New and Used Dakota Prices, Dodge Dakota Model Years and History
Dodge Dakota Models
2010 Dakota
The 2010 Ram Truck Dakota is a mid-size pickup truck that separates itself from the class by offering a V8 engine.
A mid-size pickup truck, the 2009 Ram Truck Dakota offers the utility of a larger vehicle with the maneuverability of a smaller one, making it a capable truck that gets the job done.
A mid-size pickup with an brand new look outside and in, the 2008 Ram Truck Dakota is available with RWD or 4WD and offers the only V8 engine option in this class.
The 2007 Dodge Dakota is a mid-size pickup truck available with two or four doors, and 2WD or 4WD.
A mid-size pickup truck with seating for five to six passengers, the 2006 Dodge Dakota is offered as a two-door Club cab or four-door Quad cab.
A versatile mid-size pickup truck, the 2005 Dodge Dakota is available with both Club and Quad cab body-styles, and with RWD or 4WD.
A pickup truck that straddles the line between compact and mid-size, the 2004 Dodge Dakota is available with a 260 hp V8 making it one of the most powerful in its class.
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About Dakota
Built as a durable utility pickup for drivers seeking a smaller alternative to full-sized trucks, the Dodge Dakota featured smaller dimensions than the Dodge Ram but was also one of the most capable vehicles in its class. After a 1997 redesign that involved the adoption of a Ram-like front end, the Dodge Dakota was offered with a regular and Club Cab model.
With the regular cab version of the 1998 Dakota, a 6.5-foot and 8-foot bed box was available. For 1998, the performance ante of the medium-sized pickup truck was raised by the presence of an R/T version of the Dakota with a 250-horsepower 5.9-liter Magnum V-8 powerplant.
A 5.2-liter Magnum V-8 engine also available for the 1998 Dodge Dakota pickup truck. Before the Chevrolet Colorado SS models arrival in 2009, the Dakota was the only commonly available mid-sized pickup truck in the United States with a V-8 engine. Other powerplants available on the 1998 Dakota also included a 2.5-liter four-cylinder and a 3.9-liter V-6 engine.
Rear-wheel drive as well as a part-time four-wheel drive system allowed power to the ground. For the 2000 model year, a four-door Quad Cab version of the Dodge Dakota was introduced. Also in 2000, the trucks 5.2-liter V-8 engine was replaced by a new 4.7-liter displacement PowerTech V-8. Given a new look mirroring its full-sized Dodge truck counterpart, the Dakota was refreshed in 2005 with an all-new suspension. The regular cab version of the Dakota was discontinued on the newer model leaving the Club Cab and Quad Cab.
Engine choice for the 2005 Dodge Dakota consisted of a 3.7-liter V-6 or the 4.7-liter V-8 powerplant rated at up to 260 horsepower and 310 pound-feet of torque. In 2010, the truck division of Dodge was divided into the Ram brand. As a result, the Dakota could be considered a Ram product for its final two years on sale. With dropping customer popularity, the Dakotas production ended after the 2011 model year.
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Dodge Dakota


The purification of Holy Innocents Cemetery
At the centre of the square next to my Paris street - Rue de la Ferronnerie - is the Fountain of the Innocents. It is the oldest monumental fountain in Paris and a focal point for the groups of young people that gather there.
The other day I saw a very old map of the city. I noticed that the square was marked as a cemetery, and it included a church named after the Holy Innocents. Innocents refers to the male infants King Herod ordered massacred, according to the biblical narrative.
I did some research and discovered that the space had indeed been a burial ground from the Middle Ages until the late 18th century. It was then condemned as a health hazard.
The corpses and bones were subsequently exhumed and transported to underground storage near Montparnasse, on the other side of the city. This site is now known as the Catacombs and open to the public as a tourist attraction. The Innocents church was demolished and the fountain moved to the centre, where it still stands.
I’m now half way through a 2011 novel on the exhumation, by Booker Prize nominated British writer Andrew Miller. Titled Pure, it recreates the story of the removal of the corpses, which it depicts as a purification.
This took place on the eve of the French Revolution, which could crudely be described as the forces of reason replacing the cloud of religious superstition. A purification of sorts, though the term refers more directly to the foul smell that permeated the area. It would turn fresh produce rotten and taint the breath of the residents.
The main character is a young engineer named Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a fervent believer in rationality. The family he boards with are given to superstition and are hostile to his work once they discover what it is.
My interest is heightened by the coincidence concerning the historic Camperdown cemetery at the top of my street in Sydney. In the late 1940s, ghost stories and a murder led to demands for the ‘purification’ of a large section of the site.
This took the form of the transfer of headstones to the area next to adjacent church, and use of the space for the creation of the Camperdown Memorial Rest Park. Today it’s a well frequented meeting place for young people and dog owners.


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FT Live subscriber webinar on the US midterms
FT journalists and veteran commentator Norm Ornstein explain why Democrats face tough times in Congress in spite of a ‘good’ midterm election night for President Joe Biden. Ornstein, Ed Luce, Rana Foroohar and James Politi explore who might run for president and vice-president in 2024, and how Ron DeSantis might take on Donald Trump after his resounding re-election as Florida governor. Ornstein warns western allies to prepare for a curtailed American role in the world under a more dictator-friendly breed of Republicans
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...and welcome to this special FT Live on the midterm elections. I'm Edward Luce, the US political commentator. I'm joined by my colleague Rana Foroohar, FT columninst and also fellow contributor to Swamp Notes, our newsletter, James Politi, one of the bureau chiefs here in Washington DC, and our guest today, Norm Ornstein, one of the best, most experienced scholars of American politics and also participant in American political reform and the author of, amongst many books, It's Even Worse Than it Looks.
Well, I don't know what, Norm, your view is going to be on this week's election. Maybe that title won't describe it. But it has been a pretty surprising and a pretty remarkable midterm election. We were all... the conventional wisdom, at least, was anticipating a red tsunami, a red wave, a shellacking, a thumping.
And what we've seen is something quite different, the least different, the least bad performance by a president in the midterms for 20 years, the least bad by a Democrat. Democratic president for 40 years. So Joe Biden, once again, has defied very, very low expectations.
Also an extremely bad night for Donald Trump. Not only did most of his favourite candidates, the more Trumpian candidates, like Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, Doug Mastriano, for the governorship in Pennsylvania, and many, many others across the board, lose, or look likely to lose, but Ron DeSantis, his potential challenger for the 2024 nomination, had a massive landslide to be re-elected as governor of Florida.
Rupert Murdoch also seems to have turned on Donald Trump. The New York Post's headline this morning is Humpty Trumpty. And just to finish off the poem, all the king's horses and all the king's men could not put Trumpty together again. So Norm, let me start with a question, a very direct question for you about Trump is, is this the beginning of the end for Donald Trump?
So when I saw the New York Post headline, my comment was, oh, a lover's quarrel.
Of course, Rupert has dumped many in the past. But this is a really bad time for Trump. And we saw this on Fox and other places, even on Fox, that they were saying on election eve, where they had expected this red tsunami, that Trump was to blame. Trump himself had said, if we win, you can thank me, if we lose, blame somebody else, which was classic Trump.
But we also have to keep in mind what's lurking in the background, here. And it's not just whether Republicans have decided that he is a drag on their chances rather than a boost, but we've got indictments looming, many indictments looming, Georgia, to start with. And from everything we know about what Fani Willis, the prosecutor in Fulton County, Georgia, has said and done, probably fairly quickly there.
The Justice Department has moved slowly but almost certainly we will see indictments there. We know in New York that they've basically taken over his business. And it's quite possible that the Trump organisation will be dissolved.
Trump is on a downward slide into some very bad things and very bad times. But Trumpism is still not dead. And that's the important part of this, Ed. If somehow Donald Trump just disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, the pathologies in the American political system are there. And they're in many ways, more dangerous.
And we can talk about that more. In spite of an election that, as you said, was a stunningly good one, in perspective, for Joe Biden and his presidency, although we're going to talk about the bumps in the road that will follow from that.
But we may still see Kari Lake, one of the most dangerous election deniers, win a governorship in Arizona. We've got some other races that are hanging in the balance. The cultural problems, the divide in the country, is still great enough that I'm not getting the good night's sleep that I had hoped I would even after an election that turned out to be less dangerous than we had thought.
You make a very good point that DeSantis and others are not auditioning to kill Trumpism. They're auditioning to be the new heads of the MAGA movement. And that's - we will get on to - and maybe James and Rana will have views on DeSantis in a moment. But just as a quick follow up, midterm elections for first-time incumbent presidents are traditionally seen as a referendum on those presidents.
And clearly this became more of a split-screen midterm election because of Trump. And the party was in a complete panic on Monday night when it looked like Trump might actually announce his candidacy for 2024 and completely intrude on...
Fair to say, therefore, that the difference between what the conventional wisdom was expecting to happen on Tuesday night, which is this red wave, and what actually happened, which is this far more calibrated, even, outcome, that Trump was the difference, or are there other factors, such as the abortion Supreme Court ruling that played a role here, Norm?
There are definitely other factors. And I think the conventional wisdom believe that with Biden's approval rating in the low 40s, with a number of polls showing that the top issues were inflation, the economy, and crime, that the other things wouldn't matter.
But those other things, starting with the Dobbs decision and the abortion issue, including what now, for a lot of Democrats and independents, was a concern over the radical direction that the Republican party had taken, a substantial turnout among younger voters, more than we had expected, which I think was driven significantly by the abortion issue out there, all of that made a difference and turned it into a different kind of election.
