#325： Leading Quietly
Episode Stats
Summary
When we think of being a good leader, we often think we need to be bold, visionary, risk-taking type leaders like Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, or Steve Jobs. But my guest today argues that most of the day-to-day work that makes the world function is done by individuals who stand outside the limelight and lead with calm confidence. His name is Joseph Bataraco, and he s the author of the book Leading Quietly, an unorthodox guide to doing the right thing. And today on the show, Joe and I discuss the heroic archetype of leadership, why most leadership development books and courses focus on it, and why heroic leadership can actually get in the way of an organization s success. He then shares the qualities of a quiet leader and why they are often more effective than heroic leaders at getting things done in an organization. And we end our conversation by exploring the Aristotelian approach to leadership that most quiet leaders utilize and how you can start using those principles today in your work, community, and family.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. I got a cold
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last week and I lost my voice for an entire day and it's just coming back. So I sound a little
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raspy in the intro. That's why the show must go on. So we're going to do this. When we think of
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being a good leader, we often think we need to be bold, visionary, risk-taking type leader like
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Winston Churchill, Theodore Roosevelt, or even a Steve Jobs. But my guest today argues that most of
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the day-to-day work that makes the world function is done by individuals who stand outside the
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limelight and lead with calm confidence. His name is Joseph Bataraco and he's the author of the book
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Leading Quietly, an unorthodox guide to doing the right thing. And today on the show, Joe and I
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discuss the heroic archetype of leadership, why most leadership development books and courses
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focus on it and why heroic leadership can actually get in the way of an organization's success.
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He then shares the qualities of a quiet leader and why they're often more effective than heroic
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leaders at getting things done in an organization. And we end our conversation by exploring the
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Aristotelian approach to leadership that most quiet leaders utilize and how you can start using those
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principles today in your work, community, and family. After the show's over, check out the show notes
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at aom.is slash quiet leadership. Joseph Bataraco, welcome to the show.
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Well, you wrote a book that I really enjoyed and the title of it, the reason I read it was the title
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intrigued me a lot. It's Leading Quietly. And the reason why that intrigued me, because oftentimes when
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we think of leadership, we often think of, you know, the great man, heroic leader like Theodore
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Roosevelt or Winston Churchill, very assertive, very in front of the public eye. Before we get
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into leading quietly, why do I have that conception of leadership as being up front and center?
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Sure. I think you probably got it in school because you learned about heroes and you should have studied
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and learned about heroic heroes because they've changed our world. They can inspire us. You may have
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also gotten the same message about heroic leaders from your parents. And I've even speculated there's
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some evolutionary instinct that we all share to follow the strong person. So some confluence of
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those forces makes us all think about heroes when we hear the word leader.
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And how do you think heroic leadership can often get in the way of progress, right? Like how can heroic
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leaders get in the way of the success of the individuals that they're leading?
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They can lead people in the wrong direction. They take a lot of responsibility on their shoulders.
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And if they're flawed, if they make a mistake, that has serious consequences for the movement or the
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organization or whatever they're leading. There's some heroic leaders that are good at getting started,
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good at the inspiring talk, but can't really follow through with execution and detail, which
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often are absolutely critical. And so what they've started never really goes anywhere.
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So heroism isn't easy. And that's yet another reason why we should learn about and admire the heroic
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leaders who really have made a big difference for all of us.
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So how did you stumble upon, or maybe you didn't stumble upon this idea, but this idea of the quiet leader,
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what got you interested in exploring how they approach leadership?
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Yeah. Well, I think that the very beginning was juxtaposing in my own head, the historic model that
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we've just been talking about. And the fact that in working earlier in my career for Pricewaterhouse,
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now PricewaterhouseCoopers, observing how Harvard Business School and Harvard University worked,
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writing case studies, teaching executives. I just rarely came across people who fit the heroic model.
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And so my question when I started the study was, what other model or approaches are there?
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And so I gathered, I think ultimately maybe 150 case studies of men and women at different levels
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of organizations. So right down from managing a team up to CEO who faced hard challenges. And I
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sorted them into sort of three categories, people who seem to have done well, people who seem pretty
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clearly not to have done well, and kind of murky cases. And then I looked for patterns among the people
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who did well. And it was in the process of doing that, that this other model emerged. And I don't know,
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quiet leader seemed to be the right name for it. And my publisher liked it. So that's why it found its
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So what sets a quiet leader apart from the more heroic leadership archetype?
