Given the continuing afterglow of last spring's leadership team retreat to Montpelier, I would certainly encourage schools to consider it as a site for their own reflections on leadership. But, even if you can't make the trip, it's worth pondering the leadership implications of Madison's success at the Constitutional Convention — a feat that not only propelled him into the White House years later, but also reshaped the nation and set a new course.
Our Montpelier retreat included many components: a tour of the mansion, an overview of the restoration; an observation of the archeological dig; a guided tour of the grounds (including the slave quarters, which, of course, sparked considerable dialogue among us regarding the incompatibility of the "idea of freedom" with the practice of slavery by Madison and many of the founding fathers); a surprise guest (a Madison impersonator) at a Colonial-style cocktail party and dinner, replete with Revolutionary-era minstrels; and, of course, sessions on Madison and the historical context for the Constitutional Convention. Before we went to Montpelier, we had hired a team of leadership facilitators1 who, in turn, made the arrangements with the Montpelier Foundation and a Madison scholar to help us study Madison as the leader who brought the United States Constitution to birth at a time of great skepticism, rigidly divided opinion, and outright hostility to the idea of a strong and unifying federal government. The question I posed to my team was just this: "How does a leader (at NAIS or in an independent school) with limited power overcome significant resistance to galvanize opinion towards a common goal?"
What did Madison do? After the U.S. experienced several less-than-successful years of governance under the Articles of Confederation, James Madison, John Jay, and John Marshall began publishing, anonymously, "The Federalist Papers," periodic tracts in the major publications of the time, advocating for a new Constitutional Convention that would form a strong centralized government as a cure for the ills of the loose confederation the states first adopted.2 When the delegates assembled in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, Madison, the author of what became "The Virginia Plan," took charge of the convention and successfully negotiated the most important document in the history of democracy, the U.S. Constitution, against all odds, and thereafter lobbied successfully for its ratification by the states.
What was truly amazing, in retrospect, is that Madison came to the convention with no "positional" power or authority, since, at the time, he did not hold elected office. What Madison had, as one of our facilitators pointed out, was the power to influence outcomes, actually a collection of powers that leadership scholars identify as the four "secondary sources of power"3 (or the "social power" that Malcolm Gladwell identifies in The Tipping Point):
Interpersonal Power: People with "interpersonal power" have high levels of "EQ" (emotional intelligence) rooted in communication skills, personal relationships, a high degree of empathy, and an ability to engage in constructive discussions. The title of the Harvard Negotiation Project's famous tract, Getting to Yes,4 encapsulates the essential value of this power.
Associative Power: Interpersonal skill raised to the second level becomes "associative power," which is a matter of developing social networks with key individuals who have influence in the decision-making process, building coalitions among disparate groups, and transforming pockets of resistance into collaborators. At the time of the Constitutional Convention, literally everyone knew and respected Madison — and, despite their varying proclivities, were ready to listen to him.
Informational Power: One must have knowledge and information to be perceived as credible. In the corporate universe, "informational power" is known as business acumen; in the academic universe, it is discipline expertise.
Expertise Power: Informational power raised to the second level is "expertise power," often contextual in nature, due to the leader's superior skill and knowledge base at a given moment in time. Madison arrived in Philadelphia dazzling the company he kept at the Constitutional Convention with his assessment of the failures of the "articles of confederation" throughout history to that point. Simply put, no one had done his homework better than Madison — which, in the end, won him critical credibility even from skeptics.
So, what were the take-aways for the NAIS leadership team retreat at Montpelier? What did we learn that we could, in turn, apply to our own leadership challenges?
- Know that positional power is not as important (and seldom as effective over time) as interpersonal, associative, informational, and expertise power.
- Empower others to think of themselves as leaders who can resolve conflicts, especially if the conflict is seen as an opportunity to be leveraged.
- Clarify the ways in which "what we have" is not working — in order to move the group towards compromise.
- Change position when it is expedient to do so.
- Build in systemic checks to counter the tyranny of the majority.
- Run against the grain if necessary. (Witness the triumph of the Federalists' position despite fears about a strong centralized government, an antipathy ingrained then and now in the American character.)
- Live and articulate the essence of the common spirit, the self-evident truths.
- Hold, process, identify with, respect, and include competing points of view; cherish and cultivate dissent.
- Document "founders' knowledge" for posterity.
Madison's success at the Constitutional Convention helped this nation to move forward and blossom as a democracy. But an important lesson from Madison's life is not just the creation of the Constitution, but also the way in which he stayed focused on the ideal and brought everyone around to see things his way. This was not easy to do, especially considering that the Constitution highlights a central paradox of the times: a foundational document in which freedom is the prevailing idea despite the continuing abomination of slavery. But Madison believed in it because he could imagine the idealized future in which all men and women were equal citizens, convince others of its value, then build into the system the capacity for achieving all the core ideals, even if some of them were not immediately achievable.
Madison's achievement, then, is what deep leadership is about: embedding into the structure the DNA that will inevitably create the good that we envision, but that, for now, is beyond our grasp.
Notes
1. Peter Rice, partner in Senior Resources Advisors ([email protected]); Terry Newell, director of Leadership for a Responsible Society ([email protected]); John Whitlow, president JHW Consulting Services ([email protected]). Also see, The Montpelier Foundation.
2. The Federalist Papers are a series of 85 articles advocating the ratification of the United States Constitution. Seventy-seven of the essays were published serially in The Independent Journal and The New York Packet between October 1787 and August 1788. … Federalist No. 10, which discusses the means of preventing factionalism and advocates for a large republic (and warns of the dangers of a democracy), is generally regarded as the most important of the 85 articles from a philosophical perspective. Federalist No. 84 is also notable for its opposition to a Bill of Rights. Federalist No. 51 may be the clearest exposition of what has come to be called "Federalism." Source: Wikipedia, "Federalist Papers."
3. French, J. & Raven, B. (1959) "Basis of Social Power." Studies on Social Power, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, Michigan.
4. Fisher, William, Patton, Bruce, and Ury, Roger, and Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1992.