Barbara Kellerman is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Center, and a member of the Kennedy School faculty for over twenty years. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, Christopher Newport, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She also served as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the University of Maryland.
Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A. M.Phil., and Ph.D. (in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala (1996-97), she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and is author and editor of many books. Kellerman has also appeared on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Reuters, and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Harvard Business Review.
Barbara Kellerman has spoken to audiences all over the world including in Beijing, Toronto, Moscow, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Munich, Seoul, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Berlin, Shanghai, Sao Paolo, Kyoto, and Sydney. She received the Wilbur M. McFeeley award from the National Management Association for her pioneering work on leadership and followership, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association. From 2015 to 2023, she was listed by Global Gurus as among the “World’s Top 30 Management Professionals.”
A Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Barbara Kellerman is a Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. She was the Founding Executive Director of the Center, and a member of the Kennedy School faculty for over twenty years. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, Tufts, Fairleigh Dickinson, George Washington, Christopher Newport, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She also served as Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the University of Maryland.
Kellerman received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, and her M.A. M.Phil., and Ph.D. (in Political Science) degrees from Yale University. She was awarded a Danforth Fellowship and three Fulbright fellowships. At Uppsala (1996-97), she held the Fulbright Chair in American Studies. Kellerman was cofounder of the International Leadership Association (ILA) and is author and editor of many books. Kellerman has also appeared on media outlets such as CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, Reuters, and BBC, and has contributed articles and reviews to the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Harvard Business Review.
Barbara Kellerman has spoken to audiences all over the world including in Beijing, Toronto, Moscow, Melbourne, Buenos Aires, Munich, Seoul, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Berlin, Shanghai, Sao Paolo, Kyoto, and Sydney. She received the Wilbur M. McFeeley award from the National Management Association for her pioneering work on leadership and followership, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Leadership Association. From 2015 to 2023, she was listed by Global Gurus as among the “World’s Top 30 Management Professionals.”
A Quote From This Episode
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About The International Leadership Association (ILA)
About The Boler College of Business at John Carroll University
About Scott J. Allen
My Approach to Hosting
Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phroniesis podcast. Thank you so much for checking in, wherever you are in the world. Today, I think I have this, barbara. This might be your fifth time on the podcast, and so I'm excited to have you. Dr Barbara Kellerman is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership. She was the founding executive director of the Center and a member of the Kennedy School faculty for over 20 years. Kellerman has held professorships at Fordham, tufts, farley, dickinson, george Washington, christopher Newport and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. She also served as director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Leadership at the University of Maryland. Her full bio is in the show notes, as well as links to a whole bunch of books, and we're going to get to some new books towards the end of our conversation. But, barbara, as we were beginning to think about this conversation today, so first of all, how are you?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I'm good Happy new year. Happy new year. We're recording this on the second day of 2024. So, happy new year to you and to everybody who's listening.
Scott Allen:Thank you. Thank you, I was going forward at full speed. We were kind of going back and forth about what we could discuss, and there's so many things that we could discuss. I've been thinking about you lately and the leadership system, leadership followers, contexts, and I mentioned this conversation that I'd had with Jonathan Gosling. We explored in large part, context and I think that's a future book in your repertoire Someone to help us start making sense of how to think about contexts, because in my mind, as I've had these conversations with people and we were just discussing it's like 200 plus conversations, as I've been having conversations with people about any number of different issues.
