WHARTON
LEADERSHIP DIGEST
July,
2004,
Volume 8, Number 10
CONTENTS
Good Books: Leadership
Presence, Extreme States, and Tough Choices
Elephant Stakes: Breaking
Free of Self-Imposed Limitations
Trekking Patagonia and the Himalayas: Leadership Ventures for Wharton
MBA Alumni
A Yearning
to Return: The Call of Adventure
Highlighting Others: Sharing the Leadership Spotlight
Good books: Leadership
Presence, Extreme States, and Tough Choices
Belle
Linda Halpern and Kathy Lubar, Leadership Presence: Dramatic
Techniques to Reach Out Motivate, and Inspire. New York: Gotham
Books/Penguin Group, 2003.
Two professional actors who run a training firm
offer a set of practical methods for learning how to articulate your
message, convey your confidence, inspire your audience, and otherwise
project your leadership. “Presence is the ability to connect
authentically with the thoughts and feelings and others,” say the
authors, and “great actors have it. Great political leaders have it
too, as do great business leaders.”
Kenneth
Kamler, Surviving the Extremes: A
Doctor's Journey to the Limits of Human Endurance.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004.
Hand surgeon Kenneth
Kamler draws on his own experience as world explorer, the accounts of
others who have survived extreme environments, and the field of medicine
to analyze how body and mind respond to hostile settings. With stories
from climbing Mt. Everest and crossing Antarctica to diving in caves and
walking in space, Kamler’s narrative reminds us how resourceful we can
become when facing duress.
Robert
E. Rubin and Jacob Weisberg, In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices
from Wall Street to Washington. New York: Random House, 2003.
An account of decision making in high office by the
former Goldman Sachs co-senior partner who served as U.S. Secretary of
the Treasury during the late 1990s, and who is now chairman of the
executive committee of Citigroup. From the turbulence of the Mexican
peso crisis to aftermath of 9/11, here is an insider’s account of how
many of the vital political and economic choices of recent years were
taken.
elephant stakes:
Breaking Free of Self-Imposed Limitations
By
Vivek Paul, Vice-Chairman Wipro Ltd., and CEO, Wipro
Technologies
In the jungles outside Bangalore there are many
elephant camps where one can see huge elephants chained to a tiny stake.
I wondered why the elephants do not just pull them out of the ground.
I was told that as calves when they are tied to this stake, they try
very hard to pull, but cannot, and reconcile themselves to being tied
down by the stake. But as they grow bigger and stronger, they are
mentally still tied to that stake and do not even try to break free.
Have an infinite faith in yourself, but break away from any self
imposed limitations.
Note: Wipro is India's largest
publicly-traded information-technology services company, with annual
revenues near $1 billion. Information on Wipro can be found
by clicking
here.
Wipro is well known for its long-standing leadership development
program, described
here.
Trekking Patagonia and the
Himalayas: Leadership Ventures for Wharton MBA Alumni
The Wharton School
is offering leadership ventures to Patagonia and the Himalayas in 2005.
The Patagonian and Himalayan treks are designed to bring participants
into settings where they can learn from the experience of others whose
leadership was on the line, and also from the participants’ own
experience in confronting challenges and solving problems. The ventures
are intended to assist participants in improving their capacities to
think strategically, communicate effectively, and act decisively in
business and beyond. Information on the ventures can be found
by clicking on
Patagonia and
Himalayas.
A Yearning to Return:
The Call of Adventure
By Peter
Hillary
Note:
Adventurer Peter Hillary has climbed Mt.
Everest and explored both the Arctic and Antarctic. He is author of
In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the
Edge (Free
Press/Simon & Schuster, 2003), and he will be speaking at the annual
Wharton Leadership Conference in June, 2005. He recently guided a small
group of clients up Mera Peak (6,500 meters) in the Himalayas and then
over two 6,000- meter passes to the foot of Mt. Makalu, the world’s
fifth highest mountain. It’s a tough journey, painful even, and
expensive too. Why did they do it?
My group labored across the upper
reaches of the Lower Barun Glacier at 6,100 meters. Up here beyond the
West Col, the altitude knocks the stuffing out of you, and when the sun
sits high in the sky, the reflected heat saps what little energy that
remains. Many of my aspiring climber-cum-high-altitude trekkers were
visibly wilting. In fact they were moving so slowly that even our
heavily laden porters – with their bamboo baskets slung on head bands
and woolen socks pulled over their shoes for purchase on the frozen snow
– were overtaking them as if they were studies in timeless motion.
“I
can’t go on,” some groaned, leaning on their ice axes with a force that
sent the shaft violently and suddenly into the snow, rendering more than
one of them prostrate upon the glacier.
We all looked up at the impressive form of Makalu’s
8,462-meter western wall, with the striking line of its west pillar
plummeting from the summit into a valley we couldn’t see.
“I think I have bitten off more than I can chew,”
said one. This wasn’t the place for such revelations. It would be dark
in three hours and we had another pass to cross.
But that is part of the challenge: pushing through
that invisible barrier and later, much later, the retrospective pleasure
of having gone the distance. Nearly all of my group, including one with
disabilities, made it to the top of Mera Peak and they all crossed the
two tall passes from the valleys of Mt. Everest to Mt. Makalu. Already
they’re talking about their next adventure.
So what is it about, these
journeys and the restless souls who choose to weather the fatigue and
the discomfort?
