Of the three ways that an aspiring politician can show leadership (Policy, Politics, Personality) the most powerful way is through personality. This Liberal leadership campaign shows this in spades.
For the most part, the party has a bunch of candidates who are genuinely likeable people. But only one of them is really loveable and of course, that’s Justin. Whether it’s because we’ve known him since he was a kid, watched him grow up, love his hair, his name or whatever, he has absolute star power.
And this is what people fundamentally want in a leader. They want an emotional connection with their leader. This works in business, sports, entertainment and certainly in politics. People crave that emotional connection.
When the emotional connection isn’t strong then they’ll make a decision between policy and politics but when the emotions are there, the other two don’t matter. Think back to Martin, Dion, and Ignatieff. No emotional connection there. What we have in Trudeau though is two out of three, a potential leader who is good at politics and who has a magnetic personality. He may yet surprise us with real policies but for now, two out of three ain’t bad.
Every now and then we get a leader who has all three, Policies, Politics, and Personality but that is rare. You can think to John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and yes, maybe even Pierre Trudeau. Since these are rare, if you have to find two out of three, Personality and Politics are the two to go for. As a leader, you can always surround yourself with others who can generate policies.
Of the three ways a political leader can excel (Policy, Politics, and Personality), the one that is hardest for potential followers to evaluate is that of politics. After all, you can’t go into the back rooms to watch deals happen.
You can, however watch how people raise money. That’s where the Liberals used to be good at politics, raising money from corporations. But when that option diminished with campaign finance reform, the Liberals started to have problems and have under performed the Conservatives for many years.
The Conservatives themselves have done very well with campaign finances under the new rules as they were always better than the Liberals at raising small amounts from all sorts of people. This is the new skill of politics and the Conservatives are superb at it.
But you may ask why money is a good proxy for political skill. (Or maybe you didn’t but I’ll tell you anyway.) Money in today’s market is obtained through good organization. If you’re well organized and can get favours from people who hold events and fundraise for you then you’re probably good at politics.
As for who in the Liberal race is best at politics? Well there is a clear winner, hands down, and that is Justin. He more than doubled the amount raised by all other candidates showing that he did learn politics at his daddy’s knee.
Tomorrow I’m going to look at the last of this troika which is Personality. Can you guess who the winner is in this category?
I was just going to post this and thought that a few people might wonder how this works in other areas, business for instance. It’s the same thing. The people who are best at politics get the biggest budgets. Simple eh?
Now that we’ve all read enough about Margaret Thatcher and her leadership capabilities I want to go back to the Liberal Leadership race. If you remember my blog on Monday, I said something about how there are three dimensions upon which a leader can be identified. Those are Policy, Politics, and Personality. Today, I want to look at Policy.
Marc Garneau tried to make his campaign about policy, going so far as to criticize Justin Trudeau for his lack of policy ideas. “Federal Liberal Leadership frontrunner Justin Trudeau has a responsibility to tell Canadians where he stands and where he intends to lead now, not after the leadership race is over,”
Garneau was a policy wonk’s dream. A doctorate in engineering who had flown in space and designed space flight simulators for fun. But he was dry and dense and for all his love of policy, it was hard to figure out what he stood for (gender equality, high-speed internet access, student-assistance reform, expansion of Pacific-directed trade, and telecom liberalization.)
The liberals’ had picked two very smart leaders in the recent past and look where it got them. They twice turned down the chance for a political expert with a likeable personality in favour of two intellectuals who couldn’t connect with people.
Sometimes you get leaders who are good at policy and have a personality. Rare but people like Pierre Trudeau and Clinton come to mind.
The thing about leadership is that it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how good your policies are, if you can’t connect with people, you won’t get anywhere. In fact of the three dimensions upon which a leader can excel, (policy, politics, and personality), policy is the one that matters least.
Never forget that this is why A and B students work for C students.
I got a few emails last night about how I should comment on Margaret Thatcher’s death and her qualities as a leader. I was reluctant to do so as there is little I can add to such a well covered topic. My first thought was that I would rather write a piece on the leadership qualities of Annette Funicello who also died yesterday. But I figured I could make her story a cautionary tail for those who aspire to leadership positions.
The press have gone out of their way to characterize Margaret Thatcher as a great leader. Words like conviction, tough, disciplined, focused, determined, strong are used all over the place to describe her. There is a lot about Margaret that would characterize her a great leader.
Her lack of leadership capabilities in one major area was her downfall though. She was great at setting a vision, getting results, inspiring people (although she did not earn their love and affection). She was very skilled at managing down as her personal staff will attest.
But she was lousy at managing out. Her role in the British system was “Primus Inter Pares” Unlike tother political systems where the party elects the leader, in Britain, it is the caucus and tradition holds that the Prime Minister is, “First Among Equals.” (At least this is how the other cabinet members see it.)
She had a habit of running roughshod over cabinet members, the caucus and civil servants. As John O’Sullivan describes in the Globe today, she Kicked Up and Kissed Down. This is what eventually ended her reign, her inability to manage out.
Your followers will put up with rough leadership as long as you are producing results but the minute that ends, you’re toast if you’re no good at managing out.
The Liberal party’s selection of a new leader is a fascinating look into what people want to see in a leader and this campaign in particular provides an interesting laboratory to study leadership.
In business, academia, etc leaders are not selected by their followers but by their predecessors so there is nothing really to study about leadership selection as it relates to followers. In past Liberal leadership races it was often predecessors who tried to influence leadership selection and this is one factor that got the party into trouble. In this campaign though, the waring factions of the party have been silenced so the winner won’t be selected by predecessors.
In actual elections, there are many other forces that come into play when selecting a prime minister or a president. Real elections are often about competing visions but in this leadership race you have a group of people who share a very similar vision or passion. While there may be minor differences in vision, it is harder to make this a major point of differentiation when there are more fundamental agreements than differences.
Real elections are often fought on a record of results so studying leadership selection here is confusing as well. In this campaign, it is difficult to differentiate based upon results. No one has screwed up royally in the past, and none of the candidates has a record of results that would provide a substantial differentiating factor.
That leaves it to three dimensions upon which a leader can be identified. Those are Policy, Politics, and Personality. Over this week, I’m gong to try and look at each of these areas and see how each has influenced the race. ( I should warn you in advance that I actually watched all candidate speeches on Saturday to try and figure this stuff out.)
So what are you? Are you neurotic, always taking on too much responsibility? Or is your character flawed and you tend to assume that the world is at fault? In either case, you’ll need the following six ways to avoid responsibility.
Be the CEO – lots of other people you can blame. (Tony Hayward – BP)
If you can’t be the CEO, work in a team – it allows you to blame someone else. (Lance Armstrong)
Deny there’s a problem – nothing to be responsible for. (Nero)
Invent a higher responsibility – you’ll be too busy to assume other ones. (Silvio Berlusconi)
Mess up just enough – but not enough to get fired. (Leafs management, like forever)
Hide – did it work in school when you lowered your eyes to avoid a question from the prof? (All of us)
Of the three ways that an aspiring politician can show leadership (Policy, Politics, Personality) the most powerful way is through personality. This Liberal leadership campaign shows this in spades.
