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WHARTON LEADERSHIP DIGEST
November,
2002, Volume 7, Number 2
CONTENTS
The
seventh annual Wharton Leadership Conference will be held on June 4, 2003,
in Huntsman Hall at the Wharton School in Philadelphia.
Focused on “Leading with Integrity,” the conference is devoted
to exchanging ideas on how personal integrity, responsible thinking, and
the other qualities of great leadership can be developed and ensured.
 Speakers
include Sherron Watkins, a former vice president of Enron Corporation.
She had warned CEO Kenneth Lay in August, 2001, that the company
"might implode in a wave of accounting scandals."
Now an independent speaker and consultant, she is co-author of the
forthcoming book, Power Failure: The Inside Story of How Enron's
Culture of Arrogance and Greed Led to the Biggest Bankruptcy in American
History (Random House, March, 2003).
Other
speakers include the chief executive officers of Lucent Technologies, Tyco
International, and Vanguard Group.
Information on the
conference can be found at: http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/conferences/conf_060403.shtml
Online registration for the conference is available at: http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/chr/registration.htm
An online reservation form for the Inn at Penn, a Hilton-managed hotel one
block from the conference site, can found at:
http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/chr/hotel_registration.htm
Building
the Future:
Try Feedforward Instead of
Feedback
 By
Marshall Goldsmith, Founding Director,
A4SL -- The Alliance for Strategic Leadership
Giving and
receiving feedback has long been considered to be an essential skill for
leaders. As they strive to
achieve the goals of the organization, employees need to know how they are
doing. They need to know if
their performance is what their leaders expect from them and, if not, they
need suggestions on how to improve it.
Traditionally,
this information has been communicated in the form of feedback from
leaders to their employees. And, leaders themselves need feedback from their
employees, in the form of suggestions for how to improve procedures
and processes, innovative ideas for new products and services, and
input on their own leadership styles.
But there is
a fundamental problem with feedback: it focuses on that past, on what
has already occurred -- not on the infinite variety of things that can
be in the future. As such,
feedback is limited and it is static.
Over the past
several years, I have observed more than five thousand leaders as
they participated in a fascinating experiential exercise.
In the exercise, participants are each asked to play two
roles. In one role, they are
asked provide feedforward -- that is, to give someone else suggestions for
the future and help as much as they can.
In the second role, they are asked to accept feedforward --
that is, to listen to the suggestions for the future and learn as
much as they can. The
exercise typically lasts for 10-15 minutes, and the average
participant has 6-7 dialogue sessions.
In the exercise participants are asked to:
o Pick
one behavior that they would like to change.
Change in this behavior should make a significant, positive
difference in their lives.
o Describe
this behavior to randomly selected fellow participants. This is done
in one-on-one dialogues. It
can be done quite simply, such as, "I want to be a better
listener."
o Ask
for feedforward: for two suggestions for the future that might help them
achieve a positive change in their selected behavior.
If participants have worked together in the past, they are not
allowed to give ANY feedback about the past.
They are only allowed to give ideas for the future.
o Listen
attentively to the suggestions and take notes.
Participants are not allowed to comment on the suggestions in
any way. They are not allowed to
critique the suggestions or even to make positive judgmental statements, such
as, "That's a good idea."
o Thank
the other participants for their suggestions.
o Ask
the other persons what they would like to change.
o Provide
feedforward -- two suggestions aimed at helping them change.
o Say,
"You are welcome." when thanked for the suggestions.
The entire process of both giving and receiving feedforward
usually takes about two minutes.
o Find
another participant and keep repeating the process until the exercise is
stopped.
When the
exercise is finished, I ask participants to provide one word that best
describes their reaction to this experience.
I ask them to complete the sentence, "This exercise was
... ". The words
provided are almost always extremely positive, such as
"great", "energizing", "useful" or "helpful".
The most common word mentioned is "fun!" What is the last
word that most of us think about when we receive coaching and
developmental ideas? Fun!
Ten
Reasons to Try Feedforward
Participants
are then asked why this exercise is seen as fun and helpful as opposed
to painful, embarrassing or uncomfortable.
Their answers provide a great explanation of why feedforward
can often be more useful than feedback.
1. We can
change the future. We can't
change the past. Feedforward
helps people envision and focus on a positive future, not a failed
past. Athletes are often
trained using feedforward. Racecar
drivers are taught to, "look at the road, not the wall". Basketball players are taught to envision the ball going
in the hoop and to imagine the perfect shot.