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Well, fundamentally, quiet leader, leading quietly was a really good title because it captures the
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essence of what sets these people off. They do lead in the sense that an organization
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or a little part of the world is different and better because they've been there. And it's not
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just because someone was there, it's because a particular individual was there doing or not doing
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certain things. And they haven't accomplished what they've accomplished by themselves. They've worked
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with and through other people to make a difference. So I think that's fundamentally leadership. You can call
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leadership management. You can debate that forever, but they've made a difference working with and
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through other people on something important. However, if you were a fly on the wall, or maybe even
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somebody working in the organization, you might not be aware of everything they were doing. The
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individual might not even get full credit for what's done because they've been working behind the scenes,
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patiently, sometimes indirectly, sometimes kind of astutely in a political sense, often working with
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others rather than putting themselves up in front to get the job done. So there's lots of these
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different quiet tactics. And that's kind of what defines the quiet leader. And that's how they get
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Are there situations where quiet leadership is more effective than, say, the heroic leadership model? Or
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and vice versa? Are there instances where the heroic leadership model is more effective than the quiet
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Well, let me start with the second part about the heroic part. It's a mistake, I think, to believe that heroic
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leadership is best left for political movements and churches and big organizations in moments of crisis.
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There are times in organizations where, you know, you're at a meeting, and things are moving in a
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direction that you're pretty sure is wrong. And the boss may be moving things in those directions.
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And it can be hard to put up your hand and say something, take on others, stand out from the
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group, you know, the squeaky, the nail that sticks out, the one that gets hammered down. It's hard to take
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on the boss, okay? That takes courage. And I don't want to put people who do that on the same level as
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you mentioned, Teddy Roosevelt, Nelson Mandela, and others. That would be preposterous. But it takes some
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courage to step forward and do what's right. And you're running some risks, and it may cost you
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something. So there's everyday heroism. And, you know, you see it with firefighters, you read about it with
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police officers, or even ordinary citizens who rush into dangerous situations and do something. So we may all have
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opportunities on occasion to do something that's at least a little bit heroic. That said, I think to
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answer your core question, it's the vast majority of situations that call for quiet leadership. You
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know, there's some cases that are clear what needs to be done, either strategically or legally or
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ethically. And it doesn't take any kind of leadership to do what's kind of up on a billboard, and everybody
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recognizes we ought to do it. But in tough situations where there's a lot of uncertainty, where the politics
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is tricky, where there's often technical complexities that not everybody really understands, then it's important
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to move quietly. And what I would add is I think that every five years or 10 years, the world moves further in
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that direction of greater uncertainty and greater technical complexity of all kinds. So I think you've got to move
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slowly and patiently and cautiously in those situations. And that, roughly speaking, is quiet
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Right. I like how you talked about in the book that quiet leaders often are working on the little things
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in the background, but those little things really aren't little. They're the things that make
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Well, you know, it's a cliche, but it's true that we live in this interdependent world. And that's true of
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relationships and organizations. It's true of computer systems. It's true of biochemical systems.
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You've got to get a lot of little things right. Otherwise, big things can easily go wrong. And,
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well, the quote I like a lot in the book is from a guy named Bruce Barton, who's largely unknown. But
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early in the last century, he ran for Congress successfully. He wrote a number of very successful
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religious pamphlets. He spent most of his career building up a big advertising agency. And he said that
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given the uncertainty in life, you just don't know, he said, whether a tap on the shoulder or
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a dime on a newsstand, as he put it, might not have really big consequences. So the idea that you're kind
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of on holiday till the world gives you some big issue where you can be a hero, I think is not really
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stepping up. There's lots of small and medium-sized things. They take quiet leadership,
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they take effort, they take patience, work on them and try to get them right. That's one of the
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Yeah. So one of the things you argue in the book is that a quiet leader is like a pragmatic realist.
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I think oftentimes the heroic leader is often, they're great for having, articulating a vision
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and letting people know about that vision and inspiring people. While the quiet leaders are there
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looking at, okay, what can we actually do? So what can leaders do to hone their perceptions
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so that they have an accurate picture of what's actually going on in the situation they're facing?
