Hardcore Leaders

Is Uber CEO a Bad Leader Or Just An Asshole?

Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is in the news yet again. This time it’s because of a heated argument between Kalanick and an Uber driver that was videoed. The conversation between the Uber driver and the Uber CEO starts innocently enough, but quickly turns dark when the driver calls out Kalanick for his continued changes of pricing and services which as the Uber driver puts it has “bankrupted” him and cost him “$97,000.”

Now add to this the recent scathing blog post written by former Uber engineer Susan Fowler which recounted claims of unbridled sexual harassment, and the indifferent reaction from the Human Resources department. Reports of a corporate culture of pure Darwinistic survival of the fittest environment pollute the internet.

So the question is this; is Uber CEO Travis Kalanick a bad leader or just an asshole? Now some of you may say, “what’s the difference?” And you may be right to say this as we are in the midst of a generational leadership crisis. As Steve Gruenert and Todd Whitaker once wrote, “The culture of any organization is shaped by the worst behavior the leader is willing to tolerate.” If Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is willing to tolerate sexual harassment, allow a predatory corporate culture, and as we witnessed in the video altercation, speak condescendingly to an Uber driver, what can me make of this? Legendary Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Willink has said, “It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.” And sage Chinese philosopher Confucius tells us that, “There is never a case when the root is in disorder and yet the branches are in order.”

If Uber is in such disarray internally, we can wisely infer that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is also internally in disarray. A leader’s internal mental state is projected outwardly and is manifest within the organization. A leader that is stable, fair and prudent has an organization that is stable, fair and prudent.

Of course once the embarrassing video came out Kalanick had to offer the standard mea culpa. In a memo to his employees, he wrote, “To say that I am ashamed is an extreme understatement. My job as your leader is to lead…and that starts with behaving in a way that makes us all proud. That is not what I did, and it cannot be explained away. It’s clear this video is a reflection of me—and the criticism we’ve received is a stark reminder that I must fundamentally change as a leader and grow up. This is the first time I’ve been willing to admit that I need leadership help and I intend to get it.”

He’s obviously a bad leader. And it’s obvious that’s he’s never bothered to read about how Alexander the Great, Hannibal Barca, General George S. Patton and other leaders were revered by their followers. You see, a great leader leads from the front. He knows that any failure his followers suffer is his failure first and foremost.

And as to whether or not Uber CEO Travis Kalanick is an asshole, watch the video and decide for yourself. As for all of you Uber drivers out there, the writing is on the wall, as soon as self driving cars are approved and ready to go, you’re all going to be replaced.

If Kalanick is serious about getting some leadership help, I’m more than happy to help. Give me a call Travis.

March 1, 2017 | 0 comments | View Post

Democrats, Republicans and The Failure of Leadership

When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President on June 16, 2015, I along with many others thought it was a stunt to generate some buzz for his “reality” show The Apprentice. Whether or not, this was yet another of Trump’s marketing stunts, it turned out to be the end of both the Democratic and Republican parties. If the leaders of both parties had shown even the slightest bit of leadership, there’s no way Trump would have gotten within miles of the White House. Anyone who has been paying attention knows that we’ve been experiencing a leadership crisis for many years now. Trump becoming President of the United States is simply the a physical manifestation of that failure.

Leadership is about vision, insight, integrity and inspiration. Vision, meaning the ability to see beyond what others see in order to take your group to a better place. Insight, meaning the ability to look at a thing or a person and to discern what others cannot. Being able to gain a deep and accurate assessment of whatever one focuses on is a rare talent. Integrity means being honest, trustworthy and having ethics and morals. And finally inspiration. The word inspiration comes from the Latin word inspirare which means to “blow into,” “breathe upon.” So, to inspire means to excite or inflame.

Take a look at those words again, vision, insight, integrity and inspiration. Those encompass the foundational traits of leadership. Can you truly look at the DNC and GOP and see how they’ve exhibited any of these traits? No, they haven’t. And thus, Trump was able to come along, and speaking the words of a populist, inflame the hearts of a downtrodden country and win the Presidential election. We can debate the popular vote versus the Electoral College vote another time.

