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Leadership Expert Ronald Heifetz

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INC.: That sounds straightforward, if not easy.
HEIFETZ: Yes, but there's a trap for a Roosevelt or an Iacocca. Because his exercise of firm command made so much sense in a crisis, a CEO may begin to think that he should operate in that same mode all the time.

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INC.: Well, he was a hero once -- he'd like to keep on being a hero.
HEIFETZ: Exactly. And that's natural. But please understand, it's not simply the person who resists letting go. The organization resists, too. The organization, once addicted to a hero, remains addicted, and it's quite difficult to disabuse an organization of its dependency on its hero. That's one reason why entrepreneurial CEOs of very successful companies often have to leave at a certain point -- Steve Jobs, for example. They have to leave because there is a dependency they cannot counteract.

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INC.: You mean it was inevitable from the start that Jobs would have to leave Apple Computer?
HEIFETZ: I don't mean to be so categorical. I'm describing a tendency and a trend. It could have been managed differently in Jobs's case, if he had wanted to and if he had known how.

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INC.: Is there a point of no return, a point beyond which the only choice for someone like Jobs is to leave the organization?
HEIFETZ: People who end up in that position usually don't know how to disentangle themselves, because they don't understand the dynamics that got them so entangled in the first place. My assumption is that if they did understand the dynamics, and if they knew the kinds of strategies that would disentangle them, they could reverse the situation even at a late date.

I might add that Roosevelt, too, fell into the trap. When he got reelected by a landslide in 1936, I think he began to believe he had a mandate to institute his answers. He tried to pack the Supreme Court to get his policy agenda realized.

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INC.: Isn't that exactly what we ask Presidential candidates to do today -- to have their own agenda with all the answers?
HEIFETZ: Sure. We're looking to Dukakis or Bush and expecting one of them to fulfill enormously unrealistic dreams, things neither can possibly know how to do. And, given their personal predilection to see themselves heroically, they will likely fall into the trap of protecting the American people from facing and taking responsibility for the problems in their midst. They'll provide people with convenient shelters, illusions, false senses of security, and hope that, if only you elect me and my staff of policy experts, we'll get the country back on the road.

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INC.: Well, what would we do with Michael Dukakis now if he were to say, "I can't solve the trade deficit problem. You folks have to solve the trade deficit problem.'
HEIFETZ: We wouldn't elect him. That's the paradox -- you don't get elected if you don't protect people from the work they need to do. You risk your authority as soon as you attempt to exercise leadership.

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INC.: Shouldn't we expect leadership from a President?
HEIFETZ: That would be a big mistake. The President of the United States is rarely going to exercise leadership. Primarily he's going to exercise authority. He's going to maintain equilibrium. He's rarely going to challenge people to come to terms with harsh problems. If he does, he risks losing office. The exercise of leadership by high authority requires pacing the rate at which you challenge people to do work.

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INC.: So, we're looking for someone who will say, "Here, just take this pill. . . . '
HEIFETZ: Someone who will say, "I know what needs to be done, just follow me." And the tragedy is that, eight years later, reality kicks you from behind. And that's what has happened in our current situation -- with our drug problem, with our poverty problem, with our debt problem. We have had eight years with someone who has protected the American people from facing the challenges of the next century, or even of the next decade, and thereby diminished the country's adaptive capacity. He's told us we can blame external forces instead of helping us take responsibility for our own problems. And now, of course, we're upset because we have this huge debt. Reality has caught up with us and shaken some of our illusions.

Unfortunately, we're likely to repeat the same errors because our conception of leadership is fundamentally misguided. We'll elect the next guy who claims to have answers rather than the guy who is willing to challenge us by orchestrating our problem-solving processes.

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INC.: We're doomed?
HEIFETZ: Not necessarily. What gives me hope is something inherent in a democracy -- I mean, the idea that we all share the responsibilities and obligations for making the society work. That is the nature of a democracy.

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INC.: Yes, but you've also written that, in order to have a democracy, there must be a shared set of attitudes among citizens of a country.
HEIFETZ: True. We all have to share the attitude that responsibility is ours.

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INC.: Well, that's certainly not what I hear these days.
HEIFETZ: I realize that. As we face more and more frustrating problems, we tend to look for saviors, and -- as a result -- we have been losing democracy. We think democracy simply means having a political structure in which we vote. Or, we think democracy means the protection of individual rights and liberties. But that was never really the basic idea of democracy.

The basic idea of democracy was a shared notion that we all have a responsibility for the common welfare, for the common good, for the society as a whole, for the community -- not just in times of war, but in all times. Instead, we have become more and more reliant on the President or on government, our authority figures, to do it for us.

One of the great Supreme Court justices, Louis Brandeis, stated that the highest office in the land is that of citizen. I think that's an important statement. If we lose that, and to some extent we already have, we do so at our peril as a nation. Democracy works successfully as an ongoing, adaptive mechanism because it develops our muscles. It keeps us thinking for ourselves. It doesn't allow us to fall into lazy dependency.

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