Remain principled with respect to ethical considerations. One must have the courage to make principled decisions despite inevitable criticism and other potential consequences. An episode I discuss in What Hangs in the Balance involves Attorney General Jeff Session’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
As a leader, some things are just unavoidable. Being faced with hard choices is one of them. Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. What’s the best way to go about this? Is there a “toolkit” or a skill set to help leaders sort out their feelings and make the best possible decisions? As part of our series about “How Leaders Make Difficult Decisions,” we had the pleasure of interviewing Philippe Johnson.
Philippe Johnson is a retired United States Air Force officer and the author of What Hangs in the Balance: The Case for Principled, Ethical, Competent, and Courageously Selfless Leadership. The son of a language teacher and career United States Army officer, he was raised in the United States, France, and Germany. During his twenty-four years on active duty, Lieutenant Colonel Johnson served as a fixed- and rotary-wing pilot, intelligence officer, and diplomat (military attaché). He received a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida and earned his master’s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
My father was a career U.S. Army attorney, and I suppose that my relationship to public service arguably began when I attended the Normandy D-Day commemorations as a child. It was there that the value of service and selflessness were indelibly impressed on me. I decided just prior to starting high school to pursue a career in the military (I also wanted to be pilot). That career in public service essentially began with four years of leadership training in an Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps detachment at the University of Florida. The inspiration for my book What Hangs in the Balance: The Case for Principled, Ethical, Competent, and Courageously Selfless Leadership came simply from observing what I considered to be — after being a military officer for twenty-four years — leadership deficiencies at the zenith of our government.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
If we are the sum of our experiences, we may also owe our success to a variety of people who positively influenced our growth as people and as professionals. Those people include family, friends, clergy, teachers/professors, and of course those who mentored us professionally. One particular person’s faith in me comes to mind. During my first semester of college, I devoted a bit too much time to various extra-curricular activities. Consequently, my grades suffered and I managed to lose my 4-year ROTC scholarship. I distinctly recall the conversation that followed with a certain major on the staff of the ROTC detachment. Despite my academic underachievement that semester, the major made clear that he had faith (as did I) in my ability to do better academically and to succeed in the 4-year officer training program. In another example nine years later, I experienced a severe lack of confidence brought on by an inability to sleep properly for several months. Once again, I had the support of leaders who knew my track record and believed that I would successfully complete the flying training program I was in once the sleep issues were resolved.
Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion. Can you share with our readers a story from your own experience about how you lead your team during uncertain or difficult times?
I’d like instead to share an episode I relate in What Hangs in the Balance regarding how Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue adeptly handled uncertainty and difficulty in the waning weeks of their tenures. In the last month of President Trump’s first term, Jeffrey Rosen was leading the Justice Department and its approximately 115,000 people. Soon after the 2020 election, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Division, Jeffrey Clark, drafted a letter for his superiors that was to be sent to the leadership of the Georgia state legislature. Other versions of the letter were intended for other states. The draft letter for Georgia contained knowingly false claims about the election and the Justice Department.
The intended effect of the letter was to have the Georgia state legislature consider approving a new slate of electors to replace the legitimate electors already representing Joe Biden’s win in the state. Clark forwarded the letter to Rosen and Donoghue. Both men refused to sign the letter, understanding that it would falsely give the impression that President Trump’s election fraud allegations were factual. On December 27, the president called Rosen. Toward the end of the call, the president told him, “People tell me Jeff Clark is great” and “People want me to replace the DOJ leadership.” The installation of Clark as acting attorney general would likely have assured the release of Clark’s letter.
On January 2, Clark informed Rosen that he would turn down the president’s offer to install him as acting attorney general if Rosen and Donoghue agreed to sign the Georgia letter. This was essentially the president threatening to fire Rosen if he did not sign the letter that he and Donoghue believed had the potential to spark a constitutional crisis. On January 3 — three days before the attack on the U.S. Capitol — senior DOJ officials, including Rosen, Donoghue, Clark, and Steven Engel, joined President Trump in the Oval Office. By this time, several DOJ leaders (including recently resigned attorney general William Barr) had made clear to the president for weeks that there was no evidence of widespread fraud in the election. At the start of what would become a two-and-a-half-hour meeting (the second such meeting in four days), the president told Rosen, “One thing we know is you, Rosen, you aren’t going to do anything. You don’t even agree with the claims of election fraud, and this other guy [Clark] at least might do something.” Rosen responded:
Mr. President, you’re right that I’m not going to allow the Justice Department to do anything to try to overturn the election. That’s true. But the reason for that is because that’s what’s consistent with the facts and the law, and that’s what’s required under the Constitution. So, that’s the right answer and a good thing for the country, and therefore I submit it’s the right thing for you, Mr. President.
