Real Leaders Don't Boss (17 page)

Real leaders are also teachers. Part of the teaching process means writing down your thoughts first, then sharing them, inviting feedback, and discussing alternative ideas. Writing helps clarify your vision while it increases your credibility as a leader. CEOs who write the first drafts of their major messages are much more likely to rally stakeholders in ways no speechwriter can imitate.

The business world has no shortage of heroes past or present. These are individuals whose visions and personal values form the fabric of their missions, and help make their people great leaders and their companies hugely successful. These people are heroes who personify their values and pay attention to what others say and do. They listen to employees, to customers, and to the markets.

We've all worked for or with, or heard about, the boss who's impossible to contact. Yet every one of the real leaders you have or will read about in these pages regularly mingles and mixes
with, talks to, and learns from those who are nearby. Bosses lock themselves away in their “ivory towers,” isolated from those around them; real leaders do not. That communication creates an essential awareness and connection with the company, employees, and the community that helps ensure success. It should be standard operating procedure for all levels of leadership.

Regularly connecting and networking with others in your organization—and not only in your job strata—helps build long-term alliances and provides valuable feedback for the short and long term. If you are a CEO or executive, that means taking the time to interact with your staff and your customers. Outside the workplace, the key is being perceptive and receptive to others, and sometimes both work and leisure spaces overlap.

Not every leader needs to be a globetrotter, but all real leaders do need to listen and be accessible. During my administrative tenures with various hospital systems, I always made a point to join doctors and nurse executives on their rounds. I did so not because I had to, but because it was a way to talk with physicians, nurses, and health professionals, and to experience the hospital both day and night. I wanted to get to know all the people working in the facility and to understand their concerns, challenges, families, issues, and problems. A hospital is a 24/7 operation, and its employees and medical staff may have different concerns depending on their shifts. The night shift is less distracted by the day's activities, and night workers generally can better focus on the job at hand.

This kind of communication helped me do a better job. For example, when it was my turn to serve as the nighttime on-call administrator and something extraordinary came up, I knew what was going on, who was involved, and who I could depend on to help get the problem or issue solved. My visibility in and
knowledge of a particular facility day and night also boosted my credibility as a representative of the hospital in the community. To truly represent the business, you must truly know the business—and that means both its day and night operations.

Similarly, administrators at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, were required to spend one day a month “on the floor” assisting patients and their families, medical staff, and support personnel. Such hands-on involvement led to an administrative team that was truly in touch with the ongoing issues of the facility.

You may be the best leader in the world—or at least think you are—but if you can't enlist others in the effort, true success will prove elusive.

When I became chief of public relations and marketing for Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, I used lessons in interpersonal dynamics to transform communications and create more open cooperation throughout our facilities. At the time, the medical center was typical of most academic medical campuses—the
modus operandi
was toleration between “us and them.” Doctors and staff, executives and boards did their jobs but often did not work closely with others. As a leader, I listened when and where others had not, and the efforts paid off. Most of the 300 physicians and staff ended up routinely involved in marketing, branding, and affiliation outreach initiatives, which were highly successful. Without that buy-in and expertise among the different constituencies, I doubt we would have had the substantial successes we achieved.

Real listening involves an acute awareness of what is happening and changing in the workplace and in life. Further still, a leader is willing to embrace the needs—personal and professional—that those changes demand.

R. Duke Blackwood, director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, is a highly approachable and expert communicator. Because of those skills, positive changes come about. He's a brilliant fundraiser, highly innovative in program development, and enormously skilled in developing relationships with business and academia, world and national leaders, schoolchildren and teachers. His “Team Reagan” approach created an environment for his staff to succeed as a team, more than doubling the Library's attendance since President Reagan's death, developing award-winning education programs, and dramatically increasing the Library's visibility. Today, the Simi Valley library is the most visited of our nation's presidential libraries.

The late Fred Meijer was president and CEO of Meijer, which began as a small Greenville, Michigan–based grocery and household goods store founded by his father. He was renowned for knowing the names of all his employees and customers, and greeted them by name. Meijer recognized the connection that comes with personal communication. Even as his family's superstore empire grew, Meijer continued to maintain that connection until his retirement, when he still would occasionally greet customers and employees, and collect carts in store parking lots.

Today, Meijer is still family owned, and has more than 190 locations throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky. The company follows its original mantra: “Take care of your customers, team members, and community...and all of them will take care of you, just like a family.”

Another great leader, statesman, creative thinker, eloquent speaker, and tireless crusader for college students is David L. Warren, PhD. He clearly recognizes and understands
the importance of connecting with those around him. He also knows that true leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure your impact endures in your absence. Today he is a tireless advocate for private education funding on Capitol Hill as president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, a Washington, D.C.–based industry group. He's also a former president of Ohio Wesleyan University, a former alderman and chief administrative officer for the City of New Haven, Connecticut, a former Assistant Secretary of Yale University, and a graduate of Washington State University, Yale, and the University of Michigan.