Scott Allen:We are experiencing a great number of shifts as a globe, whether that's shifts in climate, whether that's shifts with things like digitization, whether that's shifts in who is serving in leadership roles and who is not serving in leadership roles. There's just so many shifts happening right now in the context digitization and social media and you had done a really, really nice blog post about your leader of the year and you start talking about in that blog post some of the shifts that you're seeing, some of the factors that you're seeing that kind of make up the context, or contexts. So let's start there. What are you seeing? What are you seeing as some of these kind of seismic shapers of shifting our experience?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Wow. Okay, we have a couple of days to do this, right? Not a couple of minutes, no, just a couple of bullet points. Barbara, I think I actually will start in 2012. I mean, I could start with the Enlightenment, I could start with the beginning of time, but instead I think I'll start with 2012, because I've been thinking about this recently.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:In 2012, I came out with a book called the End of Leadership, and that book is still selling, and I think it's selling because people are going oh my God, maybe it is the End of Leadership, at least leadership as we understand it in liberal democracies, and I've talked the theme for years. By that, by the theme, I mean the idea that again, I'm not talking about autocracies or totalitarian systems. I'm for the moment, which is an interesting conversation of itself because it's related to what's happening in liberal democracies. But in liberal democracies, what I pointed out in the book and what has only accelerated in the decade plus since I've written the book, is the weakening of leaders across the board and the strengthening of followers across the board. Even the technology since 2012 has empowered followers who are increasingly outrageous and ill-behaved, making it increasingly difficult for leaders, and I'm talking I always talk about leaders across the board. I'm not just talking political leaders. Ask any corporate leader who's been in a position of leadership management for some years. They will tell you that leading now is harder than it was by not to speak of 10 or 15 years ago. And that's for a variety of reasons, particularly changing culture, particularly changing technology.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I will simply add at this point that when I've talked about this theme over the years, students or other audiences would say to me if leaders get weaker and weaker and followers get stronger and stronger, what is the end result here? What are we really talking about? How do we govern ourselves if leaders continue to get weaker? And I can only say guess what? Look around when we are now, and I'll now narrow it down to the United States, but you can see it in Germany, and you can see it in France and you can see it in Great Britain, where their leaders, like Carl, who's in many ways very gifted, is in political trouble. The center in Germany is in more trouble than it's been for decades.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:In other words, liberal democracies are struggling with how to govern in an age when leaders are so weak. They have very little power, very little authority and less influence than they ever did, and followers are emboldened to be outrageous. Well, guess what the solution is? The solution and we see it in this country, obviously is to return to this notion of a strongman.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Maybe a strongman and I say strongman because it almost always, or if not virtually always, is a man, maybe a strongman can bring order to a world that to us, seems increasingly disordered. So the ultimate irony of the tendency to which I refer is that we are turning to too strong arguably to too strong leadership to help us feel safe and secure, in a way that seems to be eluding us, as leaders are getting weaker. One final line, which is, whatever you may think of Gerald Biden, the fact that he comes across as old, which is a word we've tried to apply to him for years, and it doesn't get better. That doesn't help the notion that we need a strong person to govern wisely and well, which is, of course, an odds with the idea of liberal democracy. But there you have it.
Scott Allen:I had you speak in a class this might be two years ago now, barbara and you made a comment in that course and I wonder if this is another part of the conversation. You made a comment in that class. It was something to the effect of look a lot of the let's say it's the Constitution of the United States and other primary governing principles of our country. I'm talking just of the United States. Right now it's almost like we're running old software. When we said that a justice was a justice for life, people weren't living till 94, or when we said you had the right to bear arms, well, there weren't automatic weapons that could kill 70 people in a matter of minutes. And, in a way, I also wonder if part of the challenge that some of these countries and institutions are facing is that they're running old software, that that software is not appropriate for 2024. Do you think that's a part of the conversation?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I think it's an incredibly important part of the conversation. Couldn't agree more. Let's just talk about the justices that you raised. As you said, lifespans are not exactly where they were 50 or 100 or 200 years ago, but the numbers of again confining in just to the United States, the numbers of systemic problems, beginning perhaps with the electoral college. Does it make sense to have two senators from the state of Montana and two senators from the state of California? Your point is exceedingly well taken. The problem is, of course, the political one. How the hell am I allowed to say the word hell on your podcast?
Scott Allen:I don't know. I think you just said it!
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:How the hell, let's say, is wide agreement the electoral college doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense to have non-secret and court justices can be pointed at the age of 40, and they're going to serve for half a century. Let's say they're sort of a general agreement on some of these basics. How do you politically implement them? So the diagnosis in these matters is often fairly obvious, Scott, and like Deep, as I said, I very much support your point. But I'm going to turn it back to you. Great Electoral college isn't so good. Lifetime appointments for Supreme Court justices. We need to reconfigure it, we need to update or refresh our software. How, Scott, are we going to do that? You got any ideas for me?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I'm turning the lens back at you, I mean.
Scott Allen:Well, now I'm going to go to biology.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Yeah, I'm in Good.
