[inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv c-span2 2. we bring you author talks from around the country, visit booktv.org. >> can you hear me? great. hello.

welcome, everyone. welcome. good evening. you can't hear. okay. better? no better? good evening. no, it's not -- it's just in the back. the back is saying they can't hear. i will try to project as much as possible. okay. good evening, everyone. my name is adele golfo and i'm chief of commercial development at roivant sciences. this is the first event of the rethinking leadership series, i in partnership with hudson union, and we're excited to begin the series of conversations with a remarkable leader, general stanley mcchrystal. before we begin, please join me in thanking margo stamus, elissa adler, christians almond and the cornell club for making this event happen. stand up, please so we can clap for you. [applause]

>> general mcchrystal has been called one of america's greatest warriors, a retired four star general, he is the former commander of the joint special operations committee, or jcoc and former commander of all u.s. and international forces in afghanistan. general mcchrystal is perhaps best known for developing and implementing the counterinsurgency in afghanistan and creating a comprehensive counterterrorism organization that revolutionized interagency culture. so imagine if he got military agencies to work together, what that must have been like. his leadership of jcoc is credit with the capture of sam sam sam and the death -- saddam hussein and the death of the leader in al qaeda. over his many decades of

leadership he came to realize that our model ford identifying, educating and evaluating leaders are worefully incomplete. in his latest book, "leaders: myth and reality" he profiles 13 famous leaders from a wide range of fields, including margaret thatcher, robert e. lee, co "coco" chan shell, and walt disney. he is the author of two other best sellers, "my share of the task," and "team of teams: new rules of engagement for a complex world." if you haven't already, i encourage you to read them. paul davis, head of communications at roivant will be conducting the interview. so without further adieu, please join me in welcoming general mcchrystal and paul davis to the stage. [applause]

>> the tight ol' the book is "leaders: myth and reality." general mcchrystal wall are the most prevalent myths but leadership. >> let me first thank you for having me here today and thank you for the wonderful introduction and my two coauthors in the room, jeff eggers a former navy sale and wering to we have this cumulative amazing iq. had i left the group, it would have gone down slightly. and so in the tough questions come, the right answers are back there. so thank you guys for being here and thank you for being on the

team. [applause] i deflected the the first question. >> what are the most prevalent myths about leadership. >> i wanted to start. this first myth is we understand it. we study it, we have books on it, we categorize of uses as leaders but we went through a lifetime of trying to lead, trying to learn to lead and yet we never really felt we got it. so we went back to first principles with this book, went all the way to pluto and said, all right, let's go back to first principles, figure it out. and we started studying and is the conclusion we came to is a little upsetting. that leadership is not what we think it is. and it never has been. we have lived with this mythology about leadership. i grew up with a mother who loved mythology and so she read to me all the time and i eave a little orange book she got when she was five years old inth

chattanooga, tennessee and one of the myths in it i love, about atlas. and you have this muscular atlas, standing on a mountaintop and holding up the sky. and the thing that was amazing for a long time, people accepted that. they just said, the sky is still up there so somebody must be holding it up. and if you think about it, that sort of defines how we let mythology explain things for us and simplify things for us. so we came into three myths as we studied 13 leaders. and the three myths, the first was the formulaicking my and that is if you follow a list of behaviors or you have a list of traits, and you have all those, you're likely to be a good leader. and yet when he studied it we found there people who have all of them who are absolutely unsuccessful. and we have get other people who have none of them, who are rich, famous, successful, whatever you want to call it.

and so the formulaic myth is disproven time and again. the served is the attribution myth and that is, what happens in an organization success or failure can usually be traced back to the leader. and we found that's not true, either. in fact, what happens in an organization, the outcome, is often only marginally affect bid the leader. when i got out of the military i wrote my memoirs. people come to you and say you have a debt to history, have to write your memoirs. that's easier said than done. so we write my memoirs and i said how hard can this be? this is the story, the play of my life, and i'm the star, and it shouldn't be hard because i was there. but we did all these interviews in preparation for the book, and what we found was, my memory of things was usually not completely wrong but it was always incomplete.

