Risky business: leadership today requires new skills to navigate a rapidly changing world.

• Author: Linsky, Marty
• Position: Viewpoint essay

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We are living in complex times, complicated and uncomfortable for many people, but especially challenging for politicians.

I was a state representative in Massachusetts eons ago when we could attack challenges one by one and the arguments were mostly about where we were going to spend the next dollar, not where we were going to find it.

At the time, it all seemed difficult and contentious enough. But those days were child's play compared to what state lawmakers deal with today.

In the current turmoil, legislators must develop initiatives and make choices under conditions of great uncertainty, where everything is interconnected, change is a constant, and resources are, to say the least, hugely constrained. Every big decision seems a political nightmare. No matter what the legislator does, some of the people counting on her or him to do the right thing--and on whom the legislator is counting to get re-elected--will be upset.

Every politician knows how much fun it is to stand in front of an angry crowd of opponents and take a strong stand. It makes you feel even more puffed up and self-righteous than you did the day before. But today's turmoil is forcing politicians to spend more time than they bargained for standing in front of crowds of angry supporters.

That brings me to my favorite definition of leadership: Leadership is disappointing your own people at a rate they can absorb.

Whether it is immigration, taxation or environmental protection, whether you are on the right or on the left, it is easy to do what your own people want you to do, to take a strong stand that is supported by the vast majority of those to whom you are accountable or to whom you feel obligated. That's pandering, and every politician, me included, has done a robust amount of it.

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But pandering to your own people has nothing to do with leadership; pandering is the antithesis of leadership.

A SEA CHANGE?

Leadership is always difficult and risky. That's why we see so little of it. It is even more difficult and riskier today. That's why lawmakers who demonstrate leadership are so noteworthy.

We are living in a period of unpredictability that is unlike any in our lifetimes. That means leadership will have to change, to look different than it has in calmer waters.

In thinking about leadership under the current circumstances, the first question is whether we are in the midst of some fundamental transition or just a temporary glitch.

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