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Well, I think the fundamental thing is to sort of imagine that they are walking across a kind of
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minefield. And I don't mean to encourage excessive caution or paranoia, but before they take action,
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realize, ask themselves, you know, who's likely to support this? Who's likely to oppose it?
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Who could we get to support it if we made the right case and persuaded them? And if you look at
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the people likely to oppose something that's going on, how much clout do they have? How persistent will
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they be in their opposition? These are skills that we often associate with politicians. And it's kind
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of a negative view of politicians as opposed to the ones that we make into heroes or who are genuine
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heroes. But there's lots of complications and lots of politics and lots of power stuff that can stand in
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the way of getting things done. And I'd say have a really clear look at that. The second thing I'd say
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is even putting all the politics aside, you've got to ask yourself, you've got to use your imagination in a
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very practical way and say, do you have a plan that's got a good chance of working? And if it
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doesn't, what's the backup? One of the famous professors in the history of HBS was a man named
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General Georges Doriot. He was French by birth. He came to this country. During World War II, he was very
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important working for the U.S., managing the immense supply chain that supplied the troops in Asia,
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America, and in Europe. And then he went on to found the first really important publicly financed
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venture capital firm. So this guy was really important. And his advice to managers has been
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quoted by a lot of his former students. He said, if you've got a plan of action and it gets an A for
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strategy and a B for execution, and you've got another plan that gets a B for strategy and an A for
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execution, he said, always pick the second plan, the one that you can execute. So that's the second part
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of this pragmatic realism. Even if you get over the political hurdles, can you really see this
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through? And as I said, have you got a backup? I love that. Well, how do you, how does a quiet
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leader of, you know, remain realistic, right, without becoming cynical and jaded? Because that, I know
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that from my own experience, I can, I can fall into that. I'm like, I'm just being real here, but then I
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can see I'm actually being cynical. Yeah. I think you've really got to look in the mirror and you've
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got to look at your motives. And I think ideally you find a full set of motives. In other words,
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you find some self-interested motives, like I'd rather succeed than fail. I'd like to get promoted.
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I'd like to get a bonus. I'd like to have good things being said about me in the network inside the
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organization. I think people who are acting out of their self-interest or acting out of a pretty
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important and strong motive. And it keeps them motivated when things get tough. But if those
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are your only motives, then I think you're at risk for the kind of thing you were worried about,
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Brett. And you've got to say, wait a minute, am I also doing this for some larger cause or larger
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purpose that's important to the organization, important to my team, maybe important to some people
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in the organization? A quote I really like is from the ancient Hebrew philosopher and theologian,
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Hillel the Elder, who said, and a lot of people listening, I'm sure have heard this, if I'm only
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for myself, what am I? And if I'm not for myself, who will be for me? So you got to be for something
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bigger than yourself, but you got to take care of yourself as well. It's that mix that I think is
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important. Yeah. Speaking of motivations, I thought this was really interesting when you explored the
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motives of quiet leaders, because oftentimes we, I think heroic leaders are put out there as like,
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they're just these altruistic individuals who are just striving for the greater good. But you give
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these case studies of these quiet leaders who they were thinking about their careers too. Like they would
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make tough decisions that could affect their career. And they try to navigate a decision that got them to
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a good result while protecting themselves. And some people would say, well, that's kind of conniving,
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Machiavellian. Yeah. What's your response to that?
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My response to that is that that's how the world works and that's human nature. You know,
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if we just waited around until people with angelic motives that were 99.9% pure acted and did what
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needed doing, we'd be waiting an awful lot of time, a long time and not much would ever happen. You know,
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there's a kind of biography you read of great leaders, which is kind of a gotcha story. And it
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says they look great, but actually their motives were complicated and they had issues with their
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parents and so forth and their settling scores and so forth and so on. And my view of that is that's
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probably true that human motivation is typically really complicated. So I don't mean this in a
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harsh or sort of arrogant way, but I just say, you know, open your eyes, look at what makes people
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tick. It's typically a combination of motives, often very deep, often not even fully understood.
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But that's what I like about the, I think, the profound observation by Hillel the Elder.
