Leadership

Six studies in world strategy

HENRY KISSINGER

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Any society, whatever its political system, is
perpetually in transit between a past that
forms its memory and a vision for the future
that inspires its evolution.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Without leadership institutions drift, and
nations court growing irrelevance and
ultimately disaster.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Leaders think and act at the intersection of
two axes :
the past and the future
the values and the aspirations of those they
lead.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

For strategies to inspire society, leaders must
serve as educators communicating objectives,
assuaging doubts and rallying support.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Courage and character are need at the
intersection of the past with the future and
values and aspirations.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Leadership is most crucial in periods of
transition when values and institutions are
losing their relevance.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Leaders are hemmed in by constraints, they
operate in scarcity. This can be capabilities,
demography, time.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Management of risk is as critical to the leader
as analytical skill.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

The leader as a strategist faces an inherent
paradox: in circumstances that call for action,
the scope for decision making is often greatest
when relevant information is at its scantiest.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

If you misuse time, the limits will impose
themselves on you as a leader.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

History teaches by analogy, through the ability
to recognize comparable situations.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

The leader has to do the ‘correct thing’
without ‘knowing it’.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Meaningful political choices rarely involve a
single variable.

It is the combination of character and

circumstance that creates history and the six
leaders I have profiled here in the book are
good examples.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Most leaders are not visionary but managerial.

Management of the status quo may be the

riskiest course of all for any leader.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

The statesman is the first type of leader. These
leaders will embrace change and progress
while retaining that society retains its basics.
They have a sense of limits to push.

These Leaders assume responsibility for the

‘best’ and ‘worst’ outcomes.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

The statesman leader recognizes that change
cannot go beyond what it can sustain.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

The second type of leader – the visionary or the
prophet. They invoke their vision as proof of their
righteousness.

Prophets redefine what’s appears possible, they are

‘unreasonable men’ according to GB Shaw.

Prophets distrust gradualism and their goal is to

transcend rather than manage the status quo.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Leaders can move from one model to the
other, borrow from one where needed.

Churchill, Sadat and De Gaulle are examples.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Ordinary leaders seek to manage the
immediate present, great leaders manage the
future.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Do individuals matter in history?

