Following Harry’s blog post about President Biden’s decision to step out of the 2024 US presidential elections, Fortune interviewed Harry about his take on the role of leadership development. Here’s an excerpt:
Joe Biden’s 2024 election exit presents a cautionary tale for corporate America about leadership development
Whether a chief executive or a manager, one of a leader’s primary responsibilities is the development of their people.
“You can gauge a CEO’s success by whether they have several people in the wings who could immediately take their place if, God forbid, they got hit by a truck or wanted to step down tomorrow,” says Harry Kraemer, a clinical professor of leadership at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and the former CEO of health care equipment and services company Baxter International.
The same goes for the President of the United States, he says.
After a disastrous debate performance earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he would drop out of the 2024 presidential race. He later endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris in a follow-up post. Despite pressure from top Democrats and donors to step aside, Biden had repeatedly stated he would stay in the race, believing he was the only candidate who could beat Donald Trump in November. His decision to take himself out of the running comes less than a month before the Democratic National Convention in August and less than four months before Election Day, leaving Democrats scrambling to fill the leadership void.
When Biden assumed office in January 2021, he was 78 years old, while Harris was 56. Considering his age, he should have been proactive about succession planning from the beginning, according to Kraemer.
“The right thing to have done then would be to say, ‘One of the main things to achieve in the next four years is making sure my VP has all the visibility, she’s well-prepared, and people know who she is so that by the time it’s 2024, and I’m 82, everything is set up for her to take the job. That’s leadership principle No. 1: self-awareness, self-reflection, and genuine humility,” he says.
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