Scott Allen:When in nature does something adapt. Now I'm turning it back on you now.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:When it is obliged to do so. In other words, climate crisis, climate crisis. We know that the earth is getting hotter. We know there's more flooding, there are more hurricanes. There was just a major breakout not sure that's related in Japan, so there's increasingly wide recognition that climate is a problem. When are we going to move fast enough? It's not that we're not moving, we aren't doing things. We're just not moving fast enough. We're not moving sufficiently in order to seriously address the problem. What has to happen for us to adapt in calamity that we have not yet been faced with? And when we are faced, when humankind is faced with a serious calamity of a magnitude that we cannot yet appreciate, then maybe we'll get our act together.
Scott Allen:And so that's kind of where I was going, right, I mean that things change when they have to and hopefully they can do it in time and sometimes-.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:What does in time mean?
Scott Allen:I know, and sometimes they can't, and sometimes they go extinct, and we were at the International Studying Leadership Conference in Denmark a few weeks ago and this summer I was in Greece. I hadn't necessarily looked at history through this lens, because I'm going to go from biology to history now. Barbara, this is a far-ranging conversation.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:They always are with you, Scott, which is great. It's the best kind.
Scott Allen:But so we're in Denmark. And to your point about followers having power, that was an interesting thing to be at the Workers Museum where those folks amassed together and unionized and really, really created a large part of the system that exists today, which was kind of interesting. But then you go to places like Greece and they say things like well, the Turks were invaded for 400 years and as humans, the human condition seems to be that. Can we transition to the point that you were just saying? Can we evolve to a point where we are proactively shifting? But can we ever achieve that? Because there's always losers and winners, there's always power involved, there's always these systems in place where people are going to have to give up. And again, when we get to biology, if you have an organism, what is its purpose? Its purpose is to survive, procreate and probably amass some resources. I don't know, it's just an interesting react to that for me.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:There is no historical evidence, scott and Nodden, where people are willing voluntarily to give up anything they have unless and until they are pushed to do so. Yes, whether it's power or money. If you look at the rise and income inequity in this country, if you look at how much more private sector leaders are making now relative to their average workers, or even relative to public sector leaders and nobody's been willing to do anything about it and so the sums they earn I'm talking about corporate leaders, certainly those of the top. They're getting larger and larger and larger and larger, and these corporate leaders are not waking up one morning and saying, oh my gosh, this is getting out of hand. I've got to give some money back. I'm going to tell my shareholders that, instead of earning $200 million a year, I really don't need $200 million. I'll take $25 million.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:We don't have any record of it. I mean this is if you want a really eloquent testimony to that, go to Martin Luther King's Let Over Birmingham jail, where he makes eloquently clear that power is never, and not only power, but benefits, whether it's power or it's money, or it's a great house. I'm living in Florida and so far the sea hasn't risen enough to overtake my house. We don't bother that. Humankind has no track record of voluntarily giving up that which it has, which is why your brief allusion to unions, for example, is actually quite interesting, because the year 2023 was actually a year in which we saw some union activity.
Scott Allen:Yes.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:And I predict that in 2024, we're going to see more union activity, and there's actually a single labor leader to have emerged in 2023, a guy named Sean Fain, head of the United Auto Workers Union, and he is blatantly against these corporate leaders who are earning fistfuls of money while his union membership has absolutely flat out, not kept up. So you'll probably hear more about Sean Fain. He was going to push people increasingly to give up what they had, because he knows that unless they pushed, they're not going to do it.
Scott Allen:Yeah.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:So I'm sorry to be a downer on this, but are we going to get it together to give up fossil fuels in time without a calamity? I can't say that I'm an optimist. Unless technology saves us, Humankind will not save us. Technology might.
Scott Allen:Well, that's a really really interesting. Say more about that. Say more.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Technology, whether it's AI, I'm certainly way too eager to prognosticate. But if we're going to be saved from the devil of climate change and it is a devil, we know that it's not going to be because human nature changes. It's going to be because technology has made certain breakthroughs that will get carbon out of the atmosphere at a rate that we have not yet seen. Yeah, and if we can, then Humankind. If you read Shakespeare, you read Machiavellia, you read Plato, what strikes you? And you know about me that I love the great leadership literature. I love it, I swear. I think every student of leadership should be assigned some of it.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:There's a great, great classical literature on leadership out there, and if you read it and you can go back to the beginning, to Confucius Alonso, whenever you will see how humankind doesn't change. Human nature doesn't change. There are some slight modifications. We know that our attention spans are shorter than they were, and so forth and so on, but we are driven by the same lusts power, money, sex, success, legitimacy, legacy. We're driven by the same fear of failures as we have been since the beginning of time. So you mentioned the importance of context. The context does change. It is human nature that doesn't change. So again, if we're going to be saved from some of our worst plagues, it will be not because humankind changes, but because the changes will appear, particularly perhaps via technology.
