Adam Bryant, Corner Office, New York Times, Interview with Linda Heasley, president and chief executive of The Limited: Re-Recruit Your Team Every Day:
"Q. What were some big leadership lessons for you?
A. When I was in college, I took a leave of absence from school and worked as a community educator in Arizona, and I learned a lot from a man who was in this tiny community who was trying to get plumbing and streets for his town. He was a simple man, but he had incredible dynamism, and a lot of that was from the vision and the selflessness that he put forward. So I learned from that experience that it’s not about you, it’s about the bigger picture.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. I didn’t start out thinking I’d be in retail. I worked with analytical teams, and what I have come to love about retail is the link between art and management science. It’s a very creative environment, and it’s been great for me to bring the rigors that I learned in that analytical world and apply it to retail.
What I have come to understand in managing creative types is intuition and appreciation for the art, and I’m always willing to back the intuition of my best merchant. There’s something that you can’t pin down. So it is balancing the art and the science of it all.
We’re still a fact-based organization. We still have to drive to the bottom line. At the same time, I have come to realize there are some things you cannot explain with a hypothetical model, that you just do have to go with your gut sometimes. You trust and you believe.
Q. Let’s talk about hiring. What qualities are you looking for?
A. Passion. I like curiosity. I like energy level. They have to have a sense of humor. They have to be willing to take a risk. I will ask questions around each of those to try to flesh that out, like, “Give me an example of a situation where you think you took a risk or took a controversial point of view.” It’s as much about seeing how they addressed issues and difficult situations as it is what they decided to do. I do want to see how they think. They have to be smart.
I like people who have demonstrated performance in a number of different places. They don’t have to have stayed at the same place, but I like to see that they were at a place long enough to annualize things that they started and had time to build relationships. But I like the fact that people have moved and have had different experiences. Each of the places I went, I learned a tremendous amount and then was able to build on that.
Q. And what are your best interview questions?
A. I always like to hear what books they read. What keeps them up at night? I like an example of a challenging situation in a business environment where they took a controversial position. As I said, it doesn’t matter to me what they decided to do, but I like to see how they handled it. I like hearing what they do when they’re not in the office. I like to hear how a direct report would describe you and your management style. I like to hear their philosophy of leadership.
Q. Any memorable answers, good or bad, about philosophy of leadership?
A. What I don’t like to hear, and I think it’s something we’re probably all guilty of, is a focus on business results. It’s an important thing. You wouldn’t be interviewing with me if I didn’t know you had a track record. But leadership style, and how to describe it, is something we’re not as comfortable talking about as leaders. It’s interesting for me how undeveloped those responses can be.
What I do like to hear is, even when a bad situation occurs, is the willingness to take a risk and try to do something to turn it into an opportunity and lead a group to do that. I look for a little bit of thinking out of the box, but I think many executives have a hard time talking about that.
Q. And what’s your philosophy of leadership?
A. I believe that it’s not about me. I believe it’s very much about the team. I believe that my associates can work anywhere they want, and my job is to re-recruit them every day and give them a reason to choose to work for us and for me as opposed to anybody else.
So it’s about making it fun. It’s about making it exciting. It’s about keeping them marketable. I encourage people: “Go out and find out what the market bears. You should do that and then come back and help me figure out what you need in your development that you’re not getting, because we owe you that.”"
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04corner.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=Search
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Corner Office, Interview with Robert W. Selander, chief executive of MasterCard; New York Times, 6/27/10
Adam Bryant, Corner Office, New York Times, Interview with Robert W. Selander, chief executive of MasterCard: The X Factor When Hiring? Call It ‘Presence’:
"Q. What are the most important leadership lessons you have learned?
A. I spent a reasonable amount of time living overseas. So relatively early in my career I moved first to San Juan, then to Rio, then to London, then to Belgium, running businesses in those markets.
Pretty early on, I recognized that more is the same than is different — fundamental values, wanting to give your children more opportunity or at least as much as you had in life, etc. It’s present all around the world, and that happens to be true in a lot of aspects of business as well. More is the same than is different, but we tend to focus on differences, and perhaps exaggerate or accentuate those beyond the reality of what we have to worry about.
I can remember when I moved to Brazil and I had spent two years learning Spanish. I was out visiting branches. I was working for Citibank at the time and had responsibility for consumer businesses there.
Brazil is a big country. I was living in Rio and it’s like living in Miami. I was out visiting a branch in the equivalent of Denver. Not everybody spoke great English and I hadn’t gotten very far in Portuguese. As I was sitting there trying to discern and understand what this branch manager was saying to me, and he was struggling with his English, the coin sort of dropped that this guy really knows what he’s talking about. He’s having a hard time getting it out.
As I thought about the places I’d been on that trip, I realized this was probably the best branch manager I’d seen, but it would have been very easy for me to think he wasn’t, because he couldn’t communicate as well as some of the others who were fluent in English.
I think that was an important lesson. It is too easy to let the person with great presentation or language skills buffalo you into thinking that they are better or more knowledgeable than someone else who might not necessarily have that particular set of skills.
So that was something that sounds obvious in hindsight, but as I was sitting there, boy, for me this was a thunderbolt. I think that’s another thing that sort of served me well, not letting the veneer distract you from the substance.
Q. Let’s say you’re interviewing me for a job reporting directly to you. How does that conversation go?
A. Beyond the discussion of what you’re going to do for us, I want to know two or three of your strengths and weaknesses. And then I’m going to ask you about those two or three things that you’ve acknowledged are flat sides, and how you think we should work on those, how you think we should ensure those don’t become barriers to success.
I think probably the final thing is that I’m going to try to ensure — and I’m going to ask you if you feel good in your gut about it — that there is going to be some chemistry here, that you’re not out in left field and I’m out in right field from our respective positions, that we’re in fact sort of more or less in the center of the infield together.
Q. What qualities are you looking for in hires?
A. What I’m looking for is always the same. The more senior a person, the richer I expect them to be in these attributes.
The top two are leadership and results. From a leadership standpoint, I would expect you, as a more senior executive, to be able to talk about where you’ve provided strategic leadership. It doesn’t mean you’re a brilliant strategist, but you’ve been able to get a team together to agree on who the target customer is, what products and services you’re going to offer them, and the value and competitive advantage you’re going to create.
Tell me about what you’ve done in bringing along talent. Tell me about difficult things you had to do in terms of reconfiguring a team, or whatever. Talk to me about successes and all the net talent you provided to other parts of the companies you worked in.
The second would be results. At the end of the day, I want to have people who have been able to, and will continue to be able to, deliver results. That can mean starting with a clean sheet of paper and having a very credible business three or four years later. It can mean going in and taking over something that’s already very big and making it better, whether that’s revenues, expense management, bottom-line profitability.
Underpinning those would be multifunctional, multinational and presence. I’m looking for multifunctional people who have been in different activities — marketing, sales, operations, finance, human resources — who bring a richer perspective and texture to problems and opportunities than someone who’s just had a straight shot in one function.
I’m looking for somebody who’s had multinational experience. We do business everywhere in the world. I’m looking for people who have lived and worked in different markets and recognize that there are nuances that have to be considered.
And the final one is presence. You deal with different folks at different levels of the company. It depends on the exact role, but you should ensure that there is an ability to interact with and effectively represent the company.
Q. Can you elaborate more on what you mean by presence?
A. At varying levels in the company, you interact with different stakeholders. Having somebody spend time with a member of Congress is very different than having somebody go downstairs and see that they were appropriately replacing a torn carpet. You need a different capability to deal with those circumstances, not only from a knowledge standpoint but from a presence standpoint.
As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve been challenged to deal with different stakeholders. Internally, when I was younger and more junior, I probably did pretty well with peers. But then how do you credibly communicate with more senior people, who are not as concerned about some things perhaps in the details, but they want a bigger picture?
So it’s a combination of not only how you convey things, but what you convey to these various stakeholders. Presence is learning to deal with different audiences in a way that allows them to get what they need out of this interaction and ensures that the well-being of the company is looked after.
Q. Isn’t that what some people describe as just good communication skills?
A. I think you can be a good communicator and you still may not have presence. There may be someone who is very articulate on a subject and they know levels of detail. When you get with a particular audience, it may not be appropriate to go into those levels of detail, or you may create doubt by even going into the subject matter. There’s inside information in a company, for example. You never cross that bright line, but you can get varying degrees of proximity to that line, depending on your audience.
Some people are not very good communicators, but boy, when you get them into their subject matter they know exactly where to go and how far to go. Others are brilliant communicators, but because of the connection between their thoughts and the synapses firing and the words coming out, there isn’t enough time and introspection. Therefore they will brilliantly communicate something that they shouldn’t be talking about. Presence is knowing what to communicate, and how.
Q. If you were interviewing somebody and could ask them only one or two questions, what would they be?
A. More important probably than the questions is the texture of the answers, but I think that I would probably try to set the stage in terms of a double-barrel question, and it would be, “Share with me two situations, work-related, that you’re proud of — one where there was something achieved as a result of your personal initiative, and the other where the achievement was a result of the team getting something done, which you don’t think they would otherwise have gotten done without your leadership.” So I’m looking for the feedback on the personal initiative and the leadership.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. I’ve been working hard on listening skills for a few years. I can still get excited about things, so I have to be careful about not conveying where I’m coming from too early on in the process, because I’m looking to get feedback from others.
Q. What’s your best career advice for new college grads?
A. I think when you come out of undergraduate school, going out and getting some work experience is really very helpful. I found that I learned more about what I didn’t want to do in some of my early jobs. Getting experience in bigger, broader companies where there are more things that you can learn and do is a good idea, because the likelihood of exactly picking out your career from the get-go is very low. So I would encourage, for a first job, that you try to find generally a larger company where there are more things that you can get involved with, where there may be more comprehensive planned training activities to help you with certain skills that you’re going to need."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/27corner.html
"Q. What are the most important leadership lessons you have learned?
A. I spent a reasonable amount of time living overseas. So relatively early in my career I moved first to San Juan, then to Rio, then to London, then to Belgium, running businesses in those markets.
Pretty early on, I recognized that more is the same than is different — fundamental values, wanting to give your children more opportunity or at least as much as you had in life, etc. It’s present all around the world, and that happens to be true in a lot of aspects of business as well. More is the same than is different, but we tend to focus on differences, and perhaps exaggerate or accentuate those beyond the reality of what we have to worry about.
I can remember when I moved to Brazil and I had spent two years learning Spanish. I was out visiting branches. I was working for Citibank at the time and had responsibility for consumer businesses there.
Brazil is a big country. I was living in Rio and it’s like living in Miami. I was out visiting a branch in the equivalent of Denver. Not everybody spoke great English and I hadn’t gotten very far in Portuguese. As I was sitting there trying to discern and understand what this branch manager was saying to me, and he was struggling with his English, the coin sort of dropped that this guy really knows what he’s talking about. He’s having a hard time getting it out.
As I thought about the places I’d been on that trip, I realized this was probably the best branch manager I’d seen, but it would have been very easy for me to think he wasn’t, because he couldn’t communicate as well as some of the others who were fluent in English.
I think that was an important lesson. It is too easy to let the person with great presentation or language skills buffalo you into thinking that they are better or more knowledgeable than someone else who might not necessarily have that particular set of skills.
So that was something that sounds obvious in hindsight, but as I was sitting there, boy, for me this was a thunderbolt. I think that’s another thing that sort of served me well, not letting the veneer distract you from the substance.
Q. Let’s say you’re interviewing me for a job reporting directly to you. How does that conversation go?
A. Beyond the discussion of what you’re going to do for us, I want to know two or three of your strengths and weaknesses. And then I’m going to ask you about those two or three things that you’ve acknowledged are flat sides, and how you think we should work on those, how you think we should ensure those don’t become barriers to success.
I think probably the final thing is that I’m going to try to ensure — and I’m going to ask you if you feel good in your gut about it — that there is going to be some chemistry here, that you’re not out in left field and I’m out in right field from our respective positions, that we’re in fact sort of more or less in the center of the infield together.
Q. What qualities are you looking for in hires?
A. What I’m looking for is always the same. The more senior a person, the richer I expect them to be in these attributes.
The top two are leadership and results. From a leadership standpoint, I would expect you, as a more senior executive, to be able to talk about where you’ve provided strategic leadership. It doesn’t mean you’re a brilliant strategist, but you’ve been able to get a team together to agree on who the target customer is, what products and services you’re going to offer them, and the value and competitive advantage you’re going to create.
Tell me about what you’ve done in bringing along talent. Tell me about difficult things you had to do in terms of reconfiguring a team, or whatever. Talk to me about successes and all the net talent you provided to other parts of the companies you worked in.
The second would be results. At the end of the day, I want to have people who have been able to, and will continue to be able to, deliver results. That can mean starting with a clean sheet of paper and having a very credible business three or four years later. It can mean going in and taking over something that’s already very big and making it better, whether that’s revenues, expense management, bottom-line profitability.
Underpinning those would be multifunctional, multinational and presence. I’m looking for multifunctional people who have been in different activities — marketing, sales, operations, finance, human resources — who bring a richer perspective and texture to problems and opportunities than someone who’s just had a straight shot in one function.
I’m looking for somebody who’s had multinational experience. We do business everywhere in the world. I’m looking for people who have lived and worked in different markets and recognize that there are nuances that have to be considered.
And the final one is presence. You deal with different folks at different levels of the company. It depends on the exact role, but you should ensure that there is an ability to interact with and effectively represent the company.
Q. Can you elaborate more on what you mean by presence?
A. At varying levels in the company, you interact with different stakeholders. Having somebody spend time with a member of Congress is very different than having somebody go downstairs and see that they were appropriately replacing a torn carpet. You need a different capability to deal with those circumstances, not only from a knowledge standpoint but from a presence standpoint.
As I’ve gone through my career, I’ve been challenged to deal with different stakeholders. Internally, when I was younger and more junior, I probably did pretty well with peers. But then how do you credibly communicate with more senior people, who are not as concerned about some things perhaps in the details, but they want a bigger picture?
So it’s a combination of not only how you convey things, but what you convey to these various stakeholders. Presence is learning to deal with different audiences in a way that allows them to get what they need out of this interaction and ensures that the well-being of the company is looked after.
Q. Isn’t that what some people describe as just good communication skills?
A. I think you can be a good communicator and you still may not have presence. There may be someone who is very articulate on a subject and they know levels of detail. When you get with a particular audience, it may not be appropriate to go into those levels of detail, or you may create doubt by even going into the subject matter. There’s inside information in a company, for example. You never cross that bright line, but you can get varying degrees of proximity to that line, depending on your audience.
Some people are not very good communicators, but boy, when you get them into their subject matter they know exactly where to go and how far to go. Others are brilliant communicators, but because of the connection between their thoughts and the synapses firing and the words coming out, there isn’t enough time and introspection. Therefore they will brilliantly communicate something that they shouldn’t be talking about. Presence is knowing what to communicate, and how.
Q. If you were interviewing somebody and could ask them only one or two questions, what would they be?
A. More important probably than the questions is the texture of the answers, but I think that I would probably try to set the stage in terms of a double-barrel question, and it would be, “Share with me two situations, work-related, that you’re proud of — one where there was something achieved as a result of your personal initiative, and the other where the achievement was a result of the team getting something done, which you don’t think they would otherwise have gotten done without your leadership.” So I’m looking for the feedback on the personal initiative and the leadership.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. I’ve been working hard on listening skills for a few years. I can still get excited about things, so I have to be careful about not conveying where I’m coming from too early on in the process, because I’m looking to get feedback from others.
Q. What’s your best career advice for new college grads?
A. I think when you come out of undergraduate school, going out and getting some work experience is really very helpful. I found that I learned more about what I didn’t want to do in some of my early jobs. Getting experience in bigger, broader companies where there are more things that you can learn and do is a good idea, because the likelihood of exactly picking out your career from the get-go is very low. So I would encourage, for a first job, that you try to find generally a larger company where there are more things that you can get involved with, where there may be more comprehensive planned training activities to help you with certain skills that you’re going to need."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/business/27corner.html
Corner Office, Interview of Michael Mathieu, C.E.O. of YuMe, an online video advertising firm in Redwood City, Calif.; New York Times, 6/20/10
Adam Bryant, Corner Office, New York Times, Interview of Michael Mathieu, C.E.O. of YuMe, an online video advertising firm in Redwood City, Calif.: Want the Job? Tell Him the Meaning of Life:
"Q. What about leadership lessons from particularly good or bad bosses?
