Leaders who never think they are wrong, are a danger to people

I am savouring James Comey’s gem titled A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership. Comey is the FBI Director whom Donald Trump fired in May 2017. He joined a long chain of others before him. More have followed. His book is a powerful lesson in leadership, amid a complex and troublesome competition between power, truth, lies and loyalty. Many whom we expect to soberly exercise power and provide leadership tend to forget themselves. They often abdicate their role and steadily degenerate into praise-hungry bullies. Some arrive ready-made for the role of the bully. The moment they get into that space, they expect blind loyalty and unquestioning support. Woe unto those who should dare think that there is an alternative way of looking at things. Comey observes, “A leader needs the truth, but an emperor does not consistently hear it from underlings.”

Most of our leaders are regal emperors. One such a person, in Comey’s experience, is President Trump’s lawyer and former New York Mayor and FBI boss, Rudy Giuliani. As the boss, Rudy was the FBI and FBI was Rudy – except where FBI failed. “Rudy was the star at the top and the successes of the office flowed in his direction,” Comey writes, “You violated this code at your peril.” He further reports that the publicity-loving Rudy was in his element when performing for media cameras and microphones. At such moments, everyone else’s role was to be seen and not to be heard. It was said, “The most dangerous place in New York is between Rudy and a microphone.”

The global political arena abounds with such characters. Giuliani and Trump are only two of them. Being so akin, it will be interesting to see just how far their mutually fat egos will accommodate each other. They have been cut off the fabric of leadership that few can speak the truth to. This fabric provides leaders in as diverse places as the US, Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa and the world. This class leaves behind it trails of resentment. Most people only whisper about it, or just brood quietly.

The political bully is a master of the herd and a king of groupthink. The herd knows that he is always right. Overzealous greenhorns groping for space and instant fame are his favourite barking dogs and admirers. Comey confesses to the irrational passion he felt towards Rudy when, as a young lawyer, he worked for him, “Giuliani had extraordinary confidence, and as a young prosecutor I found his brash style exciting,” he says, “which was part of what drew me to his office. I loved it that my boss was on magazine covers standing on the courthouse steps with his hands on his hips, as if he ruled the world. It fired me up.”

This dangerous filial fire flows through the veins of many political novices. They imagine that they have discovered God himself. They want all of us to surrender our moral authority to the bully and the groupthink around him. We are supposed to believe the group is “a moral entity larger than ourselves. In the face of the herd, our tendency is to go quiet and let the group’s brain and soul handle things,” Comey reminds us. He concludes, “Of course the group has no brain or soul special from each of ours. But by imagining that the group has each of these centres, we abdicate responsibility (to think for ourselves) which allows all groups to be hijacked by the loudest voice, the person who knows how brainless groups really are, and uses that to his advantage.

I can relate to this. I grew up in Nairobi’s Eastlands, where every court had area boys. The loudest fellow in the group was the bandleader. He created a worldview around himself, which everyone was expected to subscribe to. If you did not fit in, you were queer. You became a slave to the group and to the autocratic bully who, in the end, really knew nothing. If people laughed at some idiotic joke he made, you were supposed to laugh. You laughed just not to be left out. But some of us refused. I relate to Comey when he says, “In my life, I would spend a lot of time assessing threats, judging tone of voice, and figuring out the shifting dynamic  . . . Surviving a bully requires constant learning and adaptation. Which is why bullies are so powerful, because it’s so much easier to be a follower, to go with the crowd, to just blend in.”

There is Giuliani and there is Trump. There are others. In this season of handshakes, hugs and groupthink in Kenya, you are bullied to join the bandwagon, even without knowing what the festivity is about. If you don’t think, you are queer. I have seen otherwise “intelligent” professors rationalising something I know they know nothing about, saying how good it is. This is the kind of claptrap Comey decries. For my part, I elect to walk slowly – like Ghanaian novelist, Ayi Kwei Armah, where he has said, “Those who are blessed with the power and soaring swiftness of the Eagle and have flown before, let them go. I am a slow walker and I will travel slowly. And I, too, will arrive.”

My moment of praising the handshake, the hugs and the kisses will come, after I finally understand what they are about. I will wait for a free and fair election, respect for the Judiciary and a conscientious Parliament. I will wait for a democratic, free and fair country. Then I, too, will sing songs of praise. Meanwhile, I echo Comey where he says, “Those leaders who never think that they are wrong, who never question their judgements or perspectives, are a danger to the organisations and people they lead. In some cases, they are a danger to the nation and the world.”

-The writer is a public communications adviser. [email protected]