A Passion for Leadership

by Robert M Gates

  Retirees are generally not an important stakeholder in most private and even public institutions, but they are a powerful constituency for the military services (and Defense Department more broadly), the CIA, and some other outfits. Foremost, of course, are the veterans’ service organizations (VSOs) such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. These groups have enormous clout in Congress, particularly when it comes to pay and benefits for service members and veterans. As the then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi once told me, when it comes to military compensation and benefits, “We primarily pay attention to the VSOs”—that is, as opposed to the secretary of defense.

  In addition, each service has multiple external, private organizations that closely monitor the health of the service, whether it’s getting its fair share of the budget, whether the secretary of defense favors one service over another, and if Congress is being helpful or not. While these groups have a far broader base than just retirees (such as representatives of the defense industries), like alumni at a university, they have real influence—in Congress, inside the Pentagon, and certainly among veterans. They have professional publications of their own to either praise or excoriate decisions affecting their service. In a speech to the Navy League, I once referred to the need to reconsider the way we use and deploy aircraft carriers. I heard about that one for months. Likewise from army retirees when I canceled that service’s Future Combat System, the centerpiece for army modernization yet vastly overpriced and failing to adequately protect soldiers from IEDs and other threats. I had, according to one retired general, “gutted the entire future of the Army.” And the response of retired air force fighter pilots to my capping production of the F-22 fighter jet was equally hyperbolic about what I had done to the future of America’s air superiority.

  Even retired intelligence officers have their own organizations. While these organizations generally stay out of the political fray, they often invite currently serving senior intelligence officers to speak at meetings, and individual attendees make their views known on such occasions as well as in contacts with journalists and legislators.

  In addition to alumni and retirees, leaders of public and private bureaucracies will have professional societies to deal with, as well as activists with a focused agenda (like environmentalists). If something happens that gets a leader or his business or institution into the national news, he will get more “help” than he needs from advocacy groups, lawyers, specialized organizations, and celebrities. When A&M was providing shelter in our basketball arena for hundreds of evacuees fleeing Houston in anticipation of Hurricane Rita, university police removed a man claiming to be transgendered from a women’s shower room after an elderly woman evacuee complained. I got an earful from advocacy groups about that episode (as a result of which we subsequently provided separate facilities).

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  All stakeholders have the potential to be supportive and helpful—but also to wreck a leader’s plans. Each kind of bureaucratic institution—indeed, every organization, public or private—will have its unique batch of such groups. But no matter how different they may be, the best approach is to treat them with respect, transparency, an open door, an open mind, and a willingness to take time to listen. Take them seriously, take their concerns seriously, and, wherever possible, try to address their issues and implement some of their suggestions. That is the way a good leader can make friends and allies. What turns off all stakeholders and makes them into antagonists is condescension and being ignored. When it comes to stakeholders, abide by the law of the conservation of enemies: make as few as possible. What can seem like a nuisance in the short term will pay off in the long term.

  7

  The Agent of Change: “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall”

  Now we come to the critical factor in leading bureaucratic reform: the leader himself, the potential single point of failure. Many senior government and business officials have written about their experiences as leaders and offer their observations on how to be successful. But American popular culture offers its own comedic insights into what works and what doesn’t. Casey Stengel, the legendary manager of the New York Yankees and Mets, once ascribed his success to “keeping the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.” The famous football coach Vince Lombardi would warn his team, “If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you’ll be fired with enthusiasm.” The film director Alfred Hitchcock wrote, “There’s nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.” Perhaps my favorite tongue-in-cheek formula for successful leadership, though, is attributable to the humorist and writer on bureaucratese James Boren, who wrote, “When in charge, ponder; when in trouble, delegate; when in doubt, mumble.”

  Real leadership, however, is a rare commodity. Believe me, I know. I have worked for eight U.S. presidents—including four in the White House—and observed or worked with fourteen secretaries of state, thirteen secretaries of defense, nine chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, fourteen national security advisers, ten directors of the CIA, and more generals, admirals, and ambassadors than I can count. I have known scores of university presidents and served on the board of directors of companies large and small. And I have had the opportunity to interact with many foreign heads of government and historical figures, including Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, Anwar Sadat, Vladimir Putin, and Yitzhak Rabin. To say their styles of leadership varied would be something of an understatement. But my focus here is on what I believe to be the characteristics of leadership needed in America, both in our governmental institutions at all levels where reform is of the essence and in the private sector.

  I’ve already discussed some of the qualities required for successfully leading reform—vision, strategic thinking, attention to implementation, transparency, treating people respectfully, political finesse with stakeholders. What I want to discuss now is not the tools and tactics of successful leadership but rather the personal qualities I believe necessary to effectively lead enduring change. How does a true leader conduct himself?

  The best leaders have their egos under control.

