B10| Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 *** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
Last but not least, there’s An-
thony Fauci, the longtime director
of the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious Diseases in the U.S.
and a member of the White House
response team. Dr. Fauci has been
widely praised for his deep exper-
tise and for speaking truth without
partisanship or blame, and also for
his selflessness, work ethic and
upbeat composure.
These examples point to one
underlying theme. In a crisis, no-
body cares how big your personal-
ity is. The leaders we crave are
the ones who show up every day,
never seem to think of themselves
and, above all, seem to know what
they’re talking about.
The obvious question is this: If
these deputies are such capable
leaders, why are they deputies?
Last month, I wrote about one
possible explanation. While all
leaders are judged by how well
they respond to a crisis, the true
mark of greatness is what a leader
doesbetweenemergencies. The
best ones work behind the scenes
to prevent the next crisis. When
they succeed, however, they liter-ally have nothing to show for it.
They don’t seem bold. They seem
like drab worriers.
The bigger problem, I’d argue,
is that too many talented leader-
ship candidates are reluctant to
step forward. Case in point: One
of America’s most beloved presi-
dents, Dwight Eisenhower, had to
be cajoled into running.
Researchers haven’t found any
evidence that people with a burn-
ing desire to lead make better
leaders, but they’re far more likely
toacquirepower.
Deborah Gruenfeld, a professor
at Stanford’s business school and
author of a new book, “Acting with
Power” (full disclosure: My wife is
her agent), has spent 25 years
studying the psychology of power.
She divides leaders into two
camps: those who pursue author-
ity to serve themselves and those
who see it as a means to serve
others. In many cases, candidates
with a “service” mind-set are un-
comfortable promoting their can-
didacies, while those who seek
power for personal gratification
love nothing more.In an ongoing and unpublished
study, Dr. Gruenfeld and two col-
leagues have made some surprising
discoveries. Most of the highly am-
bitious people they’ve tested say
they would like to be seen as quali-
fied for top leadership roles, but
aren’t automatically inclined to
take them. In fact, more than half
say they would prefer being No. 2
to being No. 1.
A smaller percentage say they
might even leave money on the ta-
ble to occupy the second rank.
“What’s normal and healthy is that
people don’t want to be first all the
time,” Dr. Gruenfeld says.
In a genuine crisis, when the
threat is dire and facts and solu-
tions are unclear, people don’t care
if you think you’re a leader, or
whether you look the part. We just
want to turn on the TV and see
that somebody smart is in charge,
working hard and keeping both
eyes on the ball.
While no nation, including hers,
is out of the woods yet, I don’t
think we’ll ever see Dr. Jung take a
victory lap. She doesn’t like to dis-
cuss herself, avoids social media
and had politely declined interview
requests (including mine).
During one recent briefing, she
received a rare personal question. A
reporter asked her how much sleep
she was currently getting per night.
“More than one hour,” she said,
before moving on.Mr. Walker, a former reporter and
editor at The Wall Street Journal,
is the author of “The Captain
Class: A New Theory of
Leadership” (Random House).InThis Crisis,the Deputies
Are the HeroesWe Need
The leaders stepping up are the ones standing to the side of the lectern
THE CAPTAIN CLASS|SAM WALKER
SIMON MAINA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; YONHAP/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK; JULIAN SIMMONDS/POOL/AFP/GETTY IMAGESEXCHANGE
The tidy wool
blazer she wore to
her first briefing on
Jan. 20 was long
gone, replaced by a
low-maintenance
medical jacket. She’d
clearly stopped tending to her
hair, which grew increasingly un-
ruly and noticeably grayer. News
reports said she rarely slept and
refused to leave the office.
By the middle of February, it
was plainly obvious that Jung
Eun-kyeong, the director of South
Korea’s Centers for Disease Con-
trol and Prevention, had put her
commitment to protecting the
public ahead of her own well-be-
ing. People who didn’t know her
name three weeks earlier posted
their concerns on social media.
President Moon Jae-in issued a
statement, saying he hoped she
could maintain her strength.