History teaches us that men and women shape

their environment by their interpretation of it.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Konrad Adenauer
• Konrad was the first German leader after WW 2.
• The task of restoring dignity and legitimacy fell on Konrad.
• He was mayor of cologne for 16 years before Hitler fired him.
• He had a lot of difficulty and instability in his life.
• He was jailed by the Nazi's, he would move from one hideout to the
other every 24 hours and tried to lead a quiet life.
• He was obsessed by the possibility of tragedy.
• Konrad outlined the idea of a positive and viable European
federation.
Leadership Book Summary Shiv
Lessons from Konrad Adenauer
• Germany’s neighbors in Europe saw Germany as a country under
‘probation” after WW 2
• Konrad always stressed that humility was the road to equality for
Germany.
• The soviet union sensed the rebuilding of German as a direct threat
to it.
• Konrad had to focus on high ranking German officials in the trial for
crimes on jews. He called it the way to ‘inner purification’
• Adenauer maintained personal contact with Nahum Goldmann, the
founder of the world Jewish Congress.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Konrad Adenauer
• Adenauer’s authority derived in part from his personality, which
combined dignity with strength.
• He never confused energy with strength
• Great leadership is about sustaining vision over time.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Charles De Gaulle(CDG)
• His was about the ‘strategy of will’.
• Before 1940, DE Gaulle was seen as an outstanding soldier and
strategic analyst.
• DE Gaulle was a reader and author of poetry. He saw the price of
statesmanship as a challenge as to whom to confide and trust.
• In 1924, CDG published a book on why Germany collapsed in WW 1.
• CDG never had gratitude as a strong point
• For CDG, politics was not the art of the possible, but the art of the
willed.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Charles De Gaulle(CDG)
• In 1945, the French were living in a state of spiritual and material
penury. Reforms that would take decades were unveiled in weeks.
• The government established a family allowance to support raising
French children and raising French birth rate.
• CSD demonstrated that revolutionary changes did not require a
revolution.
• CDG warned Kennedy about the Vietnam war, he didn’t want USA
getting into war.
• CDG had an aloof style of decision making.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Charles De Gaulle(CDG)
• CDG had great intuition, over three decades, he judged the situation
insightfully.
• He had extraordinary prescience and a courage to act.
• In 1930s, he judged that future wars would be motorized.
• CDG attracted admirers who were useful to him. A relationship with
him meant neither reciprocity nor permanence.
• His differently abled daughter Anne died of pneumonia in 1948 when
she was twenty. CDG carried a picture of her in his breast pocket all
his life.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Richard Nixon
• Nixon practiced the strategy of equilibrium
• Nixon was one of the most controversial presidents in American
history.
• When Nixon took office in 1969, the cold war was at full maturity.
• I joined Nixon as his National security advisor and with presidents or
people with power n there is no partnership, especially when the
power is distributed so unequally between the two sides.
• Even with his established relationships, an element of reserve
palpable.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Richard Nixon
• Nixon had both – significant insecurity and determined self
promotion.
• He was sometimes resentful when media highlighted my role in
national policy and he wasn’t mentioned enough.
• Nixon always focused on potential turning points in the daily
briefings.
• Nixon viewed peace as a state of fragile equilibrium between the
great powers.
• Nixon never believed that personal rapport with world leaders could
offset conflicting national interests.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Richard Nixon
• Nixon as a statesman reveled in analytical rigor and boldness in
execution.
• Nixon was instrumental in shifting the dollar gold link, and moving to
a more flexible one.
• Nixon didn’t want America to get involved in Asia so that they were
dragged into any conflicts involving that country.
• Nixon always felt that in some cases, one pays the price for pursuing
something half heartedly and whole heartedly.
• Societies become great not by victories over each other, but by
common purpose and reconciliation.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Anwar Sadat
• Even at its best the friendship between Egypt and USSR had been
formal to the point of coldness.
• Sadat approached the Us as opposed to his predecessor who tilted to
USSR
• In 1971, Sadat said he would ‘not accept this state of no war and no
peace.” when he said this he was improving his negotiation position.
• Conversations with Sadat were frequently interrupted by pauses for
reflection.
• Even successful negotiations have uneasy traces of compromise.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Anwar Sadat
• Sadat landed in November 1977 in Jerusalem to the astonishment of
the global pundits. Sadat was aiming to get to Israel via Washington,
not the other way round.
• Arab leaders felt betrayed that they were not consulted.
• In 1978, Sadat visited camp David with begin for talks hosted by
President carter and secretary Cyrus Vance.
• Sadat got a lot of aid and GDP grew form levels of 1.5 % to 7 %.
However, Egypt didn’t develop indigenous capital.
• Sadat was killed in 1981 in a ceremonial parade.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Anwar Sadat
• On Sadat’s epitaph read “ hero of war and peace. He lived for the sake
of peace and was martyred for the sake of his principles.’
• I visited Egypt in 1983 and went to his grave to pay respects, I was the
only mourner present.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew
• In November 1968, LKY visited Harvard on a sabbatical when he had
been prime minister of Singapore for 9 years. He came to Harvard to
get fresh ideas, to meet stimulating minds and to go back enriched.
• One of the qualities of a statesman is not to get sept by the mood of
the moment.
• LKY had clarity of analysis right through his career.
• Leaders are tempted by pessimism he once said to a group of leaders.
• For Singapore to be important, he felt that mediocrity and corruption
were not acceptable.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew
• LKY greatest gift to Singapore was to make them believe that they
were their own gift and they need to work hard to realize the
greatness.
• In 1978, Deng Xiaoping came to visit Singapore to develop the China
model and he was stunned by the progress. He had last been in
Singapore in 1920.
• LKY was a clever but rebellious student.
• LKY set aside 33 % of the Singapore budget for education in the early
1960s.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Lee Kuan Yew
• LKY felt his country needed to overachieve since they were constantly
walking a tightrope between survival and catastrophe.
• LKY always wanted Singapore to be a winning cause, so others would invest
in it.
• America had to live with a bigger China said LKY in 2011.
• LKY warned America not to treat China as an enemy but to develop a
different strategy.
• For LKY , globalization meant that every country had to live in a
competitive world.
• Lee always said that not everything he did was right, but he always said he
did it for an honorable purpose.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Margaret Thatcher
• She believed in the strategy of conviction.
• MT defined the leadership era of 1979 to 1990.
• She made Britain more confident.
• At the heart of her success was personal fortitude.
• Americans view presidentship as a succession of leaders, however in
Britain it is viewed as a succession of parties and policies. Hence there
is always somewhere ready to take over.
• She always wanted her party to have the winning quality.
• In 1948, fresh with a chemical engineering degree, MT applied for a
job with ICI. She was rejected. Her assessment read “ she is
headstrong, obstinate and dangerously self opinionated”
Leadership Book Summary Shiv
Lessons from Margaret Thatcher
• She cut a free milk program when she was education minister and
the press labeled her ‘ milk snatcher’
• In 1975, I said that MT will not last and Churchills son-in-law would be
a big leader. I was wrong.
• Unlike the American presidency, the British prime minister does not
have the ability to override her cabinet and still maintain his/her
government.
• She was anti communist to the core.
• MT was always inclined to challenge public opinion and take the
people with her.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

Lessons from Margaret Thatcher
• MT struggled to find anything meaningful after her retirement from
politics.
• Her exceptional steeliness coupled with her love for the country is
what made her special.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv

We cannot choose our external circumstances
but we can choose how we respond to them.

Leadership Book Summary Shiv