Note: Voice-to-text transcriptions are about 90% accurate, and conversations-to-text do not always translate perfectly. I include it to provide you with the spirit of the conversation.
Scott Allen 0:00
Okay, everybody, welcome to the Phronesis podcast. Thank you so much for joining in. Always such a pleasure to have Dr. Barbara Kellerman on the podcast. I'm going to give you her short bio today, and then her full bio, as always, will be in the show notes. 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. As I said, her whole bio. This is probably Barbara's 77th time on the podcast, so you know who she is if you've been listening. Today, we are talking about a new book of hers. And Barbara, I love your writing. I really, really do. It's just so much fun to learn about your perspective on this topic that we both have this passion for, which is leadership. In fact, we spoke for probably just 25 minutes before we even started pushing play. (Laughs)
Barbara Kellerman 1:07
That's true. I can vouch for that.
Scott Allen 1:11
We kind of went down some avenues that fascinate the two of us about this topic. But as I told you before we got on, I had listened to the book probably in February. For the last couple of days, I've kind of come back to it. And I've been listening to it and really bringing myself back into this piece of work. But ‘Leadership from Bad to Worse: What Happens When Bad Festers.’ So let's jump in, Barbara; what is the impetus for this book? I kind of have a hunch, but it's so good to have you back. And thank you so much for being here.
Barbara Kellerman 1:47
As always, thank you so much, Scott, for having me. So I'm going to give you two answers to that question. You think you're only going to get one, but for the price of one, you're going to get two. So, the first answer is that it has become clear to me… This is my, whatever, 20th book, something like that. I continue to write a lot. I blog regularly. It has become clear to me that a running theme of mine, a personal passion of mine is bad leadership, however you want to define bad. My first attempt to tackle the subject was a short essay that came out in 2000 titled ‘Hitler's Ghost: A Manifesto.’ And, in that, I already started to complain that the fields, our field, our shared field, leadership studies, leadership whatever you want to call it, by and large, paid no attention to bad leadership. It was fixated on developing good leaders and did not do much with bad leaders. Study why they exist, study why followers put up with them, all of that stuff. That was followed a few years later by a book called ‘Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters,’ which was 2004, in which I looked at what I call the universe of bad leadership. I should interrupt myself to say that if bad leaders are looked at, they intend to be the worst kind. The dictators, the autocrats, the tyrants. We’re less interested in corruption, ineffective leaders, rigid leaders, or intemperate leaders. So, in bad leadership, I wanted to look at what I call the universe or the range of bad leaders, which I did. But, fast forward to other books that I've done since then, whether they are books that are not directly on topics such as the end of leadership or professionalizing leadership, I allude to the importance of bad leadership. How it matters in the body politics matters in the workplace. Lots of people suffer the ignominious every day of bad leaders and bad bosses. So, why are we not paying attention to them? So, for example, that applies, again, as even when the subject wasn't directly on bad leadership, I would refer to that, but in a book such as, for example, ‘The Enablers,’ that was all about bad followers. That was my biggest dive yet into bad followership. I should add that your audience be, full disclosure, the subtitle makes very clear that it was about Trump's leadership and Trump's followers during the pandemic, and it similarly makes clear that I felt that period was a real failure of followership because Trump's leadership, specifically on the pandemic, was not good. So, now to the present, to the latest book, which is, indeed, Leadership from Bad to Worse,’ can you say I'm digging deeper or diving more? Yes, I think it's fair to say that I'm looking at bad leadership from a different angle, which is essentially to say in the book that unless we salvage, unless something or someone intervenes, bad does get worse virtually and invariably. One cannot say always invariably, but virtually invariably. So, that's the intellectual journey. But the second part of your answer is, yes, it is true. And then, in ‘Leadership from Bad to Worse,’ I make my own bias clear because we know that the word ‘bad’ might well mean something to you that is quite different from what the word bad means to me. Many Americans think Donald Trump is a wonderful leader and a wonderful president, and we'll vote for him to be president again in November. Many other Americans have a diametrically opposite view; they feel that Trump was an awful president, probably the worst president in American history. So, we can't talk about bad honestly without explaining where we came from. So, in this book, ‘Leadership from Bad to Worse,’ I make really quite clear that I'm a liberal democrat with a small d, not a capital D. I believe in liberal leadership as opposed to autocratic leadership. And that's the perspective of this book. But Trump is not a central figure in this book. The very beginning of the book does refer to two leaders. One is Donald Trump, very briefly, and the other one is Vladimir Putin, very briefly. Again, they're not the center of the book, but they are indeed exemplars. There will be more in 2024 than there were 5 and 10 years ago. Trump has made clear that, if he becomes president again, he will exaggerate whatever it was he did as president the first time around. So, he's not making it a secret anymore than Vladimir Putin, especially with his invasion of Ukraine in 2022. They are becoming more of what they were. So, if you think they're bad leaders, you can effectively count on them to get worse.