And what of Hillary Clinton, whose entire campaign boiled down to, “Vote for me, I’m a woman and I’m not Trump.” Where was the vision and inspiration in her campaign? There was none. For the most part, her campaign barely had a pulse.

Regardless of whether you lean right, left, or center, we should all agree that in order to be a Democratic Republic, two privately owned corporations (The DNC and GOP) should not have been allowed to control the election the way they did. The Republican establishment fought hard against Trump with their #NotTrump and #NeverTrump campaigns. Of course, all this did was to solidify Trump as a Washington outsider which just made him stronger. Now that he’s won, the Republicans smelling the intoxicating scent of power are trying to play nice with Trump. Where were the Republican candidates that truly believed in small government and individual freedom? Well, unless they were able to convince a billionaire to fund their campaign, they couldn’t buy a ticket into the game.

Wikileaks showed that the DNC worked overtime to kneecap Bernie Sanders and prevent him from winning the Democratic nomination. Despite his excited base who would have come out in a Democratic deluge to vote for him. The DNC allows owns a large portion of the blame for allowing Trump to become president.

Leadership was nowhere to be found in either party. And I sense that they will never find it because they don’t care to. When the people cried for someone to throw them a lifeline to keep them from drowning, the DNC decided to give them Hillary Clinton. During a feverishly anti establishment year, the DNC refused to change directions. As has been written repeatedly elsewhere, Clinton was a wounded, and disliked candidate. So after she lost what did the DNC decide to do? They decided to double down and give them Nancy Pelosi to lead the minority party. Because nothing says “we’ve heard your pleas and are heading in a new direction” like bringing back a 76 year old person who has been in congress since Full House aired its first episode, Michael Jackson released his album, “Bad,” and a gallon of gas cost 89 cents. Where’s the leadership?

The Republicans who used to be the party of small government and individual liberty, can’t seem to throw enough money at the Pentagon, and want to be in your bedroom, a woman’s uterus and watching you at all times. Tell us again how free we are?

A true leader would talk with the people and create a vision for the future. Based on Trump’s cabinet picks so far, we’re going to live in a full-fledged oligarchy. Not that we haven’t been already, but now the veil has been lifted, the curtain pulled back and it’s in plain sight for all to see.

The United States has a population of over 325 million people. Where are the Thomas Jefferson’s, the Abraham Lincoln’s and John F. Kennedy’s? Are we to believe that within such a diverse population there aren’t any great men and women ready to rise to the challenge? Of course there are, but because the DNC and GOP are private organizations run to benefit their donors, they won’t allow greatness anywhere near center stage.

The DNC and GOP are dead. They’re dead to the people, and in time, once the people wake up to this, they will demand that true leaders be allowed to lead.

December 13, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Brexit and the Failure of Leadership

Yet again, the mainstream media has hidden the main for Brexit. Brexit, or Britain/UK leaving the EU is at its core a massive failure of leadership. From American president Woodrow Wilson once said,
“The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.” If the leaders in the UK had been listening to the people for the last 30 years, perhaps their wouldn’t be a surge in the rise of neo-Nazi, and fascist groups. The mainstream media has been lashing out saying that those who voted to leave the EU are all just a bunch of racists and bigots. I won’t argue that some of the are indeed racists and bigots, but you know as well as I do that 52% of the population isn’t comprised of racists. That’s an overly simplistic thought, and like all overly simplistic thoughts, it’s wrong.

The heart of the Brexit issue can also be found in what’s going on across the pond here in the U.S. The popular movements supporting Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and Presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump both point to a lack of leaders listening to the people. It’s much easier for the establishment to call Brexit, Sanders and Trump supporters stupid, bigoted or entitled, but the truth lays in the fact that all three of these groups are comprised of disenfranchised people who feel as if the system has turned their backs on them. Or as the brilliant comedian and philosopher George Carlin once said, “They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fuckin’ years ago.”

