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Meet the MasterMinds: James Hoopes on the Cult of Moral Leadership

James Hoopes is a Distinguished Professor of History at Babson College who specializes in business history. He is the author of False Prophets: The Gurus Who Created Modern Management and Why Their Ideas Are Bad for Business Today.

In his latest book, Hail to the CEO, Hoopes points out the perils of what he calls the “Cult of Moral Leadership.” He offers a new model in which leaders earn moral influence, rather than exploiting it, and thus become more effective as leaders and as people.

McLaughlin: Could you start off by telling us what you mean by the Cult of Moral Leadership?

Hoopes: An accepted and well-intentioned idea is that we should lead by specific values—integrity, for example. Recognizing that managers don’t necessarily have all the authority they need to get the job done, the idea is that we get everyone pulling in the same direction by rallying them around a set of values.

The conventional wisdom about being a leader, which I think is right, is that it’s a morally dangerous job.

I don’t disagree with that. But problems arise when leaders think that all they have to do is articulate a few values and create a mission statement, and suddenly everyone in the organization will adopt those values. We can say integrity is one of our core values, but it takes hard work to change what people care about deeply and reflect in their work.

Instead of using values as tools, leaders should set them up as goals. Convey the message to everyone in the organization that integrity is one of our goals and we’ve got to work to achieve it. By contrast, those who manage by the Cult of Moral Leadership claim that we already have the values we say that our organization stands for, so we pat ourselves on the back and risk becoming complacent.

McLaughlin: Does ascribing a value like integrity to leaders tend to elevate their moral status in the minds of their followers?

Hoopes: I think that’s one of the hazards of the leadership cult: it puts leaders up there on a pedestal. Then we end up with the cult of the personality, as Khrushchev said after the Stalin era. Or, we get the celebrity CEOs of the 1990s. We looked up to them and they were quite content to bask in that role.

Leaders may then be tempted to conceive of themselves as morally superior. One might think, hey, I’ve got the top job, so I’ve also got the top soul, so to speak.

The conventional wisdom about being a leader, which I think is right, is that it’s a morally dangerous job. We need leaders, of course, but power can corrupt very easily. If we add to that a sense of grandiosity about what kind of moral person you must be because they chose you to be a leader, then that can be disastrous for the character of a leader.

McLaughlin: Do you think that leadership always imperils a person’s character? Can a good leader avoid that risk?

Hoopes: Well, leaders can manage the risk, and I think many do so very well. They have to be aware and on guard for the risks that go with the job.

For charisma to be lasting, competence is absolutely essential.

The cult of moral leadership is alarming because the first thing it does is tear down that safeguard of worrying about whether you’re really up to the job of leading. Instead, it affirms for the leader that he or she is some sort of super person.

So yes, lots of people I admire greatly have held leadership positions that haven’t gone to their heads. I’ve noticed how self-aware they are and that they take steps to avoid the pitfalls. Naturally, everybody makes mistakes. But I’ve seen many people emerge from leadership roles not only as good as they were at the start, but even better. So I don’t mean to discourage people from becoming leaders.

McLaughlin: You brought up the charismatic leaders of the 1990s, which raises the question, how important is charisma? And what’s the relationship between charisma and competence?

Hoopes: For charisma to be lasting, competence is absolutely essential. The root of the word charisma, of course, is charm. We tend to think that means a person with a charming personality. But when the great sociologist, Max Weber, created the term charismatic authority, he meant that the charismatic leader is a charmed, not a charming person.

He describes it as a nearness to the gods, which he uses as a metaphor to say that the charismatic leader is a person of extraordinary insight and accomplishment. In traditional societies, people see a leader as blessed by the gods because he is able to get himself and his followers where they want to go.

If a leader has the competence to get results the right way, that’s a vital safeguard against the temptation to get results the wrong way. In the sense of that charmed ability to achieve results, competence is the foundation of charisma. And it’s also essential to doing it in a way that maintains integrity.

McLaughlin: Could you give an example of an instance when leading by values led to a bad result?

Hoopes: I think the most famous example is Enron. I may be a minority of one, but I don’t believe Ken Lay should have been convicted. I think that, when he preached about values, he was utterly sincere. He had “Integrity” painted on the walls, and created value statements and codes of conduct. And he handed out that wonderful Enron prize.

I may be a minority of one, but I don’t believe Ken Lay should have been convicted.

The book Conspiracy of Fools tells about when Ken Lay is being deposed in preparation for a trial. The prosecuting attorney brings him to the realization that Enron’s investment vehicles were not real economic hedges. It was a moment of tragedy. I think he was incompetent—partly because he thought that he could lead just by values and not through hands-on management.

McLaughlin: On the flip side, are there leaders who do a good job of leading for values?

Hoopes: I’ve never met him, but I would say Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia, does a good job. In his autobiography, Let My People Go Surfing, he talks about the value of sustainability. He says this is a goal, but he acknowledges that we’ll never reach it.

He admits that we’ll probably never come up with 100 percent sustainable products that don’t use some resources of the earth. But he says that, even though we’ll never get there, we’re going to keep trying because that’s our best hope of saving the planet.

In the political realm, I think of Gandhi or Martin Luther King. If Dr. King had tried to manage by values, he would have just gone around saying freedom is a good thing—let’s all be free. That wouldn’t have gotten anybody anywhere.

But Dr. King organized and managed the boycott in Montgomery. He actively worked for the value of freedom and people could see that he was getting somewhere. They shared the value of freedom with him, and so they could climb onboard with him in trying to achieve that goal.

Dr. King is a great example of managerial competence being essential to lasting charisma. He obviously had personal charm, and was a wonderful orator. But that’s not why he was a charismatic leader. It was that he knew how to achieve results.

I think there’s too much emphasis on the expectation that integrity, morality, and other values are resources that should bring us benefits. But if they are goals, sometimes there are costs in achieving them and, obviously, Dr. King paid a terrible cost.

McLaughlin: Last question: If you could give an existing or emerging leader one piece of advice, what would it be?

Hoopes: I would say do your best to work for values with all the competence you can develop. Don’t think of leadership as a matter just of making the right moral decisions, but as a mandate to develop all the skills that you can muster, whether it’s marketing, accounting, or whatever the job takes.

If those skills help you deliver the goods honestly, then those are the things that will help make you a moral leader. They’ll win you followers and, if you do your job well, you will inspire others. I think that’s really the key to lasting and successful moral leadership.

McLaughlin: Thanks for your time.

You might also be interested in our previous interview, James Hoopes Takes on the False Prophets of Management.

Find out more about Professor Hoopes or write to him at hoopes@babson.edu.