Scott Allen 7:07
Mmm. Okay, so let's talk about really quickly, let's situate a couple of concepts here. So, the leadership system, I would love for you to talk about that for a moment. And then, let's hone in quickly on context because you begin the book by also kind of exploring democracy in decline and capitalism in question. We've talked a little bit about the context in previous episodes for listeners., but let's talk briefly about your leadership system, and then let's go to kind of where the scene of this book begins: Democracy in decline, capitalism in question.
Barbara Kellerman 7:42
So, the leadership system, some people who are familiar with my work will know that I never, for some years now, write just about the leader. Three parts, but they are of equal importance. Yes, the leader is extremely important. To say that the leader is not all-important is not to say that the leader is unimportant. It is a relationship, there is no such thing as leadership without, at least, one person who follows and goes along. You need to understand that dynamic if you want to understand what's going on. And yes, divorcing leaders and followers from the multiple contexts within which they're situated makes no sense at all. And especially not in the 21st century, the third decade of the 21st century, when our culture -- I will talk about the United States, the United States culture, the American political culture, but even the ordinary culture, the decline of authority, respect for authority everywhere, whether it's in the classroom, or in a doctor's office, or in the political sphere, or in the workplace, we do not respect authority the way we used to. We are ruder, and meaner, we're more divided. So, that context absolutely matters. To put it in the larger context that you alluded to, the book ‘Leadership from Bad to Worse’ does begin with a chapter called ‘Democracy in Decline and Capitalism in Question,’ which is the overarching context. Democracies around the world… I’m sure you know it, Scott; there’s this organization called Freedom House, and others like it, which measures the number of democracies around the world and also makes clear what its criteria are for democracy. The United States has not done brilliantly by those criteria in the last few years. And indeed, the number of democracies globally has not only shrunk, but it has shrunk consecutively for close to two decades. So, for two decades, the number of democracies around the world has been lower and lower and lower. Now, I have come to think, and I'm not alone, there's, for example, a very well-known columnist who writes regulation of the Financial Times in the name of Martin Wolf, who just came out with a book about this. I think it's extremely related to the second part: the democracy in decline is related to the capitalism in question. And I will, again, make it very short here by saying simply that capitalism has not been harnessed in ways sufficiently harnessed in ways that divide the spoils more equally. I'm not saying men need to be divided equally; I'm saying the wealth of this nation and other developed countries, well, let's just talk about the United States, has gotten more and more skewed with the 1% of the 1% of the 1% becoming, some would argue, obscenely rich, while those in the middle and at the bottom are having trouble buying a house, or even renting an apartment. So, this is not a healthy development, neither for capitalism nor for democracy. And yes, I believe that political leaders and corporate leaders, all of the leaders too, but particularly political leaders and corporate leaders, are entwined in ways that are not necessarily great, either for capitalism or for democracy.
Scott Allen 11:18
Yes. And you've alluded to this in the last few minutes., but from a contextual shift, followers have become a little bit more overtly challenging for leaders in recent times. Would you talk a little bit about that?
