Hillary Clinton's Leadership Style: Strengths and Weaknesses

Introduction

No other First Lady in recent history has been as admired and vilified as Hillary Rodham Clinton. Breaking from the mold of her immediate predecessors, Clinton has more in common with her earlier counterparts, like Eleanor Roosevelt, Dolly Madison, Abigail Adams, or Mamie Doud Eisenhower.

However, many of her predecessors wielded a tremendous amount of power simply through their access to the president. Nancy Reagan, for example, would often discuss the effects of their friendship with the Gorbachevs in light of the unease over the Cold War.

Unlike them, Clinton was clearly not interested in this delicate, secondary form of leadership. Rather, she became an active participant in several of her husband's most important campaigns — from health care to welfare reform. When her term as First Lady ended, she extended her leadership role further in her new position as New York's junior senator.

Through a reading of her memoir Living History, this paper assesses Clinton's rise to leadership and her various strengths and weaknesses as a leader. The first part studies her earliest leadership roles as a young woman. The next part evaluates Clinton's actions in light of the theories discussed in Peter G. Northouse's Leadership: Theory and Practice and Lee G. Bolman and Terrence Deal's Reframing Organizations. Subsequent sections examine her political conversion to the Democratic Party and her early career as a lawyer in Arkansas. Northouse's writings on leadership traits, the concept of transformational leadership, Dayle Smith's work on gender, and Ronald Heifetz's study of ethics together form a useful framework for analyzing Clinton's leadership process.

Much of the paper is necessarily devoted to her leadership roles as First Lady, amid much scandal, public adulation, and public censure. The concluding section summarizes how leadership theory helps shed light on the processes and decisions Clinton made throughout her career.

The Early Years

Bolman and Deal (1997) advocate a "framing" approach to understanding management and organizations. They see these frames as "windows on the world and lenses which bring the world into focus" (12). These frames include organizational structure, human resources, political frameworks, and cultural symbols and associations. By examining the interaction among various frames, a researcher can gain a greater understanding of an organization as a whole.

In much the same way, Clinton's narrative in Living History can also be read through a similar "framing" device — one that explores various facets of her personal and professional experiences, education, and personality to shed light on her leadership style and decisions.

Living History thus provides several frames for locating Clinton's development. For example, she offers surprising revelations regarding her upbringing that tie into her early political views. The young Hillary is a far cry from the urban, sophisticated, and liberal image she currently projects.

Clinton was raised in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, a heavily Republican enclave. In 1960, largely influenced by her father and a teacher, the young Hillary even joined Republican-led efforts to prove that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley had stolen the election from Richard Nixon through "creative vote counting." She writes about walking through dangerous neighborhoods on the South Side, describing herself as "fearless and stupid." One of her triumphs was locating a vacant lot that was listed as a residence for twelve voters on the polling sheet.

Indeed, Clinton's earliest leadership roles highlight her strong Republican leanings. While her courageous graduation speech at Wellesley has become famous, it is much less known that she was also president of the Young Republicans club. She admired Barry Goldwater's stand for individual rights and even worked on Nelson Rockefeller's presidential campaign.

Northouse (1997) defines leadership as "a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal" (3). At this early stage, Clinton is admittedly more of a follower, though she already embodies key components of this definition. She shows an ability to act within a group setting, and her willingness to brave Chicago's rough South Side reveals a focus on achieving a goal.

In discussing important leadership characteristics, Northouse (1997) also identifies several key traits: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity, and sociability. Her early work on the Republican Party's behalf to expose Mayor Daley's "creative vote counting" already demonstrates strong determination and self-confidence, while her college career at Wellesley and her role as chair of the Young Republicans are indicative of a young woman with keen intelligence and strong social skills.

Political Change

Clinton eventually left the Republican Party, beginning a move toward the liberal ideology that largely defines her today. This shift gave rise to charges that she is an opportunist who sways with political winds and therefore lacks a key leadership trait — integrity. This charge would follow her throughout her career.

In explaining her conversion to the Democratic Party, Clinton remarked, "I didn't leave the Republican Party as much as it left me."

While her detractors highlight her shifting positions, Clinton uses Living History to argue for the continuity of her values. The Republican Party's rightward drift, particularly evident during the Vietnam War era, showed that the party was increasingly at odds with her strong commitment to individual rights, leading her to break with her old leanings — a decision she did not make lightly.

Rather than a decision of convenience, the political shift was precipitated by her genuine disagreement with her old party's positions, a sign that she was already an astute political analyst willing to stand by her principles. It is an early indication of her move from a party follower to someone capable of independent leadership.

It is also worth noting that she remained consistent in several other areas. Clinton narrates, for instance, how she remained a devout Christian who turned to prayer groups and Biblical Scripture during the many difficult periods of the Clinton presidency. For her supporters, this steadfastness is actually in line with Northouse's five key traits of leadership.

Conclusion

Now a junior senator, Clinton shows how far her leadership skills have developed. Her earlier key traits of intelligence and determination were honed by political experience, leading her to make the astute decision to run for office in New York rather than in her more conservative hometown of Chicago.

That choice of venue is also indicative of her current leadership style. As a transformational leader, she positioned herself in an area that welcomes change rather than resisting it. She represents a constituency filled with working people and, importantly, working women. Unlike her difficult early years in Arkansas, it is unlikely she would be viewed as an outsider there. In fact, her credentials make her a charismatic figure among many New Yorkers, who view her as someone to emulate.

In summary, the young Clinton already embodied many of the key traits of leadership — traits she later honed through education and experience. Many of the problems she encountered were rooted in the conflicting cultural symbols she represented, conflicts brought on by her refusal to conform to the socially defined roles expected of wives, First Ladies, and women in general.

Clinton today, however, is a charismatic figure striving to be a transformational leader. She already embodies a personal power granted to her by the citizens of New York and by many people around the country. Whether that personal power and charisma will allow her to go further, however, remains to be seen.