Comment: Hegseth gives a masterclass in poor leadership

By Gautam Mukunda / Bloomberg Opinion

In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy wrote that “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Tolstoy may have been right about families, but leaders are exactly the opposite. There are many ways to be a great leader, but the worst ones are usually very similar.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth provided a masterclass in failed leadership. Speaking before almost every American general and admiral as he conveyed his vision for the newly-renamed Department of War, Hegseth embodied three of the most common failures of leaders who are, by both temperament and skill, simply not up to the job.

The first tell: Leaders who are out of their depth often prioritize the superficial over actual substance. At its worst, that can mean harming their organization by sacrificing performance in favor of image. The way things look, after all, is easy to control. Reshaping your company to meet its greatest challenges is hard. It’s not an accident that disgraced Theranos Founder Elizabeth Holmes always wore a black turtleneck and deepened her voice. She could control her appearance — therefore the company’s — even as its technology was failing.

The U.S. military faces profound challenges. The war in Ukraine, for instance, has demonstrated that 21st century warfare will involve rapidly evolving drones; the soldiers of Ukraine’s 34th Coastal Defense Brigade have used such devices to become “among the deadliest fighters in the history of war.” There is no equivalent American unit and creating one is a challenge that the American military appears unready to meet.

So when Hegseth spoke to the gathered senior officers, did he challenge them to rethink how they operate and develop the technologies that will win the next war? No, he told them “the era of unprofessional appearance is over. No more beardos.” He continued, “it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops. Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals.”

This focus on aesthetics is worse than a distraction. It will harm military recruitment and retention. Consider that as many as 60 percent of Black men are affected by pseudofolliculitis barbae, a condition that leads to painful razor bumps and ingrown hairs. For some, shaving can result in significant facial scarring. It’s not hard to imagine that many Black soldiers will choose to leave an institution that requires them to harm themselves to serve the vanity of its figurehead.

A second hallmark of poor leaders is their tendency to use their institution and its people for their own self-aggrandizement. There’s no better example than WeWork Co-Founder Adam Neumann, who used the startup to develop an almost messianic status, commanding company resources to fly in private jets, finance his drug-fueled partying and even pay him for the trademark rights to the word “We.”

Hegseth’s display was similarly grandiose. He ordered 800 senior military personnel to fly in from all around the world for a speech that could just as easily have been delivered via videoconference, or even as an email. They were met by Hegseth positioned in front of a giant American flag, a clear reference to the opening scene of the movie “Patton.” The audience — which had, collectively, more than 25,000 years of military experience — was a prop meant to provide visuals for Hegseth’s social media and his rumored campaign for governor of Tennessee.

Finally, there is no more consistent failure of the worst leaders than their disrespect for those who report to them. Al Dunlap, the infamous CEO of Scott Paper and Sunbeam, is a classic example. Dunlap nicknamed himself “Chainsaw Al” for the way he ruthlessly fired his employees. His management style was epitomized by an incident included in John A. Byrne’s biography of the CEO, in which Dunlap ordered his head of HR into his office, threw a chair at him, swore at him, then tossed him out; all in front of the man’s subordinates.

Hegseth didn’t throw any chairs, but everything about his military gathering demonstrated similar disrespect. From ordering attendees to attend with no explanation, to lecturing them on the basics of military success when every single one has vastly more military experience than he does, to criticizing, by name, three retired four-star generals, he missed no opportunity to show the senior-most men and women under his command how little he respected them and their experience.

Hegseth, a product of Princeton University, the Harvard Kennedy School and the United States Army — three of the world’s foremost institutions for developing leaders — sadly appears to have learned all the wrong lessons from his education. Leaders looking for a lesson in how to be great, however, need only look at his example this week; and do the opposite.

Gautam Mukunda writes about corporate management and innovation. He teaches leadership at the Yale School of Management and is the author of “Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter.”