Barbara Kellerman 11:36
I would say that's putting it mildly. So, my favorite example -- I may even have used it on this podcast, Scott, and if I did, I apologize, but it's such a delicious example. So, we are recording this particular conversation fairly hard on the heels of the campus unrest. By no means all of them, but many American campuses in the last month or so ostensibly triggered by the war in Gaza, when I say ostensibly, I don't mean it wasn't, but it's also a sign of the times in which students don't do what they're told to do. It's obviously not the first student protest; many people have turned to 1968 and said, “Oh, my God, look at what's happening on college campuses then,” but a sign of how our respect for authority, whether that's a physician who tells you to take a pink pill, and then you go online and you see that a lot of other physicians are recommending you take a blue pill, and then you go back to your doctor and you complain about whatever, you challenge your physician in ways that you might never have or would never have a generation ago. My favorite personal example, but it's so evident that people resist… Americans have never been good with authority, and this goes to the American Revolution, which is a separate conversation. But they're worse now than they ever were before because of changes in the culture and changes in technology. A vivid example, and then I'll get to my personal example, is in the wake of the pandemic, employers told their employees, “Please get back to work in the workplace; I need you back here 5 days a week from nine to five.” And a lot of employees, so many that it became known as ‘the Great Resignation,’ quote-unquote, said, “No, I don't think so. If you're going to force me to come back to the office five days a week the way I did before the pandemic, I will quit my job, and I will go elsewhere.” Hence, we have the apparently permanent change of what is now routinely called the hybrid workweek. That was not the idea of the leader, the employer, or the superior; it was the idea of the follower, the subordinate, and the employee who said, “I'm not going to do it anymore.” My own personal favorite example is amusing, and I find it endlessly amusing. When I started teaching, even until, let's say, ten years ago, I would walk into a classroom, and students would call me Professor Kellerman or Dr. Kellerman. That's what people did. I walk into a classroom now; those terms are out the window. They call me Barbara, even though I never met them before. And it is their way of bringing me down to their level or, at least, of closing the distance between us so that I, the previous figure of authority, am now much less of a figure of authority than I used to be. And again, it's, to me, a vivid and telling example of how our respect for authority and our willingness to go along with people in positions of power and authority has been diminished in recent years.
Scott Allen 14:57
Yes. Okay. So, we've got leader-follower’s contexts. We have some market shifts in our contexts in recent years, whether that's digitization or globalization; we could kind of go down the list of a number of shifts in the context. Some shifts in the kind of followers, and followers sentiment, and what followers are willing to put up with, what followers are advocating for. There's been some shifts, and that's very, very abundantly clear. So, we get to the topic of leadership, which is from bad to worse. In this book, you highlight four individuals and four case studies. And I find them fascinating. I absolutely do. In fact, I really had not explored the case of Martin Winterkorn from Volkswagen at all. And so, we have these people who are in positions of authority, and you talk about four phases that these individuals go through. And it doesn't go to a good place oftentimes. And again, you talked about Putin a little bit ago, where he probably was in no way, shape, or form to the extreme that he is today, a decade ago. But it seems to have gone down this slippery slope. Or, to your point about Donald Trump, “I'm going to deport however many millions of people. It's going to be an extreme measure, but that's what we're going to do.” And it's very, very much the rhetoric has elevated in a way that is much more extreme than it would have been in the past. So let's talk about bad to worse. These individuals, they're in positions of authority, and let's start there. Bad to worse, the phases of development.
Barbara Kellerman 16:39
So, this doesn't happen overnight. Leaders don't go from bad to worse overnight, they go from bad to worse; from corruption to worse corruption; from being rigid to being so rigid that they become unmovable; from being a little bit dictatorial to being a lot tyrannical. That takes time. Even a sort of archetype of bad, which, let's say Adolf Hitler, indeed, is the archetype of bad; he assumed power in January 1933, but it's not as if they were concentration camps and Jew murder overnight. It took years for the German regime and the Nazi regime to get to the point of genocide. This took a much, kind of, collapse, all of that, but it took years, it took from 33 until the early 1940s for genocide, almost a decade, not quite, but almost, for the genocidal policy, yes, the Jews to be implemented. Hitler made clear in his earlier autobiographical volume, Mein Kampf, that he despised Jews, but had there been resistance in the 1930s to what he was doing among the various elite, of course, by the people? But also, this is worth noting when people say, “Could it happen here,” by the various elites, whether it's the military elite, the corporate elite, the educational elites, or the religious elites. Had there been resistance, this is a counterfactual, but we can assume it would at least have been harder and slower for Hitler and the Nazis to end were they ended. And so, that's the archetype. It does take time. And to kind of put a framework around it, or to put this notion, bad to worse, in a framework, I looked at a lot of different cases, and I saw that there was, invariably, a pattern. By the way, the pattern is, again, important to bear in mind the leadership system. Leaders, bad leaders do not tend to wake up one morning and say, “Golly gee, I've been bad, I need to change my ways.”