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Yeah. And I mean, what I loved about these really complex, often like the ethical dilemmas some of
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these quiet leaders face is that they weren't just thinking about the immediate ramifications of their
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decision. They were thinking like third, fourth level, like how would this affect things, you know,
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years down the road. And when you have that long-term approach, it often makes you do things that in
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the short term might seem to people looking in from the outside. Well, that's not, maybe that's not
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ethical, but if you look at it for the long-term, it's actually, you realize that was the best thing
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that they could do. Yes. I think that one way of characterizing quiet leaders is that they're very
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managerial. And there is, of course, the old cliche, which I really dislike that says leaders do the
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right thing and managers do things in the right way. And it sort of says managers are sort of second
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class citizens who do the budget and send out the memos and all the rest. But in a complicated world,
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it really matters to do things the right way in making a decision and then in executing the
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decision. And in fact, I think maybe somebody has written a book I'm just about to describe.
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I'd love to read one. I'm not planning to write it myself because I don't have the background.
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But I think it would be fascinating to see a study of the great leaders and look at what they were
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doing when they weren't giving the great speeches and up on the podium and leading the troops and
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everybody else. Martin Luther King is famous for his, I have a dream speech, which he gave at the
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end of the March on Washington. But he spent two weeks or so before that trying to get six or seven
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different civil rights groups to agree to have the March on Washington and then to agree how it'd be
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structured and who would give a talk and where and all the rest. So he had a managerial hat on
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for a long period of time, just trying to get stuff done. What we know about is the
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rousing, heroic, inspirational talk, but that was sort of the icing on the cake.
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Yeah, that brings an interesting point. So it is possible to be both a heroic leader and a quiet
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leader then. My sense is that almost all of the great leaders have also been quiet leaders,
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managerial leaders. You know, in many cases, these men and women were kind of mobilizing a group.
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You know, if you think of civil rights leaders, for example, to fight against an establishment,
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and that's not easy. You know, that takes a lot of management because you don't have the same
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resources as the establishment. You don't have a hierarchy. You don't have relationships. You got to
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get people to work together, people with lots of different backgrounds. You got some people who
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are really committed to the cause, which is great, but sometimes they're so committed that
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they're a little out of control and can actually undermine the cause. You got to get all these folks
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working together. And that takes real management, negotiation, political leadership, and management
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talent. So another aspect of developing quiet leadership is seeking for good enough. Because
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I think another aspect of heroic leadership is, right, like, you know, leaders do the right thing,
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right? And sometimes you do the right thing no matter what, even if it means you don't get anything
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done because you're not willing to compromise. Right. How do you as a quiet leader navigate that
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world when you're trying to, like, make compromises when people aren't willing to compromise or
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they're not willing to settle for good enough? How do you as a quiet leader nudge people in that
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direction? Well, sometimes the instinct that says, let's not settle, it is a sound instinct.
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It's what's behind it sometimes is an intuition that if we're creative, if we spend a little more
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time, if we use our imaginations, it's not just a case of A or B or C. There's another option out
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there. It's going to take some work, take some imagination to flesh it out, but we ought to
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really invest. And so I think before you settle for half a loaf, split the difference, whatever
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cliche you want to use. These are good cliches because sometimes that's what you end up doing.
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You ought to make sure you haven't left any creative options on the table. A very famous example that I
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often use in classes involves Abraham Lincoln in the late 1850s. So he was running for president.
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The big question in the country was slavery and specifically slavery in the new sort of
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Northwest territories that became Indiana and Ohio. And if Lincoln came out in favor of slavery in
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those areas, he'd lose a lot of support in the North. If he opposed it, he'd lose a lot of support
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in the border states that he needed to get elected. So what do you do? A lot of politicians today would
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just issue some sort of mushy statement. Lincoln said the following. He said he opposed the extension
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of slavery because that would be bad for what he called free white men who would emigrate to these
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territories and get 40 acres and build a life for themselves and their families. He said it was
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unfair to make them compete with plantation farming. Okay. So it was quite interesting. He avoided taking a
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stand on the fundamental moral issue, but instead found a creative way to oppose slavery and to build
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a coalition to support him and to oppose slavery in those areas. And you can say, well, that wasn't
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heroic and that was a little wishy-washy. But I mean, arguably, if he didn't come up with this
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creative approach, his name might not be known today. The country might have split into two or more
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pieces after the civil war, no emancipation proclamation and history would be radically
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different. But there was a creative kind of compromise that this extraordinarily judicious
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man put together and managed to execute. And I mean, I love that story. But I think
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people, I think a lot of people listening, I was like, that sounds great. But like, how do you,
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how do you convey that? Like that you're doing something, you're making a compromise in the
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short term so you can fulfill some long-term goal. Or as I just, I feel like we have this culture now
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where it's like, if you compromise, like you are weak, you're giving in. And there's no, there's no
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taking an account into of the will happen five years from now and 10 years from now, et cetera.