  They empower subordinates who are given the lion’s share of credit and accolades when success comes. Such leaders are strong enough and confident enough to stay in the background while subordinates are praised. A leader’s primary goal should be to get the job done, not personal glorification or self-satisfaction.

  When King Louis XIV of France received word in 1704 that his army had been defeated at Blenheim by the British, he is said to have complained, “How could God do this to me, after all I’ve done for Him?” Unfortunately, like Louis, too many leaders are so full of themselves they think they’re doing favors for God—and everyone else—just by their very existence and by doing the job they’re in. Everything is about them. Egotism is easily detected, and it’s often the little things that give it away. Fury over minor inconveniences, temper tantrums over trivial matters, indifference to the needs or feelings of others. I’ve been told about cabinet officers, generals, admirals, and business executives who were abusive to staff or flew off the handle because the crust wasn’t removed from their sandwich bread, the mustard was misplaced on the dinner tray, rain was wrecking their hairdo, the wrong kind of bottled water was served, too much condensation had accumulated on their glass of ice water (really!), their chauffeured SUV wasn’t there at exactly the moment they were ready, or the departure of their personal plane was delayed by weather.

  As secretary of defense, I once made a surprise secret trip overseas and was accompanied by a four-star admiral whose headquarters was outside the Pentagon. The air force folks who fly military VIPs (and members of Congress) keep a list of the personal preferences of their regular “customers,” and when the crew chief of the plane I was using learned at the last minute that this admiral was to be on board, he nearly had a meltdown. Apparently, the admiral had a pages-long list of dining, drinking, and other preferences, and the cr
ew chief had no time to fulfill his wants and so anticipated a real ass chewing. I told him to relax. As long as my list was fulfilled, he didn’t need to worry about the admiral’s. And my standard list of preferences for overseas travel had only two items on it—Grey Goose vodka and a piece of lemon to go with it. The crew chief was genuinely shaken nonetheless.

  Egotists are incredibly sensitive to slights. Being seated too distant from the top person in a meeting or at a dinner, or being at a table of people they consider inappropriately low-ranking compared with their own stature, will set them off. I’ve seen powerful men literally weep when informed they were not invited to fly on Air Force One or not on the list for a state dinner. Years ago, one very senior State Department official was so obsessive about getting into meetings with the president that the Secret Service joked that if one of them saw a lump under the carpet in the West Wing moving in the direction of the Oval Office, he was to step on it—it had to be this official, whom they nicknamed “the ferret.” Similarly, if the same fellow wasn’t invited to a state dinner at the White House, it was rumored the Secret Service would double-check the waiters’ identities to make sure he wasn’t disguising himself to gain entry.

  Egotists treat subordinates badly. Joseph Persico wrote in Roosevelt’s Centurions that General George Marshall disliked “the truculent personality—the man who confused firmness and strength with bad manners and deliberate discourtesy.” Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his memoirs, “It did seem to me, in my early army days, that too many of the older officers, when they came to command posts, made it a study to think what orders they could publish to annoy their subordinates and render them uncomfortable.” He also wrote that Lincoln’s secretary of war Edwin Stanton “cared nothing for the feelings of others” and that General George Meade “was unfortunately of a temper that would get beyond his control, at times, and make him speak to officers of high rank in the most offensive manner.”

  Sadly, behavior that was offensive in the nineteenth century is commonplace in the twenty-first. The consequences go well beyond morale and working conditions. The last thing the egotist wants is candor, particularly if that includes implied criticism or even a hint that the boss is somehow shy of perfection in all things. It stifles creativity. If someone comes up with a good idea, the egotist is quick to dismiss it because it was someone else’s—or take credit for it with superiors. The sharpest, best people will do whatever they can to avoid serving with such people. Subordinates will hesitate about making decisions for fear of the egotist’s wrath at independent thinking or action, much less the consequences of something going wrong. In short, the environment created by an egotist is the antithesis of what is required to lead reform successfully. An egotist cannot help being an autocrat, the type of boss who unilaterally decides what changes are needed and implements them by fiat from above—the thunderbolt approach to leading change. It is nearly always guaranteed to fail.

  The handmaiden of egotism is arrogance, and we see the results of arrogance every day in the news. I mean executives in both government and the private sector who come to believe that the rules governing others don’t apply to them, that they are so smart they can avoid getting caught, or at least evade the consequences of wrongdoing. Whether it’s presidents lying or breaking the law, governors and members of Congress getting caught with their hands in the cookie jar, or the heads of major companies going to jail or being forced to resign because of fraud, insider trading, or other lawbreaking and wrongful acts, arrogance is at the root of their crimes.

  But you don’t have to be a criminal to be arrogant. Like everyone else, I’ve worked with and for such people throughout my career. You can’t tell arrogant leaders anything they don’t already know. They disdain advice, especially from underlings but even from peers and superiors. They often operate just barely inside the rules. They are supremely self-confident, amazingly lacking in self-awareness, incapable of introspection, and generally unpleasant to deal with. They are usually bullies. And they can be found throughout the ranks of management, not just at the top.

