Prophecies on Putin's Leadership from a 2015 Academic Paper
What's in this month's Newsletter?
Main Feature: Prophesying Putin
Jobs and Talent
What’s On My Mind & What I’ve Been Reading
Personal and Professional Updates
The Predictive Personality of Putin
It’s not prophetic, but I sure wish more people had read this fascinating paper on Vladimir Putin years ago.
A Portrait of Putin: Field Notes from a Research Project (Dyson and Parent, 2015) is a paper written for an International Studies conference that I discovered in searching for leadership scholarship profiling Putin. It’s a quick and intriguing read that left me nodding throughout. Here’s a snippet from part of the introduction:
He continues to frustrate analysis. The question asked when he first came to prominence - who is Vladimir Putin? – has yet to be answered. Close to mystical powers of cunning are sometimes attributed to him by senior U.S. politicians: “Putin is playing chess, while we are playing marbles.” (Epstein, 2014) On other occasions, he is cast as a reckless figure who has “consistently put his ego, his territorial ambitions, and the financial interests of his cronies ahead of the needs of his country.” (New York Times, 2014.) What’s certain is that a working theory of Putin is vital. “Until the West understands how the world looks to Vladimir Putin,” writes Walter Russell Mead (2015), “it won’t understand the nature of the threat Russia poses or be able to think constructively about how to counter that.
No researchers – to my knowledge – have had the chance to put Putin through a batch of psychometrics. At the very least, if any such research does exist the KGB hasn’t published any findings that are currently accessible on Google Scholar…
That’s why I like the approach the researchers used to understand Putin: Content analysis from his speeches. They utilized a software program that automated a well-researched mapping “scheme for using text to understand a constellation of personality traits, beliefs, and motivations that shaped the behavior of political leaders.”
Their findings don’t present a neat one-page overview of Putin’s personality. (Although I like the idea of a one-pager with the headline: “HR Nightmare: Not Recommended for Hiring”.) Instead, they evaluate his speech to try to understand how he views the world and is therefore more likely to act. Putin’s thinking suggests a relatively low-degree of conceptual complexity compared to many leaders and a comparatively high “image of self”.
A telling story emerges: His black-and-white thinking categorizes other nations as complex relations (China as a complex friend whereas the US and NATO, also complex, as enemies). Or, if not complex, others are thought of as “barbarians” needing to be destroyed.
Ominously, at the time of its writing in 2015, the authors highlight Ukraine as one of the preeminent nearby-enemies that Putin views as barbarians worthy of destruction. Their graphics tracking the frequency of mention in Putin’s remarks over time from 2000 to 2014 is particularly eye-popping:
We must note that this analysis is nearly eight years old. It would be particularly interesting and important to see a recent update. That aside, what can we learn from this?
I’ll leave it to others to speculate on the current foreign affairs implications. Where I feel qualified to weigh in is with respect to lessons on leadership. One in particular: Leaders’ words matter.
Gee, thanks Captain Obvious. But the subtler takeaway here is that it’s not just about the major, well-prepared remarks. Those do matter and quite a lot.
But rather, if the analysis of Putin’s near 900,000 words (on important topics alone) reveals much about Putin, it also reveals something to us about leadership: It’s the cumulative weight of a leader's running commentary that is perhaps most useful in highlighting who they are and what they’ll do.
Jobs and Talent
Jobs: There are loads of jobs out there – but none I was asked to highlight this month! Let me know if I can share any for you next month.
Talent: Same!
What I’ve Been Reading:
The assault on Ukraine and finishing touches on my dissertation have minimized this month’s reading list. Still, there have been a few good reads.
An opinion piece on the fate of the many public apologies in today’s world.
Four-day workweek alert: Sales turnover increased from $550M to $770M in one year.
Blue-collar workers are using love languages in the workplace.
An impressive college senior pens an opinion piece on campus free speech.
The book Know Thyself: The New Science of Self-Awareness by Steven Fleming.
Reminder: On the 4th of every month, the more-detailed version of this section premiers on LinkedIn.
Personal & Professional Updates
Our Endeavorun running retreat in Austin was a huge success. Check out the recap page and Instagram recaps. Endeavorun’s next retreat is in Boulder this August.
I’m doubling down on my physical newspaper kick and adding the WSJ to the mix for a few weeks. Again, I highly recommend giving this a shot.
I am hoping to share some exciting personal and professional updates next month including the soft-launch of a new business offering/venture I have been cooking up with a friend and colleague!
That's it for this edition - please reach out if I can be at all helpful.
Be compassionate and intentional.