A Seat for Her, You & Me Too
And a story about formalities, optics & 'the Daddy Chair.'
Hi there. How have you been? Like me, are you still thinking about chairs?
The newsletter has been on a brief hiatus while I conduct interviews, but it will be returning next week with Mahvash Siddiqui and Olimar Maisonet-Guzmán kicking off spring conversations.
Until then and in the spirit of who gets a seat (and who sits where), I want to share a story about the importance (or not) of mundane-seeming formalities and optics.
Earning the respect of her team, Ambassador Barbara Bodine once told me, meant agreeing to sit in the “Daddy Chair.”
Once Barbara went from deputy to boss in a particular position, she began deploying subtle cues to demonstrate her leadership style. In particular, she made a point of sitting in the middle of the long conference table.
“This is counterterrorism, so everyone else in the room is a guy. We’re talking Seals and Delta Force — very wonderful people but these are all variations of ‘guys with guns,’” she says. “I’m the only girl, so when we’d have staff meetings, I'd sit in the middle of the conference table so I could see everyone and everyone could see me.”
Somehow, she sensed something wasn’t working. After weeks of watching her team fidgeting and looking visibly uncomfortable during morning meetings, she called in a trusted deputy.
“Ma’am, you need to sit at the head of the table. There needs to be that very clear hierarchy and you show that by sitting in the daddy chair,” he told her.
“And I remember thinking: ‘honestly?’Don’t you understand the more inclusive atmosphere I’m creating? I’m doing the good thing,” she says now, laughing.
So the next staff meeting, Barbara went to the head of the table and settled into the daddy chair.
She could feel the difference. Nothing but the chair she sat in changed, the mood became more relaxed and comfortable.
It was a cultural learning curve — no different than discerning proper protocol before stepping onto foreign soil. The military has always been a culture unto itself. And Barbara had always been adept at navigating new customs and protocol.
“I learned so much from that one silly moment. Watch the body language, figure it out. And if you need to change chairs, change chairs,” she says. “It wasn’t that they were looking for a bully boss, it was what they were used to and that’s what I did. If it’s that’s easy I can do that.”
It should also be underscored that Barbara was quick to earn their respect by not trying to do what they do, unlike so many of her predecessors. In fact, a central aim of her job was to make their jobs easier by greasing the wheels with foreign embassies and governments. And they loved her for it.
Initially more than skeptical of a civilian—and a woman—in charge, the overwhelming majority on the team came to appreciate the arrangement. Unlike quite a few others who had held the same position, Barbara wasn’t a Seal wannabe.
As her second-in-command, a military officer, eventually confided: The last thing they want is another overweight white guy running around pretending he’s Rambo. Barbara didn’t need to play with the big toys, though she knew how they worked and exactly where — and at who — they might need to be aimed.
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