Clarity in Crisis

Leadership Lessons from the CIA

Marc E. Polymeropoulos

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781400223879
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

Meet your next crisis head on and get through it stronger than ever by using the hard-earned strategies and core principles from Marc Polymeropoulos, a highly decorated, 26-year operations officer with the CIA.

Marc Polymeropoulos has had to live with the consequences of decisions made under the most high-stress circumstances you can imagine as a senior intelligence officer in the CIA, retiring from his 26 years of service as one of the CIA's most decorated field officers.

Though your crisis situations may not entail international counter terrorism as Marc's did, in our age of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, the consequences of mishandling a crisis can escalate quickly, leaving irreparable damage to a company's reputation and bottom line in its wake.

In Clarity in Crisis, Marc shares how true leaders need to lead in and through times of crisis and thrive under conditions of ambiguity, rather than message their way out or duck from hard decisions.

This book provides proven strategies and core principles that leaders can apply to meet any crisis head on and lead through it, including:

• The critical elements to managing crisis, such as knowing who you can always count on to execute under high-stress situations.
• An understanding of the importance of following and stressing key fundamentals and avoiding shortcuts that often do more harm than good.
• Implementation guidance from the "Mad Minute" section at the end of each chapter that summarizes key points and action items you can begin applying right away.
• How to gain confidence that you are ready for the next crisis and embrace any situation with no fear.

Far from mere theory, Clarity in Crisis outlines the unique mindset and strategies Marc himself practiced and honed throughout his remarkable career. The core principles outlined in these pages will help you find unshakeable clarity in crisis and lead when others want to flee.

ONE

WHAT IS GREAT LEADERSHIP? CHARLIE’S WAY

I’M SWEATING PROFUSELY in body armor, wearing night vision goggles. The helicopter is loud, and my thoughts are racing. I think of my family, who I know are so proud of me for volunteering for this assignment but are dreading that the unthinkable will happen to me. I think of Darren, another CIA officer I once led, who was in Afghanistan as well and killed here two years earlier, and his words to me when he left: he would make me proud. I never saw him again. I have been warned about indirect fire, unexploded mines, and insider threats. I’m flying into a remote location, where a group of American intelligence officers I have never met are waiting for my arrival. My task is brutally honest: lead a group of men and women in gathering intelligence against our foremost terrorist foes. We are the tip of the spear for the CIA in this never-ending fight against al-Qaida. I am our leader for the next year. I’ve done this before, years ago with Charlie, in Iraq. This is another frontline intelligence collection mission, so none of this is new. I got this—being in charge, the physical danger, the discipline needed to overcome fatigue, death, and failure. I am not a member of the US military; rather, I am a CIA officer trained in the art of human intelligence collection—recruiting and running spies who can operate comfortably in war zones. But a question still gnaws at me over and over as the helicopter is on its final approach to the landing zone: Am I really ready for this leadership challenge?

Twelve months later . . .

The helicopter lifts off, and my emotions are running wild. I am properly kitted out this time and look like I belong in these mountains. The bushy beard, the longer hair. So different from a year ago. There are tears in my eyes. I just said farewell to both the American CIA heroes that I led and our local allies whose bravery I admired. I honestly believe they will miss me, that I put it all on the line, and that they know how much I cared for them. I worry that any one of them will get hurt in the near future. We accomplished a great deal in the year, and our enemy is far weaker and less of a threat to the United States than when we arrived. I think of my family, how I made them proud, and how now is the time for me to return home to be a husband and a father. Finally, I recall that initial flight a year prior, when I had asked myself how I would lead such a group of intelligence warriors and if I were ready for such a challenge. I smile and nod. I never stopped learning, and I know it will take many months for the leadership lessons to sink in. I take heart from a colleague of mine, a far more accomplished leader than I, a legend in the paramilitary ranks, who told me upon my departure, “When it’s all said and done, you did it right.” I also know that Charlie would have been proud. He would have had a glass of bourbon in one hand, a cigar in another, and would have given me a big bear hug.

WHAT IS GREAT LEADERSHIP? I asked myself this very question many times as a young CIA operations officer, so much so that it became a goal of mine to find the right answer.

