326 From Bad to Worse: How to Break Free from the Grip of Toxic Leadership and Cultivate a Thriving Organization with Barbara Kellerman, Founding Executive Director of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership | Partnering Leadershi

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Barbara Kellerman, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I am thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:06] barbara kellerman: Thank you so much and I'm very glad to be 

[00:00:09] Mahan Tavakoli: here. Barbara, I was mentioning to you before we got started recording that Professor Bob Beast, one of my most beloved professors at Georgetown business school is the person who turned me on to your work by telling me I should read bad leadership when I had sought his advice.

[00:00:27] So I've been following your work for decades now and can't wait to talk about your latest book, leadership from bad to worse. What happens when bad things happen? Festers. But before we get to that, Barbara, we'd love to know a little bit more about you. Whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become?

[00:00:51] barbara kellerman: So I grew up in the general New York area and I still live in the general New York area, even though it's now Connecticut, but nevertheless, New York City is my big city, my nearby city. And I think in my case, it's a particularly good question about my upbringing, because I think that my parents, profoundly impacted me in terms of political discourse at the dinner table was, I would say, an almost everyday occurrence.

[00:01:23] And of course, I didn't get that then, but I think my interest in power, my interest in good leaders and bad leaders, not just good, which I know in the leadership industry is much more common to emphasize the good. But I think I became acquainted with the good, the bad, and the ugly at a quite young age.

[00:01:44] And I would just add that I remember as a young child, people who know me won't be surprised to hear, that I was a rather strong little girl. And I remember being aware of power dynamics. It wasn't literally the schoolyard, but effectively in the schoolyard, even as a kid, as a young child, , girls have strong power relationships.

[00:02:07] And I think I was aware of that at a very young age. So I would say the combination of me and my peer relationships and also parental influences, Absolutely, again, who knew at the time pushed me into studying what I typically call power, authority, and influence. 

[00:02:26] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, in studying that, Barbara, one of the reasons I have loved your work is that if I was to visually picture it, I picture, Everyone going in one direction, and there is Professor Barbara Kellerman walking in the opposite direction, 

[00:02:43] where do you think that comes from? 

[00:02:46] barbara kellerman: First of all, you're right in two major ways really major. And I don't know where, don't know where, you know, I suppose I'd have to go into psychoanalysis to figure out where that came from. But even in consequence of your question, I will not plan on doing this, at least not just yet.

[00:03:05] Who knows what the future holds. But to support your point that is for better and worse, I might add. It's not always easy being the maverick. But in two major ways that is accurate. One you've already touched on just with the title of my book. My interest in bad, not just in good. I'm certainly interested in good leaders, don't misunderstand me.

[00:03:28] But my interest in bad goes all the way back. It began with a tiny essay that I wrote for a book called Hitler's Ghost, a Manifesto, and the Manifesto and the Hitler's Ghost, both parts of the title, wondered why the industry that I was part of, which I call the leadership industry, paid effectively no attention to bad leaders and even in particular, very bad leaders.

[00:03:59] I just never understood it and I still don't. And the other way that I am definitely not in step with most of my colleagues is my equal interest, not just in leaders, but again, equally in followers and in what I call the leadership system, which has three parts. The leader is very important, but of equal importance of the followers and of equal importance is the third part, which is the context plural within which leaders and followers are embedded.

[00:04:33] Mahan Tavakoli:  I would love to find out more about each one of those, but I'm still curious about why it is you're absolutely right that the vast majority of the books we read, the conversations I've had, 300 plus Podcast conversations are on good leadership. People slow down when they see car accidents and some psychologists write about it and say, there is a human tendency to want to learn.

[00:05:00] So when you see something you want to learn from it, so you don't get into that same situation. Why is it that we don't do that in leadership? 

[00:05:10] barbara kellerman: So I've written about this, as you can imagine, I've asked myself that question, it was so inexplicable to me that I asked myself the same question. I would say there are several reasons, but I will give you for the moment just two.

