Ed Batista

Bill George on Teaching Leadership

Bill George is former Chairman and CEO of Medtronic, whose market cap grew an average of 35 percent annually during his tenure, and currently a professor at Harvard Business School. His recent interview with Charlie Rose included the following exchanges:

Charlie Rose: [Leadership] can be taught and learned?

Bill George: Learned. I teach now, and I don't think you can teach leadership, I think you can learn about it. I think you can learn about yourself. It comes from within, from who are you inside and what makes you tick, and what are those tapes playing in your head about what you want to be and what your limitations are.

(later in the interview)

Bill George: In this century, leadership has changed. Leadership is not about getting people to follow you, the "Great Man theory," follow you over the hill General George Patton style. That idea is out. To me, the great leaders today are able to align people around a sense of purpose and values and get that consistency all around the globe, and then empower other people to step up and lead. And I've found that in organizations that are really effective at generating leaders, there are thousands of leaders because people empower them to step up and lead.

(still later)

Charlie Rose: I asked [earlier] about teaching leadership--what can you teach?

Bill George: What we can do is cause people to come together and learn about themselves through dialogue... You learn about who you are, and if you go inside yourself, you find out, "What are my passions?"

(still later)

Charlie Rose: One last question: Self-analysis is crucial to leadership?

Bill George: Yes, absolutely.

Charlie Rose: If you can delude yourself, or if you are in self-denial, you will never be able to [lead]?

Bill George: Can you get... Do you seek out honest feedback from people about who you are? The hardest thing we have to do is see ourselves as others see us. And do you gain that self-awareness? Some people think they have it, but they've never really tested themselves, and that is crucial. Until you have that level of self-awareness, and you know who you really are...  As one of our leaders said, "You know, I won't trust anyone who's never failed because they don't really know who they are."

I'm struck by George's emphasis on increased self-awareness through dialogue and feedback from others. These practices are hallmarks of the work I do with students at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, not only in our more formally organized leadership development programs, but also in Interpersonal Dynamics, aka "Touchy Feely," both of which provide students with extensive feedback on how others see them.

These methods are a perfect complement to George's vision of 21st century leadership, in which a leader's ability to inspire others to "follow you over the hill" is of less importance than your ability "to align people around a sense of purpose and values...and then empower other people to step up and lead."

If you're inspiring followers, self-awareness may be less important than the natural charisma we've traditionally associated with strong leadership. But if you're aligning and empowering other leaders, your success will depend on your ability to connect with people not as "followers" but as independent decision-makers and to motivate and influence them by speaking to their needs and interests.  This requires a keen degree of self-awareness and the ability to see yourself clearly through the eyes of others.

 

---

For Further Reading

True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership (Bill George with Peter Sims, 2007)

Paul Thornton on the Best Leadership Advice

What's the best advice you've been given on leadership?  Paul Thornton asked that question of 137 leaders and has compiled their responses in a compelling little volume, Leadership: Best Advice I Ever Got.  I've been meaning to read and review this book for months, but when I first got it my reading pile was several feet high, and then by the time this book had made it to the top of the pile, other work was preventing me from doing much blogging.

But when I finally made the time to read "Leadership," I wound up racing through it in a single sitting, dog-earing pages as I went.  I don't agree with all the advice relayed by Thornton's subjects, but even the comments I disagree with provide an interesting view into what that person values and the knowledge that has contributed the most to their own development as a leader.

To give you a sense of the richness of Thornton's book, here are excerpts from four of his subject's comments, all taken from pages 12-20:

Jim Ligotti, VP, Maritime Solutions, Ingersoll-Rand

[My dad] would remind me that delaying or not making a decision was in fact making the decision not to decide.  You never will have enough information, you never will have enough time, but you do need to take hold of the moment and make the best decision you can.

Liz Weber, Weber Business Services LLC

Being liked as a leader doesn't get the job done; being respected does.  Before...I had run myself ragged trying to please everyone.  I had tried to keep them happy and had tried to make sure they were happy with me.  No more.  I finally realized my job as a leader was to lead to the best of my ability and forget the unwinnable battle of pleasing everyone.

Richard J. Faubert, President and CEO, Amberwave Systems

[L]eaders connect with people at many levels.  My wife taught me to first get in touch what what motivates people before dictating my solutions to problems.  Feelings make powerful connections and can be a strong motivator.  Also, oftentimes you need to get through the feelings before you can have a productive discussion about the problem.

Daniel D. Elash, PhD, Principal, Syntient

[My mentor Norman Forer] urged me to always remember that "Leadership is a relational concept.  You aren't leading unless others choose to follow."  His advice was to always speak about new ideas or possibilities in the frame of reference of my audience.  My role wasn't to wow them with my insights but to stir them to follow my hearts onto a path toward a worthy goal.

These aren't earth-shattering insights, but I find them meaningful because they speak to me, to my own strengths and weaknesses, in concrete terms.  I suppose that's the ultimate purpose of a book like this: Every reader is going to find something that resonates with them and their experiences.

Perhaps feeling obligated to close a collection of anecdotes with a unifying vision, Thornton closes the book with a few chapters on his own views of leadership.  That's certainly his authorial prerogative, and I enjoyed some aspects of this section, but it didn't feel organically connected to the rest of the book.

It's clear that Thornton values directness and clarity and in some areas this serves him well; for example, his argument that all the various leadership styles discussed in management literature can be boiled down to just three--directing, discussing and delegating--is both thought-provoking and useful.  But in other areas Thornton's emphasis on simplicity seems forced, and prevents him from fully exploring some of the interesting ideas he raises.

Ultimately I found "Leadership" a worthwhile read not for the depth of any single insight, but for the breadth of perspectives provided by Thornton's subjects on a wide range of challenges faced daily by leaders in every organization.

(Full disclosure: Thornton was gracious enough to provide me with a review copy of "Leadership.")