The Art of Manliness - Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.080 when people think of the plays of shakespeare they tend to think of as comedies and tragedies

00:00:15.820 that spotlight interpersonal dynamics like love and jealousy pretense and reality but my guests

00:00:21.060 would say that many of shakespeare's plays especially as sometimes overlooked histories

00:00:24.840 are also unmatchable and revealing the dynamics of power elliot cohen is a military historian

00:00:30.260 political scientist professor of international studies and former state department counselor

00:00:34.340 as well as the author of the hollow crown shakespeare and how leaders rise rule and fall

00:00:39.600 today on the show elliot takes us through what shakespeare's plays can teach us about navigating

00:00:44.100 the three-part arc of power acquiring power exercising power and losing power along the way

00:00:50.480 we discuss how these lessons and leadership played out in the lives of real-life historical figures as

00:00:54.700 well after the show's over check out our show notes at awim.is slash shakespeare

00:00:59.140 all right elliot cohen welcome to the show it's uh good to be with you brett thanks for having me

00:01:18.940 so you got a new book out called the hollow crown shakespeare on how leaders rise rule and fall

00:01:24.620 tell us about your background and how did your background lead you to writing a book about

00:01:29.240 what shakespeare can teach us about power so it's uh it's a little bit unusual i'm not a literature

00:01:36.160 professor or anything like that i've spent a career in the university world but also in in government i'm

00:01:44.080 mainly a military historian somebody writes a lot about national security policy but i've also served in

00:01:50.060 government in the defense department during the george hw bush administration and then in the

00:01:56.840 department of state in the george w bush administration as the counselor so i was the

00:02:01.880 senior advisor to secretary rice and to the rest of the department and i've done various things in the

00:02:08.600 intelligence community as well so i'm coming at it from a very different sort of perspective and the

00:02:14.540 the reason why i decided to write the book is i'd always liked shakespeare but the moment that it

00:02:21.720 occurred to me that there was something to do with this was going to see a play of shakespeare's that's

00:02:28.200 relatively rarely put on henry the eighth and it in henry the eighth one of the things that happens

00:02:34.560 is the king's chancellor cardinal wolsey who's been very powerful and quite arrogant is suddenly deposed

00:02:42.920 and if you and your listeners will bear with me i'll just read what he says in a soliloquy a speech

00:02:51.280 to the audience as after he learns out that he's suddenly been stripped of all his titles

00:02:56.280 he says farewell a long farewell to all my greatness this is the state of man today he puts forth the

00:03:04.640 tender leaves of hopes tomorrow blossoms and bears his blushing honors thick upon him the third day

00:03:11.180 comes a frost a killing frost and when he thinks good easy man full surely his greatness is ripening

00:03:18.000 nips his root and then he falls as i do i have ventured like little wanton boys that swim on

00:03:24.460 bladders this many summers in a sea of glory but far beyond my depth my high-blown pride at length broke

00:03:31.500 under me and now has left me weary and old with service to the mercy of a rude stream that must forever

00:03:38.000 hide me and it was uh it was very good performance and i've looked at that speech and i thought to

00:03:42.880 myself you know i know that guy as somebody who's been in washington now for over a generation for over

00:03:49.740 35 years i've seen people who've been swimming on a sea of glory and then all of a sudden their pride

00:03:56.900 burst beneath them and they sink so it prompted me to begin talking with some of my students at johns

00:04:02.880 hopkins who are all graduate students and are going off to careers in government and things like that

00:04:08.100 about some shakespearean speeches and that turned into a course and that made me in turn realize that

00:04:14.960 there was a different kind of book about shakespeare to be written one that really talks about what he has

00:04:20.820 to tell us about leadership what i love about this book is you show how this idea of shakespeare

00:04:26.360 exploring power goes beyond just politics it's applicable to business i'm sure there's lots of

00:04:32.320 executives who can be like that guy giving the silicoids like i was riding high and then suddenly

00:04:38.040 you know the wheel of fortune has turned and now i'm i'm out of a job or it could be like a young

00:04:45.020 person who seems like they've got everything going for them and then suddenly their their fortune shift

00:04:51.540 and what do you do with that how do you deal with that yeah that's absolutely true i'll tell you

00:04:56.840 another thing that motivated me to write the book was i uh for a number of years i was the dean of my

00:05:02.760 division of johns hopkins the school of advanced international studies and so much of that was

00:05:08.580 applicable of what's in shakespeare was applicable to my own experience and one of the things that

00:05:14.220 shakespeare has to teach us is thinking about human organizations as courts and if you think about it

00:05:21.520 you know you don't have to have princes and kings and queens but in most most organizations

00:05:26.220 are pretty hierarchical and at the top there is a king or a queen there may be a crown prince you know

00:05:32.180 who's the designated successor there's certainly a whole bunch of courtiers out there there's often

00:05:37.480 a court jester or two and what shakespeare really knew and understood very very well was the politics

00:05:43.760 of courts and for sure you know when i was at a dean i had my own kind of you know mini

00:05:51.200 court president of the university had a much bigger court and it affected human relationships so it's

00:05:56.560 true of business it's true of universities it's true of non-profits you know there are things that

00:06:01.600 go well beyond people in robes who are wearing crowns on their head yeah and i love that idea that

00:06:07.600 seeing the world through the world of the court right there's courts everywhere it's not just in a king

00:06:13.500 it can happen in a corporation it can happen in a non-profit it can even happen in a restaurant