Scott Allen:In the context, Well and okay, my head is making a thousand places.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Sorry.
Scott Allen:Sorry, no, it's so much more, but that's always what that's why people like you and I were interested in leadership.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I've been interested in leadership much longer than you.
Scott Allen:And it remains endlessly interesting because it's about Shakespeare.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:You want to know about leadership? Read Shakespeare's tragedies, you're going to get it all. And Henry V or in Macbeth or in Julius Caesar fabulous stuff, if you care about what makes people think. How does the world go around, including my particular passion? I don't mean to force this on you, but bad leadership. I'm just endlessly interested in why we tolerate such awful stuff by our leaders, why humankind permits bad leadership. It's just a fascination to me. But sorry, I don't mean to go off in that dark direction.
Scott Allen:No, no, we'll get to what's coming up with some of your work and I'm excited to talk about that. But so this is another thing that's been rumbling around in my head and this is going to feel like another diversion, but a shift in the context right now is social media and these echo chambers, and that's been well documented for listeners. Just go ahead and tune into the social dilemma and you'll see some of the downsides of some of these technologies and how people are consuming news and where they're getting their information. All kinds of very, very interesting shifts. It's no longer Walter Cronkite saying that's the way it is, and all of America has a shared sense of reality. We have multiple realities literally living out.
Scott Allen:I can go to my version of choice and have my bias confirmed in a beautiful fashion. It's big money. It's a multi-billion dollar industry to feed me what I want to hear and it's a multi-billion industry to keep me agitated, scared, frustrated, curious. It's a multi-billion dollar industry and I think when digitization of the media occurred, newspapers were wondering well, how are we going to survive? And it's the old classic if it bleeds, it leads. It's just that now I can just get it in one spot. So something I've been thinking about is well, how do you monetize the middle? How do you monetize the middle, how do you monetize fair and balanced and, again, with human beings? Can we no one's clicking on the link that says hey, Republicans and Democrats compromised today and collaborated on a new bill?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Well, not that that happens all that often, but to just turn to the media for a minute and to your point, scott, you know, I'm sure as well as I, the CNN has tried in the last year or two or three to do exactly that. There's a guy named Chris Licht who was brought in to CNN to bring it to the center. It was felt by the powers that be that CNN had shifted certainly under Trump slightly too far into the left and they wanted it to return to the center. Yeah Well, chris Licht was not long for this world. He's out. There's a new CEO there now, a guy named Mark Thompson, and he is going to probably present media landscape. That's the alternative to Fox on the one hand and MSNBC on the other.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:But to your question, will people watch? Yeah, do people really want the center? And how does even the center and this is something you did mention, but I know you have heard about this as much as I misinformation and disinformation? In other words, is there enough of a shared reality, a shared sense of what's true, for Americans to have any joint understanding of what people believe to be accurate and real as opposed to inaccurate and false? This is particularly and I did mention this in the blog that you referred to Leader of the Year. This is particularly true in an era in which, lying, by the way, misinformation is and disinformation are generated often from within, but they're also generated, as we know, from that. Maybe the Russians for a long time China, Iran, Japan.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Exactly what do we believe to be true? But it's a real problem when lying, which and I find this, as I wrote in that blog and I've written it before I find it the most striking indicator of how Americans have kind of lost their moorings, because we actually still think people should not lie. We still do teach our children not to lie and if our children are lying in school and they're caught lying in home, we tell them that's not good. We say you're not supposed to lie. But somehow in our public officials and I'm not particularly inditing Trump here because it's so well, it's a commonplace about him, a truism. This was picked up in his first, in his so far first and only term that he is a chronic and habitual liar and we seem to think that's okay. So that disjuncture between the standard that we hold for ourselves and our families and presumably people we work with in our communities, and the standard that we accept from our public officials, it's pretty stark. What the hell do you do with that? What do you do with that?
Scott Allen:That's two hells now, Barbara!
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I got it all right two, two is questionable, three is out of any question. I got it. I got it. We'll see where the conversation takes us.