The only thing nobody thought
she should do was stop.
As the novel coronavirus con-
tinues to spread around the world,
a funny thing is happening. The
leaders who have distinguished
themselves under pressure are
rarely the bold, charismatic, im-
pulsive, self-regarding, politically
calculating alphas we’ve elected.
The real heroes have been, for lack
of a better term, career deputies.
Exhibit A is Dr. Jung, a soft-
spoken 50-something former
small-town physician who has
hosted daily briefings while also
playing a key role in managing her
nation’s so far wildly successful
pandemic response.
In simpler times, her thin-framed
glasses and lack of expressiveness,
and the neatly organized binder she
likes to read from, would suggest
that she’s nothing more than an in-
terchangeable bureaucrat.
To the jittery Korean public,
however, her consistent blend of
straight talk, informed analysis
and stoical calm have become a
powerful, inspirational narcotic.
At the height of the panic, when
Dr. Jung flatly stated that the vi-
rus “will not overtake Korea,” peo-
ple instinctively trusted her. They
believed it was true because they
knewshebelieved it.
By March 12, the government’s
aggressive testing program, imple-
mented without severe lockdowns,
had pushed new infections below
the number of recoveries. Social-
media posts declared Dr. Jung a
“warrior” and a “hero.”
A similar story is playing out in
the U.K. where Jenny Harries, a
little-known 61-year-old deputy
chief medical officer, has been
hosting the daily briefings since
her boss developed coronavirus
symptoms.
A lifelong public-health admin-
istrator who helped navigate the
Ebola outbreak, Dr. Harries has
won raves for her clear, sensible,South Korea’s Jung Eun-kyeong,
above; Kenyan Health Minister
Mutahi Kagwe, top left; and below,
the U.K. deputy chief medical
officer, Jenny Harries, next to
Prime Minister Boris Johnson.empathetic and disarming ap-
proach to answering questions.
Even when her views seem con-
trarian, she avoids defensiveness
and cites research and science.
Some Britons have suggested
she’d make an excellent prime
minister, but Dr. Harries waves off
the recognition. “I’m just on a
day-to-day basis getting on with
my job,” she told an interviewer.
Kenya’s unlikely coronavirus
hero is Health Minister Mutahi
Kagwe, a businessman with an
M.B.A. who had washed out of
elective office. In politics, Mr.
Kagwe was seen as a technocrat;
too ordinary and emotionally dis-
tant. In his coronavirus briefings,
these traits became assets.
Mr. Kagwe projects calm, em-
phasizes evidence and urges Ken-
yans to face facts, a style one sen-
ator described as “a breath of
fresh air.” In a recent social-media
poll, Mr. Kagwe’s crisis leadership
was rated 8 out of 10.
As of March 29, Taiwan had
limited the number of confirmed
coronavirus cases to fewer than- The hero of the hour is Chen
Chien-jen, a Johns Hopkins-
trained epidemiologist and former
health minister who happens to be
the sitting vice president. While
the health-data integration effort
he launched after the SARS out-
break has worked brilliantly so
far, the famously modest Vice
President Chen isn’t looking to
capitalize on his popularity. He
plans to step down to pursue med-
ical research.
When the threat is dire,
we just want to see that
somebody smart is in
charge and working hard.in which he had to explain why
roughly 36,000, or about 90%, of
employees were going on furlough.
The move included a commitment
to pay 100% of affected workers’
insurance premiums.
This isn’t how he wants it.
“They’ve been with me 28 years,
busting their rear ends.” Now he’s
encouraging them to buy only the
basics and try, if necessary, to ne-
gotiate favorable terms with po-
tential creditors.
Mr. Akradi, 58, cut jobs before,
during the financial crisis when a
slowdown in discretionary income
slammed several industries, in-
cluding fitness. How much worse
is it this time? “It is not even in
the same orbit.”
