Page 166 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ENERGIZE THEIR PEOPLE

a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School and now a
celebrated author and journalist, was assigned to the U.S. Department of
Energy for his Fellowship and was one of ten aides serving the secretary
and deputy secretary. One of his coworkers was Colin Powell, who had
been borrowed from the Army to serve as the energy secretary’s top aide.
“During the summer of 1979, when my class of Fellows was placed, energy
was, as it is now again, in the headlines,” Caplan explained. “Car lines at
gas stations stretched for blocks. President Jimmy Carter declared the
energy challenge the moral equivalent of war. A placement at the relatively
new Department of Energy felt like a patriotic opportunity, and when I
was offered it, I took it.”
Caplan’s writing skills were put to good use in developing a lengthy
document called the “Posture Statement on U.S. Energy Policy,” which was
designed to lay out the Energy Department’s rationale for its budget requests.
The young Fellow witnessed round after round of intradepartmental
squabbling as each section of the department jockeyed for a higher-profile
position in the report. Whenever pressure threatened to overwhelm Caplan
and his colleagues, they looked to Powell to alleviate the stress. “Colin
Powell was the largest presence on the team,” Caplan said. “When he signed
out of the department garage each evening, his signature was emphatic and
took two lines. Powell used humor as a tool of management and leadership
better than anyone I had ever worked with. He used it to dispel tension,
redirect discussion, and, most of all, create the spirit of a team.”
For some White House Fellows, becoming part of the team might
have been impossible if not for their principal’s positive energy and open
leadership style. Such was the case for Lynn Schenk (WHF 76–77), a San
Diego attorney and fervent Democrat who was selected for a White House
Fellowship in the waning days of the Gerald Ford administration. The
heated presidential race between President Ford and Georgia Governor
Jimmy Carter was in full swing, and the White House was pulled in a
million different directions trying to campaign for Ford while also running
the country.
Schenk, who recently had attended the Democratic National Conven-
tion as a delegate for candidate Jerry Brown, was assigned to work with Jack
Veneman, counselor to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. Even though
President Ford had dropped Rockefeller and chosen Kansas Senator Bob
Dole to be his running mate for the 1976 election, Rockefeller still planned

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