by James Comey
My daughter was right, but also wrong. Because if people knew what the men and women of the FBI are really like, and what the work is really like, they would want to be a part of it. Almost nobody leaves the FBI after becoming a special agent. Whether white or black, Latino or Asian, male or female, the annual turnover is about the same—0.5 percent. Once people experience the environment and the mission at the FBI, they become addicted to it and stay until retirement, despite being paid government salaries and working under incredible stress. Our challenge, I told the FBI, is to simply get out there and show more people of color and more women (that number had been stuck just below 20 percent for years) what the place is like and dare them to try to be part of it. It’s not rocket science, I said; the talent is out there. They just don’t know what they are missing. So we made it our passion to show them, and in just three years, the numbers started to change in a material way. During my third year at the FBI, a huge new-agent class at Quantico was 38 percent nonwhite. Our standards hadn’t changed; we were just doing a better job of showing people the life they could make by joining us, which is contagious in a positive way.
My travels around the country and the world taught me something else: the FBI’s leaders weren’t good enough. In the private sector, I had learned that the best organizations obsess over leadership talent—they hunt for it, test it, train it, and make it part of every conversation. They treat leadership talent like money. At the FBI, though, leadership was largely an afterthought. For decades, the organization counted on good people volunteering to be leaders and then putting up with all the family moves and time at Washington headquarters that required. Fortunately, many good people volunteered. But that kind of approach was also a recipe for people becoming leaders to escape a job they weren’t doing well or people being promoted by their bosses to get rid of them. I discovered from listening to the employees that we had some great leaders, some crappy leaders, and everything in between. That was simply not acceptable for an organization as important as the FBI.
I told the organization that I had an ambitious goal: the FBI would one day be the government’s premier leadership factory, and private employers would count the days until an FBI leader could retire (age fifty for special agents) so they could hire them to lead. The FBI would become so good at identifying and growing leaders that all the burdens of government leadership borne by FBI families would be repaid by successful second careers in the private sector. I told our employees that the military services were great organizations, but there was no reason why the FBI shouldn’t be the dominant government supplier of America’s corporate leaders. I said we were going to paint a picture of what great leadership looks like, find and grow those who could be great, and teach or remove those already in leadership jobs who weren’t getting it done.
With broad support across the organization, I was going to drive leadership into every corner and every conversation in the FBI, until we were consistently excellent, across all roles and at all levels. We would teach that great leaders are (1) people of integrity and decency; (2) confident enough to be humble; (3) both kind and tough; (4) transparent; and (5) aware that we all seek meaning in work. We would also teach them that (6) what they say is important, but what they do is far more important, because their people are always watching them. In short, we would demand and develop ethical leaders.
I knew a bit about this because I arrived at the FBI having spent decades watching leaders, reading about leaders, and trying to lead. From all that learning and all those mistakes, I knew the kind of leader I wanted to follow and the kind I wanted to be. And I set out immediately to try to set that example.
On my first full day as FBI director, for example, I sat in an auditorium in front of a camera and spoke to all employees about my expectations for them and their expectations for me. I gave the talk sitting on a stool, wearing a tie but no jacket. I also wore a blue shirt. This might not seem like a big deal to outsiders, but Bob Mueller wore a white shirt every day for twelve years (Congress had extended his ten-year term for two extra years). Not some days, or most days—every day. That was the culture, and I thought shirt color was one early, small way to set a different tone. I said nothing about my shirt, but people noticed.
I laid out my five expectations that first day and many times thereafter. Every new employee heard them, and I repeated them wherever I went in the organization:
•I expected they would find joy in their work. They were part of an organization devoted to doing good, protecting the weak, rescuing the taken, and catching criminals. That was work with moral content. Doing it should be a source of great joy.
•I expected they would treat all people with respect and dignity, without regard to position or station in life.
•I expected they would protect the institution’s reservoir of trust and credibility that makes possible all their work.
•I expected they would work hard, because they owe that to the taxpayer.
•I expected they would fight for balance in their lives.
I emphasized that last one because I worried many people in the FBI worked too hard, driven by the mission, and absorbed too much stress from what they saw. I talked about what I had learned from a year of watching Dick Cates in Madison, Wisconsin. I expected them to fight to keep a life, to fight for the balance of other interests, other activities, other people, outside of work. I explained that judgment was essential to the sound exercise of power. Because they would have great power to do good or, if they abused that power, to do harm, I needed sound judgment, which is the ability to orbit a problem and see it well, including through the eyes of people very different from you. I told them that although I wasn’t sure where it came from, I knew the ability to exercise judgment was protected by getting away from the work and refreshing yourself. That physical distance made perspective possible when they returned to work.
