FRAGILE NATURE OF LEADERSHIP & HOW EVENTS SHAPE IT

FRAGILE NATURE OF LEADERSHIP & HOW EVENTS SHAPE IT

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 2007

Symbolic interaction: The typical form of communication and interaction characteristic of human social life, involving either language or symbolic gestures.

George A. and Achilles G. Theodorson: Modern Dictionary of Sociology (1969)

Those that are regular readers of my missives know I have made an effort to concentrate on leadership, seeing an absence of leadership not only across the United States, but also across the globe. Something of leadership’s reptilian character has been lost, and for it we are all suffering.

We are a fatherless and motherless society, which has become a North American cultural plague, but not limited to the US. We have exported the plague to all progressive societies, who would emulate our Western-style conceit.

Broken relationships with parents are like broken relationships with God. “God” is a construct as endemic to atheists as to believers. It is also endemic to believers in ideologies. People have exalted fascism and communism, and now radical Islam in replacement roles for their gods. This is dangerous to society.

Ultimately, radicalism doesn’t work out.

People, who drift into radicalism, do bad things. Power and opacity become the diet of choice for leadership roles bent on playing God. The longing for God, or an appropriate substitute, never goes away. There has to be something bigger and better than ourselves to keep us on track.

That said we have drifted into a world in which people continue to do good although they have ceased to believe in anything.

Sociologists call this “nihilism,” while philosophers are content to see it as “existentialism.” Whatever it is called, the connection between things going radically wrong is closely related to the general decay of piety. I prefer this word to goodness because it is not a word in which to hide.

Having opened with this preamble, I now make a departure. History shows us that true believers, religious and political leaders, all those who have no doubt of the truth of their views, have constantly taken us to war.

It is in war that we learn of the reptilian nature of leadership. The collateral damage of war always effects the innocent and the poorest. They look for their symbolic God in their leaders. This is the source of their motivation, seeing such leaders as powerful and mysterious, but seldom ineffectual.

It takes a peculiar type of leader to connect this patch quilt of subjectivity with the serendipity of history to carry a people forward. I am always amazed at the fragility of leadership and the uncertainty of events to spin a society on the horns of a dilemma between collapse and resilience. How easily events could have fallen either way, but for an individual with the pluck and luck, intuition and bravado, or simply being the right person doing the right thing at the right time in the right way.

Since I am not a historian, my expertise being in organization/industrial psychology, I offer these thoughts on leaders and leadership from my pondering books read for the reader’s reflection and consideration.

George Washington:

There is a plethora of books on the “Father of Our Country” (currently I’m reading John Buchanan’s “The Road to Valley Forge”). Added to this, I listened recently to David McCullough’s “1776” on a CD during my return to Florida from my book signing trip in Iowa.

McCullough’s book is consistent with the symbolic detail associated with our first president, that is, George Washington always dressed like a general in the most splendid fashion against the rag-tag appearance of his rag-tag troops. This made certain that the Yankee soldier took pride in himself and his cause, as well as his general.

Formality and form were basic to Washington. Tall, six-two, and strongly built, he carried himself with authority, and walked with dignity. Should anyone touch him, he would scorch them with his eyes.

Washington was not a great strategist as a general, but was bold and brave, and credited with only one victory in the Revolutionary War. Nor did he have the quality of mind of either a Thomas Jefferson or John Adams; yet neither man would brook his will in the exercise of his power.

Andrew Jackson:

I’ve written volumes on this great general and effective president. He was not modest about his disdain for formal education, which he did not have, or books and ideas, which he did not read or take seriously.

Jackson saw himself as a decisive “man of action.” He operated intuitively and never questioned his decisions. His gusto and gumption saved the nation at the “Battle of New Orleans,” when the United States was literally teetering on extinction.

As president, he made a symbolic move of power from the Eastern elite few to the common many in the middle of the country. He also took on the banking system that was privy to a few.

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s “Age of Jackson” (1945) captures a sense of this. Schlesinger was actually using the Jackson legacy to promote President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” conspicuously leaving out the embarrassment of the forced migration of Native Americans to the northwest. Gloria Jahoda’s “The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removals 1813 – 1835” fills this void.