[00:05:28] One is, you and I can be honest with each other and with your audience. Which is that the leadership industry like any other industry is a money making business and the money is made in the leadership industry by teaching or hoping to teach or purporting to teach people how to be good leaders or how to lead better than they already are.

[00:05:52] That's where the money lies. It doesn't lie in looking at the dark side. And the second thing, as I said, there are multiple reasons and I've written about this. The second reason which I talk a little bit about in leadership from bad to worse is that it's a particularly knotty problem. So that, for example, your idea of a bad leader, and I'll use Donald Trump because he's such a vivid example.

[00:06:18] So you could be, a strong Trump supporter. And say, Oh, my God, what a great leader and I could look at you in horror and go, Oh, my God, he's an awful leader. He's the worst leader I ever saw the worst president of the United States. So I think the other problem is especially in this woke era.

[00:06:37] Where people are nervous about offending the other, we're a little nervous about going down the path of who considers who to be a bad leader. So when it's screamingly obvious, easy enough for us to agree, for example, that Vladimir Putin is in most ways a bad leader. But talking about the United States at this moment in time, the fever and pitch of disagreements.

[00:07:02] For example, most recently, obviously on college campuses, I'm just doing a three part series on leadership on college campuses, very hard. And one of the reasons it's hard is because your definition of good is different from mine. And that makes it very difficult and politically fraught. 

[00:07:23] Mahan Tavakoli: It is a big challenge.

[00:07:25] So how do you define bad leadership? 

[00:07:28] barbara kellerman: First of all, particularly in this last book, as you point out, I've written about bad leadership for a long time, but particularly in the last book, I declare myself. So I think the most you can do for your audience, whether it's listeners or readers, is to make clear where you're coming from.

[00:07:47] So I'm coming to this issue as an American. I'm coming as a woman. I'm coming as more of a Democrat. I think of myself as an independent, but I would say for this conversation, I'm more of a Democrat than I am a conservative Republican. So I make that clear. I think that's the biggest. Favor you can do your audience.

[00:08:08] However, having said that, in the book that you mentioned earlier, which came out a long time ago, 20 years ago, simply called bad leadership, what it is, how it happens, why it matters. I did define bad leadership along two very simple axes. Axis one is effective, ineffective. So if you're an effective leader, you're a good leader.

[00:08:36] If you're ineffective, you're bad. But equally important or arguably of greater importance is the second axis, which is ethical, unethical. If you are ethical leader, you're bad. to say the obvious. You're good. If you're unethical, you're bad. So you have immediately four boxes. It's possible, in other words, to be simultaneously effective but deeply unethical.

[00:09:05] And the extreme example of that is Adolf Hitler, to whom I referred a few moments ago. Between 1933 and 1939, I'm not talking about the war years, But as a leader of Germany became chancellor in 33 and 39, the start of the war, he was wildly effective by most measures, but of course at the same time, deeply unethical.

[00:09:31] So we're getting to a third reason why people stay away from bad leadership, which is it's complicated. You can't just, point and say there's a bad leader, or even for that matter, there are bad followers. 

[00:09:42] Mahan Tavakoli:  That complication, part of it has to do with the fact that you mentioned the four quadrants.

[00:09:49] I imagine we don't easily fall into one quadrant or the other. It depends on the role of the person, the time in the development, where they are in the organization. So part of the challenge that I see Barbara in, My decades long, not as long as yours, but still my decades long work with CEOs and senior leadership.

[00:10:13] You're making me 

[00:10:14] barbara kellerman: sound as old as Methuselah.  I am old, but not quite as old as Methuselah, just for the record. It's fine. I'm kidding. You know that you probably can pick that up. 

[00:10:27] , I like to have a good time. I love that. Barbara, and it says a lot about you to me that makes it   fun conversation.

[00:10:36] Mahan Tavakoli: So I appreciate that. Most of the leaders that I've worked with Barbara they never view themselves in either lacking ethics or effectiveness. So as the audience is listening, they're like, Oh yeah, Hitler.

[00:10:50] Sure. He makes sense. Or you give Elizabeth Holmes as an example in your book. In that case, absolutely. I totally agree. But when it comes to me. I placed pretty high on the effectiveness and on the integrity aspects of it as well. So how do you challenge people to think about themselves in that leadership before then focusing on the system and the organization?