Scott Allen 19:01
(Laughs) No, they double down.
Barbara Kellerman 19:06
They double down. If you leave them alone without any intervention by something, by the way, this could be some exterior event, it could be an earthquake, it could be a hurricane, it could be some external event or internal event, or it can be by someone or someones, by an individual, or groups of people. Unless something intervenes, that leader is going to get worse, almost with 100% certitude, precisely because they find they can get away with it. And so, step one, our phase one, as I define it and outline it, is leaders who paint a picture of a utopian world. Sometimes, by the way, this is a throwback world, MAGA, Make America Great Again, implies, and Donald Trump incessantly verbalizes how horrible America is now, how horrible the United States is in the present. But, if he is the leader, he becomes a leader again, he will allow it, he will encourage it, he will facilitate its returning -- the word again -- it’s still here; Make America Great again. Returning the country to a fabled past where everything was for better, for nicer, for safer, for more, you name it, than it is now. Martin Winterkorn, you mentioned him earlier of Volkswagen, promised to produce Volkswagen vehicles that magically were going to take over the world. Why? Because they were going to be able to reduce emissions in ways that were historically unprecedented, and in ways that competitors could not begin to emulate. Therefore, phase one, “I, stay with me. Your followers, stay with me, and you too can experience a world that is almost a fantasy world, far superior to anything that you've ever known.” Phase two is the solidification of support. We are leaders trying to accrue followers. The word ‘followers’ is misleading because some people follow from a distance, and some people are acolytes and worshipers. So, I'm being deficient here when I use the word ‘followers’ to describe all kinds of followers, but basically, the leader wants to solidify his or her base of support. The third stage is the initiation of bad. Again, depends on how you define bad. In each of the four cases, certainly, I made very clear -- by the way, they include China's Xi and Turkey’s Erdoğan, it's so clear. I'm not doing something magical in this book; I'm spelling out how Turkey's Erdoğan began as a liberal Democrat. And with each year, over a period of 20 years, as we speak, he's still in power, he is somewhat weaker actually, but he's still in power, he went from bad to worse, again, if you're a liberal Democrat. And, gee, I can assure you that when he came to power in 2012, 2013 -- by the way, he's leader, he’s powerful in two ways; he is the president of the country, he is the leader of the Communist Party of China -- he wasn't what he is now. It took some years for him, and I'll just end with this, to proclaim himself a leader for life, which was in 2017. Once someone proclaims himself a leader for life, this is not a good thing. Maybe there should actually be term limits; ten years might be enough. Anyway, phase four then is from bad to worse where, whether it's tyrannical leadership or corrupt leadership, however bad in this case is defined, you can challenge on getting worse, unless somehow it is stopped.
Scott Allen 23:07
Let's talk about that for a moment: Stopped. That's, in some ways, the multibillion-dollar question because sometimes it's not stopped. At times, it might be the legal system that stops it, or a coup could stop it, or any number of other external forces. To your point, it may be a natural disaster. I think, in Turkey, that earthquake was damaging in some ways to that source of power. But how are you thinking about that? How do we stop? Because, obviously, it gets to a certain tipping point where there is fear in the system. There's control among some of the major institutions, and people are really putting themselves out there and risking literal life and limb as, oh, my gosh, Alexei Navalny found out. Correct? What do you think about that?
