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A conversation on leadership with Carol and Jack Weber
Virginia Business
July
2007
Jack and Carol Weber are a husband and wife team who teach executive education programs on leadership and strategic change management at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. They have developed many executive development programs, including Leadership for Extraordinary Performance, which was named No. 1 in 2006 among open-enrollment programs in the world by the Financial Times for its faculty and course design. In their experience, leadership is increasingly about collaboration across all levels of the organization and conversations, not just among supervisors and subordinates, but also with peers, suppliers and customers. They regularly remind executives that, “you are only as good as your last conversation.” Virginia Business’ publisher Bernie Niemeier interviewed the Webers.
Virginia Business: Leadership
is getting more attention these days. Examples
in Virginia include the establishment of the Jepson
Center for Leadership at the University of Richmond. In
April, Frank Batten Sr. gave $100 million to U.Va.
to establish a new school of leadership and public
policy. Why do you think more funds are being
donated for leadership? Do we have a shortage
of good leaders?
Carol Weber: The
stakes are higher than ever. Every
organization competes in a rapidly changing environment. People are
needed who have the ability to challenge basic assumptions about what is
possible and move beyond business as usual to produce something extraordinary
and sustainable for the long term. Leadership
is an essential ingredient to making this happen.
The deeply satisfying thing is to see how widely accepted
the need for leadership development has become. When
we first began our work, there was a fatalistic assumption
that you could not teach leadership and that leaders
were born and not made. It’s refreshing
for people to see that given the right education, developmental
experiences and mentoring that people can actually
dramatically improve their ability to move organizations
into a bold new future.
It excites me to see major donors who care about making
this happen in the state of Virginia, which we care
about.
Jack Weber: Increasingly
there is a clear distinction between leading and managing,
both are important. Historically much of the
leadership training was education on management, like
setting achievable goals. There is growing
awareness that leadership and management are distinct
but complementary ways of seeing the world. There
is an increasing recognition that leadership is not
a function of title or position on the organization
chart, but another set of qualities. Leadership
is the capacity to influence without formal authority.
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VB: You’ve
taught leadership for a number of years. How
has the topic evolved?
Carol: Years ago,
leadership was far more theoretical. Today,
it is more an applied discussion. We are much more
inclined to discuss how things might affect the average
middle manager in a complex and sometimes bureaucratic organization
might influence people to see a bigger possibility for the future.
While we still work a lot with senior executives, we
are seeing more high potential people being identified
earlier in their careers. The examples are more
business related than they used to be, rather than
using historical or military examples.
Jack: The “great
person” notion of leadership
which was popular 20 years ago has kind of disappeared. The
focus on subordinate relationships has broadly expanded
across business units, across functions and geographies. People
are far more concerned about leading across boundaries
where they don’t have
formal authority.
Carol: In the past
there was an assumption that only very senior people
in the organization had both the skills and the right
to lead. Everyone
else was just expected to be loyal lieutenants carrying
out tasks defined by the leader. What we see
today are organizations wanting and needing leadership
at every level, people who will not just wait to follow
instructions, but who will step up and take a look
around their area and take the initiative to improve
things.
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VB: In
your classes, you distinguish leadership from management. What’s
the difference and why is this important?
Carol: Management
is about creating predictability and standardization. Leadership
is about creating a mindset and an appetite for change. Not
necessarily questioning the viability of the processes
in place, but to do something game changing to the
organization’s advantage
that involves pleasing an enlarging customer base.
Jack: Management
is generally about incremental change, say a 5 percent
or 10 percent increase in revenue. Leadership is about
bringing profound or transformational change and extraordinary results. Ordinary
people can do extraordinary things. Nobody comes to work thinking, “How
can I coast?” People really want to make a difference. Leadership
is about helping people to make the contribution that
they are capable of making.
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VB: You’ve
had executives from around the globe attend your
programs at the Darden School. Are there culturally
significant differences in successful leadership
styles?
Jack: In addition
to people coming around the world to Darden, we also
taught full time for six summers at the International
Management Development Institute in Lausanne, Switzerland,
and on the consulting side we work with a select number
of global multinationals.
