Leadership lesson from 1776

Posted by Marc Hodak on June 16, 2008 under History | Comments are off for this article

In 1776, McCullough creates an interesting portrait–snapshot, really– of George Washington, drawn largely by the way he was viewed by his contemporaries. The book also illustrates was how remarkably difficult it is to judge leadership by any single measure, or even a collection of them.

In McCullough’s story, Washington reveals a glaring weakness in military strategy, a weakness revealed both in the qualitative views of men who could observe him, as well as in poor results on the battlefield. Washington’s main strength appears to be his luck, and the fact that he superbly, consciously, looked and acted the part of a leader. Today, few would put someone like Washington at the head of an army, and fewer yet would keep him there after the string of losses he suffered after Boston. Yet, Washington was the right man to lead the Revolution.

What McCullough left out (explained well in Flexner’s book) was how tenuous was the faith in Washington held by the Continental Congress by the end of 1776. Washington, in fact, barely survived a political conspiracy to oust him. (He was extremely lucky that way, too.) Washington was thus able to keep his job, and generals like Nathanial Greene who shared Washington’s dismal record on the battlefield. Greene would eventually prove instrumental in driving Cornwallis to his last stand at Yorktown, and Washington, of course, would lead that final siege to victory. Nobody could have predicted it.

I always say that the most difficult job for large business owners or board of directors is to judge the quality of their top management. Most place too much emphasis on past results or “key measures.” Unfortunately, it’s impossible to do otherwise when you can’t directly observe the character and capabilities of a leader, or if one is a poor judge of those things (assuming one would admit it), or if one’s decision is politicized by accounting for the impressions of outsiders who can’t observe or judge those qualities.

Although Washington’s military leadership is best seen as a textbook case of “better lucky than good,” his reputation as a political leader would suffer no such ambiguity. Washington turned out to be the one-in-a-million leader whose military success would present him the opportunity to become a King, only to refuse the offer. Instead, Washington would willingly surrender his military commission. As our first president, he would exercise a kind of political restraint that has never since been seen. As the head of the only party around at the time, he would voluntarily leave office to a successor not of his choosing. Those instances of surrendering power were his most impressive acts of leadership.