The Leaders We Need, And What Makes Us Follow

by Michael MacCoby

  Can anyone fully understand another person? Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, wrote, “You could not in your going find the ends of the soul, though you traveled the whole way: so deep is its law.”7 Even though we may never fully know another person, to begin to know others in their uniqueness, to understand their psyches, to have some sense of how they see the world, requires a combination of a good theory and experiential capability, qualities of both head and heart.

  In traditional thinking about wisdom, the heart is a metaphor for the kind of experiential knowledge that should combine with conceptual knowledge to develop Personality Intelligence. In the bible, King Solomon dreams that God asks him, “What shall I give thee?” and he answers, “Give thy servant, therefore, a heart with skill to listen, so that I may govern thy people justly and distinguish good from evil.”8

  People think that qualities of the heart are opposite to those of the head, that heart means softness, sentiment, and generosity, while head means tough-minded, realistic thought.9 But in pre-Cartesian thought, the heart was the true seat of intelligence and the brain the instrument of logic and calculation. The head alone can decipher codes, solve technical problems, and keep accounts, but it can’t resolve emotional doubt about what is true, good, or beautiful. The head alone can’t give emotional weight to knowledge, and therefore, can’t fire up courage based on knowledge of what is right to do. Webster’s New International Dictionary’s first definition of courage, with its root in the Latin cor and French coeur: “The heart as the seat of intelligence or of feeling . . .” The head can be smart, score well on an IQ test, but cannot be wise, certainly not about people. That takes a heart that listens.10

  Intellectually , it’s possible to observe patterns of behavior that fit the personality types, for example, the obsessive’s neatness and controlling moves, the erotic’s pleasure at inclusion and affirmation, the narcissist’s self-involvement, and the marketing person’s sensitivity to interpersonal cues.11 Even body language can express type of personality, like the tight-lipped obsessive with elbows close to the body or wagging his finger as he lectures us. But knowing personality types can’t help us to know that a person is sad or happy, loving, angry, resentful, envious, doubtful, or insincere. Yes, to a certain extent we can recognize emotions like anger and fear from facial expressions and body language. Indeed, Paul Ekman, a professor of psychology at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco, teaches people to recognize at least seven facial expressions: sadness, anger, fear, surprise, disgust, contempt, and happiness. 12 But we are only sure about what we see when we can experience these feelings directly in others, just as in ourselves. That takes a developed heart.

  Intellect alone organizes data from and about other people, but it doesn’t experience them. Knowledge from the head alone is laundered of emotion. The more we experience what we observe, the more information we have to understand others. We use our heads fully to reason and affirm only when our hearts are engaged. Of course, the term “heart” doesn’t mean just that one organ that pumps blood. Rather it’s a synecdoche (like all hands on deck) to represent all of our body parts focused on experiencing and understanding not only others but also ourselves. Goleman describes recent research on mirror neurons, which allow us to experience another’s emotions. He cites Giacomo Rizolatti, the Italian neuroscientist who discovered mirror neurons, who says these systems “allow us to grasp the minds of others not through conceptual reasoning but through direct simulation; by feeling, not by thinking.”13

  But by knowledge of the heart, I also refer to self-understanding. With a detached heart, we remain unaware of our own feelings. I’ve had patients who, when I ask what they feel, say, “I’m feeling fine,” even though I (through my mirror neurons) experience directly their sadness or anger. This repression of feeling leaves them anesthetized, half asleep.

  When both head and heart develop together, the result is heightened experiential perception and expanded understanding of others, enhanced awareness of truth versus sham, increased energy and courage to act on our convictions.

  Developing both head and heart doesn’t guarantee always being right about people. We can be fooled by another’s charm or our own wishful thinking. However, the opposite of doubt isn’t certainty, but rather faith in our ability to get to the truth and willingness to risk being wrong or gullible, because we know we can learn from our errors. Nor does Personality Intelligence guarantee always doing what’s right. There will always be ethical dilemmas to consider, even for someone with the clearest vision and best moral values.

  When executives are asked to list the competencies of an effective leader, they mention skills like good decision making, strategic thinking, coaching, team building, communicating complex messages, and selecting and developing talent. Although all of these skills can be learned to some degree, how well they are done depends on a person’s intellectual and emotional qualities, their personality and brains.

  I have discussed the kind of personalities that fit the three types of leadership roles needed in the knowledge workplace. And I’ve mentioned the new kinds of intelligence—Strategic and Personality—that equip leaders for the challenges of our time. Let’s now consider how to develop these intellectual abilities, beginning with Personality Intelligence.

