The Fog of War

Photos taken of U.S. Presidents before and after their terms in office show what a huge toll that job takes on the body. In the four years between inauguration day and the end of term, Presidents often look like they’ve aged 10, not just 4 years.

It’s a grueling job, with a lot of pressure. What we see on the outside is only the tip of the iceberg. Many of us, while not quite as high profile, are in leadership positions that put a terrible strain on mind and body. What happens to the body and mind under the weight of public pressure and tensions of leadership? What toll does public attack and humiliation take on the mind and emotions? What about our energy and drive, after plans and ambitions are torpedoed by opposition, sunk by the weight of inaction, or stalled by endless rounds of skeptical questioning?

The challenges leaders face on the outside are only a part of the tests of leadership. There are also the psychological and emotional obstacles that lie in wait: lust for power, failure of nerve, unrealizable visions and follies that lead us astray, isolation and jealousy that prevent us from seeking counsel, and hurt and moodiness that interfere with judgment. This is why no matter how many how-to books you read on leadership, they do not prepare you for the challenge of your own mind and emotional demons. They do not describe the fog of war.

Stepping into a leadership role is entering a “a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.”

Those are the oft-quoted words of Karl Von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist who is (wrongly) credited with the term Fog of War. For leaders, the fog of war is THE occupational hazard. It’s the fog of war at play when we scratch our heads at the leader’s bad judgment, over-confidence, or social blunder, and ask, what was she thinking?

In sports, we know the fog of war as choking, the failure of nerve at the most crucial moment. Though in sports, you know you are choking. Your performance shows immediately – you miss the basket, your timing is off, you scream at the referee. But in leadership situations, the fog of war is more insidious. You think you are making the right decisions, or judging the situation with a complete grasp of all the variables at play, but you aren’t. Your awareness is compromised; you’re in a semi-trance and surprised, even shocked at the results of your actions. You didn’t expect to do so poorly. Everything in your training, experience, and leadership journey till now did not predict failure.

I had my own, well, mini-fog of war last year, like a mist of war perhaps. I took on a new leadership challenge, starting out full of vim and vigor and found myself, nine months later, dazed and confused. Well, it wasn’t that bad, and I think (but then again, how would I know?) I caught myself in time, and things righted themselves. But my brief experience was enough to get me thinking deeply on the subject.

The leadership challenge I took on involved making significant strategic changes in my own organization, the Process Work Institute. I thought I was prepared. I had studied and worked with leadership and organizations, group dynamics and social processes for years. And yet, in my first year at the helm, I’d maybe give myself no more than a C, and I suspect, even then, grade inflation is at play.

I began to push and pull, and wrestle against the ‘old,’ outmoded and inefficient way. My vision forward became more of a war against a past that I couldn’t see any value in. The more frustrated and annoyed I became at the complacency, or status quo, the more this annoyance separated me from the rest of the organization. My ability to think clearly began to diminish, and I could feel my emotions taking over. It was uncanny. As if some detached part of me was watching the whole thing. I knew what was happening, and yet couldn’t stop it completely.

Retrospectively, I now know what happened to me. And it’s important to talk about why it happened, because I am typical of anyone stepping into a leadership role or taking on a new task. Here’s what I know now. There is a perfect storm of variables that knock the wind out of leaders. And depending on the stakes, it can either mean hanging on the ropes for a few minutes or getting impeached. It depends on the job, and how you handle these variables.

The first variable is role pressure – I see it like the vortex of the role. And it comes from within and from others. The sense of urgency attached to the outcome, the crisis I was meant to solve, and my fear of failing constricted my thinking. Like being at a high altitude, these pressures choke the oxygen out of the atmosphere. And without oxygen, I couldn’t think straight.

Role pressure: the more ‘permanent’ the role is, the greater the pressure. Permanent doesn’t just mean long-lived; it also has to do with how much you identify with the role and its task. The more you identify with it, the greater the force the role exerts on you. I have facilitated groups in conflict, and worked on change processes with individuals and organizations for 15 years. I thought my experience prepared me for the task ahead, but the gap between facilitating others and doing it yourself was larger than I thought. As a facilitator or consultant for a group or organization to which you don’t belong, even though you’re under fire, and certainly under role pressure, you don’t imbibe the dynamics of the organization’s culture. You haven’t drunk the Kool Aid as they say. Passing through can be deadly; you still have to dodge bullets, but taking on a role in an organization is to step into a vortex of energies, expectations, and experiences that begin to own you.