00:06:19.980 and so what i love about this book is you highlight how we gain influence what are the problems of

00:06:26.140 managing our influence and what happens whenever our influence starts to to wane and you also highlight

00:06:32.240 there's a lot of famous leaders from world history who studied shakespeare to get insights about how to

00:06:40.100 gain power how to wield it and how to manage with people trying to overthrow you what were some of

00:06:45.000 these leaders that you found so i think the one who's would be most interesting to an american

00:06:50.120 audience of course would be abraham lincoln lincoln adored shakespeare he believed it was better to read

00:06:57.760 it than see it although he actually did attend a number of plays one of the things i talk about in

00:07:03.100 the book is he invited a very famous actor who is actually the among other things a brother of the

00:07:09.440 assassin who eventually killed him to kind of quiz him about one of his performances but he but the thing

00:07:16.300 that's chilling i think is he he particularly liked the play macbeth and uh if i could read just another

00:07:23.520 short excerpt that'd be great he's coming back from a visit to richmond after the fall of richmond

00:07:29.180 to the army of the potomac and he's on a steamer and he's coming back to washington and he's sort of in a

00:07:35.360 reflective mood and he of course has his staff around him and some of his subordinates and he

00:07:40.820 says you know have you have you read macbeth macbeth is wonderful and he recites from memory one of his

00:07:45.840 favorite passages this is after the king duncan has been killed by macbeth and it's actually macbeth

00:07:52.040 himself saying this better be with the dead whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace than on the

00:07:58.960 torture of the mind to lie in restless ecstasy duncan is in his grave after life's fitful fever he

00:08:06.780 sleeps well treason has done his worst nor steel nor poison malice domestic foreign levy nothing can

00:08:15.440 touch him further now the thing that's chilling about that of course is that only five days later

00:08:20.680 treason did its worst and lincoln was assassinated it's a very interesting passage because i think it

00:08:26.420 reveals some of the dark side of lincoln or the the sort of more melancholy side you know it's it's

00:08:34.060 interesting that line that better be with the dead whom we to gain our peace have sent to peace and i

00:08:40.400 suspect that he spent time thinking about the tremendous human cost of the civil war um another great

00:08:47.900 shakespearean was winston churchill it's interesting he there's a lot of his letters which have spontaneous

00:08:54.600 quotes sometimes from rather obscure plays there's one from world war one where he's quoting henry

00:09:00.260 the sixth which is a play that most people don't know at all in uh in three parts there's a great

00:09:07.000 story that the great actor richard burton used to tell so after world war ii he's playing hamlet and

00:09:14.660 uh he gets word this is shortly after the war that the old man is going to be in the audience well when

00:09:20.580 you say the old man in england in 1949 there's only one old man and it was churchill so there was

00:09:27.080 churchill in the front row and burton describes his horror when he hears this kind of rumbling

00:09:33.100 and he realizes that churchill is reciting the speeches even as he's giving them and he describes

00:09:39.920 trying to speed it up and try to slow it down to shake him off and he can't shake him off and so he's

00:09:45.600 he's thoroughly traumatized by this the story has a more or less happy ending he's you know quite

00:09:50.420 shaken at the intermission he goes back to his dressing room there's a knock at the door

00:09:55.580 and he opens the door and there's winston churchill who looks at him and says my lord hamlet

00:10:01.840 may i have use of your washroom which is a great it's a great story now the the one thing though to be

00:10:08.860 aware of is it wasn't just the good guys who liked shakespeare the nazis liked shakespeare

00:10:14.500 and it wasn't just because of merchant of venice which is in many ways an anti-semitic play although

00:10:20.800 it's much more than that there were other plays that really appealed to them and i think you know

00:10:26.480 we have to wrestle with that and i think it's the reason why that could be the case is because

00:10:30.740 shakespeare is as uh some of the people who've commented on him have said a mirror to human nature

00:10:37.980 you know he's giving us all of human nature he's not giving us a political point of view

00:10:44.300 he's not telling us what to do he's showing us people as they really are and that i think is

00:10:50.700 really his genius and they're you know they're aspects of human nature which are pretty ugly and

00:10:55.840 appeal to really ugly people as well which plays of shakespeare explore the idea of power the most i'm

00:11:02.560 sure everyone's read romeo and juliet or midsummer's night dream when they were in high school

00:11:06.900 those plays maybe a little bit talk about power but what are the ones that you focus on in this book

00:11:11.380 so there there are many more i do a lot with the histories there's really eight plays believe it or

00:11:16.960 not that carry you through there so there's richard ii which is about a brilliant but very weak king who

00:11:24.920 gets overthrown by henry bolingbrook who becomes henry the fourth so then you have two henry the fourth

00:11:29.820 plays henry the fourth part one and part two henry the fourth son is prince hal who's a brilliant leader

00:11:36.580 although i tend to think he's extremely unscrupulous and problematic so there's a play called henry the

00:11:42.660 fifth and then there are three plays called henry the sixth henry the sixth part one two and three

00:11:48.280 and henry the sixth is henry the fifth son but he's actually a very weak king so a lot of that is about

00:11:54.060 infighting among courtiers and then finally there's richard the third and richard the third is the

00:11:59.320 ultimate bad guy he's the evil king but he's absolutely fascinating character which is troubling in many

00:12:05.440 ways and so you have those eight plays i would say those those are really at the core but there are

00:12:10.860 others there's a set of roman plays i think julius caesar coriolanus which is not put on very much but

