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October, 2007,
Volume 11, Number
12
CONTENTS
SAVE THE DATE: Top Speakers Confirmed for 12th
Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, June 18, 2008
Leadership Digest
editor
LEADING THE WAY: Fortune Magazine Publishes Its
First-Ever Rankings on Leadership Development
Leadership Digest editor
LEARNING FROM COACH WOODEN: “You only have the ball for
four minutes”
By Paul Asel
TALKING WITH
THE RECEPTIONIST, Pausing When You Speak and Other
Secrets of Leadership Success
Knowledge@Wharton
MANAGEMENT AT
THE MOVIES: Film Clips that Instruct and Inspire
By Roy Tomizawa
SAVE THE DATE: Top Speakers Confirmed for 12th
Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, June 18, 2008
Leadership
Digest editor
Is leadership
training worthwhile when high-level managers are highly
mobile, hopping from one firm to another? What
leadership skills are needed when expanding from
domestic to global operations? How can organizations
find, create and retain leadership talent at all levels?
To address these
timely questions, Wharton’s Center for Leadership and
Change Management, Center for Human Resources, and
Executive Education announces the twelfth annual Wharton
Leadership Conference. This one-day intensive
conference, planned for Wednesday, June 18, 2008, will
focus on the theme of “Emerging Trends in the Search for
Leadership.” The following speakers are already
confirmed:
 Colleen Barrett, President of Southwest Airlines
David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public
Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government
S.A. Ibrahim, CEO of the Radian Group, and
William Weldon, CEO and Chairman of Johnson &
Johnson
Website
registration will be announced in the next issue of the
Leadership Digest, and we look forward to seeing
you in June for this special event.
LEADING THE WAY: Fortune Magazine Publishes Its
First-Ever Rankings on Leadership Development
Leadership
Digest editor
In its October
issue, Fortune Magazine offers readers its
first-ever ranking of companies on the basis of how
well they train and develop leaders. Together with
Hewitt Associates, the
RBL Group and a
panel of 16 international judges (including
Leadership Digest editor Michael Useem,) Fortune
analyzed data from more than 560 organizations
worldwide. And the global winners? U.S.-based
General Electric came in first, followed by
19 other firms based in the U.S., India, Spain,
Finland, Britain and Australia. (The survey also
includes lists of top-ten leadership companies broken
down by region.)
The high-profile
ranking shows that leadership development has come of
age as a key measure of organizational success, Useem
tells the Leadership Digest. “Companies worldwide
have come top appreciate and act upon the need to
internally develop their leaders for future
responsibilities.” As Hewitt global-practice leader
Robert Gandossy
puts it in the lead Fortune article,
“Organizations need talented people a lot more than
talented people need organizations.”
LEARNING FROM COACH WOODEN: “You only have the ball for
four minutes”
 By Paul
Asel
Born on a
hardscrabble Indiana farm that lacked running water and
electricity, John Wooden has achieved a level of
excellence in his lifetime that few can rival. A 2003
recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Wooden
was the first person elected to the Basketball Hall of
Fame as both a player and coach. The coach, teacher and
father of two led the basketball team at the University
of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to an unprecedented
10 college championships in 12 years, and 88 consecutive
wins over two-plus seasons. Wooden remains revered and
widely emulated in the three decades since he retired
from coaching in 1974.
Wooden
practiced his trade on a public stage where performance
is readily measured in wins and losses. Wooden knows
something about traditional measures of success, yet he
advocated what he believed to be a higher standard: a
level of intensity, execution and consistency that
maximized a team’s potential. His 2005 book,
Wooden on Leadership, presents the principles
and practices he relied on to produce these landmark
results.
History
enshrines great leaders with an aura of inevitability.
They seem to rise above the din of daily events to
accept the mantle of greatness. At first glance, Wooden
is no exception; he and his teams performed smoothly,
almost effortlessly, as they progressed through the
collegiate tournaments year after year. Yet UCLA’s
success was the result of a long, intensive effort to
build a high-performance team; Wooden coached for 32
years before UCLA won its first NCAA basketball
championship. As Wooden noted, good things take time,
sometimes a lot of time.