Barbara Kellerman 24:00
Well, first of all, I never want to ever want to, nor do I ever underestimate the difficulty. So, if you're in a workplace, and you have a bad boss, and you actually either like or need your job, you’re going to think very carefully about in any way challenging that bad boss. Does that mean it's impossible? No. But I never, ever want to make it seem easy. Similarly, in a political system or a school system, those of us who have been professors in colleges and universities know that a lot of them have leaders and administrators who are not so wonderful. But it can be dangerous not only to our professional lives but also to time and energy, and therefore, a lot of us don't bother. But if we don't bother, we need to understand that it's gonna get worse. Our bad bosses aren't going to get better, our crappy administrator is not going to magically transform into an effective and ethical administrator, our President or Prime Minister is not going to magically transform into a Democrat from a tyrant. So, having said that, I think one of the key points that I make in the book is, again, having said that this is hard. And I do come up with some suggestions, but I never wish to minimize the difficulty. Having said that, there is one thing in the book that I think is useful, at least to bear in mind, which is the earlier, the better, the lower the cost. So, if you were a citizen in Putin's Russia, in, let's say, 2012, or 2014, the same thing applies to Germany by the way, it would have been far easier then. Navalny, by the way, I think he's a heroic figure. I’m not saying anything new or original. He did work at it, but he wasn't joined by many Russians. But it would have been easier ten years ago to resist Vladimir Putin or, indeed, China's Xi Jinping. It would have been easier to resist Elizabeth Holmes, the fantasy-addled leader of Theranos, earlier in her tenure than it was later on when she was already deeply entrenched. So, the costs of intervening with bad are lower if you try to. You don't necessarily have to unseat badly, but you can try to minimize it. So, it's no accident then, to return to the example of Trump, he is worse now. If you think he was bad to begin with, he is worse now by every measure than he was. And this is after two efforts at impeaching him failed. And the Republican Party and Nikki Haley, as we speak, Nikki Haley in the last 24 hours, was the most obvious Republican; there have been others, Liz Cheney, and so forth and so on, but she was actually challenging Trump in the primary, she has now signed on with Trump. She says she's gonna vote for Trump. So, once those two impeachment efforts failed, you could argue that the Republican Party was saddled. Until Trump himself somehow departs from the scene that the Republican Party was saddled with this man. It would have been relatively easy to impeach him earlier on. Now, again, if you're a Trump supporter, you think this is great, but if you're a Republican who is not a Trump supporter, you find yourself in trouble and quite alone because the opportunity to do it earlier at a lower cost; personal, professional, political, you name it, has been lost. This man has now been on the national political scene, depending, again, on how you count, for almost a decade. And it is that much more difficult, as we see, to uproot him, particularly for Republicans. If Trump is voted in November, it will obviously be by American voters, not by members of his own party, no matter how many of them, I include here, Mitch McConnell, have a personal visceral dislike for him.
Scott Allen 28:26
Hmm. The complexity is fascinating, and it's going to be very, very interesting to watch it all play out. That's absolutely for sure. And, as we began to kind of wind down our time together, Barbara, I just very much appreciate your ability to look at these case studies, as well as these individuals from multiple different perspectives. And I think you do a wonderful job of stepping back and looking at it from a number of different angles. And I think that's how you know someone is an expert when they can really, really, really argue both sides, multiple sides of an issue. And, in this work here, for listeners, I think it's just really fascinating. I listened, but it's a fascinating read. And it's an important read because I think one of the first things that you said, “At times we portray leadership as daisies, chocolate bars, and warm fuzzies.”(Laughs)
Barbara Kellerman 29:27
One would wish.
Scott Allen 29:30
And maybe that's an ideal state, but at times, it is not that. We have all who are listening, been saddled with an individual who was not healthy, was not mature, was not skilled, was not knowledgeable, and maybe didn't even care. And they were in a position of authority. And so, I think we've spent some time talking about some global figures, but I think, from a fractal standpoint, this goes back down to just your job right now. That person who has authority over you. And, oftentimes, if Gallup's numbers are correct, we could argue that but two-thirds of the American workforce is disengaged. And that's interesting. And so, part of the conversation we were talking about was how do you better prepare people to serve in these roles and do a really good job. That's a fun, interesting, fascinating puzzle.
