Tips from The Stuff of Heroes! The following is an excerpt from The Stuff of Heroes, by William Cohen, a retired Air Force major general. In the book Cohen includes dozens of inspiring stories from the military and business that he feels prove that you'll succeed as a leader if you adhere to the following eight \"universal laws\" of leadership. ToolTip #4 Mar 2003 As you read or apply these principles, remember in neighborhood associations it is better to think in terms of community building rather than of \"leaders and followers\". Unlike the business world with \"bosses\" or the military with officers, every resident is a potential \"leader\". However, although these tips are geared toward businesses or the military with a hierarchical order, these principles may be applied to neighborhood associations in a modified way. (Neighborhood suggestions are added after each \"law\".) 1. Operate with complete integrity. The Basics: Keep your word, and do the right thing - even if you're the only one who knows you're doing it. And always pick the difficult right over the easy wrong. Trust is a basic component in every neighborhood association and trust will not happen without integrity on the part of the leaders, City staff, or anyone else involved in your association. Not only should you be accountable, but they should be too. 2. Become an expert in your field. \"Expert power\" provides one of the major sources of a leader's authority because people feel safe following those who \"know their stuff.\" For a neighborhood leader, your \"expertise\" is in knowing the neighborhood. If you are in touch with the people, understand the problems, are aware of the assets in a neighborhood, and know how to work with other, residents will have greater confidence in your leadership. 3. Tell people what you expect. Use compelling language to describe the organization's vision, goals and values. Develop a plan for getting where you want to go and launch it. Then listen for feedback that may signal the need for a strategic change. This is one that may not be appropriate for neighborhood associations as it is stated. A neighborhood association's visions, goals, values, and plans need to come from all the residents. A true leader will be able to assist the association in finding the \"compelling words\" and encourage all members to \"listen for signs\" that there may be a need for \"a strategic change\".. 4. Mean it when you commit. You'll inspire your followers if you show them you accept the risk that commitment brings. You do that by sticking to your path in adversity and solving problems that seem impossible to others. This is very true- especially for voluntary organizations like neighborhood associations. It is especially important to remember the \"in adversity\" part. As volunteers, its too easy to say, \"This isn't fun anymore. And they don't need me anyway\" and quit. If one person does that, it's easier for others to follow. 5. Expect the best. Maintain self-confident vision of what you want - success - not a negative view of what you don't want - possible failure. Positive thinking has power, but only if you fuel it with enthusiasm. This rings especially true in volunteer organizations. If leaders aren't excited and energized about what they are doing, then how can they expect others to be? 6. Care for your followers. Put your follower's needs at the top of your priority list. If things go wrong, \"take\" two things - charge and responsibility. And when things go right, share two things - the glory and the profit. Again the language is off but the concept is good. Sometimes it takes a good leader to get through the tough times. But when credit is given, its everyone's. Remember, to really improve neighborhoods, it takes a lot of residents' participation. 7. Put others first. Think of your followers before yourself. Celebrate their success by giving them as much credit as possible. And share their pain even if it's inconvenient, difficult or costly in time, money or other resources. Another one that applies more to businesses. However, always remember, as a community leader you do not always represent yourself. When we are passionate about our idea about what the neighborhood needs, it is sometimes difficult to do this. 8. Do what the word \"lead\" implies - get out in front. If you're not willing to do what you ask your followers to do, don't ask them to do it. Successful leaders thrive on action. Weak leaders hide behind their desks and issue directives. Again true. Most successful neighborhood associations are \"action oriented\" whether it be to improve the neighborhood or host spectacular events. Working together for a cause strengthens the association plus its links to other organizations. Don't' be afraid to take chances! MANAGING YOURSELF Discovering Your Authentic Leadership We all have the capacity to inspire and empower others. But we must rst be willing to devote ourselves to our personal growth and development as leaders. by Bill George, Peter Sims, Andrew N. McLean, and Diana Mayer D leadership scholars have conducted more than 1,000 studies in an attempt to determine the denitive styles, characteristics, or personality traits of great leaders. None of these studies has produced a clear prole of the ideal leader. Thank goodness. If scholars had produced a cookie-cutter leadership style, individuals would be forever trying to imitate it. They would make themselves into personae, not people, and others would see through them immediately. No one can be authentic by trying to imitate someone else. You can learn from others' experiences, but there is no way you can be successful when you are trying to be like them. People trust you when you are genuine and authentic, not a replica of someone else. Amgen CEO and president Kevin Sharer, who gained priceless experience working as Jack Welch's assistant in Mick Wiggins URING THE PAST 50 YEARS, hbr.org | February 2007 | Harvard Business Review 129 MANAGING YOURSELF | Discovering Your Authentic Leadership the 1980s, saw the downside of GE's cult of personality in those days. \"Everyone wanted to be like Jack,\" he explains. \"Leadership has many voices. You need to be who you are, not try to emulate somebody else.\" Over the past ve years, people have developed a deep distrust of leaders. It is increasingly evident that we need a new kind of business leader in the twenty-rst century. In 2003, Bill George's book, Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, challenged a new generation to lead authentically. Authentic leaders demonstrate a passion for their purpose, practice their values consistently, and lead with their hearts as well as their heads. They establish long-term, meaningful relationships and have the self-discipline to get results. They know who they are. Article at a Glance The largest in-depth study ever undertaken on how people can become and remain authentic leaders shows that an individual does not have to be born with any universal characteristics or traits of a leader. The journey to authentic leadership begins with understanding the story of your life. Most authentic leaders reported that their stories involved overcoming difcult experiences and using these events to give meaning to their lives. Authentic leaders work hard at understanding and developing themselves. They use formal and informal support networks to get honest feedback and help ground themselves. They temper their need for public acclaim and nancial reward with strong intrinsic motivations. It may be possible to produce shortterm outcomes without being authentic, but authentic leadership drives long-term results. The integrity of authentic leaders helps to sustain organizational results through good times and bad. 130 Harvard Business Review | Many readers of Authentic Leadership, including several CEOs, indicated that they had a tremendous desire to become authentic leaders and wanted to know how. As a result, our research team set out to answer the question, \"How can people become and remain authentic leaders?