Wooden
displayed remarkable attention to detail, focusing on
the process rather than the prize. Preaching the four Ps
of successful execution – planning, preparation,
practice and performance – he believed in the gradual
accumulation of many small things done at a very high
standard. Wooden began each season by teaching his
players the proper way to put on their socks (to reduce
the likelihood of blisters) and sneakers (to augment
agility and quickness) and progressed from there. As
Gary Cunningham, a UCLA player and assistant coach under
Wooden, noted: “He always used the laws of learning:
explanation, demonstration, imitation and repetition.
Lots of repetition. You can’t believe the repetition.”
Wooden
believed that winning was a result of process, and he
was a master of that process. Using the principle that
“time is finite, its potential, infinite,” he managed
every minute of the season. Wooden calculated that he
had 210 hours each season – 105 practices, 2 hours each
– to help his team achieve “competitive greatness.” He
divided each practice into three-to-five minute
increments and kept a log of each practice with his
comments in an annual notebook. Using this log, he could
compare the progress of his team for each practice
session with each of his teams in prior years and
continually upgrade and improve his practices and
coaching methods from year to year.
As its
basketball program gained national prominence, UCLA
attracted ever-more talented players. Swen Nater, a
future pro-basketball all-star, was a reserve center
behind Bill Walton throughout his college career. Yet
Wooden taught the value of teamwork above all else,
saying “the strength of the pack is the wolf and
strength of the wolf is the pack.”
Wooden
devised every drill to encourage teamwork and, despite a
penchant for clock management, yielded on efficiency
when it reinforced teamwork. He sought a meaningful
relationship with each person associated with the team
and instilled a team spirit based on an “eagerness to
sacrifice personal interest for the welfare of all.”
Wooden never selected a team Most Valuable Player, but
rather devised awards that recognized hustle, team
spirit, and self improvement. Future Hall-of-Famer Gail
Goodrich recalls Wooden asking: “You will have the
basketball for approximately four minutes per game. What
are you going to do for the team those other 36 minutes
when you do not have the ball?”
Wooden
recruited for character as much as for skill. In one
case, he passed on a highly touted prospect because the
player was rude to his mother. He encouraged debate –
“When everyone is thinking the same, no one is thinking”
– but did not tolerate non-compliance. “When a decision
is made, it must be accepted by those on your team, or
they must be encouraged to find another team,” he said.
In the midst of the hippie-era 1970s, for example, star
player Bill Walton told Wooden he intended to keep his
long hair in violation of Wooden’s clean-cut policy.
Wooden responded simply, “Bill, we will miss you.” Bill
cut his hair that day.
Wooden was
a man of principle, and his principles are embedded in
his well-known
Pyramid of Success. Wooden presented this pyramid,
with its fifteen character traits, the cornerstones of
which were effort and enthusiasm, to his team at the
outset of each season, included it in the player’s
handbook and prominently displayed it in his office.
Wooden’s pyramid has now used not only by sports teams
but also by businesses and religious organizations. When
players reflect on the impact Wooden has had on them, it
is the pyramid of success to which they most often
refer.
One
recurring theme in Wooden’s 2005 book, which is not
directly reflected in the pyramid of success, is the
need for balance. He writes, “Balance is crucial in
everything we do,” and, “Like a man walking on ice,
balance is more difficult to regain once it starts to
slip away.” Indeed, balance is an undervalued principle
in business. Entrepreneurship, like high altitude
climbing, requires balance: climb too fast or too slow
and you put yourself at risk. As David Packard, founder
of Hewlett Packard, once observed, “More companies die
of indigestion than starvation.” Companies would do well
to focus more explicitly on the interplay among pacing,
productivity and performance.
Many of
Wooden’s leadership principles have entered common
management parlance: “Don’t mistake activity for
achievement;” “Be quick but don’t hurry;” “Failing to
prepare is preparing to fail;” and “Little things make
big things happen.” Wooden on Leadership is
replete with wisdom and wit. Trained as an English
teacher, Wooden is crisp and concise in making his
points.
Wooden
leaves a long legacy. Wooden’s players and coaches have
subsequently won no fewer than 20 collegiate and pro
championships. He has mentored assistant coaches who
have themselves had illustrious careers, including
Hall-of-Famer Denny Crum. But it is the personal impact
on his players that appears most lasting. As Bill
Walton, who frequently tested Wooden as a player,
recently wrote as a tribute to his former coach:
John
Wooden is still our coach in so many ways. And just as
if it were 30 years ago …, he is there with us to this
very day. Pushing, shaping, molding, challenging,
driving us to be better. To be faster. … While our
practices were the most demanding endeavors that I’ve
ever been a part of, so physically, emotionally,
mentally and psychologically taxing, there is always the
sense of joy, of celebration and of people having fun
playing a simple game. Always positive, always
constructive, John Wooden drives us in ways and
directions that we are not aware of, always with the
goal of making us better. … Of course we didn’t
understand or realize any of this while we were living
it. We thought he was nuts, crazy. … I thank John Wooden
every day for all his selfless gifts, his lessons, his
time, his vision and especially his patience. This is
why we call him coach.
