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Authentic
Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value by Bill
George Rating: ••••• (Outstanding book-read it now) |
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Journey I have dozens of reasons why Bill George’s
new book, Authentic
Leadership, is the best book I’ve read this year. First of all, George is
a CEO who delivered outstanding results while he led Medtronic. His success
creates a forum in which we’re likely to listen to what he has to say. While
he’s proud of his accomplishments, he’s humble enough to share failures and
mistakes in a way that’s not at all dismissive. He preaches the importance of
being yourself, and changes the debate about leadership in ways that return
to the primacy of the personal integrity of leaders. George understands that
leadership is hard work, and he presents it as such. Read this excerpt of
Chapter 2, “The Transformation of Leaders,” (pp. 27-36), and you may see why
I really like this book: Ithaca does not exist; only the voyage to
Ithaca. —Nikos Kazanzakis How do you become an authentic leader? In my experience it takes many
years of personal development, experience, and just plain hard work. Although
we may be born with leadership potential, all of us have to develop ourselves
to become good leaders. The medium for developing into an authentic leader is
not the destination but the journey itself—a journey to find your true self
and the purpose of your life's work. In the Crucible In his recent book Geeks and Geezers, author Warren Bennis
observes that most of his interviewees passed through a crucible that tested
them to the depths of their being and enabled the successes they realized
later in life. At some time in your journey you, too, may find yourself in a
crucible that tests you to your limits. In this crucible you learn who you
really are and what you want to become. Having survived, you will know that
indeed you can take on any challenge and come out of it a better person for
the experience. My wife, Penny, experienced her crucible in 1996 when she was
diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through a modified radical mastectomy,
seven months of chemotherapy, and not knowing whether the cancer would recur.
At first, she was convinced she was going to die. Gradually, she took back
control other life by creating her own healing path. One of the steps on her journey was to participate in a Vision Quest
in southwestern Utah. A Vision Quest is an experience based on the rituals of
indigenous people in which participants seek to understand their purpose in
the world. Fasting alone for four days and nights in the desert, Penny found
a new power within herself and a renewed sense of purpose for her life.
Several months afterward, she gave up her practice of psychology and devoted
herself to the cause of integrative medicine, using the mind, body„ heart,
and spirit on one's healing journey. With passion and purpose, she is now
working with medical leaders throughout the United States to change the way
medicine is taught and practiced. Her inner power is enabling her to take on
leadership roles she never believed she was capable of. Four-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong makes a
dramatic—almost unbelievable—statement in It's Not About the Bike, his
book about his battle with life-threatening cancer. "The truth is, if
you asked me to choose between winning the Tour de France and cancer, I would
choose cancer." He goes on to explain, "Odd as it sounds, I would
rather have the title of cancer survivor than winner of the Tour, because of
what it has done for me as a human being, a man, a husband, a son, and a
father." Last fall I had the opportunity to bike with Lance up to the Maroon
Bells near Aspen and to ask him about his views on cancer. He explained how
his battle with cancer had, transformed him as a person and opened .up his
opportunities for marriage, fatherhood, and, yes, had given him the focus and
discipline to win the Tour four times in a row. He told me he wrote the book
not to glorify his achievements—"those will soon be forgotten"—but
to give hope to millions of cancer sufferers. Shooting Stars and Golden Boys Some rising leaders avoid challenging experiences that really test
them. I refer to them as Shooting Stars and Golden Boys. The Shooting Stars
move up so rapidly they never take time to learn from their mistakes or look
at themselves in the mirror. A year or two into any job, they are ready to move
on, long before they have to pass the test of living with their decisions.
When they see an experience like the crucible coming, their anxiety rises and
so does the urgency to move on. If their employer doesn't move them upward,
they are off to the next company. Then some day they find themselves at the
top, confronted with an overwhelming set of problems. Without the wisdom of
the crucible, they cannot cope and are prone to do bizarre things on their
way to self-destruction. Golden Boys (and Girls) follow a similar path to success, using charm,
style, and good looks to get ahead. They always set the bar of performance
low enough to ensure that they can exceed it. To outsiders and board members,
they always appear in control. Insiders observe that a Golden Boy never gets
his hands dirty wrestling with problems. When he reaches the top, he is
unprepared for the real-world challenges he will encounter. When faced with
them, he is vulnerable to making major mistakes and putting his company at
risk. My Journey to Leadership On my journey I went through several experiences in the crucible
before I developed into the kind of leader I had always dreamt of becoming.
In my early years I was hardly recognized as a leader by my peers. I was not
the one to be elected to the student council or to captain the tennis team.
