There are many uncertainties in leadership and world affairs. But there is one thing that is certain. When a leader surrounds him or herself only with those who agree, submit, or are bullied into withholding independent views, it is only a matter of time before that leader drives off a cliff of his own making. It has always been the case. The age of maturity of the human race will be an age in which no individual is empowered, on their own, to make important decisions and fall victim to the hubris of ego. The effect of this illness we now see too clearly in front of us.

1. Intellectual Curiosity and Reason:

I am reading Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now in which he goes over the transformations in thought brought about by the Enlightenment thinkers of the eighteenth century. Our Founding Fathers – Jefferson, Madison, Paine, etc. were the intellectual children of the enlightenment thinkers (Hobbs, Locke, Rousseau). The leaders who established our greatness were intellectuals and spoke several languages. The Jefferson library is a reflection of the workings of his mind. They knew history and thought deeply about the flow of civilization.

Pinker says there were four themes of the enlightenment: reason, science, humanism, and progress. What our founders did was to attempt to make those ideals the foundation of a system of government, which had never been done before. No King, no Divine Right, no adherence to religious dogma that characterized every prior government and no religious wars that had burdened Europe for centuries. Freedom of speech, press, and religion as foundational thoughts that were the essence of enlightenment thinking. As imperfect as their creation was, they were only human, it nevertheless established the expectation that you had the right to equal treatment under the law. It didn’t establish the reality of those expectations, but there would be no “good trouble” if those expectations were not established. The American story is the story of striving to achieve them.

It is an odd thing to say, but if you feel that you are not treated equally and you are upset about that, you owe that emotion to the expectations authored by Jefferson, Madison and Paine. If you lived in sixteenth century Europe the expectation of equal treatment would never occur to you and you would be spared that feeling of injustice. Cognitive dissonance is the root of progress.

2. Servant Leadership:

George Washington, who did not want to be president and did not campaign for it, established the ideal of the leader as servant of the people, unlike the reverse that had been true for millenniums.  At the Constitutional Convention at which he was clearly the most revered man, he sat at the back of the room and only spoke twice and did not take sides in debates, which were many. Both times he spoke it was to remind the delegates to collect their papers. How is this then leadership? Sometimes leadership is to be present, to listen, to encourage, and to be a force of example rather than a dominant force. Sometimes strength is silence.

In my opinion every citizen should be required to read, no study, Washington’s Farewell Address in which he voiced his two greatest fears for the new nation: entanglement with and influence by foreign powers, and what he termed the “spirit of party” that he already saw emerging around Hamilton and Jefferson. He always encouraged unity and feared disunity. Every good general knows that you are strong when united and weak when divided.

If we want to make America great again, we must again have leaders who view themselves as servants and not as the center of greatness themselves, leaders who unite and do not divide.

3. Thomas Paine and the Age of Reason:

As Washington’s troops crossed the Delaware in a blizzard, some barefoot, hungry and freezing, he had the captains of each boat read aloud passages from Thomas Paine’s Common Sense. It was the inspiration for the revolution. And then Paine wrote the Age of Reason in which he literally tears the Bible apart, pointing out contradiction after contradiction, and repeated genocidal madness allegedly in God’s name. Paine was a Deist, one who believes in God but finds the perfection of God in His own Creation, nature, and believes that the Bible and the religions of the day were an insult to God’s own perfect work. Imagine if you will, a modern politician having the nerve to write a blistering critique of the Bible. At the same time Jefferson was re-writing the Bible himself. Could a politician survive such a thing today? But, at the founding of this country the belief in reason, science and humanism were the foundation of what did make us great.

Thomas Paine was a man of incredible intellectual courage. After the American Revolution he wrote The Rights of Man in defense of the French Revolution, left for France and served in legislature and even in French prisons until rescued by James Monroe, then Ambassador to France. He was more dedicated to the ideas of constitutional government and natural rights than he was to any country. He influenced the course of government in the United States, France and Britain. He was a leader of thought and a revolutionary of ideas. This too is a form of leadership.

4. Communitarianism:

We were not made great by rugged individualists doing their own thing. The pilgrims and other odd religious groups who came to these shores relied on their collective power, their community. And, when the Europeans moved west, they did so in groups that supported one another. Farmers worked together to build barns, to share seed, and to create collective marketing organizations. The term “farmers cooperatives” became common in the mid-west states. Communitarianism built the social fabric of the nation. Communal social effort has always been our strength. It was not the heroic charismatic leader, but the ability to enable to the collective power of community.,

5. Public Education:

Free and compulsory government funded education created the middle class in America. This was an American invention. In the early 1800’s, beginning in New England, public schools were established. Without public education only the wealthy could attend school, cementing the divide between an upper and lower class. This government funded social service expanded to the idea of land grant colleges and university so that today every state has a University of Georgia and a Georgia State or Georgia Tech universities. This was all established by our government in the shared believe that educated citizens were required for a democracy and for economic progress. One might call this a great experiment in “social engineering.”  If one believes that government funded, and even required, services is a dictatorship of socialism than you can thank this socialism for creating this country as we know it.

