Larry D. Lauer

Helen Thomas was the very first female reporter to cover the White House. She was an aggressive questioner, sometimes abrasive, always direct and insistent, and yet loved by most who knew her. Indeed, she became a legend.

Sadly, Helen passed away this past week, and as I watched long time journalists reflect on their years of working with her, I could not help but think, “How did she pull it off? Aggressively and overtly persistent…and still loved!”

I am sure most of us have met aggressively persistent people in our work. In my world  most of them wind up disliked, or at least not admired. But then there are the occasional Helen Thomas’s who can be very argumentative, even rudely interrupting, and yet still end up loved and remembered as absolutely wonderful people and treasured colleagues.

Helen would challenge White House spokesmen and presidents alike.  She would press relentlessly for answers they did not want to give. Then, follow-up and press again. She was always insisting on more transparency and was determined in her search for the real inside explanation. And still, she was loved by everyone, including the presidents. In short, Helen was a true leader in her world.

Leadership is a topic that fascinates me. I like to identify the various styles that emerge in different types of organizations and situations at different times. I try to analyze what it takes to lead in each setting? Some persistent people I find actually become self-destructive.  Some simply fail. But others are surprisingly effective.

I have found that the most successful leadership styles emerge in natural ways from  each person’s total personality characteristics. In other words, they appear comfortable in their own skin. But in addition, their total personality also seems to fit acceptably within the organization’s overall nature and culture.

Helen seemed to be able to find appropriate spaces and times in each work day for being direct and insistent. And she always came off as self-confident, informed, and  single-mindedly focused on getting her reporter’s work done successfully. Equally, she found places where she was able to laugh, make jokes, collaborate with colleagues, and even occasionally receive and give hugs. In the end, her sincere and genuine humanity always came through.

I say, “Bravo Helen Thomas. I admire what you achieved. You were a true pioneer.” But to my colleagues I also say: ” You better fully understand all that made her successful before you try her style! It will take all of Helen’s many qualities to make it work!”

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Since writing a book about internal institutional politics, I have had many conversations with colleagues probing their deep inner feelings about their work environment and the people they must deal with in order to get the job done. Many of these feelings are subconscious, but they can come to the surface in heart-to-heart conversations.

For example, one executive told me about the guilt he felt when he had to admit to himself that the incredible talent of a subordinate was threatening to him.  The executive was not proud when he confronted the reality that he actually was preventing a person on his staff from having contact with other executives in the organization, and was not approving his participation in external projects. “It’s this guy’s job to put me out front, not for him to steal the limelight,” was the executive’s attitude. But, of course, he was only setting up a barrier that was holding back the career of a very talented professional.

Another person admitted in a conversation that he was fighting the feeling that he was really hoping a colleague who was getting attention for his talent would ultimately fail. This person had excuses for his feeling such as, “this person is getting too big for his britches.”  But the truth of the matter is that this is a classic case of professional jealously.  And the harm done was negative “office talk” about a professional’s genuine achievements. This situation is what reinforces the classic, “you can’t be a profit in your own land,” reality.

Another person admitted that she was doing things to impede a colleague’s recognition because she just didn’t like him. Questioning revealed this to be a common case of personality conflict.  “He makes me mad every time he opens his mouth,” was one observation.  Another was, “when he walks into the room he makes my skin crawl!”  Sometimes a person’s style is a problem for the entire office. But more often than not it is a problem between two people, and the behavior of one of them can become destructive to the well-being of the other.

Truthfully, it’s not unusual to feel unhappy about co-workers’ successes and to have difficulty celebrating their achievements.  Whatever good happens to them can feel like a setback to us. It’s a common feeling that is rarely admitted, and rarely dealt with directly. 

Indeed, most of us are in denial about our feelings, and make up excuses for them if we must. We simply conclude that the person is a selfish corporate climber, or an elitist social climber, or just a plain ego driven maniac.  “He thinks it’s all about him,” is what we say. But the truth often is that he (or she) is merely trying to advance his ideas and exercise a sincere passion he feels for making a difference.

My little book “Learning to Love the Politics,” attempts to look at leadership styles and typical barriers to individual advancement and support, and to propose some ways to deal with them. This book is mostly about university politics, but many of the situations are universal. Internal politics are in fact the big barriers to professional  achievement everywhere, and many people never have realized that they can work hard and actually be penalized for it.

There is no doubt about it, our unspoken feelings can be destructive. Getting them out in the open so we can deal with them is a major step toward organizational and individual progress.

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