First and foremost, I think of a mentor of mine, a senior officer we will call Charlie. He was always hesitant to accept individual awards as he believed only the group that he led was worthy of such praise. He relished the successes of his subordinates, gave praise to others for heroic actions he accomplished, opened his home to officers who were under his command, and always had a smile on his face. From kings, prime ministers, and the heads of foreign liaison services, to the everyday street sweeper in the back alleys, Charlie was known just by his first name throughout the Middle East. From the day I walked into the headquarters building, he has had the greatest impact on my career not only in terms of what he taught me about the art of espionage but also about caring for the people under his command.

My most important memory of Charlie, which I have never told anyone publicly before, is from late summer 2003 after we had returned from Iraq. I was not in a good mental state. My wife feared (correctly) that I was suffering from some form of PTSD due to recurring nightmares of dead, charred, dismembered bodies that would jar me awake at night and the anger that would cause me to lash out during the day at the most mundane issues, such as the mail being late or the garbage truck missing a pickup. After the intensity of being on the ground during the initial fight for Baghdad, running agents while working closely with naval special warfare units, I was not well. Professional help was in order, but Charlie first suggested that our team have a reunion on Cape Cod, the location of his beloved summer cottage. All of us, husbands, wives, and children included, spent two weeks decompressing on the beach over lobsters and barbecues. It was a magical time for me and my family that ultimately helped in my healing. I needed to feel safe, to find time to talk about what I experienced. Amazingly enough, it worked, as my nightmares subsided. Charlie understood that we were still in need of being together as a team, even back in the United States.

Great leaders promote family values.

When Charlie recently and suddenly passed away, the outpouring of love and emotion at his funeral spanned generations of CIA officers as well as many in the Arab world he had come in contact with. He was a true icon of leadership at CIA. I will never forget him.

Unfortunately, not all our senior officers were as outstanding as Charlie. Some officers constantly berated their subordinates, ruling through fear and intimidation. I remember an officer openly cursing at me during a meeting with the White House, after which close friends at work had to talk me off the ledge from quitting when I returned to my desk at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Other senior officers had unpredictable cruel streaks that would bite all of us without warning. I’m pleased to note that most of these types were slowly but surely drummed out of the CIA, as their time had certainly passed.

Even though the knowledge I acquired while working with both outstanding senior officers and those who were just plain dreadful equipped me with a clear view of what type of leader I wanted to become one day, it did not provide me with a complete answer to my main question: What is great leadership?

Over time, my many experiences in the dark and dangerous streets of the third world countries did provide me an answer. My career in the CIA was a thrilling one filled with lots of ups and downs, but still one that made me feel accomplished and proud of the role I played not just in the agency but also in the world. From running an agent who caught spies betraying the United States, to flying into Baghdad with naval special warfare units in 2003 and leading the hunt for Iraqi regime high-value targets (HVTs) using an operational network I had helped to develop, to helping the CIA hunt down and neutralize the leadership of al-Qaida across the globe, to eventually overseeing operations for the CIA across Europe and Eurasia during Russian attempts to subvert our democracy—I had a front-row view of many major world events over the last three decades. As I would always tell my junior officers, it was not difficult to get up each morning regardless of where I was in the world. I was fired up to come to work every day in my career. “Game on,” I would say to myself each morning as I walked into one of our overseas facilities or at our headquarters, passing by the famed CIA Memorial Wall, with stars etched into the white Alabama marble signifying the 133 CIA officers killed in the line of duty.

The Officer and the Agent

As noted in the introduction, the primary role of an operations officer is to spot, assess, develop, recruit, and run agents. Considering the combination of secrecy, unpredictability, and danger inherent in the work, what pushes someone to become an agent? What motivates an individual to decide to commit espionage against his or her country? Historically, people who have taken such a step have done so for several reasons: from purely ideological ones—during the Cold War, for example, the global struggle between communism and capitalism—to financial reasons. Perhaps it is out of desperation for money they need to give their children a better education or to cover health-care costs for a sick relative. And sometimes it boils down to narcissism and a desire to get revenge against colleagues or systems that they feel have wronged them, such as a glass ceiling in their country that prevents them because of their minority status from getting a promotion. I would also add that, in the case of war zone operations, a primal motivator has been to jump on board the side with the greatest firepower at the time, which was the position the US occupied during its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. The role of a US intelligence officer is to identify such vulnerabilities and what might be motivating a target, and then over time exploit them to convince the individual to provide the United States with secret information. It comes down to the most basic type of human interpersonal relationships. I liked to call it a romance, and then a marriage.

