How to be a Great Leader: Six Lessons from President Truman
The more I read about President Truman, the more I wish I was alive during his presidency. Luckily, his life and leadership were well documented, so we can all learn from his example.
Harry Truman was an accidental president. He never dreamed of sitting in the Oval Office. He simply followed the path of duty until fate sat him there.
Then he demonstrated—with grace, care, and tact—exactly who a leader should be. Exactly what a leader should do. Exactly how a leader should lead.
He left an example for every leader to follow.
And despite what you may think, we’re all leaders. We’re parents, we’re teammates, we’re family members, we’re friends. Even if we aren’t in a formal position of leadership, we have daily opportunities to lead.
And with Truman’s help, now we can all benefit with these six lessons from his life of leadership.
Leaders study history
Truman’s staff admired his knowledge of history and considered it among his greatest strengths. He was proud of it too.
“If a man is acquainted with what other people have experienced at this desk” Truman would say sitting in the Oval Office, “it will be easier for him to go through a similar experience. It is ignorance that causes most mistakes. The man who sits here ought to know his American history, at least.”
He lived by these words. Before starting work on the Truman Committee—an oversight committee for defense spending during WWII—he went to the Library of Congress to research the mistakes of a similar program during the Civil War.
Before firing General MacArthur—one of the hardest decisions of his presidency—he asked a staff member to prepare a report on how Lincoln handled the firing of General McClellan.
We may not all work in a position as well documented as the presidency, but we all have people who came before us. We can look to their examples. We can study outcomes of similar situations and apply them to our own. As a leader, it is your responsibility to study history.
Leaders take initiative
Before the United States was involved in WWII, Truman—a senator at the time—was receiving complaints from his constituents. They were concerned about waste and profiteering from the construction of Fort Leonard Wood.
Truman decided to investigate. Entirely on his own, he set out on a cross country road trip from Washington to Florida, Michigan to Missouri. He claimed he covered 30,000 miles in his trip—clearly an exaggeration. Along the way, he visited Army installations and defense plants. He would arrive unannounced and poke around looking for fraud, waste and abuse.
He found plenty of it.
Nearly everywhere he stopped, he found extra materials rotting and rusting in the rain. He found hundreds of workers standing around doing nothing but collecting paychecks. And he found contractors running projects who had no prior construction experience.
When he returned to Washington, Truman proposed a committee to monitor defense spending. Eventually the committee was approved, and Truman was in charge. Some estimates stated The Truman Committee saved the country $15 billion, and Truman was named “one of ten men in Washington whose services had been most important to the war effort.”
How easy would it have been for Truman to ignore the complaints from his constituents? Certainly nobody expected him to embark on a cross-country journey to see for himself. But that’s what good leaders do. They identify problems and take initiative to solve them—even when they aren’t expected to.
Leaders own their mistakes
Before Truman was a politician, he owned a men’s clothing store in Kansas City. In less than three years, the store failed.
Rather than taking the common route, Truman and his partner decided not to file for bankruptcy. Instead, they intended to pay off the debts over time—$35,000 worth of debts, which was a mountain of money in the early 1920s.
Truman’s partner eventually declared bankruptcy, but Truman never did. As David McCullough wrote in his masterful biography on Truman, “Fifteen years after the store went under, Harry would still be paying off the haberdashery, and as a consequence would be strapped for money for twenty years.”
Great leaders know you can’t buy a new reputation. You earn your reputation over decades with each action you take, and one wrong move can wash it all away. It would’ve been easy for Truman to declare bankruptcy, wipe out his business debts, and start fresh. It’s honestly the path most people would take. But Truman was an honorable man who deeply believed in accountability for his actions. So he took the painful way out, paying the debts of his failed business for nearly two decades.
Leaders have the courage to make unpopular decisions
In the last months of his presidency, Truman’s approval rating was only 32%. Forty three percent of people thought it had been a mistake to go to war in Korea. In a private note to himself, Truman wrote,
I wonder how far Moses would have gone if he’d taken a poll in Egypt? What would Jesus Christ have preached if he’d taken a poll in Israel? It isn’t polls or public opinion of the moment that counts. It’s right and wrong.
Doing the right thing despite its unpopularity requires courage—at least in most people’s eyes. But it seems good leaders don’t view it as courage, they view it as the job that needs to be done.
