Anthony Fauci was awarded Israel’s Dan David prize, valued @ $1 million, for speaking truth to power. “He’s the consummate model of leadership and impact in public health,” the awards committee, affiliated with Tel Aviv University, said in their statement, which recognized Fauci for “courageously defending science in the face of uninformed opposition.”

What can we learn from Fauci’s leadership – that can make us more effective in our jobs as business leaders, coaches and advisors, when we need to Make Courage Contagious?

  1. Project positive energy and quiet confidence. This isn’t easy when you’re under fire and when you’re being pressured to go against your better judgment – and threatened if you don’t. It takes tremendous EQ. And emotional labor – to keep smiling and talk with a reassuring soft even-tempered voice that can bring down the emotional temperature.
  2. Let the data talk for you – with key facts presented first. Remember that your audience has a much shorter attention span than you – and far less fascination with your domain than you. And that they don’t really want to be subject matter experts.
  3. Depoliticize. Call out the elephant in the room – by saying, “I’m well aware, this is politically hot” and by refusing to take political sides, adamantly, if necessary. Make it clear that you’ll be guided by the data, logic, science, engineering and by sound business judgment. Also make it clear, “I’m not the President. I can only offer one set of analyses and conclusions. What’s done with that isn’t my decision.”
  4. Swim like a duck – gliding on the surface, paddling like heck underwater. Mobilize your matrix to make sure you have the analyses you need to make sense of the data – and that you’re aware of the second (and third) opinions that will bubble up, as people who don’t like your risk-asessments will opinion-shop and cherry-pick, and look for the conclusions they want.
  5. Offer a call to action. Nature abhors a vacuum and threatened people abhor inaction. So offer a call to action – something constructive, concrete, actionable that people in power can do, to take charge of the situation and wrestle it down. And that goes double if the people in power you’re advising have a Type A personality or a Make-it-Happen image that they want to maintain.
  6. Tell the truth. Be straight. Don’t sensationalize – but don’t back off either, when there are key facts and key analyses that people in power need to hear. The more charged the environment gets, the more you need an expert who will tell you what you need to hear in a calm voice, rather than buying into risk-averse traps like groupthink, hierarchy deference, summit fever, tunnel vision.
  7. Build your mobilization map, your trusted-advisor partnerships and your public speaking and Q+A mojo – before you have to call in a favor, ask for benefit of the doubt, step in front of the microphone. If you can call together an Advisory Board or Panel of Experts, with you being the facilitator or consolidator of input, let your partners’ consensus put the facts on the table, rather than painting a target on your own back.
  8. Don’t fall into victim thinking. And don’t project a victim viewpoint. What we never heard from Fauci is as important as what we did hear. We never heard, “This isn’t fair. You can’t treat me like this. It’s an outrage.” We shouldn’t hear that from you either – or from anyone on your team.
  9. Ennoble, Uplift. Remind everyone around you what your noble higher purpose is – and what the stakes are for the people who depend on you for analyses, recommendations, risk-assessments and risk-mitigation. Make it about doing good and appeal to everyone’s better angels.
  10. Up to you – @ LinkedIn, add your comment to the list – what you saw in Fauci’s courage and in the things he did to Make Courage Contagious – that you’d like to encode into your leadership, if you have to tell truth to power in a politically charged environment.

—————————

Merom Klein PhD + Louise Yochee Klein PsyD are Principals with the leadership advisory firm, Courage Growth Partners. They prepare innovation leaders to be effective at moments of truth like telling truth to power – so those in power have courage to make good informed ethical business decisions that optimize value-creation and profit through turbulence. To see if you can profit from Making Courage Contagious, they invite you to take this free online test.