so i would have made this great decisive decision, i would get credit and then when we did the interview and the back store we found out there are hundreds of people doing other things, hugely important or other factors and meant that i still mattered but i didn't matter like i thought i did. and then the last one is results and you see we hire or elect or select or promote leaders because they get results. they make is money, the win badlefield victories and win elections. the reality is when you sort of do a blind test, we don't. we support serial failures, follow us people who take is places we know we don't want to go. we moat people who have never really beener successful and that's because, as we found, leaders -- it's not an objective transactional relationship between follower and leader.

it's an organic, visceral, an emotional connection that we make, and they fill some requirement in us as people, and so as a consequence we tend to be supportive or loyal to people who, in many cases, the results wouldn't support. so these three myths put together mean that when we look at leadership, we're doing it through blurred glasses. we have this fog and even though we know it, it per publish zigses and i argue it's costly. >> you said this great man myth of history is both toxic and intoxicating. why so attractive? whyer people drawn that motion that individuals are responsible for major events in history. >> it's simple. first you say if things are bad, we will wait for the great woman or man to show up and make it better. you think about it. almost any of that -- the leaders we have held very on

examed status, we put the spotlight on them and say they bent the arc of history. and in men cases they had a big effect but it really makes it simpler. george baz founded the united states of america. that's not in fact true. he was there and he was part of it. but if you go back to any number of leaders, we tend to want to simplify, the danger of that is we rev simplified it dramatically with a couple of things, with a couple of problems. one, we have ignored all the other factors and other permits and the the complexity we tend to wait around for the next great person. we'll wait some somebody will come along. they never will. now, someone may come along and purport to be that, they may show themselves as that. may advertise that, but they are not really that. and we've got to understand that

they never will be. >> you said there was a crisis of leadership in the country right now. what would you men by that. >> our nation is divided politically and socially, divided economically and we good could go on down. that's sort of obvious, we have gotten to the point where we don't believe many of the leaderses that speak to us. he watch on television somebody says something and we immediately discount it. i would say if you had someone who worked for you and they lied to you, you probably wouldn't work with them anymore. if you had a client and you lied to them, they probably wouldn't work with you anymore. but it's not just our political lead e leadership. think of our corporations and whatnot. the length of tour for a ceo now has should ranch dramatically. what has happened is we get very

unhappy with senior leaders very quickly. partly because we pet them on a pedestal and nobody can meet expectations and partly because we created this atmosphere in which it's very, very difficult to lead right now. and so we have a case where i think our leaders in many cases, don't live up to requirements, the best they can be but we rate an environment where lead is extraordinarily difficult. >> why did you choose these 13 individuals? >> we get this dart board -- no. what we did was, -- a series of pairings of a greek enrollment. ...

but i do now! we came up with power brokers. we came up with tweed, margaret thatcher, reformers, martin luther and the protestant reformation. in his namesake, martin luther king jr. we came out with heroes. harriet tubman, in the chinese admiral -- that we had a standalone. and the standalone was robert e lee. and that is because all of the figures in my life and my youth, he was the iconic leader. i went into lee high school, i

went to west point, i live about 70 feet from his boyhood home right now. for me, he was the exemplar of leadership. it is complex to write about robert e lee now. and i have a compass relationship with his memory. but i didn't think i could honestly write a book about leaders without addressing the one i had probably spent the most time in my life thinking about. >> you said you sort of riata evaluated robert e lee and that you have thrown out -- wife you change your mind about that? >> my wife of 40 when yours is in the back. when i was a second lieutenant she spent $25 and bought me this painting of robert e lee. you get quite a painting for $25. framed! and it really was just a print of a more famous painting. and they painted clear acrylic

