Picking a President

The nature of leadership has changed profoundly in this global era. Business knows it. The military knows it. America needs its next president to know it, too.

Americans will go to the polls this fall to replace a President who made his mark on history as an alpha male leader, exuding confidence and demanding unquestioning loyalty. Despite having never seen combat, George W. Bush won his 2004 reelection by depicting himself as an unflinching, nationalistic warrior, in contrast to the “flip-flopping,” cosmopolitan John Kerry (who just happened to be a decorated veteran). But while Bush is not in the running this year, the search for an appropriate warrior-leader is very much a subtext of the race.

That is because, when it comes to politics, Americans still tend to talk about power and leadership as though they were synonymous with hard power and command. We rarely speak of the soft power of attraction, of persuasion. Soft power is an analytical term, not a rallying cry, and perhaps that is why it has taken hold in academic and business discussions, and in other parts of the world like Europe, China, and India, but not in the American political debate. Especially in the current political climate, it makes a poor political slogan–post-9/11 emotions have left little room for anything described as “soft.” We may need soft power as a nation, but it is a difficult political sell for politicians. Bill Clinton captured the mindset of the American people when he said that in a climate of fear, the electorate would choose “strong and wrong” over “weak and right.”

Consequently, an old fashioned warrior-leader ethos continues to dominate the American imagination. We want a leader who is ready to take up the mantle of war, a decisionmaker who can win the battle, at least by proxy. And it’s not limited to the United States, or to presidents: As journalist Robert Kaplan points out, the world is experiencing the birth of a new “warrior class as cruel as ever, and better armed,” ranging from Russian mafiosi to Latin American drug kingpins to terrorists who glory in the thrill of violence just as ancient Greeks did in the sacking of Troy. Kaplan argues that modern leaders must respond in kind, that modern leadership will demand a “pagan ethos” rooted in the past.

At the same time, the very nature of leadership has changed in today’s interdependent, globalized world. In information-based societies, networks are replacing hierarchies and knowledge workers are less deferential. Business is changing in the direction of “shared leadership” and “distributed leadership,” with leaders in the center of a circle rather than atop a hierarchy. According to Samuel Palmisano, CEO of IBM, under today’s conditions “hierarchical, command-and-control approaches simply do not work anymore. They impede information flows inside companies, hampering the fluid and collaborative nature of work today.” Likewise, the Pentagon says that American army drill sergeants do “less shouting at everyone,” because today’s generation responds better to instructors who play “a more counseling role.” And as we have discovered in Iraq, hearts and minds matter. Smart warriors need the soft power of attraction as well as the hard power of coercion. It is not a manly modern Achilles or the strongest alpha male who makes the best warrior-leader in today’s communication age. Modern military leadership also requires political and managerial skills. The best generals use words more than swords.

But our politicians lag behind these changes. George W. Bush has described his role as “the decider,” and he uses his macho swagger to great effect. But there is much more to modern political leadership than that. Modern leaders need an ability to use networks, to collaborate, and to encourage participation. They need to be able to make decisions within rapidly changing contexts. They need to attract followers into new identities–both individual and social–and provide meaning in a disruptive world of globalization. In short, they need to use the soft power of attraction as well as the hard power of force and threat, both at home and in foreign policy. But as long as we cling to outdated images of power and leadership, we will be limited in our ability to formulate strategies that utilize both. As Americans debate the qualities of our next leader this autumn, we need to think about power and leadership in these new ways. The next Administration will face security challenges equal to or greater than those of the last eight years. The world remains a dangerous place, but to face the challenges successfully, we need a different kind of leader.

Beyond the Big Man

Our conventional image of a leader is a man who relies on command and control, issues orders, and favors force. Fundamental to our current veneration of the alpha-male warrior leader is the belief that leaders are born rather than made. This belief focuses our attention on the selection, rather than the training, of leaders. The search for the essential traits of a leader dominated the field of leadership studies until the late 1940s, and it remains popular in common discourse today. How often have you heard someone say that a political candidate looks (or does not look) like a leader? A tall, handsome person enters a room, draws attention, and “looks like a leader.” In fact, various studies have shown that tall men are often favored as leaders, and corporate CEOs are taller than average. Tall men tend to earn more than shorter men; other things being equal, an inch of height is worth $789 a year in salary. (This despite the fact that some of the most powerful leaders in history, including Napoleon, Stalin, and Deng Xiaoping, were little over five feet tall.)

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