Ulysses S. Grant & George McClellan:

Much is written about President Abraham Lincoln, his courage and humor, and how language was his sword, but he wasn’t the first or the last president that had to deal with pompous generals, such as general George McClellan.

As head of the Army of the Potomac, McClellan nearly lost the Civil War with his incompetence, indecisiveness and failure to think beyond his career.

On the other hand, general Ulysses S. Grant was a risk taker. He had failed in business and was retrieved from retirement where he had the reputation of being a drunk. Once in uniform again, he demonstrated an instinct for taking charge and going for the jugular against the Confederate Army. Hostilities over, he treated general Robert E. Lee with respect and dignity at the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Court.

As a politician, Grant was ineffective as president, failing to manage reconstruction of the South with either skill or understanding, while allowing his administration to be writhe with scandal.

LOOKING AT THE PRECARIOUS NATURE OF LEADERSHIP CLOSE UP

World War II was fought during my preadolescence. I followed the war closely. Sister Mary Helen, my fourth grade teacher, allowed me to report on it in class. I also read Sinclair Lewis’s book “It Can’t Happen Here,” which dealt with what it would be like should fascism come to America. I wasn't sure what fascism was but I thought I understood what Lewis meant by a police state.

Now, more than sixty years after that war, a book titled “Moscow 1941” creates a new appreciation of that war from the perspective of Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Here leadership and symbolism become a critical mass.

On June 23, 1941, a day after the German invasion into Russia, the Wehrmacht had destroyed the entire Soviet air force.

By June 28, German troops had entered Minsk.

On June 29, Stalin failed to appear in the Kremlin. He did not appear the next day or the day after. He had returned to his dacha. Members of the Politburo nervously made their way there, only to find Stalin with the strangest look on his face. Stalin assumed they had come to kill him. They had come instead to ask him to be their leader in this, the Soviet Union's darkest hour.

By November 7, 1941, it is a different Stalin the world sees. He is seen standing in Moscow’s Red Square defiantly holding the anniversary celebration of the October (1917) Revolution. Imagine the courage it took to hold this ceremony complete with the traditional military parade as German guns roared in the distance. Even the soldiers marching in that parade were combat troops quickly pulled from the front lines for the occasion.

The propaganda impact on the Russian people was extraordinary. It became a moral turning point.

It was important for Soviet citizens to see their leader resolutely standing, ignoring the imminence of being invaded at any time, as the German army was now on the outskirts of Moscow. Nothing was to stop tradition. The synergy between citizen and soldier became singularly deterministic.

That said Stalin’s leadership and that of the German generals was mired in missed opportunities followed by strategic breakthroughs and blunders, while both sides demonstrated exemplary valor.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the US ambassador to Moscow had warmed Stalin of an imminent German invasion, but he was too paranoid to see anything but the Allies playing Germany and Russia against each other. The invasion came as a total surprise with the Germans 450 miles within Russia in the first month.

It was at this point that Hitler started making mistakes. Leaders read history and often are spooked by it. Hitler feared history repeating itself with Germany coming to the same end as Napoleon in 1812. So, instead of closing in on Moscow, Hitler decided to postpone that effort, and turn his attention to capturing the rich oil and coalfields of the eastern Ukraine.

This delay allowed the Russian Army to regroup and for Stalin to recover his nerve.

The Wehrmacht’s “Operation Typhoon,” as the assault on Moscow was codenamed, was quite successful in early October 1941. German troops encircled several nearby Soviet armies. The death toll from this engagement was so high that the army couldn’t keep up with the task of burying the dead, with soldiers finally left where they had fallen.

By mid-October the Soviet government had mobilized hundreds of thousands of civilians who constructed fortifications and dug tens of thousands of anti-tank trenches to prevent an easy rout. The consensus was that Moscow was doomed and the end was near, but Muscovites would go down fighting.

What happened on October 16, 1941, which historians now conclude was one of the most important moments of the war, is rarely told.