on it. there we had in our quarters everywhere we lived. and i loved it because this was the symbol of what i thought about leadership. when people came in they would see this is what stanley mcchrystal admires. and it was true. then after charlottesville, to be honest, she asked me what about the picture? and i said what you mean you give it to me and i can never get rid of something you gave me. and she said, i don't think it means for everybody, what it does for you. i think it is sending an unintended signal. that some people may leave our home with. and we talked about it and at first i said no, he is just a soldier, just made the decision and she said, maybe in your eyes in his eyes but not everyone. after thinking about it i threw it away. because she was absolutely right. however we think about robert e lee in many ways, his legacy

became used by people. to include some of the iconic statues to send a message that i do not seek association with. and so i took it down. now, he is a complicated character. as much about robert e lee is extraordinarily something that we should admire. if he was here today he will be the most impressive person ever. but the reality is, at a key moment in his life, after 32 years in the united states army, he made the decision to violate the oath that i also made on the plan at west point. to turn himself against the united states and not only turn himself against it but try to destroy it. the very nation that his role models, george washington had created. he did it in defense of slavery. there is a conflict there.

in the one moment the biggest decision of his life, he got it completely wrong. and i can't ignore that. and i had to learn from that. >> now, serving in his army in northern virginia was a particularly thing to do. most of the soldiers died after two thirds -- why would people still drawn to that? what was so magnetizing? where were they divided by his leadership? >> this is what's interesting. generally took over after the 70s battle. then he commanded the army of northern virginia for the south. he had a higher casualty rate among his army than any of the commander we talk about patton and any of the other commanders or ulysses s grant, there were a lot of casualties.

nobody got close to robert e lee. if you were infantry had a seven percent chance of being a casualty. 71 percent!grant is not even in the same neighborhood with that. and yet, robert e lee 's army stayed entirely loyal to him through the war. then after the war until his death in 1870. and then his memory just kept getting varnished even more. here is a guy if you look at results, he had a huge casualty rate. and he lost. not a small thing. and yet, the loyalty to it and part of it was how he was. he was a charismatic, devoted person, he was loyal to his people, he was personally courageous with them. all of the things that make us feel good about working for someone or around someone. robert e lee epitomized in sofa 150 years immediately after his

death, there was just this series of extraordinary platitudes that described him as the greatest american general. by franklin roosevelt or winston churchill. just really iconic members of history. putting robert e lee in a category by himself. >> in terms of other people, you mention walt disney. and it doesn't seem to be the most pleasant box very begrudging in praise and demanding and a perfectionist. but animators would drop everything to go work for walt disney. why is that? >> he was a talented animator. but in 1934 after some success, they created mickey mouse, steamboat willie and technological things. in an evening in 1934 he gave every employee in the company 50 cent and told him to go get dinner. then come back to work to an auditorium. in the auditorium that night

for the next three hours, he acted out every part in a story that he wanted to create a full-length animated feature of. it turned out to be snow white. he played the dwarfs, he played snow white, he played the huntsman. all on the stage, magnetic in front of people. when he was asking them scenes kind of normal now. it was absolutely not normal. there never been a full-length animated feature before. cartoons had preceded movies and did funny little things. he created the first sound and he was trying to make a movie which people are not just entertained for a few minutes, or made to laugh, he wanted to make an animated picture in which you could also make you cry. so he was entering completely new territory. for the next three years, he pushed his team, he led his team, he worked with his team. to make this extraordinary

picture. he mortgaged his home, he mortgage the business, intellectual property for mickey mouse. he put it all on the line. at one point as there working through, because he's such a perfectionist, one of his animators remember this, the seven dwarfs, there were about 40 names they went through before they came up with seven. dopey at the end, they have dopey walking as 1/7 one is the dwarfs -- he wash and said every time dopey comes into the scene i will him to do that hitch step. it cost him six months of going back and working reanimation. but it was that level of perfectionism to try and create something that not only was new, but it was a standard no one else could get close to. that kind of leadership is intoxicated for people to get to be part of it.