[00:11:14] barbara kellerman: You're making a great and important point and it is why I emphasize the importance of the follower, bad leaders, whether they're ineffective or unethical or both. They don't generally wake up one morning and go, Golly gee, I've been bad. I really should change my ways. I need to go from being bad, either very bad or slightly bad, to being very good or even slightly good.

[00:11:42] That's not generally what happens. I feel so strongly about this is why I said earlier, I'm a maverick in two ways. One is my emphasis or interest in bad along with the good, but the other is my interest in an emphasis on the followers along with leaders because leaders are generally not very self aware.

[00:12:02] Or even if they're aware if they're behaving in a certain way, they generally wish to continue to behave that way. So whether it's a political leader or a bad boss in the workplace, everything I write cuts across the board, military leadership, educational leadership, religious leadership, corporate leadership, political leadership.

[00:12:23] So in all of these. Leaders behave generally in their self interest. They don't want to change unless they are pushed to change. Hence, the role of the follower. I wrote an entire book about bad followers called The Enablers. People are complicit for their own reasons in enabling bad leaders.

[00:12:45] So in leadership, from bad to worse, I do examine the role as I have now for many years, never written about leadership or leaders without talking about followership and followers. So for example, as I said a minute ago I just had this three part. Series on campus leadership so why is it that university presidents, especially maybe elite universities, but across the board by leaders. Of all kinds, but we're staring in the face with the university presence. Why are they having such a hard time now? We can come up with many reasons.

[00:13:22] But I will give you much the most important, at least in my view, which is that they have not only followers who are much more cantankerous, easily made unhappy, willing to speak out loud. But the numbers of followers or constituents or stakeholders, I don't care what word you apply to them, the numbers of others ranging from governments to donors to alums to students to faculty, you name it, the numbers of stakeholders has increased enormously.

[00:13:57] So between the numbers of stakeholders. Followers, whatever word, and their willingness to just behave in ways that would in a previous even one generation ago, not to speak of two, been considered unthinkable, so unseemly as to be unthinkable. That's a combination that's very difficult. Tough for leaders to deal with.

[00:14:21] Mahan Tavakoli: It is really hard. And I imagine one of the things that has happened and you've written about this as well, Barbara, is that as we've gone from a command and control structure where the leader, whoever they were in, whatever type of organization or system knew the most determined what would happen. And then information

[00:14:44] and actions cascaded down. Now, whoever is in that role in this instance, the president of the universities is more dependent on their followers than they would have been before. So they both have more of these stakeholders, but it's less of a power centered in one individual that now directs others, where to go, what to do.

[00:15:10] barbara kellerman: You've said it brilliantly. I can't add to that. It's precisely why looking at leaders. I'm talking about liberal democracies. I'm not talking about Russia. I'm not talking about China. I'm not talking about Turkey. I'm not talking about Hungary, but leaders and liberal democracies, whether they're corporations or college campuses or in religious institutions.

[00:15:30] Politics for precisely the reason that you say to look at leaders I always tell anybody who wants to learn. That's why I tell people if you want to learn how to lead you're in the wrong room because I teach about leadership. I don't teach how to lead. But if you want a tip on how to lead in the third decade of the 21st century, instead of focusing on yourself, I need to learn how to negotiate, I need to learn how to communicate, all that self focused stuff, look around you.

[00:16:03] Look at your various stakeholders, your followers, what are their needs, wants and wishes. You damn well better anticipate them and look at the context, the nature of your organization, the nature of the culture at large, and you will get many more lessons on how to lead wisely than if you fixate only on the self.

[00:16:25] Mahan Tavakoli: Now the challenge with that Barbara is I was actually talking to a university president and she was mentioning I am being torn apart by stakeholders that have very different, drastically conflicting interests. So She is wanting to listen to the followers but there's very little interest from the followers it's as if the followers see each other as enemies and want to fight rather than being part of a whole group that wants to collaborate for a more positive future.

