WHARTON LEADERSHIP
DIGEST
June,
2002, Volume 6, Number 9
CONTENTS
By
Kate Faber, Coordinator, Wharton
Leadership Program
You
don’t need to write names on your palms anymore. You won’t have to
tuck that index card up your sleeve to recall who’s on your board, in
your class, or on your schedule. And you can stop calling every person in your company
“dude.” If you’re having trouble recalling names, your memory
isn’t bad, it just needs a bit of training. With his engaging and
persuasive style, Benjamin Levy shares his tactics for expanding your
internal Rolodex so you can remember every name every time.
 A
professional magician, Levy has appeared before corporate and political
audiences to demonstrate his own remarkable feats of memory.
He can perfectly recall the names of an entire audience of 100 or
more new faces, their children, even their pets.
In
his new book, Remembering Every Name Every Time: Corporate
America's Memory Master Reveals His Secrets,
Levy walks the reader through the process of memorizing prodigious numbers
of names. By taking a moment with each person to study his or her face, to
hear the lilt or drop in the voice, and to learn more about the
individual, Levy says that such steps help establish indelible links in
your mind between the individual and the name.
Why
is this important? Why do I,
a busy individual, need to know everybody’s name?
Levy’s
client Steven Gluckstern, chief executive officer of Zurich Global Asset
Management, explains: “You
need to motivate people by making a personal connection, and a big part of
that is being able to address people by their names.” Gluckstern adds
that knowing everybody is important for everybody aspiring to a
responsible position, “because it may be part of what allows people to
display leadership in junior positions and allows them to accelerate and
move through the organization more quickly. You must have been doing some
of the things that people recognize as part of being a leader.”
Remembering
someone’s name is a public statement of the importance you place on
knowing the person. Taking the time to focus on an individual and to
personalize his or her identity sends the message that you indeed know and
care who the person is.
Levy’s
step-by-step instructions, personal accounts, and memory-strengthening
exercises move an otherwise daunting task of mastering hundreds of names
into the realm of what can be achieved by anybody.
As your brain attempts to file away a person’s name, Levy deems
it a self-conscious act of leadership self-development to keep the name
from landing in the dead letter office. Beyond reinforcing an
individual’s sense of worth by recalling his or her name, you are
reflecting and projecting the company culture that everybody matters.
Source:
Benjamin Levy, Remembering Every Name Every Time: Corporate
America's Memory Master Reveals His Secrets (New York: Fireside Press, 2002). Kate
Faber can be contacted at kfaber@wharton.upenn.edu.
Strategic Redirection:
It’s the Board of Directors
 The
Directors' Consortium is a new three-day intensive program in Chicago on
August 21-23 for directors and senior executives to explore the
fundamentals of corporate governance and board service.
It is jointly presented by the University of Chicago Graduate
School of Business, Stanford Law School, and the Wharton School.
The
program offers even experienced directors the benefit of a research-based,
comprehensive approach to the complex decisions that board members must
make. Taught by faculty from
accounting, finance, law, public policy, and strategic management, the
program is intended to help directors build a “best practices”
framework for thinking about and making informed board decisions.
Information on the program is available here.
Facing Leadership Challenges?
Take a Leadership
Venture
 Facing
leadership challenges? Consider a new experiential program offered by Wharton
Professor Mike Useem: Wharton
Leadership Ventures, September 3-6, 2002, to be held
at Mohonk
Mountain House in New York. The
program combines the outdoors with the intellectual, focusing on
application to real-world business situations.
Learning Leadership in the Himalayas
Two
participants in the annual Wharton Leadership Trek to the Himalayas in
April-May, 2002, describe their experience below.
The itinerary of the trek can be found here;
photos of the trek can be seen here;
and plans for the 2003 offering of the Himalayan trek are here.
A
Classroom on Top of the World
 By
Gopi Kallayil, Silicon Valley and Wharton MBA Graduate (WG ’98)
We
paused to catch our breath and looked at the majestic sight in
front of us. Mount
Kangchenjunga, at 28,168 feet the third highest mountain on the planet,
towered above us. The bright
sunshine glistened off the icy slopes of this Himalayan skyscraper.
