D. Verne Morland argues that CEOs must have someone
handpicked for the job of dissenter. In an article called, “Lear’s
Fool: Coping With Change Beyond Future Shock,” he offers a
position description for a Fool, who would report to the CEO.
Here is the Fool’s basic function: “To disturb with glimpses of
confounding truths that elude rational formulation. To herald
the advent of cosmic shifts and to apprehend their significance.
To challenge by jest and conundrum all that is sacred and all
that the savants have proved to be true and immutable.” Every
leader, like King Lear, needs at least one Fool.
- Leaders possess the Nobel Factor: optimism, faith, and hope.
One of the executives I interviewed for Leaderswas certain he
would have won the Nobel Prize if he had been a scientist, be-
cause he had the sense he could do anything. He communicates
this optimism to the people around him. As President, Ronald
Reagan was a good example of this boundless optimism.
Richard Wirthlin, who was Reagan’s pollster, tells the story of
the time he had to let Reagan know, one year following the as-
sassination attempt, when his approval rating had been at
record highs, that his approval rating had fallen to a record low.
Normally, Wirthlin didn’t go in to see the President alone.
This time, no one would go in with him. Reagan took one look
at the lone Wirthlin and said, “Tell me the bad news.” Wirthlin
told him. Not only had his approval rating dived since the as-
sassination attempt—it was the lowest approval rating of any
president in his second year of office in the history of polls.
“Dick, for God’s sake, don’t worry,” Reagan told him. “I’ll just
go out there and try to get assassinated again.”
Optimism and hope provide choices. The opposite of hope
is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are
no choices. President Carter was done in by his “malaise”
speech. He thought he was getting real, but we thought he was
On Becoming a Leader