And I think we can talk more about the realities that it's not a uniform, national result, Florida going dramatically further in a red direction, Ohio, where you had a Senate candidate, a Democrat, Tim Ryan, who ran the best campaign of anybody this time against JD Vance, who ran a horrible campaign and who's a horrible person.
But Vance still won pretty comfortably because it's still a tribal world. And Ohio, which was once a swing state, is becoming firmly Republican as well, while we saw dramatically different results in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and in Minnesota.
It's not clear that there is a national set of issues themselves that can explain everything. But there's no doubt in my mind that if the Supreme Court had not ruled the way it did on Dobbs, we'd be looking at a much worse result for Democrats, as we look at it today.
So you mentioned Florida. Rana, I know you've also been paying attention to the pretty extraordinary Republican performance there, no longer a swing state. It's very clearly a red state now, as Ohio is.
One of the silver linings, perhaps - and you and I have talked about this and written about this - is, to America's political polarisation, is that the racial polarisation isn't as great. You do have a lot more Hispanics voting Republican. And you even have some African-Americans moving over into the Republican column. But this is particularly true for Hispanics in Florida. What do you think explains that?
So it's really interesting. For viewers who are listening, Ed and I actually did a Swamp Note on this a few days ago. And Ed, you posed, I think, quite correctly, that Hispanics are not a single block and that Democrats really hadn't gotten that. We've seen them vote totally differently in different parts of the country, in the Midwest, in Florida, in Texas. And this reflects the fact that they're coming from different places, from different socio-economic groups, with different kinds of interests.
I've often thought in general that Democrats do better focusing on issues of class rather than slicing and dicing identity. I've thought for years that's made things very divisive within the party and has taken the party in the wrong way and alienated a lot of people. I think that's particularly true when you're dealing with the Hispanic community.
I grew up in the rural Midwest, in Indiana, and there are a lot of Hispanics there that are small business owners, they're migrants. They still believe in the American Dream. They would respond to a message of less regulation, lower taxes, more than they might respond to social issues and identity messages. And I think that Florida reflects that.
I'm also just fascinated - and I would love to hear what Norm thinks about this too - by the meaning of Florida. Florida has become the anti California, the anti New York. It's like the conservative answer to everything that they would believe is wrong with a place like, where I'm sitting, Park Slope, Brooklyn or San Francisco.
It's low taxes, private sector, we don't care if there's another hurricane, we're not going to worry about who can get flood insurance or not, but we're open for business and the money is pouring in. Now whether the latest crypto boom is going to be the beginning of the end of some of that or - I should say bust - is going to be the beginning of the end of some of that, I'm curious.
But there's a kind of, as always, with Florida, a no-holds-barred, live life, be prosperous, and it's almost a libertarian vibe. And Norm, I'm curious if you would say the same.
So Florida is fascinating. We used to think of Florida, when we thought of it as a swing state, of being multiple states. Miami-Dade County, it was a solidly blue area. Then you'd move to the panhandle, Pensacola, which was extraordinarily red. The middle of the state was more red. Miami-Dade County went red this time.
But beyond that, and there's some, perhaps, funny, good news for Democrats in all of this because I think one of the reasons that Florida moved from purple to red is that a lot of Republicans moved from Pennsylvania and Michigan and New York and New Jersey, down to Florida. And that provided enough of a cushion that the Democrats could do better in those states.
Even having said that, that Ron DeSantis won so handily against a former governor who actually was fairly popular when he was governor, is striking, and that Marco Rubio, another example, an incumbent Senator but who - when Trump labelled him 'Little Marco,' it stuck in a lot of ways - running against what ought to have been a perfect Democratic nominee, Val Demings, a former police chief, a member of Congress, who ran quite an effective campaign. And she lost by a big margin as well.
And that's really a sign that Florida has become a Republican state, period, I think for all the reasons you say, Rana. And I think if we look at Hispanics there, which is.. and that's a polyglot. We have Venezuelans and Guatemalans, a lot of Cubans, obviously, that they have turned as much as they have, I think, is a reflection of the fact that Republicans have very skillfully used the word 'socialism' to their advantage.
And Democrats missed a beat in Florida this time. Recall that Ron DeSantis basically kidnapped a bunch of asylum seekers in Texas, dragooned them into or lured them to Florida the same way that the old man would lure a child into a van with candy..
...and then flew them, using a large amount of taxpayer money, to Martha's Vineyard but... and called them illegal immigrants. These were Venezuelans fleeing the Maduro regime and going through enormous hardship to get to the United States to seek asylum.
And that Democrats didn't pound away at that and say, Ron DeSantis, you're giving aid and comfort to Maduro, you want to talk about socialism, was political malpractice, not that it would have made all the difference but it's pretty clear that Democrats, if they're ever going to get back into the game in Florida, are going to have to do something about those Hispanics in Miami-Dade.
Can I ask one question, just on the back of that? Why did the Democrats in Martha's Vineyard not show up and - where immigrants are being shipped off - not show up and say, thank you, we have a labour shortage in this country. We desperately need immigration. Please, hey, we're going to put these folks to work in the hospitality industry, here. Why did they not make just a huge political boondoggle of that?
Democrats are not very good at messaging, as we say. Now you could say they're terrible at messaging. They still did better than Barack Obama's midterm elections, when presumably, they were better at messaging than Bill Clinton, who was great at messaging. So we can't blame everything on that, or wherever they lost on that. But there was a tone deafness there to the opportunities available.
And the same is true, let me say, Val Demings, in a debate with Marco Rubio, took on the crime issue by turning it into a gun issue and did it extraordinarily effectively. And there Democrats are on really solid ground. The overwhelming majority of Americans are appalled by the way guns have been out there and assault weapons killing people. They want background checks. They want bans on assault weapons.
That's the way to hit the crime issue. And they didn't do that at all. And that hurt, I think, in a number of places where - the last thing you want, in a campaign, is to be on the defensive. You want your opponents to be on the defensive. And that's an area where they're going to have to do some additional work.
So a very good point. And with all these instances of Democratic malpractice, to still get this result does bring us back to Donald Trump, I think. And James, you've been travelling a lot around the campaign, trail to the swing states. You've seen Trump. You've seen DeSantis.
If, as expected, Trump still goes ahead, ignores the advice of pretty much every senior Republican, and still goes ahead with his 2024 campaign launch in Mar-a-Lago next Tuesday - and I guess knowing what we know about Trump and his stubbornness and his pride, it's likely he will go ahead - then what would you imagine a DeSantis-Trump full-on battle looking like? Would Trump just blow him away? Does MAGA still... does the MAGA heart still beat with Trump or is that changing?
Well, it's hard to tell at the moment. In a way, we've been here before in the sense that there have been other moments when, after electoral defeats, some Republicans have blamed Trump. And then he's continued to plough ahead because he has such a strong hold on the base.
The latest polling out, from Morning Consult, this morning, showed that Trump still has over 50 per cent of support for 2024 nomination compared to DeSantis, who has edged up, but is about roughly half that, half that level. And you can see how a sustained campaign by Fox and the Murdoch media and the conservative universe to get rid of Trump, in a certain sense, could have an impact on those numbers and really elevate DeSantis.
But I think that there's still a question about whether DeSantis will really survive the first big contacts with Trump. And we saw, there was a first swipe from Trump over the weekend, calling him Ron Desanctimonious. That didn't really seem to stick on Tuesday, but...
Too many syllables, Ron
So that was a bit of a swing and a miss from Trump. But I don't know if the next swings are going to miss in the same way. And also, we don't really know if DeSantis really has it in him to take on Trump.
He's had opportunities, in previous moments, over the course of the year, to really criticise Trump or to take him on, such as the Mar-a-Lago raid, the January 6 hearings. He could have tried to hit him a little bit when he was down and he declined to do that. And he's been biding his time, maybe wisely picking his moment.
But we don't know, really, if DeSantis has the fight in him to go after Trump head on. And he still hasn't formally announced his candidacy. There are super PACs, donors, who are egging him on, trying to get him to make the first move. Maybe he's waiting for Trump to implode a little bit before going after him. Maybe that's the right approach. But we still haven't seen that big, big clash yet. And we don't really know how, once they're in the ring, how it's going to go.
Norm, I'd like your thoughts on that, whether DeSantis has got the mojo. It seems to me, though, while agreeing with everything that James just said, that Trump might be putting him in the race by himself. DeSantis is being attacked so frequently and viscerally, and there's that tone of menace that Trump has when he targets a rival, that DeSantis just may have no choice but to be his rival. He's being attacked.
Norm, I'm might be interested in your thoughts on that but also on your thoughts about Biden's declaration for 2024. He obviously looks stronger now. He continually confounds low expectations. And I think one of the key elements of Tuesday - and others have said this - is that a lot of people hate Trump. Of course, a lot of people adore Trump too. Nobody really hates Biden.
And that's... it was very interesting to see one of Fox's stars, Jesse Watters, saying, well, there isn't this visceral hatred of Biden the way there was of Obama. And I thought, gee, I wonder why?
That's another angle here. On DeSantis, I think the attacks by Trump are good for him and here's why. Remember when Trump ran in 2016 and the Republican establishment was appalled? But what Trump did on the debate stage was to go after all the other Republicans, giving them nicknames, attacking them. And that was appealing to a group of Republicans who wanted a tough guy who was going to rip apart the opposition and blow up the establishment.
