“Of the leaders in the world’s nearly 200 countries, there is none that I admire as much as Volodymyr Zelensky. He has been a profile in courage with few equals since the days of Winston Churchill,” writes Max Boot in the Washington Post. “Though Zelensky is an inspirational wartime leader, he is not infallible. Roughly once a year he makes a boneheaded decision.”
Recently he fired a fellow inspirational leader – Mykhailo Fedorov, the innovator behind Ukraine’s wildly successful drone program. Last year Zelensky tried to curb the influence of “anti-corruption watchdogs.” As president, Zelensky has the authority to take such actions, but the media and his constituents have pushed back.
And Zelensky listens. “Zelensky is extraordinarily dependent to the masses,” an editor in Kiev told Andrew Kramer of the New York Times. Due to wartime conditions and according to constitutional provisions, Zelensky is now ruling under martial law because his five-year term ended in 2024. “He depends on his image as a popular president,” the editor said.
Churchill’s example
Zelensky is not alone in screwups. Winston Churchill, whom Max Boot, a noted author and global strategist, cited, made many mistakes in his career. His most glaring mistake was pushing the Allies in World War I to attack Turkey as a means of pushing upwards to the “soft underbelly of Europe” to break the bloody stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front.
The result was a disaster, and Churchill resigned his cabinet position. Churchill, being Churchill, did recover and a quarter century later became Prime Minister at Britain’s most imperiled moment when it stood alone against Nazi aggression.
Keeping your head about you
Leading is not a right; it’s earned authority. When you are in charge, especially in times of crisis, you rely on a close circle of aides and increasingly on your own gut instinct. The challenge is to remain in control while at the same time holding your ego in balance with reality. For those at the very top, reality can be bent by aides who live by the creed that good news is rewarded, bad news is punished.
In the wake of the failed invasion by American-backed Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs, President Dwight Eisenhower asked his successor John F. Kennedy a question. According to historian Jon Meacham in Songs of America, Ike asked: “Mr. President, before you approved this [plan for the invasion], did you have everybody in front of you debating the thing so you got the pros and cons yourself and then made the decision, or did you see these people one at time?”
Kennedy had not done so, but it was a teachable moment for him. He initiated an executive committee to weigh in on national security matters. This practice helped Kennedy navigate a peaceful solution to the Cuban Missile Crisis that occurred a year and a half later.
Final thought
Good leaders do make mistakes. Great leaders realize their mistakes and make course corrections. In Zelensky’s case, presidential overreach could imperil not only his future but also that of his besieged nation.