HotmailHow to succeed in business? Play nice
 |
 Health bill’s passage a boost for Obama? Nov. 8: NBC’s Jenna Wolfe speaks with David Gregory, moderator of “Meet the Press.” |
The leaders we spoke with had varied backgrounds and business trajectories. Some started and built their own companies, and some took more established routes through the corporate hierarchy. Collectively, they had experience in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. They represented different industries, generations, and geographies. We learned immensely from each (brief biographies of each of our interviewees are located in the appendix).
Whereas each man and woman had the requisite values, traits, and abilities to qualify as a kind leader, during our discussions with them each emphasized slightly different aspects of leadership. Throughout the book we will selectively highlight their leadership philosophies and place them within the broader context of what it means to lead with kindness.
A recent conversation during a visit to a financial institution summed up the type of leaders we chose as our subjects. As conversation moved to the topic of this book, the president of the company asked us who we had spoken to. Given where we were, we started with leaders of financial companies: “Tom Renyi ...” The president stopped us before we even made it to the second name. “Tom Renyi! He is the most honorable man in banking.”
We don’t use the word much elsewhere in this book, so now would be an opportune time to say that honorable gives a good description of those who contributed their ideas to this book. Honorable, because the sum total of who they are and what they achieved is worthy of esteem and respect. However, not one of these leaders would claim that he scaled organizational heights alone, or developed into the person he is without some assistance — sometimes hefty pushes — along the way. Thus, en route to our discussion of kindness, these people gave us what we refer to as the first rule of success. The rule needs to be satisfied before you can meaningfully move on to the many other principles of success, offered in sets of three, five, seven, or ten in the abundant self-help literature. The first rule of success is to find someone who can help you to succeed. No one achieves her life’s ambitions without the steady, guiding hands of others.
In a way, this book begins at the end. In the appendix, we provide a description of leaders who already have benefited from the selfless giving of others and who are now in the process of giving back. They have been shaped by mentors who had nothing more to gain than
to watch someone in whom they saw great potential develop and flourish.
Despite the well-documented, positive influences of mentors on careers, not everyone is blessed with a mentor or adept at finding one. The first and most powerful mentors in most people’s lives — parents — aren’t equally gifted, for an assortment of reasons. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, several leaders we interviewed mentioned that their parents had the most profound effects on their worldviews and professional successes, instilling values, such as tenacity, and skills, such as peacemaking (conflict resolution), that are useful anywhere, any time.
Second, although there are many willing and able potential mentors, it takes a keen and accepting eye to locate them and take advantage of what they have to offer. Mentors walk among us ghost-like, and only certain people are able to see them. The kind leaders we discuss throughout this book are open to experience and persistently look for ways to improve, and, consequently, are able to notice and receive what others are willing to give. They don’t have the counterproductive sensibilities that prevent many people from accepting the help of others, or that eventually repulse would-be mentors. Such behaviors, which typically incorporate some form of perceived inadequacy or insecurity, include:
- Appearing weak or intellectually fallible
- Interpreting feedback as disapproval or rejection
- Unwilling to be dependent upon or beholden to another
These barriers to the well-meaning inputs of others not only block learning; they nullify other desirable aspects of mentoring, such as ready access to the mentor’s network of associates. The kind leaders we have met through the years avoid such traps that keep them from honing their leadership abilities.
Third, as a part of our interviews, we asked leaders if they ever had a bad boss. “Oh, of course,” was the unanimous reply. Most telling, however, was that this confession didn’t contain the slightest hint of animosity. Yes, they had endured bad bosses — the arrogant, ill-tempered sort. Yet, remarkably, these leaders learned from them: Thus, whereas it would be a far stretch to describe inadequate managers as exemplary mentors, it would be fair to say that for discriminating people, they served as an occasional model. Our discerning leaders were able to see in these highly compromised people a flicker of respectability. Few individuals are all good or all bad, and while it is easier to notice the goodness in some versus others, those who become great leaders are able to accept a situation as it is and make the best of it, learning what they can, perhaps from a poor leader’s analytical genius, penchant for administration, or political wherewithal. If there is anything positive there, a person who is passionate about leading well will find it.
In addition, there always is something to be learned from the dark side. In a BusinessWeek article, Keith McFarland referred to negative lessons as “anti-mentoring.” In the article, he recalled asking his poor excuse for a boss — the vice president — for a transfer; euphemistically implied in this discussion was that his boss was the reason behind the request. The vice president agreed, on condition that the VP would relay this news to his superior. There was a lot lost in translation. The vice president conveyed that the reason for the unsuspecting employee’s request was that the company president was too meddlesome and intrusive in everyday affairs.
From this experience, McFarland learned that people are reliable and consistent. Those who can’t be trusted ... can’t be trusted. He mistakenly believed that the vice president would morph from a self-interested, overcontrolling jerk into a congenial and understanding boss. No way. Later he learned another anti-mentoring lesson: you spend too much time at work to spend it with people you don’t like or trust. Good leaders are able to learn from both their own and others’ mistakes — preferably the latter.
Fourth, as students of history and literature, good leaders adopt both real and fictional heroes and heroines as mentors. Indeed, many of the leaders we spoke to mentioned people like Lord Nelson, Elizabeth I, and Winston Churchill as individuals from whom they derived wisdom and strength and noted memorable books ranging from Atlas Shrugged to Henry IV as doorways into human nature — and sources of great pleasure. Thus, those who are interested in the craft of leadership cast a wide net throughout history and art, finding role models who inspire. In contrast, those who are only interested in the here and now, who cling only to given ideas and approaches of proven usefulness, will fail to recognize enduring lessons in the historical and literary records.
The remainder of this book focuses on good people who have made business their primary avocation: people who have treated managerial excellence itself as serious business, who have felt the momentousness of leading and worked hard and tirelessly to make organizations successful and work life more satisfying. In subsequent chapters, we describe a category of leader that, in sustaining the aggregate will of groups to continuously move forward, has largely mastered one of the most ancient arts.
Excerpted from “Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results” by William F. Baker and Michael O’Malley. Copyright © 2008 William F. Baker and Michael O’Malley. Published by AMACOM Books, a division of American Management Association, New York, NY. Used with permission. All rights reserved. For more from this book, click here.
- Discuss Story On Newsvine
-
Rate Story:
View popularLowHigh - Instant Message
MORE FROM TODAY BOOKS: MONEY |
 Jim Cramer: How to invest in current economy |
| Add Today Books: Money headlines to your news reader: |
Sponsored links
Resource guide