Scott Allen:Welcome. To go back to your original question to me how do we monetize the middle? And then you said well, how do we change some of this? I mean, I think you can use capitalism against itself or use capitalism for good. To your point, will we generate the technology to make it profitable, to invest in these technologies, to save us right To really monetize that so that people can? And again back to kind of a human condition challenge until that point, until battery storage really is profitable, how do we do when it comes to solar wind, any of these technologies that potentially could really help us move the needle? So I think you can use capitalism against itself if you can figure out again. How do we monetize the middle? How do we monetize pragmatism? How do we monetize and make it profitable?
Scott Allen:Like, I think this is an interesting character for sure, and I just finished the Isaacson biography a few months ago. But Musk at least displayed that, look, I can make an electric car that is sexy and fast and safe and autonomous to some level, but he monetized that, he made that a reality. And same thing with space travel. I mean it's kind of interesting. He's in some ways done some of what I'm talking about in some other industries. Does that make sense?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:It makes total sense. But people bought Teslas not because they were interested only in saving reclimat, because they figured they could do several things simultaneously. Certainly, the initial buyers were also do-gooders we know that they were. It was a kind of morality factor associated with it. But the morality factor wasn't overcome, for example, by price. Teslas remained not a cheap car. I think the Chinese are producing some very cheap and fuel-efficient cars. If they were marketed here I'm sure they would sell it very, very well. But the original Tesla was not a mass car because it was too expensive. So there was virtue signaling. But you're talking about capitalism. You need to combine virtue signaling with affordability and then you're going to have change. You know, by the way, I'm sure you do that EV sales have stalled. They stalled because people, you know virtue signaling.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I'm not going to fly as much because every time I fly I'm adding horribly to the carbon footprint. I'm going to sort my trash because it's going to. You know, I think most of us understand that as individuals we can do precious little. So we're going. I don't think I want, I'm not going to spend the extra money. I'm not going to convert from my gas, which I was very comfortable. I'm familiar with it. Ev sales are declining in this country. Not good, so it all goes only so far. But I have to say, scott, I think it's.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:You know, the larger issues are issues of decline in liberal democracies, and I'll certainly put the US maybe at the top of the list, the idea that it seems so fragile to us. This starts with the home. It starts, you know, we can rant about social media all we want, but it starts in the home. It starts in schools. We don't teach civics the way we used to. We permit a level of insubility in our national discourse that is often absolutely outrageous. We tolerate attacks on election officials, even threats to their well-being, their families, their homes, their lives. So it's, it's rough out there, it's really really rough out there. In our sense of what constitutes civilized discourse has not only diminished, but it's become so fractured and fragmented. There's no agreement among us. So it is tough out there and ironically ironically and you may disagree with this, but ironically I think what we may need is fresh leadership.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Having been so, now I'm talking about the political sphere, the system. We talked earlier about flaws in the system. One of the flaws in the system and it relates to the leadership point is that we are malandroid and infusing it with new blood Again. Whatever you may think of our two leading candidates for the presidency this year, they're both quite old. They've both been around the block probably too long. Even though Trump only relatively recently entered political life. Their capacity to get some fresh blood to run for president is incredibly limited. Why is this the choice that Americans are given Now?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I'm going to use Barack Obama only as an example, because at the time he seemed fresh and young, full of new ideas. By the way, his post presidency has been to me personally I saw less people think I'm in love with him. I've been deeply disappointed in his post presidency, just for the record. So I do not venerate Barack Obama, but using him as an example, when he first burst onto the national scene, it was exciting, it was vibrant and I think for some of the course correction to take place that you and I have alluded to throughout this conversation, we actually need some new blood, some younger people, younger faces on the national level. There's some governors out there, even some senators. They're great, but who knows the name of Wes Moore, except in the state of which he's governor? Not many people.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I don't, Gretchen Whitner she's kind of better known governor of Michigan but not enough people know her and she hasn't had the chance to get really onto the national stage. So, ironically, some of the molest that afflicts us, I think we may end up, if we're lucky, if we're lucky going full circle. That is, returning to leaders who are attractive enough, charismatic enough, appealing enough, broad based enough to pull in Americans and give them a new sense of hope and viability for the future.
