Leading So People Will Follow

Erika Andersen

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781118379875
• eBook ISBN: 9781118431702
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Leadership
• Index: Business

A unique take on leadership from a popular Forbes blogger and nationally-known leadership coach

Leading So People Will Follow explores the six leadership characteristics that inspire followers to fully support their leaders. Using Erika Andersen's proven framework, new leaders and veterans alike have increased their capacity for leading in a way that creates loyalty, commitment and results. Step by step, Andersen lays out six key attributes (far-sightedness, passion, courage, wisdom, generosity, and trustworthiness) and gives leaders the tools for developing them. This innovative book offers a practical guide for building the skills to become a truly 'followable' leader.

• Filled with examples from forward-thinking organizations such as Apple, NBC Universal, Union Square Hospitality Group, and MTV Networks
• Maps out the six attributes of leadership
• Includes a free online Followable Leader assessment
• Author Erika Andersen is one of Forbes' most popular bloggers and coaches some of the most successful leaders in America

Using self-assessments, real-world examples, and concrete tools, Leading So People Will Follow helps build timeless core skills that work for leaders in any field.

SEVEN

Generous

---

Just then, the same ancient crone stepped from the dusky shadows, leaning on her gnarled stick. “Have you a coin for an old woman?” she asked in her thin voice, holding out her wrinkled hand.

“Yes, certainly,” said the youngest brother, dipping into his little purse and selecting a small silver coin. “It’s not much, but you’re welcome to it.”

She took the coin and hid it in the folds of her ragged gown. “And have you bread to share with a poor old woman?” she asked, holding out her hand again.

“Yes, and you are welcome to it too,” said the boy, breaking off and handing her a chunk of his simple brown bread.

“So be it,” said the old woman, her voice stronger. The youngest brother watched, amazed, as the old woman grew and changed, becoming young and beautiful. She smiled at the boy, her face kind. Raising her stick, now straight and shining, she touched the lip of the well.

---

* * *

When Danny Meyer smiles, other people smile too. His good humor and hopefulness are highly infectious. Danny and I are walking along a Manhattan street, coming back to his office from a Webcast we’ve just taped for Forbes.com about how to be a good people manager. Danny’s talking about the speaking gigs he’s been doing lately, and he’s excited. I notice people looking at him and breaking into spontaneous grins; it’s fun just to be around his energy. The good vibes continue when we get back to the Union Square Hospitality Group (USHG) offices, the company that Danny founded and of which he is now CEO. People seem genuinely glad to see him. As he walks toward his office, each little encounter is full of life: a shared smile, a brief greeting, a moment spent telling someone that he liked a graphic she had created, a quick question and response with one of his partners.

We’ve been working with Danny and his team for twenty years; they’re our longest client relationship. When I began developing this leadership model in the mid-1990s, Danny was the first person I thought of as an exemplar of the generous leader. And as I watch him make his way through the office, I see it again: Danny is generous with all the things a leader has to offer: time, attention, praise, resources, trust, information, knowledge, and, perhaps most notable, power.

I’ve watched Danny’s business grow over the past two decades from a single restaurant to a world-spanning array of eating establishments. We first started working with USHG when the group was about to open its second restaurant, Gramercy Tavern, and now USHG runs fine dining restaurants, barbecue/jazz joints, a catering company, fast food emporia, and upscale concessions at major sports arenas. Although these venues are hugely disparate in terms of menu, pricing, and locale, all of them have at their core Danny’s credo of “enlightened hospitality,” which is all about generosity: taking care of each other, their guests, their vendors, the community, and the shareholders.

During that arc of growth, I’ve watched Danny share the wealth, literally and metaphorically, with hundreds of people. They are not only his partners, who have been there throughout the journey and shared in the company’s success, growing enormously as professionals in the process, but also lots of frontline employees—people who started out five or ten or fifteen years ago as waiters or kitchen staff and have gotten the chance to manage staff, learn operations, and run restaurants. Danny is a living example of the power of generosity: he is almost continuously giving, and consistently getting back even more than he gives.