\" We interviewed 125 leaders to learn how they developed ries to understand who they were at their core. In doing so, they discovered the purpose of their leadership and learned that being authentic made them more effective. These ndings are extremely encouraging: You do not have to be born with specic characteristics or traits of a leader. You do not have to wait for a tap Analyzing 3,000 pages of transcripts, our team was startled to see you do not have to be born with specic characteristics or traits of a leader. Leadership emerges from your life story. their leadership abilities. These interviews constitute the largest in-depth study of leadership development ever undertaken. Our interviewees discussed openly and honestly how they realized their potential and candidly shared their life stories, personal struggles, failures, and triumphs. The people we talked with ranged in age from 23 to 93, with no fewer than 15 per decade. They were chosen based on their reputations for authenticity and effectiveness as leaders, as well as our personal knowledge of them. We also solicited recommendations from other leaders and academics. The resulting group includes women and men from a diverse array of racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds and nationalities. Half of them are CEOs, and the other half comprises a range of prot and nonprot leaders, midcareer leaders, and young leaders just starting on their journeys. After interviewing these individuals, we believe we understand why more than 1,000 studies have not produced a prole of an ideal leader. Analyzing 3,000 pages of transcripts, our team was startled to see that these people did not identify any universal characteristics, traits, skills, or styles that led to their success. Rather, their leadership emerged from their life stories. Consciously and subconsciously, they were constantly testing themselves through real-world experiences and reframing their life sto- February 2007 | hbr.org on the shoulder. You do not have to be at the top of your organization. Instead, you can discover your potential right now. As one of our interviewees, Young & Rubicam chairman and CEO Ann Fudge, said, \"All of us have the spark of leadership in us, whether it is in business, in government, or as a nonprot volunteer. The challenge is to understand ourselves well enough to discover where we can use our leadership gifts to serve others.\" Discovering your authentic leadership requires a commitment to developing yourself. Like musicians and athletes, you must devote yourself to a lifetime of realizing your potential. Most people Kroger CEO David Dillon has seen become good leaders were selftaught. Dillon said,\"The advice I give to individuals in our company is not to expect the company to hand you a development plan. You need to take responsibility for developing yourself.\" In the following pages, we draw upon lessons from our interviews to describe how people become authentic leaders. First and most important, they frame their life stories in ways that allow them to see themselves not as passive observers of their lives but rather as individuals who can develop self-awareness from their experiences. Authentic leaders act on that awareness by practicing their values and principles, sometimes at substantial risk to themselves. They are careful to balance their motivations MANAGING YOURSELF | Discovering Your Authentic Leadership so that they are driven by these inner values as much as by a desire for external rewards or recognition. Authentic leaders also keep a strong support team around them, ensuring that they live integrated, grounded lives. Learning from Your Life Story The journey to authentic leadership begins with understanding the story of your life. Your life story provides the context for your experiences, and through it, you can nd the inspiration to make an impact in the world. As the novelist John Barth once wrote, \"The story of your life is not your life. It is your story.\" In other words, it is your personal narrative that matters, not the mere facts of your life. Your life narrative is like a permanent recording playing in your head. Over and over, you replay the events and personal interactions that are important to your life, attempting to make sense of them to nd your place in the world. While the life stories of authentic leaders cover the full spectrum of experiences - including the positive impact of parents, athletic coaches, teachers, and mentors - many leaders reported that their motivation came from a dif- Bill George, the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School in Boston. Peter Sims established \"Leadership Perspectives, \" a class on leadership development at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California. Andrew N. McLean is a research associate at Harvard Business School. Diana Mayer is a former Citigroup executive in New York. This article was adapted from True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership by Bill George with Peter Sims (Jossey-Bass, forthcoming in March 2007). 132 Harvard Business Review | February 2007 | hbr.org cult experience in their lives. They described the transformative effects of the loss of a job; personal illness; the untimely death of a close friend or relative; and feelings of being excluded, discriminated against, and rejected by peers. Rather than seeing themselves as victims, though, authentic leaders used these formative experiences to give meaning to their lives. They reframed these events to rise above their challenges and to discover their passion to lead. Let's focus now on one leader in particular, Novartis chairman and CEO Daniel Vasella, whose life story was one of the most difcult of all the people we interviewed. He emerged from extreme challenges in his youth to reach the pinnacle of the global pharmaceutical industry, a trajectory that illustrates the trials many leaders have to go through on their journeys to authentic leadership. Vasella was born in 1953 to a modest family in Fribourg, Switzerland. His early years were lled with medical problems that stoked his passion to become a physician. His rst recollections were of a hospital where he was admitted at age four when he suffered from food poisoning. Falling ill with asthma at age ve, he was sent alone to the mountains of eastern Switzerland for two summers. He found the four-month separations from his parents especially difcult because his caretaker had an alcohol problem and was unresponsive to his needs. At age eight, Vasella had tuberculosis, followed by meningitis, and was sent to a sanatorium for a year. Lonely and homesick, he suffered a great deal that year, as his parents rarely visited him. He still remembers the pain and fear when the nurses held him down during the lumbar punctures so that he would not move. One day, a new physician arrived and took time to explain each step of the procedure. Vasella asked the doctor if he could hold a nurse's hand rather than being held down. \"The amazing thing is that this time the procedure didn't hurt,\" Vasella recalls. \"Afterward, the doctor asked me, 'How was that?' I reached up and gave him a big hug. These human gestures of forgiveness, caring, and compassion made a deep impression on me and on the kind of person I wanted to become.