The Alchemy of Leadership
Excerpt from Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas' Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders. Reprint by permission of Harvard Business School Press 2002.
By Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas

This article appeared in 2003

In writing Geeks & Geezers, Warren G. Bennis and Robert J. Thomas conducted interviews with extraordinary individuals under the age of 35 - the geeks - and with extraordinary individuals over the age of 70 - the geezers. Out of these interviews, Bennis and Thomas offer a new model that predicts who is likely to become and remain a leader, as well as explain why some individuals are not up to the task. At leadership's heart, and what the following excerpt reflects, are what the authors call "the crucibles of leadership" - how a vital experience, such as trauma or extreme adversity, can challenge a person to find new strength, determination, and purpose. These qualities, in turn, may form his or her style as a leader.

All our leaders, whatever their age, brought to their crucibles four essential skills or competencies. These are the attributes that allow leaders to grow from their crucibles, instead of being destroyed by them. In every case, the quality most responsible for their successful navigation of these formative experiences was their:

adaptive capacity - an almost magical ability to transcend adversity, with all its attendant stresses, and to emerge stronger than before.

Every one of our leaders had three other essential qualities as well:

the ability to engage others in shared meaning,
a distinctive and compelling voice, and
a sense of integrity (including a strong set of values).

Some of our leaders had other gifts as well, such as technological virtuosity, but these four - adaptive capacity, the ability to engage others in a shared vision, a distinctive voice, and integrity - were the sine qua non of all our successful leaders. Once we identified these essential leadership qualities, we realized that these are the qualities of leaders in every culture and context. They are the attributes that sustain and define leaders, not just in our digital age, but in every era, every public arena, every business and boardroom.

Adaptive capacity is what allowed GE's Jack Welch to transform himself from staff-slashing Neutron Jack into Empowerment Jack as the needs of the corporation shifted. The ability to engage others through shared meaning is what allowed a mediocre tactician named George Washington to inspire the Continental Army to defeat the better equipped but less well led forces of King George. A fine physicist but previously undistinguished administrator named J. Robert Oppenheimer found his distinctive voice long enough to provide inspired leadership of the Manhattan Project, cajoling, counseling, and buoying his secret community of scientific geniuses as they raced to ensure that the Nazis did not make the first atomic bomb. And all these leaders possessed a powerful moral compass of the same magnetism that inspired millions to follow Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.- a quality we will refer to as integrity.

It became clear to us early on in our study that these qualities - the Big Four, as we came to think of them- were repeatedly underscored in the interviews with our geeks and geezers. They comprised their winning combination. In the elaborated model [shown on next page], we illustrate each of the four basic competences, plus related abilities....

It is important to note, however, that an individual may have the requisite qualities for leadership and little or no opportunity to use them. Who knows how many people with the necessary gifts for extraordinary leadership are stifled by class, racism, and other forms of discrimination, including the burqa? However gifted, great leaders emerge only when they can find the proper stage, a forum that allows them to exercise their gifts and skills. In the eighteenth century, Britain's restless American colonies produced half a dozen superb leaders as greatly talented individuals rose to a life-or-death challenge and grappled with a problem worthy of great minds - what form of government best suited a free people. Leadership guru Abigail Adams spoke of the importance of the crucible of history in shaping leaders more than 200 years ago when she wrote to John Quincy Adams in 1780: "These are the hard times in which a genius would wish to live. Great necessities call forth great leaders."

Great Necessities, Great Leaders

The surprise terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001 seemed to call forth just that sort of greatness. In the months before September 11, Rudolph Giuliani was the lame duck mayor of New York, best known as the hard-liner who had cleaned up the city. It was a reputation offputting to many, and somewhat tarnished by his nasty split from wife Donna Hanover. But in the crucible of the attacks on his city, Giuliani was transformed. As the New York Times' Frank Rich wrote of Giuliani a few weeks later: "At ground zero, he projected comfort as well as authority, tenderness as well as steeliness. In the midst of performing round-the clock triage on a grievously wounded city, he even found the time to honor a commitment to attend a wedding and serve as an honorary father of the bride, in a tux no less, to the sister of a New York fireman who had died on duty in August." Giuliani was tireless throughout the ordeal, recognizing and dealing with issues as varied as deferring visits to the massive crime scene by former President Clinton and others to finding out whether canon law would allow missing Roman Catholics to be declared dead before seven years had passed (the answer was yes). But it was his palpable empathy and his ability to communicate this consoling message - that all New Yorkers, and indeed all decent people, had been grievously wronged but would endure - that revealed his unexpected stature as a leader, prompting some of the same journalists who had once damned him to write rapturous tributes.

