A Passion for Leadership

by Robert M Gates

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  Winston Churchill attached to important decision papers red tabs that read, “Action This Day.” That must be the mantra of the agent of change. Even when lives are not at stake, a sense of urgency must accompany implementation of a leader’s decisions regarding change. It sustains energy, momentum, and the conviction that what is being done is vital to the future of the organization.

  5

  It’s Always About People

  This chapter, and the two that follow, are about intangible aspects of leading change in every circumstance and every organization. I have observed many presidents, cabinet officers, generals, admirals, and CEOs over many years. Some in their actions are superb examples of how to treat subordinates and motivate them; others were from the “fear and loathing” school of leadership, treating those below them with contempt and disrespect. What follows is distilled from my observations of others and my personal experience over some four decades of leading very different kinds of organizations, often under the most trying conditions. For a young person just starting a career, a middle manager, or someone in a more senior position, I believe the lessons are equally applicable.

  People, not systems, implement an agenda for change.

  As a leader pursues her reform agenda, she can’t get so enamored of flowcharts and PowerPoint slides that she overlooks a critically important factor that will determine her success or failure: the attitudes and commitment of the people who work for her. A leader who can win their support and loyalty will be well on her way to successful reform. Whatever a leader’s place on the public or private bureaucratic ladder, she must provide the people working for her with the tools and opportunities for professional success and satisfaction. She must empower them and provide them with respect, motivation, job satisfaction, upward mobility, personal dignity, esteem, and, finally, the confidence that, as leader, she genuinely cares about them collectively and as individuals. If a leader convinces them of that, employees will forgive a lot of the little mistakes that are inevitable.

  People at every level in every organization need to know their work is considered important by the higher-ups. At every level, a leader should strive to make his employees proud to be where they are and doing what they do. It doesn’t matter whether you are president of the United States, CEO of a huge company, or a supervisor far down in the organization.

  As a senior CIA official, especially when we were in the middle of one of our fairly regular political uproars and scandals, I would often be asked, “How is morale at the agency?” No CIA officer wants to face friends and neighbors (or his own teenage kids) when the agency is being accused of nefarious deeds. But I always believed morale there depended, more than anything else, on whether the CIA professionals thought their work was valued. If they did, that would carry them through troubled times.

  Belief in the importance of what one does is of course vital in any job. Bureaucrats, wherever they work, want to believe that what they do every day has real value for their company, community, or country. It is up to leaders—at every level—to explain why their work is important. Even if the organization is a little one tucked away in an obscure part of the enterprise, part of a leader’s responsibility is to ensure that employees know how their work fits into the bigger picture, how it makes a contribution, a difference. Taking time on a regular basis to explain to employees the organization’s mission and why they matter is an important leadership obligation on its own merits, but also because it is both motivational and builds the individual esteem of every member of the team.

  More than thirty years ago, Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. wrote In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best-Run Companies. A key theme was the importance of leaders communicating with employees (in their own work space), both to listen and to provide a sense of organizational purpose. I did this at all three places I led. At Defense, I also would travel to factories—such as the Oshkosh plant in Wisconsin where an MRAP-variant was being built—to tell the workers how their efforts fit into the larger war effort and to thank them for saving lives. Far from the battlefield, it was important for them to know their jobs were important and why.

  Of course this kind of effort gets a bit complicated if an organization’s mission isn’t clear, the purpose of a time-consuming project is unfathomable, or there is no positive reinforcement from above; or if a task force report that required enormous effort simply ends up on a dusty shelf; or, as everyone in a bureaucracy has experienced at one time or another, if an employee realizes he has been assigned a pointless task. (Perhaps worst of all is a military unit exposed to danger at an outpost or sent on a risky mission that soon after was deemed unnecessary.)

  It’s unfortunate when the big boss’s intentions are unclear, no one is encouraged to ask for clarification, and people proceed blindly to try to be responsive to what they imagine or guess is the real issue or question. A leader must encourage clarifying questions, and his answers must be direct and convincing.

  There is a famous story of the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover writing in the margin of a memo, “Watch the borders.” As a result, a number of agents were dispatched to the Mexican and Canadian borders. When this was reported to Hoover, he furiously informed the briefer that his note had been referring to the size of the margins on the original memo—not the country’s geographic boundaries. As President Reagan’s DCI, William Casey was a notorious mumbler and often hard to understand. He also had trouble using his telephone, which had a couple dozen direct phone lines to various senior agency officials. He would jab a button at random, shout an order into the receiver, and then hang up. As his chief of staff, I spent a lot of time each day interpreting what he had said to people and sorting out who should have gotten the call directing a specific action. My chiefs of staff at both A&M and Defense knew one of their principal responsibilities was to ensure my directions were clearly understood. Often they would come back into the office to determine what the hell I had been talking about on a given topic or to ask if I really meant to have someone perform a given task that seemed questionable.