\" Throughout his early years, Vasella's life continued to be unsettled. When he was ten, his 18-year-old sister passed away after suffering from cancer for two years. Three years later, his father died in surgery. To support the family, his mother went to work in a distant town and came home only once every three weeks. Left to himself, he and his friends held beer parties and got into advanced rapidly through the Sandoz marketing organization. When Sandoz merged with CibaGeigy in 1996, Vasella was named CEO of the combined companies, now called Novartis, despite his young age and limited experience. Once in the CEO's role, Vasella blossomed as a leader. He envisioned the opportunity to build a great global health care company that could help people through lifesaving new drugs, such as Gleevec, which has proved to be highly effective for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. Drawing on the physician role models of his youth, he built an entirely new When the 75 members of Stanford Graduate School of Business's Advisory Council were asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was nearly unanimous: self-awareness. frequent ghts. This lasted for three years until he met his rst girlfriend, whose affection changed his life. At 20, Vasella entered medical school, later graduating with honors. During medical school, he sought out psychotherapy so he could come to terms with his early experiences and not feel like a victim. Through analysis, he reframed his life story and realized that he wanted to help a wider range of people than he could as an individual practitioner. Upon completion of his residency, he applied to become chief physician at the University of Zurich; however, the search committee considered him too young for the position. Disappointed but not surprised, Vasella decided to use his abilities to increase his impact on medicine. At that time, he had a growing fascination with nance and business. He talked with the head of the pharmaceutical division of Sandoz, who offered him the opportunity to join the company's U.S. afliate. In his ve years in the United States, Vasella ourished in the stimulating environment, rst as a sales representative and later as a product manager, and Novartis culture centered on compassion, competence, and competition. These moves established Novartis as a giant in the industry and Vasella as a compassionate leader. Vasella's experience is just one of dozens provided by authentic leaders who traced their inspiration directly from their life stories. Asked what empowered them to lead, these leaders consistently replied that they found their strength through transformative experiences. Those experiences enabled them to understand the deeper purpose of their leadership. Knowing Your Authentic Self When the 75 members of Stanford Graduate School of Business's Advisory Council were asked to recommend the most important capability for leaders to develop, their answer was nearly unanimous: self-awareness. Yet many leaders, especially those early in their careers, are trying so hard to establish themselves in the world that they leave little time for self-exploration. They strive to achieve success in tangible MANAGING YOURSELF | Discovering Your Authentic Leadership ways that are recognized in the external world - money, fame, power, status, or a rising stock price. Often their drive enables them to be professionally successful for a while, but they are unable to sustain that success. As they age, they may nd something is missing in their lives and realize they are holding back from being the person they want to be. Knowing their authentic selves requires the courage and honesty to open up and examine their experiences. As they do so, leaders become more humane and willing to be vulnerable. Of all the leaders we interviewed, David Pottruck, former CEO of Charles Schwab, had one of the most persistent journeys to self-awareness. An allleague football player in high school, Pottruck became MVP of his college team at the University of Pennsylvania. After completing his MBA at Wharton and a stint with Citigroup, he joined Charles Schwab as head of marketing, moving from New York to San Francisco. An extremely hard worker, Pottruck could not understand why his new colleagues resented the long hours he put in and his aggressiveness in pushing for results.\"I thought my accomplishments would speak for themselves,\"he said.\"It never occurred to me that my level of energy would intimidate and offend other people, because in my mind I was trying to help the company.\" Pottruck was shocked when his boss told him,\"Dave, your colleagues do not trust you.\" As he recalled, \"That feedback was like a dagger to my heart. I was in denial, as I didn't see myself as others saw me. I became a lightning rod for friction, but I had no idea how self-serving I looked to other people. Still, somewhere in my inner core the feedback YOUR DEVELOPMENT AS AN AUTHENTIC LEADER As you read this article, think about the basis for your leadership development and the path you need to follow to become an authentic leader. Then ask yourself these questions: 1. Which people and experiences in your early life had the greatest impact on you? 2. What tools do you use to become self-aware? What is your authentic self? What are the moments when you say to yourself, this is the real me? 3. What are your most deeply held values? Where did they come from? Have your values changed signicantly since your childhood? How do your values inform your actions? 4. What motivates you extrinsically? What are your intrinsic motivations? How do you balance extrinsic and intrinsic motivation in your life? 5. What kind of support team do you have? How can your support team make you a more authentic leader? How should you diversify your team to broaden your perspective? 6. Is your life integrated? Are you able to be the same person in all aspects of your life - personal, work, family, and community? If not, what is holding you back? 7 What does being authentic mean in your life? Are you more effective as a . leader when you behave authentically? Have you ever paid a price for your authenticity as a leader? Was it worth it? 8. What steps can you take today, tomorrow, and over the next year to develop your authentic leadership? 134 Harvard Business Review | February 2007 | hbr.org resonated as true.\" Pottruck realized that he could not succeed unless he identied and overcame his blind spots. Denial can be the greatest hurdle that leaders face in becoming selfaware. They all have egos that need to be stroked, insecurities that need to be smoothed, fears that need to be allayed. Authentic leaders realize that they have to be willing to listen to feedback-especially the kind they don't want to hear. It was only after his second divorce that Pottruck nally was able to acknowledge that he still had large blind spots: \"After my second marriage fell apart, I thought I had a wife-selection problem.\" Then he worked with a counselor who delivered some hard truths: \"The good news is you do not have a wifeselection problem; the bad news is you have a husband-behavior problem.\" Pottruck then made a determined effort to change. As he described it,\"I was like a guy who has had three heart attacks and nally realizes he has to quit smoking and lose some weight.\" These days Pottruck is happily remarried and listens carefully when his wife offers constructive feedback. He acknowledges that he falls back on his old habits at times, particularly in high stress situations, but now he has developed ways of coping with stress. \"I have had enough success in life to have that foundation of self-respect, so I can take the criticism and not deny it. I have nally learned to tolerate my failures and disappointments and not beat myself up.\" Practicing Your Values and Principles The values that form the basis for authentic leadership are derived from your beliefs and convictions, but you will not know what your true values are until they are tested under pressure. It is relatively easy to list your values and to live by them when things are going well. When your success, your career, or even your life hangs in the balance, you learn what is most important, what you are prepared to sacrice, and what trade-offs you are willing to make. Leadership principles are values translated into action. Having a solid base of values and testing them under re enables you to develop the principles you will use in leading. For example, a value such as \"concern for others\" Denial can be the greatest hurdle that leaders face in becoming self-aware. might be translated into a leadership principle such as \"create a work environment where people are respected for their contributions, provided job security, and allowed to fulll their potential.\" Consider Jon Huntsman, the founder and chairman of Huntsman Corporation. His moral values were deeply challenged when he worked for the Nixon administration in 1972, shortly before Watergate. After a brief stint in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), he took a job under H.R. Haldeman, President Nixon's powerful chief of staff. Huntsman said he found the experience of taking orders from Haldeman \"very mixed. I wasn't geared to take orders, irrespective of whether they were ethically or morally right.