Photo: Reuters New Media Inc./Corbis
|
Behind Open Doors
By Oren Harari, January-February 2002
Colin Powell's seven laws of power
|
He has commanded armies and headed government agencies—and now as U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell is in every sense a world leader.
Through the years, in each position of growing authority, he has followed a code of leadership that inspires confidence, trust, and admiration.
Powell and I became friends after we both spoke at an IBM-sponsored conference in 1996. Over time and from our many discussions, I formulated a point-by-point guide to Powell's style, a kind of Leadership 101. Surprisingly, for a lifelong Army man, many of his strategies seem to fly in the face of traditional military thinking. As I began developing these principles into a book about Powell's innate management skills, I at first viewed the project as primarily for business leaders. But in the days following the September attacks in New York and Washington—as Powell displayed his assured, dignified, and well-prepared style—it became clear to me that everyone has a vital interest in having a clear understanding of the Powell Way. What's more, I firmly believe that Powell's insights are of immense practical value for anyone faced with important decisions, whether business or personal. Here are seven of his key principles.
1. Dare to Be the Skunk
"Every organization," says Powell, "should tolerate rebels who tell the emperor he has no clothes… and this particular emperor expects to be told when he is naked." As a young officer out of the ROTC program at New York's City College, Powell headed a platoon in Vietnam—where he learned something about how not to lead others. "We accepted that we had been sent to pursue a policy that had become bankrupt," he wrote in his best-selling autobiography. "The top leadership never went to the Secretary of Defense or the President and said, 'This war is unwinnable the way we are fighting it.'… They bowed to group-think pressures and kept up pretenses."
Powell and many other junior officers vowed that someday, when they were in charge, they would not make the same mistake. Years later, during Desert Storm, he would put that principle into practice. Almost immediately after becoming Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989, Powell huddled with President George Bush's senior staff, debating how best to respond to the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq. The group agreed that the United States should continue to defend Saudi Arabia from invasion. But what about pushing the Iraqis out of Kuwait? Only Powell was willing to bring up that potentially devastating question. "I guess some people suggested that that was not the correct thing for me to ask," he says. "But I asked it."
He went even further, suggesting that the President draw his famous rhetorical "line in the sand." And, he recalls, "That was not a well-received statement." In fact, then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney bluntly criticized Powell.
"Perhaps I was the ghost of Vietnam," he says. "There had been cases in our past when senior leaders, military leaders, did not force civilians to make those kinds of clear choices, and if it caused me to be the skunk at the picnic, take a deep breath."
Of course, Powell is a gentleman. He's not rude or mean. As a good leader, he patiently builds a consensus, prodding people while simultaneously listening, learning, and involving them. But in the final analysis, he says, "Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off."
2. To Get the Real Dirt, Head for the Trenches
"The people in the field are closest to the problem," Powell says. "Therefore, that is where the real wisdom is." On the eve of the Desert Storm campaign, Powell solicited enlisted men and women for advice on winning the war.
"When a captain came to see me," he recalls, "I would tell him to sit down. I'd say, 'Talk to me, son. What have you got?' And then I'd let him argue with me, as if he were arguing with an equal. After all, he knew more about the subject than I did.
"I also knew he'd tell his friends that he had argued with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Word would spread, and people would understand that when they came into my office I really wanted to hear what they thought." And that he trusted their opinions.
Leaders who ask for straight talk from the trenches must graciously accept information and diverse opinions—even ideas they don't want to hear. "The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them," says Powell. Such encouragement can be nonverbal. The first time I walked into his office, Powell came around his vast desk and warmly ushered me into an alcove, where we sat, almost touching, at a far smaller, round table. He explained that the table sends a message of intimacy and trust. He wants visitors to know that he genuinely wants to hear what they have to say.
|
