The Street-Fighter Element of Leadership

Posted by Rich Crowley in leadership

I had an interesting conversation with a good friend yesterday on the US political situation. We are both fans of Obama (though this doesn’t suggest my political ties are necessarily to the right or left) and we had high hopes for him to make a big, positive difference in the world. However, my friend is very disillusioned at this point based on Obama’s performance as a negotiator during the recent debt talks.

While we both agree he got taken to the cleaners by the Republicans, I argued he campaigned as someone who could make a difference by forging consensus across party lines even in the corrosive Washington atmosphere. I said regardless of the tactics he tried, he probably would have had the Tea Party gun to his head at the end as he did anyway. Changing his personal principles in the interests of getting a deal that was closer to what he felt the nation needed would have meant abandoning the very principles he campaigned on, and perhaps he felt that was a moral / ethical line he felt was his duty not to cross as a leader trying to lead with integrity.

My friend’s response, which provided me a whole new perspective on leadership, was that his definition of a great leader is one who does what is necessary given the situation at hand, and for the good of the movement he is leading, regardless of his personal principles. If this means completely abandoning certain individual principles for what might be construed as the greater good, so be it.

Thus, while Obama is a master orator, visionary and would-be consensus-builder, the environment he is in requires him to be at least part-thug / heavy / street fighter, where “no rules” is the only rule, and he is simply not capable of that. This will be his ultimate downfall for without this element in his persona, his ability to control his adversaries will be limited.