Ron DeSantis, despite doing some really horrific things in Florida, has had this popularity there, I think in part because he's seen as being tough. And if he takes on Trump and wins, that's going to be a positive for him with the rest of the electorate.
Having said that, anybody who watched the debate that Trump had with Charlie Crist, or that DeSantis had with Charlie Crist, he was not ready for primetime. He did very poorly. It's not clear to me that if you put him in the national spotlight, that the sort of chicanery that he uses with press conferences in Florida, where nobody is able to ask any questions, where he gets all the police behind him or when he signs a Don't Say Gay bill, having a bunch of little kids sitting around him, when he's under that scrutiny and really being pushed - and that means being pushed by Republicans, his rivals, because it's not just Trump.
I've been actually gobsmacked to watch Mike Pence, out there now trying to make his pitch, basically, as a gentler version of Trump, having had Trump really call for him being hanged, but now saying nice things. But Mike Pence may have a little bit of a following out there. And Nikki Haley is out there.
And Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia, who's trying to be the nicer version of Trump - he's a full-on Trumpist but he has a fleece vest and he looks less menacing - all of them are going to be stirring things up. And whether DeSantis can make it through all of that is a real question mark.
From the perspective of Democrats, first of all, the more they fight amongst themselves and the more they take on Trump, given what James said, which I think is entirely accurate, that for all of the travails of Donald Trump, for all of the reality that even Rupert Murdoch and his cronies are turning on him, Trump still has this deep following in the electorate with Republicans in the electorate.
There's still this outrage and a belief that he had his election stolen. They're going to be rising up when he is indicted. And if he stays in this game you're going to see a deep division among Republicans. That doesn't mean that they won't be united when it comes to actually voting in November of 2024. But from the perspective of Democrats, if they're in an internal battle that becomes really vicious, that's not such a bad thing.
In a moment, I'm going to ask Rana and you about the next Congress. But James, just whilst we're still focused on what the outcome of the midterm elections were, we're going to get another Senate runoff in Georgia between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker. Last time, of course, it decided the Senate. Those two runoffs going to the Democrats meant the Democrats had majority control.
It might boil down to - depending on what happens in Arizona, where they're still counting and in Nevada, where they're still counting - it could once again boil down to a Georgia runoff to decide which party controls the Senate. And now, clearly, you're going to be going down there and covering this. But tell me, what is your hunch about this Walker-Warnock run off? And will Trump get involved again because I suspect viewers will need no reminding, his involvement in the last runoffs caused Republicans to lose, becoming a very familiar story.
Well, I think a lot will depend on whether it will be a decisive election for... a decisive runoff for control of the Senate. I think that if it's not decisive, if the Democrats have already gotten to 50, I think that most likely, Warnock will rather comfortably hold his seat just because you won't get that sense, from the Republicans, that this is the only way that they can... this is their path to gain control. You won't get as much national attention. And on that score, I think Warnock will do better.
What I found... but on the other hand, if it will decide the fate of the Senate, I think that there's just going to be a massive amount of money, a huge effort. It'll be the Republican chance to reset the narrative in terms of what happened in this election. And I have to say, even though Herschel/Walker is a real classic - in some ways, classic Trump-backed candidate, it's very striking that he's at 48 per cent, 49 per cent.
In Georgia, it's a very fiercely-divided, ideological... this is the real battleground of American politics at the moment. Everyone feels very strongly about winning and prevailing. And I think Republican voters are willing to... they're willing to go with Walker if it means that they can overcome, win a Senate Majority.
Of course, if it's not decisive, then I think plenty of Republican voters will stay home. They don't really like Walker as much as they like Brian Kemp, the governor. But they would take him, I think, if it's a decisive race.
OK, let's move on to the next Congress. So Rana, assuming that Republicans do end up with a House majority, a very slim one, presumably, of 5-6, and that Kevin McCarthy becomes speaker, a very weakened speaker, I would presume because that slim margin will strengthen the far right, the Freedom Caucus, the Jim Jordans, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, et cetera, what, if anything, other than performative impeachments, can we expect from a Congress like that?
That's a great question. In some ways, I think that there's going to be a continued bipartisan consensus over China. I think that that's actually interestingly, for a midterm, China was a campaign issue in about one fifth of the swing states, which is... that's something that comes up during presidentials but it's not such a big midterm issue.
Next week, you're going to see the US-China Commission coming out on Wednesday with another report. It's going to be hawkish. It's going to be very bipartisan. And so I'm going to be interested to see, to the extent that we are moving into a more localised and more regionalised world, that decoupling is continuing, how does the rhetoric and the policy of that play out?
And this is something that you and I discussed a bit in a past Swamp Note in the Ohio election, right, because that was Vance versus Tim Ryan. And both of them were saying, look, we need to reindustrialise the US. We need to... Vance being belligerent, America-first MAGA, Ryan taking a more constructive approach, but basically the same policies around trade. I think that you're going to see everybody rowing in that direction. It's just the tenor of it that will be different, depending on who you're talking about.
That's a very interesting point. In particular, I think it is worth emphasising that Ryan's defeat to Vance, whatever it's, seven points, correct me if I'm wrong, Norm, was considerably narrower margin of victory than Mike DeWine for the governorship, which is something like a 26-point margin for the Republican governor.
So Norm, Kevin McCarthy, you are one of the leading experts on Congress in the world. Kevin McCarthy, is it a safe bet he'll be speaker, assuming they have the majority? And if so, what will he have to do to keep his speakership?
So we know that the several of the Freedom Caucus members have already indicated that they're going to try to reinstate a rule that would keep Kevin McCarthy on a very short leash, that would allow for a vote at any time to remove a speaker if they don't like what's going on. And that's a shot across his bow.
But I've been around Congress for more than 50 years. And I've never seen a leader as weak or as craven as Kevin McCarthy. And that's saying something because there have been plenty of contenders for that position.
He achieved his position, not because of his tactical brilliance, his depth of knowledge, but because he was one of these people who kept tabs on all of the members, knew the birthdays, would send cards when their kids graduated from school or won a medal in an athletic competition. He is a glad hander. And it is trying to appease everybody, that is his trademark.
And even if the majority were larger, the reality is that the Republican party in Congress has been taken over by the radical, election-denying MAGA faction. The Freedom Caucus started in 2015 because the existing rightwing caucus, the Republican Study Committee, wasn't right wing enough.
We've already seen a couple of groups form that believe that the Freedom Caucus isn't right wing enough. And the pressure on him from that faction, with no margin for error in what he's trying to do, will be intense.
What he's already done is to try to appease that group by giving a lot of slack to the craziest of his members, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, and some of the others. He is going to give them prominent positions. He's going to focus on doing these hearings, not just about Hunter Biden but about Afghanistan and about the Justice Department.
He's not going to be able to be in a position to be responsible, if responsibility is what's important. And as you and I have talked before, Ed, and as I've written, my greatest fear is that if you have a divided government, you don't have the power to enact legislation yourself. You can use the investigative tools to drive the other side crazy and to bring them to their knees.
But your biggest power is the negative one of being able to block things. And that includes blocking spending. And it includes this odd device of the debt ceiling, which in 2011, when the Tea Party group came in with a midterm that was disastrous for Barack Obama, we came this close to a default, which would shake up the international financial community and the international economy in ways well beyond the United States. That would be a tsunami that would hit a lot of different shores.
And I'm not sure that they're going to be able to avoid it. And what we have to keep in mind is, next Congress, where we are very likely to have that narrow Republican majority in the House, potentially in the Senate, that's the 118th. We will still have the 117th with a narrow Democratic majority in the House and a 50/50 Senate, where they still control it, until January 3.
The Democrats are going to have to find ways to head off the worst-case scenarios that back in 2011, the Republican speaker, John Boehner, managed to keep us from going over the cliff into default. Kevin McCarthy couldn't do that. And so there's going to be a big burden on Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer during this period of time.
If the Republicans somehow take the Senate, in early December, with that race in Georgia, then there will be no confirmations of judges or executive appointees for Joe Biden for two years. And if he wants and needs somebody in a cabinet post, for example, if it's vacated, they're going to try and hold that hostage and blackmail him into doing things that he doesn't want to do.
So they're going to have to work night and day, through December, to be able to head off some of the worst things. And whether all of those Democrats in the Senate - you need every single one - who want to take time off before they start the next time around, are going to be willing to do that, is another challenge.
Biden's got plenty of headaches ahead. It was a wonderful night for him in many respects. But we cannot ignore the traumas and dangers ahead that come even with a two-vote Republican margin in the House.
Ed, can I just amplify one thing that Norm said? Because I completely agreed with your point about the financial market fallout of the debt-ceiling issues. And I think there is always fallout.
This time around, it's going to be hyper amplified by the fact that there is already a huge issue in international markets about trust in the US government. And you're seeing that in the volatility of the T-bill space. You're seeing that in growing concerns about the US fiscal position, particularly in the midst of decoupling, in the midst of who knows what in Taiwan. So I think it would have, actually, a really amplified effect this time.
That's a very, very good point. And I've heard that as they're looking at the lame-duck session between now and early January, Schumer and Pelosi, and James, I want you to respond to this, are thinking, really, of three priorities. First is to try and raise the debt ceiling now. The second is to try and prefund some of the Ukraine military and financial assistance because the MAGA wing of the Republican party is Putinista. A lot of it is pro Putin.