  Unintended miscues, though, pale in significance to the frustration of people assigned major tasks that are principally make-work. This was the case at the State Department and the CIA in the early 1970s, when the national security adviser Henry Kissinger assigned massive projects to the bureaucracy on both the Soviet Union and China, mainly to keep us busy and distracted while he and President Nixon pursued secret diplomacy with both countries. The success of their policies was only partial consolation for our wasted time and effort.

  Government bureaucrats tasked with writing reports that end up in limbo enter the first circle of Dante’s hell. And, of course, this happens in private sector bureaucracies as well. In fact, the bigger the company, the more such useless work seems to flourish. When it comes to major projects, limbo and dead ends crush morale and feed cynicism. Both are dangerous for organizations with aspirations for excellence.

  A leader must not only explain to and reassure employees that their jobs are important to the overall mission of the organization; he must ensure that their work really does contribute, that it is not pointless make-work or wheel spinning.

  A leader should be very sparing in publicly criticizing those beneath her on the organizational ladder.

  In recent decades, most candidates for U.S. president—both Democrats and Republicans—have blamed the very government professionals they aspire to lead for many of the problems Americans face. In my adult lifetime, only two presidents have consistently and publicly praised federal public servants—John F. Kennedy and George H. W. Bush. Never mind that many of the challenges Americans face in dealing with federal bureaucrats are the result of poorly drafted or compromise congressional legislation that is itself ambiguous, unclear, or even contradictory—leaving it to the bureaucrats to interpret what Congress or the president intended or to figure out how to make convoluted laws or decisions work.

  Senior elec
ted or appointed officials are the worst when it comes to blaming “bureaucrats” for problems, usually because the alternative is to assume personal responsibility for failure. And nameless, faceless bureaucrats are an easy target for demagoguery. I’ve previously mentioned my anger when the secretary of the army blamed the problems at Walter Reed Army Medical Center on unnamed noncommissioned officers not doing their jobs. I was similarly disturbed when the air force disciplined some colonels and NCOs for problems in that service’s nuclear mission that were systemic and had resulted from earlier decisions made at much higher levels. But business leaders often do the same when facing a disaster, whether it’s a product recall, financial disaster, or any other failure or scandal. Very rarely do the big boys take a hit or show themselves to be self-critical. These leaders don’t understand the long-term negative impact on their employees of broad criticism of those lower down in the ranks—criticism usually more deservedly aimed elsewhere. It is the antithesis of how they should be treated.

  There are many ways of reinforcing for employees their importance to an organization. The tools depend on where a leader sits in the chain of command.

  Those at or near the top should do the following:

  • Remind employees often that what they do is important to a task or organization and to successful accomplishment of a mission.

  • Criticize in private and focus on a specific problem.

  • Make clear to their own subordinates that if they don’t understand the boss’s guidance or decisions, they have a responsibility to seek clarification.

  • Avoid setting up task forces or committees unless there is a reasonable certainty they will come up with useful recommendations. Too many of these efforts are about kicking the can down the road, an excuse for inaction. People’s time and energy should not be misdirected for feckless purposes.

  • Establish specific goals and milestones for any task. A good leader must accept responsibility if it proves a dead end or a mistake.

  • Listen to practical concerns from below.

  • Publicly praise employees at every level as often as possible when it is deserved. Specific individuals must be acknowledged and rewarded, the further down the food chain the better. Whether through monetary, purely psychological, or symbolic means, excellence and achievement must be recognized in front of peers.

  A leader further down the management ladder has fewer options. Explaining to people why their work is worthwhile is important, but without exaggeration or blowing smoke. Individuals and the team should always be praised publicly with sincerity and credibility. (Keep the bullshit quotient to a minimum; phony overstatement is worse than saying nothing.) It is essential that any middle manager understand what is going on if she is to be able to explain it to subordinates. A leader at any level should be receptive to suggestions and ideas from her subordinates. She should be careful about complaining downward about problems up the chain: there is a fine line between being seen by subordinates as a toady to your superiors and being insubordinate or disloyal to those who put you in your job. I think the best way for any leader to find the balance is to make sure she is prepared to question directions from above and also willing to go to bat for the team if given dumb orders. But be ready to salute and get on with the job, or quit. (More about that later.)

  A successful leader, and especially one leading change, treats each member of his team with respect and dignity. It seems obvious, but in far too many bureaucracies bosses at all levels fail to do so.

  Nearly everyone has worked for a “toxic” boss, someone who bullies, belittles, humiliates, or embarrasses subordinates. A shouter. A desk pounder. They can be found at every level. As I told midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy and cadets at West Point, “You will all surely work for a jackass at some point in your career. We all have.”