There was a simple reason for this. I was so ambitious and self-centered that
I never took the time to develop close relationships. In my desire to become a leader, I studied the biographies of world
leaders, as well as great business leaders of my era, attempting to develop
the leadership characteristics they displayed. It didn't work. I was more of
a persona than an authentic leader. No wonder my early attempts at leadership
failed. In high school I ran for president of the senior class, only to lose
by a two-to-one margin. I was devastated, I had not yet learned what it takes
to have people want to follow you. Through my college fraternity, I got some wonderful coaching from
upperclassmen about the way in which my self-centeredness was a barrier to
relationships with others. Even so, I lost six consecutive elections in the
fraternity before I came to grips with my shortcomings and began to focus on
others instead of myself. As I got in touch with my weaknesses and gradually
became more authentic, I was chosen to lead many organizations. During my career I received lots of feedback to modify my leadership
style so as to fit in with the organization's norms. Several supervisors and
human resource specialists urged me to become a different kind of leader:
less passionate, more laid back, less engaged, less challenging, less
critical of others. l listened carefully to their advice but quietly rejected
it. Had I followed this advice, I would have become a "plain
vanilla" manager or even been seen as a phony. It would have taken away
my best qualities to moderate my leadership style, just to make others feel
more comfortable. This may be a good quality for middle managers but not for
those in top leadership. As a team-building consultant once said to me,
"Bill, working with you is no day at the beach!" It took me twenty years in business to find the right place to devote
my energies—-a mission-driven company named Medtronic. Had it not been for
the frustrations of my previous job, I might never have accepted the
opportunity. It turned out to be the most important step of my career. Coping
with Tragedy Bad things happen in life that we cannot anticipate. Rabbi Harold
Kushner has written thoughtfully about how bad things happen to good people.
In my mid-twenties I had my experience in the crucible, one for which I was
fully unprepared. Two tragedies brought me face-to-face with the meaning of
life, its pain, and its injustices. After graduating from business school, I went to work in Washington
and was feeling on top of the world. I loved my work, my friends, and my new
environment. Then one day I received an emergency telephone call. My father
was on the line. He could barely speak as he told me that my mother had died
that morning of a sudden heart attack. I was, closer to her than to anyone
else in the world. She was my role model, my supporter, my ally, and the
person from whom I learned unconditional love. When I arrived home later that afternoon, my father met me at the
door. I will never forget our interaction. Looking into his eyes, I knew
instantly that I had to become the father of my father. This role reversal
continued for the last twenty-five years of his life. In a very real sense I
lost two parents in one day. At age twenty-four I became the elder. As is
said, "The son becomes the father of the man." Not long after mother's death, I fell in love and got engaged. Just a
few weeks before the wedding, my fiancee started to experience severe
headaches, double vision, and loss of sense of balance. I was so worried that
I took her to a leading neurosurgeon, who put her into the hospital for a
week of neurological tests. All her exams were negative, but the severe
headaches continued. The neurosurgeon told us rather coldly that my fiancee
was emotionally disturbed about getting married. He sent her to her parents'
home in Georgia to see a psychologist. Intuitively, I knew this was a misdiagnosis. Something was seriously
wrong with my fiancee, but it was definitely not a psychological problem. I
did not know where to turn for help. The wedding was just three weeks away,
and we had still not sent out the invitations. We talked by telephone on a
Saturday night but were paralyzed about what to do next., The following morning I returned home from church, where I'd been
praying for my fiancee's recovery. Our large Georgetown house was dark and
the curtains were pulled, which seemed odd for a sunny August morning. One of
my roommates met me at the door and asked me to sit down in the living room.
I immediately sensed the worst, exclaiming, "She's not dead, is
she?" He nodded affirmatively. She had died that morning in her father's
arms, the victim of a malignant brain tumor. I felt shock and searing pain as
once again I tumbled into the well of grief. I felt completely alone in the
world and unable to comprehend the deeper meaning of what had just happened.
Thankfully, my friends gathered around me that day and in the weeks that
followed and provided the love and support I so desperately needed. To them I
will be forever grateful. This was a crucial time in my life when I could have easily become
bitter, depressed, and even lost my faith. In times of personal crisis, the
grace of God and the power of faith can provide the basis for healing. So can
the support of friends. I was blessed to have both. Together they gave me
hope for the future and enabled me not to feel sorry for myself, just for my
fiancee and her family. I came to the realization that there are many things
in life we cannot understand and may never be able to explain. The words of
St. Paul provided the greatest comfort, "Now we see through a glass
darkly. Then, face to face." Tragic as these events were, they opened my heart to the deeper
meaning of life, and got me thinking more profoundly about what I could
contribute to others during my lifetime. "Hitting
the Wall" "In the middle of the load of my life, I awoke in a dark wood,
where the true way was wholly lost" Dante writes in The Divine Comedy. My most agonizing time in the career crucible also came when I least
expected it. I call this "hitting the wall," something that happens
to most leaders at least once in their careers. As painful as it was, this
experience provided the basis for growth and change that transformed my
career. It caused me to look inside myself, acknowledge my shortcomings, and
realize I was on the wrong path. In the mid-1980s I was on my way to the top of Honeywell. What began
as a huge promotion turned into a decision to reassess my career and to move
in an entirely new direction. By 1988 I had been promoted several times, each
time taking over more responsibility for Honeywell's most challenging
businesses. At the time I was responsible for three groups,-nine divisions,
eighteen thousand employees, and a raft of problems. I had developed a reputation as "Mr. Fixit," the guy who