A plume of mist rose from the top of the peak and was swiftly
carried away by the ferocious wind. Suddenly
the radio crackled to life: "We
are on top of Go-Cha La pass and will start our descent shortly."
The message was from five team members who had reached the high
point of some 17,000 feet beneath the shear south face of Kangchenjunga.
Cheers broke out among the remainder of our trekking party of
eighteen.
Supported
by a staff of Sherpas and porters and a herd of yak, Wharton Leadership
Ventures had brought a group of MBA students and alumni and several
participants from the Wharton Executive Education programs to the Indian
state of Sikkim in the Eastern Himalayas.
Now in its fifth year, our trek had earlier been slated to reach
the lower slopes of Mount Everest in Nepal.
But due to the sometimes violent unrest in Nepal this year, the
trek had been redirected to the slopes around India's towering colossus of
Kangchenjunga.
The
trek's lofty goals were in keeping with the heights we were scaling.
Leadership is a capacity that draws on all aspects of an individual
and an organization. Developing
a vision, articulating it, and inspiring others to achieve it require not
only careful analysis and technical knowledge but also a sense for what is
important for the organization and for the people in and around it. We knew that mastering these abilities is a lifelong
endeavor, and this leadership trek promised an opportunity to continue our
leadership development, exercise our body, cross-train our mind, and
reflect on our leadership future amongst the awe-inspiring peaks of the
Himalayas.
Teaching
leadership in a classroom is challenging enough.
But how on earth do you teach leadership by shifting the classroom
to a remote mountain landscape reached only by days of international
flights and treacherous road travel?
Our
trek started at Yuksam, a tiny Himalayan village at a height of 6,800
feet, passed through dense pine and rhododendron forests to Alpine meadows
above the tree line and finally to a point where there was no e-mail, no
electricity, no plumbing, no human settlements, no plant or animal life --
just a vast cold emptiness on a glacial moraine with some of the most
remote, desolate vistas I have ever seen.
Within
hours of hitting the trail it was clear that our trekkers came with varied
backgrounds and abilities. Lindsay
Patrick, who had grown up in the Canadian Rockies and captained the
Wharton women's soccer team, scampered up the steep slopes and slithered
down snowy stretches like a mountain goat.
I by contrast had grown up a few hundred miles north of the equator
and had not seen snow till I was in my thirties.
Our
second night's campsite was the windswept plateau of Dzongri at an
altitude of 13,200 feet. Lynne Dant, a marketing manager for a specialty chemicals
company, and Eric Byrne, a software consultant, were anxiously anticipated
the evening as this would be the first time that they had ever camped in
the great outdoors. They were
shocked as we neared the campsite when we were hit with a fierce Himalayan
ice storm that rattled even our experienced guides.
The wind howled and thunder cracked all night and into the
following day, blanketing our tents and the landscape with layers of hail
and snow.
As
the storm continued through another night, we began to face a critical
decision: whether to stay put
until the weather abated, or to push higher in the storm.
The snow-covered trail ahead initially dropped more than 1,000 feet
into a river gorge, and then back up the other side onto a treacherous
boulder field. We had no idea
how slippery and dangerous the descent and subsequent ascent would be.
Some of us urged that we remain at Dzongri until the storm abated,
while others were eager to go. Everybody
weighed in with their opinions, and the collective will came to point
toward climbing higher despite the conditions.
This turned out to be an excellent decision, as the sun emerged
several hours later to melt the new snow and reveal an array of
spectacular peaks soaring above us.
Several
nights later we readied for a 3 am departure for the high pass of Go-Cha
La. Our trip physician, Brad
Reinke, warned us to pay close attention to any signs of altitude sickness
once we ascended over 15,000 feet. A
trip leader added in no uncertain terms that while going up was voluntary,
getting back was mandatory. As
we climbed up, each of us had to continually assess how we felt, how much
higher we could ascend, and how much reserve remained for getting back
down. We knew that the latter
would be critical not only for own well being but also for the safety and
success of the entire team.