When Warren assumed the presidency of Ohio Wesleyan University in the 1980s, times were tough. Alumni relations were less than ideal, behavior at campus fraternities was an issue, fundraising was down, and relations with the local community and the surrounding area were somewhat strained. Warren's university-owned home was not yet ready for him and his family of five, so he opted to live in one of the university's residence halls. It was a brilliant move that cemented positive relations with everyone. He used the dorm room to meet students and staff informally. This story made national headlines and immediately endeared the new president to students, faculty, alumni, and townspeople. In fact, living in the dorm was such a positive experience, Warren established an intergenerational living community at the school that thrives today, 20 years later, and remains part of his legacy of leadership.

For those aspiring leaders who doubt the power of personal and real communication, the next time you're out of the office, try this simple experiment: smile at the next few people you see and pay attention to how each responds; chances are good that the majority of people will smile back. Try the same experiment in your workplace and see the results. Start personally
communicating with those around you. Your relationship with them likely will change.

Electronic communication is integral to today's business world, but think about cutting back on the Tweets and instant messages (IMs), and avoid relying on e-mail for all your communications. Instead, try to approach projects and problem-solving in your office with the same face-to-face openness and willingness to communicate that you demonstrated in your smile experiment. Such personal interaction can produce positive ideas and results, especially in an up-and-down economic environment.

Nearly everyone can recall an instance involving back-and-forth e-mails with someone in the workplace or elsewhere that involved a misjudged cue, misunderstood content, or missed opportunity. The e-mail “oops” could be nothing more than a misunderstood punch line for a joke. But on a more sobering note, if the e-mail exchange is in the workplace context, and the misunderstanding is something such as an insult or involves taking the wrong action that results in a negative outcome, the consequences can be far more serious.

Never allow e-mail to completely replace in-person communication. E-mailing, texting, and Tweeting cannot convey the personal and important nuances and critical thought processes of telephone discussions and face-to-face meetings. Anyone who thinks they can has not yet learned this lesson the hard way.

Do take advantage of the benefits of high-tech communications; just use them properly, and don't rely on them as the only form of “face-to-face” communication. Video-conferences, for example, can be a cohesive tool for project teams, or an e-mail or a Tweet can be valuable to convey a real-time confirmation.
These communication tools are valuable as ancillaries, as long as they're not used as a replacement for more direct, personal communication.

Warren netted great results from interaction, collaboration, and face-to-face communication—not only laying the foundation for his tenure at Ohio Wesleyan, but for success in the community as well, and later at the national level at the NAICU (National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities) in Washington, D.C.

McDonald's Ray Kroc was a leader in fostering communication, cooperation, and innovation from his franchisees. His business model was a three-legged stool that stood strong because everyone interacted and recognized the importance of each leg: franchises owned by franchisees, McDonald's corporate, and McDonald's suppliers. Along the way, Kroc fostered tremendous innovation from the field: three of McDonald's most popular menu items—the Big Mac, Egg McMuffin, and Filet-o-Fish—were invented by franchisees.
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(Incidentally, one of my most enjoyable and rewarding learning experiences was serving on the founding board of the West Michigan Ronald McDonald House in Grand Rapids, Michigan and spending time at McDonald's University in Oak Brook, Ill.)

Your communication should be up close and personal, and it should be authentic. Why should you or any leader need to turn over speeches and other important communiqués to speech-writers, public relations specialists, or their assistants? The answer is, you and they shouldn't. There's no good reason for it, especially with so many electronic programs available today to facilitate effective writing and outlining. For example, the iA
Writer for the iPad is a simple and intuitive word-processing system that helps most anyone write down their thoughts at least in an outline or draft form.

The writing process may be difficult for you as an untrained writer, because it involves organization and evolution of ideas. But it's an important step. When, as a leader or aspiring leader, you plot strategy or determine policies, if you draft the content yourself, the end result is more focused, better thought through, clearer, and more concise. Outcomes are further improved, too, because the personal connection fosters employee trust and followership.

Why should real leaders still rely on physical connections and communications? We as leaders must use every method available today to stay connected and in touch with employees, the community, our customers, and markets. If we do not, the disconnection becomes a real threat to our company's success.

Real leaders must go the extra mile to ensure connections with their teams and employees or lose touch. But that does not mean leaders should not also employ every other high-tech means possible to enhance that communication. That includes social media such as Twitter and Facebook, Websites, e-mails, instant messaging, and texting, plus traditional communication methods such as snail mail, paper handouts, faxes, and the like. The goal of your communication strategy should not be “going paperless” for its own sake, but establishing real and direct back-and-forth interaction between leaders, their employees, their managers, and the community, and getting it right in order to remain competitive. In today's marketplace, there's no reason for coming up short on communication.