All posts in Leadership Summit 2009

Editor-at-large at U.S. News & World Report and political analyst for CNN and PBS, David Gergen has served as a White House adviser to four presidents; Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton. He is also a professor at Harvard’s School of Public Leadership. An active participant in American national life for 30 years, Gergen has a lifetime of experience in observing and participating in high-capacity leadership, which he’s distilled into seven vital elements needed for future leaders. The author of Eyewitness to Power, he firmly believes that by identifying the traits of other leaders (and learning from their mistakes), we can increase our own effectiveness and leadership potential.

• One of David’s areas of expertise is the study of leadership.
• He teaches leadership at Harvard.

On Leadership Development

• Leadership is a journey. Each one of us has to take our own path, and get there our own way.
• There are people that can help us get there… mentors, teachers, friends.
• These people introduce us to the literature of leadership.
• A teacher of leadership cannot produce a leader.
• What you can do is make people aware of the principles of leadership and introduce them to role models they can fashion themselves after.
• Especially with church leaders, if you are in leadership it’s not a question of teaching people, but creating a culture where people are encouraged to serve and lead each other.
• The proudest moment for him is not what students learn but what they do.
• Leaders have to get better at leading.
• If you are born with it or not, you have to get better at it.
• Be a reflective practitioner.
• Reflective practice means that where you really learn leadership is in the arena of doing it and continually reading, learning, etc.
• “Not every reader is a leader. But every leader is a reader.”
• It’s the combination of doing, reading and reflecting on the two.
• General Patraeus has soldiers reflect on what happened… what they did right, what they did wrong, etc.
• Leaders can be so activistic that they don’t reflect, journal, write, discuss, etc.
• It’s easy to confuse motion with progress.
• Best leaders choose their big goals and go after them relentlessly, with a lot of feedback.
• Peter Drucker wrote “The Effective Executive” and teaches at the beginning of the year to write down what you hope to accomplish and how you hope to get there, and go back and review. Hold yourself accountable.
• One of the easiest things to do is fool yourself and be self-justifying and defensive.
• You have to be willing to wrestle, like Jacob.
• If things go right, question what the contributing factors were.
• If something goes wrong, admit how it went wrong and why you did what you did.
• When you’re down on the dance floor dancing it’s important to go to the balcony and look down. Observe the dances going on.
• The moments “out” allow you to see things more clearly.

Strengths of Presidents He Served Under…

• Nixon: best strategist. Could look into the future and see how history was going to unfold and had a gift at bending the future. “Someone who can look farther back can see father ahead.” Understanding your past helps you envision what the future will be.
• Ford: most descent. You didn’t have to keep your back to the wall. The saying goes “nice guys finish last,” but in today’s society we’ve come to prize people who are descent. Ford looks better and better through the review mirror of history.
• Reagan: contagious optimism. If you’re around leaders who always believe you can get higher, who can encourage… it makes the effort exciting. There’s a sense you are building something. He and the WWII generation had a sense of humor. People who can laugh together can pray together and do a lot of things to build a sense of team.
• Clinton: his resilience. Got knocked down a lot in life, but was always willing to get back up.

Weaknesses…

• Nixon: his dark side. “You have to understand the struggle… he had people who appealed to his right side and those who appeal to his dark side.” He could not control his demons. He was the author of his own tragedy.
• Ford: too naive. Politics is a rough sport, school of hard knocks.
• Reagan: detachment. You always have to keep your hands on the wheel, and sometimes he gave the wheel to others. When he had a good team around him, things were great… things went off track when he didn’t have a right team around him. You can trust to the point of detachment. Inspect is as important as respect. You have to keep your eye on what’s going on and not turn it over to other people.
• Clinton: cracks in his character. He was earnestly working through the flaws in his character. He made mistakes. The worst mistake was not the relationship with Monica Lewinsky… it was his failure to come forward and ask for forgiveness. If you’re straight with people, they’ll forgive you.

Great leaders carry with them great flaws.

• Maturity is all about trying to come to grip with your flaws.
• Self-awareness is important.
• You’ve got to admit to yourself you have a dark side.
• The challenge is to integrate the two so you have an authentic, integrated person.