And then third is slightly more esoteric, but maybe more important than the first two combined, is to reform the Electoral Count Act so that some of the discrepancies that led to, or could lead to another January 6, 2021, are just ruled out. James, are you hearing these things? And do you think that passage of any one or all of those three, in the lame-duck session, is realistic?
I think I could see some sort of, in an optimistic scenario, I could see some sort of package coming together along those lines. But the problem is that there won't be much time left because I think they will want to wait until after the Georgia runoff to make some kind of calculation, actually, about what they want to do and how they want to do it, what kind of compromises need to be made.
And on the debt ceiling, I don't think that there's a consensus, really, within the Democratic party about whether you want to be responsible and go ahead and raise it and take it off the table, or whether you want to use it as leverage, in a certain sense, to be able to depict the Republicans as the extremist brinkmanship champions of Congress. And I think that that's a decision that Biden and the Democrats are going to have to make.
I think that it's in a way, it's not just about the debt ceiling when it comes to economic and financial issues for Biden. If we faced any kind of even other financial meltdown, I think that it would be very difficult for the White House and the administration to respond to it if... you couldn't see a scenario, like the Wall-Street bailout, where Janet Yellen goes begging for McCarthy to pass a rescue bill for the financial sector, and that he would say yes.
It would be much harder for anything like that to happen. Even something like the auto-sector bailout... would be very difficult to see if there was a recession. And so I think that from the economic point of view, Biden will have much less flexibility to respond to any kind of crisis.
I think that's absolutely correct. Now just bearing in mind, we've got about 16, 17 minutes left. But we do have questions coming from viewers. And I'm going to throw them in here and there.
I want to ask both Norm and Rana the big, Biden question on whether there's a deeper bench of potential successors for a competitive Democratic primary emerging. Gretchen Whitmer is performing exceptionally well in Michigan. Michigan, for the first time in decades, has a Democratic trifecta. They won back control of both chambers there, as well as her being re-elected. She's quite a strong figure.
People mentioned Gavin Newsom in the Senate. Of course, there's Amy Klobuchar. Goodness knows, maybe even Bernie Sanders would try again. But the question to both of you, starting with Norm, is, will Trump, sorry, will Biden declare his candidacy? Will he run again? And...
...run again? So will he and should he, Norm?
So I'm hearing from a lot of Democrats who are saying, well, he should just take himself out of it now. He's at a good point. I doubt very much that's going to happen.
The history that we have with presidents either in their second terms or who say they're not going to run again, that lame-duck status weakens you in a lot of respects. Now he's going to have all these issues that we know with a divided government.
But I would be sceptical, barring a health challenge that emerges, that he's going to announce anything one way or the other. And one of the reasons is that if you're not running, then everybody else comes right out of the woodwork to jockey for position and you have big, internal tensions that emerge.
The Democrats have a dilemma, here. If Joe Biden were to run again-- and what happens in 2023 is going to have a lot to do with whether he's even in a position to be able to do that-- he would be 86 at the end of his second term. That's pushing it, even in an era where 60 is the new 30 and 70 is the new 40. But 86 ain't the new 50.
At the same time, you have an heir apparent. And the reality is that Kamala Harris, who is the first woman of colour to be vice president, is not a strong presidential candidate. And if you have a bitter dispute among Democrats and in the aftermath of the Dobbs decision on abortion, you bypass a woman and pick a man as your presidential candidate at a time when you need a base that's enthusiastic, you're going to have a problem with a portion of your base.
If you pick somebody who isn't a person of colour, at the same time, you're going to have a problem with another portion of your base. And you're going to have a lot of other contenders out there, including some very attractive ones. Pete Buttigieg, a judge who ran the last time, has been a star for Democrats, appearing on Fox, basically flaying the opposition, there. And he's done quite well as the transportation secretary.
You have Cory Booker, who ran the last time, who's an attractive person. I would say if Catherine Cortez Masto somehow pulls out this victory in Nevada, along with the fact that you have a Hispanic governor in New Mexico who's quite attractive, who just won re-election again, there are going to be a lot of potential contenders but you're going to have a bitter internal contest, which is not anything that you want either.
So both parties have succession issues, here, with Trump on the ropes, with Biden in his 80s. I would be surprised, though, if Biden took himself out of the running before late next year at the latest-- at the earliest.
EDWARD LUCE: That's interesting. Rana, let me just pick up something that Norm just said about Kamala Harris's weakness and what that might portend, in terms of the identity dimension, to a new Democratic nomination contest. That is, of course, the Achilles heel of the Democratic Party as well as its strength.
RANA FOROOHAR: Right, right.
EDWARD LUCE: What do you feel about that?
RANA FOROOHAR: Well, it's interesting because Kamala gets right at both the identity issues and the failure of Democrats to really hold working people. Kamala really identifies much more with the middle of the road, corporatist wing of the party. And that's where she came up. And she took some flack in the beginning for that.
I was hopeful that she would be a stronger candidate. I don't think she is. I would go with Norm and say that I think Biden should run. I think that he is absolutely the guy that still, even as he presents today-- and barring, as you say, any other kind of big, health issue-- that can win right now against, I think, either Trump or DeSantis.
But I would love to see him do it with a different veep. I would actually go with Pete Buttigieg because I think that he hits some of the diversity issues, actually. He's a he's a married, gay man.
He's a veteran. He hits to a lot of fields. He's a good messenger but he's also really strong on policy. I think nobody wants to see Biden going into this next election without a really safe pair of hands that represents something meaningful about the Democratic transition to a younger generation of politicians.
EDWARD LUCE: James, do you do you share that? It seems like both Norm and Rana think that he should run and will run. Now I know as a reporter, you're more cautious about answering should questions. But can you give your take?
JAMES POLITI: I think the Pennsylvania results was very important for Biden. I think that he campaigned there. He's from there. His wife Jill, is from there. He said it's close to his heart. It's the place that you went like 20 times over the past three months.
And to see Fetterman, who was kind of in a bit of trouble the last few weeks, actually win pretty comfortably, I think will be a huge boost to Biden as he looks at 2024. And I felt like it was reflected in the way he talked about it yesterday, saying watch me, I'm going to go for it. And he said he was going to talk about it with Jill between Thanksgiving and Christmas, once they had a little bit of downtime.
And so it looks like he's definitely feeling emboldened. On the other hand, it's also true that the exit polls showed that 66%, or more than 2/3 of Americans, think that he should not run and don't want him to run. And so I think that he has left a bit of an opening to make a decision the other way around.
And he'll have to consider the fact that he is still quite unpopular and that it could be a bit of an uphill struggle. And if he decides to run he might he's going to have to face a lot of criticism in 2023 and beyond that maybe he's actually not up for it. And his legacy might end up losing to Trump or losing to DeSantis at the end of the day, which could be quite bruising because for now, he's the one who beat Trump and did better than expected in the midterms.
EDWARD LUCE: I give you a first prize for understatement.
[LAUGHTER]
RANA FOROOHAR: Can we just state one thing about the Pennsylvania election, too? I found it so heartening that you cannot show up and be a total carpetbagger, like Mehmet Oz, and win. And it also speaks to the fact that even someone like Vance, that had Trump support, closer than you might have thought.
So I like the fact that voters are tuning in a little bit to authenticity. Here you've got the celebrity doctor that's campaigning against a guy that had a stroke mid campaign. And it was looking pretty dicey, probably because of Biden's support, but also, I think, because the voters just saw through someone like Mehmet Oz. They made the right decision.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
EDWARD LUCE: --good point. A lot of people have been remarking, and I think correctly, in the last few days, that quality of candidates matters and the human connection matters. And whilst a lot of people were focusing on Fetterman's stroke and his difficulties with communicating, actually, the fact that he got back up, went back out there, and showed he had fight, tenacity, and therefore deserving of empathy, I think might have been underestimated.
But Norm, the thought did occur to me, in the last day or two, that the break-in and assault on Paul Pelosi, and Nancy Pelosi's husband, the speaker's husband, in the last few days-- in the closing days of the campaign-- and the fact that many Republicans, starting with Trump, expressed no sympathy for her, in fact, used to use that event as a way of further dissing Pelosi, that might be an underappreciated factor.
We all, of course, we're unusual. We pay attention to politics 365 days a year. But we're a rare breed. We're like stamp collectors. Most people don't pay that much attention to politics until the closing stretches of a campaign. And this happened in the closing stretch. Are we underestimating the backlash against how Paul Pelosi's assault was depicted?
JAMES POLITI: I think you're exactly right, Ed. It's a jolt to Americans, with the fear and the threat of violence emerging through our political process and the tribalism that we have is enhancing that. And I'm concerned, as so many are. And that may have had a significant impact out there and the way in which Republicans have responded to it, the encouragement of violence, which is a problem that we have continuing ahead.
And frankly, it's reinforced, for me, the reality that the Republican Party is no longer a traditional political party. It's a cult. And if he had given sympathy to Paul Pelosi or said, we need to rally behind Nancy Pelosi, as a Republican, you're going to face attacks. So we're in a very different place.
Before we go, Ed, I'd like to make two more points. We were talking about Pennsylvania. Viewers, listeners, should keep their eyes on Josh Shapiro, who won overwhelmingly as the governor of Pennsylvania, who actually is another one of those young, up-and-coming people. He's not going to be a presidential candidate in two years. But there's some talent on the bench there as people move forward.
