Leadership Avoided? Rometty vs. Augusta

If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation.

Abigail Adams

Abigail always spoke her mind and got right to the point. She's been on my mind the last few days because of the serendipitous convergence of two separate events.

On the national scene, this is week of the Masters golf championship played at the Augusta National Golf Club...or should we say the epitome of the "old boys" club. Locally, here in South Florida, Women Executive Leadership held its regular book club meeting. WEL works to put more women on corporate boards and in executive positions.

So what's going on?

 

The Augusta facts are fairly simple. The golf course opened in 1933. Women are not allowed to be members although they can play the course by invitation. The club excluded Blacks until 1990. IBM has been one of the major corporate sponsors for the Masters tournament at Augusta and the four previous CEOs were invited to join. Current CEO, Virginia M. Rometty, has not been invited.

The WEL book club discussed Knowing Your Value: Women, Money, and Getting What You're Worth, by Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC's Morning Joe. Her book discusses the struggles of women, even those in top positions, to get paid what they are worth or at least comparable to men who hold the same positions.

When the women's movement re-emerged in the early 1960s many of us believed the days of sexism were numbered just like de jure segregation. But as Mika and Virginia and many of us have discovered, we still have a way to go (despite what the cigarette commercial told us.) Not asking for what we want has been a major stumbling block for women. In our book club discussions several women pointed out how they had overcome this barrier -- all very inspiring and great role models and path breakers.

But wait a minute...It's 2012. 2012. Not 1933 when no one saw any problem keeping women out of a club. Not 1957 when we first met June Cleaver being the perfect housewife/mom. No, it's 2012 and not only is it time to end the nonsense of unequal pay which hurts companies who say they embrace diversity and empowerment and engagement and...

But where are IBM and Virginia Rometty in all this? Can you imagine the same situation if Augusta still didn't admit Blacks and IBM showed up to sponsor the Masters with a Black CEO?

Let's go back to Abigail again for some more of her conventional wisdom:

Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken.

Here's where a little leadership could come in. What if the CEO and her board simply said, very politely and ladylike of course, "Sorry, guys. We won't sponsor an event at your discriminating club."

But if such a conversation took place, it hasn't come to light yet. IBM's 14-member Board which boasts 3 women including Rometty, has a wonderful opportunity to take some leadership here. It's not about whether Rometty would like to be a member or not personally. Reportedly she's not an avid golfer. This is about standing up and saying, "This is not the way we do things at IBM. We don't need to have our name associated with your troglodyte policy. We'll look for other events to sponsor that reflect our corporate culture."

In fact, IBM has two pointed statements on its website, taking this exact stance:

Employee well-being and diversity

Employee well-being is incorporated in every aspect of IBM’s global business, from our strategic and business planning to our operations. IBM also has a longstanding commitment to diversity and considers it a competitive advantage in serving clients.

This strong foundation brings us to where we are today...This is the point where we can take best advantage of our differences — for innovation. Our diversity is a competitive advantage and consciously building diverse teams helps us drive the best results for our clients.

So now's the time for some leadership...from both men and women; the IBM Board and CEO, the Augusta membership, every woman who has yet to demand what she is worth, and every man or woman who has been complicit in keeping the biases alive.

Or we may just have ot invoke Abigail's rallying cry and...

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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.

Author: Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers

Washington casts a long shadow... Do you?

The US celebrated President's Day this week with the usual patriotic events – giant sales at the malls. If you were out in the crush of traffic or just enjoying a day off from work it was easy to forget the holiday put together former February birthday celebrations for Presidents Abe Lincoln and George Washington. Today the holiday has become a generic occasion to honor all the US presidents…including the ubiquitous Abe and George ads hawking flat screen TVs and the latest fashions.

About once a decade, C-SPAN conducts a survey amonghistorians and presidential experts and ranks all the presidents. The 2009 survey findings are relevant and interesting for anyone anywhere who is a leader. Scholars use these leadership traits to rank the presidents:

• Public Persuasion
• Crisis Leadership
• Economic Management
• Moral Authority
• International Relations
• Administrative Skills
• Relations with Congress
• Vision/Setting An Agenda
• Pursued Equal Justice For All
• Performance Within Context of Times

Moving from the political to the organizational realm, you might want to exchange Relations with Congress for something like Relations with Stakeholders and you might want to add some other topics. For the most part, these are a good list of critical leadership traits.