By giving people ideas on how they can be even more
successful, we can increase their chances of achieving this success
in the future.
2. It can be
more productive to help people be "right", than prove they were "wrong".
Negative feedback often becomes an exercise in "let me prove
you were wrong". This
tends to produce defensiveness on the part of the receiver and
discomfort on the part of the sender.
Even constructively delivered feedback is often seen as
negative as it necessarily involves a discussion of mistakes,
shortfalls, and problems. Feedforward,
on the other hand, is almost always seen as positive because it
focuses on solutions.
3.
Feedforward is especially suited to successful people.
Successful people like getting ideas that are aimed at helping
them achieve their goals. They tend to resist negative judgment.
We all tend to accept feedback that is consistent with the way
we see ourselves. We also
tend to reject or deny feedback that is inconsistent with the way we
see ourselves. Successful people
tend to have a very positive self-image.
I have observed many successful executives respond to (and
even enjoy) feedforward. I am
not sure that these same people would have had such a positive
reaction to feedback.
4.
Feedforward can come from anyone who knows about the task.
It does not require personal experience with the individual.
One very common positive reaction to the previously described
exercise is that participants are amazed by how much they can learn
from people that they don't know! For example,
if you want to be a better listener, almost any fellow leader can give
you ideas on how you can improve. They
don't have to know you. Feedback requires knowing about the person.
Feedforward just requires having good ideas for achieving the
task.
5. People do
not take feedforward as personally as feedback.
In theory, constructive feedback is supposed to "focus on
the performance, not the person".
In practice, almost all feedback is taken personally (no matter how
it is delivered). Successful people's sense of identity is highly connected
with their work. The more
successful people are, the more this tends to be true. It is hard to give a dedicated professional feedback that is
not taken personally. Feedforward
cannot involve a personal critique, since it is discussing something
that has not yet happened!
6. Feedback
can reinforce personal stereotyping and negative self-fulfilling prophecies.
Feedforward can reinforce the possibility of change.
How many of us have been "helped" by a spouse,
significant other or friend, who seems to have a near-photographic
memory of our previous "sins" that they share with us in
order to point out the history of our shortcomings.
Negative feedback can be used to reinforce the message,
"this is just the way you are".
Feedforward is based on the assumption that people can make
positive changes in the future.
7. Face it!
Most of us hate getting negative feedback, and we don't like to give
it. I have reviewed summary 360° feedback reports for over 50 companies.
The items "provides developmental feedback in a timely
manner" and "encourages and accepts constructive
criticism" almost always score near the bottom on co-worker
satisfaction with leaders. Traditional
training does not seem to make a great deal of difference.
If leaders got better at providing feedback every time the
performance appraisal forms were "improved", most should be
perfect by now! Leaders are
not very good at giving or receiving negative feedback.
It is unlikely that this will change in the near future.
8.
Feedforward can cover almost all of the same "material" as
feedback. Imagine that you have just made a terrible presentation in
front of the executive committee.
Your manager is in the room. Rather
than make you "relive" this humiliating experience, your
manager might help you prepare for future presentations by giving you
suggestions for the future. These suggestions
can be very specific and still delivered in a positive way.
In this way your manager can "cover the same points"
without feeling as embarrassed and without making you feel even more
humiliated.
9.
Feedforward tends to be much faster and more efficient than feedback.
An excellent technique for giving ideas to successful people
is to say, "Here are four ideas for the future.
Please accept these in the positive spirit that they are
given. If you can only use
two of the ideas, you are still two ahead.
Just ignore what doesn't make sense for you."
With this approach almost no time gets wasted on judging the
quality of the ideas or "proving that the ideas are wrong".
This "debate" time is usually negative; it can take up a
lot of time, and it is often not very productive.
By eliminating judgment of the ideas, the process becomes much
more positive for the sender, as well as the receiver.
Successful people tend to have a high need for
self-determination and will tend to accept ideas that they "buy"
while rejecting ideas that feel "forced" upon them.
10.
Feedforward can be a useful tool to apply with managers, peers and team members.
Rightly or wrongly, feedback is associated with judgment.
This can lead to very negative unintended consequences when
applied to managers or peers. Feedforward
does not imply superiority of judgment.
It is more focused on being a helpful "fellow
traveler" than an "expert".
