Interview with Harlan Cleveland

Introduction
Harlan Cleveland, political scientist and public executive, is President Emeritus of the World Academy of Art and Science. A Princeton University graduate and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in the 1930s, he was an economic warfare specialist (in Washington, D.C.), economic director of the Allied Control Commission in Italy, and United Nations relief administrator (in Italy and China) in the 1940s; a foreign aid manager (the Marshall Plan), magazine editor and publisher (The Reporter), and graduate school dean (the Maxwell Graduate School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University) in the 1950s. In the 1960s he served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs under President John F. Kennedy and as U.S. Ambassador to NATO under President Lyndon Johnson. From 1969 to 1974 he was President of the University of Hawaii. From 1974 to 1980 he built and managed the Program in International Affairs for The Aspen Institute. In 1980 he moved to the University of Minnesota to start the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, serving as its Dean until 1987. He and his wife Lois now live in Sterling, Virginia.

Harlan Cleveland has written hundreds of articles in newspapers, magazines, and journals; and authored or co-authored a dozen books on executive leadership and international affairs, most recently Nobody in Charge (2002). He has received 22 honorary degrees and numerous awards, including the Medal of Freedom, Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award, and the Prix de Talloires, a Switzerland-based prize for "accomplished generalists."

Kip Winsett
We are very fortunate to have an opportunity to interview someone of Harlan’s stature, experience and expertise. As the editor of the ILF Digest I thought it would be particularly interesting to interview Harlan, who has had such a successful career in leadership, on the topic of "followership." However, feel free if you like, to expand the interview beyond that narrow focus.

Kip Winsett
Most of the time, most people are in roles of following – not leading, and even leaders are often in situations in which their proper role is to follow. While there’s plenty of literature on how to be a good leader there isn’t much on how to be a good follower, I find that surprising since without a lot of competent followers virtually nothing would get done.

I’ll start with a somewhat general question. Are there any general principles, some sort of 10 rules of following, so to speak, that are critical for followers to use or is the success of following more keyed to the specifics of the leader’s style?

Harlan Cleveland
Thanks for the promo, even though I'm not running for anything in tomorrow's election. Since, as you suggest, there is not much "literature" on the art of following wisely, we might do well not to start by laying down guidelines for followers. Rather, I'd like to begin by advancing a possibly counterintuitive notion -- that the best way for followers to act is to help their leaders decide where they want to lead us.

No one, of course, is a leader on every subject he or she touches. Indeed, most people -- even highly visible positional leaders -- are followers on most subjects. This is not just true in "public affairs."

It became clear to me one day in Hawaii long ago, after I had given a lecture on a book of mine titled "The Future Executive." During the question period an ethnically Hawaiian student reminded me that I had used the phrase "constructive ambiguity," and challenged me to explain what I meant. I challenged him in return: "Tell me," I said, "who really makes the important decisions in your family?" The student looked at the ceiling for inspiration, and the hush in the large hall gave evidence that lots of other people were speculating about decisions in their own families. Then the student's Polynesian face broke into a huge smile -- and no people I have known have such wide and infectious smiles as Hawaiians. "Oh, I see," he said, replying to my question. "It depends."

That's probably also the right answer to Kip's question about general principles of followership -- since the identity of "the leaders" changes as the subject-matter requiring decision changes. (The confusion in the current debate about stem-cell research partly reflects the natural ignorance of most our political leaders about biotechnology.)

Frequent shifts of leadership imply equal and opposite shifts of followership. Indeed, in a democracy important issues of public policy are customarily decided only after what John Gardner called the "untidy and impressive" process of wide consultation. That's why it makes sense, in a democracy, that a policy announcement should be made after, not before, most people affected by it have already made up their minds.

As some ILFers will know, I have studied a good many public-policy issues in recent American history where important shifts in our sense of direction have been brought about by shifts of opinion among people-at-large.

President Nixon and his chief advisers were clearly among the last to realize that the war in Vietnam was over because it was lost; Detroit auto-makers were blind-sided by people's preference for smaller and more fuel-efficient cars; civil rights for minorities, the changing status of women, and protections for the consumer would not be where they are if people had waited for most public executives, legislators, or leaders of universities, of corporations, or religious denominations to take the initiative. Etc., etc. The sudden (and surprisingly bloodless) political shifts that blew the Communists away in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in 1989 and 1991 came when most of the "followers" involved finally made up their minds that their leaders had to go.

