this group are targeted for ridicule and/or derision.

5. Hypocritical Leaders - These leaders live by a certain code ("Do as I say, not as I do") and rarely practice what they preach.  

6. Enforcement Leaders - These leaders continuously seek the approval of their superiors without regard to their own direct reports' welfare.  There is a difference here between taking a so-called "enterprise-wide view" (in other words, at times, the best decision for the entire organization may not be the best decision for the department and/or division) and blindly following the direction of the superior (which has been called "brown nosing"!).

7. Callous Leaders - These leaders are similar to Enforcement Leaders with one exception.  Here, the blatant disregard for the welfare of their direct reports stems, not from a desire to please their own bosses, but due to the lack of empathy.

8. Seniority Preference Leaders - These leaders are very similar to the Insular leaders, but the preference for special treatment and/or privileges is based on the length of tenure in the organization rather than their own "followers".

9. Credit-hog Leaders - These leaders take all the credit for success, even when that credit should be someone else's (often one of their direct reports).

10. Blame-shifting Leaders - These leaders shift all the blame for failure on to their direct reports.

Lt General Moore's list is longer than Barbara Kellerman's for sure, but both lists have a lot in common.  And it appears that Lt General Moore is more of a splitter than a lumper.  As I look back on my career, I've encountered (either directly or indirectly) examples of almost every one of these types of toxic leaders.  

So, how do we, as leaders, deal effectively with toxic leaders who may be colleagues and/or direct reports?  I go back to an article in the Harvard Business Review, "Stop Making Excuses for Toxic Bosses".  The first step is to recognize toxic behavior when it occurs (preferably, before it occurs).  Once we witness the toxic behavior, we should neither excuse it or tolerate it.  As the saying goes, "What you permit, you promote."  They only way to stop the toxic behavior is to simply not tolerate it.  As a matter of fact, one study found that toxic behaviors that are excused or otherwise dismissed generally get worse and more frequent. Given the implications of toxic leaders on employee turnover and morale, organizations should strictly adhere and follow a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to toxic leadership.