As such it can be easier to hear from a person who is not in a
position of power or authority.
An excellent team building exercise is to have each team member ask,
"How can I better help our team in the future?" and listen to feedforward
from fellow team members (in one-on-one dialogues.)
In summary,
the intent of this article is not to imply that leaders should never
give feedback or that performance appraisals should be abandoned.
The intent is to show how feedforward can often be preferable
to feedback in day-to-day interactions.
Aside from its effectiveness and efficiency, feedforward can
make life a lot more enjoyable. When
managers are asked, "How did you feel the last time you received
feedback?," their most common responses are very negative.
When managers are asked how they felt after receiving
feedforward, they reply that feedforward was not only useful, it was
also fun!
Quality communication -- between and among people at all levels and every department
and division -- is the glue that holds organizations together. By using
feedforward -- and by encouraging others to use it - leaders can dramatically
improve the quality of communication in their organizations, ensuring
that the right message is conveyed, and that those who receive it are
receptive to its content. The result is a much more dynamic, much more open
organization - one whose employees focus on the promise of the future rather
than the mistakes of the past.
Note: Marshal
Goldsmith can be reached at marshall@a4sl.com.
The
term "feedforward" was coined in a discussion with Jon
Katzenbach, author of The Wisdom of Teams and Real Change Leaders.
This article is amended from an article
published in Leader to Leader, Summer, 2002, No. 25 (published by
The Drucker Foundation and Jossey-Bass, Inc., Publishers).
Learning
from the Mayor:
Rudolph Giuliani on Leadership
By Maureen Rayhill, Wharton MBA Student
You can learn a lot about former Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani’s leadership style from seeing him speak.
No notes, a warm, confident and humorous delivery and poignant
answers to every question asked. As
soon as he starts talking, the fact that he is a man of passionate beliefs
with the courage to implement them whether they are popular or not shines
through.
In his in his best-selling book, Leadership, Giuliani describes how his personal and professional
experiences feed off of one another.
Constant self-assessment has become a force of habit.
He studies the leadership moments of his mentors and always listens
to the advice of his team. These
personal habits helped form the strength and courage to lead his city
through the shocking and unexpected crisis of September 11.
In a speech at the University of Pennsylvania on
October 29, 2002, Giuliani cited five key components of effective
leadership:
Conviction
in your beliefs: Giuliani
says that every leader should have a firm set of guiding principles, which
are especially important in times of crisis. He said that he learnt from
studying Winston Churchill’s fortitude during the relentless bombing of
London in the Second World War.
Courage:
Giuliani argued that a leader requires courage to implement his
principles. Real life events,
particularly crises, often pull you in many directions.
However, he was quick to distinguish between fearlessness and
courage. He said, “a
firefighter who enters a burning building without fear is insane.
A firefighter who walks into a fire and feels fear, and overcomes
it – that’s courage.”
Preparation:
This is his mantra. Whether
Giuliani is preparing for every possible surprise in the trial of a mob
boss or implementing table top exercises in the police and fire
departments, he cites preparation as a critical component to performance.
Communication:
Known for his direct approach, Giuliani recognizes the importance
of bringing your people along with you.
Less well-known is his nonverbal communication.
Being present for people during hardship is crucial to
communicating your position. He
attended the funerals of every person who died in the line of duty for the
city of New York prior to 9/11 and as many as he could in the aftermath,
sometimes more than three a day.
Team:
Giuliani draws on the success of his favorite team, the New York
Yankees, to illustrate the importance of teamwork to achieve results.
Yankee’s owner George Steinbrenner and manager Joe Torre balance each
other out and work with their players to achieve their goal.
With a glint in his eye, Giuliani cites the results of this
successful partnership: Yankees’
four championships in five years. Of his own team, Giuliani says “I’m resting on the
shoulders of giants.”
Working at his consultancy firm, Giuliani Partners,
this summer, I witnessed the strength of the team that Giuliani had built
around him. His tireless work
ethic is a source of inspiration to those who work for him, since every
member of his staff knows that he is always working at least as hard as
they are. Moreover,
every member of his staff knows that their commitment and loyalty will be
returned in kind. Giuliani’s
team at his consulting firm is almost entirely comprised of people who
worked with him at City Hall. The
work dynamic consists of cooperation, diligence, determination,
discipline, creativity, trust, and tremendous humor.
