Leadership: Power, Love and Truth

With an election in progress, I’ve been thinking a lot about leadership. I’m also reading a book, which I highly recommend: How to Lead, Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers by David Rubenstein. This book is thirty interviews with people such as Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Colin Powell, Anthony Fauci and  Ruth Bader Ginsburg discussing what makes an effective leader.

I’d also like to share here a post from my friend Minh Le who makes a compelling argument about the need to balance poser, love and truth as a leader:

 The love-power-truth triangle in leadership, and how it applies to our national election this year.One of the most fundamental requirements of principled leadership is a thoughtful balance between love, power and truth in its treatment of people. Love without power is wishy washy and weak, but power without love is abusive and sadistic, advised great leaders over the centuries. Love and power without truth will cause a leader to follow a wrong path and bring their followers to disaster, as many cultish leaders have demonstrated in the past. Truth without power will be ineffective as scientists and public health officials repeat recommendations to be safe from Covid-19 while watching the country become a hotbed of infections because the people in power choose to make mask wearing or social distancing a political issue instead.

Our election process is really about all three elements. To be elected in a principled way, a leader must be seen as caring/loving toward citizens, courageous in the use of power in pursuit of worthwhile outcomes, and a model for truth and integrity in his/her day-to-day conduct.

When a party is stuck with a leader whose entire life has been about the pursuit of power at the total expense of love or truth, its members become frantic and desperate as the polls indicate that they are going to lose in a big way, a landslide. That leader’s tactics become more frantic and desperate and his/her followers tend to follow down the same path. Unfortunately the electorate is much better informed and more thoughtful than the party would like and these tactics backfire, causing the party to be in downward spiral.

 I empathize with some of my family members and friends who are in despair because they think their side is losing and the country is going down the wrong path. I understand that anxiety and will remind these family members and friends that to cling to power while showing zero compassion and a total disregard of truth is simply not sustainable. Having had power for so long makes it hard to see it taken away from you, but it is not a total loss, only a chance to re-examine the errors in your thinking and learn from them.

 I will make them this personal promise. I will not gloat when I see this country move in the opposite direction of the last four years. I will be present and paying attention and will continue to urge the people in charge to use power wisely, without abandoning love and truth. I will remind them that our society’s priorities like a pendulum will swing back and forth over time in search of balance. I will remind everyone that a great society tries very hard to meet the needs of all of its citizens and if we are out to destroy all of our enemies we will eventually have no friends left.

 To those of you belonging to a group with a single agenda I would advise that it cannot be the only one that matters for the entire society. When it conflicts with the agendas of other groups of people, care must be exercised by a skilled leader to find win-win or compromise solutions to resolve the issue in an intelligent way. Beware of manipulative con artists who promise that they alone can fix the problem because they are the smartest and most powerful. Beware of promises of simple solutions that allow you to win while large numbers of others must lose, Choose instead someone who has learned humility by life’s challenges, who recognizes that the best solution comes from gathering together many different points of view and working through the apparent diversity to find a unity in a most coherent solution. Look for proven commitment and skills in leadership, as it is a difficult job which cannot be done successfully by amateurs or reality-TV stars.

 Lastly I would say that the younger generations deserve a great deal more admiration and respect. They have much more at stake with a more uncertain future, and they are now better educated and informed than we were in the past. The older folks (my generation) continue to have an enormous control over society, even as we lose touch with the world as to how it really shows up for the younger generations. As much as many of us older folks have tried to be open and flexible, I suspect there is much more we can do to seek to understand and continue in thoughtful ways to empower them. I predict the best turnout this year in a long time for the younger voters among us, and I will celebrate that as a great sign for the future of this country.