How Great Leaders Think

by Lee G Bolman

  THE FAMILY: CARING AND LOVE

  A central theme of the human resource frame—improving the fit between the individual and the organization—is possible only when leaders care about the people they lead. Caring—one person’s compassion and concern for another—is the primary purpose and the ethical glue that holds a family together. A compassionate family or community requires servant-leaders concerned with the needs and wishes of members and stakeholders. This commitment to caring creates a challenging obligation for leaders to understand and to safeguard the collective well-being. The gift of the servant-leader is love.

  Love is largely absent from most modern corporations. Few managers would use the word in any context more profound than their feelings about food, family, films, or games. They shy away from love’s deeper meanings, fearing both its power and its risks. Caring begins with knowing; it requires listening, understanding, and accepting. It progresses through a deepening sense of appreciation, respect, and ultimately love.

  People talk openly about love at Southwest Airlines. As former president Colleen Barrett reminisced, “Love is a word that isn’t used often in Corporate America, but we used it at Southwest from the beginning.” The word love is woven into the culture. They fly out of Love Field in Dallas; their symbol on the New York Stock Exchange is LUV; the employee newsletter is called Luv Lines; and their twentieth anniversary slogan was “Twenty Years of Loving You.”7 They hold an annual “Heroes of the Heart” ceremony to honor members of the Southwest family who have gone above and beyond even Southwest’s high call of duty. There are, of course, ups and downs in any family, and the airline industry certainly experiences both. Through life’s peaks and valleys, love holds people—both employees and passengers—together in a caring community.

  In the first month after Marilyn Carlson Nelson joined the Carlson Companies, the travel and entertainment conglomerate (including, for example, Radisson and TGI Friday’s) her father had founded, she went with him to hear MBA students from the University of Minnesota talk about the Carlson business. She asked them how they saw the company. At first, no one wanted to answer. Finally, one student said it was perceived as a sweatshop that didn’t care about people. She decided at that moment that the company’s culture had to change. When she became CEO, she set out to create a company that “cared for customers by creating the most caring environment for its employees.”8

  A key test of that commitment came on 9/11, three years after she became CEO. Aviation was grounded, and the travel industry was in a state of chaos. Carlson got on the phone with the company’s leadership from around the world and told them just to make decisions based on the credo: take care of your employees first, your customers second, your competitors’ customers next, and, finally, anything you can do for the community. She was amazed at the outpouring of energy and creativity. A hotel near the Twin Towers turned its ballroom into a relief station that provided food and shelter for first responders.9 Amid the trauma of 9/11, “Carlsonians” felt a sense of empowerment and pride that they were able to do something positive.

  For those who see caring as a distraction or a dubious investment, organizations such as Southwest Airlines and the Carlson Companies demonstrate a simple truth: if you care about your people, they are much more likely to care about you—and their work.

  THE JUNGLE: JUSTICE AND POWER

  Politics and politicians are routinely viewed as objects of scorn—often for good reason. Is there any ethical consideration associated with the political frame? We believe there is: a commitment to justice. In a world of competing interests and scarce resources, leaders are continually compelled to make trade-offs. They cannot give everyone everything they want, but they can honor a value of fairness in making decisions about who gets what. Robert C. Solomon sees justice as the ultimate virtue in corporations, because fairness—the perception that employees, customers, and investors are all getting their due—is the glue that holds things together.10 Nothing is more corrosive in a family, an organization, or a society than a widespread perception that corruption is undermining fairness.

  Justice is often hard to define, and disagreement about its application is inevitable. The key gift that leaders can offer in pursuit of justice is power—the capacity for constituents to make a difference in things they care about. People with a voice in key decisions are far more likely to feel a sense of fairness because they had a say and they better understand how the decision was made. Leaders who hoard power produce powerless organizations. People stripped of power look for ways to fight back: passive resistance, withdrawal, sabotage, or angry militancy. Giving power liberates energy for more productive use. If people have a sense of efficacy and an ability to influence their surroundings, they are more likely to direct their energy and intelligence toward making a contribution instead of making trouble. In their excellent book The Idea-Driven Organization, Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder mount a compelling case for the contributions frontline workers can make when management listens to their ideas, instead of issuing top-down instructions to do things the workers know are wrong.11

  During the Reagan administration, House Speaker “Tip” O’Neill was a constant thorn in the side of the president. O’Neill called Reagan “a cheerleader for selfishness.” Reagan returned the shot by comparing O’Neill to Pac-Man: “a round thing that consumes money.” But Reagan also spoke at a fundraiser to support the O’Neill Library at Boston College,12 and they carved out a mutually just agreement: they would fight ferociously for their independent interests, but stay civil and find fairness wherever possible. They had a rule: “After six o’clock, we’re friends, whatever divisiveness the political battle has produced during working hours.” Both men gave each other the gift of power. During one acrimonious public debate between the two, Regan reportedly whispered, “Tip, can we pretend it’s six o’clock?”13

  Power and authorship are related; autonomy, space, and freedom are important in both. Still, there is an important distinction between the two. Artists, authors, and craftspeople can experience authorship while working alone. Power, in contrast, is meaningful only in relation to others. It is the capacity to wield influence and get things to happen on a broader scale.