How would you stack up? 

Would you be able to come close to the sort of scores George Washington racks up survey after survey? Washington's stature has grown and shrunk over the years. In his own time he was worshiped and vilified. Presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin commented recently that she would find it difficult to really get to know him and he has certainly eluded most biographers.

Yet Washington was a personification of the American dream of the self-made man. As a teenager he began jotting down advice about how to conduct himself. He did not have the formal education of many of the other founders and often felt he lacked their polish with language. He engaged Alexander Hamilton and James Madison as ghost writers to turn his thoughts into the acceptable style of the day.

Yet, when army officers threatened rebellion in the 1783 Newburgh Conspiracy, he was eloquent enough on his own. Richard Norton Smith describes it this way…

None of this had much effect until the general retrieved from his pocket a congressional message promising early redress of legitimate complaints. He fumbled with the paper for a few seconds, then reached again into his coat to fetch a pair of eyeglasses. Begging the indulgence of his men, he explained to a stunned audience, "I have already grown gray in the service of my country. I am now going blind." Instantly, rebellion melted into tears.

Examine the areas where Washington rated number 1 with the scholars:

Economic Management

Moral Authority

International Relations

Administrative Skills

Are any of these areas where you excel? The international relations category may not be germane if your organization is not working globally. However, the other three are critical for any successful leader whom we would want to follow.

Economic management: Whether for-profit or not, in today’s economic climate, you must manage the finances of the organization prudently. You must invest in areas that will help you continue to grow and develop while eliminating inefficiency and eliminating unnecessary expenses.

Moral Authority: This is the essence of the Leader’s shadow. Who are you as a person? Do you perform with integrity? Are you trustworthy? Reliable? Do you care about people? Do you inspire people to be their best selves?

Administrative Skills: Can you manage people, processes, and priorities? Do you delegate, motivate, and coach people? Do you turn vision and mission into reality? Do you create a working environment where employees are fully engaged?

I suggest you spend a little time looking through the lists and see where your favorites (and not so favorites) score on each of the issues. Try to remove your ideological and political blinders and consider each president in his leadership role. No matter what country you call home, these attributes make a good checklist for leadership. What can you learn from them? How would your employees or peers rate you?

What shadow are you casting?

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© Rebecca Staton-Reinstein and Advantage Leadership, Inc.

Link to survey: http://tinyurl.com/7arjufg

(note: quote from Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation. Richard Norton Smith. Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.)

I NEED YOUR HELP: I'm beginning research for my new book on the influence of leaders on their organizations (Washington's Shadow) and I'm interested in your experiences or ideas for case studies. Drop me a note: Rebecca@AdvantageLeadership.com  

Learn more about Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers (http://www.ConventionalWisdomCenter.com  and visit our Author Page on Amazon. (http://tinyurl.com/RSRpage )

Sign up for our Conventional Wisdom blog and read this and other leadership stories and tips. http://tinyurl.com/yk7bgtn  

Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Ph.D., President

Advantage Leadership, Inc.

1835 NE Miami Gardens Drive, Suite 152

North Miami Beach, FL 33179

http://www.AdvantageLeadership.com  

Rebecca@AdvantageLeadership.com

Are you casting a shadow like Washington or…?

Headlines bombard us about executive pay, the tax code, and growing disparity between rich and poor. Pundits pontificate "They should or shouldn't do this." We react based on our own point of view.

But what about a leader stepping forward and taking action?

I was chatting with such a leader the other day. (I can’t reveal his name or other identifying particulars because they are not public yet.) He’s the top official of a small city suffering like so many others in this economy. Revenues are down, demands from residents and businesses are still high, and layoffs and service suspension have become the norm.

Of course he’s fighting back looking at ways to keep the city viable, growing, and innovative. He is trying to keep morale high for city workers who must meet demands, enforce codes, and keep the city running.

But this guy is going the extra mile at a time when it’s out of fashion. He floated the idea among the department heads and managers about taking voluntary furloughs…days off without pay. No big fanfare, no announcements in the local papers, no breathless reports on the local news. Just an idea. "Let's make a small sacrifice to help our city through a tough time."