you want to be on that team. he paid them well, he pushed them hard and treated them well. but really, the thing we most want in life is to be part of a very special team and do something of real value.and so when the movie came out, it was an extraordinary hit. just reinforced for him and of course those of comforting a bigger he had trouble scaling his own leadership style. you can see why he could pull people toward him. >> he knew very well and you profile the book, -- you begin to have a description talking to him removing a tattoo in a jordanian prison. talk about that. >> he led the al qaeda in iraq. the godfather vices. the person i talked about. they don't talk about osama bin laden. he started life in a tough,

jordanian industrial town. not a good upbringing kind of a bully and got involved in fights and alcohol and got a bunch of tattoos. but then as he got a little older he became ideologically very interested in his lung. he went to afghanistan and became very interested in holy warriors, the idea of jihad. so he comes back after that experience, starts to plot against the jordanian government. gets caught pretty quickly and thrown into prison. here is a guy with a real education or religious education. but in prison, he finds the environment in which he can do very well. he studies religion. he studies islam. he is the personal discipline to show himself to the ideologically committed.he tries to use bleach to remove the tattoos. when that doesn't work he has a

razor blade smuggled into the prison and he cuts off the tattoo that was offensive to islam. and he did it in a way that other convicts, inmates saw as a what he was doing was showing people look, i am completely committed. i am -- he was also strict with them is that you must live up to the standards as well. so when they were in the prison, he would be the guy that would basically intimidate them. when there were others that need help he was extraordinarily loyal to them as well. and so what he did was, he was a natural leader. he was intellectually superior to them and in fact inferior to most but was so committed, so convicted we could say, that he

became very magnetic to the people around him. and when he left after five years in the prison, he realized what he had was the ability to lead. and the way he would do that is leading by example. his exact same thing i learned as a young military officer. lead by example, do more than the others. when it is hard, so that you can do it. and he did that. then later in our fight in iraq, horrific as he was, he personally beheaded people. he was willing to walk the walk. he was willing to be completely committed, willing to put himself at risk. and ultimately he died for the cause. and that made him extraordinarily powerful. >> do you think he succeeded? >> apsley did. his stated goal was to help create an islamic caliphate. and to make a civil war between

the sunni and shiite. at first we thought he was a terrorist group against the west. and we were a problem but we were not his target. he wanted to incite the shieh into a civil war with the sunni, terrify them so they would band together. and largely by the end of 2006, he had done that. and what we saw after that was that playing out and so now in reality, -- >> and of the topic, you've written about the soldiers and during the years from eisenhower, we sort of had since world war ii last four presidents have not -- do think that's a good thing or bad thing? what are your views on the military experiences? >> i think we have to do context. first there were certain periods where we had huge presented people serve like world war two. we are likely to have people likely to serve because

somebody did. i think just reflects the times.the thing that we have the option. we were a small percentage of the population serving the military. so we let people just don't have the experience. i have a few views on it. certain people go into politics but just because he served in the military it is not a qualification. because if i had been in the military -- if i had not been an altar it wouldn't vote for anyone if you didn't put a gun to my head. and nor should you! the reality is, he don't judge by the breed, you judge by the individual. and the experience can be great because you can become more thoughtful and see things in a less simplified way and you start to understand what life can be. i think it is a good thing but it is just a data point. the other thing i would say is, i think all former professional

military people make it a career, there should be a time when selective people like david eisenhower or ulysses s grant goes to the president or something senior i think it's a good thing. but it shouldn't be viewed as a normal route in the politics. because if that happened, if being a politician senior politician in the u.s. was best facilitated by going to military and being a general in doing that we would change the officer board. it would take a generation or so but you would change it. we will be a lot like some countries these governments we are not as comfortable with. i think it ought to be an occasional thing. but you don't want people entering the military because i think that is the way to get to be a senior politician. because we have separation and the day we don't have separation, we will wish we had separation again.>> 34 years, in the military, being the

private sector, there are things at the military can learn from the private sector? >> absolutely. i mean it's funny were sort of walled off from the private sector. that is the biggest look i got. i was shocked of the things they did. one year as a fellow at harvard before that i had a young person come to me one day and they said, you were in the military. and i said, i am. and he said, wow, he seemed kind of smart. [laughter] and i realize he knows little about me as i knew about him. and i think it is very unfortunate we have so little interaction. after that out of the service and i got to know civilian people in business and different things, there was so much i wish i'd known.