And then I got personal. “There are people in your lives called ‘loved ones’ because you are supposed to love them.” In our work, I warned, there is a disease called “get-back-itis.” That is, you may tell yourself, “I am trying to protect a country, so I will get back to” my spouse, my kids, my parents, my siblings, my friends. “There is no getting back,” I said. “In this line of work, you will learn that bad things happen to good people. You will turn to get back and they will be gone. I order you to love somebody. It’s the right thing to do and it’s also good for you.”
I added something I learned from Stellar Wind and the torture struggle. When someone is tired, their judgment can be impaired. When they are dragging, it is hard for them to float above a problem and picture themselves and the problem in another place and time, so I gave them another directive: sleep. When you sleep, your brain is actually engaged in the neurochemical process of judgment. It is mapping connections and finding meaning among all the data you took in during the day. Tired people tend not to have the best judgment. And it is not as hard as you may think, I added with a smile. “You can multitask. You can sleep with people you love. In appropriate circumstances.”
* * *
One day during my first week, around noon, I walked out of my huge office, through my huge conference room, and past the desk of Bob Mueller’s administrative assistant, who would work with me for another few months. She had been there for decades and was an invaluable resource to me but was much more familiar with a different style of leadership.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To get a sandwich,” I said.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because I’m hungry. I’m just gonna run up to the cafeteria.”
“What if people try to talk to you?” she asked with a bewildered look.
“I hope they talk to me.”
Whenever I possibly could during my three years, eight months, and five days as FBI director, I walked down a long hall and up a flight of stairs to the FBI headquarters cafeteria. I never wore my jacket. I asked my security detail to stay f
ar enough away from me that people would think I was walking alone. I didn’t want FBI employees to think I needed to be protected from them.
No matter how I felt inside, I tried to walk with a bounce in my step, standing straight and smiling at those I passed. The way I looked at it, when the director of the FBI stepped into that cafeteria, hundreds of pairs of eyes turned to look, and every pair was asking, in some form, the same question: “So how are we doing?” The answer from my face and posture had to be: “We’re doing just fine. It’s all going to be okay.”
I also never cut the line. Even when I wished I could, or even when I was in a hurry. I stood and waited as people in front of me ordered panini (which take forever, by the way). I thought it was very important to show people that I’m not better than anyone else. So I waited.
The wait in line allowed me to interview people. I would turn to the person next to me and ask them to tell me their story, including what they liked about their job at the FBI. I learned a tremendous amount from these many conversations. One lesson was that I wasn’t the big deal I thought I was. One day after I had been on the job for close to a year, I turned to the guy behind me and asked him about himself. I learned that he worked on computer servers. He said he had been with the FBI for three years, and what he liked best about the agency was that he could get experience and responsibility far beyond what the private sector offered someone his age. There was an awkward pause, and he probably thought he needed to be polite. So he asked, “How ’bout yourself?”
“I’m the director,” I replied.
Bobbing his head side to side to emphasize his question, he asked, “Director of…?”
“Dude,” I said, “I’m the director of the FBI. You work for me.”
Another awkward pause. Finally, he said, “Oh, you look so different online.”
That evening I went home and told Patrice that story. “That should happen to you every day,” she said with a laugh.
* * *
Before I became FBI director, I worked at Bridgewater Associates—which aspires to build a culture of complete transparency and honesty. I learned there that I could sometimes be a selfish and poor leader. Most often, that was because I was hesitant to tell people who worked for me when I thought they needed to improve. The best leaders are both kind and tough. Without both, people don’t thrive. Bridgewater’s founder, Ray Dalio, believes there is no such thing as negative feedback or positive feedback; there is only accurate feedback, and we should care enough about each other to be accurate. By avoiding hard conversations and not telling people where they were struggling and how they could improve, I was depriving them of the chance to grow. My squeamishness was not only cowardly, it was selfish. If I really care about the people who work for me—if I create the atmosphere of deep personal consideration I want—I should care enough to be honest, even if it makes me uncomfortable. I should, of course, still consider the best way to deliver the message. There is a right time, and a right way, for every conversation. If someone’s mom just died, that is not the day to be accurate, but I was honor bound to find a way to have that conversation.
Effective leaders almost never need to yell. The leader will have created an environment where disappointing him causes his people to be disappointed in themselves. Guilt and affection are far more powerful motivators than fear. The great coaches of team sports are almost always people who simply need to say, in a quiet voice, “That wasn’t our best, now was it?” and his players melt. They love this man, know he loves them, and will work tirelessly not to disappoint him. People are drawn to this kind of leader, as I was drawn all those years ago to Harry Howell, the grocer. A leader who screams at his employees or belittles them will not attract and retain great talent over the long term.