Scott Allen:Well, you had mentioned that we're turning to this. Strong man was your words. When have we had a leader who was a force I'm thinking almost like a Teddy Roosevelt off the top of my head but a force for good? So I'm looking for an individual who maybe is that individual who can galvanize, who can influence, who would be that heroic archetype. Is that required at this point? Is it going to require someone who is willing to take on that role to galvanize us to begin to make some of those decisions that need to be made? We often think of that individual. We could go through the list of individuals through history who have assumed formal authority and done horrible atrocities, but can you think of examples of people who have been that force, that force of nature, but then got in and done really, really a lot of good? Does that make sense?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Well, I will tell you, having given a lot of thought to bad, I must give a lot of thought to good. And the definition this is the sad part the definition of good and bad is incredibly individually determined. So when you say good, scott, I know, I know what you're good is you're good, Guess what? Maybe my bad.
Scott Allen:Yes, you're right.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:So I'm going to turn you. As for some names, I'm going to turn to two leaders in our relatively recent past who, whatever you thought of them, were broadly seen as good. Again, this is so individual, which is why you may go no, no, don't name these names. But I mentioned one a minute ago Barack Obama, whenever his flaws, when I lots of people thought he was good, without getting into what good means here.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:And, as I showed apart, I would use wrong Reagan on the other side in office for two terms. Now, in retrospect, many people who thought he was not so good at the time are going okay, he was good. How was he good? How is Ronald Reagan good? He was certainly good in the ways that you and I could, whatever our political views, could generally agree on. He tended not to lie. He tended to be a centrist as opposed to an extremist. He tended to believe in some of the good old fashioned American virtues that most Americans could still agree deserve to be threatened. Center, yes, he brought a sense of order and calm again, whatever you thought of him and, by the way, it's such an interesting contrast his sonniness. He was the morning on a hill, president, and we now have the retribution. President, I would argue that a leader who is a good leader has to have a sense of the future, I should say the present, and the future has present a future where there is a sense of optimism that we can do this and we will do this.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:We will leave the bad, negative angers of the present and we will go into a place where many of us can meet in the middle and compromise in ways that we haven't been able to do in a least a generation. So I think even people of different views, political views, could agree in some cases on what good means, even if it just is some of the old Judeo-Christian Muslim virtues of tell the truth. Try to be in the center, as opposed to where the extremes. Be nice to people, be kind, be virtuous. I don't think that's so difficult, but we need somebody with energy and force to convey that. And you and I have not talked about the larger context. I am not oblivious to the fact that, as you and I are having this conversation, Scott, our country is tangentially involved the United States in two major wars one obviously in Ukraine, one, not equally obviously, in the Middle East. We haven't had that for a long time. You tell me that's not impacting our collective psyche and won't impact the election in 2024. So it is kind of tough out there. And I think, to return full circle to the point I made a few moments ago. I think one of the reasons and feel so tough is because we are in the hands of two men, one of whom is likely an elected president in November, both of whom seem tired, not up to the task. And I will say this equal people.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:A lot of people hate it when I bashed Joe Biden for being old. It's not his age. It's how you are communicating your physical self, your body. I happen to be reading about George Washington and much. This author, well-known author by the name of Joseph Ellis, has written very eloquently about Washington, His physical presence. He was very tall, he was very strong, he radiated the physicalness of a leader. Actually, guess what makes a difference? And I think we are lacking some of that strength. Not the strongman, but strength, Even physically the voice, the presentation of self. How do people come across? We need to be reassured that we're in good hands, and two people who were in their 70s and 80s may not necessarily be the best vessels for this sense of confidence.
Scott Allen:Yeah, barbara, I want to get us to more of a happy place before we end with this.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:You're talking to the wrong person. Sorry, I'm always on the dark side. We're trying to Not always.
Scott Allen:You are not, you are not.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:That's true. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not.
Scott Allen:You are not, and I love your critical eye and I love how you think about this topic and I love that you have that fascination with BAD, because I think it's a fascinating puzzle why do we put up with some of these individuals? And so I think us better understanding. That is incredibly important. But I posted something on LinkedIn. I think there was an article that I came across and it said something like 61 Things you Didn't Know Happened this Year, but they're Awesome and they're really, really good things that have happened. So I think there's also some of that that we struggle with as humans.
Scott Allen:We've talked a little bit about the human condition. Is that, even though the stock market is maybe the highest it's been, and that would be one level or indicator of health. There's a lot of other indicators out there, I know, but there is a lot of good, and some of your former contemporaries at Harvard were brilliant at trying to highlight some of the good that was happening. How do you think about that? Do you see that there is a lot of good happening in the world, that some of the advancements we're making are just absolutely awe inspiring? How do you think about that?
