5 lessons from Jimmy Carter about leadership, mistakes, and successes

• Former President Jimmy Carter has died at 100.
• Carter founded The Carter Center, won a Nobel Peace Prize, and promoted global peace.
• His leadership successes include mediation among seemingly intractable groups.

The death of Jimmy Carter — US President from 1977 to 1981 — has led to an outpouring of reflections on his leadership and management successes from business and political leaders worldwide.

Here are five leadership lessons Carter lived by:

1. Understand the other side

Carter mediated between seemingly intractable sides — Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat — to broker the Camp David Accords.

Carter remained patient through the grueling 13-day negotiations, letting both leaders feel heard and respected. Carter helped shift the priority of the negotiations from short-term political gains to the long-term goal of peace in the region.

In a 1998 interview with HBR, Carter said that the same principles apply to business leaders.

"All negotiations, whether in government or business, require certain things," he said. "One is a proper respect for the people across from you whose opinions differ from yours. You can't be arrogant. You've got to give the people with whom you're contending your understanding—not your agreement but your understanding."

He carried on his mediation work after his presidency.

In 1999, he helped broker the Nairobi Agreement, which led to the restoration of diplomatic ties between Sudan and Uganda and the return of about 300 child soldiers.

2. Don't fear being ahead of your time

Carter was one of the earliest advocates for fighting a series of neglected diseases, including river blindness and guinea worm.

"Starting on the day he was inaugurated in January 1977, President Carter has unapologetically advocated for human rights, a stance that wasn't always popular in Washington, D.C., or in foreign capitals," Craig Withers, an executive at The Carter Center, who worked with the former President for 36 years, wrote in Fast Company article in October.

He was also one of the first politicians to fight for energy efficiency in the transport industry, despite pushback from American carmakers.

"There was a tremendous improvement in the efficient use of energy while I was there. The laws that we finally passed after four full years of tedious negotiation are still on the books," Carter told HBR in 1998.

3. Pay attention and then take action

The 39th President was a devout Christian and taught at a Sunday school in his hometown in Georgia until he entered hospice in 2022.

Carter's humanitarian work stemmed from his keenness to notice the needs of others around him and take action. A longtime letter writer on behalf of political prisoners at home and around the world, Carter was also seen as a reliable neighbor and worked on several reforestation and conservation projects, starting with tree farming on his family's land in Georgia.

"As a businessman, a church leader, and a political leader, I became intensely aware of the needs of others in the deep South during segregation, although I wasn't always as courageous as I should have been in trying to alleviate these problems," Carter wrote in 1998. "But understanding the needs and suffering of others is a vital element for successful leadership."

4. Build strong constituencies

Among the many criticisms during his presidency, such as his handling of the Iranian hostage crisis and the recession that came toward the end of his term, critics say his biggest weakness was a people management mistake.

"Jimmy Carter found that all the political skill and savvy in the world did not compensate for lacking strong constituencies," Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, wrote in an HBR column in 2008.

His inability to garner long-term support from various factions divided the Democratic Party. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the election and the vote of many Democrats during the presidential election.

5. Be careful with the truth

Carter built his presidential campaign in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon. He called for honesty and integrity in government.

"High moral and ethical standards are essential, and they don't change from one job to another, or from one level of authority to another," Carter said in 1998. "Whenever a leader violates these basic principles, through arrogance or through ignorance, there's a derogation of duty."

Carter criticized President-elect Donald Trump for "exacerbating" racial tensions and being "careless with the truth" in a 2018 CBS News interview.

"I think I went through my campaign and my presidency without ever lying to the people or making a deliberately false statement, and I think that would be a very worthwhile thing to reinsert into politics these days," he said.

In 2022, he reflected on the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol in a New York Times Opinion essay.

He wrote: "I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally — the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power — has become dangerously fragile at home."

"For American democracy to endure, we must demand that our leaders and candidates uphold the ideals of freedom and adhere to high standards of conduct."