Saturday, October 29, 2016
By Orlando R. BARONE
The Philadelphia Inquirer
The recent resignation of Wells Fargo CEO John G. Stumpf raises big questions about leaders and leadership. Testifying before Congress, he denied any knowledge of the vast and vastly unethical practice of opening multiple accounts for unsuspecting customers and then charging fees and penalties.
I have met dozens of top executives in my long career as a management consultant, and Stumpf is something of an outlier. Most are surprisingly humble, unsurprisingly smart, and devoted to keeping their organizations healthy, strong and, yes, ethically on track.
Take Al, the CEO of a large company. He stood out as that rarity in business, a great leader, not just a good manager. Managers have subordinates; leaders have followers. Al’s people could always feel the heat of his passion for the business. He had dreams for the industry and his company’s future.
People followed Al for the same reason they follow anyone: They liked where he was going. We consultants think up fancy ways of saying this. Leaders project a vision. They are future-focused.
The point is, they are headed to a really cool destination, and people want to be on board for the trip. In meeting with his executive staff, Al presented a picture of a company rife with innovation and bristling with productive energy. Not only that, he laid out a path to the goal.
Still, that wasn’t his key strength, nor the fundamental reason his people were as loyal to him as they were. Al possessed a quality common to great leaders, one seldom written about in business books or blurbed on inspirational posters.
center of his soul
He was calm. Not laid-back, not complacent. His calmness came from the center of his soul. It rippled out to those around him and spoke words of assurance even in the toughest of times. It said that, no matter what calamities we face, what storms we encounter, we will come out all right.
Al and I had lunch together regularly in his office, and he spent one of those sessions expressing his worry that a looming crisis might endanger the company’s health, even its future. Then he stood up, squared his shoulders, and walked over to a large room where he assured his VPs and directors that they would meet these challenges and overcome them – together.
The calmness asserted itself when he detailed the basis of his confidence. First, he was there for the duration, at the helm. Second, this was the finest team ever assembled in this field, so we were the best equipped to face the coming trial and emerge victorious.
He believed in himself, and he believed in the people he had gathered around him. His calm center enveloped them and made them believers as well.
You can detect this soul-deep composure in great leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who, on the eve of his murder, assured his followers that the promised land was in sight, even though he might not get there with them.
Abraham Lincoln, on a bloody battlefield of our bloodiest war, asked not that we lash out or panic but “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
I don’t know the source of this great calm that enables great leaders to accomplish great things. Al had huge success but also his share of heartache. He lost his only son in a motorcycle accident. Perhaps tragedy bestows the perspective that engenders that transcendent inner poise. I don’t know.
What I do know, have always felt, is that this great calm always abides in a heart that is not just courageous and strong but also profoundly moral. It is a heart keenly attuned to the challenge to be worthy of the great trust we place in our greatest leaders.
Orlando R. Barone is a writer in Doylestown, Pa. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.