Role pressure is just one variable to the perfect storm. On its own, it’s bad, but with the second variable, it gets worse. The second variable is the very thing that puts you in the role in the first place – your one-sided vision. The issues you are meant to solve, the controversy surrounding them, and the vision driving you forward create a tempest inside your head. It’s like being constantly lobbied, or trapped on a Fox News program. Inside as well outside, I found myself constantly fighting for and against something. I was infuriated over the feeling of complacency I sensed, or people’s fear of change, or just others’ slower pace. Everything pissed me off.

This one-sidedness is a paradox of leadership, because in my case, and probably in many others, it’s the very reason I got in that position in the first place. I had a strong vision and could really push for it. Most leaders make it to where they are because of that very trait. This one-sidedness is sometimes an expertise, or it could be a talent, or in some cases, it’s the cause you champion. So the very reason you’re in this position creates your biggest challenge – how to have your one-sided position without losing your head in battle. Unfortunately, the track record for this is dismal. Visionaries tend to get carried away in the fighting, and fighting the opposition takes precedent over enacting the vision. We only need to look to the French, Russian, or Chinese revolutions, which got sidetracked into dictatorships and tyranny, or orgies of killing and imprisonment.

Those two ingredients, the role pressure and being one-sided are bad enough. But it could have been worse. I didn’t really experience a true perfect storm because the following, third variable didn’t come into play much. That’s because I had a lot of friends and people who hit me on the head, knocked sense into me, and weren’t afraid to tell me that I was acting funny. But in many cases, it’s the third ingredient that spells disaster: isolation and mistrust. Up there at the top, in City Hall or the C-Suite, you are dependent on those below. The information you need is filtered up to you through others, through their fear of delivering bad news, through their own secret agendas, through their envy and competitiveness, or simply through their own limited and incomplete understanding of the issues. You need to hear the truth, and no one will tell you. Or if they do, you are so blinded by the vision, and choking on the pressures, that you won’t hear it. It takes an extraordinary person with an extraordinary relationship to the leader to break through at that point.

And there are other variables that contribute to the fog of war. A big one is your own desire to succeed, the degree to which your ego is involved. This adds enormously to your stress, and can affect your judgment as well as your performance. Politics, intrigue and complicated organizational dynamics also add to the mix. They exacerbate the lack of trust, and deepen the sense of controversy swirling around and within you.

Now, I knew about this, theoretically. I had worked in international conflict zones, and with some terrifically challenging groups and organizations. I had consulted and coached others in leadership positions. So I knew what I’d encounter. I knew I’d get one-sided, that I’d encounter resistance, and that the role pressures would get to me. And I knew I had to stay aware of those tendencies. I had the knowledge of what to do going in. What I didn’t know, was that I wouldn’t be able to use it.

Once you step into the role, and the bullets start flying, it becomes a whole new ball game. It’s almost impossible to access knowledge. You can remember it, like remembering the time you visited Lake Louise. I actually remember thinking, Julie, you’re in a mood. This is bad. Snap out of it. Turn left. But it was too late. It was like hitting the keys on your keyboard but the computer is not responding. Or like being on drugs.

Actually, it is being on drugs. Under stress, when the emotional brain and hormones are engaged, we are in new territory. Here’s where this discussion on the fog of war is leading: does leadership training sufficiently prepare us for the fog of war? That’s my question (and my next post, Game Day): specifically, how could we teach leadership the way athletes, soldiers, and police are taught – under conditions that simulate the psychological and emotional pressures of battle or game day? Or, are there certain temperaments more suited to the stress and pressures of leadership? But, given the scandals, the Enrons, the WorldComs, the Eliot Spitzers and Mark Foleys, why isn’t this dimension of leadership taught in business schools, or public administration? Ethics is not enough. It’s not a lack of knowledge, but a question of emotional resilience and capacity to work under stress. Can this be taught? Is it learnable, or is it merely growable, something we gain through life experience?