Leading with Kindness

Overview

By now, many leaders have realized that when it comes to business, nice guys often finish first. Old-fashioned images of corporate callousness and greed have been replaced by a gentler, more human conception of great leadership. But how does one define "kindness? in the context of business? And what is the best way to "use? this deceptively complex notion as a guiding principle to lead an organization successfully into the future?

Far from presenting a naive idea of kindness, this eye-opening book identifies the surprising attributes successful "kind? leaders share. Readers will learn how they can use kindness to:

• motivate employees, committee members, and others

• recognize unique talents while nurturing all employees

• establish a supportive environment

• spur continuous organizational growth

• adapt to change

• stimulate calculated "stretch? and risk-taking

• prepare the next generation of leaders

This realistic book shows leaders how they can use sincerity, honesty, and respect for the good of their organizations.

About the Author

Michael O'Malley (Hamden, CT) is Executive Editor for Business, Economics, and Law at Yale University Press, and adjunct professor at Columbia University Business School.

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Press Release

SUBHEAD:How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results:SUBHEAD

Public TV's Bill Baker Advocates a Kinder, Gentler Kind of Management for the Future Success of American Business

Bob Lane, CEO of John Deere and Company, places a priority on always being honest with customers, investors, and employees. Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons instills confidence in others by treating them in a way that shows he has confidence in them. Roxanne Quimby, founder of Burt's Bees, lets her employees know how thankful and fortunate she feels to have them. While admirable, these three business leaders are not exceptional. Most business leaders genuinely care about their people and local communities, and are committed to core values and larger causes.

That's the good news that Bill Baker, Ph.D. experienced firsthand during his 20 years at the helm of Educational Broadcasting Corp., parent company of WNET-TV (Channel Thirteen) and WLIW-TV (Channel 21). It inspired him to affirm and refine his notion of what honorable bosses can accomplish. With his friend Michael O'Malley, Ph.D. , Baker did extensive research and interviewed dozens of leaders in diverse organizations. They share their insights into strong, effective leadership in LEADING WITH KINDNESS: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results (AMACOM 2008).

"If you happen to be charismatic, great, but that isn't the signature characteristic of a great leader,? Baker contends. "We think kindness is.?

What does "kindness? mean in workplace terms? As Baker and O'Malley stress, kindness is not synonymous with being a sweetheart or a pushover. Instead, kindness is the key to nurturing and reinforcing connections among people engaged in meaningful, reciprocal, and productive working relationships. In the authors' definition, this virtue encompasses six attributes and behaviors:

- Compassion…Staying in touch with workers' everyday challenges and problems.

- Integrity…Reliably acting on established values and keeping promises and confidences.

- Gratitude…Appreciating others for their essential help in keeping a business going.

- Authenticity…Being honest about being oneself and not playing for the crowd.

- Humility…Tempering optimism with realism and accepting responsibility for failures.

- Humor…Tapping the power of laughter to diminish anxieties and bolster group cohesion.

What, specifically, do kind leaders do? Using engaging stories featuring leaders from a range of organizations—Pitney Bowes, Tupperware, The Blackstone Group, Eileen Fisher Clothing, GE, Smucker's, Walt Disney, Rodale Publishing, the Julliard School, John Deere, Time Warner, and Burt's Bees among them—LEADING WITH KINDNESS shows how:

- Kind leaders are framers. They reinforce expectations for employees by establishing clear boundaries, standards of conduct, challenging goals, and organizational values.

- Kind leaders are interpreters. They tell the truth about how each worker and the entire company is doing. They help individuals adapt to change and make sense of their efforts.

- Kind leaders are enablers. They stimulate calculated "stretch? and risk-taking, without sheltering people from their own mistakes. They fight cynicism and facilitate growth.

Baker and O'Malley culminate with a look toward developing tomorrow's leaders, the independent-minded Generation Y. As the authors demonstrate, today's business leaders must instill four qualities in their successors to ensure success: self-confidence, self-control, self-awareness, and self-determination. Compelling and realistic, LEADING WITH KINDNESS leads the way to a prosperous and proud future for American business.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

William F. Baker, Ph.D., is Executive in Residence at Columbia University Business School, as well as president emeritus of Educational Broadcasting Corp. He lives in New York City. Michael O'Malley, Ph.D. , is Executive Editor for Business, Economics, and Law at Yale University Press and adjunct professor at Columbia University Business School. He lives in Hamden, Connecticut.