It is an atmosphere that is derived from the personality of its
leader.
Giuliani’s solid sense of himself is the source of
his leadership. On a personal
level, it compels him to improve and expand his experience.
And this impulse toward correction and comprehensive mastery
extends to his professional endeavors.
He has learnt to expect the unexpected.
In that way he is better prepared for it.
His sense of self coupled with his tireless drive provides him with
the confidence to act on his convictions.
And it is his conviction, his consistency which provides an
assurance, a sense of security to those around him that he will always
deliver on his promise.
Note:
Maureen Rayhill can be reached at rayhill@wharton.upenn.edu.
Conductor-Less
Yet Leader-Full: What Business Can
Learn from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
 By
Chris Maxwell, Associate Director, Wharton Undergraduate Leadership
Program
Recognized internationally as one of the world’s
major symphonic organizations, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra has a
singular distinguishing feature: It
rehearses and performs without a conductor.
How has it achieved its critical acclaim without the familiar sight
of a conductor at the helm? The
answer: By developing a
self-governing structure emphasizing collaborative leadership and lateral
communication.
In that answer are implications for orchestrating
virtually any human endeavor, and Orpheus has been sharing its experience
and insights with managers and students through “process
demonstrations” at companies and schools.
A core group of musicians, then the full orchestra, rehearses a
selection while openly discussing the presentation and negotiating its
final interpretation. The
concert master ensures that divergent opinions are heard and that the
ensemble works toward consensus. But
the concert master dictates no resolutions nor outcomes.
 Wharton School undergraduate Mark Silverstein
recently attended an Orpheus demonstration, and he observed: “Cohesiveness within the group was important.
Disagreements will always arise in group work,” as they did
during the rehersal demonstration. “However, it’s solving these differences that
makes a group successful.” He
noted that Orpheus was “built on three strong pillars of teamwork --
preparation, communication, and mutual respect,” and that they were key
to the swift resolution of its internal differences.
Wharton MBA student Patrick McClanahan witnessed the
demonstration as well, and he too could see the implication of the
orchestra’s collaborative leadership for the business world and beyond.
“There are definite applications of the multi-leader group in the
corporate world,” he observed. “The
structure of most consulting firms is ideal for shared leadership.
The Marine Corps also effectively uses the multi-leader concept.”
He found that the musicians repeatedly demonstrated an “ability
to trust one another to share the leading process,” and that that
capacity appeared to be a critical ingredient.
But McClanahan also noted that the stressful environments of
business and battle can challenge collaborative leadership since it
depends on prolonged discussion and negotiation:
“The major obstacle,” to such multi-leader endeavors, he
warned, was “time.”
By Paul
Sheppard, Wharton MBA Student
Restoring public trust in corporate America is a hot
topic for leaders. Pete
Peterson -- Chairman of Blackstone, former Secretary of Commerce and
Chairman of the Federal Bank of New York -- visited the University of
Pennsylvania last month to share his perspectives on the issue.
He spoke of how leaders can act to restore it, which is the role of
the newly formed Conference Board Committee on Public Trust that he
co-chairs.
Peterson started his talk by quantifying the scale of
the problem. In a recent Gallup poll, 77 percent of the American public
attributed greed and corruption among corporate executives as the cause of
the current weakness of the economy.
Citing a study by The American Survey he said that 80 percent of
the population believes that fraud and impropriety are prevalent amongst
corporations and their executives. He
contrasted this with his own view, and the opinion of the majority of
major corporate leaders, that the recent scandals were a product of a
“few bad apples” but said that it was public opinion that was
important.
In analyzing the causes behind the distrust, Peterson
cited the huge growth in CEOs’ compensation.
Large corporations’ CEOs average total compensation has grown far
in excess of their productivity. According
to Business Week, the total pay
of CEOs of major corporations has grown by a factor of 48 times in real
terms since 1980. In
contrast, the average American’s wage packet has remained broadly flat.
The growth in executive pay has been driven by the
prevalence of granting CEOs share options.
Although options are intended to align corporate leaders’
objectives with shareholders in the companies they manage, Peterson argues
that interests have diverged. Major
share option schemes, Peterson contends, provide many senior executives
with “enormous temptation to manipulate earnings for short term gain.”
And as has become evident over the last year, such manipulations
can be catastrophic for share prices.
