A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:8
The time is 2024 and we all have one very urgent, important job, shared collectively: We must select a President. Put it on this year’s to-do list: select the candidate that can best handle our perilous situation – the one most capable of addressing our strategic risks and opportunities as a nation, today. This approach, called Situational Leadership, identifies the pressing, existential threats and opportunities a leader will face and then prioritizes those skills, attributes and experiences in selecting a prospective leader to address them. It is a bigger, more strategic question than simply whom do you like – or hate, what narrow issue matters most to you or your political party affiliation.
The situations and seasons leaders face are dynamic. President Abraham Lincoln, who struggled early on as a war-time president, is often lauded for his abilities for healing and holding the union together as the Civil War concluded. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was an especially effective war-time leader in Great Britain during World War II and yet was voted out of office as a peace-time leader after the war. Elon Musk’s leadership innovated and created incredible value at Telsa but at X (formerly Twitter), it has been chaotic and thus far destroyed huge amounts of market value.
Leaders come in infinite shapes, sizes and styles: progressive, conservative, extreme, moderate, disrupters, maintainers, innovators, budget cutters, revenue and spending growers, people-pleasers, prickly, servant leaders, command and control, facilitative leaders, uniters, dividers, young, old, quick deciders, deliberate deciders, street smart, professorial, impetuous, predictable, eloquent and not.
This year, I believe we do not have the luxury of simply voting for our personal leadership preferences. Rather, as I will explain, we voters need to rise above them to address the strategic, existential threat that our nation faces and select for the leadership attributes that best match our situation.
Our Perilous Situation: A Relationship Tipping Point
There was a time when men were kind…I dreamed a dream in time gone by…Now life has killed the dream I dreamed. Les Miserables
The United States of America is a dream at risk. As we enter the election season of 2024, I believe we have moved deeper into a relationship crisis and now approach a “relationship tipping” point. I do not say this lightly. In 2012, based on six years of research analyzing the decline of relationships, my book This Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics and Faith was published. In it I made two primary points: one, our relationships are our most valuable and value-creating possession – individually and collectively. My second point was that our accelerating relational crisis is destroying our most valuable possession thus producing broad and compounding costs – at home, at work, in politics and faith.
This relational unraveling comes in two primary forms of relational separation: first, isolation – too little relational engagement. In May of 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General sounded the alarm on our Loneliness and Isolation Crisis that is feeding a well-documented mental health, suicide and addiction epidemic.
Second is the rampant polarization that transforms differences into relationship warfare – a form of tribal over-engagement. It is more than interesting that researchers at RAND Corporation found that loneliness is one of the predominant reasons people adopt extremist views and join extremist groups. I concluded, supported by mounds of quantitative research, that this relational loss is becoming the most destructive trend that threatens our society emotionally, socially, spiritually, politically and economically. If it was a crisis in 2012, it might qualify as a disaster now.
This relational crisis and its resulting polarization have grown significantly more intense and destructive in the past 12 years. As we have elected recent Presidents – Bush, Obama, Trump and then Biden – we have seen the political animus grow. According to Pew Research last year, more than 60% in each party feel those in the other party are immoral, dishonest and close-minded and about 80% in each party believe the other party’s agenda would “destroy America as we know it.”
Unfortunately, not only are we divided and dysfunctional between red and blue, but within red and blue. Remember when a majority Republican House of Representatives was gridlocked in painstakingly hiring and then firing Speaker Kevin McCarthy shortly followed by a similar challenge in selecting his successor, Mike Johnson. This last session of Congress was aptly labeled the “do nothing Congress” because, while we face a number of burning issues – Russia/Ukraine and Hamas/Israeli wars, Chinese and Iranian hostilities, budget deadlock, terrorism, immigration stampede, climate – our Congress is fractured and paralyzed by partisanship.
According to polls, 70% of Americans don’t want President Biden or former President Trump to run for President. What is particularly damning is their assessment is not based on speculation, but four years of actually observing each as President. Both have experienced impeachment or impeachment inquiry. President Biden who is 81 is seen by many as senile and weak. Perhaps his greatest asset in getting elected was “he was not Trump.” While he ran as a moderate Democrat, a number of conservatives feel he has governed left-of-center.
President Trump is seen by many as crazy, immoral and too ‘strong.’ It reminds me of the words of the late Roberto Goizueta former CEO of Coca-Cola: “You hope you don’t hire anybody who is stupid, but if you do, pray that they don’t have a lot of energy.” Many would say that he governed less as a Republican and more as a populist disruptor.
What if that is our choice: low energy, inept vs. energized crazy. Does anyone think Biden is going to get younger; or, Trump (who would be 81 at the end of a second term) less toxic? The two are stuck in a symbiotic relationship where each needs the weakness of the other to be a viable 2024 candidate. Is that the promise and hope of democracy?
If one of them is elected, on day one, half the country is going to be absolutely locked into distrust and disdain, seeking to block every move of the newly re-elected leader. There will be no honeymoon, there will be no “let’s give him a chance.” The cost: no trust or collaboration to get serious things done – and little hope. We hear Democrats and Republicans saying “democracy is on the ballot” – the problem is that each side thinks the other side is the threat. Neither gives us a shot at reversing this relational tipping point. Either increases the risk of tipping us over.