And then we haven't talked enough about the other implications of a even narrow Republican majority in the House, including, I think, what will be of interest to readers, foreign policy. We're going to have Republicans in the House who are going to try to interfere as much as they can with Biden's foreign policy.
They're going to use the Afghanistan hearings to try and tie down Tony Blinken and others in the State Department. They're going to use the power of the purse to cut back on diplomacy, not just aid to Ukraine. We're probably going to see Republicans in Congress go overseas and try to undermine Biden's ties to our alliances. There are obviously, as you said, a bunch of Putinistas there.
So there are headaches that emerge, even with an election that was far better than expected for Democrats. And they're going to have to do some very heavy lifting, here, to make sure that they can keep everybody on track and moving forward with the policies that they want, when they're going to be undermined, to some degree, from within.
EDWARD LUCE: We have got four minutes left. So I'm going to ask each of you to give a one-minute answer to the following question. And Norm, thank you for pointing out-- FTV does. We're a global newspaper. And this isn't just an American event. This has a great implications for everyone else.
So each of you, starting with James, what should America's allies and partners take from this election? What do you think is significant for them?
JAMES POLITI: I think what's significant is that there is a backlash to Trumpism. So the 2024 election will not necessarily yield a return to Trump. There's a big, red ocean out there. But there's also a very big blue ocean out there.
And I think that that's very important to keep in mind. And American democracy is unsettled but it's continuing to churn and produce outcomes that maybe give some hope that the decline isn't a permanent feature.
EDWARD LUCE: Rana.
RANA FOROOHAR: That's a great question. I think that allies, overseas readers, listeners, sometimes don't understand deeply enough that there is rhetoric that has to be put forward in the US at this moment. Some of the America-First stuff, even the Buy-America stuff, from the Biden administration, which is much fuzzier around the edges than you might imagine-- it's basically Buy America and 60 allies-- that the rhetoric is important for Democrats who have lost working people.
And if you don't want to see Trump in office, you have to be a little more patient with some of the rhetoric and look at the real policies underneath it. And I'm hopeful, I'm hopeful, that this is a moment, particularly with the US and Europe that there could be a little more coming together. I would love to see Macron, on his upcoming state visit in December, really get together with Biden. Let's do some horse trading.
Let's get on the same page with climate. Let's look at the low-hanging fruit. Let's quit bashing the US for EV subsidies-- Hello, Germany, plenty of auto subsidies there, plenty of agricultural subsidies in Europe-- let's get real about politics and policy and get on the same page.
EDWARD LUCE: Norm, the last word to you.
NORM ORNSTEIN: So we can breathe a sigh of relief, momentarily, that the march towards the Orbanization of America has been halted for now. But we also-- for those all around the world, if Trump is fading, Trumpism is not. And Trumpism includes America first, a disdain for alliances.
The lure of dictators is a very strong with them. We have to guard against that as best we can. But everybody should prepare for the possibility of a future where America's role in the world is curtailed. The Reagan wing of the Republican Party is not consequential anymore.
And that means that our allies have to do more, anticipating the possibility that we may not have the same kind of strong, American leadership that the world, I believe, needed and has come to rely on.
EDWARD LUCE: Well, thank you. I saw one made a comment-- and I apologise for not getting through so many of them-- but one, saying, we wish this could have gone on for two or three hours, this fascinating discussion. I agree with that.
Thank you to all four of you, James, Rana, Norm, and his dog, Henry, who deserves a shout out.
RANA FOROOHAR (LAUGHING): Henry.
EDWARD LUCE: Thank you, all of you. That was a really, really substantive, useful discussion, which I greatly enjoyed.
RANA FOROOHAR: Thanks Ed.
NORM ORNSTEIN: Thank you, Ed.
JAMES POLITI: Thanks Ed.
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The 3 Essential Qualities of a Great Leader with Russ Hill
This week we sit down with Russ Hill, Co-Founder of Lone Rock Consulting. We talk about the3 essential qualities of a great leader, the importance of clarity, alignment, and movement as you lead your community bank.
Check out Lead In 30 here: http://leadin30.com/
Intro: Helping community bankers grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Community Bank Podcast.
Caleb Stevens: Well, Hey everybody. And welcome back to the community bank podcast I’m Caleb Stevens. And today I am speaking with Russ Hill, the co-founder of Lone Rock Consulting. They work with some of the biggest companies in the country, and Russ is a leadership expert. This is a great discussion on how to engage your team, how to cast vision, how to create clarity, and also how to make sure that your vision gets throughout the entire organization. It’s one thing for the CEO to talk about the vision or to have the vision on the website, but it’s another to have every major leader within the organization, living it out and sharing it with their team and making sure that it sticks throughout the whole company. And so hope you enjoy this discussion with Mr. Russ Hill.
Well, Russ, thanks for hopping on the podcast today, it’s great to be talking with you. I followed you for a couple of years and it’s great to finally put a face with the name. So how are things out in Phoenix?
Russ Hill: Hot. At the time we’re recording this, this isn’t the place you want to be in January, February is the time to be in Phoenix, but things are going well at Caleb it’s great to meet you and I appreciate the opportunity to share some of the things that we’ve learned that I’ve learned working in this space over the years.
Caleb Stevens: Give us a quick snapshot of your career. How did you get into the leadership consulting space? What do you do at Lone Rock Consulting? Give us the quick 30,000-foot flyover.
Russ Hill: Yes. It’s not the most exciting story and it’s not that predictable, but I never viewed myself. I don’t think you, maybe some people grow up. No, I’m going to work as a consultant with senior executive teams of corporations I’m a teacher about leadership. I certainly didn’t grow up thinking that I wanted to be in the media I wanted to be a TV reporter, I wanted to travel the world and cover news events and so that’s what I did. That’s what I did for almost 20 years of my career and on the air in different, primarily radio stations and news and sports did that for a lot of years. And then worked my way into management, and started overseeing properties that our media company was acquiring. And that’s when I got interested in leadership because the teams I was leading did not like me and I thought they did. But then our company, the national broadcast company I was working for at the time started to do these things called employee engagement surveys. And the scores came back, I can laugh about it now, Caleb, but it was painful at the time. I have the distinct honor of being in the company that I worked for and have been rated the lowest leader in the company. In other words, the most toxic culture, the leader whose team disliked them the most man, that’s painful when you get that. And I was in my early twenties at the time and I had a choice to make at that time either lose my job because my team would all quit or change and so that’s when I became obsessed with culture.
That’s when I became obsessed with how you lead in a way that not only delivers results but that’s what you’re paid to deliver as a leader. But how do I do it in a way where my people like working for me, they like what we’re doing they feel a sense of purpose? We retain our best talent. How do I do that? It was a painful process and I read every book possible, I paid a lot of money out of my pocket to be developed I had leaders that mentored me and sent me to different things from universities to Gallup, to this, to that. And then long story short after a long time in the media career and no longer being the lowest rated leader growing and improving as a leader, I left the media world and went to join a consulting firm that had recruited me that specialized in the space of culture management.
Caleb Stevens: So, making an assumption here, but I would guess, before you saying that survey, I’m guessing you’d probably read a leadership book or two, in the past, and then it sounds like it’s probably one thing maybe to know about leadership from a head knowledge perspective, but then to live it and to be accountable to it and to see real results in the workplace. Did you see a disconnect there? Had you read leadership books before and now what sort of a wake-up call? What was that like?
Russ Hill: Yes, I had. And I wanted to be a good leader and so whether it was listening to at the time audiobooks write CDs at the time, now you can download them on audible or whatever, but or going to the Barnes and Noble back in the day and buying a book, I was doing that I was a student of leadership. So, that was part of my leadership development but I think the more pronounced or the part that affected me more was watching other leaders, and in my experience now working with leaders and as an executive coach and working as a consultant with leadership teams, what I’ve learned over the years is other leaders do exactly what I did, which is what are the traits in the leaders I hate that I don’t want to be around. That I just despise working for, or that man, there just don’t seem like pleasant people, or maybe they’re pleasant, but they just create an environment to where it, it doesn’t feel like we’re accomplishing things or my ideas don’t feel heard, or we’re not going anywhere as an organization. So, you look at those leaders and you go, okay, don’t do that, don’t be that and then you look at the leaders like, man, that person is amazing and what are they doing? And how do I become more like them? I think that’s probably where most of us have learned or what we’ve studied. And a lot of its unconscious we don’t even realize we’re doing it, but a lot of our leadership development in what I’ve seen is in watching and then modeling or repeating or cloning the behavior of other leaders.
Caleb Stevens: Well, I can hear the broadcasting voice now that we’re talking. Any lessons from a communication standpoint that broadcasting and media taught you?
Russ Hill: Yes, ton. I feel like I’m so blessed. I feel like there was this journey that I couldn’t see, yet my life was needing to go where it was the combination of these two worlds. And yes, if you think about it, most effective leaders, most good leaders, not all of them, but most of them are good communicators. And so I studied communications in college, not only because it was the easiest degree I could find that required the least amount of time in a classroom, but because I wanted to go into the media business. And so, effective leaders communicate and a lot of that starts with, and this is tied to Caleb. It’s tied to culture too, which we’ll get into, but a lot of it is effectively describing the vision, the destination you think about like Google maps. I would pay so much money if they charged me for that app on my phone. It’s so valuable to me, especially somebody who travels for a large part of what I do with clients and so you drop into a city and you just type in the destination, but you think about that app without the destination entered in, it’s kind of cool to look at the roads around you and whatever else, but it’s not that valuable. That app becomes valuable after you type in the destination and then it’s helping you. Hey, look out for this, that route’s closed. Don’t go there. You need to know this area’s under construction. This is the speed, this is where you’re likely to get there. Just like an effective communicator as a leader, we’re able to get up in a virtual meeting in an email in an in-person meeting and describe effectively this is not the only part of communications that has ties to the leadership, but it’s one part and it directly affects your culture.
