How Leaders Finally Walk Away

This essay was originally published in Time magazine.

President Biden is being celebrated among Democrats for his superb tour of duty and for putting the nation’s interests over his own by stepping out of the campaign.

Political pundits, wealthy donors, and prominent fellow political leaders were bewildered as to why President Biden resisted their pressure that he leave the campaign for so long. These critics didn’t realize that their pressure to push him out was backfiring. It appeared to take the confidential private reflection with trusted advisors to make the difference.

The difficult decision to exit his close race for re-election showed the torment I have observed regularly over the past 40 years researching transitions. My insight draws upon decades of study of top leadership exits since my 1989 book, The Hero’s Farewell (Oxford University Press), a study on top leaders’ exits across sectors, countries, continents, and centuries.

Top leaders are driven by two distinctive barriers to their departure: what I call Heroic Mission and Heroic Stature, both of which many Biden advisors and antagonists did not understand when trying to persuade Biden to leave the campaign.

Heroic Mission is a leader’s quest for a legacy in history with lasting impact. Biden saw the preservation of democracy as his vital purpose in his late career and sees Donald Trump as a great threat to American values of the rule of law, Constitutional governance, and respect for core governmental institutions like the courts, the military, government service as well as global trade, immigration, and international security alliances.

Driven by this elevated quest for immortality in reputation, he chafed at what he saw as short-term anxieties over his failed debate performance, certain that he would prove his valor in the weeks ahead. Biden was never a quitter, from his days as a child with a bad stutter and a family with uncertain income. He was used to rising above adversity and learned to discount the cynicism of self-interested party critics.

However, until this weekend, he would not quit. He always believed in challenging fate and resented those trying to deny him his proven chances at resilience. Despite life’s adversity, Biden rose above it, accustomed to being underestimated.

At one of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute CEO Summits in 1991, former President Jimmy Carter sobbed before the assembled corporate titans confiding about the trauma he suffered by “being fired by the American public,” as he discussed his then new focus on Habitat for Humanity as well as his initiatives advancing global health and election reform. He promptly got a standing ovation from this largely Republican crowd and an outpouring of financial support. Dwight Eisenhower, in leaving office, was rapidly embraced by JFK as a mentor, despite JFK’s victory over Richard Nixon, Eisenhower’s protégé.

The quest for Heroic Stature is the drive to differentiate themselves as unique in society. Top leaders regularly confide in me that they are worried about moving from topping the venerable “Who’s Who” list of influencers to falling to onlookers’ question, “Who’s That?” Few top leaders are used to being one of the crowd. Top leaders want to be seen as unique, to differentiate them from the crowd and often recreate a heroic image of themselves. No one ever called Alexander III of Macedonia Alexander the Great until he invented that image himself and fabricated a lineage to such mythic leaders as Odysseus and Achilles—even believing it himself.

Through his entire for 54-year career, since age 29, Biden has been defined as an elected public official, since serving on the New Castle County Commission in 1970 and then in the U.S. Senate since 1972 until becoming Vice President in 2008. Imagining himself out of office leaves him with no easy identity. A violinist can retire from the orchestra into the role as a solo performer or member of periodic chamber quartets. However that transition from the orchestra is far harder for the conductor, as the conductor’s instrument for contribution was the orchestra itself, the organization left behind.

When Johnny Carson retired as the undisputed king of late-night entertainment in 1992, he declared, just as his audience peaked, “Everything comes to an end, nothing lasts forever. Thirty years is enough. It’s time to get out while you’re still working on top of your game and you’re still working well.” While pointing proudly to the new comedians he’d launched as successors, when Bette Midler sang a farewell tribute to him on his last show, he cried on camera.

These exits of such devoted public figures are emotional affairs not just the rational tradeoffs of game theorists. Too often leadership succession is focused on the rising stars and total disregard for the exiting incumbents, however heroic they were. Those who succeeded in reaching Biden to encourage reflection, did so with appreciation and sensitivity instead of threats and humiliation. Many celebrate Biden’s wisdom over his decision. I salute him over his lessons to us on the succession process.