A. You’re a collection of all your experiences, good, bad, indifferent, and great leaders you’ve worked with. Actually, you learn a lot from the worst managers you’ve had. You learn probably more than from the great managers.
Q. Did you?
A. Absolutely. I think my worst bosses were hyper-controlling. I’ve learned that leaders actually do the opposite, which is to give their best people complete freedom to do the job. The worst managers come in and believe, “O.K., I’m going to control this.” They’re very structured. And what I’ve learned is that actually stifles high performers.
People who are really good at what they do want freedom. They want to be able to be innovative. So I try to hire the best people and give them the freedom and flexibility to do the job they were hired to do. But they have to sign up for things to get that freedom.
Q. What are those things?
A. One is, make people feel like they’re part of the team. To do that, you’ve got to make people feel like they can come in and talk about anything with absolutely no fear of, “O.K., this could be stupid.” They need to feel like their voice is heard, and feel completely fearless to have those conversations with me.
Two, they have to be clear on what our goals and vision are. This is the mountain we’re trying to go after, and let’s be clear on what we have to do. And if you do sign up for that, you’re going to be accountable. If you give good people clear goals, you can let them be accountable and go after it in their own way. And then reward and recognize...
Q. How do you hire?
A. By the time people come to me I know they can do the job, whether they’re engineers or salespeople. So when I interview people, I look for their leadership characteristics and their ability to thrive in ambiguity. So I try to ask questions about how they handle adversity. I want to get people’s thought processes on how they deal with something that’s not black or white, but gray.
I ask questions about their leadership, like, are they selfless mentors? Do they try to make people around them better? Are they proactive? Do they take initiative, so they don’t wait to be asked to do something? I try to get examples of that.
I try to really form a picture of this person outside the job. On a scale of 1 to 10, are they naturally curious people? Do they read? Do they want to learn? Do they have this thirst for knowledge that leaders have? Do they have the ability to find clarity among chaos, to have this calmness to be able to get stuff done? Does this person have a history of just being proactive in their life and not being told what to do?
I try to find people who are a 10 in tactical ability. And if they’re naturally curious people and they handle adversity with grace and they understand what they bring to the table, I’ll hire them tomorrow.
Q. What are your best questions to get at those qualities?
A. What I try to do now is find examples of how they’ve worked. One thing is, depending on the job they’re in, I ask about a situation where something didn’t go your way. How did you handle it? Explain that to me. And I love asking people what the meaning of life is. It’s a fun question because no one’s expecting it.
Q. What kind of answers have you heard through the years?
A. Some people automatically say happiness. For a lot of people it’s family, the people in their life, the quality of their relationships. I also say, "On your death bed, what do you want to be remembered for?" I love asking those questions because the folks who are completely prepared are not prepared for those questions.
Q. Have you heard some odd answers?
A. I have. My favorite is, "Are you talking about my business life or my personal life?"
Q. What does that tell you?
A. It tells me somebody is really disconnected from being passionate about what they do. They’re going to come in and say, “How can I position myself to be really successful?” versus just be who they are. Those are the people that will always be angling for something. The minute they say that, I’m like, “O.K., next.” We don’t need anglers in the company who are just trying to position themselves and managing up. We try to stay away from those kinds of folks.
Q. What other questions do you ask?
A. I try to ask: “When things don’t work your way, how do you deal with it? What’s life about? What’s the most important thing that’s happened to you over the last three years, something that’s really changed your life?” I try to ask questions that give me a sense of the person’s character and how they process information.
Q. So, what’s the meaning of life for you?
A. Two things: happiness and the quality of the relationships you’ve had in life. The impact you can have on people is why you’re here. Hopefully, you do that with enough people, and you have fun doing it.
From a business perspective, you try to generate a ton of revenue, keep the investors happy, and above all make customers happy. I try not to spend too much time talking about this stuff, because they think Michael’s going to be coming in here in his Buddhist outfit soon. But it’s about, am I present and here?
When you have a conversation with somebody, you’re not going to get the nuances of the conversation if you’re doing too many things. I try telling people, if somebody picks up the phone, stop your e-mail, stop what you’re doing, listen and have that conversation with the person and then move on. With most people in business, they’re on the phone and they’re on e-mail, and you know when they’re on e-mail.
Q. You can hear it in their voice.
A. Yes. So, I try to wake up in the morning, be connected, and have conversations with people. Don’t be distracted, and the little nuances of life will show up, and you will hear things. I’m not immune. I have to do a lot of things, and I try to slow down sometimes. I try to be present so I can enjoy the richness and quality of interactions with people. Most people can’t multitask without losing something in each of those tasks."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/business/20corner.html?_r=1
"Q. What about leadership lessons from particularly good or bad bosses?
A. You’re a collection of all your experiences, good, bad, indifferent, and great leaders you’ve worked with. Actually, you learn a lot from the worst managers you’ve had. You learn probably more than from the great managers.
Q. Did you?
A. Absolutely. I think my worst bosses were hyper-controlling. I’ve learned that leaders actually do the opposite, which is to give their best people complete freedom to do the job. The worst managers come in and believe, “O.K., I’m going to control this.” They’re very structured. And what I’ve learned is that actually stifles high performers.
People who are really good at what they do want freedom. They want to be able to be innovative. So I try to hire the best people and give them the freedom and flexibility to do the job they were hired to do. But they have to sign up for things to get that freedom.
Q. What are those things?
A. One is, make people feel like they’re part of the team. To do that, you’ve got to make people feel like they can come in and talk about anything with absolutely no fear of, “O.K., this could be stupid.” They need to feel like their voice is heard, and feel completely fearless to have those conversations with me.
Two, they have to be clear on what our goals and vision are. This is the mountain we’re trying to go after, and let’s be clear on what we have to do. And if you do sign up for that, you’re going to be accountable. If you give good people clear goals, you can let them be accountable and go after it in their own way. And then reward and recognize...
Q. How do you hire?
A. By the time people come to me I know they can do the job, whether they’re engineers or salespeople. So when I interview people, I look for their leadership characteristics and their ability to thrive in ambiguity. So I try to ask questions about how they handle adversity. I want to get people’s thought processes on how they deal with something that’s not black or white, but gray.
I ask questions about their leadership, like, are they selfless mentors? Do they try to make people around them better? Are they proactive? Do they take initiative, so they don’t wait to be asked to do something? I try to get examples of that.
I try to really form a picture of this person outside the job. On a scale of 1 to 10, are they naturally curious people? Do they read? Do they want to learn? Do they have this thirst for knowledge that leaders have? Do they have the ability to find clarity among chaos, to have this calmness to be able to get stuff done? Does this person have a history of just being proactive in their life and not being told what to do?
I try to find people who are a 10 in tactical ability. And if they’re naturally curious people and they handle adversity with grace and they understand what they bring to the table, I’ll hire them tomorrow.
Q. What are your best questions to get at those qualities?
A. What I try to do now is find examples of how they’ve worked. One thing is, depending on the job they’re in, I ask about a situation where something didn’t go your way. How did you handle it? Explain that to me. And I love asking people what the meaning of life is. It’s a fun question because no one’s expecting it.
Q. What kind of answers have you heard through the years?
A. Some people automatically say happiness. For a lot of people it’s family, the people in their life, the quality of their relationships. I also say, "On your death bed, what do you want to be remembered for?" I love asking those questions because the folks who are completely prepared are not prepared for those questions.
Q. Have you heard some odd answers?
A. I have. My favorite is, "Are you talking about my business life or my personal life?"
Q. What does that tell you?
A. It tells me somebody is really disconnected from being passionate about what they do. They’re going to come in and say, “How can I position myself to be really successful?” versus just be who they are. Those are the people that will always be angling for something. The minute they say that, I’m like, “O.K., next.” We don’t need anglers in the company who are just trying to position themselves and managing up. We try to stay away from those kinds of folks.
Q. What other questions do you ask?
A. I try to ask: “When things don’t work your way, how do you deal with it? What’s life about? What’s the most important thing that’s happened to you over the last three years, something that’s really changed your life?” I try to ask questions that give me a sense of the person’s character and how they process information.
Q. So, what’s the meaning of life for you?
A. Two things: happiness and the quality of the relationships you’ve had in life. The impact you can have on people is why you’re here. Hopefully, you do that with enough people, and you have fun doing it.
From a business perspective, you try to generate a ton of revenue, keep the investors happy, and above all make customers happy. I try not to spend too much time talking about this stuff, because they think Michael’s going to be coming in here in his Buddhist outfit soon. But it’s about, am I present and here?
When you have a conversation with somebody, you’re not going to get the nuances of the conversation if you’re doing too many things. I try telling people, if somebody picks up the phone, stop your e-mail, stop what you’re doing, listen and have that conversation with the person and then move on. With most people in business, they’re on the phone and they’re on e-mail, and you know when they’re on e-mail.
Q. You can hear it in their voice.
A. Yes. So, I try to wake up in the morning, be connected, and have conversations with people. Don’t be distracted, and the little nuances of life will show up, and you will hear things. I’m not immune. I have to do a lot of things, and I try to slow down sometimes. I try to be present so I can enjoy the richness and quality of interactions with people. Most people can’t multitask without losing something in each of those tasks."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/20/business/20corner.html?_r=1
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Corner Office, Interview of Niki Leondakis, chief operating officer of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, New York Times, 6/13/10
Adam Bryant, Corner Office, New York Times; Interview of Niki Leondakis, chief operating officer of Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, "O.K., Newbies, Bring Out the Hula Hoops":
"Q. Do you remember the first time you were a boss?
A. I was in college at UMass, and I was promoted from a server to a shift-supervisor position at a restaurant called the Hungry U.
Q. How did that go?
A. I took that job pretty seriously. But I would say both in that job and in my first job out of school as an entry-level manager, I experienced what a lot of people experience, which is being too friendly with the people you manage and learning the appropriate boundaries and distances around certain things.
Q. And some people go too far the other way, and start bossing people around.
A. I think people fall into one of two camps. I think very few people become a supervisor or a boss for the first time and know exactly where the right balance is. Both with myself and all the young managers I see, people seem to swing to one end of the pendulum or the other — overzealous with power or, “I’m everybody’s friend, and I want them to like me, and if they like me maybe they’ll do what I ask and then it’ll be easier.”
Q. So how did that play out for you?
A. It was frankly just a long road of mistakes and learning and watching and trials and tribulations, really, about managing people, counseling people, hiring people, letting people go and learning through the actual process of doing all those things over and over again that there’s a middle ground that makes sense.
Q. Did the pendulum swing back and forth for you?
A. When I started advancing in my career, I swung the pendulum the other way. I was at a point where most of my peers were men and they tended to act and behave differently than I did and came across as tough-minded and more rigid, a little more authoritarian. I felt like, to be successful, I needed to do that, too, so I was acting a lot like what I thought successful leadership looked like. That was in the early ’80s. For women in general at that time, we all thought that to be successful or to be considered equal, you tried to really dress like men, act like men and ensure people knew you were tough-minded and could make the tough calls and be decisive.
So I was holding back on some of my leadership strengths — collaboration, inclusion and building and creating teams. I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t, until one day I had to do something disciplinary to someone I really liked and admired.
Human resources got involved and they wanted me to let this person go. I said, “That’s not fair.” So the negotiation between myself and human resources resulted in a week’s suspension without pay for this person. I was struggling with how to communicate with her what had happened, because I couldn’t reconcile for myself what the words were going to be.
The person I worked for at that time could see my struggle and said: “You know what, Niki? Just tap into who you are as a woman and relate to her with compassion, and you’ll be able to do what you need to do. You can still do what you have to do, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
And that was sort of an epiphany for me, because I thought that being tough-minded and decisive and all those qualities and traits that I thought I was supposed to exhibit, that men exhibited, meant that I couldn’t show compassion. It was just a different experience for me to relate to this person with compassion and accountability at the same time, and balance the two. And the fact that it was effective was a huge learning for me.
From that point on, there was an awareness I had that there was this balance I could strike with being myself, being compassionate and holding people accountable. They were not mutually exclusive.
Q. How many years did it take before you found the right balance as a leader?
A. A good 10 years before I really found my center and learned how to be true to my values.
Q. So what advice do you give to new managers?
A. I would talk to a young manager about who they are, what they really believe in, and find the foundation or platform, if you will, to communicate consistently to the people you work with so they know what you stand for and what you believe in. And when they experience that from you, they understand the place that it’s coming from. Otherwise, they fill in their own blanks.
Q. What other advice do you give them when they become new managers?
A. I coach them to do a lot of listening. Listen first. I generally tell them that the best and most effective thing you can do is have both some group-listening environments, where you have employee meetings or department meetings with different groups of people, and one-on-ones and work your way through the entire team that you’re responsible for.
Before you start telling people where you’re coming from and what you’re about and what you’re going to do, listen first to what’s going on here, how do they feel about it, what are their views, what’s their input, what are their personal goals, and take note of all that they have to say, and then put together your version of “here’s where I’m coming from.” So, “listen and learn first” is a consistent piece of advice.
Q. Any big influences when you were younger?
A. My first leadership model as a young child was my grandmother, who ran a diner in western Massachusetts. My grandfather had died, and she single-handedly ran this 24/7 diner, and I used to spend a lot of time hanging out at that diner. I’d watch how she’d make tough calls. I’d watch how she’d handle difficult situations, and she always handled it. She never shied away from it, but she always did it with grace and poise. I just saw her handle so many difficult situations so well; it was a great example for me.
My second leadership example was my father. When I was a teenager, he was a district supervisor over a lot of grocery stores, and once a year he had to do performance reviews. He couldn’t type, and he would ask me to type those performance reviews for him on this old Smith Corona electric typewriter.
So for weeks once a year, my dad would come home from work and we’d sit down for a couple hours at night with these forms, and he would articulate what he wanted to say, and I would type for him. And sometimes, because English wasn’t his first language, I would help him say it in a way that I thought would work better. But I also learned through typing performance reviews for my dad every year a lot about having a lot of heart and compassion and giving clear, direct, accountable feedback. I saw the balance of those in him, too.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. One of the things that has evolved is learning to listen first when there’s a problem or a situation that needs to be addressed. Rather than sitting down with someone and telling them what’s wrong or what needs to be addressed or what needs to be fixed, I ask how this came about and what’s happening here, and listen to the back story. How’d we get here? Why does this look like this? And then, when I have understanding about it, I can then turn it into a coaching moment rather than a moment of judgment and fear and intimidation for the person on the other side of the table who’s listening to what’s wrong with their performance.
Q. How does that contrast with how you would handle it in earlier years?
A. When I was a younger manager, my anxiety about what wasn’t right drove me to confront things quickly. The faster I confronted it, the more quickly it could get fixed. It would get changed, and while that’s a good thing, the manner in which I did it frequently left people feeling defensive. So by listening first and trying to understand how we got here and their story, I think it allows them to then hear my point of view. And then we can move into solutions. When people feel judged right out of the gate, it’s hard for them to open up and listen and improve.
Q. How do you hire?
A. Let’s assume they have the technical skills, which is sort of the price of admission. Then I’ll look at who this person is as a human being in leadership style and in cultural fit, and I will try to have, if it’s a direct report, a variety of types of conversations with them — phone to face-to-face in an office environment to a meal.
Q. Why a meal?
A. I think people get a little more comfortable, and I can observe how they walk through a restaurant and whether they barrel through or let other people go first. Or when we’re sitting down and the server comes to take the order, do they respond by looking them in the eye, or do they talk to them without looking at them, as if they’re invisible? It’s very telling to me how someone treats the service staff.
Q. What are your key questions during the interview?
A. One key question I always ask is, “What are you working on developing within yourself right now?” If someone can’t answer that honestly and rather quickly, if you have to think too hard about what you’re working on developing, are you really working on it? I’m looking for a commitment to self-development and personal growth.