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About the Authors

WILLIAM F. BAKER, Ph.D. is Executive in Residence at Columbia University Business School and President Emeritus of Educational Broadcasting Corporation, parent company of WNET-TV (Channel Thirteen) and WLIW-TV (Channel 21), where he served for 20 years as Chief Executive Officer. He has been called an icon of public television for producing some of the industry's most respected and popular programs, including Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers Journal, Nature , Cyberchase, and Great Performances. Among numerous honors, he has won seven Emmys and two Columbia Dupont Journalism awards, and was named to the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Management Hall of Fame and the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame.

Prior to public broadcasting, Bill Baker was President of Westinghouse Television and Chairman of Group W. Satellite Communications for almost a decade. He launched the Discovery Channel and the Disney Channel, and got Oprah Winfrey started as a television talk show host. Frequently sought out as an expert on the media, he is also the author of Down the Tube: An Inside Account of the Failure of American Television and the executive producer of a documentary film, The Face: Jesus in Art.

An avid outdoor adventurer and dedicated philanthropist, Baker is Chairman of the National Park Advisory Board, as well as a board member of the Public Broadcasting Service, Rodale, Inc., and Freedom Communications, Inc. He holds a Ph.D. in Communications and Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and eight honorary degrees. Born and raised in Cleveland, Baker lives in New York City with his wife of 39 years, Jeanmarie, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and a former professor at Columbia University.

MICHAEL O'MALLEY, Ph.D. is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University Business School and Executive Editor for Business, Economics, and Law at Yale University Press. Over the course of his 25 years in the field of business education, he has written extensively in the areas of organizational change and leadership. He has edited several acclaimed books, including The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism by John Bogle and Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, among scores of titles. He has also advised more than 100 companies in his parallel career as a human resource consultant.

O'Malley is the author of two previous books, Are You Paid What You're Worth? and Creating Commitment. A native Clevelander, he earned his B.A. from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. O'Malley lives in Hamden, Connecticut, with his wife and two children.

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Goal Setting with Good Sense and Kind Leadership

SUBHEAD:A Few Tips and Reminders from Bill Baker:SUBHEAD

Expectations Matter…

- It doesn't make sense to hold someone accountable, through reward or punishment, for objectives that are poorly defined or poorly communicated.

- Important goals to which people are committed have motivational force. That is, other than performing a directive function, "stretch? goals have the complementary advantage of energizing people to persistently work toward something they want to achieve.

- Setting goals is often mistaken as the end in itself. We all have established goals, believed they were important, and did nothing to meet them. That is because each day our goals compete with other distractions and priorities. It is easy to set goals and much harder to clear the way to attain them. That is where leadership and kindly reminders of what is most important and what must get done come in handy.

- Set goals in the context of thinking big. Too often, goals are grounded in the customary way of doing things in the industry—and there is little sense in expending substantial energy swatting flies. Some companies that find themselves in a comfortable niche are happy with the status quo. But employees don't like to be associated with mediocrity. Leaders who have grander ambitions and ask for more from the workforce are inviting employees to participate in a bigger story than the one to which they are accustomed: that's not a bad invitation!

- Make certain that individual goals do not impair group performance. Most companies temper the potentially detrimental effects of personal pursuits by giving greater weight to group goals in compensation plans.

- Avoid the trap of setting long-term goals without specifying intermediate sub-goals and celebrating incremental achievements. Effort should be self-reinforcing.

- Don't lose sight of the many accomplishments that occur outside the formal goal-setting process. It is impossible to identify everything that will need to be done a year or more in advance. It is essential to recognize achievements that went beyond the call of duty.

Adapted from LEADING WITH KINDNESS: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results by William F. Baker, Ph.D., and Michael O'Malley, Ph.D. (AMACOM 2008).

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Encouraging Ethical Corporate Behaviors with Kindness

SUBHEAD:Lead Employees Not Into Temptation:SUBHEAD

The Truth Matters…

- Don't invite transgressions. Combining impossible goals with tantalizing rewards invites cheating, since there is likely to be no return for playing fairly and achieving. Avoid this bad mix of negative incentives.

- Establish a culture of trust. There is a fine line between judicious oversight and spying. It is important to have good monitoring systems in place so that people act responsibly with the organization's assets and recognize the proper management of those assets as a corporate value. Too loose oversight invites the wasting of assets, or worse. Under too strict oversight, employees will fail to see stewardship as a privilege entrusted to them.