Of course, if the followers sit on their hands, as most of our elected officials -- and most Americans -- have been scared into doing until rather recently, the "untidy and impressive" process by which we make up our minds takes a good deal longer. Unless the polls have it all wrong, which they often do, tomorrow's mid-term elections may signal the beginning of a turnaround -- though the military and fiscal messes are so troublesome that it will take years to turn this dreadnought around.

Sandy Mactaggart
The subject brings to mind a story I once heard of a mother whose daughter was applying to attend college and was pondering her answer to the in the application, "Is your daughter a good leader?" After some thought she wrote "No, but she is a good follower". Later she received a letter from the President admitting her daughter, with the comment that it was because the President thought it was important to have at least one good follower among 320 leaders.

Harlan's suggestion that the best way for followers to act is to help their leaders decide where they want to lead us, works in the opposite direction also. To be an effective leader over a long term,... to lead the band,... requires looking over one's shoulder regularly to make sure that everyone is still there.

The band is more likely to go in the right direction when it has access to honest information and concerns itself with debating alternatives, so I suggest that at least one of the points that Kip seeks, should be that a good follower should try to be informed and involved with those matters that are important to him or to her.

In that regard, I have always admired leaders who expound some cryptic generality that followers must debate to determine what the leader really meant, When they finally do reach a consensus, that IS always, of course, what the leader really did mean.

Mary Boone
Harlan -- thanks for doing this!

My sense is that everyone needs to know how to be both a leader and a follower. That doesn't mean that all of us will excel at both, it just means that we accept the responsibility that in a complex society there will be times we'll be called on to play each role.

Raymond Alden
Sandy has said it very well. (I had something like that in mind after reading Harlan's entry, but Sandy said it better!)

In my experience, which has generally been as a follower, it has been important to question, and sometimes to challenge, my leader -- to provoke his/her thinking through the consequences of this or that approach, and to make sure that other followers will understand the objective.

As Harlan knows better than any of us, the "Great Leader" will find the path that will make most of us think we "did this ourselves".

It's hard to imagine a leader functioning without followers -- I guess that would be an oxymoron, wouldn't it? It's easier to imagine, briefly, a group of followers functioning without leadership, although a leader will almost certainly emerge.

Richard Farson
Harlan, I think you were smart to deftly avoid the description of the follower because the world isn't divided into leaders and followers. Indeed, there are no leaders, as you point out, because the situation determines when they exercise leadership. There is only leadership and it is spread around in different guises, isn't it? All the research on social psychology shows that for a group to function well it needs various kinds of behavior which are adopted by various group members--a task master, an information person, a mothering figure, a clown, an inspirer, etc. That's why Ray can imagine a "leaderless" group functioning well.

I remember a physician friend of mine describing the leadership in a medical team when he was starting out. When he didn't know what to do he would keep his attention on the patient and hold out his hand behind him to the experienced nurse, and just use whatever instrument she would hand him.

Harlan, do you perceive a leadership vacuum in the Democratic party, and if so how would you explain it? Does it square with your "nobody in charge" concept?

Kip Winsett
Harlan you have outlined an ‘ideal’ dynamic in the relationship between leader and follower which is probably a great place to start. However, it often happens that leaders are not in the least disposed to allow followers the luxury of debating or questioning or giving any substantial input. Indeed, in the politics of war, for example, the military structure itself is designed in a very rigid, hierarchical fashion that tends to produce top down decisions which must be followed to the letter. Many religious organizations follow the same design principles. The Bush administration has opted to use that particular design model as a strategy to achieve specific goals. Is there any relationship, then, between the design of the organization and being a good follower? Is a follower obligated to adjust to the organization’s design? Or is a follower morally or ethically obligated to go beyond the parameters and structure of the organization and exercise greater autonomy -- and personal responsibility – regardless of consequences?

Harlan Cleveland
Good comments! As we await the results of today's exercise -- American followers telling their political leaders whether they've already followed too far -- I'll react to your comments.

Mary (18:4), thanks for your thanks. But dialoguing with people like you is hardly a burden, it's more like fun. . . . I think your generalization is just right "... everyone needs to know how to be both a leader and a follower." We never know when we may be "called on to play each role." Some of you may remember the story about the man on a down escalator who saw a clump of people, including children, tripping over each other at the escalator's bottom. With a brilliant instinctive analysis of the danger, he shouted for everybody on the down escalator to start walking UP the moving stairway.

For his instinct to save injuries and perhaps lives, everyone on the down escalator had to understand that it was essential to comply -- which meant that they had to instantly recognize the wisdom of this order from a person who held no position of authority over them. In this case, everybody took the shout seriously, turned around and starting walking up the down escalator. A potentially dangerous accident was averted.

