Before Scott McClellan vanishes from our cable TV news screens, Professor James O’Toole would like to say a few words in support of the former White House press secretary.
Don’t dismiss McClellan’s “tardy dallying with the truth” as simply an example of disgruntled kiss-and-tell for profit, O’Toole says. It still takes courage to face the inevitable charges of disloyalty, even long after the fact.
O’Toole, distinguished professor of business ethics at the University of Denver, is a student of this sort of thing, i.e., of what happens when team players decide they’re fed up with team policy.
“Indeed, ‘disloyalty’ is the organization’s trump card in dealing with those daring to voice truth internally in the hope of changing policy, and against those who exit and then ‘tell tales out of school,’ ” he said.
There’s also the charge that they’re “too angry” to be credible. But, says O’Toole, “Most workers have to be totally teed off before going public.”
O’Toole is one of three authors of a book just out called “Transparency: Creating a Culture of Candor,” published by Jossey-Bass. He, Warren Bennis and Daniel Goleman argue that a lack of openness can have disastrous consequences. And O’Toole, in an essay based on that book and a subsequent interview, says the Bush administration is an example.
He lists a number of former administration officials who left and then wrote about why they were so teed off, including Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and security expert Richard Clarke.
“Of course they were angry,” he writes. “If they weren’t, they might still be inside the administration, carrying out orders, or trying to voice disagreement through established processes. But they had tried that, failed in their attempts to be heard, and opted for vocal exits.
“It would be prettier if whistleblowers weren’t so angry,” he continues, “but anger is often a necessary spur to doing the right thing.”
Sometimes anger is a tool for doing the wrong thing, too.
O’Toole used to be at the Aspen Institute, where he had an experience with Donald Rumsfeld that left him “still shaking from the encounter” hours later. It was before Rumsfeld was secretary of defense. O’Toole had challenged a point Rumsfeld made. “He came after me with bone-chilling intensity: ‘No one ever questions me! Do you understand that?’ And, with total conviction, he added, ‘I am never wrong.’ ” O’Toole learned later that Rumsfeld had tried to get him fired.
Bullying is the management style for some very powerful and successful people. It’s leading by intimidation vs. leading by example, and it seems to be the culture in some successful organizations.
“Imagine the courage it would have taken for an Enron employee to confront Jeff Skilling with the facts of the company’s [and his] financial deception,” O’Toole writes. “Or the courage required by a GE employee simply to question the company’s former CEO, Jack Welch.” Welch is reputed to be another manager who made “his people” tremble in their boots.
And, while we’re imagining, “What if Secretary of State Colin Powell’s reported anger over the decision to invade Iraq had overcome his military-disciplined instinct to be loyal to administration policies?” O’Toole asks. “Had he resigned and publicly voiced his concerns, would Americans then have been so accepting of the questionable evidence on weapons of mass destruction?”
So don’t ignore the angry words of disgruntled former officials, he advises. As for McClellan, “cut him some slack . . . . Speaking truth to power requires not only a courageous speaker but a willing listener. The truth that makes us free is often the truth leaders prefer not to hear.”
Fred Brown (punditfwb@aol.com), retired Capitol Bureau chief for The Denver Post, is also a political analyst for 9News. His column appears twice a month.