\" He explained, \"We had a few clashes, as plenty of things that Haldeman wanted to do were questionable. An amoral atmosphere permeated the White House.\" One day, Haldeman directed Huntsman to help him entrap a California congressman who had been opposing a White House initiative. The congressman was part owner of a plant that reportedly employed undocumented workers. To gather information to embarrass the congressman, Haldeman told Huntsman to get the plant manager of a company Huntsman owned to place some undocumented workers at the congressman's plant in an undercover operation. \"There are times when we react too quickly and fail to realize immediately what is right and wrong,\" Huntsman recalled. \"This was one of those times when I didn't think it through. I knew instinctively it was wrong, but it took a few minutes for the notion to percolate. After 15 minutes, my inner moral compass made itself noticed and enabled me to recognize this wasn't the right thing to do. Values that had accompanied me since childhood kicked in. Halfway through my conversation with our plant manager, I said to him, 'Let's not do this. I don't want to play this game. Forget that I called.'\" Huntsman told Haldeman that he would not use his employees in this way.\"Here I was saying no to the second most powerful person in the country. He didn't appreciate responses like that, as he viewed them as signs of disloyalty. I might as well have been saying farewell. So be it. I left within the next six months.\" Balancing Your Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations Because authentic leaders need to sustain high levels of motivation and keep their lives in balance, it is critically important for them to understand what drives them. There are two types of motivations - extrinsic and intrinsic. Although they are reluctant to admit it, many leaders are propelled to achieve by measuring their success against the outside world's parameters. They enjoy the recognition and status that come with promotions and nancial rewards. Intrinsic motivations, on the other hand, are derived from their sense of the meaning of their life. They are closely linked to one's life story and the way one frames it. Examples include personal growth, helping other people develop, taking on social causes, and making a difference in the world. The key is to nd a balance between your desires for external validation and the intrinsic motivations that provide fulllment in your work. Many interviewees advised aspiring leaders to be wary of getting caught up in social, peer, or parental expectations. MANAGING YOURSELF | Discovering Your Authentic Leadership Debra Dunn, who has worked in Silicon Valley for decades as a Hewlett-Packard executive, acknowledged the constant pressures from external sources: \"The path of accumulating material possessions is clearly laid out. You know how to measure it. If you don't pursue that path, people wonder what is wrong with you. The only way to avoid getting caught up in materialism is to understand where you nd happiness and fulllment.\" Moving away from the external validation of personal achievement is not always easy. Achievement-oriented leaders grow so accustomed to successive accomplishments throughout their early years that it takes courage to pursue their intrinsic motivations. But at some point, most leaders recognize that they need to address more difcult questions in order to pursue truly meaningful success. McKinsey's Alice Woodwark, who at 29 has already achieved notable success, reected: \"My version of achievement was pretty naive, born of things I learned early in life about praise and being valued. But if you're just chasing the rabbit around the course, you're not running toward anything meaningful.\" Intrinsic motivations are congruent with your values and are more fullling than extrinsic motivations. John Thain, CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, said, \"I am motivated by doing a really good job at whatever I am doing, but I prefer to multiply my impact on society through a group of people.\" Or as Ann Moore, chairman and CEO of Time, put it, \"I came here 25 years ago solely because I loved magazines and the publishing world.\" Moore had a dozen job offers after business school but took the lowest-paying one with Time because of her passion for publishing. Building Your Support Team Leaders cannot succeed on their own; even the most outwardly condent executives need support and advice. Without strong relationships to provide perspective, it is very easy to lose your way. 136 Harvard Business Review | Authentic leaders build extraordinary support teams to help them stay on course. Those teams counsel them in times of uncertainty, help them in times of difculty, and celebrate with them in times of success. After their hardest days, leaders nd comfort in being with people on whom they can rely so they can be open and vulnerable. During the low points, they cherish the friends who appreciate them for who they are, not what they are. Authentic leaders nd that their support teams provide afrmation, advice, perspective, and calls for course corrections when needed. How do you go about building your support team? Most authentic leaders have a multifaceted support structure Think of your life as a house. Can you knock down the walls between the rooms and be the same person in each of them? that includes their spouses or signicant others, families, mentors, close friends, and colleagues. They build their networks over time, as the experiences, shared histories, and openness with people close to them create the trust and condence they need in times of trial and uncertainty. Leaders must give as much to their supporters as they get from them so that mutually benecial relationships can develop. It starts with having at least one person in your life with whom you can be completely yourself, warts and all, and still be accepted unconditionally. Often that person is the only one who can tell you the honest truth. Most leaders have their closest relationships with their spouses, although some develop these bonds with another family member, a close friend, or a trusted mentor. When leaders can rely on unconditional support, they are more likely to accept themselves for who they really are. Many relationships grow over time through an expression of shared values February 2007 | hbr.org and a common purpose. Randy Komisar of venture capital rm Kleiner Perkins Caueld & Byers said his marriage to Hewlett-Packard's Debra Dunn is lasting because it is rooted in similar values.\"Debra and I are very independent but extremely harmonious in terms of our personal aspirations, values, and principles. We have a strong resonance around questions like, 'What is your legacy in this world?' It is important to be in sync about what we do with our lives.\" Many leaders have had a mentor who changed their lives. The best mentoring interactions spark mutual learning, exploration of similar values, and shared enjoyment. If people are only looking for a leg up from their mentors, instead of being interested in their mentors' lives as well, the relationships will not last for long. It is the twoway nature of the connection that sustains it. Personal and professional support groups can take many forms. Piper Jaffray's Tad Piper is a member of an Alcoholics Anonymous group. He noted, \"These are not CEOs. They are just a group of nice, hard-working people who are trying to stay sober, lead good lives, and work with each other about being open, honest, and vulnerable. We reinforce each other's behavior by talking about our chemical dependency in a disciplined way as we go through the 12 steps. I feel blessed to be surrounded by people who are thinking about those kinds of issues and actually doing something, not just talking about them.