When I was first told that story, the man who shouted was given exclusive credit for the outcome. It was only when thinking about it afterwards that I realized that the instincts of all the followers also had to be sharp enough to react immediately to the shouted recommendation. Maybe not quite as sharp as the sudden "leader" whose quick analysis produced a relevant answer to the puzzle, but sharp enough for them to realize it WAS the right answer, and to act on it.

Time out for early election returns; I'll be back soon

Harlan Cleveland
Sandy (18:3): That's a lovely "follower" story. It would be interesting to know how that daughter did at college, whether she outfoxed her mother and climbed into leadership roles.

As "followers" participate more and more in leading their leaders -- which seems predictable as more and more people get access to wider education -- "leaders" will indeed have to pay more attention to what people are thinking, because they will be thinking and will resent it if those who select themselves to lead aren't paying attention. That's more,surely, than just "looking over [their] shoulders to make sure that everyone is still there." It means that "leaders" will increasingly be acting by interaction. And the more leadership thus becomes a two-way street, the fuzzier will be the frontier between "leaders" and "followers."

I like very much your suggestion to leaders: to expound cryptic generalities which require followers to fill in the blanks. (If the generalities are resonant enough, they may last for generations, and apply to different situations; think of FDR's "There is nothing to fear but fear itself," or JFK's "safe for diversity.") The resulting consensus among followers may not be just what the leader originally meant -- but he/she had better mean it now, or drop quietly out of the leadership role.

Harlan Cleveland
Ray Alden's comment (18:5) that his experience has generally been as a follower may be true, since most leaders who lead in a few sectors (as he certainly has), necessarily follow in many. But the fact that he sees himself that way is probably a clue to his success as a corporate leader. Would a majority of ex-CEOs be willing, candidly, to say the same?

While following the election statistics tonight, I've been puzzling about his final questions. Can one imagine a leader functioning without followers? Yes, but only in extreme cases, such as Nixon's last couple of days in office. Can a group of followers function without leadership? I've never seen that happen. Whenever a group has no titular or "natural" leader, I notice that one or more members of the group begin to exercise the functions of leadership -- even if, to be effective, they don't call it leadership or call themselves leaders. The resulting cooperation is sometimes the purest case of Lao Tzu's aphorism: "We did this ourselves."

Harlan Cleveland
It's late and I'm going have go to bed and see how the Virginia Senate race -- and, perhaps, the decision about which party manages the US Senate -- comes out tomorrow, or maybe next week or next month after recounts.

So I will leave Richard Farson's timely question about the Democratic Party, and Kip Winsett's interesting puzzlement about the role of organizational design, on the back burner overnight.

Sandy Mactaggart
Writing this on the day after the mid term elections, there is no doubt that the views of the followers have had an effect on the direction of the leaders. We already see this in the resignation of the Secretary of Defence, and I suspect that the attempts to impose democracy on societies that have historically been deeply divided by religious and tribal differences, will be pragmatically modified.

Harlan Cleveland
Sandy, I think you're exactly right: on Tuesday, the followers took the lead, and by Wednesday we could see the leaders trying to figure out how to follow their lead.

Richard (18:6) is worrying about a leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party. In the day or so Democrats have had to think about managing the U.S. Congress, there are already signs of commonsense arising to fill that vacuum. There evidently wasn't a followership vacuum

I've been impressed by the evidence that Nancy Pelosi knows very well the Democrats are getting this chance because so many of their candidates tapped into the political center. I've watched three interviews with her today, and unless I knew better, I wouldn't have guessed she was a flaming liberal representing a San Francisco Congressional district that only voted 15% for Bush the last time around.

The Democrats will fill their "vacuum" by appealing to a wide tent that includes most of the political center as well as newly energized liberals. The election virtually wiped out the Republican "moderates" -- because the Bush/Rove strategy abandoned them, and also embarrassed them by making a mess of public policy at home as well as abroad.

If Democrats can demonstrate the capacity to get a few things done during the next Congress -- raising the minimum wage (which seems to have been approved by the electorates of every state that posed the question to voters this year), health insurance, pharmaceutical costs, an immigration bill that doesn't slam the door, the beginnings of an energy policy -- and hold the Bush Administration's feet to the fire on an exit-from-Iraq strategy, they can begin to lead Americans to stop being ashamed of their government, and even start reversing the world-wide mood of discouragement about (giving up on) America's imagination and commonsense.

The U.S. population has been like the leaderless group I was describing in 18:10, above. The population has now spoken (in some places by narrow margins, but clearly enough). A good many leaders can now be expected to emerge from the confusion -- some of them, probably, not now on our Rolodexes. As in physics, a vacuum aches to be filled. An interesting couple of years are just ahead.