Great leaders make sure that everyone on their team is well taken care of. The unwritten contract between leaders and followers is that each will take care of the other. So what happens when we put our faith and trust in leaders that we have put into power and then they ignore our needs? A study done by Princeton and Northwestern universities concluded that “The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country’s citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful.”

Working-class voters are waking up and realizing that their leaders don’t care about them beyond getting elected or re-elected, hence the dramatic rise in alternative groups. Brexit would never have happened had the elite thrown down more than just a few crumbs to their followers. Globalization has eviscerated the middle class. It didn’t have to be so, but corporate profits became the overarching goal, while the needs and future of the people were tossed into the garbage bin of history.

Now read the following story about Alexander the Great and ask yourself, “would ANY of our leaders today do for his followers what he did?

““Now, however, he marched out against Dareius, expecting to fight another battle; but when he heard that Dareius had been seized by Bessus, he sent his Thessalians home, after distributing among them a largess of two thousand talents over and above their pay. In consequence of the pursuit of Dareius, which was long and arduous (for in eleven days he rode thirty-three hundred furlongs (644km), most of his horsemen gave out, and chiefly for lack of water. At this point some Macedonians met him who were carrying water from the river in skins upon their mules. And when they beheld Alexander, it being now midday, in a wretched plight from thirst, they quickly filled a helmet and brought it to him. To his enquiry for whom they were carrying the water, they replied: ‘For our own sons; but if thou livest, we can get other sons, even if we lose these.’ On hearing this he took the helmet into his hands, but when he looked around and saw the horsemen about him all stretching out their heads and gazing at the water, he handed it back without drinking any, but with praises for the men who had brought it; ‘For,’ said he, ‘if I should drink of it alone, these horsemen of mine will be out of heart.’ But when they beheld his self-control and loftiness of spirit, they shouted out to him to lead them forward boldly, and began to goad their horses on, declaring that they would not regard themselves as weary, or thirsty, or as mortals at all, so long as they had such a king.” -Plutarch, Life of Alexander 42.3-6 (Plutarch. Plutarch’s Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1919. 7. )

July 1, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Hannibal, Leadership and Earning Your Team’s Respect

One of the main ways that a new leader fails is when they are about to become the new leader of a group. Nothing is more important in leadership than setting the right tone for your group. Because many people confuse having a title with having authority, the alienate their team from the first day. Their attitude is, “I’m the new boss and when I say jump, you say ‘how high?’ are we clear?” Now compare that approach to how legendary Carthaginian warrior and general Hannibal Barca took the reins of power and did so with tact, and respect towards his men. Hannibal came close to destroying the Roman Empire between 201 and 218 B.C.E., but that’s a story for another time.

Now imagine the scene if you will, a ferocious army that had been commanded by Hamilcar Barca, Hannibal’s father. They had been assembled to hear Hannibals first speech to the troops as their new commander. Hamilcar was deeply respected and beloved by his me, and had taken his death hard. Sadly, Hamilcar had died during a battle when he essentially sacrificed himself to save his two sons who were also at the battle. Some time later after Hannibal’s brother-in-law Hasdrubal was assassinated, Hannibal was promoted to commander-in-chief by the army and confirmed in his appointment by the Carthaginian government.

One time before a battle, Hannibal had his army was assembled so he could speak to them. He said:

“Now as for me, my men, there is not one of you who has not with his own eyes seen me strike a blow in battle; I have watched and witnessed your valor in the field, and your acts of courage I know by heart, with every detail of when and where they took place: and this, surely, is not a thing of small importance. I was your pupil before I was your commander; I shall advance into the line with soldiers I have a thousand times praised and rewarded; and the enemy we shall meet are raw troops with a raw general, neither knowing anything of the other.”

Hannibal acknowledged the past bravery and feats of his men in battle. He reminded them that he always fought side by side with them, rather than sitting in safety far behind the fighting. Are you this kind of leader? Do you have this kind of leadership in your organization?