Q. Tell me something unusual about what it’s like to work at Kimpton.
A. One of the important aspects of working at Kimpton is having fun. For leaders, the ability to laugh at yourself is key, so we use Hula Hoops to demonstrate that.
Q. Give me an example.
A. Every year at our annual meeting, we have a general-manager meeting. About 250 people, along with our corporate team, get together for a couple days. This has been a ritual for about 15 years now. Anyone who’s a first-timer, we call them up to the front of the room, and we play the music to “Wipe Out,” and we do this hoop-off. So five people at a time hoop and then there’s a winner. There are usually four to six new teams of people. The winner of all the newbies, as we call them, then has a hoop-off with last year’s reigning champion.
Q. That could go on for a long time.
A. The entire thing takes about an hour. I also go around the country with our other senior leaders throughout the year and do what we call the “road show” at each property. The road show has a Hula Hoop component in it, and I will demonstrate the hula technique.
Q. You’re the Hula Hoop coach?
A. Now I am. I didn’t used to be. I used to be someone they laughed at, but now I actually go, “O.K., here’s the technique.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13corner.html?pagewanted=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse&scp=2
"Q. Do you remember the first time you were a boss?
A. I was in college at UMass, and I was promoted from a server to a shift-supervisor position at a restaurant called the Hungry U.
Q. How did that go?
A. I took that job pretty seriously. But I would say both in that job and in my first job out of school as an entry-level manager, I experienced what a lot of people experience, which is being too friendly with the people you manage and learning the appropriate boundaries and distances around certain things.
Q. And some people go too far the other way, and start bossing people around.
A. I think people fall into one of two camps. I think very few people become a supervisor or a boss for the first time and know exactly where the right balance is. Both with myself and all the young managers I see, people seem to swing to one end of the pendulum or the other — overzealous with power or, “I’m everybody’s friend, and I want them to like me, and if they like me maybe they’ll do what I ask and then it’ll be easier.”
Q. So how did that play out for you?
A. It was frankly just a long road of mistakes and learning and watching and trials and tribulations, really, about managing people, counseling people, hiring people, letting people go and learning through the actual process of doing all those things over and over again that there’s a middle ground that makes sense.
Q. Did the pendulum swing back and forth for you?
A. When I started advancing in my career, I swung the pendulum the other way. I was at a point where most of my peers were men and they tended to act and behave differently than I did and came across as tough-minded and more rigid, a little more authoritarian. I felt like, to be successful, I needed to do that, too, so I was acting a lot like what I thought successful leadership looked like. That was in the early ’80s. For women in general at that time, we all thought that to be successful or to be considered equal, you tried to really dress like men, act like men and ensure people knew you were tough-minded and could make the tough calls and be decisive.
So I was holding back on some of my leadership strengths — collaboration, inclusion and building and creating teams. I was trying to be somebody I wasn’t, until one day I had to do something disciplinary to someone I really liked and admired.
Human resources got involved and they wanted me to let this person go. I said, “That’s not fair.” So the negotiation between myself and human resources resulted in a week’s suspension without pay for this person. I was struggling with how to communicate with her what had happened, because I couldn’t reconcile for myself what the words were going to be.
The person I worked for at that time could see my struggle and said: “You know what, Niki? Just tap into who you are as a woman and relate to her with compassion, and you’ll be able to do what you need to do. You can still do what you have to do, but you don’t have to be a jerk about it.”
And that was sort of an epiphany for me, because I thought that being tough-minded and decisive and all those qualities and traits that I thought I was supposed to exhibit, that men exhibited, meant that I couldn’t show compassion. It was just a different experience for me to relate to this person with compassion and accountability at the same time, and balance the two. And the fact that it was effective was a huge learning for me.
From that point on, there was an awareness I had that there was this balance I could strike with being myself, being compassionate and holding people accountable. They were not mutually exclusive.
Q. How many years did it take before you found the right balance as a leader?
A. A good 10 years before I really found my center and learned how to be true to my values.
Q. So what advice do you give to new managers?
A. I would talk to a young manager about who they are, what they really believe in, and find the foundation or platform, if you will, to communicate consistently to the people you work with so they know what you stand for and what you believe in. And when they experience that from you, they understand the place that it’s coming from. Otherwise, they fill in their own blanks.
Q. What other advice do you give them when they become new managers?
A. I coach them to do a lot of listening. Listen first. I generally tell them that the best and most effective thing you can do is have both some group-listening environments, where you have employee meetings or department meetings with different groups of people, and one-on-ones and work your way through the entire team that you’re responsible for.
Before you start telling people where you’re coming from and what you’re about and what you’re going to do, listen first to what’s going on here, how do they feel about it, what are their views, what’s their input, what are their personal goals, and take note of all that they have to say, and then put together your version of “here’s where I’m coming from.” So, “listen and learn first” is a consistent piece of advice.
Q. Any big influences when you were younger?
A. My first leadership model as a young child was my grandmother, who ran a diner in western Massachusetts. My grandfather had died, and she single-handedly ran this 24/7 diner, and I used to spend a lot of time hanging out at that diner. I’d watch how she’d make tough calls. I’d watch how she’d handle difficult situations, and she always handled it. She never shied away from it, but she always did it with grace and poise. I just saw her handle so many difficult situations so well; it was a great example for me.
My second leadership example was my father. When I was a teenager, he was a district supervisor over a lot of grocery stores, and once a year he had to do performance reviews. He couldn’t type, and he would ask me to type those performance reviews for him on this old Smith Corona electric typewriter.
So for weeks once a year, my dad would come home from work and we’d sit down for a couple hours at night with these forms, and he would articulate what he wanted to say, and I would type for him. And sometimes, because English wasn’t his first language, I would help him say it in a way that I thought would work better. But I also learned through typing performance reviews for my dad every year a lot about having a lot of heart and compassion and giving clear, direct, accountable feedback. I saw the balance of those in him, too.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved?
A. One of the things that has evolved is learning to listen first when there’s a problem or a situation that needs to be addressed. Rather than sitting down with someone and telling them what’s wrong or what needs to be addressed or what needs to be fixed, I ask how this came about and what’s happening here, and listen to the back story. How’d we get here? Why does this look like this? And then, when I have understanding about it, I can then turn it into a coaching moment rather than a moment of judgment and fear and intimidation for the person on the other side of the table who’s listening to what’s wrong with their performance.
Q. How does that contrast with how you would handle it in earlier years?
A. When I was a younger manager, my anxiety about what wasn’t right drove me to confront things quickly. The faster I confronted it, the more quickly it could get fixed. It would get changed, and while that’s a good thing, the manner in which I did it frequently left people feeling defensive. So by listening first and trying to understand how we got here and their story, I think it allows them to then hear my point of view. And then we can move into solutions. When people feel judged right out of the gate, it’s hard for them to open up and listen and improve.
Q. How do you hire?
A. Let’s assume they have the technical skills, which is sort of the price of admission. Then I’ll look at who this person is as a human being in leadership style and in cultural fit, and I will try to have, if it’s a direct report, a variety of types of conversations with them — phone to face-to-face in an office environment to a meal.
Q. Why a meal?
A. I think people get a little more comfortable, and I can observe how they walk through a restaurant and whether they barrel through or let other people go first. Or when we’re sitting down and the server comes to take the order, do they respond by looking them in the eye, or do they talk to them without looking at them, as if they’re invisible? It’s very telling to me how someone treats the service staff.
Q. What are your key questions during the interview?
A. One key question I always ask is, “What are you working on developing within yourself right now?” If someone can’t answer that honestly and rather quickly, if you have to think too hard about what you’re working on developing, are you really working on it? I’m looking for a commitment to self-development and personal growth.
Q. Tell me something unusual about what it’s like to work at Kimpton.
A. One of the important aspects of working at Kimpton is having fun. For leaders, the ability to laugh at yourself is key, so we use Hula Hoops to demonstrate that.
Q. Give me an example.
A. Every year at our annual meeting, we have a general-manager meeting. About 250 people, along with our corporate team, get together for a couple days. This has been a ritual for about 15 years now. Anyone who’s a first-timer, we call them up to the front of the room, and we play the music to “Wipe Out,” and we do this hoop-off. So five people at a time hoop and then there’s a winner. There are usually four to six new teams of people. The winner of all the newbies, as we call them, then has a hoop-off with last year’s reigning champion.
Q. That could go on for a long time.
A. The entire thing takes about an hour. I also go around the country with our other senior leaders throughout the year and do what we call the “road show” at each property. The road show has a Hula Hoop component in it, and I will demonstrate the hula technique.
Q. You’re the Hula Hoop coach?
A. Now I am. I didn’t used to be. I used to be someone they laughed at, but now I actually go, “O.K., here’s the technique.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/business/13corner.html?pagewanted=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse&scp=2
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Corner Office, Interview with Jen-Hsun Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia; New York Times, 6/6/10
Adam Bryant, New York Times; Corner Office, Interview with Jen-Hsun Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia, a maker of graphics chips, "I’m Prepared for Adversity. I Waited Tables":
"Q. What’s it like to work at Nvidia?
A. Let me tell you about the two elements that are our core values and that I most treasure and that I spent a lot of time nurturing. One is the tolerance to take risks and the ability to learn from failure. This ability to celebrate failure, if you will, needs to be an important part of any company that’s in a rapidly changing world. And the second core value is intellectual honesty — the ability to call a spade a spade, to as quickly as possible recognize that we’ve made a mistake, that we’ve gone the wrong way, and that we learn from it and quickly adjust.
These came about because, when Nvidia was founded, we were the first company of our kind, but we rapidly almost went out of business. It turned out the technology didn’t work at all. We raised all this money. We hired 100 people. We built the technology and it just didn’t work. I learned a lot about leadership during that time.
Q. What did you learn?
A. I learned that it was O.K. for C.E.O.’s to say that the strategy didn’t work, that the technology didn’t work, that the product didn’t work, but we’re still going to be great and let me tell you why. I think that’s what’s thrilling about leadership — when you’re holding onto literally the worst possible hand on the planet and you know you’re still going to win. How are you still going to win? Because that’s when the character of the company really comes out.
It was during the time that we really cultivated and developed what I consider to be our core values today. I don’t think you can create culture and develop core values during great times. I think it’s when the company faces adversity of extraordinary proportions, when there’s no reason for the company to survive, when you’re looking at incredible odds — that’s when culture is developed, character is developed.
I think culture is a big word for corporate character. It’s the personality of the company, and now the personality of our company simply says this: If we think something is really worthwhile and we have a great idea, and it’s never been done before but we believe in it, it’s O.K. to take a chance. It’s O.K. to try, and if it doesn’t work, learn from it, adjust and keep failing forward. And if you just fail forward all the time — learn, fail, learn, fail, learn, fail — but every single time you’re making it better and better, before you know it you’re a great company.
Mistakes and failures are kind of the negative space around success, right? And if we could take enough shots at it, we’re going to figure out what success is going to look like.
Q. Talk more about the intellectual honesty part of it.
A. Without intellectual honesty, you can’t have a culture that’s willing to tolerate failure because people cling too much to an idea that likely will be bad or isn’t working and they feel like their reputation is tied up in it. They can’t admit failure. You end up putting too much into a bad idea and then you risk the entire enterprise.
Q. What were the most important leadership lessons over the course of your life?
A. Let me start with what I believe to be good leadership traits that resonate for me. I appreciate people who are authentic. They are just who they are. They don’t dress like a C.E.O. because they think that’s what C.E.O.’s dress like. They don’t talk like C.E.O.’s because that’s the way they think C.E.O.’s talk. They don’t conduct their meetings and expect people to treat them like C.E.O.’s because that’s the way they think C.E.O.’s are supposed to be treated. They are just who they are.
And I like people who are able to call a spade a spade. If something is right, something’s right. If something’s wrong, something’s wrong. And if something could be better, it could be better. I don’t want to be sold to all the time. And I also believe that you manage with your skills but you have to lead with your heart.
You can’t cause other people to fall in love with the work that you’re doing if you don’t love it yourself. And so I think you can manage for better performance but you can’t manage for greatness. You can’t manage your way into greatness. You’ve got to lead your way into greatness, and so you have to lead with your heart.
Q. What about when you were growing up?
A. When I was in high school, nothing gave me greater joy than computer games. It was part of how I grew up. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the video game era, but I’ve never beaten myself up about mistakes. When I try something and it doesn’t turn out, I go back and try it again.
Most of the time when you’re playing a game, you’re losing. You lose and lose and lose until you beat it. That’s kind of how the game works, right? It’s feedback. And then eventually you beat it.
As it turns out, the most fun parts of a game are when you’re losing. When you finally beat it there’s a moment of euphoria but then it’s over. Maybe it’s because I grew up in that generation, I have the ability to take chances, which leads to the ability to innovate and try new things.
Those are important life lessons that came along.
Q. Any experiences in your teens or early 20s that prepared you for leadership?
A. I was a very good student and I was always focused and driven. But I was very introverted. I was incredibly shy. The one experience that pulled me out of my shell was waiting tables at Denny’s. I was horrified by the prospect of having to talk to people. You want customers to always be right, but customers can’t always be right. You have to find compromises for circumstances that are happening all the time and you have difficult situations. You have mistakes that you make; you have the mistakes that the kitchen makes.
You can’t control the environment most of the time. And so you’re making the best of a state of chaos, which was a wonderful learning experience for me.
Q. Talk about how your leadership style has evolved.
A. I probably give fewer answers and I ask a lot more questions. It’s not possible for the C.E.O. to know everything, but it is possible for us to add value to just about everything. And the reason for that is, if you’re the C.E.O., you’re probably better at looking around corners than most. You probably have better intuition than most. You’re probably able to see the forest better than most. You’re probably able to deal with complexity better than most. And so you bring a perspective that is unique.
By asking the right questions, you can get to the heart of the issue right away. It’s almost possible now for me to go through a day and do nothing but ask questions and have my sensibility, my perspective and what’s important to me be perfectly clear to everybody without making a statement at all.
Q. The perception that many people have of C.E.O.’s is that they have all the answers.
A. There’s no way that I can be as deep in all of the areas as the people on my management team, nor is it important. It’s more important that, through probing, I help them realize that they could achieve even more than they thought they could achieve. It is probably more important that, through questions, you cause them to explore ideas that they didn’t realize needed to be explored. As the C.E.O., you’re trying to make a great idea better.
Q. What about hiring?
A. There are three characteristics that I think are directly related to success. The first is to be able to fall in love with something. Maybe it’s related to what you’re passionate about. The capacity to fall in love is so important to successful people. The second one is the capacity to take chances and make mistakes. And the third is just to see the world through a child’s eye. You know to ask: “What if? What if we could do this?” All of the great ideas are kind of, “Hey, what if we could do this?”
Q. Let’s say you’re interviewing me for a job. How are you going to find out if I have those three qualities?
A. Well, first of all, if you use words like love — “I love doing this” — you can just tell when somebody’s passionate about something. The second thing is, I’ll ask you about one of your greatest failures. Tell me about something where you just shanked into the woods. What happened? How’d you deal with it? How’d you get back into the game?
And the third one is, I’ll ask somebody to just teach me something. They’ll get on the whiteboard. I’ll start saying things like, “What if you did that?” People who are really receptive to brainstorming and creativity will say: “Huh, that’s interesting. Well, what if we did that?”
Somebody who doesn’t like criticism will say: “That’s been tried. It doesn’t work.” So those people just tend not to be good collaborators.
Q. And so, with those three screens, what’s your batting average in hiring?
A. I think hiring great people remains extremely, extremely hard. The reason for that is this: You can never really tell how somebody deals with adversity — whether it’s adversity that’s created by the environment, or adversity that you’re creating for them. When you have a difficult situation and you need somebody to take it and run with it, some people just take it and make it work. They feed on adversity. Some people see adversity and they just cower, as talented as they are.
Q. When you’re interviewing somebody, is there any way you get at that?
A. It’s really tough. You could ask them about the adversity they had in the past, but you never really know the intensity of that adversity. There are some people who, in the face of adversity, become more calm. When the world is just falling apart, I actually think my heart rate goes down. I find that I think best when I’m under adversity.
