The American presidential race commands attention around the world. The fact that the final three contenders included a woman, an African-American, and an older man who often challenged his own party suggests that the United States, after a decline in popularity during the Bush years, retains a capacity to reinvent itself. But the next president will need to recognize that the nature of leadership also is changing.
The information revolution is transforming politics and organizations.
Hierarchies are becoming flatter, and knowledge workers respond to different incentives and political appeals. Polls show that people today have become less deferential to authority in organizations and in politics. Soft power – the ability to get what you want by attraction rather than coercion or payment – is becoming more important.
Even the military faces these changes. The Pentagon reports that American army drillmasters do “less shouting at everyone, because today’s generation responds better to instructors who play “a more counseling-type role. Military success against terrorists and insurgents requires soldiers to win hearts and minds, not just break bodies. Leadership theorists speak of “shared leadership and “distributed leadership, and suggest images of leaders in the center of a circle rather than atop a hierarchy.
Of course, the hard power of command remains important. Hard and soft power are related, because they are both approaches to achieving one’s objectives by affecting the behavior of others. Sometimes people are attracted to others with command power by myths of invincibility. As Osama bin Laden put it in one of his videos, “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.
Sometimes, intimidators have a vision, belief in their cause, and a reputation for success that attracts others despite their bullying behavior. Consider Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of America’s nuclear navy. Rickover was a small man, far from the top of his class at the US Naval Academy, who did not look like a warrior or swashbuckling sea captain. His leadership success came from his bureaucratic skill in cultivating Congressional support and obtaining resources, and from a rigid discipline that tolerated no failures among his officers. The result was an efficient and accident-free nuclear submarine force that developed a mystique of success and attracted bright young officers. Able people wanted to join him because Rickover was renowned for implementing an important strategic vision, not because he was a nice boss.
Hard and soft power can reinforce or undermine each other. In response to Al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on the US, Vice President Dick Cheney argued that strong military action would deter further attacks. Certainly, the hard power of military and police force was necessary to counter Al-Qaeda, but the indiscriminate use of hard power – illustrated by the invasion of Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison photos, and detentions without trial – served to increase the number of terrorist recruits. The absence of an effective soft power component undercut the strategic response to terrorism. Almost every leader needs a certain degree of soft power. The great leadership theorist James McGregor Burns once argued that those who rely on coercion are not leaders, but mere wielders of power. Thus, in his view, Hitler was not a leader. But even tyrants and despots such as Hitler need a degree of soft power, at least within their inner circle. No individual is strong enough to coerce everyone else. A dictator must attract or induce henchmen to impose his coercive techniques on others.
At the same time, except for some religious leaders, such as the Dalai Lama, soft power is rarely sufficient, while leaders who only court popularity may be reluctant to exercise hard power when they should. Alternatively, leaders who throw their weight around without regard to the effects on their soft power may find others placing obstacles in the way of their hard power.
Indeed, psychologists have found that too much assertiveness by a leader worsens relationships, just as too little limits achievement. In the words of CEO Jeff Immelt, “when you run General Electric, there are 7-12 times a year when you have to say, ‘you’re doing it my way.’ If you do it 18 times, the good people will leave. If you do it three times, the company falls apart. Machiavelli famously said that it is more important for a prince to be feared than to be loved. He may have been correct, but we sometimes forget that the opposite of love is not fear, but hatred. And Machiavelli made it clear that hatred is something a prince should carefully avoid. When the exercise of hard power undercuts soft power, leadership becomes more difficult – as President Bush found out after the invasion of Iraq.
Soft power is not good per se, and it is not always better than hard power. Nobody likes to feel manipulated, even by soft power. On the other hand, soft power allows followers more choice and leeway than hard power does, because their views and choices matter more. And, in an age of flatter hierarchies and empowered knowledge workers, soft power is likely to increase in importance.
Hard power has not become irrelevant, but leaders must develop the contextual intelligence that allows them to combine hard and soft power resources into a “smart power strategy. Whoever the next president will be, he or she will need to learn that lesson.
Joseph S. Nye Jr. is a professor at Harvard and author of The Powers to Lead. This commentary is published by DAILY NEWS EGYPT in collaboration with Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