Charlie was the first senior CIA officer to truly teach me about the art of recruiting and handling agents. His skill in making an agent feel that they were the most important person on the planet was legendary. Don’t be patronizing, yet don’t be a pushover. Treat the agent with respect, yet be firm and make sure you are in control. Get to know your agent and his or her family. Charlie was the flat-out best operations officer I have ever encountered.

A recruitment is an incredibly intimate relationship. In the end, you are looking at someone who says, “I am putting my life in your hands.” Now let me be clear: we, meaning the US government, give them a great deal in return, whether it be finances or some other reward. But in the end, the responsibility that a young operations officer has in a relationship with a recruited agent is like no other job in the US government.

I was introduced to one of my favorite agents of my career when I was sent to another country to train this agent on secret communications systems. He proved amazingly resilient and upbeat during the training sessions. During his time on the streets, he proved highly disciplined at sending in reports, providing us a unique view on the inner workings of his country’s rotten government. Our agent loved the American way of life and the political and economic freedoms that America stood for. This is what drove him, as he felt that one day his country’s leadership would fall and that he would help usher in a new era in which the American ideal could prosper. I never met him for long on the streets of his country, as even brief meetings were considered dangerous, yet he never missed our monthly meeting in more than two years of internal handling. Not one. During a meeting out of country, in which we were able to speak and interact more freely, he provided me with words that I have remembered to this day.

“Marc, never forget, my life and the life of my family is in your hands. You may forget me day to day as you are busy with your life, as you go to a restaurant at night with your wife, watch a soccer match on TV, or enjoy time with your family on the weekends, and then you return home to the United States for the month during the summer.”

He then looked at me so intently, it felt as if he were staring into my soul. There was a long silence between us. “But make no mistake, I think of you, actually you personally, each and every day. If you make one single mistake in our meeting and communication arrangements, I may die. And my family will suffer as well. You have to be perfect, and I need to always assure myself that this is the case, so I think of you all the time.”

His words shook me for days. The weight of the world had been placed upon me. His speech fueled my desire to keep him productive and alive, employing the highest traditions of the CIA. When our agent ultimately elected to leave his country for a new life, I finally breathed easier as I knew he and his family would never be harmed. He was a hero to his country, to the United States, and to me. Pretty heavy stuff for a young operations officer. I’m not sure that those in the media who, at times, denounce the CIA actually understand what we do and the responsibilities we have, both in collecting critical information from our agents and, just as important, keeping them alive. It’s a deeply personal business. The stories of every agent I ever recruited and handled, most whom I met on dark street corners or conducted brush passes with in dusty alleyways, are forever seared into my memory.

Great Leadership

After almost three decades of working at CIA, first learning from legends such as Charlie and then gaining experience as I moved throughout the Middle East, I finally have a good idea of what it takes to lead in high-stress environments and what failure can really mean. Over time and a great deal of trial and error—some of it unfortunately involving the loss of human life—I refined my own leadership philosophy. A leadership philosophy that is as applicable to other lines of work as it was successful in the intelligence world.

Imagine you’re a football player on a team preparing for the biggest season of your career. Or you’re on an emergency room team made up of doctors, nurses, and administrative staff, working in a high-crime area with dim hope for relief over the next six months. Or you’re a junior sales executive who wants to advance in your career and sees a promotion around the corner, but you’re not clear on what it will take to lead a team and practice great leadership. My principles will help people in all these circumstances and in all walks of life. When you come right down to it, leadership is about inspiring and getting the best from others—and no matter what line of business we’re in, we are all in the People Business. This transcends every field and every technical specialty, and the lessons I’ve learned from leading my fellow officers and field staff are directly translatable to every leadership scenario, including yours, and they can be applied to groups as small as two and as big as two thousand. So, what is great leadership?

Great leadership is the art of willing those around you to conduct activities that are:

• Righteous—legal, ethical, and moral. Great leaders cannot ask their subordinates to break the law or commit a crime. The tasks must have a higher purpose and be within the bounds of our legal and moral compass.
• Difficult—the task at hand is not your everyday chore. It is a task that may entail sacrifice, risk, both physical and emotional, and something out of your comfort zone.
• Selfless—many in your group would never choose to tackle the task on their own, and you must never ask others to do what you would not.
• Communicable—the task must be easy to explain within the group, and you mus...