A Passion for Leadership

by Robert M Gates

  The gangster Al Capone allegedly once said, “You can get a lot more done with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.” Still, never underestimate the power of a kind word. Treating subordinates properly always pays dividends—and others notice. It doesn’t mean being a soft touch.

  Leaders can—and, when necessary, must—level tough criticism at individuals, but due regard for their dignity requires doing it in private, not adding embarrassment and humiliation to the equation. Criticism, done privately, is far more likely to bring about constructive change. “Praise in public, criticize in private,” as the saying goes.

  Even firing people can be done in a way that preserves that dignity—such as offering to let them resign. At A&M, when I fired vice presidents, in nearly every case I gave each a year or so to step down. I had the time to do that because, in academia, searches for replacements are long and drawn-out affairs—although jobs with special requirements often take a long time to fill in both the private and the public sectors. In my case, before acting at A&M, I had my chief of staff look into where the departing employee stood in terms of eligibility for retirement, potential loss of benefits, and so on; I needed to remove such employees, but I did not want to punish or hurt them. In one or two cases, I delayed acting for a few months to ensure there was no loss of retirement or other benefits. Leaders should never lose their humanity. And when I told those employees it was time to go, I said I would go along with any story they wanted to concoct; if they wanted to tell people they quit because they couldn’t work for that son of a bitch Gates, I wouldn’t contradict them.

  At Defense, when I told senior officers they had to go, I let them resign. I also tried to be gracious in any public statements I made, pointing to their long record of public service. On at least two occasions, I spoke at the farewell or retirement ceremony for senior leaders—our top Afghan commander and the secretary of the air force—whom I had let go in a very public and abrupt way (given the urgency, I felt there was no alternative). Each was classy enough to invite me to attend his ceremony and I returned the gesture by paying tribute to his many real accomplishments without being patronizing or disingenuous. I think the two men appreciated it, although the friends and family present were probably of a different mind.

  You can be the toughest, most demanding leader on the planet and still treat people with respect and dignity. Whether it’s the lowest-level supervisory position or the very top job, a leader can and should treat people right. To quote President Harry Truman, “Always be nice to all the people who can’t talk back to you. I can’t stand a man or woman who bawls out underlings to satisfy an ego.”

  To lead reform successfully, a leader must empower subordinates.

  Whether the changes a leader wants to make are sweeping, minor, or something in between, she cannot achieve them alone. She needs to trust those on the team below her who should have been involved from the outset in establishing goals and the plans to achieve them. A leader must be willing to delegate to them the authority to carry out plans. One person simply cannot effectively oversee implementation of significant change that affects multiple parts of an organization. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a government bureaucracy or a business.

  At each affected layer of the organization, there needs to be a leader committed to the overall agenda, a leader who has the authority not only to implement but also to adjust or adapt plans as needed. Generals develop strategy; they don’t hover over captains and lieutenants to see if they are doing their jobs on the front lines. There is a reason for the military chain of command: everyone knows his or her job but, within the realm of their specific responsibilities, can make tactical adjustments to achieve success. The same principle applies to bureaucracies, public and private.

  In each of the large institutions in which I led change, I depended heavily on the officials who reported to me to carry out my directions. Once I made a decision, I counted on the CIA’s deputy directors and the heads of other intelligence agencies, the deans and vice presidents at A&M, and the military leaders and senior civilians at Defense for implementation. I expected them—along with task force chairs and those heading other entities—to report on their progress to me on a regular basis. Equally important, I expected to be informed when someone ran into problems or obstructions to getting the job done so, as necessary, I could clear the blockage. I rarely had a problem when someone leading an effort or project proposed adjustments or changed a plan to make it work better. But the employees in each of those three very different organizations all knew that those leading the change efforts had my confidence and my backing and that I would support their actions and decisions.

  While I was president of A&M, an explosion caused by a gas leak in an on-campus graduate student apartment killed one person and gravely burned several others. Both the provost and I were traveling. The vice-provost and my chief of staff convened a meeting of relevant officials to address the situation, during which they learned that exhausted A&M maintenance officials were inspecting only some of the other units in that complex for additional gas leaks. My chief of staff felt empowered to direct that every apartment be inspected even if it required contracting for external professionals from all over the state—regardless of the cost. He knew that was the action I would have taken, and he took it himself knowing I would support his decision. Any leader wants his subordinates to be able to act on their own if necessary.

  That kind of empowerment is equally important in the private sector, as I saw time and again as a corporate board member. A CEO cannot successfully lead a company except as the head of a team.

  Another benefit of empowerment is that a leader ends up with a broad cadre of senior career professionals committed to implementing the change agenda. While they are not necessarily “disciples,” they do tend to believe in what a leader is trying to do. And in my experience, they will often support much of the reform agenda after the leader who initiated it leaves.