Harlan Cleveland
Kip poses an intriguing question about a follower's obligations in "rigid, hierarchical" systems. Before tackling the question, let me expand a little on the main example used: military hierarchies.

My impression is that military hierarchies are generally much less hierarchical than they look from the outside. During the Vietnam war, some platoon leaders had to sit down with their troops to discuss, not whether to take that next hill as ordered, but whether the war itself made sense -- since they were all hearing from home how unpopular the war was becoming. My own experience in government agencies, civilian and military, was that most of the relevant contacts were lateral, not vertical. Despite the way the organization charts were drawn, consultation and consensus were often more in evidence than "recommendations up, orders down."

One thing I learned early, and practiced much, was that an executive manages more effectively by asking questions than uttering declarative sentences -- much less by giving orders.

The reason for this trend is that as everything gets more complicated, everybody in an organization has to learn more about the whole environment for its decisions. Especially the top people in a hierarchy, by definition the "leaders," have to learn a lot from their subordinates, and that doesn't happen by "recommendations up, orders down," but through more horizontal, consultative relationships. They also have to learn a lot from people in other organizations, where giving orders obviously wouldn't work.

Now to Kip's question: In these conditions "followers" certainly have an obligation to "go beyond the parameters and structure of the organization," to use their brains, their imaginations, and their intuition to come up with relevant facts and ideas -- which, on matters they have delved into more deeply, they may well be better equipped to judge than their leaders are.

If, in these circumstances, the "followers" merely adjust to the hierarchical structure -- in other words, tell their bosses what the bosses want to hear -- the organization won't be able to understand or deal with the real complexity of the real world, and will be left in the dust. That, I think, is exactly what happened to the Soviet Union as it drowned in the flood of the Information Revolution.

Richard Farson
Harlan, any reaction to the firing of the new president of Galludet College after strong protests by the students, and apparently some faculty? I see Senator McCain has resigned from the Board of Trustees because of that move.

Raymond Alden
An essay on the Lehrer hour tonight addressed the Galludet situation in a strange way -- exploring the ideas of a deaf family that did not want one of its children to receive a cochlear implant, and thus be able to hear, because it would separate that child from her family.

I'm having trouble relating to that logic. But isn't the dispute about the Galludet president linked to the same idea? We've got to stay together! Don't let any outsiders in! Nor any new ideas either?

Sandy Mactaggart
"The Soviet Union...drowned in the flood of the Information Revolutiom". I have always thought that is exactly what did happen to Russia. When, after the death of Stalin, the government was unable to control the expanding sources of world information, "the followers" demanded access to circumstances that would give them, ... not so much access to that unknown quantity, "democracy",...as access to a better life.

What is going to happen when the "followers" of the Arabic Middle East are sufficiently relieved of their present preoccupation with immediate threats to their existance, to demand access to that better life also? In the long run, would we not be better off supplying them with education, computers and television sets, than attempting to impose security? Is the one necessarily a precondition of the other?

Harlan Cleveland
Having once been a university president, coping with student demonstrations and all, I watched the drama at Gallaudet with special interest. Gallaudet is, I believe, America's premier institution of higher education for deaf people, and thus a "beacon on a hill." It looks as if the issue is between two philosophies:

Some deaf people want to be able to break down to the extent possible the barriers that separate them from the hearing world. The president-elect, who grew up reading lips and not learning sign language until she was in her 20s, seemed to belong to that camp -- at least, that's what the student protestors and a majority of the faculty seemed to be charging her with.

The other camp, which seems to be dominant at Gallaudet, has bet on ASL (American Sign Language) as the best way to communicate among deaf people, and takes pride in the club their common condition has induced them to form among themselves. (Is "Black is beautiful" an appropriate analogy in race relations?) Most of the students and faculty evidently judged the president-elect, who has been at Gallaudet for quite a while as Provost (i.e., academic vice-president), not to be the kind of club member they wanted to see as their symbol and leader.

I have no way of judging the rights and wrongs of this altercation within what is, for me, an unfamiliar tribe. I did wonder, while the controversy went on (it was front-page news in The Washington Post), how the college's governing board had made its decision about the presidency without realizing the row that would ensue. But further, deponent sayeth not, because I simply don't know enough about the cultural cross-currents in education of and for the deaf.

Kip Winsett
You quite caught my attention, Harlan, with your statement I have no way of judging the rights and wrongs of this altercation within what is, for me, an unfamiliar tribe. Your choice of the word tribe strikes me as being particularly cogent to the concept of 'following'.