Maybe it’s Denny’s. As a waiter, you’ve got to deal with rush hour. Anyone who’s dealt with rush hour in a restaurant knows what I’m talking about."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/business/06corner.html
"Q. What’s it like to work at Nvidia?
A. Let me tell you about the two elements that are our core values and that I most treasure and that I spent a lot of time nurturing. One is the tolerance to take risks and the ability to learn from failure. This ability to celebrate failure, if you will, needs to be an important part of any company that’s in a rapidly changing world. And the second core value is intellectual honesty — the ability to call a spade a spade, to as quickly as possible recognize that we’ve made a mistake, that we’ve gone the wrong way, and that we learn from it and quickly adjust.
These came about because, when Nvidia was founded, we were the first company of our kind, but we rapidly almost went out of business. It turned out the technology didn’t work at all. We raised all this money. We hired 100 people. We built the technology and it just didn’t work. I learned a lot about leadership during that time.
Q. What did you learn?
A. I learned that it was O.K. for C.E.O.’s to say that the strategy didn’t work, that the technology didn’t work, that the product didn’t work, but we’re still going to be great and let me tell you why. I think that’s what’s thrilling about leadership — when you’re holding onto literally the worst possible hand on the planet and you know you’re still going to win. How are you still going to win? Because that’s when the character of the company really comes out.
It was during the time that we really cultivated and developed what I consider to be our core values today. I don’t think you can create culture and develop core values during great times. I think it’s when the company faces adversity of extraordinary proportions, when there’s no reason for the company to survive, when you’re looking at incredible odds — that’s when culture is developed, character is developed.
I think culture is a big word for corporate character. It’s the personality of the company, and now the personality of our company simply says this: If we think something is really worthwhile and we have a great idea, and it’s never been done before but we believe in it, it’s O.K. to take a chance. It’s O.K. to try, and if it doesn’t work, learn from it, adjust and keep failing forward. And if you just fail forward all the time — learn, fail, learn, fail, learn, fail — but every single time you’re making it better and better, before you know it you’re a great company.
Mistakes and failures are kind of the negative space around success, right? And if we could take enough shots at it, we’re going to figure out what success is going to look like.
Q. Talk more about the intellectual honesty part of it.
A. Without intellectual honesty, you can’t have a culture that’s willing to tolerate failure because people cling too much to an idea that likely will be bad or isn’t working and they feel like their reputation is tied up in it. They can’t admit failure. You end up putting too much into a bad idea and then you risk the entire enterprise.
Q. What were the most important leadership lessons over the course of your life?
A. Let me start with what I believe to be good leadership traits that resonate for me. I appreciate people who are authentic. They are just who they are. They don’t dress like a C.E.O. because they think that’s what C.E.O.’s dress like. They don’t talk like C.E.O.’s because that’s the way they think C.E.O.’s talk. They don’t conduct their meetings and expect people to treat them like C.E.O.’s because that’s the way they think C.E.O.’s are supposed to be treated. They are just who they are.
And I like people who are able to call a spade a spade. If something is right, something’s right. If something’s wrong, something’s wrong. And if something could be better, it could be better. I don’t want to be sold to all the time. And I also believe that you manage with your skills but you have to lead with your heart.
You can’t cause other people to fall in love with the work that you’re doing if you don’t love it yourself. And so I think you can manage for better performance but you can’t manage for greatness. You can’t manage your way into greatness. You’ve got to lead your way into greatness, and so you have to lead with your heart.
Q. What about when you were growing up?
A. When I was in high school, nothing gave me greater joy than computer games. It was part of how I grew up. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the video game era, but I’ve never beaten myself up about mistakes. When I try something and it doesn’t turn out, I go back and try it again.
Most of the time when you’re playing a game, you’re losing. You lose and lose and lose until you beat it. That’s kind of how the game works, right? It’s feedback. And then eventually you beat it.
As it turns out, the most fun parts of a game are when you’re losing. When you finally beat it there’s a moment of euphoria but then it’s over. Maybe it’s because I grew up in that generation, I have the ability to take chances, which leads to the ability to innovate and try new things.
Those are important life lessons that came along.
Q. Any experiences in your teens or early 20s that prepared you for leadership?
A. I was a very good student and I was always focused and driven. But I was very introverted. I was incredibly shy. The one experience that pulled me out of my shell was waiting tables at Denny’s. I was horrified by the prospect of having to talk to people. You want customers to always be right, but customers can’t always be right. You have to find compromises for circumstances that are happening all the time and you have difficult situations. You have mistakes that you make; you have the mistakes that the kitchen makes.
You can’t control the environment most of the time. And so you’re making the best of a state of chaos, which was a wonderful learning experience for me.
Q. Talk about how your leadership style has evolved.
A. I probably give fewer answers and I ask a lot more questions. It’s not possible for the C.E.O. to know everything, but it is possible for us to add value to just about everything. And the reason for that is, if you’re the C.E.O., you’re probably better at looking around corners than most. You probably have better intuition than most. You’re probably able to see the forest better than most. You’re probably able to deal with complexity better than most. And so you bring a perspective that is unique.
By asking the right questions, you can get to the heart of the issue right away. It’s almost possible now for me to go through a day and do nothing but ask questions and have my sensibility, my perspective and what’s important to me be perfectly clear to everybody without making a statement at all.
Q. The perception that many people have of C.E.O.’s is that they have all the answers.
A. There’s no way that I can be as deep in all of the areas as the people on my management team, nor is it important. It’s more important that, through probing, I help them realize that they could achieve even more than they thought they could achieve. It is probably more important that, through questions, you cause them to explore ideas that they didn’t realize needed to be explored. As the C.E.O., you’re trying to make a great idea better.
Q. What about hiring?
A. There are three characteristics that I think are directly related to success. The first is to be able to fall in love with something. Maybe it’s related to what you’re passionate about. The capacity to fall in love is so important to successful people. The second one is the capacity to take chances and make mistakes. And the third is just to see the world through a child’s eye. You know to ask: “What if? What if we could do this?” All of the great ideas are kind of, “Hey, what if we could do this?”
Q. Let’s say you’re interviewing me for a job. How are you going to find out if I have those three qualities?
A. Well, first of all, if you use words like love — “I love doing this” — you can just tell when somebody’s passionate about something. The second thing is, I’ll ask you about one of your greatest failures. Tell me about something where you just shanked into the woods. What happened? How’d you deal with it? How’d you get back into the game?
And the third one is, I’ll ask somebody to just teach me something. They’ll get on the whiteboard. I’ll start saying things like, “What if you did that?” People who are really receptive to brainstorming and creativity will say: “Huh, that’s interesting. Well, what if we did that?”
Somebody who doesn’t like criticism will say: “That’s been tried. It doesn’t work.” So those people just tend not to be good collaborators.
Q. And so, with those three screens, what’s your batting average in hiring?
A. I think hiring great people remains extremely, extremely hard. The reason for that is this: You can never really tell how somebody deals with adversity — whether it’s adversity that’s created by the environment, or adversity that you’re creating for them. When you have a difficult situation and you need somebody to take it and run with it, some people just take it and make it work. They feed on adversity. Some people see adversity and they just cower, as talented as they are.
Q. When you’re interviewing somebody, is there any way you get at that?
A. It’s really tough. You could ask them about the adversity they had in the past, but you never really know the intensity of that adversity. There are some people who, in the face of adversity, become more calm. When the world is just falling apart, I actually think my heart rate goes down. I find that I think best when I’m under adversity.
Maybe it’s Denny’s. As a waiter, you’ve got to deal with rush hour. Anyone who’s dealt with rush hour in a restaurant knows what I’m talking about."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/business/06corner.html
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Corner Office, For the Chief of Saks, It’s Culture That Drives Results; New York Times, 5/30/10
Adam Bryant, Corner Office New York Times; Interview with Stephen I. Sadove, chairman and chief executive of Saks Inc., For the Chief of Saks, It’s Culture That Drives Results:
"Q. What were your biggest leadership lessons?
A. I used opportunities to get involved and develop relationships with a diverse set of people, as opposed to the narrow group of people I was dealing with day-to-day, and that made a huge difference. It shaped my philosophy in terms of the importance of relationship-building. It really underlies my entire philosophy of how to run a business.
Q. How did you learn that?
A. In many instances, I was taken under the wing of people who gave me an opportunity, and also showed some attention and interest where they didn’t necessarily have to. Back at Harvard Business School, I remember a couple of professors there who paid some attention, and in some cases it really led to my love of marketing.
I was also a reasonably good tennis player back in my college and graduate school days. And when I started work at a company called General Foods, people were always looking for tennis partners. If you were a good tennis player, you were heavily in demand. I found that things like that allowed me to meet people that I otherwise may never have met.
I’ve been amazed over the years how relationships that come out of one thing go toward something else. So somebody I might have met through a charity then becomes somebody who knows somebody and it leads to a relationship.
If you give positive vibes, if you show an interest, by and large a lot of people will react. Not everybody, but people tend to react. When people show an interest in reaching out, I tend to react to them.
Q. Were you always comfortable in leadership roles?
A. I was the kind of person growing up who was able to play in different circles of people. I was never a great athlete. I was a good tennis player, but I also was on the math team. I was able to move from one circle of friends to another. So you could be with the top-of-the-class people, but you could also be just as comfortable with the athletes who maybe didn’t care as much about the academics.
I always felt the natural impulse of wanting people to work well together, to get whatever the end result was — winning the game, getting the team to work together, working on the newspaper, whatever it might be.
When I got to a business environment, it was a natural feeling that hey, we’ve got to win. But there was also a belief that I had, even early on, that there were a lot of others who performed as well as I did. What started differentiating me was that I would do what was needed to get a job done, but also make time to come up with new ideas.
I also grew up in a very diverse environment. My dad was with the World Bank in Washington. All of our friends were of international background. You had people from African countries, India, Indonesia.
So I grew up in a world of lots of interesting people, and you really valued learning from them and talking to them. I grew up valuing lots of different kinds of opinions and people of different backgrounds. I was relatively comfortable with adults because we always were entertaining. So you never worried about being uncomfortable in a setting like that, or shy.
Q. What about other mentors?
A. I learned a lot from some of the senior executives at General Foods. There were so many smart people there and you watched how sharp people thought about business issues. But I think that what I really learned there was the value of collaboration, the value of one and one equals three, and not having all the answers yourself. I don’t think it was someone telling me, as much as seeing how much value you could get if people work together.
I also found so many examples where people were working in silos. To me it was just obvious that if people worked together you would get a better result than if you were working independently. The first 10 years of my career I found that getting people to think differently, and moving from what I call a vertical organization to a horizontal organization, was transformational.
Q. How would you say your leadership and management style has evolved?
A. I spend more time with people and people issues. I obviously work with business issues, but I try to go out of my way in mentoring, coaching and developing young people. I tend to care a lot about the people and the relationships that they have, how the team is operating, the culture.
Q. Give me an example of how you spend time with these people.
A. I’ll take 30 or so high-potential employees and spend a day with them. And I’ll talk to them about culture, I’ll talk to them about helping. We’ll call it a C.E.O. forum and work directly with them about issues like leadership, philosophy of leadership, and real business issues that we’re facing.
Q. What’s your philosophy of leadership?
A. I have a very simple model to run a company. It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.
When I talk to Wall Street, people really want to know your results, what are your strategies, what are the issues, what it is that you’re doing to drive your business. They’re focused on the bottom line. Never do you get people asking about the culture, about leadership, about the people in the organization. Yet, it’s the reverse, because it’s the people, the leadership, the culture and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results. So it’s a flip.
What I try to teach people is, don’t ask the first question in terms of numbers. Let’s talk about the people, let’s talk about the culture, let’s talk about the ideas and the innovation.
I learn so much from the people in the organization all the time, and I also learn from students. Once or twice a year I’ll go teach at an M.B.A. class up at Columbia, and I love talking to the students because they’ll challenge you and make you think differently.
I think some of the best ideas come from people who aren’t stuck in their ways. I always tell people new to my organization when they come in, I want you, in your first three or four weeks, to jot down every time you have an idea or a question about how things are done, and then stick it in your drawer. Just whatever it is, why are they doing it this way?
I don’t care whether it’s good or bad; I don’t want you to even talk to anyone about it. Just write it down and stick it in the drawer. And at the end of three or four weeks I want you to look at the sheet. Maybe you’ll say: “Now, I understand that. Now it makes a little bit of sense to me.” Or you may look at it and say, “That still doesn’t make any sense to me.” Then I want you to sit with me and we’re going to talk about them.
Invariably, I find some really good ideas that make you say: “Why are we doing it this way? It makes no sense at all.” I’ve seen little things, big things, waste in the system and a lot of duplication of work. Things like that come out of it.
Q. What’s your best career advice?
A. Early in your career, find the time to do the out-of-the-norm. Do whatever’s required to do the job — run the budgets, execute the promotions. But you’re never going to differentiate yourself just doing what everybody else can do. Find the time to build relationships outside of your own chain of command.
Q. How do you give feedback?
A. I like giving feedback every day, on the spot. It’s important that people know how they’re doing. I’m not really big on year-end feedback. If there are problems, we’ll make sure that they understand the issues that they have to deal with. But I really much prefer it being on-the-spot feedback, as opposed to just waiting for everything to build up and then you have the big blow-out. I don’t see a lot of value in that.
The reality is that people don’t like giving feedback. By the way, there’s a flip side to it, which is that people don’t like to necessarily hear feedback, and even when they’re given feedback they oftentimes don’t hear it. Sometimes you’ll hit people between the eyes and then you’ll see that they didn’t think they got any feedback.
Q. How do you decide when it’s time to let somebody go?
A. I tend to be very half-full versus half-empty, and so you want to give the person another opportunity. You want to see if they can shift their behavior 20 degrees. I’ll probably be more inclined to give them another shot. And more often than not, it doesn’t work out, and I’ll say, “Boy, I should have let them go earlier.” You learn from it, and I’m much tougher today on that than I was.
But I’ve seen some wonderful successes, too. So maybe four out of five don’t work out. But that one that’s a homerun — giving them a little bit more time than they otherwise might have had — may make it worth the other four.
Q. How do you hire?
A. Well, clearly you want somebody who has the intellectual capacity, strategic thinking and the skill sets. But I’m looking for a cultural fit with me. How collaborative are they? How inclusive are they? How willing are they to listen to lots of different points of view? Do they have diverse interests?
Q. So what questions do you ask?
A. What do you like to do for fun? If you had a free evening what do you like to do? Where do you like to travel? What kind of people do you like to spend time with? Who are the people you admire? What have you been reading? When you get a sense of what people are involved with outside of work, you can really start to understand a person.
Q. Anything unusual about the way you manage your time?
A. I make time to wander around a lot because you find out what’s really going on when you pop into people’s offices. But I always have a purpose. It might be, what are the new ideas you’re thinking about for driving creativity or innovation? If I always ask about new ideas, then people will figure I must be interested about innovation. In the last year, I was asking about new cost-saving ideas. But I love wandering around the floors. One of the biggest risks of a C.E.O. is being isolated."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/business/30corner.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse
"Q. What were your biggest leadership lessons?
A. I used opportunities to get involved and develop relationships with a diverse set of people, as opposed to the narrow group of people I was dealing with day-to-day, and that made a huge difference. It shaped my philosophy in terms of the importance of relationship-building. It really underlies my entire philosophy of how to run a business.
Q. How did you learn that?
A. In many instances, I was taken under the wing of people who gave me an opportunity, and also showed some attention and interest where they didn’t necessarily have to. Back at Harvard Business School, I remember a couple of professors there who paid some attention, and in some cases it really led to my love of marketing.
I was also a reasonably good tennis player back in my college and graduate school days. And when I started work at a company called General Foods, people were always looking for tennis partners. If you were a good tennis player, you were heavily in demand. I found that things like that allowed me to meet people that I otherwise may never have met.
I’ve been amazed over the years how relationships that come out of one thing go toward something else. So somebody I might have met through a charity then becomes somebody who knows somebody and it leads to a relationship.
If you give positive vibes, if you show an interest, by and large a lot of people will react. Not everybody, but people tend to react. When people show an interest in reaching out, I tend to react to them.
