By Withdrawing From the Election, Joe Biden Just Taught a Powerful Lesson in Leadership. Every CEO Should Pay Attention
Joe Biden is withdrawing from the presidential race, and giving his support to vice president Kamala Harris. It’s a sad end to an impressive political career, one that allowed him to help shape this nation. It must have been a wrenching decision to make, and it’s sad news for those who admire Biden, including me.
But it’s also an unforgettable example of leadership, wisdom, and courage. Every leader should pay attention. The time may come when you’re faced with a similar decision, when you’re forced to choose between what you long to do–what your heart tells you to do–and what you know is right for your organization and your team.
I’m going to be honest. I did not want to write this column. In fact, the first time my editor asked me to do it, I declined. At the time, Biden’s decision to step down from the race seemed increasingly inevitable but hadn’t happened yet. I was hoping hard it never would.
From forgiving student loan debt to appointing Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, I’ve been mostly impressed with his performance as president. And, despite the recent lapses so horribly on display during the first presidential debate, I believe our nation would have been in good hands with him at the helm for another four years.
About those lapses. There’s a part of me, and I think all of us, that does not want to admit how much of ourselves that smart, good-hearted people can lose as we age. When Biden, who’d been harried by nagging accusations of plagiarism, dropped out of the presidential race in 1988, it was with the clear intention that he would return. ”There will be other presidential campaigns, and I’ll be there, out front,” he said back then when he announced his withdrawal.
Our working lives are finite.
This time, there’s no future campaign in sight for the 81-year-old president. Watching this formidably intelligent man go blank and lose his train of thought while hundreds of cameras were trained on him is a stark reminder to us all. Our working lives are always finite, because the day will come when we are no longer able to perform them, or at least perform them as well as we would want. And when that day comes, it will take a great deal of emotional intelligence and courage to make the choice that Biden has now made.
In passing his support to Harris, he’s also done something every company leader also must do: Choose a successor in the event that you are not able to continue in your role. It’s something Donald Trump has also finally done–perhaps pondering his mortality after an assassination attempt–by choosing J.D. Vance as his running mate.
Nine years ago, when Hillary Clinton’s poll numbers were dropping, some leaders among the Democrats urged then-vice president Biden to join the race. He mulled the question, but ultimately declined. “Nobody has a right, in my view, to seek that office unless they’re willing to give it 110 percent of who they are,” he said.
Biden has given 110 percent of who he is to this job for the past four years, and while he’s willing to do that for another four, he’s also recognized the reality that he now has less to give. So instead he’s given 110 percent by searching his heart, bravely facing his reality, and doing what he knows is right.