00:12:17.800 which i think is very powerful about a roman general who is a terrific general he wants to be

00:12:23.520 consuls or the top job in rome and he blows it because he doesn't know how to deal with the people

00:12:30.560 and he becomes a traitor that's a terrific play there's antony and cleopatra so you have the roman

00:12:36.840 plays and then there are some of the great tragedies and above all i think macbeth because

00:12:40.980 macbeth is a story of a warrior who is not necessarily innately a bad guy unlike somebody

00:12:49.320 like richard the third but who is seduced by power and ends up committing one murder hopes he can get

00:12:57.220 away with just committing one murder but of course he really can't all right so what you do in this

00:13:01.820 book is you take readers through a three-part arc of power acquiring power exercising power and losing

00:13:09.320 power so let's talk about acquiring power how we get power in the first place and in shakespeare's world

00:13:14.940 you argue there are three ways that a king or a leader can acquire power it's through inheritance

00:13:21.060 through their own skill and cunning or through seizure or they just there's a coup d'etat or something like

00:13:26.620 that let's talk about inheriting power in which plays does shakespeare explore the dynamics of

00:13:31.800 inheriting power i think for the question of inheritance is in some ways the best is are the

00:13:39.160 two henry the fourth plays because the two henry the fourth plays are only partly about henry the fourth

00:13:45.860 they're really much more about prince hal who is a continual disappointment to his father although he will

00:13:53.560 turn out to be a greater leader who is hanging around with falstaff who's this wonderful comic

00:14:00.180 creation but who is a you know somebody who has no illusions about human nature and is a coward and a

00:14:07.200 drunkard and prince hal is kind of living in the uh the rough side of town at what's pretty clearly a

00:14:13.040 brothel and he is he is actually you know at first you might think he's just kind of dissolute

00:14:20.660 actually what he's doing is he's learning how to be a leader because he he unlike his father he learns

00:14:27.880 how to deal with normal people people who are not like himself consumed with this lust for for glory

00:14:36.180 now he also has to you know achieve success on the battlefield and he does particularly he ends up

00:14:41.900 killing uh hotspur harry hotspur who's his leader of the kind of rebellion against his father and hotspur is

00:14:48.500 very attractive figure and i think the point of all that that shakespeare shows us is even if you can

00:14:56.560 inherit power legitimately i mean henry the fifth is the son of henry the fourth and you know the way

00:15:02.940 royal succession worked in england at that time is the oldest son becomes the king what how prince

00:15:09.740 how realizes realizes is he has to earn it and i think that's a big insight i think a lot of people

00:15:16.340 don't understand that once you get to a position of power that's not where the story ends you have to

00:15:23.960 be continually earning it and how is actually able to do that other people are not somebody who inherits

00:15:33.320 power but doesn't understand that he has to continually win it as it were is richard the second

00:15:41.020 who henry the fourth has killed richard the second is somebody who's intoxicated with the office you

00:15:48.240 know if there were corner offices back then he'd want one you know he'd want a limo and all the the

00:15:54.060 trappings of power but he doesn't know how to use it and for sure he doesn't understand that he has to

00:15:59.080 continually win it and he pays the ultimate price for it and you talk about how we see the

00:16:05.300 inheritance of power in our own day this plays out in politics right when a president you know they

00:16:11.320 often choose their successor they're going to groom a successor or how they have a successor in mind

00:16:15.500 in the business world sometimes a ceo once they know they're going to retire you know they start

00:16:21.720 grooming their successor and trying to figure out who's going to replace them but often even when they

00:16:27.280 have a plan for succession it doesn't work out the way they planned yeah and you know the uh i mean

00:16:33.160 the classic example is jack welch famous head of ge who built it into a huge corporation very

00:16:41.360 successful widely regarded as one of the best managers of all time who prided himself on grooming

00:16:47.380 talent and he goes through this elaborate process and he picks jeffrey imelt to be the head of ge

00:16:56.940 and in very short order ge i'm up blows up ge now people argue was it his fault or not but but the

00:17:06.060 point is you know leaders often think that they can control the future that they can control what's

00:17:12.740 going to happen once they've stepped down that's also the story of king lear by the way he thinks

00:17:17.460 he's going to have all the perks of power and he'll still exercise control even after he's handed over

00:17:22.920 his kingdom to his two evil daughters and you know what you can't and i think a lot of people wrestle

00:17:31.220 with that i mean what one of the problems with picking a successor is you have to set your own

00:17:38.420 ego aside and realize well maybe maybe i need somebody who's different than myself you know one of henry

00:17:44.920 the fourth problems and he doesn't really get along with his son just about till he dies is he can't

00:17:52.120 understand that the ways in which henry the fifth prince how is different from him could actually

00:17:57.480 make him a more effective king and you know he's just disappointed that prince how isn't more like his

00:18:04.160 old man uh and that's you know somebody who's helped raise four kids i know that's always a bad idea

00:18:11.080 this idea of inheriting power and how it can go wrong made me think about the relationship between

00:18:16.360 theodore roosevelt and taft oh that's a great that is a great case yeah so you know roosevelt he was

00:18:22.940 basically grooming taft to be his successor and the thing about taft was he really didn't want to be

00:18:30.320 president like he had high ambitions but he wasn't like roosevelt who loved to be out making decisions

00:18:37.000 and being out with people and just taking action taft was a little more cerebral he wanted to be a

00:18:41.920 supreme court justice that's where he thought he would be most suited right but he kind of got on