Author’s Note:
Paul Asel is partner at the venture capital firm Nokia
Growth Partners. He is co-author of the 2003 book,
Upward Bound: Nine Original Accounts of How Business
Leaders Reached Their Summits. He can be reached
at
Paul.Asel@Nokia.com.
TALKING WITH THE RECEPTIONIST, Pausing When You Speak
and Other Secrets of Leadership Success
Note:
This article originally appeared in the Aug. 22, 2007,
issue of Knowledge@Wharton
Several years ago, while visiting a regional branch of
Lee Hecht Harrison, a global career management services
company, then-president Stephen Harrison was stopped
short by “Ray,” his chief operating officer. “You didn’t
greet the receptionist,” said Ray, who proceeded to show
Harrison how to do what he called the “two minute
schmooze.” Introducing himself, Ray inquired about the
receptionist’s commute and impressions of the company.
Ray
explained to Harrison: “A receptionist is a corporate
concierge. They will talk to more important people in a
day -- suppliers, customers, even CEOs -- than you will
talk to all year.”
Enron-level scandals are not averted by talking to the
receptionist alone, but Harrison, speaking at the recent
11th annual Wharton Leadership Conference, contended
that small acts like this are part of what makes for an
ethical corporate culture. And culture, not “heavy
handed legislation” like the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is
a key safeguard against moral lapses, he said in his
talk.
Also
presenting at the conference, which centered on the
theme of “Developing Leadership Talent,” was Richard
Greene, a public speaking coach and author of the book,
Words that Shook the World: 100 Years of
Unforgettable Speeches and Events. Conference
sponsors included the
Center for Leadership and Change Management, the
Center for Human Resources and
Wharton Executive Education.
Executive
Pomposity
Harrison, who is now chairman of Lee Hecht Harrison,
pointed to the failure of Sarbanes-Oxley to stop
incidences of corporate fraud and misconduct. He quoted
a 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers survey that reported a 22%
increase in global fraud over the last two years. When
the Federal Sentencing Commission discovered this gap
between intention and results, said Harrison, it held a
year of hearings and then added one line to the Federal
Sentencing Guidelines stating that public companies must
“promote an organizational culture that encourages
ethical conduct.”
Shortly after this addition was made, Harrison was
appointed Worldwide Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer
of Lee Hecht Harrison’s parent company, Adecco, a
position he held for two years and one that is mandated
for publicly traded companies complying with
Sarbanes-Oxley. He, along with other newly appointed
ethics and compliance officers, wanted to know: What
does “ethical culture” mean to the Federal Reserve
Board? Harrison spoke with Federal Reserve Board
officials and attended conferences where board members
addressed the issue.
“All
of us had pens in hand, waiting for the answer. They
couldn’t give it to us,” Harrison recalled. “So I
decided I would dig into this myself.” What he concluded
mirrors the words of former SEC Commissioner Cynthia
Glassman, who said that while the government can mandate
ethical compliance, “we cannot legislate ethical
behavior.” For Harrison, even the word “ethics” itself
seems too abstract; he replaces it with what he sees as
a more intuitive, common-sense word: decency.
“Decency is not just about being nice,” noted Harrison,
author of The Manager’s Book of Decencies.
Rather, it is about creating a “bubble wrap” of good
deeds that will protect a company in hard times. “Our
willingness to be decent at work cannot depend on
whether business is up or whether we’re in a bad mood or
whether it’s raining. Decencies don’t amount to anything
unless we take the trouble to make them come alive
through concrete acts in all kinds of weather.”
For
those at the top, this can mean such actions as being
the first to volunteer for ethics training; honoring
those with unglamorous jobs, like office cleaning; and
listening to people at all levels of the organization.
He pointed to the example of Herb Baum, former CEO of
Dial, who used to host “Hot Dogs with Herb” on the
factory floor, where he invited employees to talk with
him about anything on their minds.