i would've been desperate to go spend two or three years in a civilian corporation. the middle of my career come back in the army because many businesses do things so much smaller than the army. now the army do something so much smarter than businesses. we don't find that out until too late. and both sort of look of the fence in think the other people, they've got it all going on. i tell the story all the time, in the military think that everybody in the civilian world is a godless greeting pastored. [laughter] but just extraordinarily efficient. and i couldn't believe that because every time in the military you had a meeting we would just all the officers just military officers, someone will go, if we were civilian company will go bankrupt. they would never be this stupid. now, i get the civilian boardrooms and whatnot, someone will say, the army would never be this stupid, you cannot believe and i would say no, it

is exactly the same! because it is people. the same mistakes, the same mistakes but the problem is we do not allow ourselves well enough. >> in terms of current leadership, what do you think the current commander-in-chief, there were talks around obama that led to the revelation. have you really thought anything about your own evaluation of past presidents over the course of your time and that life or no? >> i got to know george w. bush pretty well. it was the first president i was soon enough to know and i got along well with both of them. i got along with president obama very well and i still do. but the relationship between presidents and senior military isn't what it should be. it is not negative, it is to

separate -- to separated. they don't understand each other well enough. as a consequence there is not a real familiar, it is almost a tentativeness, a fear of the other. i used to tell people in the military, remember that when you wear your uniform, you look good with badges and metals and all of that stuff. that doesn't help the conversation. that stops it. it is like, it is like a wall. because people see that and that is what they see. sometimes they stop seeing you. present kennedy after the bay of pigs was advised by someone, next time you want the military, make them come in civilian clothes. and if the plan is still impressive it might be good. that is a fair point. so you think about that. here's what i think about now leaders. instead of judging each i wish we would pull a whiteboard appear and say, what do we want for our president? let's forget about democrat or republican. what values do we want, what qualities and values and

experience? let's write that down and let's talk about that. i do think will be that far apart across different parts of the aisle. instead, weave a bunch of candidates come up and we try to trace that. if we started with that, and we said, well, we want this, this, this and this. there we look in the mirror and said, are we willing to demand that of our leaders? are we willing to demand that of ourselves? then i think, we might start to reach different conclusions. because at the end of the day, what we demand is what matters. the study that we found as the interaction between leaders and followers is extraordinary. that means followers have responsibility. big responsibility. we say the president is bad, congress is better whatever. we elected them.

we support or don't support them. reality is if we like things and don't other things, there compromises to be made. but if we like one thing because it benefits us, and we think something else is terrible and we don't do something about it, it is not going to treat us well. the leaders are going to be treated however, they will be treated. but i think it's a time in america when we need to look in the mirror. stop looking at the t.v. and start looking in the mirror and start making tough evaluations of ourselves. >> one thing before we open up to the audience. you say by itself reading this book will not make a great leader. overcome values or -- i do find it personally disputing. [laughter] seriously, what is the value in reading about the lives of impressive figures? >> that is a misprint in the prologue. if you buy and read the book, you will lose -- [laughter]

trust me! no, you know, we need to look back at history to understand that because if we look back at leaders and we have a simplified view of them, if we think coco chanel is perfect and she was not a pain to work for, but extraordinarily talented as a marker, then we start to think how we should lead or select leaders in a skewed way. and we start to look around for this two-dimensional character. and leaders are only too happy to portray themselves as two-dimensional. two dimensions. because it's easier. and so, we go back and really tear apart these leaders and every one of the leaders in the book, i cannot find a leader who was not flawed. at the same time some of them did some amazing things. and in many cases, they did amazing things because they were part of teams.the miracles of the civil rights

movement is not that martin luther king had a worthy cause. not that he was a brilliant speaker. and a charismatic guy. it was that he put together these groups, all pulling in different directions, against great resistance. and against uneven political help and he kept it going in the day he was killed, the movement kept going. it wasn't about martin luther king jr. it was about everyone and the movement. and i'm not sure many leaders come along that can do that but we need to understand, that was the genius, that was a miracle. not the i have a dream speech. >> in the front. >> had we get leaders that can make the technical things right so end up focusing on battleships will need aircraft carriers? not focusing on aircraft carriers when we need missiles.