Barbara Kellerman 30:22
It is. And I will simply say I think that the more we understand that unless we do a better job of educating, training, and developing good leaders, the more at risk we are of suffering, and I'm so glad you invoked the workplace just now, Scott because I think for many of us, that's our most immediate experience of bad. And, by the way, that's not necessarily evil. It can simply be thoughtless or unkind. To have a healthy work-life, we need our managers -- who often have quite a bit of control over our work lives -- we don't necessarily need them to be brilliant or amazingly wonderful, but we need them to be decent. We need them to be thoughtful. We need them to be kind. We need them to be at least a tad caring. And, without that, our daily lives at the workplace, in the workplace, even hybrid, even remotely, can be much more stressful and much less pleasant and healthy than it needs to be.
Scott Allen 31:27
Yeah. And to go back to one of your types of bad leaders, who is incompetent. Are they competent?
Barbara Kellerman 31:37
Oh dear, that’s another conversation, Scott. A whole other conversation.
Scott Allen 31:41
Okay, we will tee that up for next time. So, real quick, before we end our time together, is there anything that's caught your attention in recent times that you've been listening to or reading? Of course, I'm going to put links to your blog in the show notes so people can check them out. I know you're always writing, but what's caught your attention in recent times?
Barbara Kellerman 31:58
Well, you asked for it. I'm going to switch gears, and I'm going to say that I read this. This was the subject of a brief blog yesterday. So I'm reading an article in the Financial Times about the number of women, and as I said, I'm switching gears here. Our women executives in the United States have dropped. So, in this article, there are two experts quoted; one, for example, was the head of Catalyst, a well-known organization that helps women in the workplace, and they give the same answers to the problems that we have heard now for decades, such as unconscious bias or the responsibilities of childcare. I would not argue they are wrong; this is not what I'm saying. There is unconscious bias and there is inequity, not just in childcare, but in eldercare, both are true. But I am arguing in a new chapter and in a blog that is available, if anybody cares about it, for a radical relook at the gender gap, which is not about the similarities; men and women are the same; they should be able to lead the same, but about the physical and psychological differences between men and women, their bodies, their minds, their psyches. Until and unless these differences are taken into account, we're going to be spinning the same old wheel.
Scott Allen 33:21
Wow. Okay. So, I'm going to share a link to that blog post, correct? You have written about this, correct?
Barbara Kellerman 33:30
Yeah, there's a long chapter in the forthcoming book, but the blog post is called ‘A radical relook at the gender gap.’ And stay away unless you want to read about things such as menopause and menstruation. That if you don't think menopause and menstruation are relevant to women in leadership, might I suggest that you think again?
Scott Allen 33:52
Well, you know what, Barbara? You always make us think. And, for that, I am very, very thankful because you challenge, and you push, and you pull, and it's… You know what? You're making us think. Agree or disagree, you're making us think, and I think that's absolutely wonderful. I really, really…
Barbara Kellerman 34:13
I appreciate it. I'm not so sure that is always a good thing, but, for your audience, maybe they… The end of this conversation caught them just a little bit by surprise, which is, of course, in my book, a good thing.
(Laughter)
Barbara Kellerman 34:28
Thank you so much, Scott. I appreciate the conversation as I always do.
Scott Allen 34:33
Oh, thank you, Barbara. Be well. Bye-bye.
Barbara Kellerman 34:35
Thank you. Bye bye.
Scott Allen 34:36
I did an episode a few months back called ‘Provocation as Leadership.’ One thing I very much appreciate about Dr. Barbara Kellerman is that she is challenging us to think about things in new and different ways. And she's equal opportunity. She'll go after JFK. She will go after Bill Clinton. She will go after Donald Trump. If she sees something, she says something. And I think, for us, the opportunity is that her provocation, her insight, and her interpretation can spark an opportunity for us to clarify our own perspectives. But more times than not, I find myself really, really intrigued after having conversations with her. I very, very much appreciate her work. I very much appreciate her challenging us to think differently about this thing called leadership. The leader, the followers, and the contexts. The leadership system and bad leadership. We have all experienced a number of different flavors of bad leadership. And in this book, ‘From Bad to Worse,’ she's challenging us to intervene sooner because it will likely get worse. Take care, everyone. Be well. Have a wonderful day. And, as always, thank you so much for checking in.
[End of Recording]