As secretary of defense, I became frustrated with the number of senior military officers being investigated by the inspector general for having abused their privileges and perquisites on travel, questionable expenses, and the trappings of grandiosity. It was not grand theft, but those people were operating at the line of propriety—and maybe just over it. Some went clearly over that line and were disciplined. They were spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on slick publications celebrating their service in a senior role, elaborate farewell dinners and ceremonies, motorcades of four or five vehicles (the chairman and I had two each). The problem of senior officers’ ethical lapses became serious enough that I discussed it several times with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and addressed it in talks with new general officers. Even so, the problem worsened, so much so that after I left office, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed a senior officer to work just on this problem.
And then there is Congress. Out-and-out bribery, tens of thousands of dollars secreted away in home freezers, sexual predators, misuse of campaign funds—the list of misdeeds (about the only bipartisan thing in Congress these days) goes on and on. But that doesn’t include the legal but reprehensible hypocrisy of some of the loudest proponents of moral rectitude getting caught with their pants down (literally as well as figuratively) all too often. The only good news is that this is nothing new. More than a century ago, Mark Twain wrote, “There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.”
The point is that everywhere we look, leaders seem to have feet of clay. So who can young people—and others—look up to and admire as an effective leader with honor and integrity? There actually are many examples. They just don’t get any publicity. I was privileged to work closely over my government career with a number of men and women of impeccable character—the national security advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski; the deputy DCIs John McMahon, Dick Kerr, and Bob Inman; the DCI William Webster; Admiral Mike Mullen; and my own chief of staff at Defense, Robert Rangel, to mention just a few. I had the highest admiration for many senior officers I worked with in the CIA and the Pentagon as men and women of utmost integrity. The same was true of my experience at Texas A&M. The trouble is that their character, their integrity, garner no national media attention. Thus, as role models for young people across the country, they are nearly invisible, especially compared with the ubiquity of the miscreants.
Character is sometimes described as how people behave when no one is watching. The trouble is that in an age of YouTube, iPhones, and social media, someone is watching all the time. And you’d think that people smart enough to be leaders would be smart enough to realize the chances of getting caught in flagrante delicto today are dramatically higher than ever before. Which brings us back to ego and arrogance.
Too many leaders have discredited themselves away from the workplace: honor and character are 24/7 propositions, not just for one’s professional activities. If you lead a public institution, and often as well a private one, people are watching you at all times. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.” The leader of a big institution in a small or medium-size town has little privacy. The residence of the president of Texas A&M is one of the few such homes still located in the middle of campus. For nearly four and a half years, the drapes were always closed because students were continuously on the grounds. But not just students. I was sitting outside on our little, semiprivate patio one Sunday afternoon reading, only to look up and see a woman walking her dog and looking at me from about ten feet away.
Washington, D.C., and other big cities may provide most inhabitants some measure of anonymity, but whether you are a senior government official or business executive, don’t kid yourself that you go unnoticed. Whether you are a powerful congressional committee chairman who, drunk, drives his car into the Tidal Basin with a stripper as his passenger, a White House aide or senator arrested in a men’s room, a corporate executive fired for an affair, or myriad other embarrassments we have read about over the years, dishonor can destroy you and everything you are trying to achieve.
Self-discipline is central to the leadership of institutions and to reforming them.
A favorite saying of mine is “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” I won’t tell you how many times in a congressional hearing I just wanted to scream. How often in the White House Situation Room I wanted to say, “That’s the dumbest idea I ever heard.” How often in a briefing at the CIA or the Pentagon I wanted to tell someone where to stick his PowerPoint slides. Senior leaders want to blow off steam—shout at people—all the time. But to be an effective leader, you have to suppress those urges.
Two common threads through this book have been the needs to listen and to empower subordinates. The corollary to both is to know when to keep quiet and when to keep your hands off the steering wheel. The temptation to weigh in with your own opinions or to take over a problem is constant. Being an effective leader, especially a reform leader, requires a lot of self-control. Silence and restraint are essential, if undervalued, tools of leadership.
Everywhere I have served, I have seen too many people in authority dominate a meeting by talking nearly the entire time and then, with five minutes left, ask for comments. By then, everyone just wants out of the room, and so no one speaks up. In other settings, some people are so eager to share their wisdom with everyone present that they ignore what others are saying and interject their thoughts without any reference to what another speaker has just said. I once belonged to a strategic study group where the practice was to turn your name placard on end to signal the chairperson you wanted to respond to the speaker. More often than not, before the speaker had even said hello, a dozen placards had been turned on end. Those who did so had no intention of responding to the speaker. They just wanted to bloviate with their own thoughts for the enlightenment of the attendees. Listening was not part of their agenda, nor was self-restraint.
