Friends and Colleagues:
Experiences recent and remote have prompted me to reflect on the adaptability of leadership styles. Recently, I have had the opportunity to observe some impressively talented leaders whose styles are very different than my own, and have been obliged to find ways to make mine mesh with theirs.
More remotely, twenty-five years ago Cherie, my wife, and I spent a remarkable night in a theater in Kansas City, then our home. We saw DC's visiting Wooly Mammoth Theater Company do a compelling piece on Ulysses Grant. The playwright's theme was that Grant was a huge success as the commander of the Union Army because his character attributes matched well the requirements of his role, whereas he was a huge failure as President because that same character was disastrously matched to the requirements of that role. I have, in two and a half decades, forgotten most of the dramatic details, but I imagine the attributes of the Grant character included a great faith in his own intuition, loyalty to others and steadfastness with decisions made, even when circumstances would cause others to equivocate.
The lessons of that play, the wrenching tragedy of the Grant's inability to change his approach as President, the Lear-like erosion of his self-image as he clung to ill-placed virtues and misapplied lessons, all stay with me these years later.
The central question this tragedy raised for me was about the range and limits of human adaptability and how leadership draws those into relief. If we are self-conscious and diligent we can adapt our leadership behaviors significantly. I realized, late in my father's life that he had chosen, in his twenties, not to be shy. It was, I think, a career and a leadership choice. Coming from a farming family with limited resources and two emotionally remote parents, he wanted prosperity for himself and his family and he saw his native shyness as an impediment. He made this adjustment so thoroughly that nearly everyone I know who met him as an adult saw him as a guy with a big, warm, gregarious personality.
That is a huge, adaptation, of course.
On the other hand, surely there are limits to our ability to adapt. I'll shift the example from my father to myself: I work hard to assess the leadership needs of the organizations I serve and to adjust my style accordingly. However, even when the adjustments are emotional or social in character - when I have to identify with the distinctive attributes of the organization's culture or relate to a colleague whose style is very different than my own - I have to do it analytically. I have to breakdown the problem into parts and then figure out a strategy for addressing it. To be the empathic, intuitive leader, to respond to people immediately with a kind of automatic emotional intelligence of the sort often attributed to former President Bill Clinton, is simply beyond me. It's just not in my wiring.
These reflections, of course, demand answers to two further questions:
Unfortunately, I don't claim to have reliable answers to those questions. The best suggestion I can offer has to do with process. It requires that we remain self-aware, willing to ask ourselves the questions and to grapple with them honestly, even when the process is awkward and the answer is potentially painful. And, it demands that we approach the questions with humility and confidence - pushing the humility to the surface, constantly doubting the easy and self-congratulatory answers - while nurturing the confidence in a deeper part of our characters, believing in the possibility of answers even when we are very far from having them.
As always, I'd be eager to learn of your own insights into these matters. Help me refine my thinking and improve my leadership by sharing your own thoughts.