What Is True Generosity?

We tend to think of generous people as those who share material wealth: giving to charity, buying expensive gifts, or taking the in-laws out for dinner. In business, we think of generous leaders as those who provide a way for their people to share materially in the success of the company—through raises, profit sharing, or a bonus system. All of these things can be good, but they are only part of true generosity. As I’ve noted with Danny, truly generous leaders share the wealth on many levels. For example, they are quick to give others credit for their good efforts and new ideas. They’re also generous with their knowledge, sharing information with those who need it and teaching others around them how to do what they themselves do well. They are generous with their faith in people; they tend to assume best intent (although they are not naive) and believe people are generally innocent until proven guilty.

Perhaps most important, they are generous with power. The generous leader, having provided the information necessary for success, gives people the authority and autonomy to act on that information. A leader who is fully generous shares both the power to make decisions and the responsibility for dealing with the consequences of those decisions. She shares the resources needed to execute on the power she shares and the insight and support necessary for people to recover from mistakes and failure. Finally, she is generous with feedback. She takes the time to notice what her staff are doing or not doing, think about what’s great and what’s not, and share with them her observations.

What About in Times of Scarcity?

As we’ve worked with leaders during these last few years of economic shakiness, we often get pushback about generosity. How can we be generous when resources are thin? they ask. I’m convinced that question arises from a narrow definition of generosity and a narrow understanding of what people most want from their leaders.

Bosses tend to err on the side of thinking that what’s most important to workers is material generosity: high wages, lush benefits, big offices. And while everyone wants a living wage, reasonable working conditions, and insurance coverage, research has shown again and again that what employees most want, and what most effectively creates a committed and productive workforce, are things like appreciation, interesting work, being included, being trusted, having opportunities for individual growth, and flexible schedules. In other words, they most want their leaders to be generous with acknowledgment, responsibility, information, trust, and openness to new ways of working. And fortunately for leaders, that sort of generosity is possible in good times and bad.

In fact, being generous in that way can often make up for a temporary lack of ability to be generous with resources. In the depths of this last recession, at the beginning of 2009, a client of ours called a town hall meeting with his whole company, about 250 employees. He told them that revenues had really taken a hit (the banking industry formed a big part of its customer base). He let everyone know they were making immediate efforts to diversify their client base and that they felt they’d be back on track by the following year. He said that he was 100 percent committed to not laying anyone off but noted that in order to keep that promise, they were going to have to forgo yearly bonuses and put a freeze on raises and promotions. If it got worse before it got better, they might have to institute some temporary wage cuts. He said that the same cost-cutting measures applied to everyone in the organization, including him. He also shared that he was going to take a voluntary 15 percent pay cut for the year. Finally, he told everyone in the organization that they were welcome to look at a high-level profit-and-loss statement to see how the cuts would balance lost revenue and allow some modest investment in sales and marketing.

The employees weren’t thrilled, of course, but his generosity with information, his generosity in committing to retaining all the employees, and his personal generosity in taking a hit in advance of everyone else were meaningful to people. The company squeaked through the year, and by the third quarter of 2010 sales were largely back on track. Only one key person left, and our client believes that his folks’ generous response (in time, collaboration, creativity, and commitment) was largely responsible for their fairly quick return to profitability.

Generous leadership makes people feel capable, included, and motivated to succeed. It also makes them feel generous themselves. A generous leader is a powerful role model and catalyst for an open, honest, supportive organization.

How to Be Generous

Generosity is in some ways easier to identify and cultivate than some of the other attributes. It’s still helpful to have a handful of specific behaviors to focus on if this is one of the areas where you need to develop as a leader.

Leaders Who Are Generous

1. Assume positive intent

2. Share power and authority

3. Share what they know

4. Freely give credit, praise, and reward

5. Provide the resources necessary to succeed

It’s especially important, as you assess yourself in this attribute, to be a fair witness. Because it’s embarrassing to think that we might not be generous (nobody wants to be considered a jerk, a miser, or selfish), it’s easy to sort of zip past this one, thinking, Oh yeah, sure, I’m good at that.