00:18:45.580 this conveyor belt and felt this pressure well i got to do this because roosevelt wants me to do my

00:18:49.680 wife wants me to be president and so he you know he becomes president and theodore roosevelt just

00:18:54.880 basically like man taft is doing a terrible job and basically turned against him and it hurt their

00:19:00.100 friendship oh and and you know he essentially runs against him for uh for president no i think it's a

00:19:06.140 great case because you know what tr is looking for and i think this frequently happens with people

00:19:11.840 pick their successors subconsciously or not looking for somebody who's simply going to do what the old

00:19:20.000 no sort of follow the guidelines that the old man set out for him rather than really carve out his own

00:19:27.980 path in his own way and they're always disappointed and the other thing about taft was taft was a very

00:19:33.860 able subordinate for tr and you know there there are certain kinds of people in this world

00:19:39.480 who are excellent number twos but you never want them to be number ones and i think that's really

00:19:46.320 what happened to tr and to taft and it was uh it was a tragedy in in many ways i mean they sort of

00:19:53.500 reconciled a bit at the end but it was really unfortunate it wasn't wasn't fair to taft and i say

00:19:59.000 that as an admirer of tr it wasn't fair to have picked him and then it wasn't really fair to have

00:20:04.560 turned on him either it also speaks again to how hard it is for powerful people to walk away from

00:20:11.960 power yeah so let's talk about what shakespeare can teach us about acquiring power through skill

00:20:17.960 any plays or a character from shakespeare's plays that really highlights how through cunning and their

00:20:23.140 own virtue or excellence or skill you can acquire power well you know we've been dwelling a lot on

00:20:29.740 the henry the fourth plays but i i would talk about richard the second action the richard the second play

00:20:35.680 and the figure of henry bolingbrook who becomes henry the fourth who is very cunning in the way that he

00:20:43.520 pushes richard aside now there's a i've had very lively debates with uh with critics about you know is

00:20:51.640 did bolingbrook did bolingbrook always want to be king or is it just that he was treated unjustly by

00:20:57.220 richard the second who confiscates his father's estates john of gaunt but i think what he does

00:21:04.360 is he's very subtle he's very restrained in his use of force henry bolingbrook like henry the fourth

00:21:10.980 that he becomes knows when to be quiet he knows when to be decisive he had one of my favorite lines

00:21:19.760 of his is if these be necessities let us meet them like necessities which is a not a bad motto if

00:21:27.160 you're a leader in difficult times but he's restrained he does unlike somebody like richard the third

00:21:33.100 he doesn't kill for the joy of killing people he's not innately cruel unlike macbeth he doesn't deceive

00:21:41.720 himself into thinking you know i can just i can kill somebody and then i'll be king he he is very concerned

00:21:47.880 about legitimacy and you know his legitimacy is always to some extent in question and he's cunning

00:21:54.720 and it's you know there are there are other people who are like that i mean it's a dimension

00:22:00.040 of lincoln for example that people i think often overlook his law partner willie herndon once said

00:22:08.300 that any man who took abraham lincoln for a simple man usually found himself lying on his back in a

00:22:15.880 ditch you know there was a lot of subtlety and you know a certain degree of ruthlessness i mean i think

00:22:23.440 that's part of shakespeare's measure there too is you don't acquire power simply by being a nice person

00:22:29.720 yeah what you have to do is you have to i mean you have to appear nice right you have to cloak your

00:22:36.240 ambition and your desire for power through yeah i'm a nice guy i'm trying to do a good cause i mean

00:22:42.180 maybe you are doing good right in the process but the ultimate aim is to acquire power right right and

00:22:49.780 again another willie herndon quote he said that abraham lincoln's ambition was a little machine that

00:22:55.840 never stopped ticking you know the kinds of people and i and i think shakespeare is very alive to this

00:23:02.140 in a certain way it comes out best in the roman plays you know all of us have some level of ambition

00:23:07.880 in some case but but you know people who really aspire to top positions and again whether it's a

00:23:13.660 ceo or president of university or president of the united states that level of ambition makes you very

00:23:20.640 very different than most normal people and you know the rest of us have to understand that's what those

00:23:27.480 people are like they are just different than you and me and they in turn have to understand the people

00:23:33.440 who support they are trying to get and the ones who succeed are you know the ones who manage to do

00:23:41.060 that and then you also talk about one thing that shakespeare touches on and you see this in the lives

00:23:47.180 of great leaders you might be skilled in one domain say the military you see this a lot for leaders who did

00:23:54.100 well in the military and they say well i'm a great general i could be i could be a great president now

00:23:59.320 and they try their hand at another domain and they just fumble they do terrible anything shakespeare can

00:24:05.960 teach us about that oh absolutely i mean the play to look at is coriolanus which i mentioned earlier

00:24:11.800 about this roman general who becomes a trader who is a brilliant military leader and he's a great speaker

00:24:18.660 i mean his speeches are terrific them they're filled with invective and but he has no self-discipline

00:24:25.380 though when it comes to talking to the people and he has no control over his temper and there comes

00:24:33.000 a moment where he's just one of the smashing victory and even though the people don't really

00:24:38.460 like him because he's kind of sarcastic and rude and rough and contemptuous and the tribunes were so

00:24:44.900 the representatives of the people are fearful that he really wants to be a tyrant they uh you know they

00:24:50.360 have to go along with this until the moment comes when in order for coriolanus to be elected