[00:17:02] barbara kellerman: Welcome to leading in the 21st century, especially now in the third decade. It's tough out there. I started one of my recent blogs by pointing out that two of my books. written in the last 10 years have titles that talk about what you just referenced. One is called The End of Leadership.

[00:17:24] I titled The End of Leadership precisely because of what you're describing. Not only followers who are more demanding and less easily satisfied, but who conflict with each other. They don't all want the same thing. So one book , as I said, just exactly the point you're making was The End of Leadership.

[00:17:42] And the second one, which came out a few years later is called Hard Times Leadership in America, because it's really hard to lead at this moment in time. But it's important for your, I'm sure, quite sophisticated listeners. To understand that while the changes are on account of culture and technology, what's changed is the culture, what's changed is the technology, and arguably what's changed also is the ideology.

[00:18:14] But the real point I just want to make very quickly is that the changes to which I refer are not abrupt. They didn't happen all of a sudden. We're talking about living in a country where the rights of the individual were always championed over the rights of the group.

[00:18:31] We're not living in China, where the group or the commonweal has always been put above the individual. We are talking about the American political culture, even the Western political culture, which has evolved from the rights of the individual over the rights of the group. And when you magnify that over the years from the Enlightenment to the 1900s, where you had slaves freed and women eventually got the right to vote, in the 20th century, all the demands of the 1960s and 70s, there are huge changes, technology one of them, But at the same time, it is the continuation of an historical trajectory as opposed to being a break with it.

[00:19:15] Mahan Tavakoli: So in that continuation of the historical trajectory you're mentioning, Barbara, a lot of organizational leaders and CEOs are feeling the impact of this, whether Google's of the world or smaller organization, they are feeling it so this is the unsolved challenge. We know where it's going.

[00:19:38] It requires engagement and followership, how you keep things together, whether it is in society or within the organization becomes a real challenge. 

[00:19:51] barbara kellerman: Let me go back to a triad that I mentioned earlier. Now I'm not talking about leaders, followers and context.

[00:19:57] I'm talking about power, authority and influence. So what's happened is that leaders. Power has been diminished. Embarrassingly leaders authority has been diminished. Poor Dr. Shafiq, who's president of Columbia, she must be feeling, I'm president here. What authority do I have?

[00:20:16] And people are giving her no deference whatsoever. Power's been diminished, authority's been diminished, severely diminished, which leaves us with influence. So the skill set that is required to be a successful leader. Now, I recognize. Again, it's why context is so important. The context of a campus is not the same context.

[00:20:42] Of a large corporation, nor is one large corporation like another large corporation, ergo, anybody who teaches leadership, who doesn't teach followership, who doesn't teach the importance of the context within which leaders and followers are operating, especially now is misguided. You can't respond to the question that you asked.

[00:21:08] By focusing on, gee, what should the leader do? The leader should take his or her cues from the followers, from the context and understand to say the obvious, because this, command and control style is out, other forms of leading are in, but again, It is important to focus not so much on the self, but on what is happening around you.

[00:21:33] And then you might have a prayer. I'm not saying it's a recipe for success. I'm saying you might have a prayer of succeeding. 

[00:21:43] Mahan Tavakoli: I love a couple of points you made, Barbara. One is you've repeatedly said, it's not the focus on the self. It's a focus on the followers. And You actually highlight the complexity that goes into it.

[00:22:00] A lot of times when we are reading books, seeking information, listening to podcasts, we are looking for the listicle, do these three things. And then you will be, which applies to everyone. What you're saying is context makes a huge difference. The environment makes a huge difference. So there aren't simple frameworks.

[00:22:23] to apply for this leadership. 

[00:22:28] barbara kellerman: Americans have a history of being attracted to how to books, for example, how to speak persuasively in five easy lessons, how to learn how to cook like Julia Child in five easy lessons. But alas, that doesn't work in most cases. And it most certainly doesn't work. In the case of leadership, and it's one of my objections, which you clearly understand to the general leadership industry, because I feel it tries to simplify.