Hannibal was was the first to enter battle and the last to leave the field. He ate the same food as his men, and rather than sleeping on a nice soft bed in a tent reserved for officers, he slept on the cold, hard ground alongside his men. Is it any surprise that his men would die for him? Would any of your team die for you? Okay, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but to what extent would any member of your team go to protect you? If you haven’t fostered that kind of loyalty among your team, take a step back, pause, reflect and ask yourself, how can you EARN this kind of intense respect from you team?

March 29, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

What Can We Learn From Donald Trump and Leadership?

The stratospheric rise of Donald Trump as the Republican party front runner can offer us many real world lessons about leadership. Keep in mind that I’m looking at this from a clinical perspective. Whether you’re pro Trump or anti Trump, you can’t argue the fact that he was created a massive following in a very short period of time. Why? If you are willing to keep an open mind, let’s unpack this phenomena known as Donald Trump.

The brilliant sociololgist Max Weber would sum up Trump’s success in one word: charisma. The etymology for the world charisma is Greek, meaning of divine origin. Weber wrote about charisma being “a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin…an on the basis of them the individual concerned is treated as a leader.”

Isn’t that what Trump has managed to do when he claims that all he does is “win?” He has positioned himself as a demi-god imbued with supernatural powers. And he has promised to use his powers to improve the lives of his followers.

A soft spoken, non-charismatic person will never elicit the rabid loyalty that Trump has among his followers. One only has to look at Jeb Bush to see this was proven true. Despite the establishment power and money behind Jeb, Trump was able to steam roll right over him (along with the others) without breaking a sweat.

We could say that the core of Trump followers make up a cult. The word cult is derived from the Latin word cultus which means “worship.” Most cults are made up of people who felt alienated from society at large and have congealed around a shared common belief in one person whom they feel crackles with charisma and can take them to the “promised land.” In this case the disgruntled masses of Trump followers feel that the GOP has thrown them overboard. Add in a convenient enemy whether real or imagined that the group can focus their collective rage on and you have the formula for a powerful movement. I can tell you right now that the Republican establishment has no idea what they’re dealing with, and the more they try to crush Trump, the more power they give him.

In one of the most insightful books every written on human nature and mass movements, Eric Hoffer shared his timeless wisdom. The True Believer: Thoughts on The Nature of Mass Movements sums up the rise of Trump in 168 tightly written pages. Below are a few noteworthy quotes from the book:

“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

“The permanent misfits can find salvation only in a complete separation from the self; and they usually find it by losing themselves in the compact collectivity of a mass movement.”

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

“The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle. The reason that the inferior elements of a nation can exert a marked influence on its course is that they are wholly without reverence toward the present. They see their lives and the present as spoiled beyond remedy and they are ready to waste and wreck both: hence their recklessness and their will to chaos and anarchy.”

If the above quotes seem frighteningly accurate and appropriate to the rise of Trump, keep in mind that Hoffer wrote this book in 1951!

In the book on messianic movements, The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn, he shows a pattern of these movements rising during times of economic instability and social upheavals. What makes the Trump movement so powerful (and potentially dangerous) is that it mirrors many of these past violent movements.

A good leader helps create a vision of what could be and then points the people in that direction. He plays the role of the grand conductor. There’s an element in Trump’s followers of wanting him to be a father figure who will “make American great again.” Daddy will fix things once and for all. By appealing to people’s base instincts he has catapulted himself to the front of the GOP pack.

Trump leads by voicing the collective thoughts of his followers. Followers who feel that the system has betrayed them. He positions himself as the one who will fix things and give them the live they had been promised. The life they have always dreamed of.

As Napoleon once said, “A leader is a dealer of hope.” And to his followers, that’s what Trump represents, a leader who will reestablish their sense of hope for a life better than the one they have now.

So what are the leadership lessons and take aways from Trump’s rise?

People must believe that you have special powers or abilities. At the very least they must think that you are more talented than they are.
Find or create an enemy for your team/group to rally against. Apple has Microsoft, Redbull has Coke and Pepsi, Harley has the fear of being a boring old man.
Rally your team around a collective vision of something that is better and larger than themselves.