00:24:56.260 a consul he has to show his wounds take off his toga and show all of his scars and he just detonates

00:25:05.800 you know he said i i'd rather anything than show you my scars you know because in his view this would

00:25:12.980 be pandering to the vulgar curiosity of people who've never been in battle and it would make it look as

00:25:19.720 if he got those wounds not for his own honor or glory or sense of duty but in order to kind of

00:25:26.400 pander to the people and get power parenthetically by the way i'll just tell you this is one of the

00:25:32.740 joys of teaching shakespeare where i did at the school of advanced international studies a graduate

00:25:38.900 school of international relations i had a number of students in my class who were in their early 30s

00:25:44.640 who had served in places like iraq and afghanistan and libya and i said to them don't don't feel

00:25:51.060 obliged to answer this but when you came back did anybody ask to see your wounds

00:25:56.280 by which i meant not physical wounds but you know kind of probe their psyches and boy they all

00:26:05.200 detonated you know they felt exactly the same emotion that coriolanus did now they had kept it under

00:26:11.260 better control i dare say but it's a it's a very very human reaction and i you know what what makes

00:26:18.480 coriolanus his fatal flaw is not that he has that kind of instinctive resistance to exposing himself

00:26:26.600 to people but that he doesn't know how to control it either to say look i won't be consul you know i'm

00:26:34.200 not going to stoop that low or kind of grit his teeth and put up with it and that's really his

00:26:42.040 fatal flaw we're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:26:46.120 and now back to the show um so you talk about another way you can acquire power is seizing it

00:26:56.720 what do you mean by seizing power well i mean you know quite literally in the case of mcbeth it's murder

00:27:02.400 uh he murders king duncan but you know again there are let's not forget there are analogies to this i

00:27:09.620 mean i won't name the institution this was a number of years ago but i know one institution which was led

00:27:16.040 by a not particularly effective leader and one of his key subordinates really plotted against him

00:27:24.300 and was able to convince the board to remove him and then kind of orchestrate things so that he would

00:27:32.800 be put in charge of it and i know another more recent case where somewhat similar kind of thing

00:27:39.840 happens i mean you know there are coups there are people who will try to undermine somebody

00:27:45.060 in charge with the idea of replacing them either themselves or with uh with a creature and it's

00:27:52.480 it's ugly but it can it can succeed and you know that's that's also part of organizational life

00:28:01.160 does shakespeare have any insights on the dangers of acquiring power through seizure or how to navigate

00:28:08.280 that definitely yeah absolutely you know there's a famous passage when mcbeth is thinking about should

00:28:13.400 he kill duncan and he knows it's wrong and he knows it's doubly wrong because he's his guest but

00:28:18.920 he's thinking well you know maybe maybe i could just do this and then it'll all be over and everything

00:28:23.840 will be okay and he he does go ahead with it even though deep down he knows that one murder will lead

00:28:31.460 to another murder and i think that's really the key to it that shakespeare is teaching us that

00:28:36.640 if you take power that way the chances are the original crime are not going to be the only crime

00:28:45.480 you're going to have to commit you're going to have to do other ruthless things and the

00:28:50.220 illegitimacy of your seizure of power will never go away even the case of henry the fourth where i

00:28:59.560 would argue it's more by kind of manipulation because richard the second resigns his crown and

00:29:03.700 he's pressured and so on but it's it's not the same thing as simply ordering his murder he's haunted by

00:29:09.560 this for the rest of his days and even his son how is also haunted by this so i i think that's you

00:29:18.740 know that's what shakespeare has to teach us there that if if that's how you take power essentially

00:29:23.200 through some sort of coup d'etat it's not going to end there it'll be with you for a long time

00:29:29.340 yeah it'll probably that's how you'll get removed you know live by the sword die by the sword

00:29:33.460 yeah absolutely so once you acquire power you have to exercise it because that's how you keep your power

00:29:38.680 right if you inherit power you actually have to exercise power so you can earn it and then you

00:29:43.500 talk about the difference between management and the art of command what are the differences between

00:29:48.160 the two and what separates leaders who might be good managers from those who are good commanders

00:29:54.000 so let me uh actually make a kind of a three-part distinction between leadership command and management

00:30:01.200 all which are critical by the way i think so leadership well i would say management let's start with

00:30:07.760 management management is the art of coordinating human activity and you know obviously the bigger

00:30:14.140 the organization the more complex the activity so let's just think about organizing a picnic

00:30:18.760 you know making sure that you have all the food ordered and you reserve the uh the place where

00:30:25.280 you're going to do the barbecue and you've arranged for a bus to pick people up that's the management

00:30:29.480 part of it command which people tend not to think as much about is about the art of giving authoritative

00:30:38.800 directions and i mean the military spends a lot of time thinking about how to issue commands there are

00:30:46.080 times for any organization where the top person has to say i need you to do this but that's actually a

00:30:54.300 more complicated art than you might you might think but it's like say you know giving directions to the

00:31:01.160 bus driver on the way to the picnic you just need to tell them where to go and tell them in such a way

00:31:07.120 that he'll get you there with a minimum of fuss it's not about coordinating human activity it's about

00:31:12.200 giving clear guidance leadership is the art of getting people either to do things they would not

00:31:20.240 otherwise do or getting them to do them better than they otherwise would so to use the picnic

00:31:26.200 analogy again it's making sure everybody has a good time it's making sure that everybody feels

00:31:31.100 included it's making sure that you know the baseball game that you play in the park is not a chore but it's