Q. Were you always comfortable in leadership roles?
A. I was the kind of person growing up who was able to play in different circles of people. I was never a great athlete. I was a good tennis player, but I also was on the math team. I was able to move from one circle of friends to another. So you could be with the top-of-the-class people, but you could also be just as comfortable with the athletes who maybe didn’t care as much about the academics.
I always felt the natural impulse of wanting people to work well together, to get whatever the end result was — winning the game, getting the team to work together, working on the newspaper, whatever it might be.
When I got to a business environment, it was a natural feeling that hey, we’ve got to win. But there was also a belief that I had, even early on, that there were a lot of others who performed as well as I did. What started differentiating me was that I would do what was needed to get a job done, but also make time to come up with new ideas.
I also grew up in a very diverse environment. My dad was with the World Bank in Washington. All of our friends were of international background. You had people from African countries, India, Indonesia.
So I grew up in a world of lots of interesting people, and you really valued learning from them and talking to them. I grew up valuing lots of different kinds of opinions and people of different backgrounds. I was relatively comfortable with adults because we always were entertaining. So you never worried about being uncomfortable in a setting like that, or shy.
Q. What about other mentors?
A. I learned a lot from some of the senior executives at General Foods. There were so many smart people there and you watched how sharp people thought about business issues. But I think that what I really learned there was the value of collaboration, the value of one and one equals three, and not having all the answers yourself. I don’t think it was someone telling me, as much as seeing how much value you could get if people work together.
I also found so many examples where people were working in silos. To me it was just obvious that if people worked together you would get a better result than if you were working independently. The first 10 years of my career I found that getting people to think differently, and moving from what I call a vertical organization to a horizontal organization, was transformational.
Q. How would you say your leadership and management style has evolved?
A. I spend more time with people and people issues. I obviously work with business issues, but I try to go out of my way in mentoring, coaching and developing young people. I tend to care a lot about the people and the relationships that they have, how the team is operating, the culture.
Q. Give me an example of how you spend time with these people.
A. I’ll take 30 or so high-potential employees and spend a day with them. And I’ll talk to them about culture, I’ll talk to them about helping. We’ll call it a C.E.O. forum and work directly with them about issues like leadership, philosophy of leadership, and real business issues that we’re facing.
Q. What’s your philosophy of leadership?
A. I have a very simple model to run a company. It starts with leadership at the top, which drives a culture. Culture drives innovation and whatever else you’re trying to drive within a company — innovation, execution, whatever it’s going to be. And that then drives results.
When I talk to Wall Street, people really want to know your results, what are your strategies, what are the issues, what it is that you’re doing to drive your business. They’re focused on the bottom line. Never do you get people asking about the culture, about leadership, about the people in the organization. Yet, it’s the reverse, because it’s the people, the leadership, the culture and the ideas that are ultimately driving the numbers and the results. So it’s a flip.
What I try to teach people is, don’t ask the first question in terms of numbers. Let’s talk about the people, let’s talk about the culture, let’s talk about the ideas and the innovation.
I learn so much from the people in the organization all the time, and I also learn from students. Once or twice a year I’ll go teach at an M.B.A. class up at Columbia, and I love talking to the students because they’ll challenge you and make you think differently.
I think some of the best ideas come from people who aren’t stuck in their ways. I always tell people new to my organization when they come in, I want you, in your first three or four weeks, to jot down every time you have an idea or a question about how things are done, and then stick it in your drawer. Just whatever it is, why are they doing it this way?
I don’t care whether it’s good or bad; I don’t want you to even talk to anyone about it. Just write it down and stick it in the drawer. And at the end of three or four weeks I want you to look at the sheet. Maybe you’ll say: “Now, I understand that. Now it makes a little bit of sense to me.” Or you may look at it and say, “That still doesn’t make any sense to me.” Then I want you to sit with me and we’re going to talk about them.
Invariably, I find some really good ideas that make you say: “Why are we doing it this way? It makes no sense at all.” I’ve seen little things, big things, waste in the system and a lot of duplication of work. Things like that come out of it.
Q. What’s your best career advice?
A. Early in your career, find the time to do the out-of-the-norm. Do whatever’s required to do the job — run the budgets, execute the promotions. But you’re never going to differentiate yourself just doing what everybody else can do. Find the time to build relationships outside of your own chain of command.
Q. How do you give feedback?
A. I like giving feedback every day, on the spot. It’s important that people know how they’re doing. I’m not really big on year-end feedback. If there are problems, we’ll make sure that they understand the issues that they have to deal with. But I really much prefer it being on-the-spot feedback, as opposed to just waiting for everything to build up and then you have the big blow-out. I don’t see a lot of value in that.
The reality is that people don’t like giving feedback. By the way, there’s a flip side to it, which is that people don’t like to necessarily hear feedback, and even when they’re given feedback they oftentimes don’t hear it. Sometimes you’ll hit people between the eyes and then you’ll see that they didn’t think they got any feedback.
Q. How do you decide when it’s time to let somebody go?
A. I tend to be very half-full versus half-empty, and so you want to give the person another opportunity. You want to see if they can shift their behavior 20 degrees. I’ll probably be more inclined to give them another shot. And more often than not, it doesn’t work out, and I’ll say, “Boy, I should have let them go earlier.” You learn from it, and I’m much tougher today on that than I was.
But I’ve seen some wonderful successes, too. So maybe four out of five don’t work out. But that one that’s a homerun — giving them a little bit more time than they otherwise might have had — may make it worth the other four.
Q. How do you hire?
A. Well, clearly you want somebody who has the intellectual capacity, strategic thinking and the skill sets. But I’m looking for a cultural fit with me. How collaborative are they? How inclusive are they? How willing are they to listen to lots of different points of view? Do they have diverse interests?
Q. So what questions do you ask?
A. What do you like to do for fun? If you had a free evening what do you like to do? Where do you like to travel? What kind of people do you like to spend time with? Who are the people you admire? What have you been reading? When you get a sense of what people are involved with outside of work, you can really start to understand a person.
Q. Anything unusual about the way you manage your time?
A. I make time to wander around a lot because you find out what’s really going on when you pop into people’s offices. But I always have a purpose. It might be, what are the new ideas you’re thinking about for driving creativity or innovation? If I always ask about new ideas, then people will figure I must be interested about innovation. In the last year, I was asking about new cost-saving ideas. But I love wandering around the floors. One of the biggest risks of a C.E.O. is being isolated."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/business/30corner.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse
When Mentoring Goes Bad; Wall St. Journal, 5/24/10
Dawn Chandler, Lillian Eby, Stacy McManus, Wall St. Journal; When Mentoring Goes Bad: A good relationship can help both mentor and protégé. Here's how to make sure that happens:
"Most young managers view having a mentor as their ticket to the big leagues—to greater visibility, exciting assignments and big promotions. Benefits flow to mentors as well, as they enjoy broader influence when their young protégés rise to stardom.
And it's all true. Except when it isn't. Except when mentoring goes bad.
And it does go bad—in all sorts of ways and sometimes spectacularly. At one end of the spectrum are relationships that fizzle out for benign reasons, such as the pressures of daily work and personal lives, conflicting goals or a lack of shared values. But relationships also fail for not-so-benign reasons: manipulation, deceit and harassment, to name a few. Either party can be the cause—and the career trajectories of both may never be the same afterwards.
To be clear, mentoring can be invaluable, not only to protégés and mentors, but also to organizations. It is important, however, to manage the relationships appropriately and be aware of early signs of potential problems.
Here is a look at some of the ways mentoring relationships go awry, followed by advice on how mentors, protégés and companies can spot warning signs sooner and create more positive experiences...
Questions to Ask Yourself
1. If you are mentoring someone, are you giving them enough of your time and interesting work?
2. Are the personality and work habits of your protégé similar to yours, and if not, are you able to make sure that doesn't get in the way of working together?
3. Have you and your protégé clearly outlined his or her professional-development goals?
4. If you are being mentored, is the work interesting, and does your mentor give you credit for any projects you complete for him or her?
5. Do you feel like part of a team, and are you treated in an open, respectful manner?
If you answered no to any of these questions, your mentoring partnership may be heading for, or already in, rough waters. Discuss potential conflicts with each other, and get help from human resources to arbitrate any disagreements...
THE BOTTOM LINE: Before the mentoring begins, both parties need to understand what will be required to make the collaboration worthwhile. Then they should either commit wholeheartedly or opt out.
GIVE FEEDBACK: Mentors can share appraisals with the protégés' supervisors, who have a vested interest in the protégés' development. If problems arise, someone from HR or another supervisor should be in the loop to give objective advice or mediate.
PREPARE FOR THE END: Everyone should be clear on the fact that mentoring eventually ends, when the protégé has learned all that he or she can, or when the mentor no longer provides guidance or satisfaction. Talking about this in advance helps to avoid misunderstandings or hurt feelings when the time comes. "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016920463719744.html?mod=WSJ_Careers_CareerJournal_4
"Most young managers view having a mentor as their ticket to the big leagues—to greater visibility, exciting assignments and big promotions. Benefits flow to mentors as well, as they enjoy broader influence when their young protégés rise to stardom.
And it's all true. Except when it isn't. Except when mentoring goes bad.
And it does go bad—in all sorts of ways and sometimes spectacularly. At one end of the spectrum are relationships that fizzle out for benign reasons, such as the pressures of daily work and personal lives, conflicting goals or a lack of shared values. But relationships also fail for not-so-benign reasons: manipulation, deceit and harassment, to name a few. Either party can be the cause—and the career trajectories of both may never be the same afterwards.
To be clear, mentoring can be invaluable, not only to protégés and mentors, but also to organizations. It is important, however, to manage the relationships appropriately and be aware of early signs of potential problems.
Here is a look at some of the ways mentoring relationships go awry, followed by advice on how mentors, protégés and companies can spot warning signs sooner and create more positive experiences...
Questions to Ask Yourself
1. If you are mentoring someone, are you giving them enough of your time and interesting work?
2. Are the personality and work habits of your protégé similar to yours, and if not, are you able to make sure that doesn't get in the way of working together?
3. Have you and your protégé clearly outlined his or her professional-development goals?
4. If you are being mentored, is the work interesting, and does your mentor give you credit for any projects you complete for him or her?
5. Do you feel like part of a team, and are you treated in an open, respectful manner?
If you answered no to any of these questions, your mentoring partnership may be heading for, or already in, rough waters. Discuss potential conflicts with each other, and get help from human resources to arbitrate any disagreements...
THE BOTTOM LINE: Before the mentoring begins, both parties need to understand what will be required to make the collaboration worthwhile. Then they should either commit wholeheartedly or opt out.
GIVE FEEDBACK: Mentors can share appraisals with the protégés' supervisors, who have a vested interest in the protégés' development. If problems arise, someone from HR or another supervisor should be in the loop to give objective advice or mediate.
PREPARE FOR THE END: Everyone should be clear on the fact that mentoring eventually ends, when the protégé has learned all that he or she can, or when the mentor no longer provides guidance or satisfaction. Talking about this in advance helps to avoid misunderstandings or hurt feelings when the time comes. "
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703699204575016920463719744.html?mod=WSJ_Careers_CareerJournal_4
Corner Office, Interview with Barbara J. Krumsiek, chief executive and chairwoman of the Calvert Group Ltd.; New York Times, 5/23/10
Adam Bryant, New York Times; Corner Office, Interview with Barbara J. Krumsiek, chief executive and chairwoman of the Calvert Group Ltd., an investment firm:
"Q. Tell me about your first management experience.
A. I’m not a trained business or organization development person. I’m a mathematician. I was an analyst and had no one working for me for the first seven years of my career. I developed the business strategy for entering a new market, working with all the other departments. Booz Allen, the outside consultant who’d been helping the team launch this product, recommended that I run this business. All of a sudden I went from no one working for me to having 200 people working for me.
Q. And how old were you?
A. Thirty.
Q. Talk about that.
A. I really admired and liked the team of people I was working with. Being able to work with my peers is probably the single most important attribute that helped me along my path or, as I like to call it, my career obstacle course. In those days, I don’t think it was really appreciated. That was my strength.
The biggest success was convincing or cajoling one of my colleagues on that team who was probably 20 years older than me to work for me and head systems operations. I still keep a note from him. He probably worked for me for seven or eight years until I moved on, and the note was thanking me.
He was promoted to vice president while he was working for me. He said no one worked harder for him in his career than I had worked to support him and move him forward. I keep that note because it was very special.
Q. So where did you learn those skills?
A. I have to credit two early experiences. One is Girl Scouts. It was a huge part of my life growing up in Queens. It was an opportunity to learn selling through Girl Scout cookies. I always vied for the top selling awards. I remember having a troop leader have confidence in me that I could go off and lead a group of girls to start the campfire or whatever.
The other was my education in girls’ schools. I went to Hunter College High School, which was all girls when I went. It’s now coed. I think it really drove home that girls could do anything.
I remember as a young teenager, my parents lived in a neighborhood in Queens. At Christmas, we would always go next door to the couple who were Russian immigrants to say “Merry Christmas.” I remember the husband asking each of us what we wanted to do — what our favorite subjects were, and what we were studying. I said I loved math. He said, “Oh, girls, women don’t do math.” I remember being — whatever I was — 13 or something, thinking very calmly to myself, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Q. Going back to that story of suddenly managing those 200 people. Can you analyze a bit more how you were able to do that?
A. I’d rather put it in today’s context because I’m still managing the same way. I think the key is that people who work for me honestly believe that there is going to be a win-win here. I’ll bring it back to my obstacle-course analogy. I believe that the whole career ladder concept is a very disruptive concept because what does it suggest? You can’t get past the person ahead of you unless you push them off the ladder. It promotes aggressive behavior.
When you think of an obstacle course, there are a lot of people on the obstacle course at the same time, and my success doesn’t impede your success. And I may be able to take a minute and help you over that next obstacle and still get where I want to get to.
I also think you have to be a little humble. You have to be maybe a little bit overly confident to break into new things, but a little bit overly humble about what you don’t know, and admiring of the talents different people bring to the table.
Q. What’s it like to work for you?
A. I’m the kind of person who delegates everything. Theoretically, there’s not one piece of paper at my desk. So everything that happens at Calvert happens in the management team, with a few exceptions, like strategy, brand image, and our relationships with our boards and owners."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/business/23corner.html
"Q. Tell me about your first management experience.
A. I’m not a trained business or organization development person. I’m a mathematician. I was an analyst and had no one working for me for the first seven years of my career. I developed the business strategy for entering a new market, working with all the other departments. Booz Allen, the outside consultant who’d been helping the team launch this product, recommended that I run this business. All of a sudden I went from no one working for me to having 200 people working for me.
Q. And how old were you?
A. Thirty.
Q. Talk about that.
A. I really admired and liked the team of people I was working with. Being able to work with my peers is probably the single most important attribute that helped me along my path or, as I like to call it, my career obstacle course. In those days, I don’t think it was really appreciated. That was my strength.
The biggest success was convincing or cajoling one of my colleagues on that team who was probably 20 years older than me to work for me and head systems operations. I still keep a note from him. He probably worked for me for seven or eight years until I moved on, and the note was thanking me.
He was promoted to vice president while he was working for me. He said no one worked harder for him in his career than I had worked to support him and move him forward. I keep that note because it was very special.
Q. So where did you learn those skills?
A. I have to credit two early experiences. One is Girl Scouts. It was a huge part of my life growing up in Queens. It was an opportunity to learn selling through Girl Scout cookies. I always vied for the top selling awards. I remember having a troop leader have confidence in me that I could go off and lead a group of girls to start the campfire or whatever.
The other was my education in girls’ schools. I went to Hunter College High School, which was all girls when I went. It’s now coed. I think it really drove home that girls could do anything.
I remember as a young teenager, my parents lived in a neighborhood in Queens. At Christmas, we would always go next door to the couple who were Russian immigrants to say “Merry Christmas.” I remember the husband asking each of us what we wanted to do — what our favorite subjects were, and what we were studying. I said I loved math. He said, “Oh, girls, women don’t do math.” I remember being — whatever I was — 13 or something, thinking very calmly to myself, “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Q. Going back to that story of suddenly managing those 200 people. Can you analyze a bit more how you were able to do that?
