Strong Leaders, Weak Organizations
Paradox or Pattern?
An article titled Master of the House: The Pelosi Paradox — How the Strongest Speaker Made Congress Weak hit my inbox this morning. The article is interesting and illustrates an important point that I want to get to in a moment. The title is infuriating.
The thrust of the article is that the significant legislative accomplishments under Pelosi’s leadership came at the price of further shifting power and control over the legislative process away from committees and into the hands of a “small coterie of leadership and membership.” This caused the committee structure to atrophy and significantly weakened the representative nature of the House and its strength as an institution.
The title is problematic on multiple levels. I’m angered by the unthinking use of a male-gendered term associated with slavery to imply that a strong female leader is the cause of the weakness of Congress. The article itself makes clear that Pelosi’s strategies contributed to an evolution that began in the 1970s, involved both Democratic and Republican (male) leaders, and was responsive to contemporary challenges of increasing partisan polarization and thin majority margins. So, obviously, Nancy Pelosi’s fault.
Sorry, but I had to get that off my chest. The title was particularly infuriating in the wake of the recent absurd and obscene NY Times column about how women have supposedly ruined the workplace (I refuse to link to the column itself, but you might enjoy this thread of all the things that women have ruined). Now on to my actual main point.
That “strong” leaders weaken institutions is not so much a paradox as a pattern.
We love “strong” leaders. We love their charisma and the way they plow through resistance to just get things done (as long as it’s our things getting done).
The problem is that, when we define a “strong” leader as someone who successfully centers power and control in their own hands, we are necessarily also promoting weak organizational governance and therefore weak organizations. We may accomplish our goals in the short run, but we end up sacrificing the long-term health of the organization and its mission.
That has been playing out nationally in our political system. Strategic moves by congressional leaders were paralleled by decades of effort by presidents of both parties to expand their power at the expense of Congress and the courts. Now, at the moment of crisis, we are paying the price.
The pattern plays out in every domain, not just in the political system. Just in the last few months I’ve learned of several nonprofit organizations where a charismatic leader has constrained the organization’s capacity to adjust to change and even threatened its very existence. It’s so common, particularly with founders, as to be cliché.
The problem is that leaders are never “strong” in isolation; they are always part of a larger organizational system. When initiative and power are ceded to the leader, other sources of power and leadership atrophy. In nonprofits, over-powerful leaders inevitably are matched by weak boards. In other contexts, command-and-control styles deprive teams and organizations of the wisdom and dynamism available from the broader base of members and employees. To say nothing in both cases of the consequences for leadership transitions; the departure of a “strong” leader is often the trigger for years of dysfunction.
I have certainly been guilty of the tendency myself, opting to just get things done rather than expend the effort required to build up a team. Things get done. Opportunities are lost. Over and over.
It’s not an easy problem to fix — it’s deeply ingrained in our culture. But I want to propose we begin with language. The words “strong leader” too easily evoke a simplistic image of (inevitably) a man in control, someone able to single-handedly power through and get things done. So I propose we reclaim the term by explicitly and deliberately redefining strong leader in terms of what would actually accomplish what we so desperately need from our institutions and organizations.
For me a strong leader is someone who:
Fosters leadership behaviors from everyone around them
Welcomes accountability
Prioritizes the health and long-term viability of the team or organization
What would you add?
Afterthoughts
Thinking About Governance. I sat down today determined to send out an article, one of the two I’ve been working on, neither of which is this one. Schumann’s newsletter topic and title set me off, as you have seen. But one of those articles actually is about governance and I already suspected it would turn out to be part of a series. I guess today’s was the first :).
Governance When the World is On Fire. Speaking of governance, I love how this article reclaims the word: “Governance is not a word we speak enough. We speak of politics, of policy, of power. But governance — real governance — begins in the quiet places where we live our lives. It begins in kitchens and courtyards, in markets and workplaces, in assemblies and living rooms. It is the tender work of deciding together how we will be to each other.”
First Branch Forecast is Daniel Schumann’s newsletter focused “on transparency and governance issues being considered by Congress and the Executive branch.” Today’s article made me mad, but I do generally find it interesting and helpful.
If you have thoughts you wish to share on anything I’ve said here, or would like to have a conversation about how it might apply in your community or organzation, please reply to the newsletter email or contact me here.