00:31:37.840 something that everybody's really enjoying doing and everybody's participating and feels good about it

00:31:43.760 you know leadership has those three aspects to it and not everybody is equally good at all three of

00:31:52.120 them you know there are people who can be terrifically inspiring but couldn't organize their way out of a

00:31:57.980 paper bag there are people who are great at inspiring but they can't actually give guidance do this

00:32:04.180 and so on so any characters from shakespeare that help us see this these differences well the person who's

00:32:13.440 really all purpose is henry v who can manage things you know he he arranges the pretext for an unjust war

00:32:21.900 in such a way that it's the french who started and the kind of moral difficulty associated with it falls on

00:32:28.020 the english church you know that that was an art that was management you see him throughout that play

00:32:33.320 giving very direct orders he knows what he wants people to do and he knows what he wants people not to do

00:32:39.760 and he's extremely clear about those things and effectively so so for example you know he scares

00:32:47.080 the hell out of the french at this town of harfleur but when they surrender he is very very clear about

00:32:53.540 you know i want the people in the city treated well i don't want any looting and it that's very important

00:32:58.800 and his instructions are clear and then he is a great leader now a lot of that i think is

00:33:06.220 it's it's a questionable honesty so you know he gives this very famous speech which makes everybody

00:33:12.900 sit up straight in their chair you know we few we happy few we band of brothers for he today that

00:33:18.420 sheds his blood with me shall be my brother and so on very very very famous speech and gets imitated by

00:33:24.620 everybody from winston churchill to volodymyr zelensky now does it represent what he really thinks i don't

00:33:31.720 really think so because he's you know the night before he'd been wandering around the camp and he

00:33:36.540 hears the soldiers grumbling and he you know he calls them fools and peasants but when it's on the

00:33:42.000 battlefield he's calling them my brother and he does it in a way that convinces us even though we've just

00:33:47.520 heard him describe uh his soldiers in a very very different way the night before so he's really the

00:33:54.680 the all-around leader henry the fourth his father is a manager but he's not he doesn't inspire people

00:34:03.960 really certainly not in the henry the fourth plays he is very good at giving commands it's you know that

00:34:08.920 if these be necessities let us treat them like necessities you know in i think plays like uh julius

00:34:17.020 caesar you see some characters who are tremendously inspiring and you know mark antony is in this

00:34:25.360 famous scene where he turns the crowd around against the people who've murdered caesar but he's not

00:34:31.440 actually great at managing things the guy who's great at managing things is octavius who will eventually

00:34:37.500 become emperor who's kind of in the background but it turns out to be much more effective so it's not

00:34:42.800 clear that you know any one of these characteristics is always dominant there are times and places where

00:34:51.720 one of the three can be much more important than the others exercising power often requires

00:34:58.640 manipulation and this is a big reason why people don't like to try to go for power you know like i

00:35:05.120 don't want to do the politics it feels dirty it doesn't make me feel good but henry understood

00:35:10.400 to exercise power he needed to manipulate so you know he believed one thing but he was willing to

00:35:16.560 give this stirring speech so these you know peasants would fight for him even though he didn't think much

00:35:22.020 of them any other shakespeare characters who understood that sometimes in order to exercise

00:35:26.900 power you got to get your hands dirty and maybe manipulate things yeah i i would say

00:35:33.200 if you look at julius caesar and if you look at the plotters against caesar the character who actually

00:35:40.640 i have the most sympathy for is cassius it was young cassius has a lean and hungry look and people

00:35:48.660 probably remember that line from high school that really caesar doesn't trust him cassius needs to

00:35:54.480 get brutus to lead the plot against caesar and he orchestrates it and he knows what needs to be done

00:36:02.020 but he knows he's not an inspiring enough figure to bring other people along for that he needs brutus

00:36:09.280 who who is flawed because brutus himself is a kind of a self-righteous sort of stuck-up kind of character

00:36:17.040 but there's something about his integrity and about his family's history that causes other people to fall

00:36:22.660 in with him cassius orchestrates the conspiracy pretty well and if brutus weren't such a dummy they would

00:36:29.380 have done the thing that would have enabled them to succeed which is to kill mark antony i mean cassius

00:36:34.700 it says we cannot leave mark antony alive you know it's just too dangerous and in retrospect he's

00:36:42.760 completely right and brutus who thinks it's possible to you know to in ways a little bit like

00:36:50.620 macbeth he thinks okay we'll just do one murder we won't even call it a murder we say we're not

00:36:55.800 going to you know it's not word that we're going to kill we're going to carve him up like a sacrifice

00:37:00.420 to the gods which is self-delusion it's murder and cassius understands now if you kill caesar you got

00:37:06.860 to kill mark antony too so he he's the political manager i think par excellence but he's not the guy

00:37:13.100 who's going to inspire people and you highlight a modern character who understood that exercising power

00:37:18.660 often requires manipulation lyndon b johnson how did he display shakespearean manipulation to wield power

00:37:26.640 oh well i mean i you know they're uh i refer everybody to the uh truly incredible robert carrow

00:37:33.640 biography of him which i think is now four volumes which gives it all in chapter and verse and it it

00:37:41.300 involved outrageous flattery it involved a certain reason of physical intimidation you know johnson used

00:37:50.120 his body he was a big guy and there are these famous pictures where he's arguing with the publisher

00:37:54.440 of the new york times i think because he he wants better publicity and and if you see the the time

00:37:59.600 sequence he's leaning further and further over this this poor publisher who's leaning further and

