They Told Me Not to Take that Job: Tumult, Betrayal, Heroics, and the Transformation of Lincoln Center (46 page)

Bruce greeted me warmly and asked, “So I know you must miss the Mercury, but how are you liking the Honda?”

“Well, it runs smoothly, I suppose.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I am.”

“In what?”

“The gas mileage. In the Mercury, I could travel about 247 miles on a full tank of gas. Now, with the Honda, supposedly a fuel efficient car, I only get about 360 miles. Not much more.”

“You bozo. Don’t you realize that the Mercury Marquis has a gas tank large enough to fuel half of the vehicles in the Bronx!? It holds twenty-seven gallons of gas, whereas your Honda holds seventeen. You are getting more than double the miles per gallon with your new car.”

“Oh.”

“So, here’s what I want to know. What idiot gave you the title President . . . of anything?”

Okay, there are some costs to focus and concentration, I suppose. And taking lip from Bruce is one of them.

But not being aware of all kinds of practical stuff, like the date of Mom’s birthday or the capacity of the gas tank of my car, leaves me the space to keep on top of what I need to know at work, as undistracted as possible.

Winning Friends and Influencing People

For over a decade, Norman Vincent Peale’s book of this title topped all best-seller lists.

What alliances are to nations and partnerships to companies, donors, investors, and cooperative parties are to nonprofits. By definition, an eleemosynary institution must win friends and influence people in order to thrive. Places like Lincoln Center are in the business of asking: for time, talent, treasure, and the sweat equity of employees, trustees, volunteers, donors, and sister institutions.

One terrific metric to gauge whether Lincoln Center is winning friends pivots around donors. How are acquisition and retention rates of donors at various levels of generosity faring? Are they increasing in number, holding steady, or decreasing? Do these results compare favorably with other admired institutions? The same question should be asked about trustees, and more broadly, about ticket buyers.

The ability to lead an organization effectively often depends on the relationships you have cultivated during your career. Calling in favors or just requesting fair play from existing and potential donors, or media outlets, or politicians, or foundation and corporate officials, or members of your board of trustees is possible only if you have spent time with them and invested in creating an enduring connection.

In the ATM machine of leadership, asking for withdrawals will not be successful if you haven’t provided substantial deposits of time, attention, advice, and assistance. That means keeping in touch, letting others know you are thinking of them, and offering genuinely felt compliments on positive developments in their personal and professional lives, as well as help when the inevitable setbacks and stumbles occur.

Read, Travel, Network, Encounter Art

The theme here is a combination of curiosity and discovery. About ideas. Places. People. The visual and performing arts.

Challenge me to predict the likelihood of an executive’s success, someone I have just met, and I would respond by asking that person four questions:

       
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What do you read?

       
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Whom do you meet with at and outside of work?

       
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With whom do you speak most often, and with whom do you exchange e-mail most frequently?

       
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How do you spend your vacations, and what do you most enjoy doing in your spare time?

In my experience, the answers are leading indicators of executive success or failure. Reading widely and deeply. Listening attentively. Possessing a boundless and curious mind. Show me an executive with these attributes, and I will predict leadership of uncommon quality.

My frequent-flyer mileage cards have taken me to 47 countries and 253 cities and towns around the world. My well-stocked home library contains thousands of books and is a continuous source of intellectual sustenance. My electronic Rolodex and old-fashioned diary are crammed with new names, adventurous meetings, and fresh encounters.

These experiences and relationships allow me to benefit from the example of others, past and present. They lend authority and authenticity to my leadership at work. They are also an indispensable source of self-confidence. But the richest origin of knowledge and ideas by far is attentive, eclectic reading.

When I was nine years old, for my birthday, my dad took me on a special trip from our one-bedroom apartment in a building called the Shelbourne, at the intersection of Ocean Parkway and Brighton Beach Avenue, to Manhattan, known to all of us Brooklynites as “The City.”

To go to “The City,” everyone dressed appropriately, meaning for men and boys a white shirt, jacket, and tie. Somehow, Dad decided that he would encourage my early propensity to read by taking me to the original and then the only Barnes and Noble, located at 5th Avenue and 18th Street, so that I could select a book for my very own, the very first.

I roamed the shelves for several hours and came away with a paperback copy of
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
. That round-trip on the D train is one I will never forget, and to this day, my precious possession sits on a shelf at home in a proud corner of its own.

Until Benjamin Franklin’s work entered my life, I joined the family in believing that books could be read only by borrowing them from the Brighton Beach branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. It was there that four years later I was lucky enough to land a part-time job shelving and checking out books. My idea of wealth was not just to borrow books, but to be able to buy them too, and building a personal library at home was an aspiration I never thought could be realized.

At Abraham Lincoln High School in 1962, I discovered how thrilling it was to witness adults’ exhilaration in the joy of teaching. In that freshman year, my absolute favorite was an English teacher named Miss Alice Bantecas, a short, matronly lady with a beautiful cursive handwriting, who would begin each and every class with a quotation written on the blackboard for us to discuss. And here is what greeted the students on our exciting first day of high school: “There is no frigate like a book to take us miles away.” With this piece of wisdom, Emily Dickinson has been my guide ever since.

That seaworthy vessel called a book could also engender empathy, teach by example, take readers intellectually to arguments they could not otherwise imagine, to experiences they would not otherwise
encounter, to role models they’d probably never meet, and to places well beyond their pocketbooks.