March 18, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Hardcore Leaders Lead From the Front

One of the common themes occurring today is how many “leaders” lead from behind. Whether it be the chicken hawk politician grandstanding and eagerly offering to send young men and women to fight and die in some third world shit hole, or the CEO that promises the Board of Directors revenue goals that have no basis in reality and then expects everyone else in the organization to move heaven and earth to make it happen, one doesn’t need to look far to see that what passes off as leadership today is sadly lacking. In order to get the most out of your people, you’re going to have to lead from the front.

Over 2,300 years ago, a young Alexander the Great was preparing his men to go into what would be a very brutal battle. What he told his men is something that all leaders and aspiring leaders. At one point in his talk, he said this, “‘Perhaps you will say that, in my position as your commander, I had none of the labours and distress which you had to endure to win for me what I have won. But does any man among you honestly feel that he has suffered more for me than I have suffered for him? Come now, if you are wounded, strip and show your wounds, and I will show mine. There is no part of my body but my back which has not a scar; not a weapon a man may grasp or fling the mark of which I do not carry upon me. I have sword-cuts from close fight; arrows have pierced me, missiles from catapults bruised my flesh; again and again I have been struck by stones or clubs—and all for your sakes: for your glory and your gain. Over every land and sea, across river, mountain, and plain I led you to the world’s end, a victorious army. I married as you married, and many of you will have children related by blood to my own. Some of you have owed money—I have paid your debts, never troubling to inquire how they were incurred, and in spite of the fact that you earn good pay and grow rich from the sack of cities. To most of you I have given a circlet of gold as a memorial for ever and ever of your courage and of my regard. And what of those who have died in battle? Their death was noble, their burial illustrious; almost all are commemorated at home by statues of bronze; their parents are held in honour, with all dues of money or services remitted, for under my leadership not a man among you has ever fallen with his back to the enemy.”

Can you imagine a CEO today giving the modern version of this speech? Alexander made it clear to his men that he had always fought side by side with them. He didn’t talk about it, he LIVED it!

Are you leading by example as Alexander did? Would your team die for you? No, okay, then what would be the modern day work related equivalent? Perhaps working on a weekend for no pay? Perhaps missing a wedding anniversary in order to make a deadline. Would your people do any of these things for you? No? Then ask yourself this, what have you done for your team in order to engender the kind of ferocious loyalty that Alexander the Great did.

February 29, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Hardcore Leadership and How to Manage Knowledge Workers

One of the biggest disconnects regarding leadership has been brought about by our rapidly evolving technology. When I say “leadership,” I define that as someone people follow. And when I say “Hardcore Leadership” I define that as a leader who knows what it takes to get his people to the highest levels of achievement and makes it happen. With the exception of aristocracy, during most of history, leaders were in place because (hopefully) they had many years of experience and could teach and guide their followers on the details of how to do the job right. The top down model of management, often referred to as Theory X held that a hierarchical model where the guy on “top” made all the rules because he was the boss. He said jump, and his people asked “how high?” The new model is referred to as Y Theory, meaning that the organization was flat, more collaborative and less autocratic.

So what happens when the old leadership model of master craftsman teaching the young apprentice his job no longer applies? The big shift in leadership is this: how do you lead and manage people who know more about their work then you do? With the explosion of new networking technology (Software Defined Everything and the Internet of Everything for example) how does a manager who came up learning antiquated programming languages or outdated networking technologies tell a millennial how to do his job? The smart answer is they don’t. A leader’s new responsibilty is to eliminate any friction in the organization that prevents the knowledge worker from doing their job. The second duty of a Hardcore Leader to to help his people collaborate effectively. As technology becomes every more ingrained in our world, helping teams to work effectively together. Thankfully that’s a leadership skill that has always been important and will never become outdated. Your job as a leader is to empower your knowledge workers.