Carol: We’ve worked throughout the world — Europe,
Australia, Pakistan and South Africa. The basic message is about a
mindset that is dissatisfied with the status quo and creating an eagerness
within the organization to work with someone who has a clear picture of what
could be and who harnesses people’s willingness, energy and passion
to make that happen. When you speak about a compelling
future it has a human appeal that transcends geography.
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VB: How
does that apply to Virginia? Would
you say that business in Virginia has a set of
cultural norms that impact the leadership skills that
lead to success?
Carol: That’s
interesting. We use a 360-degree
feedback evaluation in our programs, and the leaders
who come to us from Virginia are consistently seen
as modeling values that are the foundation for extraordinary
success. One is treating people with dignity
and respect. There is a courtesy in Virginia
that is missing in other states and countries. Even
if people disagree, there is a less confrontational
and aggressive way of dealing doing it. This
accrues as an advantage to Virginia because the complexity
of issues and the speed of change is going to require
new levels of collaboration that a foundation of respect
really helps.
People in Virginia also tend to have
a pretty optimistic view of life. The best leaders
are optimistic about the future and convey an unshakable
confidence that tomorrow can be even better than today. Virginia
business men and women predictably display optimism
and respect.
If there is a downside, it’s
that sometimes they need a willingness to be a little
more confrontational at times. It can take longer
to move a group to consensus if a person is not direct
about their own feelings on an issue.
Jack: Rather
than more confrontational,
maybe it’s
to be more challenging of business as usual and to be more willing to engage
in constructive conflict. With that said, all
of these qualities among Virginians are sources of
competitive advantage, not only in Virginia, but in
the nation and the world.
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VB: What
are some characteristics of a successful leader?
Jack: The notion
of characteristics goes back to the idea of personality
traits. The trait theory has been studied by
psychologists for years and the only characteristic
that has been predictable for people in leadership
positions is height. Being taller
is really not the basis on which we ought to populate
the higher offices of corporations.
Carol: We’ve
seen both introverts and extroverts who are great leaders. Some
qualities are pretty common. They are
absolutely committed to making a difference, to raising
the bar, to leaving a legacy. They have a natural
urge to improve things. They
also have a lot of natural confidence about making
it happen.
They are not gloom and doom people. They
tend communicate what they are doing is a positive
and upbeat way that attracts and inspires people rather
than making them defensive.
People who really want to make a
difference also demonstrate a level of persistence
that people who are not inclined to lead don’t. When
they hit a brick wall, they find a way around it. Other
people make sporadic and tentative attempts to change
things, but when they encounter obstacles they fold. The
kind of leaders that we are inspired by are ones who
know it is not going to be easy, but who take it on
for that very reason.
Jack: The
word that comes to mind for
me is resilience. Clarity
of purpose and of the future they want to create, commitment
to that and resilience in the face of setbacks.
Carol: Psychological
research says that people
who are resilient are good
at accurately reading the
environment they function
in and have a level of self
awareness about their own
strengths and weaknesses. They
are also good at communicating and listening to other
people.
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VB: Are
there really “natural born leaders” or
do all leaders learn their skills from someone else?
Carol: There are
some people who have genetic predispositions that are
advantageous in a competitive environment, but we can’t
really predict who they are.
On the other, hand some early developmental
environments are more nurturing of leadership skills
than others. Before
people even get to the workplace, they need some sense
of self, optimism about the future, flexibility in
a changing world, and willingness to take chances and
not be deterred by setbacks.
What we are seeing now is a new generation
that has a very low tolerance for frustration. That
will have some interesting repercussions in the workplace
and how you lead people who are used to getting the
right answer, getting it right away and getting immediate
help when they need it.
A lot happens before a person ever gets to the workplace. There
is a lot of evidence that a person’s first boss
has a major impact on the future. Down the road,
that’s sometimes translated into “now I’ve
learned how I shouldn’t be.” The
jury is still out on the effectiveness of mentoring. A
lot of mentoring relationships lack a personal affinity,
you can’t just be assigned to someone and expect
it to work.
