In the early days of George W. Bush’s presidency, the State Department began planning for the President’s first trip out of the country, a meeting with the new president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, at Fox’s ranch. There were important issues to discuss, among them immigration, border control, drugs, and trade.
In preparation for the trip, I asked President Bush to visit the State Department to be briefed on Mexico-related issues. It would be his first visit to State since becoming president, and I knew it would give my troops a boost. He readily agreed.
At my staff meeting the next morning, I explained how I wanted the briefing to be handled. The two junior Mexico desk officers were going to brief the President. The young Foreign Service officers at the boiler room, desk officer level should know more about what was happening on the ground in Mexico than anyone else. When the time came for the President to be briefed, I would merely introduce them. No senior officials would speak, no assistant secretaries or deputy assistant secretaries. The staff gave each other skeptical looks. “When would you like the rehearsal?” they asked after a pregnant pause. “When would you like to check the slides they’ll use?”
“I don’t want a rehearsal,” I told them. “And I don’t need to see slides.” Frankly, I didn’t want slides. No PowerPoint. The two junior officers would just sit across from the President at the conference table and tell him what they knew and what he needed to focus on and remember.
I had little concern. I had never met the two officers; I didn’t even know their names, but I was sure they’d be ready. They would spend the days from now until the briefing working like dogs, consulting with their bosses and the embassy in Mexico City, reading everything they could, and getting ready for their big moment. They might lose a little sleep. They might feel more pressure and excitement than they were used to; and their spouses were doubtless calling every living relative to share the news.
In fact, the whole building was buzzing. I expected that. I wanted it.
The day came; the President and his party entered the conference room and took their places on one side of my large conference table. The table was historic. It had been used at the 1983 G7 Summit in Williamsburg, Virginia; a plaque at each place identified the head of government who had sat there.
I welcomed the President, introduced my key leaders, and then introduced the two action officers and turned them loose. Of course, I had briefed the President about my plans, and he was eager to play his part. The two officers took off, and their performance totally met my expectations. They provided the President with all he needed to know before he flew down to Mexico. The President asked penetrating questions and got solid answers. When it was over, he expressed his satisfaction, thanked everyone with a handshake and a smile, and swept out, assistants in his wake. I’m sure the two officers rushed back to their phones to call home; all their office mates must have then clustered around for a debriefing.
Here was the real payoff. Word went around the department at the speed of light: “It was great! The new Secretary trusted us. So did the President.” Over the past ten years, dozens of State Department officers have reminded me of that story.
I believe that when you first take over a new outfit, start out trusting the people there unless you have real evidence not to. If you trust them, they will trust you, and those bonds will strengthen over time. They will work hard to make sure you do well. They will protect you and cover you. They will take care of you.
This isn’t a fairy tale of confidence building. If the briefing had gone wrong, I would have known immediately that I had more serious problems than I had so far recognized, and that I might have to take drastic action. However, my style is not to expect trouble when I take on a new outfit. I like to go in believing that the leaders who were there before me were smart and had done their best. I’d learned long ago not to go in swinging a samurai sword like John Belushi in a Saturday Night Live skit. All that does is put people on guard, and make them anxious and afraid. The sword swinger is seen as an infection, and bureaucratic white corpuscles will race to attack it.
During those same early days at the State Department, I asked my principal line officials, my Assistant Secretaries, if they were reluctant to go up on Capitol Hill to deal with members of Congress. Hands went up: no one liked to go up to the Hill. I could understand that. I didn’t relish it either. But I still had to do it, I told them, and it was too heavy a load for me to lift alone. I needed them to carry more of it. Their reluctance stemmed from concerns that they might say the wrong thing; get in trouble, both up there and back at the department. I told them I would make sure they knew the administration positions, and I would expect them to defend those positions. I trusted them to do so. They didn’t need to check in with me beforehand—just go up there and see what the member or the committee wanted. Always approach congressional questions with a “Glad you asked!” attitude. They are the people’s representatives and we are the people’s servants. And if you get in trouble, we’ll work together to get you out of trouble. We’re a team.
There will be times when you need to take up a sword.
When the Iran-Contra scandal shook the Reagan presidency in 1986, Frank Carlucci, Howard Baker, Ken Duberstein, and I were brought into the National Security Council and the White House Chief of Staff’s office to cut out the infection and stem the bleeding. We did that, and in the process we fired lots of people. But we embraced those who remained, and the new people we brought to the team worked well with those we kept on the basis of mutual trust and a commitment to making the last two years of the Reagan presidency a success. We achieved that goal.
When I first entered the Army I was sent to Fort Benning, Georgia, for my basic officer training. At the end of the course, a wise old sergeant said to me, “Well, Lieutenant Powell, you are off to a good start. You might make it in the Army. But let me tell you something about leadership. You’ll know you are a good leader if your troops will follow you if just out of curiosity. The day will come when they are facing life-or-death danger, they are scared and unsure. Yeah, you’ve trained them and they’ve got the weapons and equipment to get the job done. They are curious as to how you are going to get them out of this mess and will stick with you to see.”
The sergeant was not really talking about curiosity, but about trust. They will follow you because they trust you. They will follow you because they believe in you and they believe in what they have to do. So everything you do as a leader has to focus on building trust in a team. Trust among the leaders, trust among the followers, and trust between the leaders and the followers. And it begins with selfless, trusting leaders.