Later in the meeting, the president asked what he had to lose if he were to replace Rosen with Clark. Donoghue told the president that he would resign immediately. The president then turned to Engel and said, “Steve, you wouldn’t resign, would you?” Engel assured the president that he would indeed resign, and Donoghue then added that the entire DOJ leadership would resign within hours, with the potential of U.S. attorneys across the country doing the same (resulting in potentially hundreds of resignations). Engel then explained to the president, “The story is not going to be that the Department of Justice has found massive corruption that would have changed the result of the election. It’s going to be the disaster of Jeff Clark.” Donoghue had earlier explained to the president that Clark was very much unqualified to be attorney general. White House Counsel Pat Cipollone then described the Clark letter as a murder-suicide pact. By the end of the meeting, the president had been persuaded not to replace Rosen with Clark.
Leadership often entails making difficult decisions or hard choices between two apparently good paths. Can you share a story with us about a hard decision or choice you had to make as a leader?
What process or toolset can a leader use to make a choice between two difficult paths?
Leaders absolutely need critical-thinking skills. Critical thinking is essentially the use of logic, reason, objectivity, and creativity to analyze evidence, separate fact from assumption and opinion, and distill the essential elements into information useful for forming a position. To think critically, one must also possess a certain amount of knowledge. Dr. John Hnatio described the critical thinker as someone who thinks about objections and analyzes positions by probing assumptions and consequences. The critical thinker understands that emotions and prejudices can impact decisions and therefore demands clarity where there is vagueness.
Intellectual conformism is antithetical to the critical-thinking skills needed by decision-makers. The majority opinion does not always represent the best answer. Though public opinion polls can measure policy preferences, poll results should not play a major role in informing complex policy decisions that require considerable deliberation and risk analysis. Hence the political adage that you cannot lead from the polls.
When faced with a choice between two difficult paths, you should also consider which choice is more likely to serve the greater good. Consider that there may also be more than one “right” or viable solution. Additionally, look for precedent in places you might not usually look (knowing the history of your organization helps here). Who else has faced similar circumstances? In conducting risk analysis, consider the likelihood of success and the cost of failure with respect to each path. Last but not least, allow organizational values and ethical principles to inform both judgment and logic.
What would you say is the most critical role of a leader when faced with a difficult decision?
When faced with a difficult decision, the most critical role of a leader is to effectively solicit and assimilate or manage the inputs to decision-making. This is necessary for making an effective, timely, and ethical choice. Understand what’s at stake. Understand what information is available, what information is unknown (known unknowns), and with which advisors and stakeholders one should consult. Ensure you are objectively evaluating the input you receive. Filter out the distracting and irrelevant inputs that can hinder judgment and objectivity. When we obtain more input than necessary, the surplus and potentially irrelevant information (or noise) can unnecessarily and unacceptably delay decision-making.
One challenge leaders face is the reluctance of subordinates to provide honest and dissenting advice or feedback. When a leader creates an atmosphere where important information on a particular topic is regarded as “bad news,” subordinates are conditioned to restrict the upward flow of that information. A secondary and unfortunate consequence of this conditioning is that subordinates will be rewarded for providing the leader with what is perceived to be good news. Neither practice provides the leader with the information needed for sound decision-making.
Keeping an open mind allows one to see all sides by evaluating a broader field of facts and opinions. Intellectual humility encourages a person to ask lots of questions, prevents attachment to a particular position, and, when appropriate, allows one to assume a new or revised position based on new evidence.
Do you ever look back at your decisions and wish you had done things differently? How can a leader remain positive and motivated despite past mistakes?
The first step in understanding and moving past your mistakes is admitting them. Owning one’s mistakes requires humility and a little courage. It may also require a degree of resilience sufficient to see beyond recent setbacks. Executives who admit their mistakes, analyze and fix them, but don’t dwell on them tend to be much more successful. Even a small amount of contrition can yield a great deal of understanding, forgiveness, and cooperation and foster a culture of trust and respect. The ability to share lessons from one’s own mistakes is a key component of building trust. When one shares those lessons, it gives subordinates the freedom to critically evaluate their own shortcomings. Similar to admitting a mistake is changing one’s position after receiving new evidence. This requires open-mindedness, self-confidence, and the humility to admit that the appearance of having initially been mistaken is outweighed by the adoption of the preferred position or course of action.