- Underscore the how in addition to the what. The fun of business is trying to figure out how to best satisfy customers' true needs, knowing that if this is done properly, the "what? will follow. Concentrating solely on the "what? may not only encourage aberrant behaviors to meet objectives, but also result in self-defeating behaviors as well. One way to increase profits is to reduce costs by using, for example, lower grade ingredients or materials. But sacrificing quality for short-term financial gains is not a smart way to retain valuable customers.

- Model appropriate behaviors. Ultimately, the measure of anyone—and especially anyone called to lead—is in what he or she does. Remember: People are watching and how you conduct yourself in public will have immeasurable effects on others. Leading with kindness includes acting with integrity—consistently adhering to ethical standards of conduct and the organization's core values.

Adapted from LEADING WITH KINDNESS: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results by William F. Baker, Ph.D., and Michael O'Malley, Ph.D. (AMACOM 2008).

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Building Organizational Resilience

SUBHEAD:What Kind Leaders Do to Help Their People Adapt:SUBHEAD

Growth Matters…

- Provide a moral compass. Life is so much easier when the solution to corporate dilemmas and adversity is simply doing the right thing. It also becomes easier when actions are taken with a clear set of criteria and purposes in mind. Possible responses are narrowed to those that are consistent with corporate values and support the fulfillment of some larger mission through one's work. For better or worse, it is much easier to carry on when backed by the conviction that you did the right thing for the right reasons.

- Encourage an active approach to problem solving. Being well-equipped to handle whatever comes along makes it easier to cope with even the worst case scenarios. Having procedures in place to carefully examine issues, having the required resources and tools to gather information and probe for answers, and having the knowledge and confidence are all critical. Good kind leaders invest substantial time and resources in employee training, process review and drill, and problem-solving procedures.

- Create extensive support networks. Successful kind leaders discourage over-reliance on themselves for answers to all corporate ailments. They don't abandon their own role in providing encouragement and support, but emphasize that the organization itself is a superb reservoir of talented, cooperative colleagues. To encourage exchange among employees, these leaders create cross-company forums to discuss and debate issues and often introduce formal mentoring programs. Knowing you have the willing, competent support of others works wonders to buffer the debilitating effects of adversity.

- Embrace change. Adaptation proceeds more peaceably if people perceive the challenges associated with change as a part of the natural order. The best kind leaders anticipate and welcome change as an opportunity rather than an inconvenience or, even worse, a hardship. An attitude of realistic optimism supports not only organizational resilience, but also a company-wide commitment to continuously pursuing improvements.

Adapted from LEADING WITH KINDNESS: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results by William F. Baker, Ph.D., and Michael O'Malley, Ph.D. (AMACOM 2008).

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Review Quotes

"A must-read for anyone in a management position.? CareerBuilder.com

"One of the Best Leadership Books of 2008 according to LeadershipNow.com.?

"...a powerful vehicle for driving home the reality that the long-term viability of an organization might just rely on leaders who understand what being kind really means.? —Graziadio Business Report

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Cover Copy

"Familiar notions about 'leadership' and 'kindness' are unseated when the terms are redefined by two savvy observers, doctors Bill Baker and Michael O'Malley. Then, with help from a roster of superachievers, Baker and O'Malley do a captivating mash-up, creating a timely concept sure to motivate any ambitious reader who really wants to 'make things happen.'? — Charles Dolan, Chairman, Cablevision Systems

"Kindness, as the authors define it, is a sign of strength, and every organization could use more of it. This book is a thought-provoking guide for leaders, and aspiring leaders, who want to stand out from the crowd and achieve extraordinary things.? — Anne Fisher, Fortune magazine and CNNMoney.com "Ask Annie? workplace columnist

"The American workplace would be a lot more productive, and fun, if only man?agers would follow the advice of this book. Let's hope they do. Baker and O'Malley show us through numerous examples that kindness brings out the best in workers and is the key characteristic of great leaders.? — Susie Gharib, Anchor, PBS-TV's Nightly Business Report

"Baker and O'Malley transcend the muscular clich?s of the endless sports manuals on leadership and vanity reflections of egomaniacal executives to reveal genuinely strong leaders whose success is anchored in their integrity, credibility, vision, insight, inclusion, and fairness. There are no coercive, pampered bullies in this book. I know most of the leaders profiled in this book firsthand and find this book to be accurate and an indisputable reminder that good guys can finish first.? — Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, author of Firing Back and the Senior Associate Dean and Lester Crown Professor of Management, Yale School of Management

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Jacket Copy

But as it turns out, being kind is one of the most crucial attributes of some of the world's most successful business leaders. Far from a euphemism for "soft? or "wishy-washy,? true kindness demonstrates a powerful confidence in oneself and those one leads. And not some intangible quality that one either "has? or doesn't, kindness is an amalgamation of quantifiable, learnable, and refinable traits and skills.