Truman regarded his decision to fire General MacArthur as one of the most important of his career—and it was wildly unpopular—but he didn’t consider it courageous.
“Courage didn’t have anything to do with it,” Truman said. “General MacArthur was insubordinate and I fired him. That’s all there was to it.”
Courage, it seems, is doing what needs to be done, even when it is exceptionally unpopular. Similarly, being a great leader means knowing the right decision while the majority of people still think it’s the wrong decision.
It’s the paradox of good leadership. The right decision is rarely the popular one, so good leaders are often judged as poor leaders in the present. It’s no coincidence that history looks on Truman as one of our best presidents. He made the right decisions, even when they weren’t popular.
Leaders are patient
In his decision to fire General MacArthur, Truman displayed exceptional patience and restraint.
During the Korean War, when the United States had momentum, Truman wanted to begin peace talks with China.
MacArthur refused.
Truman drafted a cease fire proposal and sent it to MacArthur so he would be aware of what was to come.
MacArthur disregarded the proposal. Instead he taunted the Chinese and threatened to expand the war, effectively sabotaging Truman’s peace talks.
Truman was livid.
On March 23, Truman decided to fire MacArthur, but he said nothing of the decision. He refused to act impulsively. Instead, he sent a staff member to prepare a report on how Lincoln handled a similar situation.
Next, a Congressman released a letter from MacArthur, further displaying the general’s insubordination. Again, Truman didn’t react.
He held multiple meetings with his advisors over several weeks about the MacArthur situation. Truman never revealed his thoughts in these meetings. He was only seeking the opinions of his advisors.
Finally, on April 9, more than two weeks after making his initial decision, Truman took action to relieve MacArthur. He only acted after careful deliberation, a review of a similar situation in history, and the agreement of all his advisors.
Truman’s calm restraint was incredible in the face of a subordinate who was actively sabotaging his efforts. Truman easily could’ve let his ego get the best of him and rushed into a rash decision. Nobody would’ve blamed him.
But Truman knew how important this decision was, so he exercised patience and restraint to get it right. He never tipped his hand because he needed to be sure he was receiving unbiased advice.
Great leaders like Truman can separate their thoughts from their actions. They use patience, restraint, and time to ensure their decisions are reasonable, well-informed, and not based on impulse.
Leaders put the group before the individual
On Sunday, April 9, 1950, Truman wrote a letter announcing his retirement—a letter he would not make public for nearly two more years. Although the 22nd amendment was about to become law, he was exempt from it. He could’ve run for a third term. But he drew his guidance from history, much like he did with all important decisions, and put the good of the people over the good of the man.
He wrote:
In my opinion, eight years as President is enough and sometimes too much for any man to serve in this capacity. There is a lure in power. It can get into a man’s blood just as gambling and lust for money have been known to do. This is a Republic. The greatest in the history of the world. I want the country to continue as a Republic. Cincinnatus and Washington pointed the way. When Rome forgot Cincinnatus, its downfall began. When we forget the examples of such men as Washington, Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, all of whom could have had a continuation in the office, then we will start down the road to dictatorship and ruin. I know I could be elected again and continue to break the old precedent as it was broken by FDR. It should not be done. That precedent should continue—not by Constitutional amendment but by custom based on the honor of the man in the office.
And two years later, when it was time to nominate the next candidate, Truman stood by the words he wrote—the words signaling the importance of the group over the importance of the man.
A leader’s eulogy
Political journalist Mary McGrory wrote a beautiful eulogy of Harry Truman that ran in the Washington Star the day after he died.
It’s a eulogy every leader would be proud to have. But it’s also one any leader can use as a blueprint. She wrote:
He was not a hero or a magician or a chess player, or an obsession. He was a certifiable member of the human race, direct, fallible, and unexpectedly wise when it counted. He did not require to be loved. He did not expect to be followed blindly. Congressional opposition never struck him as subversive, nor did he regard his critics as traitors. He never whined. He walked around Washington every morning—it was safe then. He met reporters frequently as a matter of course, and did not blame them for his failures. He did not use the office as a club or a shield, or a hiding place. He worked at it… He said he lived by the Bible and history. So armed, he proved that the ordinary American is capable of grandeur. And that a President can be a human being.
Truman was at once exceptional and average, astonishing and approachable. And although most of us weren’t around to experience his leadership, we can all benefit by following his well documented example.
Photo by Elijah Mears on Unsplash
