So what does good leadership look like in practice? How do we find good leaders, and how are they trained and shaped? Who are America’s best leaders today – and what can we learn from them? And, desperately, how can we Please do more of it?
Over the next year, I’ll be examining what works for leaders in politics, government, and business. A good place to start is Nels Olson, a Washington-based executive search firm who wakes up every day thinking about leaders – where to find them, how to identify them, how to make them more successful. He came to Washington fresh from studying political science at the State University of New York at Oswego, helped run George HW Bush’s Office of Presidential Personnel, and later worked at a Washington public relations firm. Since 1993, he’s worked for one of the city’s top executive search firms.
But this, he admits, is a moment that challenges even the best leaders – and guarantees the worst.
“There is a certain reluctance to engage in public engagement in business or academia,” he says. “Anyone can post something on social media,” he says, “that can very quickly create an avalanche effect and take out a leader; that didn’t happen 10 years ago. Now it can go from zero to 100 in a matter of hours.”
To simply call Olson a “headhunter” is as inadequate as calling Nancy Pelosi a California congresswoman. Olson has worked on more than 1,000 headhunts for all manner of nonprofits and charitable organizations and speaks with the measured diction of someone comfortable in executive suites and presenting to boards of directors.
Olson says that the three basic characteristics of successful leaders have not changed in all his decades of work: Good leaders combine integrity, vision and the willingness to take people along. Harry S. Truman once characterized it similarly: “A leader has two important qualities. First, he goes somewhere. Second, he is able to persuade other people to go with him.”
But while the fundamentals of being a good leader remain the same, the tools needed to succeed are changing – and becoming more complex. “The difficulty level of these roles is constantly increasing,” says Olson. “The bar is getting higher and higher – whether in politics, business or academia.”
Unlike the top-down managers of the post-war era, Olson says today’s leaders must develop a tolerance for far more diverse voices than in the past. This need has arisen in part because so many people can have a voice today – whether they work for the company or not.
“With cell phones and a whole host of other things, it’s very hard to be a command-and-control leader these days, because if you make a mistake, it’s going to show,” he says. “You have to be able to tackle things head-on. You have to have a certain level of openness and humility. You have to be willing to meet people where they are and not overreact. None of the successful CEOs I know lose their composure when a particular problem doesn’t go well – they know how to regulate themselves.”
Therefore, he says, strong communication skills and crisis management skills are required – skills that not everyone at the management level has or is particularly good at. “This cannot be achieved with personality alone.”
Another ingredient in the recipe: A strong sense of curiosity. Today’s best leaders need to be more knowledgeable about a broader range of topics than they were in the past. The years of pandemic, geopolitical unrest, supply chain disruptions and partisan polarization have highlighted how events seemingly far removed from a leader’s day-to-day operations can wreak tremendous havoc in any organization. “They need to be lifelong learners,” says Olson, “not just get stuck in the paradigm they’re already in. Leaders need to be able to adapt and pivot now. Demanding boards are looking for people who not only have the qualifications on their resume, but also the EQ and intellect needed to succeed in an ever-changing world.”
The best leaders are always reinventing themselves. He cites John Crowley as an example. Crowley, a former lawyer and Harvard MBA, started his own biotech company in 1998 after two of his children were diagnosed with a usually fatal neuromuscular disorder to help find a potential cure; his family’s journey was eventually documented in a book and a 2010 film. In December, Crowley was named head of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, moving from the corporate world to advocacy. “He’s been thinking hard about what’s next after selling his own company, making a big change and now learning a new set of challenges,” Olson says.
The good news, says Olson, is that big problems, no matter how confusing and confusing the landscape, usually attract the most ambitious leaders. “Leaders seek challenges,” he says. “They get great satisfaction from making a difference. They don’t mind a sticky situation.”
If that’s true, Americans can count themselves lucky. It’s hard to imagine a more delicate moment than the one we’re in today.