[00:23:01] Take my course and you too can learn how to lead. Come to my executive program and you too can learn how to lead. I'm not saying this is rocket science leadership, but it is definitely somewhat more complicated than learning it quickly and easily. I don't think it's possible. By the way, I have a wonderful book out, which I can say is wonderful because it's essentially not mine.

[00:23:26] It's an anthology and there is great leadership literature. Which is partly contemporary, partly from the last several hundred years, and partly goes all the way back. But if you look at what Plato wrote about leadership, or Machiavelli wrote about leadership, or Confucius wrote about leadership, they all got, you cannot learn how to lead quickly and easily.

[00:23:48] This is complicated, and those who would reduce it to a few simple lessons or even learn it in a year they're not gonna succeed. Another book I wrote, yes, I wrote a lot of books, is called Professionalizing Leadership. And in that book I essentially talk about one organization in the United States, Or institution that I think teaches leadership quite well.

[00:24:16] And one of the reasons they teach it quite well is because they understand it's learning over a lifetime. It doesn't try to communicate when you go to this institution or take this program. It sends the message if you're going to learn how to lead, you're a lifelong learner. And that institution that I generally respect.

[00:24:37] For its leadership, education is one training. The next development, the next is the American military. 

[00:24:45] Mahan Tavakoli: One of the people who I respect highly and stands as an example of what you mentioned also wrote a blurb for your book, and that's general McChrystal who is. A humble learner himself and transformed many of the conversations I've had with Navy SEALs and other folks in special.

[00:25:08] Yes. Truly transformed the thinking about followership and how The special forces function and operate. So what an outstanding example. 

[00:25:19] barbara kellerman: By the way, I think the military is much more alert to the importance of the follower than generally is the private sector. I just did a podcast on followership for the British military broadcasting system or whatever it's called.

[00:25:36] When I started writing about followership, I would type the word in. And I would get one of those red underlines that indicate there's no such word or you misspelled it and that doesn't happen anymore. So I think planet leadership is beginning to get it because they have no choice.

[00:25:54] They get that if they want to lead effectively in the 21st century in a liberal democracy, they better pay attention to the other. 

[00:26:04] Mahan Tavakoli: That speaks more to your strength of character and what you have written about, Barbara. So I want to mention this quickly before then going on to organizational culture, in that I can see whether it's for conferences or books to promote, what you want to promote is the positive stuff.

[00:26:23] The stuff that makes it simple, easy, you can do a talk about, everyone gets excited, hyped up, and goes out of the room. As an aside. My undergraduate degree and I did graduate work in human nutrition. And one of the reasons I got frustrated was because everyone wanted to know, tell me to eat these two things and that's it.

[00:26:43] And still to this day, people say, tell me to avoid these food groups or eat this one food, and I'm going to live a lot longer. So what you have done is You have marched to your own drumbeat against where the force of our desires take us, which is the simple solutions, easy answers, the motivational listicles, makes me love the content that you produce and see a lot more value in it because it's real.

[00:27:18] It's not written or done for the sake of sales or speaking gigs. 

[00:27:25] barbara kellerman: I have been compared and my work has been compared to many different things, but never to nutrition. So this is a first for me. I am so excited, and I think it's actually somewhat persuasive. I'm not sure that's such a good thing, but what can I tell you?

[00:27:43] It's great. It's a whole new way of thinking about what I do, but you're absolutely right. You're exactly right. You put it perfectly. We like the simple way out, but every now and then simple will not suffice. I just want to add that maybe unlike dieting or nutrition.

[00:28:00] It's thrilling that why are you so interested in leading, why does leadership interest you, why has it interested me as you've implied for decades, more than you, more decades than you, thank you very much, because If it were so simple, it wouldn't be interesting. And for leaders, rather than being daunted by the complexities, again, this is not rocket science.

[00:28:24] I think we should regard it as a positive, that it's exciting to be a leader in a time when it is difficult, but that's both intellectually and professionally interesting, challenging, yes, but interesting, exciting, never, ever boring.

[00:28:41] Now, the other thing that you go into also in your book is you give different cases, and I've read a lot about the Volkswagen case, Martin Winterkorn, and I would love to get your thoughts with respect to what role does culture play in leadership from bad to worse?