I’ll stop. Those are some of the things that leaders did that I believe did make America great. As we consider our own standards of leadership, our expectations of leaders, perhaps there are some lessons for us in this history.

 It is the job of leaders to create trust between leader and led, between the institutions of governance and those who are governed. Udemy recently asked me for comments on this topic that were just published in FastCompany Magazine.  My friend, Payam Zamani, tech entrepreneur and CEO of OnePlanet also just published an article on the national crisis of trust and the danger of the decline of this nation. 

For fear of mixing business and politics I have been hesitant to speak out on the current crisis in this country, which is much larger than the Covid19 pandemic. It is the crisis that will determine whether this country (the U.S.) remains a great nation. We have been great, precisely because we have been open to immigration and because we have embraced alliances around the world, promoting democracy and human rights, the values of this country. We have, in the past been united around the core values that did make this country great – opportunity, equality, democracy and justice for all – but, greatness requires vigilance and now is the time for us all to be vigilant. 

Trust is the social glue that unites a cultures. All cultures are either in the process of integrating or disintegrating, creating cultural cohesion or dissension, and economic growth has proven to be correlated with high levels of trust and economic decline correlated with the absence of trust (see Francis Fukuyama’s book Trust). Trust is social capital and the World Bank has recognized the essential nature of building social capital to achieve economic development. The same is true within a corporation as it is in nations. High levels of internal trust result in high levels of creativity and problem solving. We create and expand in an environment of trust, and the reverse is true. We retreat when we fear the outside world, our competitors, and that retreat is followed by disintegration of brand equity. Leaders create trust and expansion; anti-leaders create fear and retreat.

Arnold Toynbee studied the rise and fall of 23 civilizations and among his conclusions was that great civilizations are never defeated by the external barbarians, but always by internal disintegration and what he called the “loss of self-determination.” They decline when they are at their most powerful and most wealthy, when they reach a “condition of ease.” 

This is also a failure of leadership. Leaders emerge from the culture but they also shape and give direction to the culture. The first job of leaders is to create unity of purpose, common cause, common challenge and unite people in shared effort. Leaders must define our ennobling purpose, and challenge us to arise to that purpose. Purpose creates unity. If we don’t select leaders who will do that we will continue to disintegrate and decline. When leaders spread distrust they are essentially engaged in an act of collective suicide. 

What can a leader do to build trust within his or her company (or country)?

1. What is our worthy purpose? Why are we here? What will be our (or my) legacy when we are done? Defining our personal purpose and the purpose of the group of people whom we seek to lead is the essential cornerstone of leadership and growth. The President of the United States, like the president of a company, must define the purpose not only of their administration, but of the country at large. I always understood that our purpose was not only within, but was expansive – to promote democracy, free enterprise, human rights to the entire world. If we believe in these values we must speak up! We must promote them to the world and encourage countries and leaders who do the same. 
2. Take Ownership of Performance: Can you image the president of a company openly disparaging his own company, disparaging the human resource department, the marketing or manufacturing and causing employees to not trust their own company? Impossible. He would be fired. The job of the president of a company or country is to make things work! It is a simple idea. But, a company president is judged by the performance of that company. To perform, all the pieces (engineering, marketing, etc.) must work together, united in both process and principles. Trust builds performance and distrust destroys performance. 
3. Fact Based Transparency: Some leaders believe in their own words, their theories, more than they believe in facts. Great executives are obsessed with understanding the facts. They study, they read, they listen to others with more expertise in different subjects. They are good students first, good executives second. Then they openly share the data, good or bad, and confront reality with action. Sharing the data and explaining the data to employees in frank and honest terms. Particularly in this time of the pandemic crisis, every employee understands that their company is being impacted by disruptions in markets and supply chains. Share the data and be absolutely frank in explaining what the data is telling you and how you are responding. This creates trust and loyalty in followers. 
4. Be absolutely humble! We don’t trust people who feel a need to congratulate themselves. Admit mistakes. You will gain respect for engaging in self-reflection. Arrogance is the enemy of learning and destroys trust. Humility is an attitude of learning that gains trust. 
5. Talk Continuous Improvement: In this age every employee understands that there are no absolutes – no perfect process, no final destination in performance. Talk about the journey… where we have been and where we are going and what we are doing to get there. Employees want to know that their leaders are themselves engaged in continuous improvement. Be the model! If employees hear you talk about your efforts to continuously improve, they will trust you more and they will be motivated to engage in continuous improvement. 
6. Give Credit to Others: Always share credit for any success with others. I want to be on your team if I see you sharing success with your team members. And, your team will then take responsibility for failures and for continued improvement. 

 I know the above comments have swung back and forth between business and larger societal issues. Principles that matter apply to leadership of self, company and country in almost identical ways. I tried, in my course on Transformational Leadership to capture the most important principles that I feel are essential for leaders who will build trust. It is the essence of leadership.