Pray For Our Pastors

BE LIKE BUSH AND KERRY

In my Public Management class today, we discussed the 1985 MOVE incident. The visiting professor actually authored the case study we read, in which he interpreted then-Mayor Wilson Goode’s decision-making as a class example of the dangerous combination of “defensive avoidance” followed by “hypervigilance.” In Goode’s case, he sat on his hands while the MOVE situation worsened, and then moved way too rashly to squash it. As a result, 60+ houses were destroyed, 11 people died, and Philadelphia was made a national laughingstock as the government that dropped a bomb on dissenting citizens.

My take-away from this case study was that good leaders have to be able to act decisively AND simultaneously be fluid enough to be accountable to others and allow their opinions to mean enough to change your mind if you’re in the wrong. It is easier said than done to be decisive as a leader; stressful situations and imperfect information mean you have to pull the trigger, and if things blow up you look bad. It is also easier said than done to be open-minded; every leader says they’re willing to be corrected by their subordinates, but how many give off non-verbal cues that make subordinates fearful of doing the correcting?

It occurs to me that we recently had a very prominent example of this continuum between decisiveness and open-mindedness. Bush’s people painted Kerry as a flip-flopper, while Kerry’s people protested that Bush was being stubborn. Which would you prefer, the election seemed to boil down to: someone who is stubbornly wrong or someone who is maddeningly indecisive? Most of us had trouble visualizing someone who could be both certain and adaptable.

But good leaders are able to be both. In fact, they must be both. For in the crucible of real life, when things are going wrong and information is imperfect and every avenue looks bad, leaders must be able to be simultaneously resolute and pliable. Easier said than done.