It seems to me that, in general, to be effective as a follower or a leader one has to have a strong sense that one "belongs", and that others must also sense you as "belonging".

How important do you think this is to being a good "follower"?

Harlan Cleveland
Kip: The connection between "belonging" and "following" has long seemed to me a very tricky one. Each of us "belongs" to many groups -- families, clubs, professions, institutions, corporations, political parties, churches, counties, states, nations, and so on ad infinitum.

Outsiders may assume that people who "belong" necessarily "follow" leaders in their groups. But they don't, necessarily; I suppose that there are mavericks in every kind of group whose morale is sustained by NOT following their leaders, by differing from the group's doctrines, or even by leaving the fold.

So, while a sense of belonging may sometimes, even often, correlate with a willingness to follow, I don’t think that correlation is very dependable. With the rapid spread of knowledge that is a hallmark of our times, my guess is that belonging and following will be bracketed together less and less.

Kip Winsett
Much as I'd like to keep this interview going I know we're drawing to a close. Harlan agreed to a one week stint with us, so Monday will be the last chance for questions.

Sandy Mactaggart
If today is the last day for questions, may I start by thanking Harlan for a most interesting week, and then ask one more question.

I believe you have hinted that the remarkable increase in the ability to communicate rapidly and widely has had an effect on the powers of followers. Have you any last comment on how you think that ability may affect the Islamic world?

That is such an enormous question that I hesitate to ask it, and would fully understand if you decide to ignore it.

Harlan Cleveland
Brief follow-up on the row at Gallaudet Uviversity about its president-elect: Over the weekend the Board, having lost two of its members (the chairman and Senator McCain), decided to consult the faculty and students before naming another president-elect. Lesson: they would have done well to think about consultation before their first selection.

Harlan Cleveland
Sandy: Thanks for your thanks. I've enjoyed it.

On your question about communication: My point has been not only to emphasize the effects of rapid communication, but to stress the effects of the marriage of faster computers and more reliable telecommunications. The case for thinking that this "information revolution" has empowered followers to take the lead is spelled out in my writings such as the first chapter of "Birth of a New World" (1993), and the chapter titled The Age of People-Power in "Nobody in Charge" (2002). [Both books were published by Jossey Bass in San Francisco.]

To sum up my argument without all the illustrations I've collected over the years: The spread of knowledge, greatly multiplied and enhanced by the marriage of computers and communications, produces hundreds of millions of people who (unlike most of their ancestors) are open to new ideas and increasingly unwilling to be governed by "leaders" encased in impenetrable bubbles of dogma or doctrine. (The American people -- a good many of them, anyway -- produced last Tuesday an illustration both current and choice.) That unwillingness seems to lead quite naturally to the phenomenon I've been so impressed with during my lifetime -- "the followers leading their leaders."

Your question is about "the Islamic world." I have seen just enough of the most populous parts of "the Islamic world" to want to differentiate between the Middle East and the rest (such as Indonesia and large swaths of the Asian subcontinent). Focusing on the Middle East, it's all too clear that the global spread of knowledge has spread nearly everywhere faster, and penetrated everywhere more deeply, than in the Middle East, especially the Arab nations. There are obviously a lot of educated people there, and their ancestors were once the world's leading intellectuals. But in modern times they seem the least modern peoples, I suppose because of the suffocating layer of authoritarian mullahs and secular authoritarians on top of them.

So it was probably in the cards that the Arab parts of "the Muslim world" would come late to the spread-of-knowledge party -- that they may, in fact, be the last of the world's major cultural groups to experience the excitement of openness, the joy of seeing the comeuppance of their authority-loving leaders. It's hard to identify as yet the intellectual revolutionaries like Vaclav Havel or even the top-down reformers like Gorbachev; at least they don't shine on my radar. But of course I don't know what's going on backstage, beneath the radar, among people whose names are still unknown, perhaps because they still want it that way. I certainly hope there's more there than meets the eye. The Arabs, and Persians, are great peoples; they deserve better, much better.

Kip Winsett
Thank you, Harlan, for making yourself available for this interview, for sharing your thoughts so lucidly and especially for conveying your compassion and care for people. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to have this time with you.

Harlan Cleveland
Thanks to all participants, and especially to Kip for setting up this Interview, keeping it going, and shutting it down on schedule.

Since "followers" are so neglected in the Leadership literature, it was interesting to be induced to think harder about them -- and to discover that the dividing line between leaders and followers is getting even fuzzier than I had previously thought it was........Harlan.