It is a simple truth that when you are talking, you are not learning. I was criticized by one of Bob Woodward’s sources in his book on Obama and the Afghan war for not speaking up until late in NSC meetings (except when the president called on me early). And it is true I would bide my time before offering my opinion. This had two benefits. First, it was advantageous in terms of my strategy to have the meeting conclude along the lines I preferred. By waiting to speak, I knew where the other principals were on the chessboard before I weighed in and thus could better calculate what I wanted to say and how to express it. Second, on some issues, I had not made up my mind and actually wanted to hear what others had to say. I proceeded on the radical assumption that by listening, I might learn something I hadn’t thought of.
Fortunately, few readers will testify before Congress, but I think there are lessons in self-discipline from the experience that are broadly applicable for leaders—especially the importance of identifying situations when it is best to remain silent. The rule of thumb provided by White House legislative minders for nominees going before the Senate for confirmation hearings is 90/10: if the senators are speaking 90 percent of the time, things are likely to turn out just fine. They love to hear themselves talk, especially in front of a camera, and the witness who insists on interrupting them to say his or her piece is woefully misguided. I will acknowledge, though, keeping silent in the face of outrageous speeches, misstatements of fact, and unfounded allegations takes a lot of self-discipline.
I confess to a certain perverse pleasure in some of my responses during testimony. During my DCI confirmation hearing in 1991, it was late in the day and Senator Howard Metzenbaum read a long screed—on live television—about a complicated issue, a text obviously prepared by his staff. When he finally finished reading, I told him I had lost the thread of his argument and could he just tell me what his question was. I knew full well he couldn’t. First one, then another of his staff came up and knelt beside him to help him formulate the
question. It didn’t work, and finally he just read the screed all over again. But my simple request demonstrated to all he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Along the same lines, now and then I would get an extended speech/question from a member of Congress and I loved responding monosyllabically yes or no. They might ask me to elaborate, to which I would reply, “No.” The virtue of restraint.
Self-discipline is required in other situations as well. Whether dealing with staff, the media, or others, a leader will always be tempted to let his temper fly, to yell and pound the table, to curse, to bully, to be cutting. In contrast, it didn’t take too long anyplace I worked for people to learn that the angrier I was, the quieter I became. After I fired the secretary of the army over the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal, he commented to the press how stone cold I had been.
Temper tantrums by a leader are an embarrassment and a waste of time and energy. But such behavior is unfortunately fairly commonplace—and with long historical precedent. Dwight Eisenhower had a terrible temper and worked all his life to control it, a monumental effort at self-discipline. The daughter of another key figure in World War II, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Ernest King, according to the writer Joseph Persico, described him “as the most even-tempered man she knew: ‘He’s always in a rage.’ ”
One of my favorite scenes from the movie Patton is when, after a tirade by the general, his military aide observes that sometimes his audience didn’t know when he was acting. To which Patton replies, “It’s not important that they know when I’m acting, only that I do.” The trouble is that most leaders who fly off the handle aren’t acting; they just lack self-discipline.
Restraint is a must in dealing with the media. I have witnessed and read about too many people in charge who have no use for the media and behave accordingly. In press conferences, they are condescending, insulting, evasive, and disrespectful. An ineptly framed or ill-informed question is met with derision, a critical one with scorn. The consequence in my view is nearly always short-term gain and long-term pain. No one suffers public humiliation well. And the media will always have the last word. I tried to treat the Pentagon press corps respectfully, and when occasionally a reporter might ask a clumsy question or had trouble articulating what he or she was trying to say, I did my best to figure out the question and respond seriously.
One of the reasons I believe the leader of an institution—any reformer—must exercise great self-discipline has to do with subordinates. If the boss can’t control himself, that sends a signal to those at lower levels that such behavior is acceptable, and that hardly creates an environment in which inclusive, participatory reform can take place. It sounds old-fashioned, but the leader of an institution needs to be a role model.
A leader must be friendly, approachable, and accessible but ought not to allow too much familiarity. After all, he’s still the boss. It may sound stuffy, but a leader has to maintain his dignity, another old-fashioned notion. He must be cautious about the activities he agrees to join. One can be totally dedicated to the well-being of subordinates without affecting to be their “pal” or “one of the boys.” They don’t think you are anyway. A leader has to find the thin line between being a good sport and becoming an object of ridicule for trying too hard to demonstrate he is a regular guy. Even with top-level executives, a leader must never forget they report to him and that someday he will likely make decisions they don’t like, including about them. Getting too close will only make those decisions harder.
It’s important for a leader to recognize there are some things he can do that he shouldn’t. Just because some things are not forbidden does not mean they are permissible. A good leader doesn’t encroach on other people’s space—their offices, where they gather for recreation, where they live—just because he has the authority to do so. When I first arrived at Texas A&M, the vice president for student affairs asked me to join him in an unannounced late-night visit to one of the Corps of Cadets dormitories. I’d been there about thirty seconds when I realized I didn’t belong. I never again made that kind of mistake.