Russ Hill: There’s no question about it, which is, can I effectively describe the destination? I’m trying to take my team too because you think about the word leader. It implies we don’t think about this a lot, but I’m leading you, I’m leading our team somewhere. And so if I were to ask your team, where is Russ? Where is Caleb leading you? How would they answer that? Do they know what the destination is? What success have we defined success in a way? Or is it just being busy and kind of doing my job? And that’s not enough you think about the organizations that have a great culture and that are, you think about super effective leaders, they have a vision they’re taking the team somewhere.
Caleb Stevens: Yes. Well, to hire you all, I would think that requires on your client’s part, a great deal of self-awareness to even know, hey, we need to invest and improve our leadership. And yet it seems like so many folks who are not the best leaders that’s one of the main issues is they don’t have the self-awareness to even know, Hey, we need to hire a guy like Russ, how do you sort of, think that through, because I would think you see a lot of opportunities to help leaders, but yet if they don’t have the self-awareness to know, we need to invest in ourselves, they’re never going to give you a call.
Russ Hill: Yes. It’s a great point and our business or our interaction with leaders is driven a lot by two different categories. It is the self-aware leader and it’s the leader who may be or, isn’t thinking about how I need to change to be more effective. We never get a call or we hardly ever get a call from somebody saying, help me be a better leader. We usually don’t get that call. What we get is a direct message on LinkedIn that says we need help with our results. And so either we’re not retaining the people that we want to retain, or we’re in this incredibly competitive environment and how do we attract better talent or our people aren’t engaged. I was on the phone with a Fortune 10 company that’s a client of our healthcare company. And they got their most recent poll survey from employees. They went, man, we went down again, and we’ve been going down every year since this pandemic started a few years ago.
And so, that that’s driving their need to get some help so it’s driven usually by results, and sometimes it’s a leader calling saying, or direct messaging us and saying, Hey, can you help us with this? And by the way, it’s not always a burning platform like Amazon’s a client of ours and Amazon didn’t have any problem with it, they’re people that hate Amazon, but most of us have boxes from them that are piling up on the front porch. And so what caused them to want to dig into this topic was we want to grow even faster and they have this hunger to be absolutely the best at every single thing that they do. So you have that group Caleb, and then you have another group that typically drives our interaction and maybe it’s the board. I could tell you plenty of stories where it’s a board of directors that goes, yes, our team needs help. Or it’s an executive saying, not calling for themselves, but saying, we’ve got this business unit or these locations or this team, can you help us with them?
Caleb Stevens: Yes, well, I saw Gallup’s recent state of the workforce survey from, I think it was 2021 and it was something like 34% of US workers are engaged around 49 or 50% are disengaged, and then about 15 or so are actively disengaged. And I’ve been sort of thinking through, what’s the driver here? Is it leadership? Is it culture? Is it not connecting the vision of the company to the everyday experiences of the team members? I think that’s sort of putting your thumb on kind of hits on that. What’s your take on those engagement surveys? What’s sort of the root cause? Is it leadership from the top?
Russ Hill: Yes. And it’s interesting because the year of that data, the year that you cite doesn’t matter, it’s the same in 2022, 2021, 2020, 2015, and 2010, there has been no movement. You can Google this, and do the research. We wrote the book, The Great Resignation a year and a half or so ago. And so we hired this team of data scientists to dig in and look at all the research because we had our theories based on working. We feel like we work in a leadership lab with, leaders of all these different organizations from manufacturing to financial, the world that you all live in retail, to restaurants, to healthcare, to whatever it might be. So we feel like, we had some real theories on what was causing all the movement in the workforce. And then we started looking at the data and one of the things that data uncovered was there’s been no movement in employee engagement in over 20 years. None. But there has been a change in the outcome or the effect of that. So, if you think about five years ago, if I’m disengaged, back to those numbers, you just said. If I’m disengaged from working at a bank or a Credit Union, and I’m not happy or I’m not satisfied. What do I do? Typically what I do is I keep showing up and I start poisoning the people around me. We call it the excuse trap. I’m blaming everyone and everything for why I’m dissatisfied. It’s that policy, it’s that leader it’s that other team it’s whatever it is that I’m justified in, in my frustration at work.
Russ Hill: And a lot of it by the way is justifiable, but then you just go to this negative, vicious, poisonous place and I’m obsessed with everything I can’t control. Everything bad about this job, this company, this location, this branch, whatever it has nothing to do with me and everything to do with everyone else, so you externalize it. So five years ago, if I’m in that situation, I become poisonous and I do that. Now after the pandemic and the current environment that we work in. And by the way, the data suggests that it’s not guessing what the pandemic didn’t start this change it just accelerated it. And the fact that we’re hopefully continuing to come out of the pandemic, it’s not going to change it either that’s our theory. And we think we’re being proven right by the data we’ll see in the next, 6, 12, 18, and 36 months. But now what happens? I come into the branch I come into work, I’m frustrated I still poison everybody, and then I just don’t show up and I don’t stay, I leave because I have so many different options. So what’s driving your question? What’s driving that disengagement?
So much of it is leadership it’s all tied to leadership and yet you have leaders that go. “No, it’s the market. It’s the customer it’s the whatever, it’s all these different things. No, we just have to be honest. It’s just like me when I got those scores, two decades, three decades ago of Russ, you suck as a leader, your team doesn’t like you, they’re not engaged that’s what my team was not engaged. And what changed the level of engagement on that team Caleb was me as I started to change as a leader, there were other things, but once I took ownership of that and went, okay, what’s the culture I’m creating? What are the beliefs that my team holds? What experiences am I creating? What’s the mindset? What’s the narrative on this team? What are the stories that are being told once I started taking ownership of that and defining it, then I could shift it?
Caleb Stevens: Well, I think that’s a good segue into one of the things that you preach is that there are two essential qualities of leadership. And of course, there’s been hundreds of books written on the subject, thousands of books, probably you could define in several ways you could come up with 30 great qualities of a leader, but there’s two that I’ve seen that you preach, that you hammer home. Would you mind kind of unpacking those for us?
Russ Hill: Yes. And in fact, I’m going to expand it to three. So you’ve probably seen me talk about two, which means I need to do a better job of talking about all three. And the ones that we focus on the most with leaders and you’re right there’s a lot of different content that you can go into. For instance, you might have seen me posting on social media about transactional versus transformational leaders might be what you’re referring to. And so a transactional leader as I come in and my job is just too kind of maintain, just to run the place. My job is just to, kind of make sure, and don’t screw it up. Right. And then a transformational leader, somebody that comes in and says, okay, where are we headed? What’s the potential here? What’s possible back to my Google maps analogy, where could we be in two or three years?
And they’re looking for movement and by the way, every employee wants to work for a transformational leader. Well, I’m going to say, not every employee, there are a few that are very happy not having any movement or growth, but there is this human need in most of us, a few people have suppressed it, but there’s a human need to grow, to create, to become something better than ourselves. And so we want to work for leaders that do that. So, that’s one distinction we make as we work with leaders transactional versus transformational and or transformative leaders. The other thing that I would talk about is just, that when it comes to culture, what great leaders do is focus on three areas and we call it the third leader.
Russ Hill: And, let me walk you through this just real quickly, it’ll take me a minute or two. So the first leader, so I’m just going to define different leadership profiles. This is helpful in our experience because often we aren’t putting the mirror on ourselves and thinking about, okay, well, what kind of leader am I? I might think about what kind of leader I am, but I’m defining it by 50 million things let’s narrow it down. So, the first leader is somebody who’s got no vision, they haven’t defined anything. It’s not that their team’s not doing anything in fact, their team feels super busy. Tons are going on, but they feel like they’re on a treadmill, sweaty, exhausted, just they’re busy all day long, but we’re not going anywhere. We can’t point to any progress we’ve made as an organization or a team over the last, six, 12, or 36 months, whatever it might be.
So there’s no vision, the first leader, loves discussion, they hesitate to make decisions so they love meetings. There’s just endless discussion you log into their meetings, you walk into their meetings, just tons of dialogue and it’s because the first leader leans into consensus. So, what they care about more than anything else is I don’t want to create conflict that doesn’t want to make decisions because I just want consensus and there are all kinds of costs that an organization pays because of that. The second leader views themselves as an upgrade, they’re an evolution of the first leader, and they used to be the first leader now they’re not. And the second leader, they’ve got a vision the problem is it reads like a Broadway playbill they’re 150 priorities, 20 pages long and so everything’s a priority.
So, they think they’ve created a vision, but in fact, it’s way too complicated, nobody knows what to do with it. The second leader micromanages they’ve had your job and they can’t wait to tell you how to do it more effectively. And so they pride themselves on making decisions unlike the first leader, the second leader making decisions on a moment’s notice, they don’t have anybody coming along with them or taking ownership of it because they had no involvement in that decision. So, the second leader doesn’t seek to create conflict, but, by nature of the way they lead, they create tons of conflict, they create silos, okay. The third leader is what we advocate going into and the third leader does these three things, these are the three categories I was talking about.