He was the first to sign up to ease the city’s budget woes. He knows the pain people are suffering because in another recession he was laid off from his city job. So far a couple of department heads have also stepped forward and more are expected to do so as word spreads.

Now the cynics among us are saying, “of course it’s no big deal. He can afford it and will probably take a nice vacation. It’s just symbolic.”

I disagree…not just because I know the guy and he’s sincere. He’s taking a concrete action and setting an example for the rest of the city leaders. He’s walking the talk…something people say is important.

The official is employing "Shadow of the Leader."

Shadow of the Leader is an observation that people in authority through their likes, dislikes, treatment of others, language, personal preferences, beliefs, and values shape the culture of the organization. Employees watch the leader for clues about what’s important.

Although the idea is not new, the first systematic study was done by Larry Senn in his 1970 doctoral dissertation. (In full disclosure, Shadow of the Leader was the subject of my own dissertation in 1979.)

Creating a culture is one of the most important functions of a leader. Whatever example he or she sets will determine whether the organization achieves its stated vision, mission, values, and goals or not. We take our lead from what the leader does, NOT what he or she says…human nature.

In his first inaugural address George Washington stated he would serve without a salary. Congress in its wisdom convinced him to take the salary based on the republican principle that an official who was not getting compensation would be prone to corruption.

It was Washington’s desire to stay above the fray, always display character and rectitude, and set an example for others to follow. He knew his every move would be watched and used to set a precedent for future presidents.

If we are serious about our visions, missions, values, and goals and about leading our organizations, whether a tiny team or a vast country, understanding the power of our shadow and stepping up to take the next right action is absolutely necessary.

So hats off to the city official and those who extend his shadow to help their city in a time of need.

What shadow are you casting?

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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein,  Ph.D., President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.

Learn more about Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform and Progress Like the Founding Fathers and visit our Author Page on Amazon.

 

Don't know much about historeeee...

You may not remember the old pop song with that refrain but it could be the theme song of way too many people. My sister called the other night and told me about a meeting she went to in her town. The discussion got pretty hot and heavy and one woman pulled out her pocket-sized copy of the Constitution and waved it around as she made her points, disagreeing with whatever was being said.

Now my sister is not the shy retiring type that I am -  ;-)  - and so she asked her, "Did you actually read the Constitution?" "Well, no...but I know what it says..." and went on with her harangue, misquoting and mangling the document -- rhetorically not physically.

To my sister and me, it was a reminder us of being dragged off to tent revivals by our grammaw where various lay preachers would thump the good book, tell us what it said, and threaten us if we doubted them.

The problem with the thumpers is that in the words of the founding fathers, the constitution, or the bible or other holy books, you can cherry pick phrases that agree with your beliefs and ignore those that don't. If your audience doesn't know any better and hasn't studied the details themselves, you can say just about anything. Psychologist know that if the idea is repeated often enough, you will come to believe if, even when faced with hard facts to the contrary.

Here's an example from a letter to USA Today (7/1/10) from a writer commenting on the passing of Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Our Founding Fathers did not intend congressional positions to be life-long ones. They felt that it was the duty of our leaders to give of their time and manage their states temporarily, and that this was in the best interests of their constituents...

We have senators...[who] have become professional politicians.

He goes on to support term limits AND age limits.

There are many good arguments for and against term limits...but how the founding fathers "felt" is not among them. There were among the founders those who saw it as their duty (or privilege) to serve in government for a while and then return to private life. George Washington is a good example.

But not all the "fathers" followed that path nor believed it was the best path. Three examples from three different political philosophies come to mind. Patrick Henry was one of the most powerful professional politicians in Virginia and served in a variety of positions in the state including the governorship. He was a strong "states rights" defender and foe of the new federal Constitution because it removed the absolute power of the states.

John Adams started out as a lawyer but was soon drawn into the Continental Congress and became a professional politician, serving as a representative in the Continental Congress, and as a diplomat in France and England. With the establishment of the new federal government he became Vice President and then President. He was a Federalist and only left office when defeated by Jefferson in the election of 1800.