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Well, here's where I think a managerial approach can be helpful. So if you're going to say to a group,
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this is the best we can do, we've got to sort of compromise. And I know you're disappointed.
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You've got to be able to make the case that this is the best you can do. And that means assembling
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facts. It can mean assembling data. It can mean showing them that you really burned the midnight
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oil, trying to find alternatives. It can mean you looked at some alternatives and decided they
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wouldn't work or they were just too risky. What I mean by being managerial is you got to make
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the case. Then there's a personal element to this as well. Now you've got to be able to make the case
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convincingly and look people in the eye and say, I really did the best I could. And that's why we're
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going to do this. You know, that often happens in the case of layoffs, which are very painful for the
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people laid off. Also tough in some ways for the people who do the laying off. They'll typically say
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it's the toughest thing they do as managers or executives. And before you look at a group of
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people and say, I'm sorry, but we're taking your jobs away. You know, you've got to be convinced and
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you've got to be convincing that you really did all you could. And that's, that's hard managerial work.
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That's not something that comes out of the heroic leader playbook.
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You also discuss in your book, and this is can also raise some eyebrows from people listening,
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is that an element of quiet leadership is rule bending. How can rule bending, I don't know,
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be done ethically in a way that can move forward a big picture goal of a quiet leader?
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Well, first, to be clear, there are some rules called, you know, black letter law,
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whose interpretation is unambiguously clear, you know, like around insider trading. I'm not saying
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for a second that you ought to bend those rules. In fact, I think you even ought to avoid the gray
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area around those rules. Because, you know, if you're leading an organization or part of an
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organization, and you're doing some clever maneuvering in the gray area, trying to get
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right up to the law, but not cross it, maybe you'll succeed. You may wander across into something that's
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illegal. And some people in your organization watching you, watching your example, may not be as
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skilled as you, and they may do something that violates the law, and you've got a big problem.
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So there are some real bright lines you better not cross. But, you know, there's lots of other
00:25:21.260
sort of laws, regulations, guidelines that have to be interpreted in particular situations.
00:25:30.020
And often they were written for situations other than the one you happen to be dealing with.
00:25:35.180
And so there I'd say, look for a little flexibility, rather than just say, gee, the law or the regulation
00:25:42.760
says absolutely this, this is what we've got to do. I think that can actually be a cop-out.
00:25:48.860
Now, you know, well, sorry, we can't do anything because that's what the regulation says.
00:25:53.760
I would look for a little flexibility. I'd certainly talk to knowledgeable people in compliance,
00:25:58.840
in the legal department, experienced senior executives, a mentor, if you've got, and say,
00:26:04.500
look, I think this is just pushing us too hard in the wrong direction. You know, you want to be
00:26:09.720
able to be public and somewhat transparent about it. If you've got a responsible job, you're not paid
00:26:15.400
to look up things in a rule book. You're paid to use your judgment. There can also be conflicting
00:26:20.300
rules, conflicting judgments. So that's where I say, look for a little flexibility and just don't assume
00:26:26.580
is black and white. It often isn't. Yeah. As I was reading your book, it seems like this
00:26:30.840
managerial approach that you're advocating is very Aristotelian, right? Like you're looking for
00:26:35.700
the right answer for the right reason at the right time. That's precisely right. And you're doing those
00:26:42.640
things for the particular situation you face. Now, Aristotle can be kind of frustrating because when
00:26:49.940
you say, well, what's the right thing? And you go to his writings, he'll say, well, the right thing is