We have seen this movie before. The Civil War is the most dramatic example we can point to when the South seceded to become the Confederacy. It left 600,000 dead and a nation with wounds and scars still visible today. There are ample examples of institutions going through “relational” divorce: major religious denominations like the Methodists and Presbyterians, state/city government and local school boards that are split and unable to function as a whole. Outside the U.S., Great Britain’s exit from the European Union in 2020 –Brexit – is now seen as the right decision by only 33% of its citizens according to a December Statista poll. Most recently, the Hamas terrorism and the brutal Israeli response in one tiny corner of the world has surfaced anti-Semitism and Islamophobia that is inflaming cities and universities around country and around the world.
Once more, we are at a tipping point. If we are to reverse this unraveling of the very fabric of our country, as voters we must decide what we most want: to fight yet again to get our perfect way on partisan issues such as abortion, immigration, climate, gender identity, international engagement; my way or the highway. Good luck with that in a divided country unwilling to compromise. Either we select a leader who invests our country in bigger swords and more deadly fights where nothing much get done until we no longer have a country. Or, we select a leader who leads us in putting down our swords to work collaboratively to address our pressing problems.
Our Situational Leadership Need: Relational Leadership
Are your relationships big enough to get the job done? Steve Radcliffe
Selecting a new kind of leader will require us as stakeholders to adopt a new mindset to voting. It has been my experience that the most important priority in successfully selecting a leader is to focus on the skills and attributes that best fit the strategic situation – the threats and opportunities – that leader will face. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard named and described this model as Situational Leadership. Based on my 20 plus years as a CEO, 15 years as an executive coach to dozens of public/private/non-profit CEOs and five years doing executive search, I believe this model can help us rethink how we select our next president.
Clearly our vote to select a leader is based on many factors: whom we like or – hate, who is best for us financially, who aligns with our single-most pressing issue, who makes us feel good, who is articulate, whom our tribe likes.
By contrast, Situational Leadership asks us to come at voting with a key strategic question: What problem is our vote trying to solve for? Both in our brain and in our gut, I believe many of us know that problem is our Relationship Crisis. Our situation cries for Relational Leadership that has as its highest aim building relationships big enough to get the job done.
As voters we must decide to act as Relational Stakeholders if we expect to elect a Relational Leader. My friend, Michael Murray recently reminded a group of us about the root of the word decide: ‘cide’ comes from the Latin meaning ‘to kill’ as in suicide, infanticide, insecticide. We must make a choice by killing one or the other: more united or less. When we say “democracy is on the ballot” – it cannot mean “only my side wins.” Rather it means influencing all sides to choose the greater whole – including the parts with which we disagree. To quote Richard Rohr: “Seeming opposites are not opposites at all, but part of a hidden and rejected wholeness.”
I strongly believe that the current situation calls for Relational Leadership if we are to sustain as a free, self-governed democratic-whole. What are the qualities we as voters must decide to look for in a Relational Leader? Let me suggest four priorities:
1. Advocate for democratic purpose over partisan preferences. Democratic purpose places priority on what the nation wants over the narrow, partisan views of a political party or group. In recent years we have seen federal and state government leaders impose their views against the will of the people on key issues: extreme bans on abortion, failure to act on the border crisis, Covid restrictions, availability of assault rifles, growing deficits – to name but a few. Relational leadership is about being leader to all the stakeholders, not just those who support you. Elevating strategic purpose is the skill of great leaders and at the core of collaborative effort.
2. Uniter not a divider: We don’t need a leader who helps us become more divided. Relational leadership is about finding common ground to get things done and problems addressed. Uniters build relationships that are invaluable in working through difficult issues. It doesn’t mean letting go of your core beliefs, but it does mean finding common purpose and respecting differences – not allowing differences to become weaponized nor demonizing the other side.
3. Future focused. We are a country burdened by leaders past their prime. Biden is 80, Trump 77, Senate Majority Leader Schumer is 72, Senate Minority Leader McConnell is 81, House Leader Pelosi was 82 when she stepped down. History and past experiences matter, but they must be energetically applied to our future. We are in need of a next generation of leaders who can move us into a less combative, more productive politics.
4. Skilled at Constructive Dissatisfaction. As shared previously in this space, a wise CEO provided his wisdom: “I have three groups of stakeholders — shareholders, customers and employees. If I fully satisfy any one of the three, I would be bankrupt. My job is to keep all constructively dissatisfied, to the make enterprise successful and deliver to all.” We need leadership that will tell us hard truths and set realistic expectations – that solving knotty, complex problems will require accepting trade-offs. The illusion we want: The choice is half-a-loaf or a full-loaf. Today’s polarized reality: half-a-loaf or no bread at all. Constructive dissatisfaction is the currency able leaders skillfully deploy to get important things done.
Here’s the urgency we face: The capability to impact the Presidential candidates cannot wait until the General Election in November of 2024. It must start in January in Iowa and on through the primaries for the GOP. For the Democrats, there is no primary if President Biden opts to stay in the race. Poor options ensure poor decisions. The time is now. Here’s the hopeful news: it would be great to get everyone on board, but it only takes a relatively small percentage to shift an election outcome.
There is a time for war and a time for peace. Now is the time for Relational Leadership that is a force for relational peace. Now is the time to let what we are voting for drive whom we are voting for.
Robert’s latest book, “This Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics and Faith,” is now in paperback. A “recovering CEO,” he has authored 200 published articles and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The CEO Magazine. His website: www.robertehall.com