[00:29:04] Mahan Tavakoli: So it wasn't just one individual. 

[00:29:07] barbara kellerman: Volkswagen is a particular case because they had a very strong autocratic culture, not just During the years of its inception in the 30s and 40s, but lasting into the 70s and 80s and really 90s and 2000s partly that's because Volkswagen is a thoroughly German company, obviously, lots has been written about the impact of German culture on power in Germany in the 20th century and into the 21st.

[00:29:37] Look, I don't have to talk to you about the impact of organizational culture. I think what's interesting is the relationship of organizational culture to the larger culture or context in which the organization is situated. In any case when you said, obviously, winter corn wasn't operating alone.

[00:29:57] It's why I always talk about the other. You cannot understand Martin winter corn without understanding his enablers and his accomplices when leadership is bad, it's because others are complicit. You cannot have a leader without a single follower, and you cannot have a bad leader without at least one bad follower.

[00:30:19] So again, , you cannot blame the person, I'm going to use Trump again, I'm not being political here, but for all the people who don't like Trump, you cannot just look at Donald Trump. You've got to look at the large cast of characters from his base to when he was president and members of his administration, members of the cabinet, a man like Mitch McConnell, who is well known to personally loathe Trump and to disrespect him, but who has decided Had decided, did decide, still is deciding to go along with him and to not open his mouth in protest.

[00:30:55] So again, to get what's going on, you need to look at the whole picture. If you focus only at the person at the top, on Martin Wintergorm, never in a million years will you understand what happened at Folk's Fund. 

[00:31:09] Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding way to put it, us being enablers, leadership because I do get lots of feedback, Barbara, sometimes people emailing in and sometimes in the organizations I'm working with where people complain about the leadership and when they're complaining about leadership, it's someone higher up in the organizational hierarchy and Part of what you're saying is that followership is important, and part of that is if there's bad leadership, we could be serving as enablers to that bad leadership.

[00:31:44] barbara kellerman: Yes. Now, having just said that, it's up to us followers to challenge bad leaders, whatever that looks like. I wanna add one other point in fairness. Very often, in fact, arguably more often than not, taking on a bad leader is very hard to do. If we're in the workplace, and we have a bad leader or manager.

[00:32:12] What's it like for us to challenge that person, to take on that person? How do we navigate that terrain? Is it going to be worth it to us? Are we risking our jobs? Are we risking being marginalized? Are we risking being not promoted? I think one of the great mysteries of the human condition, and Shakespeare wrote a lot about this, is why we tolerate bad leaders again in the workplace.

[00:32:39] They can make us miserable on a day to day basis. I don't have to tell you. I'm sure more than I about the impact of bad bosses on people who work for them. Everybody will tell you they've had a bad boss. Everybody will tell you having a bad boss is stressful. It makes us unhappy. It even makes us unhealthy.

[00:33:02] And yet, we find we're stuck. We're stuck with bad leaders. What is that? What is it about the human condition that makes it so difficult to upend people who are harming us, however harm is defined? I would simply say that it's more difficult, I don't want to ever send the message that upending a bad leader is easy.

[00:33:26] It is sometimes difficult, it is sometimes even risky, and painfully hard, but it is not impossible. It is one of the reasons I wish followership were taught. It's virtually never taught. We teach leadership, but we don't teach how to be a good follower. 

[00:33:44] We don't teach the conception of what it means. We see it all around us. And you just described it. We, by and large, those of us in the leadership industry, by and large, ignore it. And there's no way in hell we can ever learn to be better followers. Unless we, to begin with, understand the conception, we have our consciousness raised.

[00:34:08] about how important the role of the follower really is. We see it, we're seeing it on college campuses, you just mentioned it, but the idea that we can play a role, whether in the political sphere, in the corporate sphere, that usually eludes us because we're either too timid, Or for good reason, we're afraid, or because it's simply too demanding and too time consuming.

[00:34:30] It's much easier generally to go along to get along. 