\" Bill George's experiences echo Piper's: In 1974, he joined a men's group that formed after a weekend retreat. More than 30 years later, the group is still meeting every Wednesday morning. After an opening period of catching up on each other's lives and dealing with any particular difculty someone may be facing, one of the group's eight members leads a discussion on a topic he has selected. These discussions are open, probing, and often profound. The key to their success is that people say what they really believe without fear of judgment, criticism, or reprisal. All the members consider the group to be one of the most important aspects of their lives, enabling them to clarify their beliefs, values, and understanding of vital issues, as well as serving as a source of honest feedback when they need it most. Integrating Your Life by Staying Grounded Integrating their lives is one of the greatest challenges leaders face. To lead a balanced life, you need to bring together all of its constituent elements - work, family, community, and friends - so that you can be the same person in each environment. Think of your life as a house, with a bedroom for your personal life, a study for your professional life, a family room for your family, and a living room to share with your friends. Can you knock down the walls between these rooms and be the same person in each of them? As John Donahoe, president of eBay Marketplaces and former worldwide managing director of Bain, stressed, being authentic means maintaining a sense of self no matter where you are. He warned,\"The world can shape you if you let it. To have a sense of yourself as you live, you must make conscious choices. Sometimes the choices are really hard, and you make a lot of mistakes.\" Authentic leaders have a steady and condent presence. They do not show up as one person one day and another person the next. Integration takes discipline, particularly during stressful times when it is easy to become reactive and slip back into bad habits. Donahoe feels strongly that integrating his life has enabled him to become a more effective leader. \"There is no nirvana,\" he said. \"The struggle is constant, as the trade-offs don't get any easier as you get older.\" But for authentic leaders, personal and professional lives are not a zero-sum game. As Donahoe said, \"I have no doubt today that my children have made me a far more effec- tive leader in the workplace. Having a strong personal life has made the difference.\" Leading is high-stress work. There is no way to avoid stress when you are responsible for people, organizations, outcomes, and managing the constant uncertainties of the environment. The higher you go, the greater your freedom to control your destiny but also the higher the degree of stress. The question is not whether you can avoid stress but how you can control it to maintain your own sense of equilibrium. Authentic leaders are constantly aware of the importance of staying grounded. Besides spending time with their families and close friends, authentic leaders get physical exercise, engage in spiritual practices, do community service, and return to the places where they grew up. All are essential to their effectiveness as leaders, enabling them to sustain their authenticity. Empowering People to Lead Now that we have discussed the process of discovering your authentic leadership, let's look at how authentic leaders empower people in their organizations to achieve superior long-term results, which is the bottom line for all leaders. Authentic leaders recognize that leadership is not about their success or about getting loyal subordinates to follow them. They know the key to a successful organization is having empowered leaders at all levels, including those who have no direct reports. They not only inspire those around them, they empower those individuals to step up and lead. A reputation for building relationships and empowering people was instrumental in chairman and CEO Anne Mulcahy's stunning turnaround of Xerox. When Mulcahy was asked to take the company's reins from her failed predecessor, Xerox had $18 billion in debt, and all credit lines were exhausted. With the share price in free fall, morale was at an all-time low. To make matters worse, the SEC was investigating | Discovering Your Authentic Leadership the company's revenue recognition practices. Mulcahy's appointment came as a surprise to everyone - including Mulcahy herself. A Xerox veteran, she had worked in eld sales and on the corporate staff for 25 years, but not in nance, R&D, or manufacturing. How could Mulcahy cope with this crisis when she had had no nancial experience? She brought to the CEO role the relationships she had built over 25 years, an impeccable understanding of the organization, and, above all, her credibility as an authentic leader. She bled for Xerox, and everyone knew it. Because of that, they were willing to go the extra mile for her. After her appointment, Mulcahy met personally with the company's top 100 executives to ask them if they would stay with the company despite the challenges ahead. \"I knew there were people who weren't supportive of me,\" she said. \"So I confronted a couple of them and said, 'This is about the company.'\" The rst two people Mulcahy talked with, both of whom ran big operating units, decided to leave, but the remaining 98 committed to stay. Throughout the crisis, people in Xerox were empowered by Mulcahy to step up and lead in order to restore the company to its former greatness. In the end, her leadership enabled Xerox to avoid bankruptcy as she paid back $10 billion in debt and restored revenue Superior results over a sustained period of time is the ultimate mark of an authentic leader. growth and protability with a combination of cost savings and innovative new products. The stock price tripled as a result. Like Mulcahy, all leaders have to deliver bottom-line results. By creating a virtuous circle in which the results reinforce the effectiveness of their leadership, authentic leaders are able to sustain those \"And you wanted to hibernate!\" 138 Harvard Business Review | February 2007 | hbr.org results through good times and bad. Their success enables them to attract talented people and align employees' activities with shared goals, as they empower others on their team to lead by taking on greater challenges. Indeed, superior results over a sustained period of time is the ultimate mark of an authentic leader. It may be possible to drive short-term outcomes without being authentic, but authentic leadership is the only way we know to create sustainable long-term results. For authentic leaders, there are special rewards. No individual achievement can equal the pleasure of leading a group of people to achieve a worthy goal. When you cross the nish line together, all the pain and suffering you may have experienced quickly vanishes. It is replaced by a deep inner satisfaction that you have empowered others and thus made the world a better place. That's the challenge and the fulllment of authentic leadership. Reprint R0702H To order, see page 158. Harley Schwadron MANAGING YOURSELF THEORY & PRACTICE Management Leaders Turn Attention to Followers: Firms Should Rely More On Passionate Staffers, Some Experts Believe By George Anders Wall Street Journal, December 24, 2007; Page B3 Experts in leadership are plentiful, and Barbara Kellerman, a lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, counts herself as one of them. Now, though, Ms. Kellerman and some other management experts are turning their attention to the other extreme of the organization chart: what matters to followers. In "Followership," a book being published this winter, Ms. Kellerman argues that a big organization's fate can be surprisingly dependent on how well it understands thousands of low-ranking employees, and makes them more effective. Entrepreneurs Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom took a similar perspective last year in their book, "The Starfish and the Spider," suggesting that lower-ranking employees, called catalysts, need to drive organizational change, instead of top bosses. Among these authors' precepts: companies should look for passionate employees, keep them informed and give them room to carry out useful projects. What's more, Ms. Kellerman says, all