From Maxwell Perspective...

Crisis Management

Last year’s Oscar-winning movie gave a glimpse into one aspect of leadership styles.

By Renée Gearhart Levy

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In the film Argo there's a pivotal scene when the hostage escape plans are canceled on the eve of their implementation. The CIA officer in charge is told the U.S. government has lost faith in the scheme.

For filmgoers it's tense viewing; the officer proceeds with his plan anyway.  What Peg Hermann most noticed, though, was the last-minute official flip-flopping.

Hermann, an expert on political leadership, contributed a chapter on hostage taking, the presidency, and stress for the book, Origins of Terror. She describes Jimmy Carter's style during the Iranian hostage crisis as "hypervigilant," pursuing all possible solutions regardless of sensibility, rapidly changing approaches when a decision appears to sour. She calls the film scene "a beautiful example" of that.

A subset of Hermann's research deals with decision making under stress. "Stress is probably going to highlight those traits that are most characteristic of a leader," Hermann says, although any individual response is "situation- and context-based."

President Carter and his successor, Ronald Reagan, handled stressful challenges in different ways. Carter's hypervigilance reflected his "general decision-making style," Hermann says, "in which he took a personal interest in being a part of the policy-making process by educating himself in the details of the problem under consideration." Reagan's style was to delegate authority. "The policy maker who shifts responsibility under stress . . . reduces his own stress by leaving the field, putting the stressful situation into someone else's hands," Hermann wrote.

At the time she wrote the chapter, little research existed on the pressures such events place on the government leaders. "This piece of the puzzle is crucial to understanding policy for a terrorist situation," Hermann says. "If you know something about the leaders involved, you can guess what they are likely to do. The dilemma is that some policy makers thrive in crises and it doesn't stress them at all. Others may fall apart."

This article appeared in the spring 2013 print edition of Maxwell Perspective; © 2013 Maxwell School of Syracuse University. To request a copy, e-mail dlcooke@maxwell.syr.edu.