Most of the
team made it to the Go-Cha La point at 16,700 feet, and five pushed all
the way up to Go-Cha La pass at 17,000 feet.
Lynn Dant and I had set our own personal "Go-Cha La" of
reaching at least 16,000 feet, and we succeeded in climbing higher than
that and getting a magnificent up close view of Kangchenjunga before our
inner voices said that was enough. With
our type A personalities it was hard to say "no" to going all
the way to the top. But we
had to make a sensible call to leave ourselves with enough reserves to
descend safely and not jeopardize the rest of the team.
It proved a personal leadership moment.
Lessons
from the trail
 Therese
Mancuso, Sales Organization, Hewlett-Packard Company
Our trekking team of eighteen set out with a common vision and goal of
challenging ourselves. We
wanted to reach new heights, and we were driven by a sense of adventure
and a willingness to explore the mountain mystery.
Our destination was known, but the journey less so.
By the end of our two
weeks in the Himalayas, our trip had reinforced some of my closely held
beliefs but had also pressed me to view leadership and teamwork with a
fresh eye:
Leadership:
Throughout the trek, we rotated leadership every day.
Each team member was paired up with another with the responsibility for
leading the group that day. As the day’s leaders, we were to see
to the overall health and well being of all participants as well as
facilitate midday seminars and evening discussions based on case studies
and assigned readings.
The main lesson I learned while jointly leading my day was about offering
people a choice, of letting them decide what they wanted instead of
telling them what to do. What
makes for effective leadership, I found, is allowing the team to
determine the “how” in accomplishing a task while holding them
accountable for producing the end result – in our case, safely reaching
the next camp site or crossing a mountain pass.
A leader paints a vision of what is possible and inspires others to
share in that goal. Once the dream is embraced, the leader must then
provide plenty of free space for individuals to determine how to make
their goal a reality.
Communication: In
a morning “check-in” everyone reported their physical health and
mental attitude to the entire group, and that helped all of us appreciate
our respective problems and capacities, vital information for deciding on
both individual and collective plans for the day ahead.
It proved critical that each person honestly disclose their personal
condition, even when some of us found it very uncomfortable to do so.
I came to better understand
that when a team member is unwilling to speak the truth – opting
instead to say what he or she thinks others want to hear – the team can
be hobbled by the unacknowledged problems.
Honest communication forms the foundation for building an effective
team, and it is thus critical to create a safe environment for frank
disclosure.
Teamwork: I
had a tendency to want to assist my fellow trekkers that I
perceived as experiencing difficulty on the trail.
But I soon learned that sometimes my perceptions that they were
having problems were just that: my
own beliefs and not their reality. To test my perceptions, I found I
needed to check in and verify them with the person.
Otherwise, I would have rendered unnecessary aid, taking away from
my own resources and subtly undermining the hiker’s own resourcefulness.
I came to appreciate as well that everyone on the trek should be viewed as
a member of the broader team regardless of status.
Our many porters and Sherpas from India and Nepal, for instance,
expressed a selfless attitude, giving their all with the most modest
expectations in return. I was inspired by their humility and
willingness to do whatever was needed, all with a smile.
Without their arduous efforts throughout out time in the Himalayas,
we would have never made it up or down the mountainsides, reminding us
that regardless of title or role, everyone is critical to the success of a
team.
Well formed teams, I also learned, can produce results far greater than
that of any individual. When some trekkers felt vulnerable as the
terrain steepened, others stepped forward to lend a hand.
The sense of compassion and words of encouragement made all the
difference for each of us to reach our own personal destination.
Summation:
The physical, emotional, and intellectual challenges of our Himalayan trek
helped me to see what I was really made of, and I came away with a
newfound respect for both the capabilities of the human spirit and the
mystery of the mountains. Whether on a mountain, at home,
or in the office, there can be tremendous value in leaving our
comfort zone and testing our limits.
Note:
Therese Marie Mancuso can be reached at Therese_Mancuso@hp.com.
Copyright
© 1996-2002, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management
University of Pennsylvania
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