As a retired military officer, I have spent a lot of time thinking about leadership and what makes a good leader. I served with exceptional leaders and some who fell a bit short during my time in the service. I have lots of notes that may become a book on the subject if I ever find the motivation. One of the questions my book will need to answer beyond refute is whether or not we can learn to be good leaders? I have heard it said that Leaders are born not made and there are lots of high-ranking military officers who would agree with that assertion, but how would they explain the mission of their service academies?
Another friend from days gone by used to say of management at his company – When they don’t know what they are doing, they do what they know. To the extent that we might believe this assertion, we would have to question the ability to teach leadership since much of leadership is carried out in circumstances of unknown or unique requirements and we never know what will happen in those conditions.
It is always easy to proclaim that the missing ingredient in any project is leadership as though some common direction and coordination would make success a certainty. In truth, this one is just an excuse for poor performance throughout the team because the leader can’t get top notch performance out of unskilled people. And here is the real issue about leadership that we see every day in Washington, D.C. without skilled team members, even the best leader is destined to fail.
The first rule of leadership is that you will need some followers. Leaders coordinate, leaders motivate, leaders praise, leaders reprimand, leaders set goals, leaders insulate their team from distractions, and leaders report to superiors on progress, but none of these functions of leadership is possible when there are no followers.
We regularly hear Republicans talking about a lack of leadership from the White House, but all of their energies have been focused on not doing anything that would make President Obama look good. And, we shouldn’t forget that the three branches of our government are design to be co-equal so why would we expect the Executive Branch to provide leadership for the Legislative Branch? Working together sure, but not one branch working for another branch.
As I think about it, the failure of leadership we see every day is the failure of the majority and minority leaders of the legislature. These are the people who should be guiding their respective caucuses towards compromise in the interest of moving America forward and they are not doing their jobs.
Last night Senator Murray and Representative Ryan reported that a compromise budget agreement had been reached. The details of the agreement are not germane to this discussion, but the agreement itself is. No sooner had the agreement been announced when the ideologues started lining up to denounce it. All the usual arguments are part of their displeasure and each of the idealists is essentially saying they will vote against the measure unless it contains their specific provision for change – essentially it is their way or no way.
So now we should watch the leadership in both houses of congress as they try to gather their caucuses together and pass this legislation. After all, it has only been about four years since they actually passed a budget so this is a real test of their ability to legislate. Will your elected official be on the side of compromise or will they land on the side of obstruction?
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