Truth Hurts, but It Also Builds

Kolditz analyzes and surveys leadership in dangerous circumstances, such as sky-diving outfits and units in Iraq, and writes treatises applying the lessons to the private, public and social sectors. He is also the coach of Army's sport parachuting team. He argues high-risk environments are valuable crucibles in which real leaders are forged, because in "stark, unforgiving reality," people unerringly sense phoniness or someone who seems less than fully aware. Under threat, he suggested, they naturally gravitate to more authentic leaders.

Studies of leadership have found the value of truth-telling increases with the risk of the endeavor. In a low-risk activity like business, an organization can get by with inauthenticity from a leader and not suffer, but a parachute squad prizes frankness because the penalty for crisis-denial is death.

Where does the NFL rank, in terms of risk? Probably somewhere between bond trading and parachuting. The players are under physical threat, and the stakes in terms of their "life savings" are also high.

Nobody dies if a team loses, but livelihoods and bodies are on the line. It's therefore imperative Zorn be perceived as authentic by his players, even if they don't like what he says. Which they apparently do: Out of the playoffs and with nothing at stake, the Redskins didn't quit on Zorn, and instead responded with two of their stronger performances to close out the season.

But finishing 8-8 doesn't mean he has completely won them over, either. The transition to new values can be awkward and take some time, especially if the team members are unaccustomed to Zorn's type of confrontation, Kolditz noted. In some cultures "there is too much of an emphasis on face-saving to withstand that level of candor," he said.

Face-saving is the issue that has caused the most trouble for Zorn. Most notoriously, he publicly called out Clinton Portis for missed assignments after the running back sat out practice, nursing injuries. The sensitive but egotistical running back exploded, trashing his coach on John Thompson's radio show. The NFL code seems to be that private honesty is okay, but public honesty is dicey. Zorn essentially invited the world into internal team issues, and some players didn't like it.

But according to Kolditz, Zorn did the right thing, because public exposure of uneven habits are necessary to curing them in the organization as a whole.

Whether it was calling out Portis for being in the wrong place on a play, or the rookie receivers for being lazy and running the wrong routes, or Campbell for making a poor read, Zorn's policy of public accountability unquestionably chafed. But in Kolditz's in-extremis manual, silence and privacy are not options when confronting mistakes.

"If the wrong kind of behavior is happening on the team and the coach is allowing it without talking about it openly, then he's effectively endorsing it," Kolditz said.

There are of course a thousand subtle and nontransferable differences between Zorn's job as a head coach and Kolditz's squad leaders who are in extremis. Even so, truthfulness promises to be a core issue for Zorn going forward.

"Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of the them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened," Winston Churchill observed. Not Zorn. Whether he is in Washington to stay or not, he won't be hurrying off from the truth.