Page 93 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

explained. “Whole parts of the operation can end up on the take and get
too cozy with developers. There’s just a lot of potential for corruption, but
one of the leadership lessons I took away from that assignment was from
the tone that Carla Hills set. She was fiercely, unflinchingly determined to
do the right thing and never batted an eye about it. Whenever misconduct
came to light, she dealt with it quickly and effectively, firing people if
necessary and then moving on.”
Blair recalled that he and the other special assistants took turns field-
ing telephone calls from people trying to pressure the secretary and her
department to do things for political reasons, perhaps to award a Section
8 housing contract to someone solely on the basis of his or her political
influence. “Our instructions were to say, ‘Well, Mr. Smith, if you just put
that request in writing and send it in, we’ll be glad to take a look at it,’”
Blair explained with a laugh. “And of course, nothing ever came of it and
we never heard from that person again.”
During Blair’s year in Washington, President Ford was up for reelection.
The president and his cabinet, including Blair’s principal, Carla Hills, were
under intense pressure to run a winning campaign. Although everyone’s
job was at stake, Blair saw no one abuse his or her power or resort to cheap
tactics to influence the election. “It wasn’t that the department was com-
pletely naive. If there was a good program sitting there waiting to be moved
into a key state, then there was pressure to move it and to get the money
out the door. But bad programs were never invented for political reasons,”
Blair said. “Carla Hills never came in and said, ‘We’re in trouble in Ohio.
I want to push some Section 8 money toward Ohio, and I want a big pub-
licity drive so we can turn out a lot of votes there.’ There was none of that.
They played by the rules and fought fair and always tried to do the right
thing. That stuck with me; in fact, it was one of the greatest lessons that
came out of my Fellowship. Several times in my own career I was given a
choice between doing the right thing and doing something that might have
shaded my principles a little bit but also would have gotten me ahead or
made things easier for me. I’ve always tried to choose to do the right thing.”

As Blair progressed through the Navy’s ranks, he discovered even more
important truths about leadership that helped him keep his bearings. He
learned that the higher a leader climbs in an organization, the more the
rules fall away and the greater the challenge to maintain a strong sense of

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