Page 65 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

as those I experienced in the late 1980s,” Johnson said. “I speak openly
about this to show that even severely depressed people can escape from
depression with the right professional help. Depression is an illness, not
some sickness that can’t be discussed openly and honestly. We must do
more about the stigma, and I intend to do my part.”
If Johnson had known when he was starting his career what he knows
today, he would have done many things differently. “I would have balanced
my work with play. I would have been as wonderful a father as I think I am
now as a grandfather. I would have loved Edwina more, laughed more, and
enjoyed the splendid world outside an office. And I would have been a far
better balanced person—not the uptight, disciplined workaholic that I was.”
In short, he might have been more like White House Fellow cocreator
John Gardner.
Of all the great leaders I’ve ever met, Gardner offered perhaps the best
illustration of how to live a balanced life. I met him during my Fellowship
year, and I learned that this great man who had accomplished so much in
his professional life—as an advisor to presidents and a cabinet secretary,
an author, and a founder of a citizen’s lobbying organization, among other
things—was not a workaholic who burned the midnight oil, chained to his
desk in a downtown office six or seven days a week. On the contrary, John
Gardner knocked off at a reasonable hour each weekday afternoon and
went home to his family. Although he typically took a briefcase full of
papers home with him, he worked and wrote his books at a desk he had
placed in the middle of the busiest part of his house, with the hustle and
bustle of family life going on all around him.
“His desk was, by choice, always placed and exposed to the full noise,
commotion, interruptions, and ups and downs of family activity in which
he participated fully. The policy was never a closed door, and we took
advantage of it,” recalled Gardner’s daughter Francesca. “In his last few
years . . . I asked him about this, and he said an interesting thing. He said,
‘I made a great point of never closing my door so that the scramble of
infancy and childhood just went on around me. I learned to tune it out
when I had to, but it always kept me in very close touch. I knew every little
waver in my family’s psyche because I lived with it, and that’s valuable.
That’s family life.’”
Howard N. Nemerovski (WHF 65–66) served as the first White
House Fellow assigned to work with John Gardner during his tenure as

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