James Madison beginning in his mid-twenties was only out of public office for a couple of years. He served in county and state legislatures, the Continental Congress, worked with Alexander Hamilton and Ben Franklin to engineer the Constitutional Convention, served in the new Congress, was Secretary of State under Jefferson, and finally served as a two-term president. Although starting out with a strong nationalist/federalist bent, he moved away from this by Washington's second term and worked along side Jefferson to found the Republican Party (which later morphed into the Democratic Party.)

My point is that the letter writer didn't know some basic history, which he could have discovered in a  history book, on the web, or (in the olden days) in school. But that seems too hard. I recently set my Google Alerts to look for references to the Founding Fathers -- everybody adopts them to prove their points. I'm on a quest to confront ignorance with facts.

The founding fathers were as complex, complicated, and conniving as any modern politician or leader. They were humans. They had their points of greatness and their follies. We should admire them, not because we can find some words they uttered that fit our political views but because of what they did, sometimes in spite of themselves, to create a system of government that works and is self-correcting through the will of the people.

Before you adopt their words to prove yourself right, read the entire body of their work. Learn what books they were reading and what philosophers influenced their thinking. Know what was going on in the wider world and in their world.

Learn a little more about historeeeee....

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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, President , Advantage Leadership, Inc.

Want to know a little more about historeee and contemporary leaders? Check out Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers. Available on Amazon.

Want to read a couple of chapters first? Send an email to Rebecca@AdvantageLeadership.com with "Chapters" in the subject line.

223 years -- good enough track record?

223 years ago in May 1787, the U.S. Constitutional Convention opened on May 25 and began its debates. They were wrestling with how to form an effective republican government. They were responding to crises of huge proportions; a national legislature unable to act because of deep divisions, massive government debt, widespread foreclosures, foreign enemies prepared to strike, and extensive domestic strife.

Sound familiar?

On May 29, Edmund Randolph put forth the Virginia Plan -- authored by James Madison -- as an outline for the constitutional debates. Deliberations raged for four long months in the Philadelphia heat. At the end the produced the U.S. Constitution that was ratified the following year after extensive, rancorous debate in state ratifying conventions. This historic document is a strategic plan that has stood the test of time.

A few years ago, author David McCullough gave a speech at a leadership seminar entitled, "Knowing History and Knowing Who We Are." In it he quoted Daniel Boorstin, the late Librarian of Congress, saying 'trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.' McCullough continued, "We're raising a lot of cut flowers and trying to plant them...One of the truths of history...is that nothing ever had to happen the way it happened...We just don't know how things are going to turn out for us, they [the revolutionary generation] didn't either...[John Adams in a letter to his wife wrote,] 'We can't guarantee success in this war, but we can do something better. We can deserve it.' Think how different that is from the attitude today when all that matters is success."

McCullough goes on to decry our lack of knowledge, much less understanding, of history and concludes, "History isn't just something that ought to be taught...or encouraged because it's going to make us a better citizen." [It will make us a better citizen, a more thoughtful and understanding human being, and will cause us to behave better.] History "should be taught for pleasure: The pleasure of history, like art or music or literature, consists of an expansion of the experience of being alive, which is what education is largely about."

What pleasure, guidance or understanding can you gain from the history of the making of the U.S. Constitution? What pragmatic lessons are there for your leadership efforts? According to many contemporary executives, there is a lot to learn. I interviewed 20 of them as well as poured over the records of the Constitutional Convention. I discovered the common strategic approaches of historic and modern leaders as they work to deserve success.

Here's what former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had to say:

Thank you for sharing with me your new book Conventional Wisdom: How Today's Leaders Plan, Perform, and Progress Like the Founding Fathers. Your research into the planning sessions of the Constitutional Convention and the struggles that our framers of the Constitution faced has been cleverly weaved into the strategies of modern business. I am pleased to have your book.

I have been persuaded to reopen a "secret" webpage for a limited time so you can take advantage of a special offer and improve your own performance and learn from these historic and modern mentors. I did it myself. The very process of writing the book was a major learning experience. The insights I gained and applied helped me survive the economic downturn and thrive now that things are improving. You can do the same.

Discover your own conventional wisdom... Click here for the special offer.

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(c) Rebecca Staton-Reinstein, Ph.D., President, Advantage Leadership, Inc.