By Steve Moran

It was clear from the moment the first shot rang out at the Trump rally in Pennsylvania that there was a massive security failure on the part of the Secret Service. In the hours and days following, the number of obvious failure points grew exponentially.

Kimberly Cheatle, the now ex-head of the Secret Service, quickly became the poster child in how not to lead. It was a failure so massive that it seems unlikely that even if she had done everything perfectly she could have survived, but instead it seemed as if she did nearly everything she could to make it worse, to make her leadership look worse.

It all culminated yesterday (July 22, 2024) when she appeared before the House Oversight Committee. She clearly had been heavily prepped for the hearing, but by people who either were incompetent or were setting her up.

Your Advisors

This might be the biggest single lesson for every leader. The House hearing was going to be tough no matter what, but what we saw was an unmitigated disaster, where Cheatle made herself look completely incompetent. She was so bad that a number of people I talked to felt badly for her, though none wanted her to stay.

If she had said to each and every question things like …

  • “The investigation is still ongoing, but this is what we know so far …,” and then given good, solid information.
  • “These are the specific things we have done to make future events safer ….”
  • “We have suspended these people who were responsible for this event while we investigate ….”

It seems all but certain that she has surrounded herself with advisors who only told her what she wanted to hear rather than what she needed to hear. Honestly it is a lot more fun as a leader — to surround yourself with fans, with people to tell you how brilliant you are, how amazing your ideas are. And how dumb and terrible your detractors are.

But this is what happens.

Pay Attention to the Evidence

The other remarkable bit of data that came out of all the federal government departments that hire people, the Secret Service ranks 413 out of 459 in engagement and satisfaction scores. There is only one reason for this, and that is leadership. If you dig just a little into the details you find that most of the employees (80%) like and trust their direct supervisors but that when they look at top leadership, less than 50% trust senior leaders.

It has been trending down for the last four years.

The evidence was there that leadership was the problem, and they ignored it.

In general, when we surround ourselves with great advisors who are willing to tell us the hard truth and we pay attention to the signals, we will have far more success and fewer failures.