My fixation on reading as a source of knowledge, inspiration, and guidance was reinforced at Hobart College, where a faculty of uncommon quality and devotion to teaching united around the principle that exposure to original texts, from the Bible to Thomas Mann, was the best way to learn. Secondary sources, mere histories of the literature, however good, were derivative and superficial. They deprived one of the pleasures and the challenges of coping with original authorial meaning and intention. They glorified context, but gave short shrift to content.

Hobart’s two-year required, primary-text-only, eighteen-credit Western civilization program thrust me into foreign territory, and I reveled in the intellectual journey.

Ever since, I have urged my colleagues and associates when confronting a challenge to ask: “What would others do in this situation? How has something like this been handled elsewhere? Who are the best thinkers on this subject? Let’s learn from what they can teach us. Let’s read up on this stuff.”

Wherever your work takes you, books, periodicals, and newspapers can be extraordinarily helpful, time-saving guides. And if you wish to communicate well, orally and in writing, there is no better prescription than extensive reading to help you do both.

Staying in close touch with works that have stood the test of time, with writers who weigh their words, and with advocates who respect sound, well-developed arguments keeps your mind awake and alive. It allows you to draw from a deep well of history and insight in helping colleagues cope with the challenges of the day. It renders you a more interesting and engaging human being. It places your preoccupations in a larger and richer context, offering you the freedom to approach problems differently, buoyantly, imaginatively.

In a world of shortcuts and sound bites, where Twitter and instantaneous blogging predominate, I remain old-fashioned.

It is said on a very popular all-news radio station in New York City, WINS: “You give us twenty-two minutes, and we will give you the world.”

Well, I am a long form kind of guy.

A twenty-two-minute world isn’t for me.

Engaging the brightest and most creative minds you can find in any field will keep you lively and informed. It will infuse your leadership with passionate content and inspiring direction. It will broaden your frames of reference and enlarge your range of associations. It will render you a far more sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and interesting person. Leaders with well-used passports and well-thumbed books in their library; leaders comfortable in galleries and concert halls; leaders familiar with history, literature, and language are far more likely to reach sound decisions and mobilize supporters to help implement them.

Seek Work-Life Balance

Seize opportunities, personal and professional, when they present themselves. It is highly unlikely that they will come to you at convenient intervals or in accordance with your carefully drawn career plan. Instead, think of your life in phases that may require you to defer gratification and to sacrifice, at work and at home. Many people can succeed on all fronts during the course of their lives. But I know few who can do so simultaneously all of their lives.

I do recognize the need for there to be some measure of work-life balance. Lincoln Center is extremely generous to those caring for a sick child or parent; those on maternity leave; those afflicted with illness themselves; and those who must be at that important soccer game, parent-teacher conference, or fourth-grade graduation. We offer all kinds of accommodations to where employees need to be physically, and we provide them with the very best technology so that they can reach their colleagues easily wherever they may be located.

But to aspire at any given time for complete harmony between meeting the unpredictable challenges of the workplace and satisfying the often surprising needs of your children, your parents, your spouse, and your friends is an open invitation to frustration.

I know of no easy substitute for constantly juggling the pressures of work and home life. Hopefully, the help of a spouse, parents, and friends will ease the struggle. So can an empathetic employer. Lincoln Center attempts to play precisely that role.

Ask Thoughtful Questions, Listen Intently

How often have you been involved in a conversation in which those participating talk completely past one another, and pauses are not intervals for absorbing what was said, but simply a waiting period before offering one’s own point of view, uninfluenced by other participants?

A key to successful leadership is learning from those closest to problems and challenges. How carefully do you pose questions? How willing are you to wait patiently for responses that may not surface as quickly or as lucidly as you’d like? How ready are you to change your mind? How observant are you of the body language of the respondent? How adept are you in reading between the lines of those you gently and enthusiastically interrogate?

When CEOs guide institutions by engaging their employees and demonstrating respect for them in the process, word spreads quickly. Permission is granted for leaders to emerge from throughout the organization. The collective energy summoned to a cause is most impressive when the entire organization is asked to contribute.

Two stories, one apocryphal, the other real, illustrate the importance of attentive listening and of framing probing questions.

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and his younger brother Walter are both German refugees. They have both resided in America for seventy-six years, and they are very close in age. Walter is two years younger than Henry, who celebrated his ninety-first birthday in 2014. Why is it, then, that Henry still speaks with a thick German accent, while Walter, the eighty-nine-year-old kid brother, betrays hardly any sign of his country of origin? Well, Henry’s joke has it, that is because he doesn’t listen.

Of course, Henry listens extremely well. His unparalleled statecraft and his accumulation of power in the Nixon administration reveal a sharp ear, one very sensitive to the forces swirling around him. His magisterial histories are the work of a distinguished diplomat, historian, and political scientist possessed of an inquisitive mind, given to few.

Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, was asked by Charlie Rose at the end of 2012 what would make for a personal good year in
2013. I was sure Immelt would reference markets to conquer, topline revenue, earnings per share, or an improvement in GE’s disappointing stock price. Instead, his answer was both humbling and penetrating. My recollection is that it went something like this: “I hope that in 2013 I can pose better questions to the brilliant employees of my company and listen more intently than ever before to their answers.”