  DEVELOPING PERSONALITY INTELLIGENCE

  Personality and Strategic Intelligence are the new leadership qualities for the age of knowledge work. But both are extremely difficult to develop, and someone who is strong in Strategic Intelligence will not necessarily be as accomplished in Personality Intelligence and vice versa. Although both require analytic and practical intelligence, Personality Intelligence builds more on Emotional Intelligence, Strategic Intelligence more on systems thinking and practical intelligence.14 Rather than expecting all leaders, even the best ones, to score at the top range of both types of intelligence, we can also think of developing these qualities in a leadership team where different members are respected for their distinctive strengths. Of course, to make this work, the whole team needs to understand what these qualities are and why they are both essential to strategy and visioning on the one hand, and on the other, improving relationships, dissolving distorting transferences, selecting talent, and motivating and partnering effectively. Even though some members of a team will excel more than others, everyone can improve both Personality and Strategic Intelligence. Here’s how, starting with Personality Intelligence.

  First of all, develop the heart. Recognize that figuratively as well as literally the heart is a muscle. Without exercise, it won’t get strong. Overly protected, it’s easily hurt. There’s a term for a person with a weak heart and a strong sense of guilt: a bleeding heart, typically an erotic personality with liberal beliefs who doesn’t understand others but wants to help the underdog. When the object of these good intentions isn’t grateful, the bleeding heart feels taken in.

  All social characters and personality types can develop their hearts, but there are typical differences in attitudes to fully experiencing self and others. The bureaucratic social character, brought up in a more or less close-knit nuclear family, typically has strong emotional ties that cause strong transferences. To avoid feeling vulnerable or being misled by their emotions, bureaucrats sometimes build a shell around their hearts. For example, one such CEO said to me, “If I opened myself up to people, they would eat me alive.” Another said, “I’ve a shell around my heart, and even my children feel and resent it.” But the lack of Personality Intelligence caused by an overprotected heart cramped their effectiveness. It made these two executives vulnerable to countertransferences whereby they overvalued inadequate but admiring subordinates. This self-protectiveness leaves the unexercised heart flabby and causes managers to obsess over decisions when they need to be decisive.

  In contrast, Interactives tend to be more detached. At an early age, they don’t expect parents to always be there for them, and they become emotionally more independent. It’s easier for
them to break off unsatisfying relationships, but it’s also harder to commit themselves to others. Although they may have radarlike interpersonal intelligence, they use their gut rather than their hearts in deciding about people. This leads to valuing people too much on appearance, on whether or not they look good, present themselves well, seem confident. Underneath these quick judgments often lurks unresolved doubt. Interactives, especially marketing types, know who’s on their side only as long as they’re playing the game together. However, the most productive Interactives are self-developers, and just as they recognize they need to keep mind and body up to speed, so they may grasp the benefits of developing their hearts.

  Of course, some people don’t just protect a tender heart, but harden their hearts in the pursuit of power, revenge, or an ideology that justifies terrorism. These are the most dangerous leaders, who are not moved by others’ feelings. An example is Fidel Castro, who was “remorseless and unforgiving of his perceived enemies” and wrote from prison, “I have a heart of steel.”15

  Developing the heart means exercising it, being willing to experience strong and painful feelings; it means leaders should not ignore the guilt they may feel when making an unpopular decision, firing people, or otherwise causing grief in order to further the common good, and not ignore the anger of those who are hurt. No muscle gets strengthened without painful exercise.

  Just as there are disciplines to develop the intellect, such as mathematics, logic, and scientific methods, so there are disciplines to develop the heart.16 They are: clearing the mind to see things as they are, deep listening to get in touch with ourselves, and listening and responding to others.

  Clearing the Mind

  Clearing the mind to see things as they are means frustrating the cravings that cloud the mind, avoiding fantasy and all forms of escapism. Heraclitus wrote that when we dream, we are all in different worlds, but awake, we are in the same reality. Only when we are fully awake do we see things as they are, and many people go through life half-asleep because they repress uncomfortable perceptions and feelings.

  Furthermore, we can’t see people as they are when our minds are clouded by emotions like lust, anger, or jealousy. For example, a lustful man doesn’t see a beautiful woman’s spiritual qualities, just as a glutton isn’t the best judge of gourmet cooking.

  To see things as they are, first of all, we have to practice frustrating the fantasies and passions that keep us from being clear-eyed and fully awake. But we can’t frustrate irrational passions if we repress them. At an early age, we naturally repress thoughts and impulses that make us feel crazy or could get us into trouble. But the habit of repression can spread, blocking self-awareness.

  Deep Listening

  Deep listening to get in touch with ourselves means experiencing what we would feel and think if we weren’t defending ourselves from these unpleasant feelings and thoughts. Freud’s motto, taken from the poet Horace, was “Nothing human is alien to me.” We have within us all the human potentialities and passions, creative and destructive. If we were fully in touch with ourselves, we’d experience murderous madness and dark despair, but also transcendent love and cosmic consciousness. The great mystics like Meister Eckhardt, St. John of the Cross, and the Buddhist masters journey to the depths of the soul to free the self from enslaving needs and affirm the human capacity to find transcendent relatedness to the universe, to overcome the illusion, as Einstein put it, that we are isolated beings. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the goal is oneness with God. In the Buddhist, nontheist tradition, it’s enlightenment—being fully awake and present. An essential function of religious and philosophical thinking is to contain and give meaning to what we can experience when we become aware of powerful and troubling repressed feelings. Freud tried to substitute a psychoanalytic framework, but I think his insights need to be understood within a more spiritual context. This is what Erich Fromm tried to do in his approach to humanistic psychoanalysis.