00:38:07.960 further further backwards to get away from him you know he he used his techniques depending on who he

00:38:15.120 was dealing with he was a manipulator but he was also a phenomenal listener and that's actually how

00:38:22.280 he learned how to what buttons to press with somebody you know what do they respond to what do they

00:38:28.940 need what are they afraid of and he would play to both people's strengths and their weaknesses to their

00:38:36.080 vanity but also to the values that they had you know there's a great novel one of the great american

00:38:42.700 political novels uh all the king's men by robert penn warren i think has a picture of a very similar

00:38:48.040 character who is a sort of loosely modeled on hui long but he was also a fantastic manipulator of

00:38:55.920 people you have to have a certain kind of thoroughgoing understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of human

00:39:02.380 nature and be willing to suppress your own ego enough to figure out what's going on with the other guy

00:39:10.920 and then to work with it yeah it takes a certain instinct i think part of it's innate and then you can

00:39:16.460 develop it but yeah some people have it more than others for sure yeah and i think by the way i think

00:39:21.760 the great authoritarians and i mean great in the sense of successful not great in any moral sense

00:39:28.360 uh usually have if you look at it closely an almost feral instinct for people's weaknesses

00:39:36.020 not for their strengths they know how to appeal to the things that people are afraid of or intimidated

00:39:42.720 by or worried about and they can often just sense that in a way that it's you know it's almost like a

00:39:50.120 kind of an animal sense well let's talk about how leaders can lose power i mean you talk about one of

00:39:55.680 the ways that shakespeare explores that leaders lose power is through just arrogance or being naive

00:40:02.480 any plays or characters that stand out the most for that way yeah well you know actually in all the

00:40:09.060 plays i've talked about where somebody's deposed whether it's julius caesar or duncan or richard ii

00:40:14.540 they all have deep flaws that cause them to lose power with with duncan it's a kind of innocence which

00:40:23.660 might be charming if he weren't king where he's he is just very very naive about the people he's

00:40:29.500 he's working with with richard ii it's his intoxication with his own position

00:40:34.620 with julius caesar it's arrogance it just is you know unbelievable arrogance he he he you know he comes

00:40:42.540 in first he's talking about himself in the third person which is usually a sign that you got a problem

00:40:47.420 but then he says i'm as constant as the northern star i'm not like the rest of you who change i am

00:40:54.700 unchanging and you know i am not afraid and fear is afraid of me i mean it's it's over the top and

00:41:03.320 and he pays for it and i have to say the longer the more experience i have of life and i'm seeing

00:41:09.520 political and military leaders in various settings it's arrogance i think that does people in most

00:41:15.700 how does that play out are they just they they're so high on their own supply that they're ignoring

00:41:21.720 the things going on behind the scenes like people starting to resent them and those resentful people

00:41:26.780 start thinking let's get this guy out of here yeah they uh they lose a sense of their own fallibility

00:41:32.480 they have excessive confidence in their ability to master any kind of difficult situation they forget

00:41:42.540 that you need allies and friends they forget that they too can be surprised so leaders tend to

00:41:49.820 if they're not careful they can start deceiving themselves and thinking they're absolutely they're

00:41:54.440 almost magical yes and i have a chapter as you'll recall about magic and self-deception and so one of

00:42:01.360 the characters i talk about there is in henry the sixth part one and i really encourage people to read

00:42:06.380 the henry the sixth plays they're wonderful i talk about joan of arc she's shown as being very successful

00:42:11.820 but the thing that's so striking about if you look closely at her successes shakespeare gives you

00:42:16.660 everything to understand that her successes are because she's smart or because she persuades people

00:42:24.060 this is the right thing to do or she uses a certain kind of military ruse of one sort or another that

00:42:30.520 that brings her success it's when she begins to believe in her own magic you know when she begins

00:42:35.500 conjuring up spirits that's the point where actually she fails and she ends up being burned at the stake

00:42:41.240 nobody has real magical powers and and even in shakespeare you know there are witches and ghosts

00:42:47.700 and stuff like that but if you look closely at how he describes them all they're doing is they're

00:42:53.020 playing to your weaknesses they're playing to what you want to believe about yourself so like macbeth

00:42:58.660 confronts their people say three witches they're actually the the three weird sisters which is an

00:43:04.660 interesting term and all they do is they say things that are completely true but are easy for macbeth to

00:43:13.920 interpret in such a way that it reinforces what he wants to believe and you know they turn out to be

00:43:22.080 wrong are there any shakespearean leaders who just walk away from power gracefully most of the ones

00:43:28.440 have been talking about they were deposed they had their power taken away from them uh against their

00:43:33.080 will any ones who just said i'm done i'm i'm passing the torch so the the one who uh i think is most

00:43:40.240 moving is prospero in uh tempest so in the tempest prospero had been the duke of milan but he's deposed

00:43:49.220 by his brother because he's he's spent too much time in his library he's a magician and he's uh he's

00:43:55.860 he's been marooned on this desert island with his daughter and finally his enemies all kind of are

00:44:02.680 within his grasp and he causes the storm there's a shipwreck various things and there's sort of

00:44:06.900 reconciliation at the end but prospero who has undoubted magical powers he can call up storms and

00:44:14.280 spirits and stuff like that at the very end of the play he says that i'm going to break my staff

00:44:22.380 my magic wand and bury it several fathoms deep and deeper than did plummet ever sound drown my book

