The Leadership Journal

In my last post, I provided a recap on the recent Biz Week Web cast – featuring Marshall Goldsmith and a surprise guest – Alan Mullaly.

I haven’t read much or heard much about Alan Mullaly – I just know him as one of 3 auto maker CEOs who was roundly criticized for flying corporate Jets to Capitol Hill, during a period when many in their companies where loosing their jobs, or taking pay-cuts. Truth be told, not many CEOs of Fortune 50 companies stopped using their private jets, fewer still sold them outright, but I digress…

Mr. Mullaly was introduced as a great leader with great attributes. The moderator teed things up by asking Alan to provide some leadership insights for listeners and explain how he stays positive, in a difficult financial environment. He could easily have basked in the accolades and reinforced the comments which Marshall had made earlier. Instead – he spent the first 5 minutes providing a brief overview of his career and thanking Ford’s employees, dealers, biz partners e.t.c, for helping the company through a very difficult period.  He then explained certain elements of his management philosophy.

“It’s important to include everybody – it’s got to be okay to share your issues/challenges –with others. That way, everybody can help. Leaders need to unleash all the energy of their organizations – to help others. Figure out how to help – which helps keep one from getting isolated, and helps the entire team move forward”. As leaders, we must always lead by example, ask the right questions, clarify what we’re about, what’s our compelling vision, what areas need special attention.

Alan  drives shared accountability through a rigorous, “very disciplined review process which we run through weekly meetings”. He provided 5 key attitudinal or behavioural traits which every one attending these meetings, must espouse.

1. Always, use facts & data.
2. Always come to the meetings with a “can do” , “find a way” attitude.
3. Seek to understand, before you seek to be understood.
4. Meeting attendees must respect and appreciate one another – and listen to each other.
5. Have fun – try to enjoy the journey of what we’re all about

Sometimes, when senior level executives speak, we feel as if we’ve heard it all before and they’re just repeating a party line. Surely there must be more to being a great, effective, leader than all this “stuff”.  “Sometimes you need to play politics”,  “It’s about who you know, not what you know”, “You’ve got to be tough with others”. “People only follow you if they fear you”. I’m sure you’ve all heard some of these assertions before – I won’t try to dispute them here, there are many path’s to success – as a leader. It’s just gratifying to note that some great leaders believe in the principles which Alan shared during the Web cast….

Servant Leader…

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Becoming A Leader, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.