On Principled Leadership

by Dr George Grant, January 2023

1. Leaders are always controversial. John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson both understood that if you’re going to lead, you will be opposed. Any stand on any issue will be controversial. Leaders don’t shy away from controversy.

2. To affirm one thing is to deny another. Most people don’t like this fact. We love to prevaricate—beat around the bush—rather than saying to someone what really ought to be said. As G. K. Chesterton said, “Great art is always made greater by the frame.” It’s because there are boundaries, you see where it ends, and there’s structure. So to stand for some principles, you must deny other principles.

3. Leaders must accept the nature of the struggle. When Adams was forbidden by a gag rule to bring up petitions about slavery, he attempted to defy that rule by using a loophole. He would stand and say he didn’t wish to defy the gag rule, but he had to remind the house that he had letters in his possession asking him to defy the gag rule. He did this every day. Leaders often just dive in and fight, but great leaders understand the journey is the point. The process is the point. The struggle is the point. It’s where metal is proven, where character is built, where the real victory is won—not when the enemy capitulates, but the way you conduct yourself in the process. Napoleon was a great leader because his men trusted him long before they assembled on the battle lines.

4. If leaders must fight, they fight fairly. You must fight within the bounds, using persuasion and finding ways to continue even when the fight seems to be over. Jackson and Adams were clear about when and why and how they would fight. They fought fairly, and so both were respected as men who told the truth and did not back down no matter what.

5. Leaders admit the world’s mystery and complexity. They realize a new day would call for new methods. If you expect different results, you must do different things. Ideologues try to simplify everything. Karl Marx in Das Capital came up with a theory, but never did the math and didn’t understand human nature or the people he was supposed to champion. Stalin said, “I will save this people, or I will kill them if they will not let me save them.” But Adams and Jackson both embraced diversity and complexity. They were willing to enter in knowing the best laid plans would be upset somewhere along the line. Great leaders know that managing people is like herding cats, that in a fallen world anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

6. Leaders do not hesitate to run toward the roar. Both Adams and Jackson were incredibly courageous. When they saw the battle before them, they ran toward it. They knew there was danger and risk. This is the difference between the man who falls in love but frets about the difficulties of marriage and frets and frets until he misses his chance, and the man who knows the difficulty of marriage but runs toward it. Adams, as an old man shaking at his desk, was still roaring like a lion for the end of chattel slavery.

7. Leadership is an inherently dangerous affair. Adams and Jackson understood that leadership can entail both physical and moral danger. It doesn’t matter whether you’re leading a patrol on a hike for trail life at your church, or if you’re building a business or holding a high civic office, or if you’re a deacon at your church, leadership is inherently dangerous. Great leaders know that, accept that, and wade in anyway. What could have been a great divide to collapse the American experiment in liberty wound up proving that freedom is worth fighting for, that freedom is a diverse thing, and that freedom requires all kinds of leaders This is why the Bible makes so much of freedom.