Leading with Kindness identifies six ingredients of kindness—compassion, integrity, gratitude, authenticity, humility, and humor—none of which might readily spring to mind when envisioning the archetypal business leader. But they are absolutely essential to powerful leadership. The book also points out obstacles to each of the six qualities, and (crucially) offers real-world, everyday management and leadership approaches that build and demonstrate each one. For example, an obstacle to compassion is distance. A simple solution is to get out of the executive suite and into the field with the rank and file.

Obvious? Then why doesn't every leader do it?

And why doesn't every leader deal in the truth? "The truth matters,? write authors William Baker and Michael O'Malley. "It would not be kind for leaders to allow others to persist in a world of untruths by misrepresenting how they, others, or the company are doing—good or bad. Kind leaders endorse reality.?

Similarly, while every good leader is eager to promote the growth of his or her charges, truly kind leaders know that part of growth is the experience of failure. Kind leaders will not shelter their employees from every single setback or mistake, but rather offer the response and guidance that will help employees learn from mistakes and unforeseen circumstances, and build knowledge for the future.

Based on interviews with two dozen executives and leaders from corporations worldwide—including John Deere, Disney, Time Warner, Citibank, GE, and Smuckers—the public sector, the cultural arts, the military, and other realms where effective leadership is vital, Leading with Kindness identifies those qualities that help the best leaders:

- Motivate their employees to excellence

- Nurture all employees universally while recognizing unique talents

- Stimulate calculated risk-taking

- Adapt to change

- Prepare the next generation of leaders

You can't assume that you are a respected leader simply because you are nice, fun, and non?threatening. But if you are truly kind—that is, genuinely committed to the welfare of your company and your people through thick and thin—you will reap the broad and sustained benefits of trust, honesty, commitment, and loyalty from every corner of your organization for years to come.

William F. Baker, Ph.D., is President Emeritus of Educational Broadcasting Corporation (Thirteen/WNET and WLIW21) and Executive in Residence at Columbia University Business School.

Michael O'Malley, Ph.D., is Executive Editor for Business, Economics, and Law at Yale University Press, and adjunct professor at Columbia University Business School.

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Excerpt

WHAT KIND LEADERS DO

Enter Lady Macbeth. Reflecting on a witch's prophecy that her husband will become King of Scotland, she wonders if, despite his ambitions, he is too soft, "too full o' th' milk of human kindness,? to do what it will take when the current king, Duncan, drops by.

At least since the time of Shakespeare, many have questioned the awkward alliance between kindness and leadership. Although the imperatives of leadership are not as extreme as murder, they may involve decisions that involve doing what is best for the company at the expense of other concerns: decisions, for example, that can cost others their livelihoods or affect the well-being of entire communities. In these situations, kindness is perceived as a self-defeating obstruction.

In this book, we maintain that kindness and leadership are complementary, and that this combination specifically gives a leader a crucial edge. Our conclusions are based on our personal experiences, an understanding of the academic literature, and interviews with many business leaders who have quietly made a difference to their companies, their industries, and, in some cases, their country. We don't pretend that our examination covers all facets of leadership. But we believe our inquiry goes to the heart of what it means to be an effective leader and that our exploration of kindness is a refreshing antidote to the sterility of much leadership theory.

We admittedly had our reservations about using the word kind to describe a special sort of leader because it conveys a softness from which many in business recoil, even though it seems odd to distance oneself from such a positive trait. We chose to retain it for three reasons. First, kindness is universally understood as a virtue.1 It is recognized as an essential ingredient of humaneness regardless of religious or ethnic heritage and has a well-deserved role in human affairs.

Second, it approximates in meaning a set of attributes that we found in successful leaders. No one word can capture everything there is to know about any person, but kindness appropriately summarizes a constellation of behaviors we have observed among a group of effective leaders.

