WHY LEADERSHIP MATTERS

 James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D. 

© May 18, 2020

The past is prologue to the future

Andrew Jackson was born before the Declaration of Independence was signed for the United States of America. He fought in the Revolutionary War as a mere boy, became an Indian fighter, lawyer, judge, U.S. Congressman, U.S. Senator, and General of the U.S. Army before becoming President of the United States.

This colorful leader defied the modality of his times. His victory against Great Britain in the Battle of New Orleans (1815) saved the Mississippi River basin and forever stifled the expansionistic threats from both Great Britain and Spain.

Jackson rode his popularity to the presidency. As president, his new frontier "take no prisoners" style of leadership resonated with the common man in the heartland of this young nation.

Jackson's leadership released pent up energy in the populace, and changed the course of American history from the conduct of the presidency to the commerce and industry of the nation.

The American frontiersmen and women personified the nature of the struggle against the native Indian population indigenous to the land while increasingly claiming this virgin undeveloped continent as their home.

Even with Andrew Jackson’s follies, which were sometimes monstrous, Jackson never became stuck, never questioned the intuitive character of his mind, but forged constantly ahead. Reality was his companion, national survival his focus.

Critics, then as now, point to Jackson's flawed character, but he was also real. We have come to be more comfortable with leaders who are charismatic, look good, and behave predictably as scripted.  Jackson was never predictable. He was a man of immense passion who was committed to obliterating the frontier barriers of his age, and in the process, once in power, reinvented the role of the American presidency.

We now confront a new frontier, the Information Age. As Jackson personified the leadership of an emerging frontier nation, the Information Age seeks new leadership against declining expectations. This new age requires Jackson's boldness, yet we are stuck in the leaderless leadership of leading from behind. Such leadership drives a stake into the collective national psyche.

Our addiction to numbers and analytics finds "numbers addicts" hypothesizing with a sense of being in control. Such a society resists a "wake up" call as it finds comfort living in the surreal world of virtual reality. In that state, no matter the calamity our collective hubris neutralizes whatever threat may occur that might jeopardize this imagined security. Undermining conventional leadership, as Jackson demonstrated, proved leadership matters.

Why Leadership Matters, Yet  . . .

One wonders how men and women are induced to seek public office when journalists with agendas hound them implying or suggesting they are guilty of untoward behavior, while the church and the corporate world protect their leadership often hiding their blatant malfeasance. 

That said, the dominant themes of the time call for the constant reinvention of leadership to match the surreptitious and/or ambivalent demands of the led.

We are now in the postindustrial postmodern age driven by a different revolution that features the Internet and social networking moving uncertainly beyond capitalism for doing business as we know it, and into a wilderness we never anticipated and therefore fail to understand. We are in a state of chaos with seemingly no one in charge.

Influence resides with those who provide information. This is no longer old geezers but spunky kids, neophytes, working in their parents' garages rewriting the codes by which we all now live.

Institutions of higher learning are lost in the maze of convention, unable to see beyond the brick and mortar of their buildings to capture what is salient and vital. Meanwhile, the government instigates wars it cannot win, and responds late to social and natural disasters it cannot control.

Power no longer resides with those who control the means of production as it has tectonically shifted to intellectual properties often emanating from modest facilities. These pathfinders are inheritors of the future from institutional society that is now moribund, archaic and obsolete.

Leadership is individualistic with everyone a leader or no one is. Stated another way, a leader is a complete follower because he must know where his followers wish to go.

Leaders sense the role long before it is clear to the led.  By definition, leaders are narcissistic and solipsistic with one eye on the opportunity and the other on the future, embracing supporters as a mirror reflection of their own self-image.

Followers are attracted to a leader's edginess, entranced by his use of abstract ideas converted into the concrete language of the possible.  If this sounds duplicitous, that is because it is.  While being professed as a marriage of love, it is  a marriage of convenience.  Both leaders and followers have hidden agendas.  This is reality.

Likewise, leaders are actors on the stump, displaying the confidence, appearing clear headed, informed, never seeming to waffle, with an implicit “take charge” demeanor, displaying the ability to seem just like “us.”      

A leader is seldom brilliant or especially creative, but when effective, amiably a self-directed doer. This, alone, is not enough to stand out as a leader. To lift followers out of their funk, a leader must first convince himself that he can lead.

Although a leader is apt to be selfish and self-interested, he finds it necessary to feign selflessness to ease his way through his followers’ barriers of suspicion.

Even so, there is no certainty that he will succeed.  A leader must possess a singular ambition fueled by his ego and high sensitivity to carry him across the threshold of credibility. Ambition can be quiet or loud, whichever resonates most affectively with the mind of the times. Talent is never enough.

