The Most Powerful Man in the World and.... My Dad

About ten years ago my sister was working as the activities director at a nursing home in my home town. One day former president George H. W. Bush and his wife Barbara stopped by to say hello to the residents of the home. Mr. Bush’s summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine is about eight miles from my parents home, as such his being in the area was not a surprise. My sister was involved in organizing his visit which provided her access to the former president. Mr. Bush was always one of my father’s favorite presidents, so my sister asked him if it would be possible for my dad to come say hi. Mr. Bush kindly said yes then had my sister give one of his secret service agents her and my dad’s details and they scheduled a time for them to visit. The day came, my dad and my sister went down to Mr. Bush’s house (its location is very well known in the area), the appropriate security checks were done, then my dad and Mr. Bush talked with each other. For a full two hours they went back and forth discussing politics, the military, and mostly fishing. This man who at one point was, arguably, the most powerful man in the world took two hours out of his day to talk with my dad, who the history books will forget.

In The Dark Side Of Transformational Leadership: A Critical Perspective Tourish decries the trend of promoting “transformational” leadership as the ideal version of a leader. He argues that this sort of leadership promotes demagoguery and cult like behavior.¹It is no surprise to anyone who pays attention to group dynamics and has found himself in the orbit of a transformational leader what a problem this sort of leadership can be. The requirement of absolute agreement and tyrannical behavior when things do not go quite to plan and the reaction of followers to circle the wagons around the leader can be at the very least terrifying.

As much as this sort of leadership is of fashion there is a way out of it. Tourish provides some examples of ways to make leadership less cult-like and more ‘rooted in a profound appreciation of context, an understanding of the limitations inherent to leader agency and an acknowledgment of the agency of others’ ² By finding a value in the others around them leaders can avoid the pitfall of seeing themselves as messianic figures for their organizations.

By all accounts my dad’s experience with Mr. Bush was not an exception. Mr. Bush’s humility was a common theme by those who spoke of him just after his death this past November.³ It was this humility that helped him to move the world past the cold war, to achieve legislative victories and treaties, and to garner a fan for life out of my dad. This is not to say that he did not have faults, he certainly did, but a healthy amount of humility can help to overcome a plethora of faults.

It would be great if more of the popular leadership writers started to heed Tourish’s warnings about transformational leadership. Unfortunately there is something in much of the human psyche that likes the idea of being large and in charge, which makes selling books telling people how to become a transformational leader incredibly profitable. Humility does not sell real well, so we are probably in for more failures because of it before people in positions of power start to acknowledge its dark side.

In spite of his faults, the world could use more leaders like Mr. Bush, if only for his humility.