  As I sought to persuade the army not to return to its pre-9/11 conventional warfare model subsequent to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but to sustain a broad range of capabilities—based on lessons recently learned at great cost—for diverse kinds of conflict, I knew that appointing one reform-minded senior general wouldn’t be enough: the institutional army could outlast and overwhelm one person. So I advanced more than half a dozen senior army generals (Martin Dempsey, Ray Odierno, David Rodriguez, Pete Chiarelli, and Lloyd Austin, among others) who I believed shared my point of view to positions where I knew they would dominate the army for perhaps a decade or more. I also supported the secretary of the army when he brought General David Petraeus back from Iraq to chair a selection board for new brigadier generals. I wanted to make sure the colonels who had distinguished themselves commanding troops in unconventional combat would be put in a position to shape their service in the future. Too often, the “Big Army” establishment used promotions to keep perceived iconoclasts from getting into a position where they could shake things up.

  A leader empowering subordinates who believe in the desired agenda is going a long way toward ensuring reforms will endure after she is gone. Empowering subordinates also helps them develop their own leadership and decision-making styles, thereby advancing their careers and providing the institution with a strong bench of capable future senior leaders. Everybody wins.

  As I told the graduating midshipmen at the United States Naval Academy in 2011, leadership includes “the ability to stand in the shadow and let others receive attention and accolades. A leader is able to make decisions but then delegate and trust others to make things happen. This doesn’t mean turning your back after a decision and hoping for the best. It does mean trusting people at the same time you hold them accountable. The bottom line: a self-confident leader doesn’t cast such a large shadow that no one else can grow.”

  A successful leader—and reformer—never misses an opportunity to give credit to those working for him as a group and as individuals. He also
is willing to let excellent employees move on when they are offered new opportunities or a chance to ascend the ladder.

  Too many bosses, when congratulated by higher-ups for some accomplishment, are content to take all the credit for themselves. The real leader will give credit to those who did the hard work that made success possible. Every time I praised a commander in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan, he would immediately tell me—and everyone else—that it was all the doing of his soldiers or marines. No one likes a glory hog.

  A good leader helps create opportunities for the members of his team. It is hard to let go of a superior performer; it is nearly always a genuine loss to the organization. But I know of too many instances where a boss has refused to let someone go (by weighing in with higher-ups, arguing that the loss would imperil overall performance) or has even actively sabotaged a move up by someone he wanted to keep. When I was first invited to join the NSC staff in 1974 on loan from the CIA, one of my senior bosses at the agency told me flat out there probably would not be a job for me when I wanted to return. Too many aspiring people at every level have had the experience of “leaders” putting obstacles in their career way forward.

  After my personal experience at the CIA, I tried to be supportive of superb subordinates who had a chance to move up or on to better positions. As secretary of defense, I hated to lose my old friend and colleague Jim Clapper as undersecretary of defense for intelligence, but when President Obama asked him to become director of national intelligence, I knew it would be a step up for Jim and that it was the right move also for the country. Truth to tell, I even proposed Jim’s name to the president. I relied heavily on all of my senior military assistants and, in every case, would have liked to keep them longer. But I would not stand in their way.

  The chief of protocol at the Pentagon has myriad responsibilities including arranging visits by foreign leaders, a wide range of ceremonies, and presidential visits. Mary Claire Murphy held the position when I became secretary, and she was a genius at it—warm, welcoming, creative, and attentive to detail. She had been doing protocol work for years and was offered a job at a major corporation to oversee its foundation and charitable efforts. It was a rare opportunity to broaden her experience and get into a field far less dependent on the political fortunes of her bosses. And so, with great reluctance, I encouraged her to take the job. How good was she? Years later, she was still being called back into service for major events—including organizing the memorial ceremony (at which the president spoke) at Fort Hood for the thirteen soldiers who were killed there.

  For any leader in any business or public sector bureaucracy, blocking the advancement of his people is short-term, shortsighted thinking. If a leader’s organization is seen as high performing and a place where promising people have a chance to grow and to see their careers fostered and advanced, the highest-quality individuals will want to work there. Such an office will soon acquire a reputation as a launching pad for further career success rather than a dead-end job. Believe me, a leader’s own superiors will notice when a disproportionate number of highfliers seem consistently to come from one place.

  Empowerment means taking care of one’s subordinates in other ways as well, including bringing to their attention opportunities for professional education or broadening, as well as for advancement. Little things can mean a lot, such as including junior professionals in meetings with senior officials so they have an opportunity to demonstrate their skills or giving them face time with other leaders in the organization so they get known. One of the many reasons I admired Michèle Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy who worked for me during Obama’s first term, was her determined effort to enhance the performance, career, and potential of all those who worked for her. She was a true leader in this regard.

