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WHARTON LEADERSHIP DIGEST
December,
2002, Volume 7, Number 3
CONTENTS
Leading
with Courage: Eleanor
Roosevelt
Corporate
Leadership: Year End
Perspective
Connect
Your Leaders! Sharing
Ideas in the Army on the Web
Zen
and the Art of Total Fitness in China: Searching
for Magicians and Philosophers
Learning
Program: Leadership and
Management in Southeast Asia
Leading with
courage:
Eleanor Roosevelt
By
Kate Faber, Coordinator, Wharton Leadership Center
 Eleanor
Roosevelt achieved far more than just being First Lady. Eleanor’s life
is marked by a constant struggle to overcome numerous personal upsets to
pursue her passion for social justice and become an international leader. In
her book, Leadership the Eleanor Roosevelt Way: Timeless Strategies
from the First Lady of Courage, Robin Gerber summarizes the various
challenges Eleanor faced in her lifetime and translates these lessons into
lessons for leadership. While
forced at times, this work provides a solid framework for individuals
seeking both a path for leadership development as well as an example of
resilience and passion.
Gerber, a senior scholar at the University of
Maryland’s Academy of Leadership, was attracted to her subject because
of on the many hurdles Eleanor surmounted. When
she was eight years old, Eleanor’s mother died of diphtheria and her
father was confined to a mental asylum where he died two years later from
alcoholism. She later had to
deal with her husband’s infidelity and his later polio as well as her
own cycles of depression.
Eleanor’s track record for meeting conflicts --
practical and emotional -- head-on is an inspiration in itself. However,
she is most remembered for her achievements in pursuit of human rights. She was involved in the promotion of women’s right to vote,
defying racial segregation and, at the twilight of her career, was
appointed as Head of the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Each chapter of Gerber’s book details specific
challenges Eleanor faced, parallels how these challenges may occur today,
and defines “Eleanor’s Way”: quick
tips to incorporate into one’s own leadership strategy.
For example, in Gerber’s chapter entitled, “Face
Criticism With Courage,” she shares a test of Eleanor’s ability to
both rally the troops and address public criticism. Eleanor,
as the First Lady, reached out to people society deemed untouchable. Approaching
impoverished African-Americans, speaking out for coal-miners, and talking
with ordinary Americans, even though society’s elite often felt she was
going too far. Gerber gleans the following lessons from Eleanor’s reaction:
1. Get Firsthand Information.
Have a deep understanding of what you are talking about--its pros
and cons, its strengths and weaknesses. She
also believed in getting information yourself and not relying on popular
opinion or what others are saying to you.
2. Don’t Let Critics Get In Your Way.
Gerber supports this lesson with a quote from Eleanor: “If you
consider that you are being criticized by someone who is seeking knowledge
and has an open mind, then you naturally feel you must try to meet that
criticism. But if you feel
that the criticism is made out of sheer malice and that no amount of
explanation will change a point of view which has nothing to do with the
facts, then the best thing is to put it out of your mind entirely.”
3. Stay True to Yourself. You are the one who faces the mirror in the morning. Are you
making decisions that correlate to your beliefs and passions? Are
you making decisions based on popularity polls and public criticism? When
the work is done, you will be known by how you handled the situation. Ultimately,
you are your decisions.
Gerber’s work provides an overview of Eleanor’s
life and greater insights on how challenges can be transformed into
leadership skills. Eleanor’s
life is testament to creating opportunities for learning, testing your
principles by taking risks, and staying true to your self in the most
turbulent of times. Gerber captures Eleanor’s indomitable spirit and
encourages her readers to follow suit.
Note: Kate
Faber can be reached at kfaber@wharton.upenn.edu.
Corporate
Leadership: Year End
Perspective
By Paul
Sheppard, Wharton MBA Student and Deputy Editor, Wharton Leadership Digest
2002 has been a tough year to be the CEO of a major
US corporation. Leading through a recession is a thankless task. Slack
consumer demand, excess labor supply and volatile capital markets have all
increased pressure on CEOs. Like the Red Queen in Alice
in Wonderland, they often find themselves running faster just to stand
still.
The year’s economic downturn has also shaken out a
few bad apples that have rotted the public reputation of all CEOs. A
recent opinion poll conducted by CNN, USA Today and Gallup revealed that
almost three quarters of the American public believe that you “cannot be
too careful” with CEOs of large corporations. The
same poll showed Americans have not lost faith in popular capitalism:
three quarters of the public believe that most leaders of small businesses
can be trusted.