The day after my last chat with
Mr. Akradi, I talked by phone with
ZipRecruiter Inc. founder and CEO
IanSiegelashekeptaneyeon
two children at his home in South-
ern California. Mr. Siegel had just
finished a roller coaster of a
month that included laying off or
indefinitely furloughing 500 peo-
ple, roughly a third of the staff.
Job seekers use ZipRecruiter tosearch and apply for jobs posted
by companies on its website. Not
all hiring has stopped, but listings
rapidly declined starting March 10.
He had to decide whether the
abrupt decline was a “shock to the
system or the new normal.” With-
out an accurate compass, he de-
cided to plan for the worst-case
scenario. He intentionally cut to
the bone.
Mr. Siegel, 46, and his manage-
ment team took about a week to
figure out what to do. Keeping 700
employees would be manageable
considering the company’s liquid-
ity and revenue levels. It likely
gives ZipRecruiter enough head
count to pivot back to growth if
there is a sharp boost in hiring at
the end of this crisis.
The process was gut wrenching;
“definitely the hardest decision
I’ve had to make.”
Here’s an important thing Mr.
Siegel takes away from this pro-
cess: A red-hot startup like the de-
cade-old ZipRecruiter can be so-
bered at a moment’s notice. The
steps he took last month were
“humbling.”
These CEOs believe they will
emerge and their businesses will
eventually resemble what they
looked like a month ago. Mr.
Akradi says CEOs like him are as
crafty as they are tenacious.
“I’m never going to be faster
than the bear,” Mr. Akradi told me.
“I just have to be faster than a lot
of other folks.”
Good advice, but outrunning the
other guy just got a lot harder to do.Hoping to SurviveTheir Trial by Fire
Facing the unknowns of a global pandemic, CEOs are grappling with
the toughest calls of their careers
ON BUSINESS|JOHN D. STOLL
due this month
should be deferred
to May.
Topping the list
of concerns Mr.
Akradi can control:
the 38,000 people on
his payroll. He likens
Life Time to a boat
in troubled waters.
“We are in a big,
massive storm,” he
told employees
March 25. “We have
no idea how long the
storm is, or how bad
it’s going to get.
What I’m trying to
do is make sure I
keep everybody on
this ship staying in-
tact and alive. That’s all.”
Eight days before, when he
closed more than 150 clubs in 30
states, he recorded a video mes-
sage telling employees Life Time
could weather a two-week shut-
down without breaking much of a
sweat. After that, he’d have to
get creative.
Last week came another videoparking lots are a fact.”
Like many honchos I talk to, Mr.
Akradi would like political leaders
to set a firm date to reopen busi-
nesses and end rigid sheltering
rules—even if that date is several
weeks in the future. He also wants
everyone’s bills across the country
to be postponed in April. For in-
stance, mortgages or car paymentsBusiness leaders
live by the calendar,
attaching forecasts,
projects and goals to
a specific date or pe-
riod of time. No one
knows when state-is-
sued mandates to stay at home
will lift, and that renders a calen-
dar about as useful in 2020 as an
eight-track player. It is like stum-
bling around in the dark.
As quarterly earnings confer-
ence calls take place in the coming
weeks, expect to hear a lot of “we
don’t know,” “it’s hard to say,” and
“I wish I had a crystal ball.” These
terms aren’t typical for the man-
aging class.
“CEOs are wired to take action,”
Jerry Colonna, a former venture
capitalist who now counsels top
executives, told me this week. “It’s
really hard when they don’t really
know what action to take. It’s like
taking a bucket to extinguish a fire
and not knowing if the bucket is
full of water or confetti.”
Bahram Akradi, the Iranian-
born founder of the Life Time Inc.
health-club chain, is one of those
CEOs looking for water in the
bucket. I’ve talked with Mr.
Akradi often in recent weeks
about how his company is navi-
gating the crisis.
The answer: It isn’t pretty. Rev-
enue has all but dried up, nearly
$1 billion in new developments
are on ice. “These are the facts,”
he told me during a Wednesday
FaceTime session from his Chan-
DOUG CHAYKAhassen, Minn., office. “Empty