Making mistakes is part of growing as a leader/decision-maker. In analyzing your mistakes, you may want to approach it in a manner consistent with a safety (mishap) investigation, which focuses not on blame, but rather understanding what went wrong and why to avoid similar incidents. One trap to avoid in post-decision analysis is the tendency to judge the merits of a decision based only on the outcome. People routinely get away with bad decisions. Similarly, good decisions will occasionally yield undesired outcomes because of extreme, unusual, or unforeseen factors or circumstances.
Finally, avoid promoting a mistake-averse culture in which subordinates must choose between honesty (publicly owning their mistakes) and career progression. If subordinates feel that they cannot demonstrate initiative and take reasonable risks, innovation will be stifled.
What is the best way to boost morale when the future seems uncertain? What can a leader do to inspire, motivate and engage their team during uncertain times?
Empower and trust. In my own career, nothing motivated me more than being personally responsible for mission success and the welfare of others. Entrusting employees with a reasonable degree of independence and meaningful decision-making authority builds confidence and motivation.
Provide clarity. While leaders cannot provide certainty, they must provide clarity despite the uncertainty inherent in crisis situations. Under stressful and confusing circumstances, directions and intentions must be clearly understood. Poorly chosen words may just add to the confusion. Clarity is important, even when the facts are uncomfortable. For example, when making a difficult decision that will likely be unpopular with subordinates, one should clearly explain one’s rationale. While that clarity may not assuage the disappointment of some, it is more likely to engender respect for both the leader and the decision. It will also promote trust.
Be consistent. Consistent and reliable messaging breeds confidence, reinforces expectations, and promotes desired behaviors and outcomes. Inconsistent messaging produces uncertainty (a lack of clarity), promotes a lack of discipline, and undermines unity of purpose. Inconsistency can occur within one person’s messaging or, for example, when members of the same organization engage in inconsistent messaging on a particular issue. Inconsistent messaging also diminishes internal and external organizational credibility and trust.
Provide vision. A bold, aspirational yet realistic vision statement serves to inspire employees of what the organization can achieve in its ideal state. In an organizational context, leaders do not create “miracles” themselves. Rather, their visions for an organization create environments where miracles can happen and where people are motivated to overcome obstacles to success. Leaders must also promote organizational cultures that support the vision, a process that may require shifting peoples’ mindsets and behaviors.
Respect your subordinates. Studies suggest that the ability to show respect is the key behavioral trait necessary for achieving positive organizational outcomes, promoting healthy work cultures, and securing the commitment of subordinates.
Be accessible and listen. Spend time with your people in their work environments. A leader’s presence can have an enormous impact on morale, demonstrating to subordinates that they and their efforts are valued. Never think of yourself as too important to interact with subordinates in a situation as fleeting as a passing “Hello” or “How are you?” Momentary and simple displays of kindness, concern, and decency go a long way toward building respect, trust, and loyalty. A leader who is tone-deaf or out of touch with the needs or desires of his or her subordinates will erode trust and morale.
Keep it light. Maintain an appropriate sense of humor. This intangible is important for the morale of leaders and their followers.
Can you share 3 or 4 of the most common mistakes you have seen other businesses or leaders make when faced with a hard decision? What should one keep in mind to avoid that?
Overconfidence. Arrogance and unwarranted confidence can inhibit leaders from soliciting the feedback they need, creating a pernicious cycle of mistakes and lessons unlearned. They may wrongly believe that they have the institutional knowledge and experience to make effective, ethical, and lawful decisions. Similarly, some experience a phenomenon known as the Dunning–Kruger effect, in which people with low expertise or experience in a particular area tend to underestimate their own incompetence. It requires humility to acknowledge you are not an expert on something and modesty when you want advice despite your expertise. The knowledge and opinions of any one leader are insufficient for understanding complex issues and formulating coherent policy. Don’t shortcut decision-making processes by excluding necessary experts and stakeholders.
In a July 2020 interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace, Trump was asked about the possibility of renaming military bases named after Confederate leaders. As Trump began defending the status quo, Wallace stated, “But the military says they’re for this.” Trump responded with, “Excuse me, excuse me. I don’t care what the military says.” When you stop valuing the advice of subordinates — especially those charged with providing advice based on their expertise and vast experience — they will begin to feel undervalued and ineffective.
Acting too quickly. Avoid making snap decisions in order to appear decisive, especially when there is time to fully leverage the resources at one’s disposal. Staffs exist to present decision-makers with well-researched courses of action. Even for large-scale and relatively slow-moving public health emergencies such as a pandemic, plans exist to guide the more urgent decisions and to ensure the participation and input of all relevant players.