Leaders of large companies have slumped to rate
alongside used car salesmen and politicians in the public consciousness
mainly as a result of the numerous corporate scandals that have rocked the
capital markets over the last twelve months.
Yet it seems like only yesterday that the CEOs of
Worldcom, Enron and Tyco stood proudly on the front pages of business
magazines. Such business
leaders were often championed for their vision: being able to position
their companies to profit in new and rapidly changing markets. And
American investors lapped it up so long as equity values continued to head
north.
However, in the past year, Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay and
Denis Kozlowski have graced the same front pages for very different
reasons. The demise of their
corporations has created acres of newsprint but perhaps the most
interesting lesson for corporate leadership is not the scandals themselves
but how the CEOs responded to them.
In its latest annual review of ideas, The New York Times chronicles the rise of “know-nothing CEO” in
2002. Throughout the year,
embattled CEOs have played the hapless dupe. Sure their companies were in
a mess but they were not at fault as they did not know what was happening.
Bernie Ebbers, Ken Lay and Denis Kozlowski have all claimed to know little
more than shareholders about the seemingly mundane accounting, financial
and operational details that brought down the companies that they were
entrusted to lead.
The events of the year serve as a stark reminder to
business leaders that they need to be in control of both the details and
the big picture. CEOs must lead in the realization that the buck
ultimately stops with them. To
lead better, the CEO needs to build and maintain an organizational
structure and corporate culture that promotes and monitors ethical action
of all those involved with the company. It
is no easy task and is certainly not as sexy as the vision thing. But
plenty of major companies do it well. And
it is paramount if CEOs are to avoid facing the public and pleading the
paltry know-nothing defense.
Note:
Paul Sheppard can be reached at paulks@wharton.upenn.edu.
CONNECT
YOUR LEADERS! Sharing Ideas in the Army on the Web
 By
Major Nate Allen and Major Tony Burgess, Staff and Faculty, United States
Military Academy
The cost of losing in the Army is very serious, so it
makes sense that Army leaders are passionately committed to figuring out
and sharing what works. However,
there has been no system to allow leaders to share real time, laterally
across the entire organization. For
the most part, when leaders leave their jobs, their experience goes with
them. This is problematic considering that Army leaders switch jobs on
average every one to two years, the Army’s operational pace has
increased 300 percent in ten years, the force has been cut in half, and
the operational environment is getting more complex every day.
We simply cannot afford to have key leaders operating in
disconnected silos, not sharing what they are learning.
Our idea was to create
a virtual space for Army leaders to connect in conversation and to talk
about the things that matter most in our profession.
We imagined leaders hanging out on the “porch” talking about
building combat-ready units, sharing their best ideas, and solving their
most pressing problems. Our
team designed and built two Web sites -- www.CompanyCommand.com
and http://platoonleader.army.mil
-- which are laterally connecting
the company-level leaders of the Army.
The sites have sparked a grass-roots movement -- fueled by word of
mouth -- that is helping to change the way officers prepare for and lead
soldiers. We believe the
lateral connections and shared conversation around what is truly core to
the Army will lead to improved bottom-line effectiveness in battle.
Although we
have learned many things during our 2-1/2 year, self-imposed mission to
connect leaders, we will focus here on one of the more compelling ideas
that our team has unearthed:
If
they build it, they will come.
The
community space must be designed and facilitated by people who are
experienced in and passionate about the particular practice that you are
seeking to connect. They will
intuitively know the culture and understand what will add value to people
in the practice. They also
have amazing social capital which is absolutely priceless since who they know and their
reputation in the practice will directly influence their ability to
attract people to the project.
This is very different than
management saying, “If we build it, they will come.”
Unfortunately, this is the approach most organizations take; it is
an approach that is often followed by “make them come” and “it
didn’t work.”
Our initial 12 volunteers, to
include our one technology savvy team member, were all straight out of
company command operational assignments.
They were passionate about command, and were energized around the
vision of laterally connecting company commanders across the Army.
Finally, we believe that our
team’s success has been and always will be tied directly to our
delivering best-of-class value to our audience.
We are acutely aware that the people we are seeking to connect have
tremendous demands on their time, are continually deployed around the
globe, and spend little time sitting in front of a computer.