  As DCI, I relished sending a GS-13 analyst expert (an army major would be a military equivalent) to the Oval Office to brief the president. I had great confidence he or she would do well, whether I went along or not. I never had one let me down. As secretary of defense, on foreign trips sometimes I would have a young desk officer ride to the formal evening event in the limo with me and pass through the honor guard and welcoming ceremonies by my side. It was recognition of that person’s hard work, but I also knew, from my own experience, he would never forget the occasion. It also had the ancillary benefit of making an impression on the senior foreign officials our desk officer would be dealing with long after my trip was over. It demonstrated that this mid-level American interlocutor had the ear of the boss, so those he’d be dealing with would pay better attention and show some respect.

  From the vantage point of the corner office, whether you are a corporate CEO, the secretary of defense choosing the next generation of military leaders, or a middle manager, identifying talent and growing it are two of the primary responsibilities of a leader. Maybe one of the reasons I feel so strongly about these particular responsibilities of a leader is that I owe my career success to such an act of empowerment. The DCI Bill Casey and his deputy, Bob Inman, passed over dozens of more senior officers to appoint me as the CIA’s deputy director for intelligence in January 1982 because they had the confidence I could succeed, and they were willing to let me go as chief of their executive staff to assume the new job.

  A leader who looks out for his subordinates will almost always reap big dividends.

  A successful leader must always be evaluating the people around and below her. She should empower the strong, try to help those who show promise despite shortcomings, and get rid of the deadwood.

  One of the fundamental roles of a leader is to assess her people: Who is an asset, and who is a liability? In nearly all public bureaucracies, evaluating the performance of individuals and acting on that evaluation is a deeply flawed process. Determining someone’s performance with some accuracy and fairness is often difficult. Telling someone in person about his shortcomings and weaknesses—areas for improvement—or even his strengths in a constructive way is even tougher. The result is often that a supervisor is so negative that the individual thinks he’s about to be fired or, more commonly, the discussion is so anodyne that someone who is not performing up to snuff thinks he’s doing just fine.

  Written evaluations are even worse. In the military, individuals are scored on a number of different criteria, from worst possible performance (an X in the far-left-hand column) to best (an X in the far-right column). In practice, any mark not in the far-right column is disastrous and mostly a career ender. Similarly, if in the “comments” section the individual is not described as walking on water and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, the chances of promotion are slim. Supervisors are reluctant to provide honest comments precisely because they have such disproportionate consequences. Thus, to take a worst-case example, several supervisors would later acknowledge they saw disturbing behavior on the part of Major Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood soldier who killed thirteen people in a rampage, but they never recorded it in his evaluations. While that is obviously an extreme case, the failure to make an employee’s problems and weaknesses part of the evaluation record is typical.

  For subordinates, such an evaluation system encourages timidity and an unwillingness to challenge superiors or to be candid. If they just keep their heads down, they will be assured a good review and a shot at future promotions. Rocking the boat puts that future at risk.

  Although the preparation of personal performance evaluations at the CIA was not quite as skewed as in the military, the same tendencies were prevalent. Indeed, when I was deputy DCI, from time to time I was asked by senior officials to approve early retirement for an individual based on poor performance. I would call for the individual’s personnel folder, and, sure enough, the performance ratings for the preceding several years were always “strong” or “outstanding.” After years of failing to establish a paper trail of inadequate performance, supervisors wanted me to push someone into retirement. In such cases, I usually refused in the hope of forcing more honest app
raisals. It was a forlorn hope. I encountered much the same situation at A&M, although I did ask the vice president overseeing human resources to devise a process that gave supervisors freedom to provide more substantive feedback to employees.

  The ability of a leader in a bureaucracy to move people or fire them because of poor performance is significantly limited by failures of the evaluation system. Exceptions are few and far between. And, increasingly in business, you had better have a record of warnings and counseling over time if you want to fire someone, or you will face a problematic lawsuit. (The director of the CIA probably has the most comprehensive unilateral authority to fire someone in either the public or the private sector, an authority upheld by the Supreme Court. But even that authority can be challenged if it is deemed “arbitrary and capricious.” So, even at the CIA a paper trail is required.)

  Early in my CIA career, after several successive positive annual evaluations, a new boss gave me a pretty crummy report. The good news was that he gave most others in our little unit crummy reports as well. We all objected up the chain of command, and, amazingly, some months later he was fired as our branch chief. The group of us, collectively and individually, had a strong performance record, and the powers that be apparently didn’t want us transferring elsewhere because of a toxic boss. I would realize in later years what an extraordinarily rare action that was.