Over-relying on instinct. Instinct and intuition can still play a useful role in decision-making for someone who is well informed and open to advice. But rarely does impulse or intuition substitute for knowledge, experience, and robust decision-making processes. An example of supplanting logic with emotion I mention in What Hangs in the Balance comes courtesy of the New Mexico county commissioners who refused to certify election results in June 2022. The commissioners’ concerns stemmed from unsubstantiated fears promoted by conspiracy theorists claiming that Dominion Voting Systems machines were compromised. Commissioner Vickie Marquardt felt “dishonest” certifying the election “because in my heart, I don’t know if it is right.” Her colleague Couy Griffin similarly admitted that his refusal to certify was not “based on any evidence.” “It’s only based on my gut, my gut feeling, and my own intuition, and that’s all I need to base my vote on the elections.” Facing possible criminal charges and removal from office, Marquardt and another colleague eventually provided the two-vote majority needed to certify the county’s election results.
Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a leader should do when making difficult decisions?
1. Choose your advisors and sources of information carefully. Leaders tend to make better decisions when they receive input from a diverse range of advisors and stakeholders. Time permitting, seek all available and relevant guidance to include external perspectives as provided through audits, inspections, and customer feedback. Having good advisors also increases the likelihood of remaining connected to what is objectively true — a prerequisite for sound decision-making.
Following his 2020 election loss, President Trump spent his final weeks surrounded by unofficial advisors who pushed conspiracy theories and proposed outlandish means of keeping him in office. He too often sought the counsel of his private attorneys over that of his White House legal advisors and the leadership of the Justice Department. When President Trump’s acting deputy attorney general assured him during a phone call in late December 2020 that there was no evidence of widespread election fraud, the president reportedly responded with, “You guys may not be following the internet the way I do.” As the president continued to publicly question the outcome of the election, his secretary of labor urged him in a letter to use his cabinet for decision-making, in lieu of the private citizens who were serving him poorly.
A study in contrasts is President John F. Kennedy’s use of advi¬sors during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. During thir¬teen days in which the world was arguably never closer to nuclear war, Kennedy was faced with deciding how the United States would respond to evidence of Soviet nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba. In contrast to his use of advisors in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy on this occasion assembled a team from a wide range of agencies that included voices with which he was likely to disagree. He listened to his military advisors with an open mind, despite skepticism stemming from the Bay of Pigs fiasco. His military advisors vigor¬ously advocated air strikes, arguing that a naval quarantine was a weak response. Dissatisfied and not caving to pressure, Kennedy consulted other advisors, adjusted his strategy as he received new information, and eventually chose the naval quarantine option along with nego¬tiated concessions. His skilled use of advisors resolved the crisis and eventually resulted in the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba.
2 . Suppress personal bias. When seeking advice, you must be willing to have others challenge your preconceived notions (in addition to challenging them yourself ). Even when your original intuition is sound, hearing a different point of view may allow you to better articulate your original position. It’s important to examine one’s prejudices or preferred solutions, especially when they run counter to evidence.
As described in What Hangs in the Balance, Robert Cardillo, who headed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2014 to 2019, acknowledged in a conversation with CNN that it is natural for humans to arrive with their own perspectives and experiences. “As an intelligence professional, we often confront policymakers who come into a situation or an issue with a bias, or their own experience, of course, but then they take on new information and they use that to either challenge or adjust their thinking. This president [Trump] has a way to deflect new information, even scientific data in a way that allows him to be more comfortable, and to sustain, as I said, that internal view and to think about what the best outcome is for himself. …What he doesn’t want to believe and chooses not to believe is the fact that Russia did interfere in our election in 2016, and its intent was to get him elected. Because he feels that that delegitimizes his presidency, he will deflect anything, again, that conflicts with that view. And so when Vladimir Putin says “I didn’t do it,” that fits and thus he would align with that, vice the Intelligence Community’s assessment.”
Another trap is positive or negative bias associated with the person providing the information. This trap leaves leaders vulnerable to readily accepting bad information or, conversely, rejecting sound input. I recall a specific episode from my Air Force career where I was responsible for recommending one of two operations management applications we would adopt for weapon systems across an entire Air Force command. In this context, I witnessed a particular senior officer whose bias toward one of the two applications appeared to correlate to his closeness to a former subordinate who was promoting that particular application. His bias was more evident in the manner in which he rudely dismissed the arguments of those representing the competing application.
3. Do your homework. Having great advisors does not absolve one of the responsibility of attempting to independently understand all sides of an issue. Well-informed leaders better anticipate opposing viewpoints and more easily assess the value of the advice and expertise they are provided.