Third, the leaders with whom we spoke had no difficulty with the term. Indeed, they rather liked it. As long as we properly explain its meaning, each is very pleased to be called kind.

INDUSTRIAL AGE BOSSES

Kindness is not the first word we associate with business. The image of business still largely includes old scenes from industrial America in the early twentieth century: the age of hard work and tough bosses. As the machines heated, spun, milled, and bore, managerial overlords paced factory floors counting the output and pressing employees to produce more and more. This was not the place for weak-kneed supervisors and executives. Forbearance was not a principle of Taylorism and the new scientific management, which adduced tightly choreographed movements between man and machine.2 The goal was to keep production lines efficiently moving by any means necessary. The only thing worse than workers who wouldn't work was a soft manager who couldn't make them.

Today, the pressure for unremitting productivity from the forces of fierce competition in the global marketplace continues. New, unforeseen market entrants can suddenly emerge from anywhere in the world with a new technology, better business model, or improved product, to exploit a company's weaknesses and rob it of customers.3 Meanwhile, traditional competitors are always laying in wait for a missed order, a slip in quality, or a lapse in service. The margin of error is very thin, and befuddled, wishy-washy executives who can't manage to the numbers are expendable. We would agree, but the premises of operational precision, rigorous financial oversight, and market wariness that belie organizational success often lead in an unpromising direction: back to the lords of the shop floor and a falsely constructed ideal of an overly severe leader.

We mistake the need for precision with the need for managerial control, the need for oversight with the need for corporate autocracy, and the need for vigilance with the need for icy objectivity and personal detachment. We conclude that what every business presumably needs is a leader who is calculative, single-minded in the financial purposes of the enterprise, and, perhaps, competitive to a fault: to the point of being overbearingly aggressive and belligerent. In this new age of competitiveness, we assume that managers who are incapable or unwilling to grimly snip away at expenses, to relentlessly push employees, and to be unyieldingly tough are too compromised to succeed in a harsh and unforgiving business world. As our erstwhile leaders did in the industrial age, today's leaders ostensibly, too, must be uncompromisingly and dispassionately focused on the prize of productivity gains and wealth creation for shareholders. Everything else is an investment or expense.

The abiding impression of the modern manager remains haunted by images of past generations of overcontrolling thugs: the new company man or woman who has just the right amount of indifference and interpersonal distance to make the unthinkable possible. He must get people to do their jobs the very best they can—without caring too deeply about their burdens. Whatever semblance of decency that emerges is part of a canned, formulaic concoction designed to get results. Those who are unsuccessful at feigning concern are sent off to communication classes where they are shown how to listen harder and to demonstrate empathic awareness through carefully crafted questions and statements.

Since many employees have had to endure the dismissive and erratic treatment of "shouters? during their tenures, our point is proven by that experience. We have a very long way to go before universal decency prevails within management. Why else would more than twelve states now be contemplating laws that allow workers to sue their bosses for "threatening, intimidating or humiliating? behavior, "repeated infliction of verbal abuse,? or "gratuitous sabotage . . . of a person's work performance?? Discriminating against specific groups has been outlawed for some time, but states have now turned their attention to those who have been referred to as "the equal opportunity asshole.?4 These are the managers who indiscriminately abuse everyone. Most disconcerting, however, is that despite living in an era of unprecedented economic progress and scientific enlightenment, management practice remains primitive, with the incidence of bullying in the workplace increasing, not decreasing as one might have surmised.5

Neither of the authors prefers external regulation and law for influencing behavior. We prefer a positive approach, with voluntary acceptance as a first course of action: that is, a method that convinces managers that there are far more dignified and effective ways to get results than by inculcating scream-and-holler cultures. Winning Super Bowl coach Tony Dungy, for example, doesn't curse, sarcastically chew out players, or rant on the sidelines. He believes he can get his team to compete by calmly providing direction and treating players with respect. Interestingly, this demeanor prevented him from getting a head coaching job for many years.6 We need more Tony Dungys, who, in the process of trying to perfect their own lives, set examples for others.

The real disgrace behind the new state laws under consideration is that too many executives who are in a position to do something about mismanagement within their ranks either don't know what is going on or refuse to do anything about it. Organizational leaders who fail to step in when people need them most are culpable.7 It may be time, as both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal recently announced, for a new type of leader who has cast aside the largesse of ego and exercises power in more humane ways.8 This is tantamount to removing the crook from the hands of royalty, where it once symbolized authority and dominion, and passing it to the shepherd, where it became a symbol of protection and a humbler, more subtle form of power.9 The less invasive leadership style symbolized by the shepherd's staff reminds us of a quote attributed to Margaret Thatcher: "Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.?