could get Honeywell's troubled businesses turned around. I knew how to turn
businesses around, but I never got the opportunity to reap the fruits of my
labor before moving on to the next set of troubled operations. In my last
assignment, I uncovered losses approaching $400 million that had not been
recognized or accounted for properly. This caused a great deal of
consternation for the Honeywell board and its shareholders. There was nothing
we could do except get all the problems on the table and correct them. As I
was fond of saying, "I didn't create these problems. I'm just the guy
who's getting them fixed." During this period I started questioning whether Honeywell was really
the place for me. l have always seen myself as a growth-oriented leader, not
a turnaround specialist. When presented with problems, I was quite willing to
take responsibility for them and get them resolved, but I also yearned to
experience the fruits of my labor. My lack of passion for Honeywell's businesses also troubled me. I was
out of sync with Honeywell's slow-moving, change-resistant culture. I also
found myself becoming more concerned with appearances and my attire than with
being myself. Reluctantly, I faced up to die reality that Honeywell was
changing me more than I was changing it. I had "hit the wall," but was too proud to face it. I felt I
was in a trap from which I couldn't escape. The macho side of me said,
"I have to tough it out." Sure, I was leading, but the purpose of
my efforts was not at all clear. Where was my "leading" leading to? On a beautiful fall afternoon when the maple trees were blazing red, I
had a daydream while driving around the lake near my home. But this dream was
not pretty. I saw myself staying at Honeywell for a few more years, becoming
increasingly frustrated, and then deciding to accept a CEO position at a
large company in some other city. This would mean uprooting my family, Penny
giving up her job, our sons changing schools, all of us leaving the community
we loved. Why would I do that? Just to satisfy my ego? I had a lot of
self-explanation to do. My experience that day enabled me to realize that, like Dante, I too
was "in a dark wood." I needed to wake up and overcome my fixation
on being CEO of a very large corporation. Reluctantly, I realized I was
letting my ego get in the way of my values. If indeed I was in a trap, it was
a trap of my own making* When we are in this position, it is difficult to see
things clearly, and we may miss the opportunity that is staring us in the
face. Over the years I had had three opportunities to join Medtronic, dating
back to 1978.1 turned them all down, mostly because I didn't feel Medtronic
was a large enough company for me. Yet the opportunity kept nagging at me.
Had I done the right thing? It finally dawned on me that I was so caught up
in my drive to run a major corporation that I was in danger of losing my soul
in the process I realized I had sold Medtronic short, and maybe myself as
well. That evening Penny and I had a long talk about our lives and our
careers. We recognized that my lack of fulfillment in my job was having a
negative impact on all of us. She encouraged me to take another look at
Medtronic. I kept thinking about the vision I had in my teenage years: leading a
mission-driven, values-centered company where I was passionate about the
company's products and the opportunity to serve others. What better place to
do that than Medtronic? I called Medtronic's CEO and reopened the door. Five
months later I walked through Medtronic's door to become its president and
chief operating officer. Rarely in life does opportunity knock four times. Finding
the Right Place I finally had found the place—or it had found me—that offered
everything l wanted: values, passion, and the opportunity to help people
suffering from chronic disease. Had it not been for my experience in the
crucible, I might-never have seen the light. I have never looked back nor
regretted it. It was only in going my own way I became fully alive and
developed my potential as a leader. Throughout my life I have bad a passion to make a difference in the
world. At Medtronic I was able to lead a company that changes people's lives.
I feel a deep sense of good fortune in finding a confluence of interests
between my personal desires and the needs of Medtronic. The Medtronic mission
to restore people to fuller health inspired me from the moment Medtronic
founder Earl Bakker described it to me. Fourteen years later, it inspires me
even more. I don't want to oversimplify the challenges of leading a rapidly
growing organization. Being the leader is a tough job with a lot of pressure
that can arise at any moment from an unanticipated source. There was rarely a
time when I could put aside thoughts about my work and focus entirely on
other things. With all the challenges we faced, it was inevitable that I had
fears and doubts. As good as my subordinates were, I knew the final
decisions—and the lives of thousands of people—rested in my hands, my head,
and my heart. Over the years we faced continuous challenges from a wide range of
sources. Looking back, I made some good decisions, but also made my share of
mistakes. The thrill of taking on these challenges with a team of people l
deeply respected was worth every ounce of stress. During these years I often
felt like Theodore Roosevelt's "Man in the Arena," Whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives
valiantly... who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends
himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of
high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while
daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat. Underpinning everything I have done
in life is a strong faith. My experiences, both good and bad, have only
served to strengthen the conviction gained in my younger years that a loving
God is there to guide me along the way through all the difficulties I may
encounter. In this few pages, George lays out the
issues of personal development, setbacks, courage, and the complexity of our
personal journey. The rest of the pages of Authentic
Leadership are as good as these, or better. According to George, there
are five dimensions to being an authentic leader: understanding why you want
to lead, practicing solid values, leading with a heart, establishing
connected relationships, and showing self-discipline. Stop reading this
review, and start reading Authentic
Leadership, right now. Steve Hopkins, September 23, 2003 |
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ã 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the October 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Authentic
Leadership.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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