  Arrogant egotists also are people who crave power. Like a black hole in space, they draw to themselves all decision-making authority and constantly seek to expand their bureaucratic empires, to continue growing their power. They weaken everyone around them. The power hungry have no sense of limits.

  An arrogant egotist is exactly the wrong person to lead reform in a bureaucracy.

  A leader, or those who aspire to that role, regardless of whether in the public or the private sector, must have integrity.

  Every leader in public service and business will at some point need to stand apart and alone—to speak truth to power and to do the right thing. That can be a very lonely place. But it is where leaders who can effectively reform institutions are found.

  In King Richard II, William Shakespeare wrote, “Mine honor is my life; both grow in one; / Take honor from me, and my life is done.” Yet the concept of personal honor seems rather quaint nowadays. In fact, one rarely hears of it anymore. It meant everything to our Founding Fathers. “A young man should weigh well his plans,” John Adams wrote to his son Thomas. “Integrity should be preserved in all events, as essential to his happiness, thro every stage of his existence. His first maxim then, should be to place his honor out of the reach of all men.” The Declaration of Independence concludes with the signatories pledging to one another “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

  Honor is defined as “honesty and integrity in one’s beliefs and actions,” integrity being “adherence to moral principle and character.” Words like these are not heard much in our public discourse today. But I believe these words and what they represent are the bedrock of effective leadership. If you seek to lead men and women, you must persuade them to follow you. That means they must trust you. Herbert Asquith, British prime minister from 1908 to 1916, wrote, “To speak with the tongue of men and angels, and to spend laborious days and nights in administration, is no good if a man does not inspire trust.” A leader’s actions must match his words. People must believe he means what he says, that his promises matter and are not just idle rhetoric. Integrity in action becomes moral authority, and it is moral authority that moves people to follow someone even at personal risk or sacrifice—or even when they disagree.

  Sadly, there are far too few leaders today publicly noted for their personal integrity and who carry the mantle of moral authority. It seems that every time we pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, or go online, we read about yet another government or business leader who has been caught lying, cheating, or stealing. But even more pervasive, though less obvious yet no less damaging, is a willingness to look the other way when others are behaving dishonorably, to pretend that certain villainous acts are okay because others are doing them, or to believe that dishonor in one’s personal life can be isolated from one’s professional life.

  My personal lesson in doing the right thing came during the Iran-contra scandal that broke in 1986, a scandal involving a secret effort to fund the anticommunist contras in Nicaragua with the profits from arms sales to Iran. It almost resulted in President Reagan’s impeachment. The CIA director, William Casey, orchestrated the effort in league with the national security adviser, keeping it secret from all but a few people in the CIA and elsewhere in government. I had been Casey’s deputy (for five months) and testified before the special counsel Lawrence Walsh that I had first learned the outlines of what was going on in October 1986. At that point, I informed Casey (who did not let on that he already knew about the scheme), as well as the agency’s general counsel, and, following the latter’s advice, informed the national security adviser (not realizing he was deeply involved in the matter). Walsh was convinced I had been told about the arms-for-profit deal a few weeks earlier, but he could never prove it. I never denied that I might have been told a few weeks earlier, but simply did not remember any such conversation. Over the years to come, others in the agency who had been in on the Iran-c
ontra deal testified that I had been kept in the dark. While uncertainties about what I knew and when I knew it derailed my nomination to replace Casey as DCI in the spring of 1987, as more information came out, members of Congress continued to trust me. I remained as deputy DCI under Bill Webster and would be confirmed in 1991 as DCI under President George H. W. Bush.

  I relate this story because, through this searing experience, I came to realize that while I had done nothing wrong, I hadn’t done enough right. After informing the already-aware Casey, the CIA general counsel, and the national security adviser about what I had learned, during the month that followed before the scandal broke publicly, I did nothing else. I didn’t go to the White House counsel, to the chairmen of the congressional oversight committees, or to the attorney general. I told myself for years that I only knew part of the story, I was no lawyer and didn’t even know if laws had been broken (the agency’s general counsel did not tell me he thought the activity illegal), and I had no reason then to mistrust Casey’s professed ignorance of the arrangement. But when it was all over, I knew, in my heart of hearts, by my own standard of conduct, I had somehow fallen short. I swore it would never happen again.

  For most at or near the top of the bureaucratic heap, it is not the great crime that undermines integrity but the little things that erode it. When I became DCI, my personal secretary from time to time would come into my office and share the latest gossip about which senior CIA officials were having affairs. I told her to stop. I said that such information made it very difficult for me to work with those men because if their wives couldn’t trust them, why should I—or the country? I couldn’t fire them, but I couldn’t fully rely on them either.