A leader shouldn’t ask subordinates to do personal favors, like running errands or some chore at her residence. She shouldn’t place her staff in embarrassing situations by asking them to do something even mildly humiliating. One cabinet secretary I know of, who led a less than prominent domestic department, was notorious for a large personal staff that was used for every manner of personal errand. Some years ago, the head of a major federal agency lost his job because his wife routinely used employees to carry out personal tasks for her. When I was growing up, the key question was always, what would your mother think? Nowadays, the more apt question regarding behavior is, how would it look on the front page of the newspaper or on YouTube?
Intellectual and professional intimidation, characteristic of those who believe they are the smartest people in the room, is a poor way to solicit good ideas and avoid big mistakes.
Over the years, I have worked for and with a number of people who thought they were the smartest in the room. A couple were presidents of the United States. I can think of at least two White House chiefs of staff, a handful of cabinet secretaries, a few corporate executives, and assorted others in less august positions. A leader who feels that way has a tough time taking seriously what anyone else thinks, especially if he disagrees. Such a leader might solicit opinions from others on a particular subject, but it quickly becomes apparent to all others that his interest is phony: he believes he has already thought about everything everyone has said—and made up his mind before walking in the door. The folks who believe themselves to be the smartest in the room tend to condescend and subtly or not so subtly bully their interlocutors. Sometimes they can be downright insulting. They are not much fun to work for—or with. There is a remarkable overlap between arrogant egotists and those who believe they are the smartest people in the room. A telltale sign of both is, in the middle of a meeting, a long-suffering sigh intended to convey impatience at having to put up with inferior minds.
The Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. once observed of Franklin D. Roosevelt that he had a second-rate intellect but a first-rate temperament. I believe most of our greatest presidents fit that description: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Reagan. No one around any of them ever forgot who was in charge, but each surrounded himself with extremely capable people, listened to them, integrated their opinions with his own judgment and instincts, and made historic decisions. The historian Gordon Wood wrote of Washington, “Lacking the genius and intellectual confidence of the advisors, he consulted them often and moved slowly and cautiously to judgment; but when ready to act, he acted decisively, and in the case of controversial decisions he did not second-guess himself.” Some senior advisers and cabinet officers of several of these presidents—Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan among them—fairly openly derided their intelligence and judgment. But guess who history remembers and honors?
Leaders of institutions who approach their jobs with some humility are far more likely to get from subordinates the kinds of ideas and advice critical to success and to build a solid team than those who presume to know all the answers. No matter what room I was in, I always knew I was not the smartest person there. This was not false modesty. A D in freshman calculus and being in the presence of anyone who had mastered biochemistry, mathematics, or engineering—which I could never have done—were constant reminders to me of my limitations. What I brought into the room was a willingness to listen (I got better at that with every passing year), an ability to analyze and synthesize large and diverse amounts of information, opinions, and recommendations and come up with practical solutions to problems and proposals for reform. That, and a willingness to be bold.
Courage is essential for reform.
“Courage” is not a word that automatically pops into mind when thinking about bureaucracies. But anytime a mid-level leader tells his boss and his colleagues that the old way of doi
ng things is no longer adequate and that change is necessary, it is a courageous act. Even when the man in charge takes a stand that most people, at least initially, oppose, it requires courage.
Acts of courage by institutional leaders for the sake of principle or the national interest are more common than you might think. But not so much when it comes to institutional reform. The truth is that dramatic reform efforts in public institutions, certainly at the federal level, are so rare that examples are hard to come by. There are more examples of significant change among governors and local leaders, whose hands are often forced and strengthened by budgetary crises.
Transformational reform takes courage because so many people have a stake—political, financial, or emotional—in the status quo. The defense of what “is” begins within the institution but then quickly involves potentially affected businesses, lobbyists, stakeholders, politics and political donors, and, perhaps most daunting of all, the legislature. A leader has to fight everyone to implement reform. The foregoing chapters have talked about the how of doing so. But the process begins with the act of courage required just to start.
Of course, if the would-be reformer isn’t at least somewhat daunted by the challenge of bringing change to his institution, he doesn’t understand the strength of the forces that will be arrayed in opposition. As on the battlefield, a realistic appreciation of one’s adversaries is the first step toward success.
When a leader is fighting bureaucratic battles for reform, she needs a few senior associates who are trustworthy, share a commitment to her agenda for reform, and are capable of effectively implementing her decisions.
A leader’s battle for bureaucratic reform will be a lonely one because she will not have many allies inside the institution—at least at senior levels. Upper-level officials will be concerned about their own careers and turf and eager to protect whatever “empires” they have assembled. Some may offer their support only selectively.
A Passion for Leadership Page 18