Is Obama's Leadership Style Too Laid Back?

President Obama is being excoriated from the right and even from supporters for taking three days to issue what turned out to be a rather tepid public response to the attempted Christmas day airliner bombing.

You remember that the president also came under fire for taking months to decide to add troops in Afghanistan. He was late responding to the Fort Hood shootings, critics said. He's too cool. Too deliberative. Too cerebral. All these are code words to some extent for weak. Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who generally supports the president, titled a recent column, As the Nation's Pulse Races, Obama Can't Seem to Find His. And CNN dubbed him today, "no drama Obama."

Look, I think deliberation is always better than shoot-from-the-hip. I'd rather a president be criticized about thinking about something too much rather than not enough. But this debate raises a legitimate point that all managers face at some point in their career: When is it best to be cool under fire, and when is it best to display, as Harvard Business School professor John Kotter calls it, "a sense of urgency."

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, an expert on leadership at HBS, says Obama "lost credibility" after the airliner bombing attempt by sending messages that were overly mild.

"Leaders set the tone about how seriously everyone else takes the situation," she wrote recently in Northwest Flight 253's Lessons for Leaders. "And that, in turn, determines how hard people work on the analysis, communication, and coordination that can catch the next vulnerabilities before they get out of hand (or board the plane)."

Too hot or too cool? If you had President Obama's ear, what management advice would you given him about the tone he needs to project to be an effective leader for the American public?

(President Obama image by Richard, CC 2.0)