Twenty Years Later: Leadership Lessons Learned from 9/11

Growing up, I remember the way my parents’ generation talked about November 22, 1963. Everyone seemed to remember where they were when they got the news of President John F. Kennedy’s brutal assassination in Dallas. In a moment, the unimaginable became a very real nightmare for the entire nation. Even more, that generation seemed to later remember it as the first in a series of horrific events that transformed how they saw the world. A brutal and long-lasting war in Southeast Asia. The horrible murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. All of the dark turns of the 1960s seemed to in some way trace upstream to that fall morning in 1963 when so many illusions were permanently shattered.

In some sense, I suppose each generation has a similar moment. But there are some that seem even more momentous. Time will tell what the lasting effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is. But two decades later, it seems to be no understatement to conclude that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, permanently reconfigured the way so many of us in the United States see the world, and ourselves. 

I’ll leave it to others more qualified to render their judgments on matters of foreign policy and political strategy. All I can do is speak from my own experience and vantage point. In my case, I was a college senior in western Pennsylvania. A phone call from my then-girlfriend (now my wife) alerted me to the first jetliner crash into the World Trade Center that Tuesday morning. Like everyone else, I rushed to turn on the TV. We stayed glued to that television throughout the day, watching in horror as the subsequent crashes and building implosions seemed to unfold right in front of us. Little did our campus community know that one of those planes—United 93—would go down just a couple hours from us in Shanksville, as the 40 passengers and crew heroically sacrificed themselves to save their fellow Americans from another planned attack.

Two decades later, there are a number of lessons that stand out to me, especially for leaders and organizations.

The Reality of Evil in a Broken World

I had the last ticket on the last seat of the caboose of the Generation X train. Throughout the 1990s, our generation was routinely derided in the press as the “slacker generation,” one marked by a deep cynicism and an absence of ambition. That indictment has since been proven absurd by a generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and activists.

But likely it is true that my generation lacked the romantic idealism that our Baby Boomer parents did. However, none of us were prepared for what we saw on 9/11. We knew there was evil in the world. We’d seen it. We’d even seen terrorists strike the World Trade Center before, killing six people in a bombing on February 26, 1993. We’d seen it in the horrifying bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people. And we’d seen it in the horror of rising numbers of school shootings, perhaps nowhere more disturbingly than the Columbine massacre of April 20, 1999, which left 12 students and one teacher dead.

We’d seen evil and we’d seen it close to home. But there was something different on September 11, 2001. There was for all of us a heightened sense of vulnerability to that evil. The world seemed more fragile than we had imagined.

That sense of fragility is still with us, even two decades later. We may experience it differently now--I suspect most of us don’t have the same anxiety when we fly as we did on that first flight we took after 9/11. But the world still seems fragile. 

Good leaders know this and account for it, at least as much as is humanly possible. Of all people, Christians should be the most capable of this kind of realism. After all, we are the people who believe that sin really is that pernicious and present that it corrupts everything in the world. Yes, there is good. Yes, there are more evidences of God’s common grace than we can count. But in this present age, sin and evil are never distant. 

That means that every healthy organization factors this into its policies, personnel, and systems. That’s why we have financial controls, accountability for personnel, policies to keep the most vulnerable safe, and any other number of similar restraints on evil. Effective leaders are not naive about these threats. Rather, they are prepared to make the necessary investments to protect and guard their organizations from them. And they are always re-evaluating to make sure they are effective. The threats to any organization mutate and evolve, demanding an ability to adapt. But what remains constant is the brokenness of things and the depravity of the human condition.

The Importance of Leadership That Shows Up

Leaders show up. There’s more to it than that, but not less. 

When George W. Bush was elected president, no one expected him to be a wartime president. In fact, most of his campaign centered around questions of domestic policy and an attempt to chart a new course for what he called “compassionate conservatism.” He had a range of priorities that he hoped to advance in his first term. But all of those changed on September 11, 2001. Those priorities had to change.

Suddenly, the main priority of the administration was keeping Americans safe from terrorism. Ardent loyalists and critics alike will have their own assessments of the Bush presidency and its long-term impact. But what does seem clear is that in the days following the attacks, President Bush and his team leaned into the crisis and recognized the significance of it. For his part, Bush was eager to get back to Washington, DC as soon as possible, signaling to the nation--and the world--that terrorists had not been successful in undermining the stability of the United States government. When it comes to leadership, place matters. Showing up matters. Bush did that three days later, when he famously stood at the still-smoldering ruins at ground zero in Manhattan, took a bullhorn, and delivered a short, but unforgettable speech. 