A. I’d rather put it in today’s context because I’m still managing the same way. I think the key is that people who work for me honestly believe that there is going to be a win-win here. I’ll bring it back to my obstacle-course analogy. I believe that the whole career ladder concept is a very disruptive concept because what does it suggest? You can’t get past the person ahead of you unless you push them off the ladder. It promotes aggressive behavior.
When you think of an obstacle course, there are a lot of people on the obstacle course at the same time, and my success doesn’t impede your success. And I may be able to take a minute and help you over that next obstacle and still get where I want to get to.
I also think you have to be a little humble. You have to be maybe a little bit overly confident to break into new things, but a little bit overly humble about what you don’t know, and admiring of the talents different people bring to the table.
Q. What’s it like to work for you?
A. I’m the kind of person who delegates everything. Theoretically, there’s not one piece of paper at my desk. So everything that happens at Calvert happens in the management team, with a few exceptions, like strategy, brand image, and our relationships with our boards and owners."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/business/23corner.html
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Corner Office, Interview with Steve Hannah, chief executive of The Onion; New York Times, 5/16/10
Corner Office, New York Times; Interview with Steve Hannah, chief executive of The Onion, If Plan B Fails, Go Through the Alphabet:
"Q. How do you interview job candidates?
A. I have two basic questions in mind: “Can you do the job, and would I enjoy spending time with you?” I want to know where you came from. I want to know how many children are in your family. I want to know where you fit in and what your role was. I want to know what your mother and your dad did, what influence they had on you. I find that, without overstepping my boundaries, most people like to talk about themselves.
Q. What is it you want to know?
A. I want to know whether you were a kid who was entitled, whether you worked hard, whether you excelled at school, whether you held summer jobs, how hard you had to work, whether you got the jobs yourself, whether you got promoted. I want to know if you’ll work hard. I’m hopelessly old-fashioned. I want people who really want to work hard. And I absolutely loathe a sense of entitlement.
Q. What else turns you off?
A. I hate it when someone comes in and they trash their former employer. They talk about how they were held back. They talk about how they worked for a terrible boss, and the boss did this or the boss did that.
I have no idea what makes people think this, but this happens often. People think that by telling their prospective employer that their previous employer was a complete slug, that somehow this is going to make me feel, what, sorry for them? I generally figure: Well, you didn’t work hard enough, and apparently you weren’t smart enough to figure out the system. That’s probably why you didn’t advance at your last job.
Q. What were the biggest influences on your leadership style?
A. My dad was a World War II and D-Day veteran. He was just a tough guy, and everything I ever learned about leadership from my dad was, you know, manage tough, manage angry. Life is tough, an endless struggle. You’re entitled to nothing. My parents used to say to me, “When you’re 18 you’re on your own.” And they meant it — I was on my own. He thought: “We’ve done our best with you. Now, we’ll find out what kind of character you have.”
At the same time, my mother said, “The sun, the moon, the stars and the tides were in alignment when you were born.” You know: “You can do anything you want. You’re terrific.” And if your mother tells you this often enough, you start to believe it. I think that if you’re going to run something, you have to have self-confidence. She gave it to me.
It doesn’t mean you think you’re going to get everything right. It doesn’t mean that you’re smarter than everybody else. It means that essentially you believe that you can get the job done. So my mother kind of told me, “You can get the job done.”
Meanwhile, I got my father’s view of the world that life is tough and you have to work hard to get what you want, to take care of your family, make sure your kids are provided for and be good to your friends. It’s not that complicated...
Q. What are the top three or five lessons?
A. In no particular order? He taught me that you never, ever do anything to deprive a human being of their dignity in work, in life. Always praise in public and criticize in private. You might be tempted, for example, when you’re letting someone go, to say something that would diminish the value of their work. Don’t ever do that.
And he taught me that when you’re faced with something that’s really difficult and you think you’re at the end of your tether, there’s always one more thing you can do to influence the outcome of this situation. And then after that there’s one more thing. The number or possible options is only limited by your imagination. Hal often said, “Imagination is enormously important, enormously important.”
Q. What else?
A. When I was young and managing, I didn’t listen nearly enough. Hal would always say to me: “Listen to the people below you because they are on the front lines. Do you realize that any given moment any one of those people from the highest to the lowest can be the most important person that day in your operation?” I’ve seen that happen in our business.
There was another thing that Hal and I used to talk about: decisiveness. In the beginning of my career, when people walked up to me and said, “Here’s the problem,” I’d say, “Here’s the answer” immediately. I did it in a nanosecond. It took me a while to learn that with some issues, I’d probably have a better answer tomorrow.
So I always say: “What’s the sunset provision on this decision? How much time do I have?” If somebody says to me, “You have 24 hours,” then I’ll take 23 hours and 59 minutes. Not always, but I usually take as much time as I possibly can. I don’t feel the need to appear so swift and decisive that I’m going to make a knee-jerk decision. I think that’s a young person’s game. I’ll take the time allotted to me.
Q. What are some other approaches you have to work?
A. I try to get out of my comfort zone every day. I say yes to things that I really don’t want to do, or I get involved in things that are difficult for me to be involved in, for whatever reason.
Q. What is your career advice to somebody just graduating from college?
A. Find what you really love to do and then go after it — relentlessly. And don’t fret about the money. Because what you love to do is quite likely what you’re good at. And what you’re good at will likely bring you financial reward eventually.
I’ve seen too many people who have plotted a career, and often what’s at the heart of all that plotting is nothing other than a stack of dollar bills. You need to be happy in order to be good, and you need to be good in order to succeed. And when you succeed, there’s a good chance you’ll get paid.
And while you’re at it, read. A lot. Start with Plato. He was a very practical man."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/business/16corner.html?pagewanted=2
"Q. How do you interview job candidates?
A. I have two basic questions in mind: “Can you do the job, and would I enjoy spending time with you?” I want to know where you came from. I want to know how many children are in your family. I want to know where you fit in and what your role was. I want to know what your mother and your dad did, what influence they had on you. I find that, without overstepping my boundaries, most people like to talk about themselves.
Q. What is it you want to know?
A. I want to know whether you were a kid who was entitled, whether you worked hard, whether you excelled at school, whether you held summer jobs, how hard you had to work, whether you got the jobs yourself, whether you got promoted. I want to know if you’ll work hard. I’m hopelessly old-fashioned. I want people who really want to work hard. And I absolutely loathe a sense of entitlement.
Q. What else turns you off?
A. I hate it when someone comes in and they trash their former employer. They talk about how they were held back. They talk about how they worked for a terrible boss, and the boss did this or the boss did that.
I have no idea what makes people think this, but this happens often. People think that by telling their prospective employer that their previous employer was a complete slug, that somehow this is going to make me feel, what, sorry for them? I generally figure: Well, you didn’t work hard enough, and apparently you weren’t smart enough to figure out the system. That’s probably why you didn’t advance at your last job.
Q. What were the biggest influences on your leadership style?
A. My dad was a World War II and D-Day veteran. He was just a tough guy, and everything I ever learned about leadership from my dad was, you know, manage tough, manage angry. Life is tough, an endless struggle. You’re entitled to nothing. My parents used to say to me, “When you’re 18 you’re on your own.” And they meant it — I was on my own. He thought: “We’ve done our best with you. Now, we’ll find out what kind of character you have.”
At the same time, my mother said, “The sun, the moon, the stars and the tides were in alignment when you were born.” You know: “You can do anything you want. You’re terrific.” And if your mother tells you this often enough, you start to believe it. I think that if you’re going to run something, you have to have self-confidence. She gave it to me.
It doesn’t mean you think you’re going to get everything right. It doesn’t mean that you’re smarter than everybody else. It means that essentially you believe that you can get the job done. So my mother kind of told me, “You can get the job done.”
Meanwhile, I got my father’s view of the world that life is tough and you have to work hard to get what you want, to take care of your family, make sure your kids are provided for and be good to your friends. It’s not that complicated...
Q. What are the top three or five lessons?
A. In no particular order? He taught me that you never, ever do anything to deprive a human being of their dignity in work, in life. Always praise in public and criticize in private. You might be tempted, for example, when you’re letting someone go, to say something that would diminish the value of their work. Don’t ever do that.
And he taught me that when you’re faced with something that’s really difficult and you think you’re at the end of your tether, there’s always one more thing you can do to influence the outcome of this situation. And then after that there’s one more thing. The number or possible options is only limited by your imagination. Hal often said, “Imagination is enormously important, enormously important.”
Q. What else?
A. When I was young and managing, I didn’t listen nearly enough. Hal would always say to me: “Listen to the people below you because they are on the front lines. Do you realize that any given moment any one of those people from the highest to the lowest can be the most important person that day in your operation?” I’ve seen that happen in our business.
There was another thing that Hal and I used to talk about: decisiveness. In the beginning of my career, when people walked up to me and said, “Here’s the problem,” I’d say, “Here’s the answer” immediately. I did it in a nanosecond. It took me a while to learn that with some issues, I’d probably have a better answer tomorrow.
So I always say: “What’s the sunset provision on this decision? How much time do I have?” If somebody says to me, “You have 24 hours,” then I’ll take 23 hours and 59 minutes. Not always, but I usually take as much time as I possibly can. I don’t feel the need to appear so swift and decisive that I’m going to make a knee-jerk decision. I think that’s a young person’s game. I’ll take the time allotted to me.
Q. What are some other approaches you have to work?
A. I try to get out of my comfort zone every day. I say yes to things that I really don’t want to do, or I get involved in things that are difficult for me to be involved in, for whatever reason.
Q. What is your career advice to somebody just graduating from college?
A. Find what you really love to do and then go after it — relentlessly. And don’t fret about the money. Because what you love to do is quite likely what you’re good at. And what you’re good at will likely bring you financial reward eventually.
I’ve seen too many people who have plotted a career, and often what’s at the heart of all that plotting is nothing other than a stack of dollar bills. You need to be happy in order to be good, and you need to be good in order to succeed. And when you succeed, there’s a good chance you’ll get paid.
And while you’re at it, read. A lot. Start with Plato. He was a very practical man."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/business/16corner.html?pagewanted=2
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Corner Office, Interview with Rachel Ashwell, founder of the home furnishings retailer Shabby Chic; New York Times, 4/25/10
Corner Office, Adam Bryant; New York Times, Interview with Rachel Ashwell, founder of the home furnishings retailer Shabby Chic: What’s Wrong With Saying ‘I Don’t Know’?:
"Q. What turns you off in interviews?
A. One thing is a kind of arrogance, the “yeah-yeah” people who think they know everything. I’ve seen people who just think they know it all, and then it happens over and over again. And that’s where I just think, “Oh no.” Because that, to me, is a character quality. It comes from a place of fear and wanting to please, or maybe thinking that you know everything.
I think the words “I don’t know”’ — in a positive way — is a little phrase much avoided, and I don’t really know why. I just turned 50 and there’s still plenty I don’t know and that’s something that I often tell my staff. If you don’t know something, it’s just so much better to say so. Guessing can cause all kinds of problems. But the point is not to be passive either, and to take responsibility and go find out what it is. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/jobs/25corner.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse
"Q. What turns you off in interviews?
A. One thing is a kind of arrogance, the “yeah-yeah” people who think they know everything. I’ve seen people who just think they know it all, and then it happens over and over again. And that’s where I just think, “Oh no.” Because that, to me, is a character quality. It comes from a place of fear and wanting to please, or maybe thinking that you know everything.
I think the words “I don’t know”’ — in a positive way — is a little phrase much avoided, and I don’t really know why. I just turned 50 and there’s still plenty I don’t know and that’s something that I often tell my staff. If you don’t know something, it’s just so much better to say so. Guessing can cause all kinds of problems. But the point is not to be passive either, and to take responsibility and go find out what it is. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/jobs/25corner.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse
Corner Office, Interview with with Bill Carter, partner in and founder of Fuse, a youth marketing agency; New York Times, 4/18/10
Corner Office, Adam Bryant; New York Times, Interview with Bill Carter, partner in and founder of Fuse, a youth marketing agency:
"Q. So, what kind of leader are you now?
A. I think that I’m fair, because I try to be honest and direct in a helpful way. If you want people to be at their best, and if you want the whole company to be on the same page all the time, you need to be willing to communicate directly with people. In our office, what we’ve achieved is that being direct is not a personal attack.
I did learn that, to some degree, in my college lacrosse experience. When my coach was coming down on me or somebody else, it never felt like a direct attack. Now, it felt awful, but I never thought he was being mean-spirited about it. I never thought he was doing it for any other reason than he wanted us, as a team, to be on the same page and to be the best that we could be.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved? What do you do more of, or less of?
A. One of the things I do more of now, and probably a better job of now than I did 10 years ago, is being really present in our office when I’m there. I think many senior people, C.E.O.’s and presidents of companies, both small and large, obviously spend a lot of time outside of the office. What I used to tend to do with the 50 percent of the time that I was in the office would be to go into my office and shut the door, literally or figuratively, and delve back into the real core responsibilities of that day or that week. And I might as well have not been in the office. I wasn’t interacting with other staff, both senior and junior staff. I wasn’t gauging anything that was going on in the staff, learning anything new, or understanding the challenges that people were facing.
I’ve learned that when you’re in your office and you’re in that position, the best thing you can do is spend at least 50 percent of your time in the office communicating with as many staff as you have time to communicate with. Holing yourself up in your office is not the way to learn about what’s happening in the organization. The information doesn’t flow up to you when you’re in a closed-door situation like that.
I think that if you look at your core responsibilities a little less literally, you’d probably want to spend more time with your staff, because what are most C.E.O.’s really in charge of? Well, they are in charge of setting strategy. They are in charge of creating the best work environment. They are in charge of finding the best talent. How can you possibly do that by isolating yourself in your office and only communicating with people from accounting or your outside legal counsel or the majority of the people that are probably the ones e-mailing you?
Your junior staff people are not e-mailing you. And if you don’t go down the hall and talk to that person, you’re not going to know the real challenges."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/jobs/18corner.html?pagewanted=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse&scp=4
"Q. So, what kind of leader are you now?
A. I think that I’m fair, because I try to be honest and direct in a helpful way. If you want people to be at their best, and if you want the whole company to be on the same page all the time, you need to be willing to communicate directly with people. In our office, what we’ve achieved is that being direct is not a personal attack.
I did learn that, to some degree, in my college lacrosse experience. When my coach was coming down on me or somebody else, it never felt like a direct attack. Now, it felt awful, but I never thought he was being mean-spirited about it. I never thought he was doing it for any other reason than he wanted us, as a team, to be on the same page and to be the best that we could be.
Q. How has your leadership style evolved? What do you do more of, or less of?
A. One of the things I do more of now, and probably a better job of now than I did 10 years ago, is being really present in our office when I’m there. I think many senior people, C.E.O.’s and presidents of companies, both small and large, obviously spend a lot of time outside of the office. What I used to tend to do with the 50 percent of the time that I was in the office would be to go into my office and shut the door, literally or figuratively, and delve back into the real core responsibilities of that day or that week. And I might as well have not been in the office. I wasn’t interacting with other staff, both senior and junior staff. I wasn’t gauging anything that was going on in the staff, learning anything new, or understanding the challenges that people were facing.
I’ve learned that when you’re in your office and you’re in that position, the best thing you can do is spend at least 50 percent of your time in the office communicating with as many staff as you have time to communicate with. Holing yourself up in your office is not the way to learn about what’s happening in the organization. The information doesn’t flow up to you when you’re in a closed-door situation like that.
I think that if you look at your core responsibilities a little less literally, you’d probably want to spend more time with your staff, because what are most C.E.O.’s really in charge of? Well, they are in charge of setting strategy. They are in charge of creating the best work environment. They are in charge of finding the best talent. How can you possibly do that by isolating yourself in your office and only communicating with people from accounting or your outside legal counsel or the majority of the people that are probably the ones e-mailing you?