Jack: We often
have conversations in our classes
about “personal
best” leadership experiences. Rarely do
those experiences have anything to do with a mentor. They
have to do with an external challenge or opportunity
for the organization where they and a group of people
developed the commitment to do something extraordinary. In
the process of achieving that goal with a group of
other people they realized that titles and hierarchy
was not important and they really saw the power of
working collaboratively with a group of people with
an external customer focused. Those
experiences are far more shaping than a mentoring relationship.
Carol: Formal
mentoring programs are most valuable when they are
designed to enhance diversity in the organization and
help people see things that others often take for granted. I
would not want to dismiss the value of mentoring completely.
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VB: Is
leadership style situational or is there one dominant
approach to successful leadership?
Carol: Yes and no. You
can’t
lead anyone into a new future unless you are sensitive
to how they currently see things.
Jack: Much of what’s
now called situational leadership used to be called
situational management, so it’s
just a substitution of one word for another.
Historically, situational management
had to do primarily with how much freedom you gave
people to participate in decisions, based on importance,
the time necessary to accomplish the task, skill level,
etc. That
leads to a lot of manipulative thinking and proscribes
certain rules and behaviors.
What we see is that truly effective
leaders have a situational sensitivity but it is more
intuitive and spontaneous and rooted in good judgment,
rather than a 2x2 model of how to manage a situation.
Carol: The
old model was about trying
to figure out other people
so that you could get them
to do what you want. Based on our
work, leadership is not about figuring out other people,
it’s
about figuring yourself out, having a level of self-awareness
about what you want in your life at work and the difference
you want to make and then being able to communicate
that authentically enough that it speaks to what other
people want.
The more you know about yourself
and what you want in life and work, the clearer and
less ambiguous you will be in communicating with other
people. The
sincerity of this approach makes it more effective.
Jack: Leadership
is about the present and the
future. Management
is about the past — how to extend or improve upon the past. The
way we think about leadership is about creating an
extraordinary future.
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VB: You
are both part of the early baby-boom generation,
coming of age in the ‘60s. Are successful
leaders today different from those from earlier generations,
say the 1950s?
Carol: There was
a lot more management than leading going on in the ‘50s. In
a stable business environment, you could get away with
maintaining the status quo and it would ensure some
degree of success… A
lot of companies that were at their peak in the ‘50s
have experienced trouble. The managers thought, “We
are the experts and we know what to do, but you just
can’t get good people.” Suddenly
the world changed on them.
Jack: The evolution
of ideas that have influenced how we think about leading
and managing organizations was relatively unchanged
from the industrial revolution to the 1980s. Most
of the thinking in management development flowed out
of the division of labor and the hierarchy of authority
in large complex multi-layered organizations. There
were variations in the ‘50s and ‘60s like
MBO (Management by Objectives). The
notion was that increased effectiveness came from setting
mutually agreeable goals, but it was still in the context
of a hierarchical organization.
Carol: Following
WWII, the G.I. Bill invited a lot of veterans to go
to school. This began to challenge the undisputed
authority of people high up in the organization. Suddenly
people joining organizations knew more than their bosses,
before that it was pretty deferential. There
was a heightened skepticism if what management saw
was at odds with common sense or the experience of
people at other levels in the organization.
Jack: A real inflection
point came around 1981, when for the first time a management
book, Tom Peters’ “In Search
of Excellence”, made it to the #1 position
on New York Times’ non-fiction
best sellers List. Another book made the list
in 1982, “The
Art of Japanese Management” by Anthony
Athos and Richard Pascal.
In the ‘70s and early ‘80s,
there was a wave of new products from Japan, automobiles
and copying machines, that threatened the whole paradigm
of American business by offering higher quality at
lower prices.
Tom Peters identified 43 companies
in his book, all American companies, and a short list
of eight core competencies like “Keep in simple,
stupid” and “Stick
to your knitting,” that ensured their success
and the preeminence of American business over Japanese
competitors.
1981 was a year of 18 percent interest
rates. It
was also the year that Jack Welch took over as chairman
of General Electric and really began to challenge a
lot of the conventional thinking about the insularity
of American business.
This created for the first time a
global mindset and a hunger for new ideas in American
business. Over
the following 20 years there was an explosion of fads
and business books, many of which failed when erratically
applied without real leadership. If you take
something like Six Sigma, which is basically a management
tool kit, it makes a profound difference on companies
where it was applied with commitment and persistence
over a long period of time. Without leadership,
it makes no difference.