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:So you earlier said, you use a wonderful phrase if it bleeds, it leads. So you made the point yourself that we tend to. One member of my family uses the phrase panic porn. We tend to gravitate to stories that are negative and violent and so forth and so on. So that's the human condition and, as you said, it also sells. But yes, but I'm sorry, I'm going to. You gave me a chance to say something good and nice and I'm going to instead say something bad and not nice, Because you insisted. I can't help it. You insisted on invoking Harvard. I can only say that the three women residents of Harvard, Penn and MIT who testified famously or infamously before Congress in early December I think it was maybe about a little under a month ago Since then, the president of Harvard, as you I'm sure know very, very well, and I'm sure most of your listeners has been accused.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I'm not going to get into the merits of the case, but has been charged with some examples of being less than perfect with regard to citations. I'm not going to use any particular words, but it is an example that the fact that our elite universities can't have presidents who can testify before Congress with strength, with confidence, with it to your go back to your point with a sense of positivity. This is not a good sign for leadership in America. This is Harvard's. Whatever you may think of the merits of the Claudine president, Claudine Claudine Gay, of Harvard, whatever you think of the merits of the case, I don't doubt that Harvard's branch, for the moment at least, has been damaged. It's not an example of what we should be seeing in this country in terms of leadership. Oh my god. At least our leading universities are being led by people, men and women, who are confident and positive, who have a sense of what to say and when to say it. If anything, that's yet another domain of leadership that has been badly damaged in recent weeks. It is talked about there.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Yes, I'm very aware I still prefer to live in the United States to any other country in the world, but there's a lot of rising hate, there's a lot of divisiveness, and I think any student of leadership cannot help but be aware of both sides at the same time. That is all that is still good in this country. I'm sitting in a lovely town on a beautiful winter's day. I have enormous amounts to be grateful for, as I'm sure you do, Scott, and most of our listeners, but I think to be oblivious to the dark side is making a mistake. I think there is a threat to democracy, even in our venerated democracy. This year, I am interested in exploring how people can get better at overturning bad leaders. Our field is 99.9% fixated on developing good leaders. I would like our field to pay more attention to the question of how to get rid of bad ones.
Scott Allen:Wow, wow. Well, it's also 99.9% fixated on positivity. Everything needs to be collaborative and I agree, collaborative is very, very important, but sometimes, in some contexts, collaboration will get you killed or you'll lose all of your resources and everything because you were trying to collaborate. So it's an interesting space and this could take us in a whole nother, but there's a spectrum of Machiavelli oftentimes is derided, right. I mean just, oh, you wouldn't want to ever be Machiavellian. Well, when would it be appropriate? That's an interesting question also. And is that a tool in the arsenal? That's probably not the first tool we would want to go to, but that's an interesting thought experiment, right.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I want to just underscore what you said about collaboration. I don't know if we did a content analysis, but it seems to me the word team, which has even become kind of a verb teaming that's become in the field of leadership, that's become the ideal. We're a team, I'm not an individual, I'm my collaborators and God knows leaders need collaborators more than they ever did before. Among other things, the most leaders are not a droid in technology and we depend on others to help us with the technology. On the other hand, to your point and a little bit to my earlier point every now and then we need, as Freud said famously I love this line. He said we have a thirst for authority.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I think one reason we're kind of playing with the idea, maybe playing very seriously with the idea of electing a strong man to the presidency is because we are looking this is, I think, the point you are making for a leader who seems in command, in control, and I think if we don't have that in the center, we're going to look for and you earlier mentioned the F word, which is worse than the H word the fascist leader, the strong man, as I said, the irony of somebody who has focused on followers as much as I have on leaders.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:It is ironic coming from me that this may be as ripe a time as any for a centrist leader of energy and vigor to come to the fore, one who is not afraid to invoke those parts of Machiavelli to your point for us to see, for sophisticated people by that I mean sophisticated in the ways of leadership to see the prince Machiavelli's the prince as all bad. They're not reading it carefully. Read it carefully. He, the prince, is told to care about followers, to make them happy. This is not some crazy rulers that the prince recommends. So one could do worse than say go back and read Machiavelli and you'll know a little bit of what we're looking for.
