ability of the artist to depict a truth that we, too, feel deeply but may not have found the right poetry, visual symbol, or music to express. Artists in our culture are worshipped more widely than mystics, because no matter how practical we think we are, we’re willing to pay good money for songs, films, photographs, books, and paintings that reflect what we crave to understand about deeper layers of nonverbal awareness and experience.
Intersubjectivity has an immensely more practical purpose as well, in daily relationships, in business, and most certainly in cultivating the skills associated with leadership and team building. Basically, intersubjective awareness involves paying attention to your own nonverbal experiences and body language cues and those of the people you’re interacting with at the same time. It’s easier said than done. Most adults, in fact, just aren’t very good at this, because the skills associated with intersubjectivity have been seriously neglected in our culture. But when we become conscious of what we’re communicating to others nonverbally, and what they’re communicating to us nonverbally, a whole new universe of information is suddenly available to us. This information virtually demands that we develop the ability to improvise as we respond and adapt to these subtle cues on our way to achieving any goal.
With modern education overemphasizing intellectual and verbal arts, people who somehow manage to train all three of their “brains” become more influential in, even irresistible to, populations who lack this full-bodied charisma. Take Ronald Reagan, whose firm yet congenial, focused, larger-than-life presence was, in fact, the mark of a rider capable of harnessing power and intelligence without repressing the spirit that brings it to life. He so swayed public opinion that the phenomenon of “Democrats for Reagan” was cited by Barack Obama as an inspiration for cultivating cross-party support.
Photos of Reagan on horseback — heading across the range in any number of old Western movies, mounted on his regal gray Arabian at the ranch, and later, riding English-style with Queen Elizabeth — are plentiful on the Internet. Most people would consider this a colorful, perhaps elitist, pastime. Yet the fact that Reagan loved to ride speaks volumes about what kind of intricate, nonverbal training he received that led him to become the noteworthy leader history has since proven him to be.
During the election of 2000, I couldn’t help contrasting the former president’s engaging presence with the stiff, tentative, overintellectual style of Al Gore, a candidate whose ideas and policies I did, in fact, support in several key areas. While he has since gone on to win the Nobel prize, Gore’s demeanor was unduly skewed toward the brain in the head. The “other 90 percent” was missing, at least during his public appearances. Whether or not the election was rigged, the race itself was close. George W. Bush’s style of engaging with the public involved a bit more heart and gut, and that gave him a palpable edge in the nonverbal communication department.
Over time, however, the winner of that controversial vote did not demonstrate the level of horse sense that Reagan possessed. The most telling example was Bush’s response to the news that New York City’s Twin Towers were falling — a response caught on film while he was reading a story to some blissfully unaware schoolchildren. George W. had that deer-in-the-headlights look, which means he wasn’t actively creating a calming presence; he was dissociating. Had he slipped into a similarly disconnected state on the back of a panicking horse, he would have ended up on the ground, temporarily unable to remember that he was the president of the United States.
What Would George Washington Do?
At this point it’s important, enlightening actually, to appreciate the sophisticated combination of intellectual ability and horse sense possessed by our country’s first president. George Washington was a prolific letter writer with progressive views on education and leadership even by today’s standards. It wasn’t nearly so easy to document his considerable nonverbal talents, of course, but many of his soldiers and colleagues wrote home about him, capturing intriguing anecdotes and observations of his particularly striking effect on others. Washington not only commanded respect, he moved people deeply, inspiring loyalty during periods of extreme hardship, mind-boggling uncertainty, and dramatic change. And he accomplished all of this with a reputation for being a man of few words, at least in public.
When I began studying Washington’s career in earnest at the end of 2009, the country he fought so long and hard for was struggling with Wall Street betrayals, record unemployment, fear-mongering pundits, and hostile relations between, sometimes even within, the two political parties. Scared, angry people were burning the current president in effigy over health-care reform, shouting racial slurs, bemoaning the end of civilization itself. Uncompromising red-faced fanatics on both sides of the issue were threatening to move to Canada or Costa Rica if they didn’t get their way. Like many people caught in the middle, I was disgusted with the greed, egotism, irresponsibility, manipulation, and extremism running amok in the name of patriotism. To say I was becoming jaded would be an understatement.
And then the spirit of George Washington rode up on his powerful steed. Little-known facts about the man’s life captured my imagination, not only invigorating my research on leadership but renewing my faith in the sanity our country’s original vision. I was, for a time, filled with such sincere and fervent feelings of patriotism that friends and family members would stare at me wide-eyed, leaning backward, glancing toward the door. “We were cheated by the public school system,” I’d declare. “Our naive yet well-meaning teachers were making us memorize dates and names and superficial facts when they could have been teaching us the process Washington went through to become the ultimate leader and citizen of a free society. True democracy can’t possibly thrive in this country until the abilities that Washington modeled become the rule rather than the exception, not just in politicians, but in the population at large!”
Then I’d practically shout, pounding the dining room table, “This ambitious yet essential goal cannot be achieved exclusively through verbal-oriented education!”
I’ve since calmed down considerably, but I still believe I was on to something. While my high school history teachers were devising coolly objective multiple-choice tests involving dates like 1776, names like Benedict Arnold, and events like the Boston Tea Party, essential facts about George Washington’s true genius were languishing in obscurity, information that would have given me a road map to becoming a more courageous, adaptable, and insightful leader. I would have understood the hardships, mistakes, and betrayals he endured, how he rose above these challenges without losing his heart and soul. I would have glimpsed the power of charisma balanced by integrity and empathy. And perhaps most important, I might have understood the extent to which visionary leadership in particular demands qualities a lot more sophisticated and mysterious than passion, idealism, and a talent for risk management. Innovators charged with transforming society must develop a paradoxical combination of conviction and adaptability, demonstrating a level of endurance so high it’s contagious while consciously engaging in the lesser-known, largely nonverbal art of fear management.
The Presence of Power
In the winter of 1777, George Washington somehow inspired a ragged group of soldiers not only to stick around for the Second Battle of Trenton but to actually win it. John Howland, a young private from Rhode Island, lived to tell the story. In an account published fifty-four years after the event, he struggled to remember what the general said but never forgot how it felt to borrow the man’s courage.
“Lord Cornwallis was on the march from Princeton with, as it was said, ten thousand men to beat up our quarters,” Howland reported, estimating that the “whole army of the United States” at that time was “supposed to amount to about four thousand men.” And that wasn’t even the worst of the news. The odds were against them in so many other, thoroughly demoralizing ways: “If any fervent mind should doubt this,” he emphasized, “it must be from not knowing the state of our few, half-starved, half-frozen, feeble, worn-out men, with old fowling pieces for muskets, and half of them without bayonets, and the States so disheartened, discouraged,
