Expand Your Mind: About Leadership
by Miki Saxon
Today we’re going to start with the general and move to the specific.
Last year we saw a generational shift during the Presidential election and that generational shift is happening in business, too.
Ethisphere recently spoke with William W. George, a professor of management at Harvard Business School who is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic and currently a director of both ExxonMobil and Goldman Sachs. He talked about how leadership in business is going through a huge and dramatic transformation as the baby boom gives way to younger executives with very different ways of seeing the world, connecting and working. He also talked about what it takes to be a strong leader in a challenging time.
George considers Chip Conley too old at 49 to be one of those transformational leaders, which just goes to show how silly it is to define things by a random circumstance like birth date. It may seem to work as a generality for marketers, but it rarely holds up on a case-by-case basis. In a delightful post, Conley talks about his leadership lessons during junior high.
No, what Danari [13 year old grandson] wanted to know is which classes had the most profound impact on me as a leader today?
I do like Bob Sutton’s stuff, he’s a great writer and he always makes sense. In this post he looks the boss as a shield, not for herself, but for her people.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this topic lately, since it’s the focus of an article I’m publishing in September’s issue of Harvard Business Review called “The Boss as Human Shield,” and of one chapter in Good Boss, Bad Boss. There are many nuances to how bosses protect their followers, but it’s a useful simplification to say that the protection must be both tangible and emotional.
The recent stories of unbridled greed makes you think that nothing would surprise you, but any time you think that another story comes along and you realize that you ain’t seen nothing yet. The story of David H. Brooks, CEO of DHB, which makes body armor for the military and police, fits that category. It’s not just his greed, although that is stunning,
“What makes it interesting isn’t that there is anything novel legally about it, but just how egregious this guy’s alleged behavior is, how gross the abuses are and how much greed is involved,” said Meredith R. Miller, an associate law professor at Touro College in Central Islip, N.Y.
but it was his defense that blew me away.
His lawyers also defended the hiring of prostitutes for employees and board members, arguing in court papers that it represented a legitimate business expense “if Mr. Brooks thought such services could motivate his employees and make them more productive.”
Unbelievable.
Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/