Even more dramatic was how President George W. Bush seemed to be transformed in the same crucible. Snatched out of harm's way immediately after the assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he did not get off to a distinguished start. "Where is the president?" people wondered, and understandably so. But in a matter of days a president with an uncertain mandate and a less-than-memorable oratorical style had found his voice. On September 20, Bush gave a half - hour speech to Congress and the nation that approached greatness.

Many observers were stunned. In a piece in the Wall Street Journal, longtime Democrat Gerald Posner described a new Bush, one who suddenly emerged to meet the challenge the country faced. "Like Franklin Roosevelt or Winston Churchill," Posner wrote, "he rallied a country's spirit, had the courage to tell us the bad news that the upcoming battle would be neither swift nor easy, and declared that those who would destroy our culture and values would not prevail." Posner had previously found Bush to be a stiff speaker, especially when delivering a prepared text. But on this occasion, Posner said, "he was infused with passion and outrage. His sincerity was heartfelt, and boosted almost all who listened to him. And precisely because we all know he is not a masterful orator, the power of his words and the forcefulness of his delivery carried even more impact. He rose to this most important occasion."

As we said earlier, the fact that we repeatedly see our leadership model at work in the world bolsters our confidence in its validity. The president's speech showed all four essential competencies of leadership; the adaptive capacity allowed Bush to turn even his usual verbal awkwardness into a strength. A newly found and compelling voice allowed him to engage an entire nation and its allies through shared meaning and common purpose. Moral conviction gave his condemnation of the attacks the force of something more than political expediency. Like Abigail Adams, Posner recognized crisis as a powerful catalyst. "More often than not," he wrote, "real leadership flourishes when faced with imminent threats and dangers."

Bush was acutely aware of the seriousness of the moment and was determined to seize it, yet another ability evidenced by our geeks and geezers. As Leo Braudy tells us in his classic study of fame, The Frenzy of Renown, Alexander the Great associated himself with nothing less than the gods when forging his imperial image. In conversations with friends, President Bush confided that he was inspired throughout the crisis by one of the deities of the modern leadership pantheon, Winston Churchill. (Mayor Giuliani was similarly inspired by the legendary communicator, who buoyed Britain during the prolonged terror of the Blitz.) Indeed, at one point in tweaking Bush's address, speechwriter Michael Gerson sat down with presidential counselor Karen Hughes in front of a plaque that bore Churchill's stirring line: "I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar." Although echoes of Churchill were heard throughout the speech, Bush insisted that no quotes from great leaders be included. As Bush made clear to his writers and advisers, he saw the speech as an opportunity to lead, and he wanted his to be the words the world remembered. The speech was wildly effective, winning the praise of Ted Sorenson, Ted Kennedy, and other non-Republican connoisseurs of the language of leadership. More important, in the course of delivering its 2,988 well-chosen words, Bush seemed to change before the nation's eyes from a down-home, easy-to-dismiss Prince Hal into something more akin to a home-grown Henry V.

Leadership is one of the performing arts, and the leader always has to sell himself or herself to the audience. That is precisely what the president did. At the risk of committing psychobiography, he appeared, in the course of the 30 minutes, to shed his previous role of Fortunate Son and to assume a leadership role. In the crisis and its aftermath, the president seemed, for the first time, to recognize that he would be judged by history. Following the speech, Bush's approval rating shot to 90 percent, the highest in the history of presidential polling, with a record 72 percent of Democrats expressing their support for his crisis management.

Bush's transformation was reflected in his behavior as well as his speech. Fabled for his devotion to downtime before the attacks, he was now in the Oval Office at daybreak, studying briefing books with an unprecedented seriousness. He stepped up his physical fitness regimen as if in training, upping his daily time on the treadmill and trimming the fat in his diet. He even assumed a new formality in his dealings with the other members of his administration, calling Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "Mr. Secretary" instead of the usual precrisis "Rummy."

As the attacks recede in time, a far more subtle and complex presidential leadership will be required than the martial style that worked so well immediately afterward. We will need a leader who can balance protecting freedoms with protecting the lives of the citizenry, and it is not yet clear who that leader will be. The same president who moved us with his eloquence could falter badly in such critical areas as encouraging dissent, not a strength of his administration before the events. But while the ground was still smoldering after the assault, the president seemed worthy of his office even to many who had voted for other candidates.

Warren G. Bennis is University Professor and Founding Chairman of the Leadership Institute at the University of Southern California. He also serves as Chairman of the CPL's Advisory Board and is Thomas S. Murphy Distinguished Research Fellow at the Harvard Business School.

Robert J. Thomas is a Senior Research Fellow and Associate Partner in Accenture's Institute for Strategic Change. He served as a faculty member of MIT (Sloan School of Management and School of Engineering) for 10 years and authored the award-winning book, What Machines Can't Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial Enterprise (University of California, 1994).