The third leader creates clarity in its three to four key results, these are the most important things for our financial institution to deliver this year. And it might be a revenue number it might a profit number, it might be several new clients might be employee engagement whatever it is. These are the three things it’s not more than three or four because people can’t remember more than three or four. We want them top of mind and so, the third leader creates clarity. The second thing that they do is build alignment they understand that there’s a fundamental difference between my team being aware of things and that that’s what most leaders do they make their team aware of it. Here’s the new policy, here’s the plan for the next year, and here’s the new project. They create awareness and then wonder why they don’t have alignment. And alignment happens out loud it’s messy and so, the third leader not only creates clarity, but they build alignment around their vision the team’s not just aware of it. They are aligned to it and alignment’s different than an agreement by the way. And then the third thing that the third leader does is generate movement and this is where culture management comes in they define the mindset of the team.
So, whether you look at Chick-fil-A you look at Amazon, you look at Apple, just go down the list of companies that you think of as culture, as a competitive advantage, they have defined the culture they’re looking for. Well, how do you define culture? It’s not a bunch of old static, stale values that are sitting on a frame, somewhere gathering dust. It’s a living, breathing timely set of statements that can be three or four, and it shouldn’t be more than that. That defines how we need to be thinking and acting. So for instance, Amazon, I’ll hesitate it so I give you a chance to work it out Caleb, but you can tell I’m passionate about this, can’t you? So like Amazon, they call them leadership principles is biased for action we are hiring people who are this way. They are biased to take action they’re not biased toward discussion. They’re not biased for analysis. They’re biased toward action. You can Google Amazon biased for action you’ll see it’s one of their leadership principles. There’s a large defense contractor we worked with we’ve consulted their senior team for a lot of years. They just rewrote their set of culture, principles, whatever you want to call them leadership principles.
And one of them is accelerating change. They’re way too stuck in the status quo, they need more people innovating, speaking up challenging the way we’ve always done it. If they’re going to compete for talent and clients and so accelerate change defines the narrative that they’re looking for. In other organizations, it’s the customer first, the patient first, or it’s one team. So you look at if I’m the leader of a financial institution, whether it’s just one location or a bunch of them, I’m looking at what’s the narrative. How do I want people to describe how we think and act here? Do we accelerate change? Are we one team? Customer-first, biased fraction. What are those few statements that define the way we need people to think and act? And you define the culture and you start managing it.
Caleb Stevens: So clarity, alignment, and movements. So let’s say you’re working with a large company and let’s say the executive team says, yes, Russ, I get it, we’re all about that. There’s clarity on the executive team there’s alignment. They’re committed to making change happen. But, my gosh, when you get 5, 6, or 7 layers down into the organization, how do you cast vision and create clarity in such a way that it spreads in scales to the whole organization? I heard you say one thing, the bias fraction, that’s a short, frequently repeated sticky, portable phrase that can probably be disseminated throughout the whole company. But how do leaders who are trying to create movement and clarity and alignment with 5, 6,000 folks? How do they do that effectively?
Russ Hill: Okay. So it’s a great question. And there’s a lot to that, but I’ll give you the 30,000-foot kind of, a thumbnail version of this. So the first thing is if I were to call all of your direct reports, whatever financial institution, whatever team you’re leading. So, I’m going to call your direct reports we’re going to do a quick zoom meeting I’m going to ask them what the three things that define success are. Would they all answer the same way? And in our experience of asking that question for over 15 years, in all kinds of industries, in all kinds of locations around the world, it is over 95% of the teams we interview do not answer the same. They don’t have clarity, you think they do? Yes, we’re clear. But you’ve shown them the plan for the year it’s got 50 million things in it and, or they’re aware of it, but they’re not aligned to it. So, they know you’re saying this is important, but they’re overworking on that and so how do you get it throughout the organization? You start with, you have to drill in on the leadership team with this. Do we have clarity? So, what are the three most important things? And we would tell you, and again, we teach all this in this thing called Leadin 30. People can find out about it at leadin30.com. It’s like, think about it like a 30-day fitness challenge, but it’s a 30-day leadership challenge anybody can sign up for it we offer it for free. We just require that people bring two leaders, other leaders from their company with them because then it gets traction and impact and that helps our organization.
So, leadin30.com and we start week one is all about clarity, we call them RPM Key results, repeatable, purposeful, measurable. Are they repeatable, a large pharmaceutical company we consult it’s 5, 1, 85 those are their key results? Everybody in the whole organization, tens of thousands of people knows 5, 1, 85 and those numbers 5 1 85 represent three different metrics that are incredibly important. The general motor is a client of our three zeros. If you look up Google GM, we could talk about this I can mention their name because it’s public. But general motors, six years ago, we were in the room when they wrote the three zeros that are the vision for general motors. How do you get, how do you get tens of thousands of people aligned? You start with clarity at the top. So we’re going to discuss what is clarity, what are RPM repeatable, purposeful, measurable, and key results we’re going to discuss and then we’re going to look for alignment. How aligned are we as a team?
And alignment means, I feel heard I feel involved doesn’t mean I have to agree with you, but I feel like I had a chance to weigh in before you decided on anything. And teams don’t make decisions, leaders make decisions, but teams inform leaders to make the best decision. So, many organizations have that backward they think teams make decisions. No, your job as a leader of that leadership team is not to get them to help you make a decision, they help you make the decision, but you make the decision or you delegate one of the decisions to them and they’re the decision maker. So you create alignment there and then you start to define at the executive level, Caleb, how do we need people thinking and acting? Then you go, we just did this with a large manufacturing company, 425 directors VPS along with the ELT, they have 35,000 people underneath them. They’re at multiple warehouses around the US and the world. And so, we have them in leadin30 virtual set of meetings, 30 days long, one meeting a week. And so 425 top leaders going in to create clarity, alignment movement at that level because if we’ve spent months student the leadership team, the ELT level.
Now they’re rolling it out and they’re recruiting into the conversation, these 425 directors and VPs and by the way, we just wrapped up that session with them last Friday, at the time we’re recording this and they came out of it going, my gosh, the directors are going. I’ve never had access to the ELT like that. Never been able to interact, they didn’t say it this way, but you could tell, I don’t feel like my voice was heard the way it has been the last four weeks. So now you’re moving down the org chart. Guess what the next step is the next layer. So, that’s an extreme example of a very large organization, but you take a company of 300 or a company of 3000 and it’s the same principle.
Caleb Stevens: Yes. And it reminds me of the phrase people support our world that they help create they may not make the final decision, but if they feel like their voice is heard and they have some level of input that creates buy-in long term. And I would guess too, when you talk about transactional versus a transformational leader, you need transformational leaders at the middle management level to bring the vision to life across the whole company because it’s just status quo if it’s transformational at the top, but status quo in the middle, how much change are you going to make.
Russ Hill: A hundred percent? And the phrase that we so often hear our clients referred to, especially our fortune 100 companies that we work with, the frozen middle, you might have heard that those leaders in the middle, we call it the clay layer, the roots go down from the ELT end of the next level. And then they kind of hit this clay and we can’t get the roots to go deeper in the organization. And how do we get that to change? Well, a lot of it’s recruiting them into the conversation and there are a lot of things that sucked were horrible about this pandemic, but one of the benefits of it is the change in the way we work in multiple ways where we can do this virtually you don’t have to fly everybody in. For me we just did it with this manufacturing company got 450 liters nobody got on a plane, and nobody came off the factory floor. All they did was log into a virtual meeting one hour a week and then went and consumed some content in their own time in between the meetings and we’re having these kinds of conversations. So, we can work our way through the organization and impact the culture and get buy-in at a lower level of the organization. More efficiently, more effectively than we ever, leaders, 10 years ago, would’ve been dying to have the ability to reach deeper in the organization the way we can now with the tools we have virtually.
Caleb Stevens: That’s a good segue into something I wanted to ask you about COVID. How have you seen the best leaders navigate COVID because you talk about clarity? I mean, my goodness, how hard has it been for leaders to offer clarity to their team over the past three years? And what I’ve sort of landed on is you can’t offer everybody certainty, but you can’t offer them the clarity that you do have. How have you seen the best leaders navigate? I can’t offer certainty, but I can’t offer the clarity that I do have, but even that takes intention.
Russ Hill: Yes. And what you’re speaking to is transparency and so nobody likes driving and fog. When we get behind the wheel, what we want is visibility. Please show me the road ahead. Because if I’ve got fog or I’ve got a limited field of vision, I’ve got to dramatically reduce the speed and I’m tense and I’ve got all these concerns about the danger because whenever I join an organization or I log into a meeting for the first time, the first human behavior I’m most concerned about is threat detection. Is it safe for me to be here? Am I in the right place? Am I looking stupid? Can I speak up? How’s that going to go? And so, I want visibility, I want to feel safe I want comfort. As sometimes as a leader, we can’t provide that. And the example you’re using Caleb of you think about those first few weeks or months after the pandemic began, who the crud had clarity, right? None of us did. It’s a great point and some things happen in our companies as senior leader leaves all of a sudden. We got a text yesterday from an executive we thought was in line to be CEO eventually of a Fortune 50 company.