Being
accessible is as important as being humble, said
Harrison. “Remember Ed Koch?” The former mayor of New
York, in his second year in office, drove from borough
to borough, asking people, “How am I doing?” “He went
from being well-liked to well-loved.” Harrison also
recalled meeting up one night with a long-lost college
roommate, Ruben Mark, chairman and CEO of Colgate
Palmolive. Over a Japanese dinner, Harrison asked him
how he explained his success. “He leaned across the
table and said, ‘That’s easy. I make absolutely sure
nothing creative or important is ever identified as my
idea,’“ said Harrison. “Now that’s humility.”
He
also counseled executives to avoid the trap of
“executive pomposity.” He first heard that term in a
1967 speech from the CEO of Technico, who spoke
specifically about executive “telephone pomposity.” Said
Harrison: “I have answered my own phone since then.”
Being
generous with praise and recognition will earn leaders
what Harrison calls “psychic income.” He gave the
example of the chairman and CEO of Campbell Soup who “at
the end of every day gathers his people to hear about
neat stuff done that day and then handwrites thank-you
notes to the people who did it. If you go around
Campbell Soup, all over the world, you will find those
notes framed.”
A key
test of a leader’s sensitivity comes at layoff time.
While Western companies, and particularly American
companies, have come to accept the reality of the need
for layoffs, “what they should not come to terms with is
a downsizing episode that is anything but sensitive,
well thought out and has preserving personal dignity as
the highest priority,” Harrison said.
Immediately after layoffs take place, for example, a
leader should be “very visible and accessible,” ready to
answer questions, reduce anxieties and even assuage the
guilt of those who survive the layoffs. “It takes
courage to put your chest out, shoulders back, and be
there to deal with this. It’s a decency, and people will
appreciate it.”
At
the end of the day, said Harrison, the words of poet
Maya Angelou ring true: “People will forget what you
said, they will even forget what you did, but they will
never forget what you made them feel.”
Leading with Your
Voice
As
public speaking coach Richard Greene knows, however, a
few unique individuals are able to combine words and
feelings in stirring, almost miraculous ways. “I would
rather hear Martin Luther King read the Philadelphia
White Pages out loud than hear almost anyone in
corporate America deliver the ‘I have a dream’ speech,”
said Greene during his presentation.
While
King had natural gifts that only a chosen few possess,
Greene argued that most people have never been trained
in public speaking, in part because the subject is not
usually taught in schools. “It’s a mechanical process
and every single employee, with a little bit of
intention, focus and time spent, can learn a new skill
set. They haven’t had a chance to see how good they can
be,” said Greene.
The
first task of a speaker is to realize his or her purpose
in speaking, whether it involves addressing several
prospective customers across a boardroom table or a
convention of thousands. “Public speaking is nothing
more than having a conversation about something you’re
passionate about with two or more people, while you just
happen to be standing up, or not,” said Greene, who has
advised CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and coached
presidents, prime ministers, and, in 1996, Diana,
Princess of Wales.
One
of the biggest pitfalls for speakers in a corporate
communication setting is perceiving a speech or
presentation as a performance. “It’s easy to get nervous
and think, ‘I want them to know how smart I am and how
much I know,’“ said Greene. “But if it’s just about
downloading data, then stay home, hit the send button
and save everyone’s time and expense.”
The
best communicators have understood that public speaking
is not a performance; it’s about making a connection
with others, said Greene. “What did Franklin Roosevelt
call his weekly radio addresses? Not ‘fireside speeches’
but ‘fireside chats.’ He understood that this new
technology -- radio -- could be a way to connect with
people.”
Greene, who began his career as a lawyer, became
intrigued by public speaking after watching motivational
speaker Tony Robbins. “His ability to work a crowd is
unparalleled and I learned a lot from him. I also
decided it would be much more fun to do what he was
doing, rather than what I was doing, which was being his
lawyer.”
During the 2000 presidential election, Greene advised Al
Gore’s campaign to let the then-Democratic nominee speak
about environmental issues, but his advice was brushed
off by the vice president’s campaign on the basis that
“no one cares about the environment.” “What was missing
from Gore in 2000 was a sense of human passion and
authenticity. It doesn’t matter what you think of global
warming: What matters is you see that he believes in
something passionately,” he said.
Authenticity can help convince an audience that you are
bringing something unique to the table, said Greene.