You challenge yourself and you
uplift the spirit in the process. The mountains are just the dramatic
stage where we go to experience the wide-ranging emotions and travails
of the mission. And it is that sense of mission that draws these people.
They want to go somewhere that extends their experience and their vision
and to gain insight into their own multilayered beings.
Despite immediate discomforts, or
even exhaustion and fear, they know that this is not forever.
Eventually, they will go home to other lives. It is up to each of us to
encourage our sense of wonder and to assuage the desire to look across
the next ridgeline; to see what you have not seen before.
The journey goes beyond self and
the environment you find yourself in. It is the galaxy of relationships
among the group – good, bad and mediocre – that is also the frontier. A
group of people is a conglomeration of personalities with infinite
permutations. So the mission contrasts our other lives and breathes
fresh air into stale emotions.
For me these journeys open your
eyes to what you have at home and often take for granted – the luxury
of a hot shower, the pleasure of clean sheets, the taste of fresh
vegetables and the company of family and friends.
I know fear and I confess to
carrying it around in saddlebags. In fact, I don’t leave home without
it. It is perhaps my greatest asset; for acknowledging your own fear,
your own frailty, prevents delusion. Gravity doesn’t care for deception!
But I am not a pessimist. I love
to dream and when I do I always see a way through. A way to yearn to
return.
Note:
Information on Peter Hillary can be found
here.
Highlighting Others:
Sharing the Leadership Spotlight
By
John Baldoni
When U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry chose
John Edwards as his running mate, the overnight polls of likely voters
registered strong approval. While Edwards radiates charm, Kerry has
been called “charisma challenged.” As communicators, Edwards is warm and
articulate whereas Kerry is stolid and steadfast. Despite an obvious
appeal for votes, Kerry’s choice of Edwards says something more about
his potential presidential leadership style: he is not afraid to share
the limelight.
Sharing the Limelight with Others
Kerry and Edwards have a parallel in the corporate
world at General Motors in Rick Wagner, CEO, and Bob Lutz, vice
chairman. When Wagner became CEO in the late 1990s, corporate America
was in the era of the heroic CEO; the pages of American business
magazines were packed with laudatory profiles of men and women in
charge, those who ruled with power as well as impunity. Many CEOs
became intoxicated with their own image and as a result failed; the
corporate scandals were stoked in part by those at the top believing in
their own invincibility as well as their own lack of accountability.
Wagner was not one of those CEOs; he hired Bob Lutz to come to his
company to revive product development efforts that had grown stodgy as
well as subject to bureaucratic infighting. Wagner saw Lutz, a veteran
product man and once the number two executive at Chrysler, as someone
with skills he did not have – a sixth sense for product design and
performance. Lutz was also charismatic and an automotive media darling,
and his good looks, ex‑fighter pilot background, and superb track record
further solidified his appeal. Together they have revitalized company.
What Wagner has done, and Kerry appears to be
doing, is what every leader must do: surround oneself with the best and
brightest talent, even if that means being less in the spotlight. But
let’s be realistic. You don’t aspire to become a chief executive –
presidential or corporate – without a certain desire to make headlines.
By nature many leaders are aggressive, dominant, and power‑centric.
Yet, as Wagner has shown, there are organizational benefits to sharing
power.
In Good to Great, Jim Collins describes
Level 5 leaders – self‑aware, self‑fulfilled, and other‑directed – as
those who prefer being backstage rather than onstage. Darwin Smith of
Kimberly Clark was more comfortable with others getting credit;
organizational success was more important to him than individual kudos.
Frances Hesselbein, former CEO of the Girl Scouts and now chair of the
Leader to Leader Institute, speaks of good leaders as those who are
surrounded by diverse, innovative talent.
Drawing Others into the Limelight
What these “out of the spotlight” leaders possess
is a strong sense of self as well as an ability to engage with others in
ways that enrich others; they makes others feel competent to perform a
task and excited to do it. Such leaders connect with people in ways
that make them feel good about getting things done. Here are some ways
they do it:
Reach for the stars. One of the mistakes
that leaders make is underselling the vision. Visions by nature are
big, bold, and brassy. As predictors of the future, they should be
designed to excite the imagination and capture the heart and mind of
others.
Share the spotlight. Visions are inert
without the active participation of others. A leader who views the
future as a play with parts for all the “actors” in the company will
have a better opportunity of getting things done. Many local arts
organizations are prime examples: their success comes in part from the
joint effort of those behind the scenes with those playing the “leading”
roles on stage.
Learn from failure. Mistakes are not the
end of the world, although we sometimes treat them as such.
Organizations that build great talent around the top leaders – from the
Marines to Jet Blue – are those that see missteps as opportunities to
further develop the talent.
Leadership is not for the faint of heart. If you
can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen as president Harry Truman
used to say. Leaders, especially presidents and CEOs, rise to positions
of prominence because they not only like the heat, they do not like the
cold. In other words, they only become fully engaged and energized when
the stakes are high. But there is a price to pay: taking too much heat
– and grabbing too much limelight – can both burn and blind. Those who
push others to front of the stage to share the spotlight will better
avoid both the burns and the blindness.
Note: John Baldoni is a leadership
communications consultant, and he can be reached at
jbaldoni@lc21.com.
Copyright 1996-2004, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management
University of Pennsylvania.
