Leadership in America

Leadership in America

I learned about leadership early in life.  I was in Boy Scouts at its height of popularity back in the sixties and early seventies; we had a troop of forty or fifty boys, with a leadership structure: Patrol Leaders who led groups of ten, Assistant Senior Patrol Leaders and the Senior Patrol Leader, older boys, who were “in charge” of the troop.  Those boy/leaders were advised by even older boys, Junior Assistant Scoutmasters, and adults, the Scoutmasters.

My troop in Cincinnati, Troop 819 in Wyoming, Ohio, had adults who were committed to letting the kids do the work. Clayton Warman, my first Scoutmaster there, had fought his way across Europe in World War II, earned a battlefield commission, and three Purple Heart medals.  He was a career Proctor and Gamble man, which was all I really knew about him when I was a kid. I just knew that Mr. Warman was a very “proper” man, who wanted the kids to lead the troop.  He saw himself as the advisor, who helped make decisions, but also let mistakes happen. 

He was followed by Tom Morgan, another career P&G guy, who navigated strategic bombers in the Air Force after the war.  Tom was a lot more relaxed, and was dedicated to letting kids lead the troop, without much interference from the adults.

So that’s how I learned about leadership, first as a Senior Patrol Leader, then as a Junior Assistant Scoutmaster.  These men knew to let us go, encouraging us in the right direction, but allowing us the “rope” to learn about how to lead, and how to get others to follow to reach our common goals.  It worked: we had a tremendously active troop, out every month (even in sub-zero weather) with two weeks of summer camp where the younger kids learned, and a “high adventure” expedition where the older boys were challenged.

That’s the leadership model I thrived under in my life.  Luckily for me, most of my “bosses” believed in that model as well; they gave me a job, and let me have the space to get it done the best way I could.  Whether it was in political campaigns as an operative, in the classroom as a teacher, or in athletics as a coach; they let me find my own way to succeed.  It’s the same model I used with the folks I worked with, my assistant coaches, my staff on campaigns, and the groups of kids I helped.  Here’s the job, let’s find a way to get it done together.

My first Principal, Pete Nix, passed away yesterday.  He was another of those Clayton Warman kind of guys; strong, determined, and willing to let you do your job.  Pete believed in “doing what’s right for kids.”  That was his most important goal, and he hired the people for his schools to get the job done.  He was a model of an administrator, he could be stern (I broke a window in my classroom – reporting that scared me to death) but he could also be fun (as an Alabama man, he made it clear that not standing for Dixie was a serious employment risk.)

Kids will remember him as scary, but also as the best pep-rally speaker ever.  When he got done, the whole school was ready to take the field.  He motivated, he lead, but he allowed others to lead as well.  

That model of leadership seems to have been lost.  In schools, “data-driven” decision-making has become a cover for micro-managing.  “Data doesn’t lie” is the line; but of course, data doesn’t tell the whole story of human interactions, what schools are all about. But administrators are too afraid to allow their staff the room to lead, every box must be checked, every step coordinated.  No wonder those administrators look so weary, they spend all of their time trying to do everyone else’s job.  

This form of “leadership” does not allow for creativity, or for mistakes.  It presses everyone into a common “form” so that they are easily controlled.  Trying to “raise the worst” has resulted in “smothering the best.”

And it’s not just in the schools, this is the new “American Way” to lead.  It must be some great new academic model, get your “data” and keep those you lead “in line.”  But it’s not the model that Clayt Warman or Tom Morgan or Pete Nix (or Marty Dahlman) used, and it’s not the model that encourages new leaders to learn and improve.  It makes the numbers look good.  But numbers aren’t faces, whether it’s kids in school, or employees doing their job.  

Mr. Warman and Mr. Nix are gone: I hope the next generation will find the kind of role models that those men were for me, and find that faces are more important than data points on a graph.