Page 175 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

“Those senior civil servants were very smart and dedicated, and they
cared a lot about the mission,” Cotter said. “But the ones who were most
enthusiastic about the department’s agenda were the ones who had the best
communication with their superiors. Their assistant secretary or under-
secretary met with them regularly, talked with them, explained things to
them, and incorporated their ideas. They really felt part of the team, and
even when they disagreed, at least they knew their opinions had been heard
and treated with respect, and they had been given explanations as to why
it wasn’t possible to do the thing they were advocating. That lesson of
listening carefully to people throughout the entire organization and then
communicating back to explain why you were taking one action over
another helped to bring a larger group of people together to achieve a
common aim, no matter what their level in the organization.” For that
reason, Cotter implemented weekly staff meetings in every organization
he led after his Fellowship so that he could not only communicate his
priorities but also listen to his people and hear their concerns and ideas.
As a Fellow in the Department of the Interior, Richard Northern
(WHF 79–80) had the opportunity to watch how his principal, Interior
Secretary Cecil Andrus, used his listening skills to resolve a major dispute
facing the department and, indeed, the country. Northern, a lawyer from
Kentucky, admired his principal a great deal. “Andrus looked the part of
Secretary of the Interior. He was a tall, fit outdoorsman who preferred to
be pictured on horseback rather than in a suit. He taught me to take my
work—but not myself—seriously. He never got caught up in the arrogance
of Washington despite his large responsibilities. He never seemed full of
himself,” Northern said. “He played first base on the department’s softball
team. His driver also played on the team. Andrus treated the driver with
the same respect he did any of the assistant secretaries, maybe more because
the driver was a better ballplayer than the executives.”
Andrus, who served a total of four terms as a popular governor of
Idaho, gave his young Fellow a plum assignment working on the Central
Arizona Project, the biggest and most costly water diversion system ever
built in the United States. The centerpiece of the project was a 336-mile
canal that would bring water from the Colorado River down through the
state and into Phoenix and Tucson. The Department of Interior’s job was
to decide how to allocate the finite water supply among three competing
interests: the cities, the farmers, and the Native Americans.

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