Peterson discussed his agenda for restoring public
trust in major corporations. He advised:
Overhauling
business leaders’ compensation packages. He argued that compensation should be structured to focus on
the long term and linked to company operating -- rather than purely stock
market -- metrics of performance.
Independent
outside consultants to the Compensation Committee.
The Compensation Committee should retain any outside consultant
who advise it and the outside consultants should report solely to the
committee (i.e. not conduct any other work for the corporation) to avoid
any conflict of interest.
Expensing
of stock options on a uniform and broadly accepted basis.
Peterson acknowledged that it would be difficult to convince
information-technology executives to adopt such a policy as, if they had,
average reported earnings per share for 2002 would be 70 percent lower
(according to a Merrill Lynch study).
Executives
should own stock for long run.
Senior management and directors should be required to own a
meaningful amount of company stock and be subject to substantial minimum
holding periods for equity compensation.
Advance
notice of share sales. Executives
should be required to give advance public notice of their intention to
sell stock holdings in companies they manage.
Strong
independent directors.
To help achieve this, Peterson favored the splitting of the
role of board chair and chief executive.
Measures
to improve the ethical culture of corporations. Peterson favored a
selection process of CEOs that puts emphasis on their ability to foster
ethical practices and including ethical conduct in their performance
reviews. He also recommended
regular surveys of employees’ understanding of a company’s ethical
code, processes that make it easier for employees to report breaches of
conduct and prompt investigation of complaints.
Peterson does not want legislation to enforce his
recommendations. Rather he
advocates achieving his reforms by their voluntary adoption by prominent
business leaders which would set best practices to be copied by the
industry. He
points to the important precedent set by Jeff Immelt, CEO of General
Electric. The company now expenses employee share options and Immelt
has pledged not to sell a single share of GE stock while he is CEO.
Peterson is essentially arguing that business leaders
have a responsibility to help rebuild public trust, which is a wider
mandate than managing in their company’s shareholder interests. The two are often aligned but not always.
For example, expensing share options may impact a company’s share
price but be the right thing to do.
Whether businesses leaders are ready and willing to
take on this wider responsibility is to be seen.
The public is unlikely to be patient in waiting for CEOs to get
their houses in order.
Note:
Paul Sheppard can be reached at paulks@wharton.upenn.edu
leadership Through Discovery:
Experiential Learning at Petróleos
de Venezuela
 By
Edgar Guédez, Carlota Núñez (right) and Marisol Pulgar (left),
International Center for Education and Training, Petróleos de Venezuela, Caracas, Venezuela
The International
Center of Education and Training (CIED) of Petróleos
de Venezuela (PDVSA), the national oil company, has developed a new
learning experience in leadership and communication for its employees.
Its “Experimental
Laboratory for Learning and Communication” consists of three phases:
1) a preparatory
period in which the participants are sensitized to the process of
experiential learning via a website and readings; 2) a workshop, 14 hours
in duration, that engage participants in a variety of learning
experiences, including interactive presentations, brainstorming,
story-telling, and team dynamics; and 3) a debriefing period in which
participants share their learning experiences and design a personal
learning agenda.
The learning
strategies are focused on three areas:
1) Self-knowledge:
Participants reflect on their own leadership capacities, including
self-discipline, listening skills, learning styles, teamwork,
communication, and organizational change.
2) Building
knowledge: Participants work
on transforming their organization’s tacit knowledge into explicit
knowledge that can be actively applied, and in building a capacity and
willingness among their subordinates to bring forward fresh approaches and
strategies.
3) Sharing knowledge:
Participants build a learning community by expanding their networks
and disseminating their ideas for action through them.
The results of the
workshop exceeded our expectations, and CIED is now in the process of
presenting this new learning method to the many organizations that it
supports and serves within PDVSA in Venezuela and abroad.
Note:
Edgar Guédez is Director of PDVSA’s International Center for
Education and Training, Carlota Núñez is a specialist in Education
Technology, and Marisol Pulgar is Senior Advisor of Leadership Program at
CIED. They led the design and
delivery of the Experimental Laboratory for Learning and Communication,
and they can be contacted at webmastercied@pdvsa.com.
A Spanish-language website for CIED is available at http://www.pdv.com/cied/esp/principal.html.
Copyright
© 1996-2002, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management
University of Pennsylvania
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One
important implication, concluded McClanahan, is that “one should never
assume that an employee, subordinate, or peer does not have an opinion of
how to carry out an activity or project.