The Playbook for Tomorrow’s Leaders
Hey Reader,
Right now, my city is burning. And I am grieving. While my family and I are safe, too many aren’t. The scale of suffering is almost unimaginable except it is equally tragic and equally real.
First the important stuff. If you feel so called here are some credible organizations that do life saving work that are accepting donations:
World Central Kitchen
LAFD
California Fire Foundation
Best Friends LA
Leadership is made or broken in tiny moments. It can be grand sweeping gestures of history (“I have a dream…”) but it can also be demonstrated in quiet moments between the scenes of history.
Churchill’s stirring wartime rhetoric and FDR’s fireside chats offer clear examples of each. They demonstrate what is required of all leaders: both warmth (compassion) and strength (competence). The challenge is that data suggests that high performance on one metric can limit perceptions of efficacy on the other. Women get biased into the former category where men, to a lesser degree, to the latter.
And in a rapidly escalating crisis, time is a precious commodity so you have little time to demonstrate both.
These are the hallmarks of great people and the gauntlet of crisis management: Connect then Lead.
In fact there is a related 2×2 matrix that is the way all leaders are assessed, often in snap judgments (fairly or not):
People won’t care what you say unless you demonstrate you care about them. You have to enter their inner circle before they will enter yours.
If people are angry, hurt or triggered that circle becomes a ring of fire that you have to cross.
Can you perform alchemy and change it to a circle of trust?
And then you have to actually get the job done after that.
This is why both purely technocratic leaders and solely empathetic ones fail the mark of leadership.
Simon Sinek reframes this as trust v performance matrix, based on his work consulting with Navy Seals. Many organizations fail because they have a plethora of tools to identify and promote high performers but few for high trust individuals. Toxicity ensues. It’s also why so many people seem to dislike their bosses.
But what allows someone to be both deeply caring and deeply competent? The authors don’t really comment on that but I would argue it is this:
power can only be properly wielded by those who have truly felt powerlessness
That central background of trauma and tragedy becomes an organizing force in people’s lives. It spurs people to learn to overcome pain (acquire skills and competence) to ensure no else suffers the same (empathy for others).
Unfortunately, that same hurt can move people to narcissism and destruction.
The same environment can build one person up and break another down.
It’s the majesty and madness of human nature.
In the era of cellphone cameras everywhere, we are getting a glimpse into of what leadership looks like without publicists, handlers and other personnel. The glimpse has been revealing as much as it has been dispiriting at times.
In crisis, great leaders make you feel safe.
This moment Karen Bass found herself at a loss of words. She was confronted about her arrival into Los Angeles Wednesday. She had been away to attend the inauguration of the President of Ghana last week on a cultural exchange trip despite early warnings of historically bad Santa Ana winds. A reporter happen to be on the plane with her, and asked her disaster response during the last 48 hours as the Palisades were burning and she was gone:
The silence is deafening.
This moment will be politically ruinous and comparable to President Biden’s calamitous debate with now President Elect Trump or Ted Cruz’s trip to Cancun as his state has freezing and in the dark.
The first task of leadership in a crisis is to communicate clearly. Express empathy. Validate people’s concerns. Show and show up, not simply tell.
And yes, optics do matter. Because leadership is not simply a press conference or a white paper sent out by pdf. Leadership is in the doing of things. We are visual creatures living in a visually rich media environment.
It’s an open question how much more a Mayor can do the ground since her primary role is having meetings and coordinating the response. That can be done on airplane with a strong wifi connection and a Zoom link.
But physically being present with grieving families and holding their hands, is everything. Proximity is power.
We in medicine know this well. Recall the old adage by Dr. Francis Peabody – the care of the patient is in the caring of the patient.
And that’s what healthcare providers here in LA have been doing.
Mayor Bass, take notes.
Leadership in the practicalities is about threat detection. The era of the culture wars has convinced too many people that “owning the libs” or ridiculing the “red-pillers” is the job. No it’s not. That’s simply feeding the outrage machine.
The job is to protect first, then innovate. You have to take off the break before you can put on the gas.
Here’s an exercise I often give to clients. Identify and prepare for the top ten threats to your organization, company, family, city or even country. List them on a paper. Do it right now. By hand if possible because you’ll retain the information better. Identify the 1 person to head that project and the budget you’ll need.
Now create a separate workflow and action plan to shore up that threat within the next 6 months.
If your response is like mine, you’ll be shocked at how many big ticket items and things need to get done. How much you’ve been ignoring to focus on trivial things.
Leadership is primal. Focus on the essential.
If you’re POTUS, that might be some consequential actions: safeguarding our nuclear arsenal or creating a new cyber security team.
If you’re a mom of young kids, it could be an infection, a car accident while they play on their bikes, or bullying at school.
And if If you’re in California, it certainly involves wildfires.
I learned this lesson from reading the book by famed Intel CEO the late Andy Grove, Only the Paranoid Survive. “Improvise, adapt, and overcome” as the Marines say.
You have to anticipate that which is unpredictable. .
Unique, once in a 100 year, Black Swan events are happening more frequently.
After the pandemic we all wondered what would come next. Now we know.
I have grown up in Los Angeles since I was 1. I returned back to the city in 2013 after almost a decade away for my education. My parents live here. I met my wife here. And I am proud to say my son was born here.
I call many places home but I am an Angeleno at heart.
The devastation I see here truly saddens me. It’s been hard to fight back tears, either in front of patients or my son.
But I know the community that exists here and that the city will rise again. LA2028 Olympics will be a great way to show how much progress we can make.
The greatest asset we ever have is the people we love. Leaders recognize and good people embody it. I guess that makes me an anti-Machiavellian.
I have seen good people here help strangers and take them in; strangers donate money and meals to families; vets caring for lost and scared animals. There is a fire station less than 5 minutes walking distance from my house and the community has been offering food and thanks to the weary firefighters.
For a misanthrope like me, it gives me hope. In an era where institutions are crumbling or becoming decadent, I still argue the future is bright because of the people I see around me.
As Chef Jose Andres of World Central Kitchen says, “In the worst moments of humanity, the best of humanity shows up”
I often write about heroes. They are ones.
We might say they are the real angels in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula.
Tomorrow Can’t Wait,
PS And if you count LA out; you’d be wrong. Just wait till the Olympics in LA 2028. We’ll put on a world class show.