Even the best leaders sometimes trip up on this. Ironically, Bush would later take criticism for his “fly-over” of the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The political damage to his presidency, as a result, was real and lasting. And that should be sobering to any leader. 

The principle remains true. In a crisis, leaders have to show up. They have to do so both literally and figuratively. Being present physically and visibly is no small thing. But it also means demonstrating the kind of servant leadership that is willing to pay a personal sacrifice for the sake of others within the organization. 

The Necessity of Clear and Consistent Communication

In the weeks and months following 9/11, it became increasingly clear that clear and intentional communication between government agencies was deficient. In particular, it seems that intelligence and security agencies had developed habits that had built organizational silos, resulting in weakened inter-agency communication. Over the last two decades, those agencies have gone to incredible lengths to mitigate that problem and develop systems that facilitate more immediate and comprehensive communication. 

At the same time, Americans rightly expected to hear regular updates from their leaders, even as we all realized that there was still an abundance of unknowns. Indeed, it seemed like we were all learning more with each passing hour and day. But it said something that President George W. Bush flew back to Washington, D.C. that very night and addressed the nation from the Oval Office. 

The same holds true for any organization. From the CEO down, every leader has to work intentionally to communicate throughout the organization. Ask any seasoned leader and they will assure you this is easier said than done. It requires the formation of certain leadership disciplines, demanding that we interrogate our own assumptions about what our team members know and how effective our current communication channels are. In my experience, most senior leaders overestimate how effective their current communication models really are. But I have yet to meet a team member who complains that their boss communicates in excess. 

Leadership teams have to be united in their messaging throughout the organization. Who are we? What are our priorities and values? What’s the most pressing challenge and opportunity before us right now? What expectations do we have for one another? Each of those questions demands constant and clear reiteration within an organization, especially during a crisis.

The Unifying Power of a Crisis

I’m not sure exactly when it was, but within days our church in Wexford, Pennsylvania had gathered for a prayer vigil. Church members and staff lined up that evening (Wednesday?) along the side of Route 19, joining together to pray for our nation, for the families who were grieving the loss of loved ones, and for wisdom for our leaders when there were so many unanswered questions. 

In the days and weeks that followed, there were a number of regrettable comments made by prominent Christian leaders, each attempting to speak on behalf of God and offer their interpretation of why this horrible attack had taken place. Some blamed America’s sexual immorality, others the evil of abortion. But there is great danger--and presumption--in trying to trace God’s mysterious providence. The fact is, we often do not know why things take the shape they do in this present age. God has spoken to us clearly in His Word. But there are a great many questions in this life that remain unanswered for us, awaiting a coming age when all will be set to right. 

Aside from those televangelists on cable news, it seems most Christians had a more proper first instinct. We were angry, to be sure. And we were hurting. But it seemed that the Lord used it to bring us closer to himself and one another in prayer. 

The same seemed to hold true of our national life, even if only briefly. Partisan fights were temporarily suspended and the nation seemed to galvanize behind the urgency of the moment. Of course, that sense of unity gradually eroded in the years following 9/11. A pair of long wars, increased political polarization, a banking crisis, and severe economic recession all saw to that. But we should not lose sight of the opportunity of that singular moment, that window of time during those weeks in the fall of 2001. At that moment there was a genuine opportunity for unity--the kind of unity that is more than sentimental but actually affords meaningful opportunities for forward progress and action. That window of opportunity eventually does close. A failure to steward it well means forfeiting real potential to make a difference. 

We are still very much living through a crisis that will shape us in its own ways for years to come. The COVID-19 pandemic has had such a devastating global impact, most painfully recorded in the heartbreaking fatality count of more than 4.6 million deaths. It has brought with it excruciating economic disruption and the rampant destabilization of so much of our civic life. Rather than rallying together, our communities seem more divided into factions than ever. It is in these very moments that leadership is needed more than ever. Let’s hope that two decades from now, another generation will be able to say we stepped up to the challenge of the moment.