  Early in my career at the CIA, I worked for such a supervisor. When one of my colleagues went to see him one day about serious morale problems in our division, the boss’s reply was “They should be glad they have jobs.” Later, I worked in the White House for a deputy national security adviser with a formidable temper. He would scream and shout and carry on, routinely lacing his comments with loud and truly foul obscenities. On one occasion, his shouting and swearing on the phone was so bad that the vice president of the United States strode down the West Wing hall from his office and, without a word, slammed my boss’s office door shut. Another time, this same person got so angry while on the telephone that he jumped up from his desk chair without pushing his chair back from under the desk, thus badly cracking his knees on the underside of the desk and then landing on his butt on the floor, breaking the Plexiglas mat under his chair. I witnessed this entire tantrum-induced workplace injury and nearly fell out of my own chair I was laughing so hard. He was not pleased by my reaction. The man was very smart and I actually liked him, but he had one hell of a temper.

  Such poisonous pills may be smart, charismatic, decisive, and able mostly to get the job done—traits that can get you pretty far in most organizations. But the cost in morale, employee dissatisfaction, and creating a toxic environment is very high. People whose day-to-day job life is miserable are not going to feel motivated to excel, make change work, or better serve a customer or policy maker. And it doesn’t matter whether they are CIA spies or retail clerks.

  I have long called these kinds of bosses “little Stalins.” They choose to demonstrate they are in charge by using their authority—their power—mainly to make people miserable. Someone needs to take off for a couple of hours to take a child to the doctor? Denied. Time off to attend a kid’s baseball game or tend a sick spouse? Denied. My training officer in U.S. Air Force Officer Training School—a first lieutenant—in San Antonio in 1966 was a little Stalin. Our training period included two days off at Christmas, and one member of our group planned to travel to Dallas to see his newborn daughter. The lieutenant found a way to give him just enough demerits to prevent his trip. That happened nearly fifty years ago, and I still have not forgotten what I considered a wanton act of cruelty or the name of the officer who perpetrated it.

  Little Stalins can do untold harm to an organization. I once thought they were primarily individuals appointed to their first supervisory position who, lacking training and experience, thought the best way to demonstrate their newfound authority over other men and women was by being tough on people. Only later did I discover that there are little Stalins at every level of every organization.

  The trouble is that little Stalins are often hard for superiors to spot because they usually relate well to those up the bureaucratic and corporate ladder and are considered by their bosses to be polite, reasonable, and effective. There seems to be a direct correlation between the meanness of a little Stalin downward and his or her talent for sucking up to superiors—the “kiss up, kick down” syndrome. Given the dangerously corrosive effect such people can have within an organization, it is important to ferret them out and either move them to a nonsupervisory position where their individual skills might still be of value or, if necessary and possible, fire them.

  A senior official who exhibits such behavior is especially problematic. If such a person is not the highest ranking in an organization, the only option—as at lower levels—is to get word to the top boss, often through a chief of staff or someone else close to the head honcho. I had this happen everyplace I worked. My chief of staff in each case would learn about abusive behavior at a lower level and either informed the little Stalin’s boss about it (telling him to handle it), spoke to the individual directly, or, as a last resort, got me involved. If I had to talk to someone, I made it clear mine was a final warning: if there were a recurrence, the offender would be leaving permanently.

  If the guilty party is the CEO, sad to say, the organization will just have to grin and bear it, waiting for the person to depart or for his ugly behavior to find its way into the media (hint, hint) and—with luck—force a change in behavior or resignation.

>   I pounded the desk just once in my career. It was in 1982 during my early days as deputy CIA director for analysis (the same position where I mistakenly began my tenure with the scorchingly critical speech). I called someone to my office to chew him out for some fairly egregious blunder. For dramatic effect, at one point I noisily slammed my hand down on my desk. I brusquely told the person to get out of my office immediately. I threw him out in haste mainly because I thought I had broken my hand. I hopped around the office holding my hand, alternately crying and laughing. Crying because my hand hurt so badly, laughing because I realized how ridiculous I looked and felt. Not only did I never pound my desk again, but I don’t think I ever again raised my voice or threw someone out of my office. It was a lesson painfully learned.

  A leader who treats his team members with respect and dignity can win the loyalty of subordinates literally for life. Throughout his entire career, George H. W. Bush was consistently kind to all those who worked with and for him. Most memorable were the countless little notes he would send to people who had gone out of their way for him, had received recognition of some sort for an accomplishment, had just done a good job, or had suffered some kind of personal tragedy or setback. He treated everyone—from White House groundskeepers to cabinet officers—the same way, asking about their families and their children (usually by name), asking how things were going for them generally, talking about the latest sports event of note. Virtually all who worked for him were considered part of a larger family, and no one ever forgot it.

  An equally respectful boss was Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s national security adviser. At one point, I was traveling with him to Cairo in 1978 during the final stages of negotiating the Camp David peace accords between Israel and Egypt. When he met with the Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat, I accompanied him as his note taker. I will never forget Brzezinski introducing me to Sadat not as his aide or staff assistant but as his “colleague.” It was a tiny gesture of respect, but one I remember vividly nearly forty years later. Zbig was a demanding boss but unfailingly polite to those who worked for him. I was lucky to work for several such bosses, including the national security adviser Brent Scowcroft and the DCI William Webster.