And all of a sudden the executive team was shocked yesterday when he announced his departure, I’m leaving, whoa, what we thought you were a lifetime person here. And so that creates uncertainty so it’s not just a pandemic or a global event there are things in our industry. Think about real estate right now, how much certainty is there in the real estate market? Like very little. And so when the field of vision is reduced, what I do as a leader is two things. I increase my visibility and I increase my transparency. In other words, my team wants to see me, they want visibility of me because they’re wondering what I’m thinking. Am I okay? Where’s the leadership team at? And so I increased my visibility and transparency to sound like this team. We know you’re concerned about this we know that you aren’t sure about this, whatever it is, you’re validating the emotion you know they’re feeling. You’re not pretending, there is nothing to see here, nothing’s wrong with the market, or just put your head down and go execute and everything’s going to be alright. I was talking to somebody that’s a developer and, and builds a bunch of homes in the west the other day.
And he was talking about his sales team and he’s a friend, a great person, but this is a terrible leadership tactic. And he was talking about, yes, we met with our sales team I just told him again, real estate. He’s like, just put your head down like, so it’s never been this good, it’s awesome. And I’m thinking, that’s not what your team wants to hear. What they want to hear is man, things have changed it’s not as good as it was three weeks ago, three months ago. And they want you to hear, that we’re not sure where this is headed, but here’s what we do know, and here’s what we are working on. So, whatever level of transparency I can offer and then visibility so they know that they’re seeing me because a lot of leaders when something hits pandemic or a downward spiral or a downward turn in the market, whatever it is, they tend to go into hiding. And it’s not intentional necessarily they’re super busy and they don’t have certainty, but it just causes that organization like a driver and fog to slow down or even completely stop moving.
Caleb Stevens: Yes. That’s good. Well, as we wrap up here, I’d love to get your take on culture and we talked a little bit about it earlier in the show, you know we’re bankers, Russ. So, we tend to think of culture as, the soft stuff, how do you quantify culture? Is that just the bean bags in the break room and PTO we’re all kind to each other and it’s a fuzzy place to work? Culture, can you put a number on that? We care about the P&L and balance sheet. How do you define culture? Because when you say results, I think that gets our attention as bankers well man, I want to get results. So where’s the connection there?
Russ Hill: Right. That’s where the conversation about culture has to start and you’re right Caleb people think of it, there is a good number that you mentioned that where culture and people are like, I need to hit the pause button on the podcast now we’re getting into the soft stuff. No, think at Chick-fil-A they’re going, yes, cultures the soft stuff. We’ll get to it when we can get to it. You think at Southwest airlines are going yes, culture, if you guys have time to deal with culture, you might dig into it. No, it’s their competitive advantage it’s everything to them. And so, when you think about culture, the first place that you start is with the results. I’ve got two levers to pull as a leader to affect the results. One is a strategy and by the way, one of these without the other is not very valuable. So I’ve got a strategy, I got to build the business plan I got to come up with, what are we going to do? What’s the plan for the next 12, 24, or 36 months? Where are we headed? So that strategy, the other one is culture. How do I need our people to think and act? I’ll give you an example, just too kind of illustrate this. So the gym that I go to is just a few miles from my house been going there, and our family’s been going for years.
So you used to go and walk in and, and your check-in, you scan your phone or your gym membership card. If you go into the gym and you scan that and you go in and you do whatever you’re going to do, get on a machine and do some cardio, or you’re doing some strength training, you’re going to go, lifts some weights, whatever it is. So you walk in and there’s nothing notable about our gym it’s just like, whatever okay, nothing meaningful about it. Then one day I’m walking in and there’s somebody at the counter and they’re like, “Hey, how’s it going? Welcome in.” Like super friendly the moment I open the door and they’re at the desk right there at the front entrance. And I’m thinking, that’s nice, they hired somebody super friendly. Then I scan my phone and they’re like, “Hey Russ. How is it? How’s your day going? What are you doing today? What are you working on?” I said, “Well, I’m here, I’m going to do some strength training, chest day, whatever it is. Like, “Okay, great workout. If you need anything, let us know”. So as I’m going to the bench, what am I thinking Caleb about that employee?
Caleb Stevens: You’re thinking, huh? Where did he come from?
Russ Hill: Right. They hired someone super friendly or he’s in a good mood, they promoted somebody, and he’s super excited about his job. So then it happens the next day and it’s somebody else. Then it happens the next day and it’s somebody else then on my way out, they’re “Hey, have a great afternoon. Thanks so much for coming in. How was your workout?” So something shifted what happened in that location by the way and it’s been like two and a half years since that happened. Same experience and in a gym membership, if you know anything about that industry, it’s like restaurants and retail, massive turnover. The same people aren’t working at the gym, 50% turnover, in however many months. And so the people have changed yet the culture is staying the same. Why is that? Guess what I bet one of their metrics is. What do you think one of their key metrics Caleb at that gym is?
Caleb Stevens: That’s a good point…
Russ Hill: Tied to my experience. What do you think they’re measuring that’s affecting that?
Caleb Stevens: Probably something related to customer engagement. I would think too or…
Russ Hill: Yes, satisfaction.
Caleb Stevens: Yes.
Russ Hill: Yes. So, when you join our organization, you work at that gym. I don’t know this, I’m telling you this. This is my theory based on how I know this works inside organizations. But the gyms, not client, and this is a chain out in the Western US so they’re all over a bunch of states and it’s the same place I’ve gone into multiple locations when I travel same experience. So, what happens is they, you join the team and they say, Hey, by the way, here are the most important things. One of our most important metrics at this gym is member satisfaction. So to affect the culture I start with, what I define. So at Chick-fil-A, what’s one of the most important metrics, customer satisfaction, so McDonald’s tracking customer satisfaction I don’t think so. Maybe they are I don’t know, but have work to do, but Chick-fil-A that is it. Same thing you think united airlines is tracking customer satisfaction, not the way that Delta or Southwest is. And so, you start with the metric, Hey team, you’re joining the team, this is one of our most important that’s clarity, most important things. Then you need to help them get aligned to it back to my clarity, and alignment movements. So, alignment is, do you understand how you affect it? The way you affect it is in the drive-through, we need you to ask people their first name, and we need you to tell them, it’s my pleasure. At the gym when they walk through the door, we need you to be friendly you affect, your job is not to check people in. Your job is to deliver 90% customer satisfaction.
Russ Hill: You see in the switch here Caleb?
Russ Hill: So, your job is not just to help people with, get their withdrawals or deposits in the bank. Your job is customer satisfaction and here’s the metric how do you think you affect it? Because the most effective way to have that conversation is to ask them the new team member or the long-time team member, how do you affect it? “Well, I do this.” “Great.” And then I’m getting into movement, which is okay. So, how do we need people to think? Let’s define that when we hire them let’s interview them for that way of thinking. When we promote them let’s promote them based on the fact that they lean into that. So, that’s culture and in my experience, it’s not the soft side, it’s not optional, it is a competitive advantage. The reason most leaders are not most what the data shows is a lot of leaders will say culture is, a soft skill, and the reason they say that is they don’t know how to define it and they don’t know how to manage it. And so, what I’ve given you here is some high-level, how do you define it? And then we haven’t gotten into, but we talk about this in leading 30, then you have to start, well, how do I manage that on a day-to-day basis? How do I manage culture in my one-on-ones or our weekly meetings or those sorts of things, you have to continually manage it as well.
Caleb Stevens: Yes. Well, that’s a great segue if folks want to find out more about what you offer for leaders. If the community bankers listening are saying, wow, Russ, I need more of this. Where do I find it? How can they engage with you leadin 30? What are all the resources you offer and how can they get in touch?
Russ Hill: Yes. Leadin30.com is the best way we just had Utah in the state of Utah, the whole Utah bankers association sent a bunch of leaders from various financial institutions through, as I said, we don’t charge anything. And so if you go to leadin30.com, you’ll see that there is, I think the list price on its 497, $497 per participant now. But if you direct message me on LinkedIn and we’re making some changes to that sheet, we’ll get you in for free and we do it every six weeks, we kick off leadin 30, every six weeks. So, we had a credit union in the Seattle area that put 40 leaders through it. So, whether you go through it or not, doesn’t matter there are a lot of principles that you can see, you can see videos of leaders that have been through it. You can see everyone I’ve been mentioning Chick-fil-A DN Turner. Who’s a longtime C H R O head of human resources at Chick-fil-A.?
Caleb Stevens: Yes, we had her on the show probably a year ago.
Russ Hill: Did you? Yes. She’s awesome. So, DN Turners in there as well as Francis Fry, she’s a Harvard Business School Professor. She went on a sabbatical when Uber called and said they were desperate several years ago and said, can you help us turn around our culture? So we got interviews with a bunch of executives like that, that are in leadin 30, as well as our team so that’s the best way. And then LinkedIn, Caleb, just search Russ Hill and leadin 30. You’ll find me and I’d love to connect with anybody who wants to.
Caleb Stevens: Well, I think we could go for another hour if you let me, but want to respect your time, Russ. Thanks for joining us. We’ll link to leading 30 in the show notes and we appreciate you being here.
Russ Hill: Hey Caleb, you’re a great host man. I’ve been on a lot of podcasts I appreciate the questions, and I appreciate your efficiency and asking them and giving me a chance to kind of share what I’ve learned some observations, and working in this space for a few years. So thanks again, I’m honored by the invitation to speak with you.
This week we are taking a look back at 5 of our favorite episodes we recorded in 2022. We hope you enjoy! The views, information, or opinions expressed during this show are solely those of the participants involved and do not necessarily represent those of SouthState Bank and its employees. SouthState Bank, N.A. – Member…
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