At the FBI, I spoke often about LeBron James. Even though I don’t know the man personally, I talked about him for two reasons. First, I believe he is the best basketball player in the world today. Second, he is never satisfied he is good enough. I have read that he spends every off-season working on some part of his game to improve it. At first glance, that seems crazy; he’s already better than everybody else. But it makes complete sense when you consider his perspective: he isn’t measuring himself against the other players; he is measuring himself against himself. The best leaders don’t care much about “benchmarking,” comparing their organization to others. They know theirs is not good enough, and constantly push to get better.
Early in my term as director, when I had declared that the FBI’s leadership culture needed to improve, someone handed me a survey showing we had the second-best leadership survey results among the seventeen agencies in the United States intelligence community. I returned the survey, explaining that I didn’t care; I wasn’t measuring us against them. I was measuring us against us, and we weren’t nearly good enough. The tough and kind leader loves her people enough to know they can always improve their game. She lights a fire in them to always get better.
I knew there were other areas where we could improve, and I suggested to the entire workforce that they read Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” one of the most important things I ever read. Inspired in part by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, King’s letter is about seeking justice in a deeply flawed world. I have reread it several times since first encountering it in college. Because I knew that the FBI’s interaction with the civil rights movement, and Dr. King in particular, was a dark chapter in the Bureau’s history, I wanted to do something more. I ordered the creation of a curriculum at the FBI’s Quantico training academy. I wanted all agent and analyst trainees to learn the history of the FBI’s interaction with King, how the legitimate counterintelligence mission against Communist infiltration of our government had morphed into an unchecked, vicious campaign of harassment and extralegal attack on the civil rights leader and others. I wanted them to remember that well-meaning people lost their way. I wanted them to know that the FBI sent King a letter blackmailing him and suggesting he commit suicide. I wanted them to stare at that history, visit the inspiring King Memorial in Washington, D.C., with its long arcs of stone bearing King’s words, and reflect on the FBI’s values and our responsibility to always do better.
The FBI Training Division created a curriculum that does just that. All FBI trainees study that painful history and complete the course by visiting the memorial. There, they choose one of Dr. King’s quotations from the wall—maybe “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” or “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy”—and then write an essay about the intersection of that quotation and the FBI’s values. The course doesn’t tell the trainees what to think. It only tells them they must think, about history and institutional values. Last I checked, the course remains one of the highest-rated portions of their many weeks at Quantico.
To drive the message home, I obtained a copy of the October 1963 memo from J. Edgar Hoover to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy seeking permission to conduct electronic surveillance of Dr. King. At the bottom of the single-page memo, which is only five sentences long and without meaningful facts, Kennedy’s signature grants that authority, without limit as to time and place. I put the memo under the glass on the corner of the desk where every morning I reviewed applications by the FBI and the Department of Justice to conduct national security electronic surveillance in the United States. As Hoover did, I was required to personally sign an application. The difference was that our applications went to a court and were often thicker than my arm. As I would explain to employees, it is a pain in the neck to get permission to conduct that kind of surveillance, and it should be.
I kept the Hoover memo there not to make a critical statement about Hoover or Kennedy, but to make a statement about the value of oversight and constraint. I have no doubt that Hoover and Kennedy thought they were doing the right thing. What they lacked was meaningful testing of their assumption
s. There was nothing to check them. It is painful to stare openly at ourselves, but it is the only way to change the future.
The FBI rank and file reacted very positively to this and other initiatives, something I could see in their annual anonymous rating of me across the organization. But I knew some FBI alumni were confused as to why I seemed to be “attacking” the organization I led. But transparency is almost always the best course. Getting problems, pain, hopes, and doubts out on the table so we can talk honestly about them and work to improve is the best way to lead. By acknowledging our issues, we have the best chance of resolving them in a healthy way. Buried pain never gets better with age. And by remembering and being open and truthful about our mistakes, we reduce the chance we will repeat them.
Harry Truman once said, “The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.” Humans tend to do the same dumb things, and the same evil things, again and again, because we forget.
CHAPTER 9
THE WASHINGTON LISTEN
Let me not seek as much … to be understood as to understand.
—PEACE PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS
ERIC GARNER. TAMIR RICE. Walter Scott. Freddie Gray.
Those are the names of some of the black civilians who died during encounters with the police in 2014 and 2015. Those encounters were captured on video, and those videos went viral, igniting communities that had been soaked in the flammable liquid of discrimination and mistreatment. And although it didn’t involve video of the shooting, one death, in particular, rocked the country. On August 9, 2014, a young black man named Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, touching off weeks of unrest in that community and bringing unprecedented attention in America to the use of deadly force by police against black people.