followers shouldn't be lumped together. She divides them into five categories based on how much they care about the organization, ranging from "isolates" to "diehards." Savvy managers should treat each type differently, she argues. Such messages resonate at a host of big companies, including Best Buy Co., United Parcel Service Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. Executives at such companies say they've grown more interested in followers as they've seen the Internet flatten traditional lines of command and empower grassroots employees. Some executives also believe that leadership has been studied to exhaustion, making fresh insights rare. By contrast, there's been much less attention to what makes followers tick. Companies that can achieve breakthroughs in this latter area may be able to build lasting competitive advantages. "Look at why big companies die," says Shari Ballard, Best Buy's executive vice president, retail channel. "They implode on themselves. They create all these systems and processes -- and then end up with a very small percentage of people who are supposed to solve complex problems, while the other 98% of people just execute. You can't come up with enough good ideas that way to keep growing." When she visits Best Buy's electronics stores, Ms. Ballard says she asks managers: "What do you know about your customers that I couldn't possibly know?" The question encourages local initiatives that help Best Buy grow. For example, Ms. Ballard says, a store in a heavily PolishAmerican section of Chicago built a profitable Polish music section. A Minneapolis store rearranged its display of iPod accessories so customers could more easily find the right cases and power chargers for their particular models of music players. She says she couldn't have driven those changes from above; they had to take shape at the local level. Best Buy also learned the hard way that rank-and-file employees -- not bosses -- determine the fate of clever-sounding software tools designed to share knowledge within big organizations. Best Buy's bosses have bought several such tools and urged employees to embrace them. "But the problem is, people don't use them," Ms. Ballard says. Instead, she says, front-line employees at the 140,000-worker company created their own site, www.blueshirtnation.com, where employees share tips, gripes and personal interests. It's proven far more popular than its management-driven predecessors. At UPS, which employs 427,000 people world-wide, executives seek help from "followers" to guide the implementation of new technology. John Saunders, vice president for human resources, notes that UPS generally has higher-paid, more-experienced employees than rivals. UPS managers now schedule one-on-one conversations with individual drivers each year, in which the company shares its road map of new hand-held devices and other technology. That gives employees time to adjust to change. It also gives the company a better sense of potential sticking points, so that it can deal with them early. In the past, UPS briefed its drivers mostly in group meetings. Those are still useful, Mr. Saunders says. But the one-on-one meetings allow for fuller, more candid exchanges that are customized to each employee's situation. Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, has expanded its traditional employee surveys to ask more questions about whether the company is being as fast and nimble as it should be. The company started doing so about five years ago, soon after it acquired Compaq Computer Corp. At first, scores were disappointing, says Marcela Perez de Alfonso, the computer and printing company's head of human relations. But they have improved significantly. She says Chief Executive Mark Hurd gets many questions at staff meetings in the U.S. and China about how H-P can move faster -- and that those expressions of employee interest are valuable to top management. As Harvard's Ms. Kellerman puts it: "Better followers beget better leaders." 1 Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 Week 1 - Leadership Theory Leader one who takes the lead or initiative a person in whom resides authority or ruling power In this first Module we will look at leadership theory, at the structure of leadership and the characteristics of executive leaders, particularly those that differentiate them from middle level managers. Leadership is an important topic. Even nature shows us the importance of leadership. A naturalist from the nineteenth century once conducted an experiment with a species called processionary caterpillars. These caterpillars get their name from the fact that they travel together as a unit, each one joined to the one in front of it. Once joined, they move along following the leader. This arrangement works just fine as long as there's a leader. If one leader is removed another will take over. In this experiment the naturalist arranged the caterpillars so that they were linked in a continuous circle without a leader. He then placed the caterpillars around the rim of a pot with fresh mulberry leaves and water at the center. What happened? The caterpillars inched their way around and around the pot, each one following the one ahead. For a full week they followed each other around the pot until they all became unconscious. An abundance of food was just inches away -- but they never found it because they had no leader to show them the way. I hope that throughout the course you'll come to realize the importance of not only leadership, but of good leadership. Executive Management Executive level management, by its very nature, suggests an advanced level of leadership. As we begin to unpack the concept "leadership" from the top down, we need to get a general understanding of what we mean by executive level management. Managers are typically divided into three categories. The front-line managers represent the lowest level of employee who is responsible for seeing to the work of others. The front-line managers supervise (and are hence often called "supervisors") the work of employees who are not themselves managers. Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 2 The middle manager interfaces between top management and the front line. They need to make sure that the demands made by the people at the top can be, and are, implemented. Top managers are the small group of executives who are responsible for the big picture. They set the procedures and corporate goals internally, and interact with other companies to further the interests of their business. While the front-line manager must be intimately familiar with the technical details of the product, the top manager must be more concerned with creative thinking, human relations, and direct authority. The CEO, in particular, may or may not need a detailed understanding of the technical aspects of the production process. However, s/he must know how to conceptualize the process, creatively solve problems, and make sure that the people in the company work well together. This need to organize people and information, while relying more on conceptual analysis and creative thinking, is the hallmark of a good leader. The leader must be an entrepreneur, constantly looking for ways to improve performance and develop new ways of increasing revenue. The leader must know how to handle people carefully and make sure that there is a proper flow of information and resources. But mostly, a leader, as the person on top, must have a clear vision of the direction the company is taking. The leader sets the pace; everyone else must keep up. In this module we will begin to assess the qualities of a good leader. In particular we will try to cash out what we mean by "vision". Working from this conceptually high vantage point we can begin to develop a clear vision of how the leader provides leadership. To say that definitions of leadership, in management literature, are abundant is to grossly understate. Each theory has merit in terms of elucidating some nuance in the leader 's character or some aspect of the leader 's role. To be sure, the leader directs others, sets the tone, creates a vision, influences task-related activities, and