A leaders has a clear responsibility to his followers, but the led have an equal responsibility to the leader. Unfortunately, the led tend to take a pass on that requirement preferring to hold the leader accountable but not themselves when things go awry. It is for this reason that followers get the leadership they deserve.

A leader must realize that people vote with their hearts, not their heads. The Information Age and the Internet has made this even more pronounced. The leadership that brought the country through the New Frontier of Jackson's time will not suffice to carry the nation through this newest frontier that has no physical barriers or definable turf.

What made Jackson a popular president is that he could relate to people in terms of how, what and where they were. Thomas Jefferson thought Jackson a buffoon. But Jefferson’s sense of the American mind of the time was then however passé.

Admittedly, Jackson’s approach to leadership was untidy, explicit, with comments sprinkled with earthy language but always with a message clear to followers rising out of the earth and not from the stateroom, a message always in a language they understood and trusted.  He was one of them and he was on top, which meant that they were on top, too.

Jackson was an effective communicator not so much for what he said, but how it was said. His vigorous personality caught fire in the moment as he acted out his impulses as if thoughts were actions, always seemingly knowing what nerves to touch. Confrontational by nature, he was in your face without disguise or guile.

Nor was he much given to reflection for he was confident that his sturdy principles would never steer him wrong. He showed little inclination to the free exchange of ideas or in improving the quality of his mind, as he was not a reader of books, but a man of action.

The only laws he respected were the laws he made. He had no qualms about using questionable means if he felt the ends were justified. Nor did he have a concept of social justice because his justice only reaffirmed his own impulses and experience. This found him confident to handle any problem that may arise.

Brilliant men from Thomas Jefferson to Henry Clay, Daniel Webster to John Calhoun constantly underestimated Jackson. They repeatedly painted him into a corner and yet his countermoves invariably proved them wrong, diminishing their esteem while causing them grief.  Jackson had the intuitive sense that earthy America was on a march to an American identity with little in common with European civility.

What Leaders Can Learn from Andrew Jackson

What leveraged President Andrew Jackson to such popularity was that he made his triumphs the triumphs of common folk, his courage against all odds their courage, his heroics their heroics. Being able to touch people's lives became more than a display of guile but a viable platform for the people to believe in themselves.

What matters is how we perceive our leader.

We will follow our leader to the death if he makes us feel more real than we are, and who stands for what we say we believe but don't always practice.  Such a leader provides a well-crafted persona that suggests to us an invincibility that we know we don't possess, removing the trauma of uncertainty that haunts us daily providing us with a reliable stanchion in the storm of life.

Alas, a leader cannot be packaged through institutional education or be well-horned through a network of prominent friends. A leader rises out of the muck of life and percolates to the top through the combustibles emotions of the confused. He often emerges as the answer to a real or imagined crisis which is however real in the collective mind.  He can be explained in no other way.

A leader who is most astute can understand our pain that comes from our struggles to comprehend the incomprehensible with language that reaches our hearts to lessen the discomfort of our heads.  He can do this because tragedy to him is an old friend.

Andrew Jackson's father died about the time he was born. His mother and two brothers died in the American Revolutionary War. This found him an orphan without prospects as he turned 14. What followed was constant privation, little formal education, and no chance to develop the normal self-esteem modern psychologists claim essential to our well-being.

During Jackson's climb to prominence, America was also finding its own moral center, unshackling itself from Great Britain, and climbing with him to where, no one was certain. So, it is with all leaders who know and understand their times, and who have the drive, focus, courage, élan and tenacity to resonate with the people.

In adulthood, despite his many feats, Jackson's enemies ridiculed his inability to write with panache or to spell common words correctly or compose sentences grammatically. Such critics would point to his inscrutable ignorance. Yet, Jackson changed the presidency, changed leadership as it was then known  and practiced, giving birth to a political party, and creating what became known as "The Age of Jackson" with a series of like minded presidents to follow.

His intuitive vision allowed him to reach conclusions by short cutting the problem solving while others were beating about the bush indecisively lost in the game. His strength translated intellect into action. He understood most people had a need to vent before they were in a mood to act. He was not however a man of reflection but a man of doing.

The new Information Frontier is much more psychologically rather than physically dangerous as was the case in Jackson’s time. It is a kind of intimidation Jackson obviously faced, but never found limiting.

This electronic age is changing work, displacing millions of breadwinners used to conventional jobs in making a living. Government has become high political theatre where it attempts to be the constant parent providing economic relief rather than gutting conventional education, and retraining and retooling people to meet the new demands.

These times parallel to an amazing degree those of Andrew Jackson's, when it was clear a new kind of leadership mattered.