[00:34:34] Mahan Tavakoli: It is. So in order to be able to not go along to get along, Barbara, let's say a team is listening to this, a manager is listening to it, a CEO, and they are saying, I want to have the kind of environment. Where there is transparency, we are more likely to prevent these leadership failures.

[00:34:58] Is there a role that training and development can play or what would you recommend for the team to start doing or the individual responsible? It could be one person or it could be a group of people start doing. So they move closer. Toward an environment where there is effective followership.

[00:35:20] So the leadership doesn't go from bad to worse. It actually goes the other direction. 

[00:35:25] barbara kellerman: In the book, I do give some handy dandy tips, and I'm using that slightly derogatory phrase handy dandy and tips because, again, I never want to make it seem easy. Many leaders slash managers will communicate to their teams, for example, oh, when you feel I'm doing something wrong or you have some other ideas.

[00:35:48] By all means, feel free to tell me, but somehow the environment that's created is not generally supportive of that, that you feel there's a tension and that there would be a risk if you actually opened your mouth. Now, are there some strategies, of course. Aligning yourself with one or two or three others.

[00:36:10] If you're talking about a team, that's obviously a relatively small group within a small group. You can certainly see if you have some allies and instead of opening your mouth alone, make sure in advance of doing so you have some allies and so forth and so on. So there are certainly some strategies involved, but I would argue that the first step and I use that.

[00:36:32] The phrase a moment ago and I'll repeat it. Is consciousness raising? Is understanding the importance of your role in an organization, the role of the individual, as an employee, let's say, as a subordinate, as somewhere on the hierarchy that's not all the way at the top, but also making sure that leaders understand that unless they pay attention to their followers, however defined, and this is a constant.

[00:37:05] tension. We see it in the push now to greater unionization. We see it, as we've said several times on college campuses. We saw it when NBC tried to hire somebody who was a conservative Republican and people at MSNBC went completely crazy. In other words, It's out there, but somehow it's not yet fully absorbed by the leadership industry and the industry.

[00:37:32] I think if it only, watches TV or reads the newspaper or goes online and pays attention to what's happening out there, getting that the world has changed. And adjusting accordingly. It's the key to understand. Some people do it naturally. You know that some people are naturally good at swimming and playing the piano and some people are naturally good at leading.

[00:37:57] I don't think Martin Luther King ever took a leadership course. So some people are naturally gifted at this. But for most of the rest of us, having an intellectual conception of how the world is changing and how to adjust to that, which does not, by the way, mean total flexibility, we mentioned earlier, college campuses, I think presidents of universities, especially the elite ones cannot be so flexible and so open that they seem to others to be malleable.

[00:38:28] That's a line, that's a fine balance that has to be found. I don't mean for a moment to make it seem easy, but it is precisely, , the complexity. People grasping that this is somewhat harder than the leadership industry generally conveys, to me, that is step one. 

[00:38:48] Mahan Tavakoli: That consciousness raising that you mentioned, Barbara, is really important.

[00:38:53] Doing it, though, is hard because it requires for us to pay attention to real signals rather than focusing on the noise. One of the challenges that I see with some of the CEOs that I work with is in many conversations, They attribute some of these things to generational differences, thinking that, it's millennials, it's Gen Z, it was the pandemic that did this, rather than tuning in to some of that consciousness raising you're talking about and to the real signal.

[00:39:30] Yes and yes. In other words, there are generational changes, as I'm sure you would be the first to agree, but the generational changes are in response to what you're then adding.

[00:39:42] barbara kellerman: Is the larger context and I'm going to go back to three words I used earlier, changing technologies. Look, we could spend not just this conversation. Of course, a year long seminar on how technology has changed the relationship between leaders and followers. It is out there we're not even going to get into AI, but it's huge.

[00:40:04] so much. But so has the culture. So let me just give you one example of how important culture is. You ever heard the name Monica Lewinsky? 

[00:40:13] Mahan Tavakoli: Yes. 

[00:40:14] barbara kellerman: I often talk about that moment and people smile, but It was a watershed moment because for the first time in American history, we had presidents who were not entirely faithful to their wives, however, faithful is defined before Bill Clinton, but by the time Bill Clinton got to the White House.