influences behavior, and more. However, to get to the bottom of things, leadership, in terms of management, is founded on the concept of "power over other". This has a harsh connotation, to be sure. But that need not be the case. Leadership theory, for the CEO expresses the ingredients of how the leader helps others perform to their maximum potential in reaching a vision which the CEO sets for his organization. Leadership Isn't leadership really as much about management as it is about vision? Traditionally, theories of leadership tend, in general, to focus on effective Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 3 management rather than leadership. Modern leadership theories, then, are beginning to assess these more intangible issues of leadership, rather than simply looking at the leader as the most influential manager. The leader's impact on the organization, its direction, its goals, seems to characterize theories of leadership today more than in the past. In attempting to distinguish between managers and leaders we can think about the spirit of leadership. Apparently, those who are boring and bored can hardly be good leaders. At the same time, the true leaders must have more. The most important feature is their possession of a vision i.e. \"the lofty ideal and soughtafter dream\" for which \"the magnitude of the discrepancy between the future goal and the present circumstances is the yardstick for how exceptional and extraordinary the vision is\" (Open Letter, 2003). Thus, whilst managers use their authority to bring about order and consistency by drawing up formal plans, designing organization structures, and monitoring results against plans for obtaining their goals, the leaders use their vision and strategy. As not all managers are leaders, not all leaders are effective managers. In this case, they should select some into their circle and closely collaborate with them - otherwise they may face problems during the implementation of their vision. Also, different situations call for different types of leaders. Mikhail Gorbatchev (Peacemission, 2005 a) in Russia, Lech Walesa in Poland (Peacemission, 2005 a), and Vaclav Havel (President of CR official website, 2006) in Czechoslovakia, all of them have been effective leaders for the transition period in their relevant countries. All quickly lost their leading positions when the revolutionary period ended. Their style of leadership did not fit to new requirements and expectations following the change. It has also been shown that the \"right\" method of leadership depends on the local culture. In some cultures, people expect much more guidance and control than in the others. The following shows the percentage of people in various countries agreeing with the statement: \"It is important for a manager to have at hand precise answers to most of the questions that his subordinates may raise about their work.\" (Buchanan & Huczynski, 2003) Japan 78 Indonesia 73 Italy 66 Germany 46 Belgium 44 Switzerland 38 Britain 27 Denmark 23 United States18 Holland 17 Sweden 10 Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 4 Evidently, the manager and leader must act differently in different countries to fulfill their expectations. As many of the above countries belong to the European Union, one can imagine that moving a Dutch or Swedish manager to Italy (or inversely) may create tensions and misunderstanding caused by different expectations of each side. Swedish employees can perceive an Italian manager acting in his/her traditional style as \"a dictator\" because he/she will try to provide them with all details of their duties. In the opposite, Italian employees will view their Swedish or Dutch manager as incompetent because he/she will not offer such details to them. What in general characterizes a good leader? Different theories have been looking at it from different perspectives: - Trait theories: It is a matter of fact that the leaders are different from masses. The trait theories tried to identify the traits that distinguish the leaders from the others and - in this way - try to predict who could be such. The typical traits are charismatic, enthusiastic, and courageous. On the other hand, the trait theories are not very appropriate for making good predictions because they only describe outer attributes of leaders. They state \"who could be a good leader\" but nothing about \"who will become such, why, and how\". - Behavioral theories are based on a different idea: As we can presume that there are people with visions who are not leaders (yet?), let us look at how leaders are born and how they act. Ohio State University researchers identified two dimensions: initiating structure and consideration. The would-be-leaders high in initiating structure attempt to organize work, work relationships, and goals. They are able to put in order other group members, assign tasks to them, and require standards of performance. They \"rise from anonymity\" and suddenly \"everyone listens to them and obeys them\". Those high in consideration create job relationships characterized by mutual trust, the respect for employees' ideas and the regard for their feelings i.e. are team-builders. Naturally, the best leaders climb from those high in the both dimensions. University of Michigan studies analyzed differences between employeeoriented and production-oriented leaders. Their results favor employeeoriented leaders emphasizing interpersonal relations because they demonstrate more convincing results in productivity and job satisfaction. Scandinavian studies stress another important attribute: the developmentoriented leaders (those who value experimentation, seek new ideas and generate and implement change) have more satisfied employees and are seen as more competent by them. This is quite natural, because at a workplace there is no better demonstration of a vision than a capability to Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 5 experiment with innovative ideas and to encourage themselves and others to implement them. - Contingency theories: The contingency theories presume that there is no \"general leader\" capable of leading at any conditions. Under certain conditions, a style is more appropriate, but when the conditions change, the leadership style must also change. This happens because the leader is not the only player on the field. In addition to (already recognized) leader-members relationship, two more factors play role: task structure and position power. This explains why the above leaders of postcommunist countries failed - they have simply unable to adopt a new vision and to attain a style of leadership more appropriate for the changed situation. One of important conclusions refers to the degree of control the leader can apply. It shows that the leaders are more important when the task is unstructured (i.e. not well-defined). The leaders arise from those who are capable to identify its critical characteristics and outline solutions. At the same time, the more power they have, the easier is for them to implement their proposed solutions. Trust and Leadership The relationship between the leader and his followers is mostly based on trust. Trust is built through experience. A person not demonstrating integrity, competence, consistency, loyalty to his/her followers, and openness to the others can hardly become a leader - and if he/she does, he/she will certainly not hold his/her post for long. In addition to trust, the followers must have positive expectations in their leader. They have to believe that the idea is worth of following and that it will bring fruit in the future. This makes them vulnerable to the leader's actions. This opens a question of ethics of leadership. The history is full of leaders who misused their power; Stalin and Hitler have certainly been not the last ones. The contemporary leaders might not belong to this category of murderous maniacs, but the consequences of their behavior can still be almost as fatal. Recall Enron, Tyco International, Merrill Lynch; they represent just tops of the iceberg. Trust has three main forms: deterrence-based, knowledge-based, and identification-based. - Deterrence-based