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.”