  But although there’s a limit to how much we can, at the same time, function in the rough and tumble world and also explore the depths of our psyches, we can practice getting in touch with what we really experience with other people and not repress uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. In his book Blink, Malcolm Gladwell cites studies of how first reactions are often more accurate than studied evaluations.17 We sometimes repress our first negative perceptions of people. As we saw in chapter 3, unconscious transference projections can cover the real personalities of bosses or subordinates. Of course, sometimes it’s inconvenient to admit to ourselves what we really feel about people we need to get along with. But we can’t do anything about improving bad relationships if we don’t see people as they are.

  Getting in touch with oneself, self-awareness, is a goal of psychoanalysis, especially uncovering transferences that distort how we see others. But analysis is a costly process, and unless a person is suffering from psychological causes, it’s not practical for most people. Furthermore, when I taught and supervised analysts, very few showed the talent for or interest in exploring the unconscious any more than was necessary to alleviate a patient’s anxiety or depression. And even with the deep analysis I underwent with Erich Fromm for eight years, I still found it helpful to practice the Zen Buddhist form of daily meditation to get in touch with myself. Besides Zen, there are other forms of meditation and prayer that help to connect us to our feelings and silence the noise that muffles the small voice of truth that’s in all of us, but is often ignored.

  Listening and Responding to Others

  Listening and responding to others when we have cleared the mind and are awake frees us from the obsession with self, so we can see others more clearly. This kind of listening is active, reaching out with head and heart to understand what we are hearing. Paradoxically, egocentrism is reinforced by obsessing about what others think of us. That just keeps us in ourselves. We only overcome egocentrism when we get out of ourselves to see things from another’s point of view. That doesn’t mean assuming that others feel what we’d feel in their place. Rather, we need to make an effort to understand how others view things through their own lenses, even experience directly what they experience, an effort of both head and heart. Beyond understanding is courageous service, reaching out to others, responding with intelligence and passion to social needs, as we have seen with the leaders profiled in this book.

  Not only do we strengthen our ability to understand and act by practicing these disciplines, but also, as Albert Schweitzer wrote, only those who have sought and found how to serve well will be truly happy.18 By realizing a vocation of service, we strengthen our hearts and also attract others who find meaning in the same missions.

  DEVELOPING STRATEGIC INTELLIGENCE

  In my earlier study of narcissistic leaders, I found that the most successful strategic visionaries demonstrate Strategic Intelligence, an interactive mix of analytic, practical, and creative elements.19 Now, when we need visionaries to take on the challenges of health care, education, alternative energy, environmental protection, and national security, these leaders should be able to anticipate future trends, think systemically, understand how to architect effective social systems, communicate meaning and purpose to motivate and educate collaborators, and partner with other types of leaders who complement their strengths.

  The largest gap in the intellectual ability needed for effective leadership in the knowledge age is systems thinking. Without it, leaders can’t understand the relation of global forces to local pressures, macro policy to micro implementation, and social character to individual personality. Without it, their organizational vision will lack coherence. When linear thinkers connect the dots, they draw straight lines rather than the dynamic interactive force field that represents a knowledge-age organization.

  After I first wrote about Strategic Intelligence, a group of interested consultants joined me to interview over thirty top executives about it.20 These leaders agreed that the elements of Strategic Intelligence were essential for a CE
O’s effectiveness. They told us that a major part of the CEO’s role is to think about the future, and all of them worked on their foresight, using tools like scenario planning. In one way or another all these executives scanned the relevant business environment. Large companies and government agencies teach “what-if ” thinking. U.S. naval officers are even graded on their foresight.

  But with few exceptions, these executives told us that among the elements of SI, they were weakest on systems thinking. Their knee-jerk approach to a problem was to attack and analyze, to break it into clearly manageable pieces—stacked rather than integrated—and to manage the parts of their organization rather than the interactions. Why is systems thinking so hard for many executives? And can it be taught?

  Some people are natural systems thinkers, while others think in terms of clearly definable details and simple cause-and-effect relationships. 21 Productive narcissists tend to be systems thinkers because they like global visions, while obsessives are more inclined to make lists. Contrast Freud, the narcissist, who conceived of behavior as resulting from the interaction of passions (id), conscience (superego) and self-interest (ego) with obsessive psychologists who list behavior traits they can measure but that have no obvious relationship to each other. Some of the great business entrepreneurs have been systems thinkers, like Henry Ford, who designed the model system for the industrial age, and Toyota’s Taiichi Ohno, who transformed Ford’s system—pushing out a standardized product—to a pull system of lean production and just-in-time delivery of varied products demanded by customers. And some business leaders have had a meteoric ride to failure because they lacked systems thinking. 22