The propaganda on both sides was passionately idealistic. On one side stood Hitler, fascism, and the myth of German supremacy; on the other stood Stalin, communism, and the myth of the international proletarian revolution. Both sides claimed ideological, psychological, and moral supremacy. Stalin portrayed the Germans as “heirs of world capitalism and out to restore the rule of landlords.” Hitler, meanwhile, spoke of the Soviet Union being a country of a “Slavic-Tartar body” and a “Jewish head.” Bolshevism, he concluded, “attacks the foundation of human order, the concept of civilization, our faith and our morals.”

So effective was this rhetoric that Soviet soldiers and Russian citizens were declaring, “We will not work for landlords and noblemen,” while German soldiers were condeming “Jews and Bolsheviks” seeing them both as the same.

Thanks to propaganda, both sides came to believe in the certainty of victory: the Germans held to their own racial superiority, while the Red Army were convinced scientific Marxism and communism had to triumph.

No day shattered both myths more decisively than October 16, 1941.

With the Germans only a few miles away, Muscovites awoke to a city transformed. There were no buses, no trams, no Metro, no mailmen, no garbage pickups, no police. The streets were covered in ash, and the air filled with it, a result of thousands of bonfires.

Bureaucrats, politicians, and even ordinary people were burning documents, Party cards, and Marxist tracts, even portraits of Stalin in anticipation of the arrival of their conquerors. They were ready to greet them as their new heroes, their “liberators,” as victors. Workers were turned away at factory gates. Machinery was shut down and being packed for evacuation. Rumors spread of a coup d’etat and Stalin’s arrest.

Most unfortunately of all, people repressed from speaking their minds, now began to talk freely and openly. They shouted that they had been betrayed, remembered humiliations, injustices, deceptions and transgressions.

Meanwhile, preparations were being made to blow up key factories, bridges, dams and railways.

But October 17, 1941 came and the Germans had not arrived.

In the interim of a single day, it immediately became apparent to ordinary Muscovites the deep divide between the privileged Communist elite and the downtrodden proletariat. Bigwigs, party bosses, and anyone with a car began to drive east, taking family and possessions with them. Riots broke out, fights started in food queues. Others refused to join trench battalions. It was a state of anarchy.

Then something happened. In this state of near total chaos and collapse, word quickly passed through the streets that Stalin had not left Moscow. Whatever was his motivation, it became the most important decision of the war for ordinary Russians.

Stalin's symbolic behavior stated loud and clear: if Moscow falls, I will fall with her.

It was electric. Muscovites declared in a single voice, we, too, will give our best for our leader and country, and they did.

There is no way he could have known the impact of his decision.

Russians had lost four million men, 17,000 aircraft, 60,000 guns and mortars, or all the stocks and weapons they had built up in the years before the war. They were practically defenseless.

But on the outskirts of Moscow, the German army had run out of steam. They were worn down by the weather, lacked supplies for the winter, and were exhausted from the long struggle and the diversions. The Wehrmacht would have many future victories against this setback, but the failure to capture Moscow dealt the army a psychological blow every bit as significant as the boost it gave to the Red Army.

What the Battle of Moscow demonstrated to the Western Allies, who had yet to be successful, was that the world’s finest and most experienced military could be beaten, could be ground down, and comprehensively defeated.

We see the same thing in sport when a team which seems invincible is finally defeated. After Moscow, Stalin threw tens of thousands of men and boys against the Germans. Often poorly armed, the sheer magnitude of Stalin’s capacity to take casualties, throwing wave after wave of these Russians against the better-trained and armed Germans, proved the difference in the end.

Leadership is not a style, not an academic curriculum, not a mathematical algorithm, or some learned system from an academic or guru. Nor is it a set of words or schematics of a PowerPoint presentation on leadership.

Leadership is that very human quality that manifests itself in our reptilian brain to reach beyond logic and systematic thought to address issues of survival when men are reduced to a single spirit, and undifferentiated unity.

Just as none of us knows whether we will be brave or cowardly in a moment of supreme danger, there is no way of predicting when a leader will stay the course or cave into its pressure.

Leaders do not know how they will act until the situation presents itself. A life is the best guide. So, how do we choose our leaders? We don’t. They choose us.

Dr. Fisher’s latest book, for which this is a continuing mantra, is A Look Back To See Ahead (AuthorHouse 2007).