Your junior staff people are not e-mailing you. And if you don’t go down the hall and talk to that person, you’re not going to know the real challenges."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/jobs/18corner.html?pagewanted=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse&scp=4
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Corner Office, Interview with Jilly Stephens, executive director of City Harvest; New York Times, 4/ 11/10
Corner Office, Adam Bryant; New York Times; Interview with Jilly Stephens, executive director of City Harvest:
"Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?
A. I was working for a big international charity. I was in Romania and was leading a team of international surgeons and nurses and engineers, and we were transitioning the leadership role to me. The person I was taking over for turned to me and said, “So, what would you do in this situation?”
It was tough. I can’t recall exactly what we were dealing with, but I remember that my response was, “Well, I think we need to get some more information and we need to talk to these people.” Which is what we did.
I think that was the lesson very early on. You may have a hunch about what’s happening or what’s going on. But you really have to take the time to talk to people and find out. And oftentimes your hunch is wrong.
Q. Other lessons?
A. The thing that comes immediately to mind was the first time I was responsible for implementing the results of a strategic plan, and was faced with the inevitable resistance from people who didn’t like the new direction.
Q. What was the context?
A. It was this medical charity. It’s an aircraft that’s converted to house an operating room, and you fly into developing countries to do surgery to restore sight. The strategic shift was recognizing that we’re never going to end global blindness like this. We need to go deeper into the communities where we’re working.
That was very threatening to the people at the organization who existed just to move this plane from country to country. What I began to experience in the leadership role was a lot of resistance, even down to refusing to go to the place where everyone in the entire organization was gathering from around the world to figure out how we were going to implement this.
I just realized there and then that, well, they had their opportunity to get on board and we’ve done everything we can to help them get on board. The organization has to move on and it looks, unfortunately, as if it’s going to be without them.
Q. What was the lesson from that experience?
A. You’re not always going to bring people along. Maybe they just can’t get with the new direction. It’s important to give them a moment to sort of realize what’s coming, give them a moment to understand it, to get on board, and really work closely with them to encourage them to get on board. But if it appears they can’t do it, then the organization has to move on. The organization really has to come first.
Q. How would you describe your leadership style?
A. I’m somebody who likes to support staff, to have in place things that our staff needs to do a really fantastic job. One of the ways we do that here at City Harvest is to have really clear expectations. The staff have clear objectives that they have to meet throughout the year...
Q. Was there a job you had as a teenager that prepared you the best for leadership?
A. At 17, I worked as a horseback-riding instructor — taking groups of people, often with children, out onto beaches, onto highways. Looking back on it, that was a big deal, and it was a lot of responsibility. We had to pay careful attention to make sure everybody was just doing the right thing, that everybody knew what they had to be doing and that they were doing it the right way.
Q. How do you hire? What questions do you ask people?
A. I’m looking for people who can express concisely what it is that appeals to them about the job they’re interviewing for. That’s always quite an interesting opening question, and I’m always surprised at the number of people who can still be answering it 15 minutes later.
I’m looking for people who are passionate about whatever job it is that they’re applying for here at City Harvest, and that they’re passionate about our mission: to help feed hungry New Yorkers.
Q. What’s it like to work with you day to day? Do you do a lot of all-hands meetings?
A. I’m more low-key. I do walk around. I’m introverted by nature, so I’m not somebody who’s holding sort of big rah-rah meetings. I love the idea of having a big bell outside my office that we can ring when we get a big donation, but it’s just not me. But I do spend time talking with people.
Q. A lot of managers are introverted, yet they’re expected to be extroverted in leadership roles. What’s your advice for them?
A. Find what fits for you. My predecessor here ran fantastic all-staff meetings every month that were just jaw-droppingly good. She was just so magnetic. I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t a mantle I should try to shoulder.
What works for me are these small group things, and we’ll come together as an organization maybe quarterly, usually around something significant like the beginning or the end of harvest season, which is the time when we raise most money and most food. Then I’ll spend time with people informally. But that big rah-rah meeting, I just can’t pull that off. I’d love to think I can, but I can’t.
Q. What’s your best advice to people who are becoming managers for the first time?
A. It’s important that you communicate clearly with people who are going to be reporting to you, that you be as open as possible about who you are, what they should know about you, what they should understand about you, and how you like to operate.
I remember learning that very early on in my own career — having to sit and think about what I needed to let people know about me. I even said to people that I’ve been told that I look angry a lot of the time, and I’m usually not. It’s just my face, so just don’t be put off by that.
Again, just be very clear about what you expect of the people who are going to be reporting to you. Meet with them regularly. Help keep them on track. Understand what it is they need to succeed. That’s it.
Q. What is your best career advice to somebody who’s just getting out of college?
A. Take a gap year. As someone who’s traveled the world extensively and who has nephews and nieces growing up in Europe where the gap year is very common, I just think it’s invaluable to get out there and experience the world and experience other cultures, because you’ve got a lifetime of work ahead of you. I just think to draw on that year of spending time outside of your immediate world is a good thing to do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11corner.html
"Q. Do you remember the first time you were somebody’s boss?
A. I was working for a big international charity. I was in Romania and was leading a team of international surgeons and nurses and engineers, and we were transitioning the leadership role to me. The person I was taking over for turned to me and said, “So, what would you do in this situation?”
It was tough. I can’t recall exactly what we were dealing with, but I remember that my response was, “Well, I think we need to get some more information and we need to talk to these people.” Which is what we did.
I think that was the lesson very early on. You may have a hunch about what’s happening or what’s going on. But you really have to take the time to talk to people and find out. And oftentimes your hunch is wrong.
Q. Other lessons?
A. The thing that comes immediately to mind was the first time I was responsible for implementing the results of a strategic plan, and was faced with the inevitable resistance from people who didn’t like the new direction.
Q. What was the context?
A. It was this medical charity. It’s an aircraft that’s converted to house an operating room, and you fly into developing countries to do surgery to restore sight. The strategic shift was recognizing that we’re never going to end global blindness like this. We need to go deeper into the communities where we’re working.
That was very threatening to the people at the organization who existed just to move this plane from country to country. What I began to experience in the leadership role was a lot of resistance, even down to refusing to go to the place where everyone in the entire organization was gathering from around the world to figure out how we were going to implement this.
I just realized there and then that, well, they had their opportunity to get on board and we’ve done everything we can to help them get on board. The organization has to move on and it looks, unfortunately, as if it’s going to be without them.
Q. What was the lesson from that experience?
A. You’re not always going to bring people along. Maybe they just can’t get with the new direction. It’s important to give them a moment to sort of realize what’s coming, give them a moment to understand it, to get on board, and really work closely with them to encourage them to get on board. But if it appears they can’t do it, then the organization has to move on. The organization really has to come first.
Q. How would you describe your leadership style?
A. I’m somebody who likes to support staff, to have in place things that our staff needs to do a really fantastic job. One of the ways we do that here at City Harvest is to have really clear expectations. The staff have clear objectives that they have to meet throughout the year...
Q. Was there a job you had as a teenager that prepared you the best for leadership?
A. At 17, I worked as a horseback-riding instructor — taking groups of people, often with children, out onto beaches, onto highways. Looking back on it, that was a big deal, and it was a lot of responsibility. We had to pay careful attention to make sure everybody was just doing the right thing, that everybody knew what they had to be doing and that they were doing it the right way.
Q. How do you hire? What questions do you ask people?
A. I’m looking for people who can express concisely what it is that appeals to them about the job they’re interviewing for. That’s always quite an interesting opening question, and I’m always surprised at the number of people who can still be answering it 15 minutes later.
I’m looking for people who are passionate about whatever job it is that they’re applying for here at City Harvest, and that they’re passionate about our mission: to help feed hungry New Yorkers.
Q. What’s it like to work with you day to day? Do you do a lot of all-hands meetings?
A. I’m more low-key. I do walk around. I’m introverted by nature, so I’m not somebody who’s holding sort of big rah-rah meetings. I love the idea of having a big bell outside my office that we can ring when we get a big donation, but it’s just not me. But I do spend time talking with people.
Q. A lot of managers are introverted, yet they’re expected to be extroverted in leadership roles. What’s your advice for them?
A. Find what fits for you. My predecessor here ran fantastic all-staff meetings every month that were just jaw-droppingly good. She was just so magnetic. I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t a mantle I should try to shoulder.
What works for me are these small group things, and we’ll come together as an organization maybe quarterly, usually around something significant like the beginning or the end of harvest season, which is the time when we raise most money and most food. Then I’ll spend time with people informally. But that big rah-rah meeting, I just can’t pull that off. I’d love to think I can, but I can’t.
Q. What’s your best advice to people who are becoming managers for the first time?
A. It’s important that you communicate clearly with people who are going to be reporting to you, that you be as open as possible about who you are, what they should know about you, what they should understand about you, and how you like to operate.
I remember learning that very early on in my own career — having to sit and think about what I needed to let people know about me. I even said to people that I’ve been told that I look angry a lot of the time, and I’m usually not. It’s just my face, so just don’t be put off by that.
Again, just be very clear about what you expect of the people who are going to be reporting to you. Meet with them regularly. Help keep them on track. Understand what it is they need to succeed. That’s it.
Q. What is your best career advice to somebody who’s just getting out of college?
A. Take a gap year. As someone who’s traveled the world extensively and who has nephews and nieces growing up in Europe where the gap year is very common, I just think it’s invaluable to get out there and experience the world and experience other cultures, because you’ve got a lifetime of work ahead of you. I just think to draw on that year of spending time outside of your immediate world is a good thing to do."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11corner.html
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Corner Office, Interview with Andrew Cosslett, chief executive of InterContinental Hotels Group; New York Times, 4/4/10
Adam Bryant, New York Times; Corner Office: Interview with Andrew Cosslett, chief executive of InterContinental Hotels Group:
"Q. How do you hire?
A. If I’m recruiting people for very senior positions, I will delve quite extensively into what makes them tick. I will look into how many times in their life they’ve been seriously tested emotionally, physically, where they’ve had to stand on their own feet and deal with something that they couldn’t be prepared for. That could be in the business context. It could be in the family context, social context.
And the ones who are the best, I’ve found, are the people who have had to confront something very difficult, and they’re the people you can rely on when the going gets really tough because they’ve been there, and they know what they can do...
Q. How do you test yourself?
A. I just have lunches with general managers of hotels. And because they know me and I’m trusted, they know they can speak very straight. The culture we’ve built in the business is one of great trust and openness and candor. And they know that they’ll only get rewarded for being open. The only people who suffer in I.H.G. are ones who don’t come up and say what they think and what’s on their mind.
In business, the big prizes are found when you can ask a question that challenges the corporate orthodoxy that exists in every business. In every business I’ve worked in, there’s been a lot of cost and value locked up in things that are deemed to be the way we do things around here, or they’re deemed to be critical to — in the hotel world — a guest experience. So you have to get talking to people and ask questions. I just keep asking people, “Why do you do that?”...
Q. What’s your best career advice to somebody who has just graduated from college?
A. Leave home. Go as far away as possible from what you know. I think you’ve got to be tested, and you’ve got to test yourself. So my best career advice would be life advice. Go and find out who you are and what you can deal with and put yourself in some positions that will be distinctly uncomfortable. Forcing yourself out of your comfort zone is a great learning in life.
The second would be: keep asking questions. There’s a lot of perceived wisdom in most industries that haven’t hasn’t been challenged for years. The trick in business is not to care too much. Because if you care too much, you won’t ask questions and you won’t challenge because you’ll care too much about your position and what someone’s thinking about you.
I was always relatively cavalier in my early career because I always thought if I don’t make it in business, I’ll go and do something else anyway. I always have given 100 percent to everything I’ve done, but I’ve always had a slightly maverick side that actually stood me in great stead, because it enabled me to ask those difficult questions and be the burr under the saddle.
The third one is: have a sense of humor. It’s a lot easier to get through most things if you’ve got a smile on your face. It doesn’t have to be a chore. So just lighten up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/business/04corner.html
"Q. How do you hire?
A. If I’m recruiting people for very senior positions, I will delve quite extensively into what makes them tick. I will look into how many times in their life they’ve been seriously tested emotionally, physically, where they’ve had to stand on their own feet and deal with something that they couldn’t be prepared for. That could be in the business context. It could be in the family context, social context.
And the ones who are the best, I’ve found, are the people who have had to confront something very difficult, and they’re the people you can rely on when the going gets really tough because they’ve been there, and they know what they can do...
Q. How do you test yourself?
A. I just have lunches with general managers of hotels. And because they know me and I’m trusted, they know they can speak very straight. The culture we’ve built in the business is one of great trust and openness and candor. And they know that they’ll only get rewarded for being open. The only people who suffer in I.H.G. are ones who don’t come up and say what they think and what’s on their mind.
In business, the big prizes are found when you can ask a question that challenges the corporate orthodoxy that exists in every business. In every business I’ve worked in, there’s been a lot of cost and value locked up in things that are deemed to be the way we do things around here, or they’re deemed to be critical to — in the hotel world — a guest experience. So you have to get talking to people and ask questions. I just keep asking people, “Why do you do that?”...
Q. What’s your best career advice to somebody who has just graduated from college?
A. Leave home. Go as far away as possible from what you know. I think you’ve got to be tested, and you’ve got to test yourself. So my best career advice would be life advice. Go and find out who you are and what you can deal with and put yourself in some positions that will be distinctly uncomfortable. Forcing yourself out of your comfort zone is a great learning in life.
The second would be: keep asking questions. There’s a lot of perceived wisdom in most industries that haven’t hasn’t been challenged for years. The trick in business is not to care too much. Because if you care too much, you won’t ask questions and you won’t challenge because you’ll care too much about your position and what someone’s thinking about you.
I was always relatively cavalier in my early career because I always thought if I don’t make it in business, I’ll go and do something else anyway. I always have given 100 percent to everything I’ve done, but I’ve always had a slightly maverick side that actually stood me in great stead, because it enabled me to ask those difficult questions and be the burr under the saddle.
The third one is: have a sense of humor. It’s a lot easier to get through most things if you’ve got a smile on your face. It doesn’t have to be a chore. So just lighten up.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/business/04corner.html
A civil senator; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/4/10
Jeffrey Lewis, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; A civil senator:
"On April 4, 1991, Pennsylvania lost a favorite son, voters lost a U.S. senator who put their interests first before the politics of the day, and the nation lost a moderate Republican who understood, valued and cared about rebuilding this nation's human and physical infrastructure. John Heinz understood that bipartisanship, civility and integrity were the roots of legislative success and political longevity.
With the passage of the national health care legislation, the bitterness, unpleasantness and animosity displayed by members of Congress in some ways is reminiscent of the Congressional battle over passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
In an April 1978 speech to the American Association of University Women, Sen. Heinz shared his concerns over why the ERA was not moving forward. His comments reflect the mindset of a passionate, caring and thinking Republican legislator who clearly understood the pulse of the American people and today his words still echo the issues Congress cannot overcome:
"The stubborn battle over the ERA reflects a growing malaise in American society, and one that concerns me greatly. If I am right, it should be a grave concern to you and all Americans. We are losing our tolerance of diversity, our understanding of different circumstances and points of view, and good will toward those who reflect those differences. I think the reason for this failure of spirit, is a lack of confidence; a lack of confidence in our leaders, our institutions and even ourselves. We Americans have always been renowned for our ability to meet and conquer tough problems..."
What John Heinz discussed then is unfortunately still true today. He was elected in an era when civility was woven into the fabric of the legislative process. Name calling, if it did occur, was left to the backrooms, not a public forum and certainly not the floor of the U.S. Congress. No one, Republican or Democrat, would have tolerated the callous disregard for the presidency of the United States.
During Sen. Heinz's era, respect for the legislative process was paramount. These legislative colleagues certainly disagreed on many issues before them, but neither their race nor their religion, ever entered the public debate. It was always about the substance, the strategy and your ability as a legislator to convince your colleagues.