But really reflect on each of the five behaviors and ask yourself, “How consistent am I in doing this?” You may believe in all these things, but do you actually behave this way? Recently I began coaching an executive who truly believed he was generous. He does have a really good heart, but he wasn’t sharing power and authority or assuming positive intent, and so his people didn’t see him as a generous leader. (He’s taking steps to improve now that he’s more aware of his behavior and how it has affected others.)

So assess yourself as accurately as possible (this is a definitely a stretch for your fair witness muscles). Use a scale of 1 to 3 to rate yourself in these behaviors, where 1 is, “I don’t do this consistently; it’s definitely a growth area”; 2 is, “This is a strength of mine; I do it consistently”; and 3 is, “I am unusually skilled and consistent in this area; it’s a key strength.” Then explore the elements where you could use some help.

#1 Assume Positive Intent

I worked with someone for many years who seemed to operate on the assumption that everyone was out to get her and her company. When others failed to share important information with her, for instance, she didn’t assume that they had forgotten or didn’t know that she needed it. Rather, her automatic assumption tended to be that they had intentionally withheld the information because they were trying to make her life difficult, or wanted her to fail, or were simply incompetent.

She and I spent a lot of time talking about the power of assuming positive intent, but she wasn’t able to change her mind-set. I think she believed that assuming negative intent (although she wouldn’t agree that’s what she was doing; she called it being “prudent”) protected her from getting hurt or being taken by surprise.

Unfortunately, a great many leaders seem to share this point of view. I’ve seen otherwise good leaders run off the rails because they so often assume others have negative intent.

Here’s an example. Many years ago, I was engaged to coach the head of marketing in a client company. Allan, I’ll call him, was extremely creative and personally productive; I’d observed him as being farsighted, passionate, and even courageous. But his lack of wisdom and, especially, generosity had damaged his relationships with his peers and his team along the way. His boss, the CEO, wanted to see if he could be helped to improve, and Allan seemed open to coaching.

When we do executive coaching, we conduct confidential interviews with six to eight people who work closely with the person to be coached (we work together with the coachee to select this interview pool). These colleagues give us a good sense of how those around this person see him or her.

It became clear to me as I spoke to his interviewees that Allan was consistently making negative assumptions about people’s intentions and that he didn’t see all the problematic results of his negative, limited assumptions. For instance, he decided early on that a new colleague of his, Claire, was ill intended; he thought she was egotistical and self-focused and that her actions were aimed at controlling and excluding others from discussions or decisions. Because he had such faith in his negative assumptions about Claire, all his interactions with her were stiff and guarded.

I had the chance to facilitate a meeting with him, his peers, and the CEO before we started our formal coaching engagement, and I got to see the impact of his negative assumptions firsthand. The group was having a pretty wide-ranging discussion about the potential marketing campaign and sales plan for a new TV series, and everyone had been weighing in. But when Claire expressed her point of view, Allan snapped at her, “Hey, this isn’t even part of your job. I don’t know why you think you should be able to make that decision.” She looked taken aback and started to defend herself. Before I could step in to untangle it, the CEO sighed and said, “Allan, back off. We’re just talking.” Allan subsided, but I could tell by the look on his face that he thought, They’re all in this together; they’re trying to take away my power.

It turned out he was acting in the same way with his own team: he would assume they were trying to undermine his authority when they merely disagreed with him and making plans behind his back if they met without telling him. Without meaning to, he had created a strong atmosphere of resentment and uncertainty around him: people ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• More Praise for Leading So People Will Follow
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• ONE: The Longing for Good Leaders
• TWO: Firesides and Folktales
• THREE: Farsighted
• FOUR: Passionate
• FIVE: Courageous
• SIX: Wise
• SEVEN: Generous
• EIGHT: Trustworthy
• NINE: Friends for the Journey
• TEN: Your Own Tale
• Epilogue
• Listening and Self-Talk for Leaders: Bonus Section
• Acknowledgments
• The Author
• Index