“When you’re trying to market an idea or product or
service, you have to answer two questions the customer
has, which are: ‘What makes you unique, as compared to
your competitors? And how can your uniqueness benefit
me?’“
Greene offered some practical tips, including the
observation that “the difference between a good speaker
and a great speaker is the pause.” He recited a piece of
the famous King speech: “He said, ‘I have a dream’ --
pause, pause, pause -- ‘that one day’ -- pause, pause,
pause -- ‘this nation will rise up….’ He didn’t just run
it all together, one word after another.”
Other
simple tools of the trade include making eye contact
with audience members even in a large room, establishing
a casual relationship by walking in front of a podium
rather than standing behind it, and varying voice tone
and rhythm. “This is all low-hanging fruit,” said
Greene, meaning that with a little training, most
speakers can improve in these areas.
Of
course some public speaking skills are the result of
natural gifts, Greene acknowledged, and voice resonance
is one of those gifts. Former CBS News anchorman Walter
Cronkite won the nation’s trust in part because of his
deep, full voice, said Greene; on the flip side,
Democratic presidential nominee Hubert Humphrey lost the
1968 election in part because his voice was high-pitched
and even grating.
As
for the current presidential race, Greene predicted that
Mitt Romney would win the Republican nomination and
Barack Obama the Democratic because both are strong
communicators. “There is a continuum of great speakers.
Where you are on this continuum is pretty much where you
are in terms of overall effectiveness.”
He
attributes Obama’s rapid political rise to the skill of
his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National
Convention. “It didn’t sound like a normal political
speech. He spoke from a place of pure nakedness, as if
he were saying, ‘I’m not even giving a speech; let’s
just connect.’”
While
disparaging an older generation of public speaking
advice that recommended viewing audience members in
their underwear, Greene offered a different kind of
advice that can be summed up in four words: “It’s not
about you.” Referring again to Martin Luther King,
Greene said, “He had this ability to reach inside his
heart and soul and just bring out what was there. What
he cared about at every moment was just getting his
message across. He wasn’t worrying about how he looked.”
MANAGEMENT AT THE MOVIES: Film Clips that Instruct and
Inspire
 By Roy Tomizawa
On a
recent (and long) plane flight from New York to Tokyo, I
watched the film “Astronaut
Farmer,” in which Billy Bob Thornton plays Charlie
Farmer, a former astronaut forced to retire early to
save his family farm who fulfills his dream of space
travel by building and launching his own earth-orbiting
rocket.
Improbable and hokey as the film was, I enjoyed it as a
tribute to the unlimited potential we all possess.
Hollywood is in the business of making dreams come true;
as Farmer says in the movie in response to doubting
reporters, “When I was a kid, they used to tell me I
could be anything I wanted to be, no matter what.” All
of us in the corporate world face similar if perhaps
less dramatic moments like this, when we must dig down
and find an inner grit that will propel us forward.
Like
Hollywood, leaders are also in the business of making
dreams come true. Great leaders establish the vision and
tell the stories that help us see in our minds’ eyes how
wonderful or beautiful or exciting the realization of
that vision can be.
Stories are not just effective in setting the vision;
they are powerful tools in helping people to understand
complex behaviors and situations. As James Kouzes and
Barry Posner wrote in their 2003 book on leadership,
Encouraging the Heart, “Good stories move us.
They touch us, they teach us, and they cause us to
remember. They enable the listener to put the behavior
in a real context and understand what has to be done in
that context to live up to expectations.”
In my
15 years of working on human learning and development, I
have used the stories embedded in film clips to model
behaviors that exemplify the best of management and
leadership. If you want to understand the elements of
powerful persuasion, see
the shareholder vote scene towards the end of “Other
People’s Money” where Danny DeVito and Gregory Peck
out-persuade one another. If you want to gain insight
into effective teamwork, watch
the carbon dioxide filter scene in “Apollo13.” If
you want to feel the power of visionary leadership, see
Kenneth Branagh deliver the “Band of brothers” speech
in his adaptation of King Henry V.
In
other words, if you’re looking for a memorable way of
explaining the complex behaviors of the best managers
and leaders, grab your popcorn, take your seat, and
enjoy the movie!
Author’s Note:
Roy Tomizawa is the Director of People and
Organizational Capability for Microsoft Japan. To learn
more about film clips that can be used by educators,
managers and leaders to instruct or inspire, visit his
blog,
Management at the Movies. He can be reached at
roy.tomizawa@hotmail.com. |