00:26:55.040
whatever shows good judgment. You say, okay, great. What's good judgment? Well, good judgment is sort
00:27:01.480
of putting the virtues into practice and justice, truth, prudence. Okay. How do you find somebody
00:27:10.040
who's got good judgments living by the virtues? Well, they come from a good community. What's a
00:27:14.740
good community? Well, that's where you have a lot of people practicing the virtues. How do you know
00:27:18.540
you've got a good community? Well, you've got a lot of people with good judgment and you're right back
00:27:22.860
at the beginning. It's circular, but he did not want to define the world in terms of rules and
00:27:28.980
cookie cutters. He said, you've really got to look at specific cases. And of course, you use your
00:27:34.860
judgment, you may make some mistakes. That's another reason to be managerial, to try and do things
00:27:39.920
carefully, but you may make some mistakes. That's also why I think you need good managers to have
00:27:45.460
contingency plans. But that really is out of the Aristotelian pragmatic view of how you do the right
00:27:51.920
thing. Well, and speaking of Aristotelian virtue ethics, you argue that there's three quiet virtues
00:27:57.200
of leadership. What are those virtues? One I focus on most heavily is the one I call modesty. And that
00:28:04.200
sort of says, let me put it this way. One consulting firm years ago had an ashtray or something they
00:28:09.640
gave to people. They put on the desks of people in their offices a long time ago, back when a lot more
00:28:14.460
smoking, and said, just remember, you're not a genius. And this idea that the world is a really
00:28:20.340
complicated place. And that you might be pretty good at what you do, and you might have gotten
00:28:24.600
some promotions, because you're pretty good. But there's an awful lot out there that you just
00:28:29.440
don't know. It's described sometimes as the prayer of a Breton sailor. The prayer is roughly,
00:28:37.060
oh Lord, my boat is so small, and the sea is so vast. It's this sense of modesty before all the
00:28:44.780
uncertainty out there that I think is almost an instinctive part of what makes quiet leaders tick.
00:28:54.380
And so they move more slowly, they talk with other people, they drill down, they pause and reflect on
00:29:00.320
things for a while. There's another saying that I like quite a lot that's apparently put in front of
00:29:06.420
people who are training to be Navy pilots, you know, who are going to land on aircraft cruisers,
00:29:11.300
which is a pretty dangerous and difficult thing to do. And the saying basically is that there are no
00:29:17.600
old, bold pilots. I think that's a great saying. These are super courageous people who do these
00:29:24.820
things. I'd say be patient, be modest before you go plunging ahead. Right. I think that's an important
00:29:30.820
virtue to hit on, especially in our day and age where you don't want to be modest. You want to
00:29:34.320
promote yourself and live big and go big or go home. Well, and you know, there are these great
00:29:39.280
stories out there. So I'm now reading a biography of Elon Musk. I'm about halfway through, but what an
00:29:45.300
amazing guy. And if you look at his three companies now, they seem to be doing pretty well as companies
00:29:51.020
and making profound changes or promising profound changes in life for all of us today. Okay. The guy
00:29:58.760
just didn't know he was supposed to sleep and often didn't think that what other people thought were
00:30:05.540
barriers in front of him were real barriers and went crashing ahead. Now, I think another biography
00:30:11.140
could be written about the close calls he had, the luck he had. But you look at somebody like that,
00:30:17.600
and that is kind of inspiring. And it sort of says, get off your rear end and give stuff a shot.
00:30:23.640
And I think that's a good instinct, but it's got to be counterbalanced, you know, in a complicated,
00:30:29.280
uncertain world with other ways of thinking, which I describe as quiet leadership. And most of us
00:30:34.860
aren't Elon Musk to begin with. So I'd recommend a little modesty, even if reading his book does get
00:30:40.880
you off your rear end and out trying some stuff. Well, Joseph, this has been a great conversation.
00:30:45.600
Where can people go to learn more about your work? Well, I've written a number of books that in some
00:30:49.920
ways are all variations on this theme. You can find those books basically on Amazon. Most of the books
00:30:55.820
I've written have led to Harvard Business Review articles as well. And I think they're available from
00:31:00.840
Harvard Business Publishing, I think for three or $4 or something like that. So those would be the
00:31:05.860
places I'd have a look. Fantastic. Well, Joseph Bataraco, thank you so much for your time. It's
00:31:09.900
been a pleasure. You're welcome, Brett. I enjoyed it. My guest today was Joseph Bataraco. He's the
00:31:13.540
author of the book, Leading Quietly, An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing. It's available on
00:31:17.880
amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash quiet leadership,
00:31:23.920
where you can find links to resources, where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:31:26.480
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:31:41.500
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. If you enjoy the show,
00:31:45.560
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