[00:40:38] His dalliance, his relationship, again, however you want to define it, with Monica Lewinsky was not only front page news, but the press and the public felt they had the right to know everything. They had the right to know everything. Everything from what they did and where they did it about the semen on the blue gap dress.

[00:41:02] When you have that level of detail about a person supposedly in a position of authority, you are bringing that person down and you are raising yourself up to their level. You're collapsing the distance between leaders and followers. One consequence of that closing of the gap between leaders and followers is that when I first started teaching, I would walk into a room and my students would call me either Professor Kellerman or Dr.

[00:41:36] Kellerman. Now when I walk into a room, , I've never met them before, and they feel they're on my level. And one way of indicating that is they call me Barbara. I'm Barbara. That seems trivial, but it's not. It is exactly what you and I have been talking about. 

[00:41:56] Mahan Tavakoli: So to that end, I would love to know part of the advice.

[00:42:03] And the practice of many leaders has been for them to, humanize themselves and try to , be authentic, vulnerable, whatever term you want to put on it. So that is a big recommendation to executives and CEOs. 

[00:42:22] barbara kellerman: So I'm going to tell you a story in response to that.

[00:42:25] Because I was being adorable, because of the changes to which we talked about, my first time I taught, I was palling around with my students, and they loved me. They thought I was great. Sometimes we even went out for a beer after class. It was wonderful. These were adult learners. It was a nighttime course.

[00:42:48] It was wonderful. Then came the time where I actually had to grade them. And guess what? I didn't give everyone an A, and after that, they didn't love me nearly so much. So any leader, you're absolutely right about the changing times, and we're all equal, and we're going to hang out together, and it's going to be great.

[00:43:12] So the leader, the successful leader, has to find the balance between being more, as you said, more vulnerable. But even more importantly, more accessible, but at the same time, remembering their position is not like everyone else's. And that's, by the way, the college president's dilemma. How do you connect with students?

[00:43:37] We talked about generation before, but at the same time, recognizing you are, after all, the president of this university. And that's an example of the leadership bad to worse. I would argue it's a counterintuitive, but presidents who made clear that they will tolerate dissent only in certain forms.

[00:44:01] It is not acceptable to harass students, for example, any students. They didn't make that clear on day one, they very quickly ran into trouble. So you need as a leader to find the balance between being more friendly and accessible than in previous generations. But remember who you are. You are the leader, whether you're the CEO or the president or any other title you want to give it.

[00:44:28] You're the leader. Bear in mind who you are. And again, I spoke about myself also as a professor. It was a lesson I had to learn. Can't be that accessible. Can't be that friendly. 

[00:44:40] Mahan Tavakoli: What outstanding advice, Barbara, filled with lots of subtlety. As your writing is, the many books that you've written that I have learned from, which is why it's such an incredible joy having this opportunity to share so much.

[00:44:57] some of your insights with the partnering leadership community. How can the audience find out both more about your book, Barbara, and follow your writing and your work? 

[00:45:10] barbara kellerman: There's a lot of books as I've indicated. I've written many books. Certainly the more recent ones are on Amazon.

[00:45:16] Leadership from bad to worse is only the most recent. But I also blog regularly and I'm on LinkedIn. So there are always ways of finding me. And if somebody wants to reach me, I'm at barbara underscore Kellerman at harvard. edu. So thank you very much. It's been a great conversation. I'm grateful to you, just so you know.

[00:45:36] I really 

[00:45:37] Mahan Tavakoli: appreciated Barbara. What an honor and joy it has been for me because as I said, you have contributed to my thinking and my understanding so now getting an opportunity to talk about leadership from bad to worse. What happens when bad festers at a time when you mentioned there are all these changes that require us to think differently.

[00:46:04] I really appreciate the insights you've shared and the wonderful book as well. Thank you so much, Barbara Kellerman. 

[00:46:11] barbara kellerman: Thank you very much for a smart and lively conversation with a good sense of humor too. I appreciate it.