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VB: If
leadership is evolving, where do you see them going
for the next generation of leaders?
Carol: One
thing is how quickly technical
expertise becomes obsolete. Gaining position
through technical knowledge is going to be an eroding
strategy for influence in an organization. This
calls for the ability to create communities of problem
solvers. How
do you create an environment where people can learn
as much as they can as quickly as they can?
Jack: I’d
add the ability to work across boundaries. Even
at lower levels, people need the ability to work laterally,
as well as across functional and geographical boundaries,
both within the U.S. and globally.
Carol: People need
the ability to listen very openly to other people. Most
of us tend to listen with a bias to what we already
know and value.
It requires courage and humility
to understand that somebody else’s ideas might
be really, really valuable to moving toward what’s
next. The
ability to listen openly and with curiosity and to
have respect for diverse points of view is going to
be very important.
We will also need to nurture the
ability to tolerate ambiguity without being immobilized. In
complex organizations there is often some ambiguity
on where one person’s role ends and another’s
begins. People
are reluctant to step into this space and something
important gets dropped.
Collaboration is sign that boundaries
are an artificial constraint on how we think about
what we do and what’s
possible.
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VB: Jack,
you regularly practice the art of meditation; has
that influenced your thinking about leadership?
Jack: I
spend 10 to 20 days per year
in silent retreats. I
practice meditation techniques from various wisdom
traditions.
Carol: You are much
more accepting and embracing of all sorts of participation
in class and a lot calmer. It’s
smoothed some of the edges and, especially in times
of upset or breakdown, you are much calmer in an accepting
sort of way.
Jack: One of the
things about spending hours and days in silence it
that I’ve become more aware of the relentless
chatter of the human mind. The mind generates
about 50,000 to 65,000 thoughts a day. We have
a mantra in our course which is, “Don’t
believe everything you think.”
It’s really made me very aware of the sheer volume
of thoughts from past conditioning that I’ve
simply held to be true. This helps me to constructively
challenge a lot of what the managers we work with call
thinking, but which comes through nothing more than
their conditioning. Because I’ve seen it
in myself, I can share it in ways that help people
see how the busy their minds are with automatic thoughts
that really don’t reflect a depth of thinking.
Meditation really helps bring you back to the present. People
are more effective when they are really present with
what’s going on and less distracted by BlackBerrys
or something to do later in the day.
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VB: How
have technology and new forms of communication affected
the practice of leadership? By this, I mean
abundant e-mail, less face-to-face communication
and the overall increase in the speed at which business
is conducted.
Carol: E-mail
was supposed to keep us all
connected and aligned. It’s so easy to stay connected that it really just adds
to the kind of chatter in your head that Jack was just talking about. It’s
absolutely distracting.
People will say something in e-mail that they would
never say to your face. Even when that’s
not the intention; you miss all of the non-verbal cues. Most
technologies rob us of the human connection that’s
really important to building something good together.
Jack: Human
conversations are absolutely
essential in building glue between the white spaces
in organizational charts.
Carol: It’s the human conversations where you have
spontaneity and serendipity that lead you in a someplace neither party expected
to go; that doesn’t happen in e-mail or voice
mail.
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VB: What’s
it been like to team teach, especially as husband
and wife?
Jack: I’ve loved it. I
love working with Carol; we bring very different
perspectives that are complimentary. I studied
physics as an undergraduate and went back to graduate
school in organizational behavior. Carol
is a psychologist. We bring that together
in a way that understands people’s business
problems. We team teach
in front of the room without segmenting the time. It’s
much more like a basketball team where we pass topics
back and forth.
Carol: It’s
energizing to do the work I love with someone I love
and who really shares my values and excitement about
bringing these kinds of conversations to businesspeople
who really have the opportunity to transform the quality
of work for people.
We both realize this is an awesome
mission and are humbled by the opportunity to get to
do it with a lot of great people. Maybe what goes on at our best
moments is that we model what collaboration really
looks like. In less fine moments, it models what
it looks like when people don’t see eye to eye. So
people can learn by both our good example and our bad
example; I’m okay with that.
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