How do you come to grips with your flaws?

• We have to be realistic enough to know most people won’t conquer their flaws.
• Make sure you are aware of your flaws so they don’t hurt you or others.

How do you bring alignment between your private behavior and public life?

• People who can be great leaders oftentimes have very messy private lives.
• Martin Luther King was one of the great moral leaders of the 20th century. He helped lift our moral sight, yet he had a very chaotic private life.
• He worked hard to bring his private life under control… he knew he was a sinner.
• Nelson Mandella said “get up every morning and try to do better…”
• We should be more forgiving and less invasive about people’s private lives.
• We should be very demanding of their public lives.

Leadership does not have to be lonely.

• “The day of the Lone Ranger as a leader are over.”
• Leaders today get the best results when they have great teams, and build a team of leaders.
• Your role as a leader is to have team of leaders.
• The world is increasingly complex and you, the leader, have to work with many other groups and many other leaders.
• Leaders need to learn how to partner and collaborate.
• We build things together.
• “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” – Patty Stonesifer

Importance of symbolism

• Leadership is working with others in the pursuit of shared goals.
• In old times, leadership was command.
• Today it’s about persuasion.
• Leadership is about trust and communication.
• You communicate by how you role model.
• Symbols matter to people. Your brand.
• The “V” for victory with Churchill gave people hope and inspiration.
• Ghandi gave up the clothing of the law and went with the lion cloth to communicate his simplicity.
• Mandella was seen in prison garb, but was one of the greatest leaders of our time.
• Reagan’s horse… we have a Marlboro man image in our culture… and Reagan said “there’s nothing greater for the inside of the man than the outside of a horse.”

Communications + Leadership

• “Speeches take place in a situation, not a vacuum.”
• Who the speaker speaks as loudly as what he says.
• We are bombarded with words.
• The demand is to figure out who we are going to listen to in the midst of the chaos.
• Your willingness to listen depends on trust.
• You trust they are being real, authentic, and that they know what they are talking about.
• You look for people who can explain things in a way that’s clear and simple.
• The person who first understood public speaking was Aristotle, his book about rhetoric.
• There’s three elements to a good speech: 1) Ethos – the personality, authenticity, believability of the speaker. 2) Logos – logic of the speech. 3) Pathos – the emotion. You want to appeal to someone’s reasoning power and their emotional grip on something.
• Whoever is communicating needs a rhythm.
• A speech shouldn’t be more than 15-20 minutes.
• 1/4 of the audience can’t keep up after 30 minutes.
• Your ethos should be established up front… let people know who you are.
• Logos needs to be the body of your message
• Pathos needs to be the emotional call to action, not just an appeal. Inspire people.
• The best preachers bring the argument and the emotional appeal that inspires us.

On Personal Habits of Leaders

• Self-discipline is like self-awareness.
• The best leaders have regular habits.
• It’s important to be physically fit.
• People who let themselves get flabby often let their minds get flabby.
• Leadership is physically demanding, you need endurance.
• You need to build time into your day to reflect.
• You need to build time into your day to spend time with the people you love.
• People who are in loving relationships at age 50 tend to live a lot longer and be a lot happier in life.

What do you hope is going to happen in you and to you when you go to church?

• Church should be a place where one can find inner-peace. Not about them, but something larger.
• Likes to learn something from the pastor or the readings.
• He wants to not only hear the words but read them, and study their context.
• Many of the young people today care deeply about social change. Many of them are on a spiritual journey.
• This generation is on a search for their spiritual well-being.
• Whatever their faith may be, spirituality is important for the foundation of their leadership.
• It helps you find your moral compass. You’ve got a “true north.”
• Going to church is where you nourish it.
• It’s important to have good anchors in life.
• Our ego can get so inflated that you become arrogant and think that the rules don’t apply to you.
• You can fly too close to the sun.
• Faith, family and friends are good anchors… they remind you there are things bigger than you that you don’t hold it in your own hands.
• You are one of many… part of a grander scheme.
• If you want to change the world, be the change you want to see in the world.
• Each of us has warmed our hands around a fire… and our role is to bring a log to that fire and keep it going to others.