WHAT KINDNESS IS NOT

No, kindness is not a word that spontaneously comes to mind when we think of business, and its acceptance as a workplace virtue is made more quaint by highly salient experiences we have all had with loathsome, capricious bosses who somehow manage to escape detection and, inexplicably, ascend the corporate ladder. The quality we have singled out for study, then, is not an obvious one. Before proceeding further, however, let us briefly say what kindness is not, in order to clear up some common misconceptions. As a Latin proverb suggests, giving an account of what something isn't helps to clarify what it is.10

There Is More to Personality Than Kindness

Leaders exhibit many qualities besides kindness. It is, for example, possible to be hard-nosed and kind, to be cantankerous and kind, to be analytical and kind, or to be gregarious and kind. Kindness comes packaged with many other traits. Thus, leaders'own unique qualities give them a distinctive style. We assert that kindness is part of a good leader's constitution and that others are able to brush aside some of the other qualities that leaders possess in order to see their compassionate centers. Therefore, many different types of people are kind.

We believe that the endless, and tiresome, search for the perfect leadership personality is terribly misguided and ultimately fails to explain what leaders really do and what makes them effective. It is best to think of kindness as a key ingredient in a robust stew. The character of the stew is defined by all of the ingredients in combination, but omit just this one and the fine flavor is lost.

Kind Leaders Aren't Sissies

Part of the problem is that often when we think of people who are kind, they are sometimes overly so—and too much of a good thing is harmful. These individuals are indulgent and na?ve; their benevolence is often the target of calculating, homoeconomicus looking for a free ride or easy gain. By kind, we do not mean sucker or pushover. Nor do we imply a warmly permissive leader whose underlings run wild.

Kindness, like many other traits, has an optimal level that makes it a virtue as opposed to a vice. Too little or too much transforms it into something ugly or suspect. Too much courage can make one foolhardy, too much pride can make one haughty, too much politeness can make one officious, too much love can make one covetous, and too much kindness can make one a dupe.

Kindness Is Not the Same as Likability

Kindness doesn't preclude a full range of expression, including, at times, displeasure, nor should it be interpreted as excessive amicability. Compare it to the relationship between a parent and child; kindness implies an interpersonal closeness and fondness, but it comes with other baggage. It requires mutual responsibilities that a day at the beach with a buddy does not. This is because parenting goes well beyond common courtesy, the sharing of intimacies, and companionship.

At any given time, a parent can plummet in the likability ratings faster than a discredited televangelist. Parents are supervisors who manage their children with some of the same modus operandi as businesses: There are daily responsibilities and performance expectations that are to be executed and met by people with different capabilities, motives, and temperaments. Every day, like it or not, parents are called upon to get the job done. Whereas evaluations of likability may ebb and flow, it is hard to imagine succeeding in this or any interpersonal endeavor without the presumption of kindness to motivate our best intentions and to temper our worst impulses.

As in business, it often is possible for parents to get results without much skill. It is always possible to make people do things through threats of punishment and brute force. But those parents who repeatedly rely upon such measures would hardly be described as "good.? Even if such tactics never quite reached the level of abuse, the one-dimensional style is the stuff of satire. Getting results in its various forms is not the sole criterion for parental (or managerial) success. Even so, results fed on a strict diet of fear are fleeting. Children, like employees, are discriminating and know when they are beyond the vigilance and control of others, free to do their own thing (or, in extreme cases, get even)—sometimes in spite of themselves. The goal of leadership is never really to just get results, but to increase the value of the company over time using agreeable means.

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Table of Contents

FOREWORD, ix

PREFACE, xi

INTRODUCTION, 1

CHAPTER 1

WHAT KIND LEADERS DO, 11

CHAPTER 2

WHO KIND LEADERS ARE, 37

CHAPTER 3

EXPECTATIONS MATTER, 77

CHAPTER 4

THE TRUTH MATTERS, 119

CHAPTER 5

GROWTH MATTERS, 155

CHAPTER 6

PREPARING THE NEXT GENERATION OF LEADERS, 193

APPENDIX, 217

INDEX, 229

ABOUT THE AUTHORS, 237

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