A simple illustration of doing your homework involves a personnel decision I had to make as a young lieutenant during a military deployment. At some point during the deployment, one of my airmen made the case that he needed to return home (to the United States) because his wife was not handling his absence well and was allegedly acting irresponsibly. As I learned more about his concerns, it was clear that the alleged “irresponsibility” was related to the couple’s religious beliefs and how those beliefs informed a husband’s authority in marriage. My airman was clearly distraught by her behavior and was convinced he needed to return home in order to resolve the issue. While his early return might have only minimally impacted our ability to operate effectively, without better justification, it would have been unfair to the remaining men and women. In an effort to better understand the situation, I phoned the airman’s wife. My conversation with her revealed that this was no domestic emergency. She was in no way distraught and did not need her husband to return prematurely. She revealed to me that her husband simply did not approve of her newfound autonomy and the fact that she was occasionally spending evenings out socializing with her female friends. I decided that the airman did not need to return home prematurely.
4. Remove self-interest and ego from the equation. Decision-making, especially in public service, requires, first and foremost, that one subordinate self-interest in favor of public or shared interests. One must guard against the instincts of self-preservation and personal gain. Our personal convictions and beliefs — our sense of what is morally right and wrong — may sometimes be in conflict with the nation’s laws and judicial decisions. Yet public leaders do not have the luxury of allowing their beliefs to compromise faithful adherence to their oaths of office. Leaders should also consider their successors and the future of their organizations as they deliberate. Impacts should be evaluated not just in the short-term context of a leader’s tenure but also in the context of an organization’s enduring policy objectives.
Representative Justin Amash (R-MI) was accused at a public event of not representing the will of his constituents with respect to his decision to impeach President Trump. Amash responded by explaining that it was not his job to merely do the will of his constituents but rather to defend the Constitution. Viewed through the narrow lens of self-interest, he could have chosen to be less principled and acquiesce to the opinions of his constituents.
5. Remain principled with respect to ethical considerations. One must have the courage to make principled decisions despite inevitable criticism and other potential consequences. An episode I discuss in What Hangs in the Balance involves Attorney General Jeff Session’s decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Because of Sessions’s involvement in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, Sessions was forced to consider recusing himself from the investigation over which he would normally have a supervisory role. In the lead-up to his decision to recuse in March 2017, White House advisors (on behalf of the president) had been pressuring Sessions not to recuse. He recused himself after career ethics officials at DOJ advised Sessions that his previous role in the campaign created a conflict of interest. The pressure on Sessions continued post-decision, as documented in the Mueller report:
Sessions believed the decision to recuse was not a close call, given the applicable language in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), which Sessions considered to be clear and decisive.… Sessions got the impression, based on calls he received from White House officials, that the President was very upset with him and did not think he had done his duty as Attorney General.… [Hope] Hicks recalled that the President viewed Sessions’s recusal from the Russia investigation as an act of disloyalty.…
In early summer 2017, the President called Sessions at home and again asked him to reverse his recusal… Sessions did not reverse his recusal.…In December 2017…the President met with Sessions in the Oval Office and suggested, according to notes taken by a senior advisor, that if Sessions unrecused and took back supervision of the Russia investigation, he would be a “hero,”…He did not unrecuse.
Sessions had appropriately refused President Trump’s demands for inappropriate loyalty, which arguably cost him his job in November 2018. It also resulted in the president’s opposition to his 2020 Senate bid. When Sessions failed to regain his former Senate seat, Trump stated, “I made a bad decision…one bad decision. Jeff Sessions. And now I feel good because he lost overwhelmingly in the great state of Alabama.”
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
One recent insight that I treasure is the notion that there’s often more than one right answer. In my case, I was trying to figure out what the next chapter of my life might entail (after retiring from the Air Force). I was attending an “Aspiration” event at the home of real estate artist and author Frank McKinney. During one particular exercise, I suddenly realized that I was afraid of “doing the wrong thing” or of somehow not discovering what it is I should be doing. The idea that there was more than one correct answer allowed me the freedom and courage to consider a host of new paths to follow. That process eventually led to my decision to write What Hangs in the Balance.
How can our readers further follow your work?
You can visit my website https://philippejohnson.com/ for more information on my book, and you can also follow me on LinkedIn (Philippe Johnson), X (@PhilippeJohnso7) and Bluesky (@philippe-johnson.bsky.social).
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Thank you for having me!
Author Philippe Johnson On How Leaders Make Difficult Decisions was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.