and had refined leaders they get the emotional and psychological right so we do not lose all of our allies but we don't also feel -- [inaudible question] >> the question is how to get a leader who is correct on tactical issues with the battleship or aircraft carriers and also emotional issues. >> i think first off, you're not looking for a leader you looking for -- in fact, i think next presidential election, maybe shouldn't be about a person. it ought to be about a team what if a candidate came forward and said, i have 100 people from across the u.s. accomplished people who have already sworn to spend at least two years and this administration bringing forth the right answers, doing the right thing. and he didn't judge just that person. because no one is smart enough and has all of the answers. but someone who is good enough to put together a team at the right talent can do amazing

things. the senior leader however, there are certain things they have to provide and as he talked about, the representational part, the inspirational part. there is a role that only the most senior leader can be the head of. other people should reflect that as well. there are things that we want our most senior leaders to be and we want them to make us better than we are. our member having leaders in the military i would be tired and lazy. i'll be wanted to take a knee. then a leader walks by, and i know they are tired but yet they are standing up and they make me want to do that. that is what the leader does. even if they never know the right answers. you can get people. all you have to do is at that point a multiple-choice test we just have to get the right kind of advisors and that is why i think we ought to think about that. thank you. >> next question. remember brevity is the soul of

wit. [laughter] >> i think he is talking to me. >> general, so that you should be running for office. the other question, some of the other leaders are not politically correct but you think about hitler, stalin, ho chi minh, castro, and do you feel any affinity to any of the leaders? >> a great question. in the book where great -- there is an implied question. [laughter] the thing like hitler, now we looked at all of those in great detail. without much closer to writing about -- this hitler. we thought he'd been written about so much that it probably wouldn't be as informative. mau would be more interesting.

pierre was pushing for virtuous is will do by spilling a lot of blood. same with -- so those two and they don't come out in the pantheon of most honest people. so, we thought we could cover that and show that they could still be effective. effective in some things about how he helped administer the city and certainly effective in the low level political maneuverings. so i think that they were trying to get a balance. we spent more hours picking these 13 leaders will most counterfeits fight. to be honest, the one i'm still bitter about is davy crockett. i wanted davy crockett so bad. i just love the walt disney show about them.

[laughter] maybe next book. thank you so much. >> one final question. >> a quick question. we've been in afghanistan for too long. we don't have leadership there that can get us out? what is the problem? >> we don't have a lot of time! [laughter] >> i see the politics in albany and i ask, what is the problem? you know, it is never simple. afghanistan has been at war for 30 years and they were already a complex tribal place to begin with. there are a few things also. the first is afghanistan is not the same place it was. the number of females in school now for almost a generation, 17 years and number of young afghans in school has changed complexion of the country. the reality is, my generation, our generation will have to get

off the stage. because we are scar tissue and we are in the way in afghanistan. therefore .4 million afghans, it is pretty impressive considering the situation. there is still corruption and challenges. but i believe that there is a way. i don't believe thousands of american troops and american dollars is right. but there is a way. look at what happened after world war ii, what we did in japan, what we did in europe. those are very painful, expensive and whatnot. ...

the world is connected now. the idea of building borders and living in the u.s. is not the way the world goes forward and a lot of those places aren't going to be fun there. but your point, absolutely well taken. >> the world may go on forever but this won't last. thank you for joining me in thinking general mcchrystal. >> thank you. >> the general will be signing books in the back of the room. they will not be personalized. thank you for coming tonight. [inaudible conversations]