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Our Culture. New Graduate Start-Up Program. Our Approach. Korn Ferry Tour. Our Leadership Team. Investor Relations. Our Offices. Find an Expert. Press Releases. Korn Ferry Foundation. Korn Ferry Vice Chairman Nels Olson highlights two traits that leaders can emulate from his old boss.
Olson was there to identify and recommend candidates for spots in various cabinet agencies, and from time to time, the president would stop by. But what he did find remarkable was how much the 41st president valued what he, a very junior staffer, was doing.
The passing of the former president, whose burial is Wednesday, reminds Olson of two traits that many leaders would do well to adopt. Humbly competitive. Bush certainly had plenty of victorious moments in his career: winning congressional seats; being appointed director of the CIA; and, of course, winning the presidential election.
One of his biggest accomplishments was overseeing a peaceful end to the decades-long Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet while leaders may have been tempted to crown themselves in glory or denigrate their defeated opponents, Bush did none of that. Not gloating was smart politically; it engendered goodwill among people throughout the world.
All leaders are naturally competitive, he adds, but the best keep their own victories in perspective. Being present. Bush, who died late Friday at Catherine Meyer, a digital strategist and, full disclosure, a former colleague of this reporter , says she received a thank you note from the Former President in and the short note deeply touched her.
Bush and his thank you notes. It reminded me of one I received from him when I was a lowly editorial assistant. It made me feel so appreciated," Meyer says along with a photo of the note on Facebook. I never forgot that small gesture.
We could learn a lot about decency from how he lived his life. The art of the thank-you is a soft skill good leaders have mastered. Google billionaire and former CEO and Chairman Eric Schmidt has stressed that leaders should not underestimate the value of this simple gesture. It's a unique set of skills. But it is well understood that if you yell at people enough, they will quit, and if you're nice enough to them, they are less likely to quit," Schmidt says to Tyler Cowen on the "Conversations with Tyler " podcast.
Indeed, as a boss, saying thank you is savvy management, too. You are more likely to get more productive work from your employees if you remember those two words, Schmidt says.
But it just seems to me that if you take a moment, and you add the preamble of 'Thank you' or 'I appreciate it,' or 'I recognize it,' people's hearts sing, and you get a lot more work out of them," Schmidt says. In his eulogy, President George W. Bush also recognized his father's tenacity when faced with tough challenges. He showed us how setbacks can strengthen," the 43rd President said Wednesday of his father, according to a transcript of the eulogy.
The organizational psychologist and top-rated Wharton professor Adam Grant has said resilience is the key to success. So when you encounter a difficulty, a hardship, a challenge, how quickly and how effectively are you able to marshal strength and either overcome that challenge or persevere in the face of it? Our culture has a powerful macho strain: we are attracted to men who walk like John Wayne, talk like Gary Cooper, and look like Tom Cruise on a flight deck; we often scorn collaborative leaders like Jimmy Carter as weak and ineffectual.
Similarly, Americans like risk takers. From the Pilgrims who sailed on the Arabella to the astronauts who flew to the moon, from the cavalry at Little Big Horn to the troops at Omaha Beach, a willingness to take risks has been part of the nation's DNA.
For his supporters, Bush's bravado is one of his most admirable traits. Bush's own character and his religious faith are also important building blocks for his support. While many Americans applauded Clinton's policies, they were embarrassed by his behavior and greeted Bush with relief. No less than 46 percent of Americans now proclaim themselves born-again or evangelical Christians, and regular church-goers gave two thirds of their votes to Bush in They remain a crucial part of his political base today.
Nor should one underestimate how much Bush's hot-pepper conservatism has strengthened his leadership. Not even Reagan stirred up the faithful in the ways Bush has. The Gipper talked conservative but tended to govern more toward the middle. Bush clings to the original concept. All those qualities have forged a large and durable political base. In the aftermath of September 11, his approval skyrocketed above 90 percent and it remained above 60 percent for the next sixteen months. The slide that began in early summer could continue, but it seems doubtful that he will repeat the precipitous, point drop of his father: his conservative base is too strong and loyal for that.