00:44:28.920 his book of magic spells and it's interesting why is he going to do that he's been restored as duke of

00:44:34.000 milan but why should he give up his magical powers and i think the the answer that shakespeare gives us

00:44:41.940 is that prospero has grown and there's a hint that he already sort of has begun to understand this at

00:44:47.800 the beginning very beginning of the play he's going to explain to his daughter how do we end up here

00:44:51.980 and he uh says help me take off my magic robe which means that he understands two things one

00:45:02.040 if he's going to talk to his daughter as a father talks to a daughter rather than as a

00:45:07.840 you know magician with superpowers talks to somebody he's responsible for he's got to take

00:45:13.660 off the magic robe and and he needs help actually he can't just take it off on his own and i think

00:45:20.980 that's what happens to him at the end he he he understands power has not been good for him and

00:45:26.440 if you look at how he even treats caliban who's this sort of semi-human slave that he has who at

00:45:33.680 the beginning he's quite brutal towards at the end he said he acknowledges to the king who's one of the

00:45:39.540 people who's been shipwrecked he says you know yeah this guy belongs to me and i'm responsible for

00:45:44.560 him and he humanizes himself and it's not that he's happy because he says you know i'm going to

00:45:50.580 go back and every third thought is going to be of death but he has become a human figure and he's a

00:45:56.660 more likable more reasonable kind of figure and in the book what i then do is i talk about other people

00:46:02.780 who walk off the stage of whom the most impressive is george washington who really does it twice once

00:46:08.320 as commander-in-chief after the when he hands his makes a big point of handing his commission back to

00:46:14.720 the continental congress which he didn't have to do and then when he steps down as president

00:46:19.380 and you know george the third who didn't have any particular reason to love george washington

00:46:24.440 said you know if he does that he'll be the greatest man of the age which he was you know he

00:46:30.420 he and it's and again like prospero it's not that he was happy at the end of his presidency it'd been

00:46:38.540 a really difficult time but but he did the right thing and he left with a certain kind of contentment

00:46:44.960 and wholeness which can only happen i think if you voluntarily relinquish power any advice you have

00:46:52.600 for people about walking away from power right this could be you know your executive position

00:46:59.260 at a business or maybe a non-profit or you could be a dean at a university or whatever because you've

00:47:06.700 seen this firsthand with really powerful people and they're in that position where their power is

00:47:12.240 waning their influence is waning and they're just really grasping like they just want to hold on to

00:47:16.580 it it just seems like it's miserable it seems kind of pitiful it often it often is quite pitiful

00:47:21.760 so so people who are successful at just kind of walking away with some dignity and and the like

00:47:27.740 what do they do differently well it comes from the the inside obviously and some ability to

00:47:35.740 be introspective i think for for those people who are not towering figures one thing that helps

00:47:41.700 is if you have a very strong relationship with somebody who will be honest with you and you know

00:47:50.120 churchill had that with his wife clementine people don't always have that person but that's that's

00:47:55.860 one thing but the other thing is to remind yourself that you are not indispensable you know somebody once

00:48:01.280 said i think it was charles de gaulle said the cemeteries are filled with indispensable men

00:48:06.860 and you got to keep on telling yourself that you know the ancients of course were there before us

00:48:14.940 and all this the you know famously when the great general had a triumph in rome they'd have a slave

00:48:20.080 riding in the chariot with him whispering sick transit gloria monday this is the way that the glories of

00:48:26.940 the world pass so i think that is another part of it but but i think it's you know maybe it just comes

00:48:34.740 from understanding that this is part of your job too you know your job whatever your job is whatever

00:48:39.540 your leadership job is it has many components it includes inspiring people it may be building

00:48:44.900 something it may be eliminating something or destroying something and ending it well is also

00:48:51.380 part of your job and if you can't find somebody else to tell you that you need to tell yourself that

00:48:57.680 yeah you need to read some shakespeare yeah well it's always good to read shakespeare

00:49:03.580 well ellie this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work

00:49:08.760 hopefully they'll they'll want to buy the book and it's for sale you know on an amazon barnes noble

00:49:15.340 and hopefully in a decent bookstore for other things that i've written again you know what i would do

00:49:21.460 is just look at some of my books i'm i'm retiring from johns hopkins university i've moved over to the

00:49:26.460 center for strategic and international studies but i think if people are particularly interested in this

00:49:31.700 question of leadership they may want to look at a book of mine called supreme command

00:49:36.660 soldiers statesmen and leadership in wartime and it's built around a study of four great civilian

00:49:43.700 wartime leaders abraham lincoln during the civil war george clemenceau the premier of france during

00:49:50.040 world war one winston churchill obviously britain in world war ii and david ben-gurion the founding prime

00:49:56.080 minister of israel and it asked what is it that they did what was the nature of the leadership that

00:50:01.820 they exerted and i think people might be interested in delving into that because i i do talk more about

00:50:08.260 leadership there fantastic well elliot cohen thanks for your time it's been a pleasure well thank you it's

00:50:12.780 been a real pleasure for me too my guest here is elliot cohen he's the author of the book the hollow crown

00:50:18.740 it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out our show notes at aom.is

00:50:22.940 slash shakespeare where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

00:50:26.320 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:50:37.860 artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives and while you're there sign up for a newsletter we

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00:50:57.900 of it as always thank you for the continued support and until next time it's brett mckay

00:51:01.880 remind you to listen to aom podcast but put what you've heard into action

The Art of Manliness - February 05, 2024

Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall

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