  The gift of power is important at multiple levels. As individuals, people want the power to control their immediate environment and the factors that impinge directly on them. Many traditional workplaces still suffocate their employees with time clocks, rigid rules, and authoritarian bosses. A global challenge at the group level is responding to ethnic, racial, cultural, and gender diversity. Gallos, Ramsey, and colleagues get to the heart of this issue: “Systems are most often designed by dominant group members to meet their own needs,”14 which often means they systematically exclude others who are not “like us.”

  Justice requires that leaders seek to empower the powerless—ensuring access to decision making, creating internal advocacy groups, building diversity into information and incentive systems, and strengthening career opportunities.15 All this happens only with a rock-solid commitment from top management.

  Justice also has important implications for the increasingly urgent question of sustainability: How long can a production or business process last before it collapses as a result of the resource depletion or environmental damage it produces? Decisions about sustainability inevitably involve trade-offs among the interests of constituencies that differ in role, place, and time. How do we balance our company’s profitability against damage to the environment, or current concerns against those of future generations? Organizations with a commitment to justice will take these dilemmas seriously and look for ways to engage and empower diverse stakeholders in making choices.

  THE TEMPLE: FAITH AND SIGNIFICANCE

  The central theme of the symbolic frame is the way humans discover and create meaning in an ambiguous and chaotic world. Leaders can build and sustain meaning by fostering faith in an organization and its work. Like a temple, an organization can be seen as a sacred place,
an expression of human aspirations and hope, a monument to faith in human possibility. A temple is a gathering place for a community of people with shared traditions, values, and beliefs. Members of a community may be diverse in many ways (age, background, economic status, personal interests), but they are tied together by shared faith and bonded by a sanctified spiritual covenant. In work organizations, faith is strengthened if individuals feel that the organization is characterized by such durable values as excellence, caring, and justice. Above all, people must believe that the organization is doing something worth doing—fulfilling a calling that adds value to the world.

  Significance is partly about the work itself, but even more about how the work is embraced. This point is made by an old story about three stonemasons giving an account of their work. The first said that he was cutting stone. The second said that he was building a cathedral. The third said simply that he was “serving God.”

  Temples need spiritual leaders. This does not mean leaders who promote religion or a particular theology, but leaders who bring a genuine concern for the human spirit. The dictionary defines spirit as “the intelligent or immaterial part of man,” “the animating or vital principal in living things,” and “the moral nature of humanity.” Spiritual leaders help people find meaning, hope, and faith in work and help them answer fundamental questions that have confronted humans of every time and place: Who am I as an individual? Who are we as a people? What is the purpose of my life, of our collective existence? What ethical principles should we follow? What legacy will we leave?

  Spiritual leaders offer the gift of significance, rooted in confidence that the work is precious, that devotion and loyalty to a beloved institution can offer hard-to-emulate intangible rewards. Work is exhilarating and joyful at its best, and arduous, frustrating, and exhausting in less happy moments. Many adults embark on their careers with enthusiasm, confidence, and a desire to make a contribution. Some never lose that spark, but too many do. They become frustrated with sterile or toxic working conditions and discouraged by how hard it is to make a difference or even to know if they have made one. Tracy Kidder puts it well in writing about teachers: “Good teachers put snags in the river of children passing by, and over time, they redirect hundreds of lives. There is an innocence that conspires to hold humanity together, and it is made up of people who can never fully know the good they have done.”16 The gift of significance helps people sustain their faith rather than burn out and abandon work that has lost its meaning.

  Significance is built through the use of many expressive and symbolic forms: rituals, ceremonies, stories, and music. An organization without a rich symbolic life grows empty and barren. The magic of special occasions is vital in building significance into collective life. Medtronic’s Mission and Medallion ceremony for new employees offers a simple but powerful example. The presence of the CEO, the sharing of stories, and the gift of the bronze medallion all speak to the significance of the work and the faith that sustains it, while adding symbolic depth and magic to a new employee’s induction process.

  During Burke’s reign as CEO of Johnson & Johnson, his concern that the Credo might become mere window dressing prompted him to initiate a series of meetings he called the Credo Challenge. He brought in managers and told them, “If you do not believe in the Credo, and you aren’t urging your employees to abide by it, then it is an act of pretension. In that case, you should take it off the wall of your office and throw it away.”17 The process stimulated thought and debate that ultimately revitalized the company’s commitment to its time-honored values. Burke’s concern that the credo would decay into window dressing seemed justified more recently during Bill Weldon’s tenure as CEO. Even though Weldon insisted that Johnson & Johnson was still committed to its Credo, a series of scandals made it clear that something had been lost along the way.