A Hardcore Leader working with knowledge workers is going to have to create an environment that crackles with the energy of compelling sense of purpose. Say what you will about Steve Jobs, but you can’t deny that he brought out the very best in his people. Was he hard on them? Hell yes he was, and look what he created. Many years ago when I was in the Navy, I attempted to become a Navy SEAL, sadly I was injured and didn’t finish the program (that’s a story best shared over a drink). One of the things that struck me about being at BUD/S (Basic Under Water Demolition/SEAL) was how one of the classes that had recently graduated had a saying, “A day without a hammer is like a day with out sunshine.” That always stuck with me, because it was a clear acknowledgement that in order to become the best, you needed someone to push you harder than you thought you could go. And that is what a Hardcore Leader needs to understand; that part of your job is to clear the path for your team, and push them to achieve heights they didn’t think possible.

If technology has become so complex that a manager can’t offer any feedback or help to solve a complex problem, then his job becomes obsolete if he doesn’t bring anything else to the table.

February 25, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post

Do Most Leaders Suck…and Where are the Great Leaders?

Chances are, if you’re over the age of eighteen and have worked a few jobs it probably occurred to you that most of the people you worked for were horrible leaders. Did you ever stop to ask yourself why that was?

We have over 7 Billion people on the this planet, so why are aren’t we brimming full with amazing leaders? Where are the Alexander the Great’s, the Winston Churchill’s, the Julius Caesars, the Asoka’s, the Franklin D. Roosevelt’s, the Thomas Jefferson’s and Napoleon Bonarparte’s, and the George Washington’s? Where are the Nelson Mandela’s, the Mahatma Gandhi’s, and Joan of Arcs, the Ataturk’s, the Hamurabi’s and the Leonidas’? Where are the 21st Century’s versions of Marcus Aurelius, Catherine the Great, the Simon Bolivars? Our world history is replete with tremendous leaders, who left their mark on the societies that they lived it.

Just here in the United States of America alone we had John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton just to name a few. The original thirteen colonies had a population of approximately 3 million people. Let that sink in for a moment. A fledgling country with a population of 3 million people had six brilliant leaders. The US population is now well over 350 million people. That means that we should have over seven hundred leaders at the caliber of the US founding fathers. But we don’t, why? In three words we can sum up why, education and role models. You see, these men all were educated not what to think, but how to think. Equally importantly they had role models. At a young age, Alexander was exposed to Achilles from a poem called The Illiad. was a heroic Greek warrior from a famous ancient poem called the Iliad. Achilles became the model of the noble warrior for Alexander, and he modeled himself after this hero.

Alexander was first educated by Leonidas, who was a relative of Alexander’s mother Olympia. Alexander’s father King Phillip asked Leonidas to teach Alexander math, horsemanship and archery. Alexander’s next tutor was Lysimachus, who used role playing as a way to engage and make the lessons stick. Alexander was enthralled by the warrior hero Achilles in the epic poem, the Illiad. Alexander’s fascination with the Illiad lasted throughout his life and he was said to always have a copy with him on his military campaigns. Eventually King Philip hired the philosopher Aristotle to teach Alexander. For three years, Aristotle taught Alexander philosophy, poetry, drama, science and politics.

America’s Founding Fathers were immersed in what was called a “classic education.” From the article The Classical Education of the Founding Fathers
“The typical education of the time began in what we would call the 3rd Grade—at about age eight. Students who actually went to school were required to learn Latin and Greek grammar and, later, to read the Latin historians Tacitus and Livy, the Greek historians Herodotus and Thucydides, and to translate the Latin poetry of Virgil and Horace. They were expected to know the language well enough to translate from the original into English and back again to the original in another grammatical tense. Classical Education also stressed the seven liberal arts: Latin, logic, rhetoric (the “trivium”), as well as arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music (the “quadrivium”).”

By now you have probably already come to the same conclusion as I did, “Why weren’t we educated in this manner?” Can you imagine what America would be like today if we had, as opposed to the intentional dumbing down of this country’s citizens?

And my dear reader is what Hardcore Leadership is all about, educating the next generation of leaders. And as Patrick Henry once said, “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past.”

February 15, 2016 | 0 comments | View Post