In a speech to the graduates of Wilkes College in May 1979, Sen. Heinz shared his definition of leadership:
"Real leadership, whether it is political, economic or moral, involves persuading people to do something now that will bear fruit in the future. But too many people live only in the short-term. Instead of clearly seeing what is demanded of us in this changing world ... of learning from the past, instead of charting a new course for tomorrow, too many Americans are allowing themselves to be manipulated into quarreling with the past and denying the realities of the future.... Americans risk losing the future and missing the great opportunities that lie before us as a nation."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10094/1047478-109.stm
"On April 4, 1991, Pennsylvania lost a favorite son, voters lost a U.S. senator who put their interests first before the politics of the day, and the nation lost a moderate Republican who understood, valued and cared about rebuilding this nation's human and physical infrastructure. John Heinz understood that bipartisanship, civility and integrity were the roots of legislative success and political longevity.
With the passage of the national health care legislation, the bitterness, unpleasantness and animosity displayed by members of Congress in some ways is reminiscent of the Congressional battle over passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.
In an April 1978 speech to the American Association of University Women, Sen. Heinz shared his concerns over why the ERA was not moving forward. His comments reflect the mindset of a passionate, caring and thinking Republican legislator who clearly understood the pulse of the American people and today his words still echo the issues Congress cannot overcome:
"The stubborn battle over the ERA reflects a growing malaise in American society, and one that concerns me greatly. If I am right, it should be a grave concern to you and all Americans. We are losing our tolerance of diversity, our understanding of different circumstances and points of view, and good will toward those who reflect those differences. I think the reason for this failure of spirit, is a lack of confidence; a lack of confidence in our leaders, our institutions and even ourselves. We Americans have always been renowned for our ability to meet and conquer tough problems..."
What John Heinz discussed then is unfortunately still true today. He was elected in an era when civility was woven into the fabric of the legislative process. Name calling, if it did occur, was left to the backrooms, not a public forum and certainly not the floor of the U.S. Congress. No one, Republican or Democrat, would have tolerated the callous disregard for the presidency of the United States.
During Sen. Heinz's era, respect for the legislative process was paramount. These legislative colleagues certainly disagreed on many issues before them, but neither their race nor their religion, ever entered the public debate. It was always about the substance, the strategy and your ability as a legislator to convince your colleagues.
In a speech to the graduates of Wilkes College in May 1979, Sen. Heinz shared his definition of leadership:
"Real leadership, whether it is political, economic or moral, involves persuading people to do something now that will bear fruit in the future. But too many people live only in the short-term. Instead of clearly seeing what is demanded of us in this changing world ... of learning from the past, instead of charting a new course for tomorrow, too many Americans are allowing themselves to be manipulated into quarreling with the past and denying the realities of the future.... Americans risk losing the future and missing the great opportunities that lie before us as a nation."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10094/1047478-109.stm
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Tips for Making Small Talk With Bigwigs; Harvard Business Review, 3/22/10
John Baldoni, Harvard Business Review; Tips for Making Small Talk With Bigwigs:
"One of the things that can befuddle managers, even experienced ones, is how to make small talk with the big boss.
When you are talking about someone who has authority over you, be it your boss's boss or the CEO, the word "small" becomes relative. Anything involving a boss can have a big impact. Conversation with a superior can be fraught with peril but it can also be a great opportunity. Peril comes from the fear of saying the wrong thing; opportunity arises because you can reveal a new dimension of yourself to other.
You can increase the odds of success if you prepare. Yes, actually plan out what you will say to the senior manager. This works well if you know that the CEO is coming to visit your department or if you have the opportunity chat with him at an all-employee gathering. So here's what you can do.
Do your homework. Learn the issues the senior team is focused on. Ideally everyone in the company should know the strategic priorities. Bone up on these so you know them, too. Think in advance what you will say to a senior person if you meet her in person. Work out a key message about your projects, your career and yourself. This is good practice whether you meet a senior person or not. Finally, if it's a more social meeting, you might try to learn of a boss's personal interests — hobbies, sports he or she likes, or their volunteer activities.
Be yourself. When you are introduced to the senior leader, make eye contact as you shake hands. Smile and act relaxed. Feel free to ask questions about what's going on in the company. If appropriate, talk about what you are working on. This is your opportunity to use your messages. Strive to be brief and to the point.
Read the situation. Keep speaking if the boss is interested; if not, thank the person for his time and move on, even when you didn't get the opportunity to use your key messages. In some ways your sense of decorum is more important than what you say. Rattling on when no one is interested marks you as lacking in self-awareness; knowing when to end the conversation says much about your ability to read the situation.
Such preparation is good when you know in advance you may meet a senior executive or a member of the board, but what about accidental encounters, say at the airport, a social gathering, or even a sporting event? The good news is that what works for prepared encounters works for impromptu ones. Just assume that someday soon you will run into a senior person and prepare for it as you would for a more predictable encounter. And that preparation will pay off in other contexts too, such as during team meetings or conversations with clients.
That's why you should practice your key messages from time to time, say on your drive to work. You can even practice by recording them on your mobile phone, just to see how you sound. The exercise will give you confidence that you have what it takes to have a clear and coherent conversation with people in power.
One of my favorite stories about Winston Churchill, taken from Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes, is an encounter he had with a young New Zealand airman during the Second World War. The airman had crawled out of the cockpit of a bomber with an engine on fire and extinguished the flames. When Churchill met the young man he noted the lad's nervousness. "You must feel very humble and awkward in my presence," Churchill said. When the man said he was, Churchill replied, "Then you can imagine how awkward and humble I feel in yours."
Never forget that senior leaders are people first; executives second. Never forget your own personal abilities. And never forget that making small talk can have a big impact on your career."
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/tips_for_making_small_talk_wit.html
"One of the things that can befuddle managers, even experienced ones, is how to make small talk with the big boss.
When you are talking about someone who has authority over you, be it your boss's boss or the CEO, the word "small" becomes relative. Anything involving a boss can have a big impact. Conversation with a superior can be fraught with peril but it can also be a great opportunity. Peril comes from the fear of saying the wrong thing; opportunity arises because you can reveal a new dimension of yourself to other.
You can increase the odds of success if you prepare. Yes, actually plan out what you will say to the senior manager. This works well if you know that the CEO is coming to visit your department or if you have the opportunity chat with him at an all-employee gathering. So here's what you can do.
Do your homework. Learn the issues the senior team is focused on. Ideally everyone in the company should know the strategic priorities. Bone up on these so you know them, too. Think in advance what you will say to a senior person if you meet her in person. Work out a key message about your projects, your career and yourself. This is good practice whether you meet a senior person or not. Finally, if it's a more social meeting, you might try to learn of a boss's personal interests — hobbies, sports he or she likes, or their volunteer activities.
Be yourself. When you are introduced to the senior leader, make eye contact as you shake hands. Smile and act relaxed. Feel free to ask questions about what's going on in the company. If appropriate, talk about what you are working on. This is your opportunity to use your messages. Strive to be brief and to the point.
Read the situation. Keep speaking if the boss is interested; if not, thank the person for his time and move on, even when you didn't get the opportunity to use your key messages. In some ways your sense of decorum is more important than what you say. Rattling on when no one is interested marks you as lacking in self-awareness; knowing when to end the conversation says much about your ability to read the situation.
Such preparation is good when you know in advance you may meet a senior executive or a member of the board, but what about accidental encounters, say at the airport, a social gathering, or even a sporting event? The good news is that what works for prepared encounters works for impromptu ones. Just assume that someday soon you will run into a senior person and prepare for it as you would for a more predictable encounter. And that preparation will pay off in other contexts too, such as during team meetings or conversations with clients.
That's why you should practice your key messages from time to time, say on your drive to work. You can even practice by recording them on your mobile phone, just to see how you sound. The exercise will give you confidence that you have what it takes to have a clear and coherent conversation with people in power.
One of my favorite stories about Winston Churchill, taken from Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes, is an encounter he had with a young New Zealand airman during the Second World War. The airman had crawled out of the cockpit of a bomber with an engine on fire and extinguished the flames. When Churchill met the young man he noted the lad's nervousness. "You must feel very humble and awkward in my presence," Churchill said. When the man said he was, Churchill replied, "Then you can imagine how awkward and humble I feel in yours."
Never forget that senior leaders are people first; executives second. Never forget your own personal abilities. And never forget that making small talk can have a big impact on your career."
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/03/tips_for_making_small_talk_wit.html
Corner Office, Interview with Debra L. Lee, chairwoman and chief executive of BET Networks; New York Times, 3/28/10
Corner Office, New York Times; Interview with Debra L. Lee, chairwoman and chief executive of BET Networks: Sometimes, You Have to Say ‘My,’ Not ‘Our’:
"Q. What were some key leadership lessons for you?
A. One occurred when I was appointed chief operating officer at BET. Before that, I was general counsel, and over time I had taken on more and more business projects.
When I was promoted to the new role it was assumed that I was picked as the successor to Bob Johnson, our founder. It was a good training ground.
But when Bob left and I became C.E.O., I had to learn different skills, and I had to become the leader of the company. I had to decide what my vision was, what I’m passionate about, and how I motivate my executive team to help me carry out my vision and my goals. For me, it was tough for a while to even say “my.”
Q. Why?
A. I’m a consensus builder and I like having my executives on the same page and I like motivating them in that way — let’s talk about it, let’s all agree on it.
But I found very quickly that as C.E.O. I couldn’t do that anymore. I really had to be the individual who took charge and was clear about what my vision was, was clear about what my passions were, so that I could believe in what we were doing. Then I could pass that on to the executives, but still be open to their needs and desires and what they wanted to accomplish. But as the leader of the company, it had to be about where I wanted to take this company, and it took me a few years to get used to that...
Q. Looking back, it sounds like it was a big leap to go from general counsel to C.O.O.
A. As general counsel, you’re taught research, research, find out every case, find out every opinion, think about it. It’s almost like you’re a judge.
So when I went from being general counsel to C.O.O., that’s the way I first approached it. I’d go into senior staff meetings and I’d listen to advertising and sales folks, I’d listen to the programmers, I’d listen to everyone. And then my job was to go away, think about it and make a decision. Well, that doesn’t work. By that time, they’re all going off in five different directions.
I had to learn to make decisions quicker on the spot and follow my gut. You’re not going to have all the information. You’re not going to be able to run the numbers and come up with the perfect answers.
Q. You went from being part of a team of executives to managing that team.
A. Yes, these are your friends, and all of a sudden they’re reporting to you. Early on, I was not decisive enough and I was not clear in my instructions. People saw that as a sign of weakness and an ability to keep doing what they wanted to do — “You didn’t tell me I couldn’t do that; this is the way I’ve always done it.”
So I found over time I had to be more precise and give more directions. It was no longer, “Hey, we’re friends and we’re all in this together.” It’s, “I’m the one making the decisions about your salary and your promotion and your future and whether you’re going to a make it here.” And that’s a much different relationship than when you’re someone’s peer.
There was also an expectation that I didn’t know enough about their departments in order to manage them. They knew I had a learning curve, so they could withhold that information and still be able to do what they wanted to do until I got up to speed and understood where I needed to change things. So there’s a little gamesmanship that went on for a while — “She doesn’t know anything about this.”
Q. So how did you deal with that?
A. I got more and more involved in what they did. That was painful at first for me and for them, and I studied the industry as a whole. I became friendly with other people in the industry, and found out how they did things. I’m on several corporate boards, so that was a great learning experience for me. I think that’s one of the things I enjoy most about being on other boards. You can see how things are done differently, and you can bring management techniques and other kinds of methods to your company.
I didn’t get an M.B.A. I got a master’s in public policy, which taught a little bit of management. But I think it’s more about experience. You have to really see how companies are run.
Theories help, but I think it’s really just seeing it in action — whether it’s your own company or whether it’s observing someone else’s company. It’s kind of an on-the-job learning experience. I don’t think you can get an M.B.A. and then be perfectly positioned to run a company. I think you have to grow up in that company. I think you have to learn all aspects of it.
You have to understand that management is a skill. It took me a while to understand that that’s really what I do from day to day, that management is really my job. You say you’re a C.E.O., but what do you do?
When I was general counsel, I could say I keep the company out of legal trouble. I knew exactly what my job was, but as C.O.O. and C.E.O., you’re really a manager and a leader, and those are things that you have to learn over time. You have to learn how you do it and how it works for you and what kind of people relate well to how you do it.
I talk about this a lot, and I talk to women’s groups about it. I think men and women manage differently, and I think women have to learn to be comfortable that their management style may be different from a man’s, and that’s O.K."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/business/28corners.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse
"Q. What were some key leadership lessons for you?
A. One occurred when I was appointed chief operating officer at BET. Before that, I was general counsel, and over time I had taken on more and more business projects.
When I was promoted to the new role it was assumed that I was picked as the successor to Bob Johnson, our founder. It was a good training ground.
But when Bob left and I became C.E.O., I had to learn different skills, and I had to become the leader of the company. I had to decide what my vision was, what I’m passionate about, and how I motivate my executive team to help me carry out my vision and my goals. For me, it was tough for a while to even say “my.”
Q. Why?
A. I’m a consensus builder and I like having my executives on the same page and I like motivating them in that way — let’s talk about it, let’s all agree on it.
But I found very quickly that as C.E.O. I couldn’t do that anymore. I really had to be the individual who took charge and was clear about what my vision was, was clear about what my passions were, so that I could believe in what we were doing. Then I could pass that on to the executives, but still be open to their needs and desires and what they wanted to accomplish. But as the leader of the company, it had to be about where I wanted to take this company, and it took me a few years to get used to that...
Q. Looking back, it sounds like it was a big leap to go from general counsel to C.O.O.
A. As general counsel, you’re taught research, research, find out every case, find out every opinion, think about it. It’s almost like you’re a judge.
So when I went from being general counsel to C.O.O., that’s the way I first approached it. I’d go into senior staff meetings and I’d listen to advertising and sales folks, I’d listen to the programmers, I’d listen to everyone. And then my job was to go away, think about it and make a decision. Well, that doesn’t work. By that time, they’re all going off in five different directions.
I had to learn to make decisions quicker on the spot and follow my gut. You’re not going to have all the information. You’re not going to be able to run the numbers and come up with the perfect answers.
Q. You went from being part of a team of executives to managing that team.
A. Yes, these are your friends, and all of a sudden they’re reporting to you. Early on, I was not decisive enough and I was not clear in my instructions. People saw that as a sign of weakness and an ability to keep doing what they wanted to do — “You didn’t tell me I couldn’t do that; this is the way I’ve always done it.”
So I found over time I had to be more precise and give more directions. It was no longer, “Hey, we’re friends and we’re all in this together.” It’s, “I’m the one making the decisions about your salary and your promotion and your future and whether you’re going to a make it here.” And that’s a much different relationship than when you’re someone’s peer.
There was also an expectation that I didn’t know enough about their departments in order to manage them. They knew I had a learning curve, so they could withhold that information and still be able to do what they wanted to do until I got up to speed and understood where I needed to change things. So there’s a little gamesmanship that went on for a while — “She doesn’t know anything about this.”
Q. So how did you deal with that?
A. I got more and more involved in what they did. That was painful at first for me and for them, and I studied the industry as a whole. I became friendly with other people in the industry, and found out how they did things. I’m on several corporate boards, so that was a great learning experience for me. I think that’s one of the things I enjoy most about being on other boards. You can see how things are done differently, and you can bring management techniques and other kinds of methods to your company.
I didn’t get an M.B.A. I got a master’s in public policy, which taught a little bit of management. But I think it’s more about experience. You have to really see how companies are run.
Theories help, but I think it’s really just seeing it in action — whether it’s your own company or whether it’s observing someone else’s company. It’s kind of an on-the-job learning experience. I don’t think you can get an M.B.A. and then be perfectly positioned to run a company. I think you have to grow up in that company. I think you have to learn all aspects of it.
You have to understand that management is a skill. It took me a while to understand that that’s really what I do from day to day, that management is really my job. You say you’re a C.E.O., but what do you do?
When I was general counsel, I could say I keep the company out of legal trouble. I knew exactly what my job was, but as C.O.O. and C.E.O., you’re really a manager and a leader, and those are things that you have to learn over time. You have to learn how you do it and how it works for you and what kind of people relate well to how you do it.
I talk about this a lot, and I talk to women’s groups about it. I think men and women manage differently, and I think women have to learn to be comfortable that their management style may be different from a man’s, and that’s O.K."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/business/28corners.html?scp=2&sq=corner%20office&st=cse
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