At the heart of that solid support is a belief that he is an effective leader. A survey in spring , when his approval was in the high 60s, asked his supporters what they most admired about him. Even as it has strengthened his political base, Bush's brand of top-down, assertive leadership also runs clear, deep, and dangerous risks. Over the past year, the dangers have become ever more visible and could eventually be fatal for his presidency.
The trouble with top-down leadership, history suggests, is that is can yield strong short-term results but turn sour over time. For one thing, top-down leaders and their teams spend too little time soliciting and cultivating the views of others. Advisers don't anticipate trouble nearly as well. Outsiders are viewed with suspicion, and dissenters are given short shrift. Lyndon Johnson grew increasingly blinkered in his conduct of the Vietnam War, as did Richard Nixon on an array of issues.
Decisions can still be brilliant, as were Nixon's gambits in breaking up the Sino-Soviet alliance, but there is a high probability that they can go horribly wrong, as Nixon found during Watergate. And over time, closed administrations tend to provide incomplete or misleading information to the public; their accountability suffers. The top-down approach also places a special burden on the leader himself: because he gathers so much power to himself, it is essential that his judgment be well and widely informed and imbued with experience.
Simply put, this is not Bush's strong suit. President Bush sometimes reaches out for alternative views, but over time he and his administration have acquired a reputation for being one of the most closed and ideological in recent years. While he is one of the most decent men to occupy the office, he also seems one of the least curious. He has said publicly that he rarely reads newspapers and relies on his staff to summarize the news for him.
He is a quick study; he has appointed some outstanding advisers and he asks them hard questions before making a decision. The net result is that the President runs an obvious danger of basing decisions on too narrow and limited a flow of information and opinions. Moreover, the limited information only reinforces his tendency to see issues in stark black-and-white terms. That approach worked in rallying the country and then winning conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, but seems peculiarly inappropriate for winning the peace in those same regions.
The buttoned-up culture of the Bush White House ensures message discipline, but it also reduces the flow of information to the public and plants seeds of distrust. Every White House in the television age has fought hard to influence what voters see and hear, and there is nothing wrong with that. Winning hearts and minds is indispensable to governing. Where administrations go over the line is in refusing to answer reporters' questions openly and candidly, or spinning the answers so much that they distort the truth.
So long as public events were breaking in their direction, they paid no price, but when troubles came in Iraq, the press began to retaliate one example among many: the controversy over a sixteen-word sentence about African uranium in Bush's State of the Union address.
Distrust for the administration, already widespread in Europe, has now become a full-fledged campaign issue at home. Experience suggests that presidents tend to make wiser decisions when there is a little less efficiency and more openness.
For all of his personal flaws, Bill Clinton created highly sophisticated, subtle policies because he practiced what might be called "degree leadership. No one would recommend that George W. Another risk in top-down, command-and-control leadership is that these days it tends to stir up resentments and anger.
A half-century ago, leaders of institutions were accorded latitude for making decisions on their own. A leader cannot assume the automatic trust of her followers; she must earn it, showing respect for followers by soliciting their views in advance of a decision. That's a major reason why leadership studies now emphasize a more collaborative approach and urge appreciative forms of inquiry.
Make everyone feel included, so the theory goes, and you are more likely to command broad support. Collaboration is an important source of soft power. Internationally, of course, disenchantment with his administration is even more pervasive, and some experts believe the terrorists are winning.
Finally, Bush runs the risk that his crisp, damn-the-torpedoes style, combined with his ideology, may compel him toward policies that pay off in the short term but court serious problems down the road. His fiscal policies come instantly to mind. It was understandable that in his first year, when he inherited substantial budget surpluses, he would cut taxes so that Democrats would not spend the money on new social ventures. His initial tax cuts were also a reasonable spur to a slowing economy.
But he has insisted upon continued reductions in long-term taxes even as he has permitted overall spending to increase by more than 7 percent a year. The combination has not only brought the sharpest reversal of fiscal outlook since the Korean War but also put the country on an unsustainable path.
Whether the same charge can one day be fairly placed against his war policies remains to be seen.
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