In Extremis Leaders Have a Common Lifestyle with Their Followers: There's No Elitism

A fourth unique characteristic of the in extremis pattern emerged when we asked interviewees about their remuneration and lifestyle. In an era where there are entire conferences devoted to executive compensation, it was refreshing to focus on authentic leaders who lacked materialism and instead focused on values.

When I asked public sector employees such as police officers and soldiers about the nature of their pay structure, the leader’s pay and the follower’s pay were unequal but uniformly modest. I found consistently that most in extremis leaders earn at most an average wage but that they felt it was sufficient for their needs. This made sense to me and my colleagues who also interviewed these people. In contexts that routinely threaten the lives of the leader and the led, value attached to life is morally superior to value attached to material wealth. Pay should take a backseat to other concerns. Economists might deconstruct this phenomenon differently with respect to public service jobs, arguing that the availability and skill sets of such work drive wages down. Perhaps. But the often overlooked mechanism is the irrelevance of symbolic value in the face of danger. Money has no meaning. Even future rewards or punishments have little meaning when the promise of a future is uncertain.

Current leadership theory recognizes that symbolic value is only applicable in limited circumstances. James MacGregor Burns initially developed the notion of transformational leadership, based largely on a charismatic leader establishing vision, a way ahead.⁵ This contrasted with other theories that together were characterized as transactional, based on leader-follower transactions such as giving pay and rewards and establishing perceptions of equity and fairness. The idea that organizations could be changed by a transformational leader took root, was elaborated by Bernard Bass and others, and is a dominant theory in the art and science of leadership today.⁶

Earlier writers, however, presumed that a transformational approach was due to either a leader characteristic such as charisma or a leader approach such as visioning. For those who understand the dynamics of dangerous settings, it’s clear that the immediate threat places value on human life and strips away the value inherent in transactional leadership. In fear of their life, people don’t care about fairness, equity, future rewards, or anything else except being led out of the circumstances that threaten their existence. In extremis settings are the perfect incubator for transformational leadership. Due largely to the irrelevance of symbolic value, transactional leadership is almost completely ineffective in in extremis settings. The nature of the context is developmental. Over time, a values-based form of transformational leadership emerges and becomes part of the operating style of in extremis leaders. Consider what one FBI agent said that reflects the values-based conditions under which he serves:

I think it’s the respect for the guys that I work with [that is] more important than anything. I don’t need this job; I mean, I love my job, I love my country, I love the Bureau. But more important than any of those things, I think it’s like that philosophy that you’ve probably heard a million times before about why does the individual infantry soldier fight. He doesn’t give a shit about his commander, he doesn’t care about red, white, and blue. He doesn’t care about anything else except for the guy that is on either side of him. To a man, the people I work with feel the same way, and I do too. It’s their respect that they go home at night and say, "The guy who put this plan together, the guy that led us on this mission, [he’s a] squared-away guy, and he’s got our best interest at heart. That’s more important to me than anything else. (Special Agent James Gagliano, FBI SWAT team leader, New York City Office)

Outside the contexts of military, police, and firefighting, the pattern of common lifestyle continues. People who live and work in dangerous environments learn to love life. They seem to live in a world where value is only loosely attached to material wealth, as one mountain climbing guide confirmed when asked to characterize his financial and material well-being:

Well, you can look at it a couple of ways. There is an old Yosemite climber that said at either end of the social spectrum, there is a leisure class. So in many ways, I am part of a leisure class in that I get a lot of free time to go and do the things I want to do. I don’t have, financially, a lot, and so to answer that question, I think there are a couple ways to look at it. Financially, we aren’t as well off as most of my clients. Most of my clients have corporate jobs, making good money. But they are also living in the city, places I would not want to live. [They] work nine-to-five jobs. So in that regard, I think I am better off than they are, because I think I am healthier, probably less stressed. Financially? No, but lifestyle wise, yes, and better off than most folks. (Christian Santilices, professional mountain guide, Exum Climbing School, Jackson Hole, Wyoming)

We believe that in extremis leaders accept, even embrace, a lifestyle that is common to their followers as an expression of values and that such values become part of their presence and credibility as leaders. There is an inspirational Quaker saying that underscores the value of a transparent lifestyle: "Let your life speak." The idea is that followers come to understand values by watching the leader.

Notes:

5. J. M. Burns, Leadership (New York: HarperCollins, 1978).

6. B. M. Bass, "From Transactional to Transformational Leadership: Learning to Share the Vision," Organizational Dynamics, 1990, 18, 19–31.