  When ceremony and ritual are authentic and attuned, they fire the imagination, evoke insight, and touch the heart. Ceremony weaves past, present, and future into life’s tapestry. Ritual helps us face and comprehend life’s everyday shocks, triumphs, and mysteries. Both help us experience the unseen web of significance that ties a community together. When inauthentic, such occasions become meaningless, repetitious, and alienating—wasting our time, disconnecting us from work, and splintering us from one another. “Community must become more than just gathering the troops, telling the stories, and remembering things past. Community must also be rooted in values that do not fail, values that go beyond the self-aggrandizement of human leaders.”18

  Stories give flesh to shared values and sacred beliefs. Everyday life in organizations brings many heartwarming moments and dramatic encounters. Transformed into stories, these events fill an organization’s treasure chest with lore and legend. Told and retold, they draw people together and connect them with the significance of their work. Lou Gerstner at IBM and Alan Mulally at Ford both found inspiration in the stories of legendary founders—Thomas J. Watson Sr. and Henry Ford—who had built great businesses decades earlier.

  Max De Pree, famed both as both a business leader and an author of elegant books on leadership, underscored the role of faith in business: “Being faithful is more important than being successful. Corporations can and should have a redemptive purpose. We need to weigh the pragmatic in the clarifying light of the moral. We must understand that reaching our potential is more important than reaching our goals.”19 Spiritual leaders have the responsibility of sustaining and encouraging faith in themselves and in recalling others to the faith when they have wandered from it or lost it.

  CONCLUSION

  Ethics ultimately must be rooted in soul: an organization’s commitment to its deeply rooted identity, beliefs, and values. Each leadership lens offers a perspective on the ethical responsibilities of organizations and the moral authority of leaders. Every organization needs to evolve a profound sense of its own ethical and spiritual core. The frames offer spiritual guidelines for the quest.

  Signs are everywhere that institutions around the world suffer from a crisis of meaning and moral authority. Rapid change, high mobility, globalization, and racial, cultural, and ethnic conflict tear at the fabric of community. Leaders cannot escape the responsibility to track budgets, motivate people, respond to political pressures, and attend to culture, but they serve a deeper, more powerful, and more enduring role if they are models and catalysts for such values as excellence, caring, justice, and faith.

  NOTES

  1. Thomas, K. “After Recalls and Missteps, J.&J.’s New Chief Confronts Critical Challenges.” New York Times, Apr. 25, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/business/big-challenges-ahead-for-johnsons-new-chief.html?_r=0.

  2. Kimes, M. “Johnson & Johnson CEO Bill Weldon’s Painful Year.” CNNMoney, Sept. 7, 2010. http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/06/news/companies/J_and_J_Bill_Weldon_Bad_Year.fortune/.

  3. “Patients Versus Profits at Johnson & Johnson: Has the Company Lost Its Way?” Knowledge@Wharton, Feb. 15, 2012. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/patients-versus-profits-at-johnson-johnson-has-the-company-lost-its-way/.

  4. George, B., and Van de Ven, A. “Medtronic’s Chairman William George on How Mission-Driven Companies Create Long-Term Shareholder Value.” Academy of Management Executive, 2001, 15(4), pp. 39–47.

  5. Bolman, L. G., and Deal, T. E. Leading with Soul: An Uncommon Journey of Spirit. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011, p. 122.

  6. Ibid., pp. 128–129.

  7. Levering, R., and Moskowitz, M. The 100 Best Companies to Work For in America. New York: Plume, 1993.

  8. George, B. True North. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007.

  9. Ewen, B. “Persistence Is the Difference for Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Carlson Cos.’ Leader.” Upsizemag.com, 2009. http://www.upsizemag.com/back-page/marilyn-carlson-nelson.

  10. Solomon, R. C. Ethics and Excellence: Cooperation and Integrity in Business. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 231.

  11. Robinson, A. G., and Schroeder, D. M. The
Idea-Driven Organization. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2014.

  12. O’Neill, T. P. “Frenemies: A Love Story.” Campaign Stops (blog), New York Times, Oct. 5, 2013. http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/frenemies-a-love-story/.

  13. Neuman, J. “Former President Reagan Dies at 93.” Los Angeles Times, June 6, 2004. p. 1. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-reagan,0,2289200.story#axzz2uNVjUa6t.

  14. Gallos, J. V., Ramsey, V. J., and Associates. Teaching Diversity: Listening to the Soul, Speaking from the Heart. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997.

  15. Cox, T., Jr. Cultural Diversity in Organizations: Theory, Research, and Practice. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1994; Gallos, Ramsey, and Associates, Teaching Diversity; Morrison, A. M. The New Leaders: Guidelines on Leadership Diversity in America. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.

  16. Kidder, T. The Soul of a New Machine. New York: Little, Brown, 1989, p. 313.

  17. Gurowitz, M. “James E. Burke, 1925–2012,” Kilmer House: The Story of Johnson and Johnson and Its People (blog), Oct. 1, 2012. http://www.kilmerhouse.com/2012/10/james-e-burke-1925-2012/.

  18. Griffin, E. The Reflective Executive: A Spirituality of Business and Enterprise. New York: Crossroads, 1993, p. 178.