trust is based on fear of reprisal if the trust is violated. For that reason it only functions when a punishment is possible and it is imposed instantly after the violation. A typical example is the relationship between a new manager and an employee. We usually trust our new boss. Our trust is based on our belief that he/she was appointed to the position for good reasons. Thus, even if the managers asks for something Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 6 unusual, we believe that he/she likely knows why he/she poses this particular requests on us. At the same time, we are also aware that he/she has a chance to penalize us if we fail to accomplish his/her expectations. - Knowledge-based trust is the most common form of trust in organizations. Compared to the previous form of trust, this one is based on information. Our long-term experience with individuals results in our ability to predict their behavior in \"standard working situations\" as we have collected enough \"samples\" during our past interactions. We know who is arriving late, who goes for lunch early and where, who is first in accomplishing a task. Based on these experiences, we can predict the individual's behavior. Because the person will likely behave in our predicted way, our trust (better saying, our conviction on how well we know the person) will increase. That's why most people dislike working with individuals who are \"difficult to read\". - Identification-based trust is the highest level of trust. This sort of trust is achieved among members of good teams and between leaders and their followers. It exists when the parties understand each other's intentions and appreciate other's wants and desires. At this level, control is minimal because there is unquestioned loyalty. The orders are not given simply because everyone knows what must be done and performs it without requests. Trust is extremely fragile. It is rather easy to break it. Any change can break it. Large changes in organizations create atmosphere of mistrust as they may lead to downsizing or reshuffling of positions. Thus, everyone is forced to become watchful and his/her behavior turns into much less conventional. Leaders: Born or Made? Can the traits of leaders can be learned? It is possibly better if a person demonstrates them \"on his/her own\" because he/she is a born leader, but many important characteristics can be trained. Searching for \"charismatic leader training\" in Google produces dozens of results. What features are practiced? - Creating the image of charisma by maintaining an optimistic view; Using passion as a catalyst for generating enthusiasm; Communication with the entire body, not just with words; Creating a bond that inspires others to follow; Brings out the potential in followers in tapping into their emotions. The experiments showed that people can learn to exhibit these traits. This is very important because other experiments confirmed that followers of charismatic leaders show higher task performance, task adjustment, and adjustment to their group. Cynthia Phillips All rights reserved 2015 7 On-line Leadership On-line leadership necessarily differs from traditional leadership. It's important to keep in mind that in that much of a leader's charisma and influence is generated by their presence and ability to communicate in a whole way (tone and body language and emotion are key factors). In the online environment this can be difficult to get across, and might handicap a leader. When communicating on-line where communication mostly depends mostly on words, the role of tone and body language is almost negligible. This implies that much higher attention must be paid to the quality of the messages. For example short phrases with words in all-capitals change the message into a rigid and tough one; using full sentences softens its content. The effects of on-line communication have not yet been comprehensively studied. We presume that they can be double-fold. For many people, the distance decreases their trust because they cannot meet with the partner face-to-face. At the same time, introverted and shy people may feel safer so such an environment may make them more courageous and open new perspectives for them. Buchanan, D. & Huczynski, A. (2003): Organizational behavior: an introductory text. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall. Open Letter (2003): The Elements of Successful Leadership: Vision: Is What You See What You Get? The Open University of Israel: Open Letter, No. 16, [Internet] Available at: http://www-e.openu.ac.il/geninfor/openletter/p10.pdf (Accessed on 28 May 2007) Peacemission (2005 a): Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. [Internet] Available at: http://www.almaz.com/nobel/ (Accessed on 28 May 2007) Peacemission (2005 b): Lech Walesa. [Internet] Available at: http://www.almaz.com/nobel/ (Accessed on 28 May 2007) Running head : ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND DECISION MAKING Organizational Leadership and Decision Making Name Institution Organizational Leadership and Decision Making There are varied opinions as to who matters with regard to the success of a company between the top management of the company and the employees within the lower levels. It is evident that the survival of most big organizations is dependent on how well it understands the lower cadre employees within its organization. The lower cadre employees are normally the once bestowed with the driving the day to day activities of the company that add up to its overall vision. If they are passionate and provided with room to carry out their job then the company will be assured of its success. On the other hand, this employees execute the activities of the company that have got a direct relationship with the cost aspect of the company thereby providing them with opportunity to create a critical role in terms of where the organization can get some competitive advantages over its competitors(Thomas, 2008). In as far as, they play a critical role the top management takes a greater responsivity when it comes to the success of the firm. The top management forms the least percentage of the total workforce however they play a major role in deciding what the other employees are 1 ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND DECISION MAKING 2 supposed to do. The day to day work carried out by the junior employees becomes a routine that while the competition outside is not the same. New competitors, technology, Legal issues among others emerge that require continues solutions. The solutions to this challenges are a not a plug-in and play affair however have to be modeled to fit the business circumstances facing the firm. In light of the above the company top management normally handles complex issues that cannot be solved by the staff in the lower levels. A task may be small but without a leader everything will be confused similar to the analogy provided in the text on how caterpillars move and accomplish their task (Thomas, 2008). The chief executive officers of the company may be having all the technical information about the corporation but there vision acts as a guiding block to which the other employees have to model their synergies in order for the firm to succeed. Kindly reach me fel.bright7 at gmail dot com. I will be pleased as we continue working together. In brief, both the top management and lower cadre employees have to work together in achieving the vision of the company that is defined by the top managers. The top managers ought to set the standards for the company and nature their staff or provide them with an environment where they can utilize their talents. The idea of providing the environment represents the business model defined by the top managers. Mangers ought to learn their employees, listen to them, care for them and always take them as the important assets of the company to achieve success in the organization. ORGANIZATIONAL LEADERSHIP AND DECISION MAKING 3 References Thomas, Robert. (2008). Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn From Experience to Become a Great Leader. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Pu