The day we lose focus on adding phenomenal value to leaders in the
field, is the day that we become irrelevant.
Note:
Nate Allen and Tony Burgess are the co-founders of
CompanyCommand.com and PlatoonLeader.org, and coathors of Taking the
Guidon: Exceptional Leadership at the Company Level. You
can contact them via email at allenandburgess@aol.com.
Zen
and the Art of Total Fitness in China:
Searching for Magicians and
Philosophers
 By
Tomer Rothschild, Chief Representative for China, Bally Total Fitness
Advertisement:
Bally Total Fitness in
Beijing is launching, and is looking for managers who possess knowledge of
the health club industry, emerging markets experience, and strong
marketing skills. Preference will be given to those with a strong magic
and philosophy skillset.
I arrived in Beijing nearly 12 months ago as Bally
Total Fitness’ Chief Representative for China.
I am responsible for our market entry and development, and the
opening of our first health club -- a beautiful 45,000 square foot
flagship club located two miles from Tiananmen Square.
Since then, we have grown our first club successfully, opened our
second club in Beijing in October, and have signed deals for our third and
fourth clubs. With the
Beijing 2008 Olympics in the near future, health and fitness is booming,
and so is Bally Total Fitness in China.
Why the need for magicians and philosophers?
Because magicians can pull objects suddenly out of hats, and
philosophers are skilled in explaining theoretical concepts.
These two skills (improvisation and abstraction) are most relevant
to being a manager at Bally in Beijing.
This past January and February, our new employees
received a six-week training course.
We taught them the basics of health and fitness, sales skills, and
customer service. In March
and April, we let them practice their skills with real customers during a
2-month presales period. And
in May, with a wave of the Bally wand, we were able to open the doors to
our first club with over 600 members!
Why is this magic? While our club was under construction, we held our training
class in a neighborhood school classroom.
At that time, because the health club industry was so new in China,
none of our employees had ever worked in, or for that matter, even seen a
proper health club. In such a
spartan environment, we were forced to improvise.
We did “club sales tours” around the schoolyard, pointing to
imaginary treadmills and lifting barbells made out of chopsticks with
dumplings hanging on each end.
Howard, the Bally-trained American Club Manager, and
I were forced to turn to philosophy to inspire our salespeople to depart
from the prepared textbook sales script.
We realized that our employees’ Chinese educational background
emphasized rote memorization skills and a lecture format, while our
lessons were based on role-play and developing sales skills -- interacting
with and listening to customers. A
successful salesperson, we explained, uses a combination of art and
science, or as we explained in Chinese, yishu
yu kexue. “Ahh,” they
sighed as they began to digest this abstract idea.
Our employees had no problem with the science part -- they
memorized the sales script in the training manual and effortlessly quoted
the physiology statistics for achieving fitness results.
What they lacked was the art -- the ability to handle the
unexpected contours of a real conversation, and use individual flair and
personality in the sales process. Thankfully,
several weeks of encouragement to be creative and different brought out
the Dale Carnegie in our employees, as they started to feel at ease making
a sales pitch, speaking up, and presenting in front of an audience.
Now, 12 months later, as we look to staff our third
and fourth clubs, I am reminded of how a manager’s skillset must adapt
to the local environment to succeed.
A leader in most environments must be able to inspire people by
providing a vision and pathway to success.
In China, a leader must do all that, and in addition become a
philosopher of management theory and pull dumbbells out of a hat.
Note:
Tomer Rothschild can be reached at tomerrothschild@yahoo.com.
Learning
Program:
Leadership and Management in Southeast Asia
A three-week Senior Executive Program is offered from August 10 to 30,
2003, by the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of
Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University in collaboration with the Wharton
School and Kellogg School. The
program is intended for senior managers moving into cross-functional or
general management responsibilities with strong potential for top
leadership.
The program is offered in English at a resort hotel southwest of Bangkok,
and it draws participants from the Asian region, including Indonesia,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand. Wharton and Kellogg faculty provide instruction in
accounting, economics, finance, leadership, marketing, organizational
behavior, and strategic management.
For
information on the Senior Executive Program, contact Sasin’s Head of
Executive Education, Patcharaphorn Phantarathorn at patchara@sasin.chula.ac.th,
or see the program website with online registration at http://www.sep.sasin.chula.ac.th.
Copyright
© 1996-2002, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management
University of Pennsylvania
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