Scott Allen:Well, ok, all this tells me is we need to have another conversation.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Next time, Machiavelli Next time.
Scott Allen:OK, so really quickly talk a little bit about the book that's coming out in March.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Well, you're not going to let me, because you said I have to focus only on the right side. Okay, the books that's coming out in March, in a few sentences, is called Leadership from Bad to Worse what happens when ban festers. It's being published by Oxford and it's very much as its title suggests. It's essentially a warning that if we do not nip a bad leader along with his or her bad followers there's no such thing as a bad leader without bad followers.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:We don't nip it in the bud, nip it early on, whether it's in the again private sector, the military, by the way, if you read about the mistakes made by the Israeli military now, which are being covered widely by, among other places, the New York Times, if we don't nip bad in the bud early on, it becomes more and more and more difficult, and I think that's a lesson that needs very badly to be learned, and I wish our fields would, as I said a few moments ago, pay as much attention to fixing bad, correcting for bad, as it does to promoting good, because the history of humankind suggests there's a lot of corruption, there's a lot of excessive rigidity, there's a lot of incompetence, there's a lot of mean things out there, including evil, and we need to pay. We, our field, ought to be paying more attention to the dark side as well as to the sunny side.
Scott Allen:Yep, Okay, last question what have you been reading, streaming, listening to other than stuff around leadership and writing blogs, which I'm going to put for all listeners by resident, a prolific blogger. I'm going to put a couple recent blogs and then you can go to find all of her other blogs, her leader of the year and her follower of the year, so we will post links to those. Anything else that's caught your attention in recent times, Barbara? Well, I do go to. Yeah, we can have a conversation about the movies and leaders in movies.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:I'd go to the movies all the time. I watch movies all the time, but as I said a moment ago, I actually am turning. I read a review of a book about Martha Washington Martha who knows anything about Martha Washington? The review was good. The book came out some years ago and I thought I'll read it and that got me into Washington. It got me into again the founders, the founding brothers, and I am reading. I read this very. I really enjoyed reading about Martha Washington and the context in which she lived, for example, the degree to which death ran through families, particularly death of children, of babies and of children, people dying young death as a through line in ways that would you know I don't, would be hard to imagine us having that same sense of depth and dread. But again, reading about, again newly and maybe more deeply, about Madison and Hamilton and Washington and Jefferson, one could do worse. Do these characters have anything to tell us about leadership in the 21st century? And if they do, what exactly is it?
Scott Allen:Yes, okay, as always, so much fun. Thank you so much for the conversation. Thank you, scott. I really really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to that book about contexts. Okay, that'll kind of, because you've written about all three of them I have my assignment.
Dr. Barbara Kellerman:Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. I was just going to go and watch a movie on television and now you're telling me I've got to go to work. This is not good, not good, all right. Thank you so much. And again, happy New Year to you and to your listeners. Thank you so much for doing this.
Scott Allen:This conversation reminds me of a Tolken quote, "not all who wander are lost, and I've called this episode wandering, and then in parentheses, with purpose. I think the practical wisdom for me is that sometimes we have to wander, sometimes we have to explore. It's not all going to be gold, but there's so much swirling around us that making sense of what's swirling around us is an important activity, and, of course, we aren't going to have absolute clarity from the very beginning, but sticking with some of these thought puzzles is incredibly important, and so I'm so thankful for Barbara Kellerman and her wisdom and her willingness to wander with me. We have any number of macro contextual shifts that are occurring, whether that's climate change or globalization, shifts in demographics, urbanization, political polarization, social movements, cybersecurity, digitization. There are so many of these really macro shifts that are occurring at a pretty rapid rate that making sense of those shifts can help us make sense of leadership.
Scott Allen:Now there's a lot of good you know - In many ways, this is one of the best times in history to live, whether that's an increase in health care and lifespan, access to information, the number of democracies in the world, poverty reduction, global connectivity. There's so much child mortality. There's so much good happening in the world, yet there still is all of these shifts, and how we navigate those shifts is incredibly important, and so the next few episodes are really going to, I hope, challenge you, the listener and certainly they have challenged me to better make sense of what's swirling on around us. That's the goal. Barbara has her leadership system, leader, followers, contexts. These next few episodes in many ways are about all three of those to help better make sense of what's swirling around us. As always, thank you so much for checking in. Take care and I'll see you soon. Bye.