Tag Archives: Wharton Leadership Conference

Immediate Vault Immediate Access

Do Quiet Leaders Make Better Leaders?

Posted on by

Last week at the annual Wharton Leader Conference, I was presented with an interesting theory: Quiet leaders, oftentimes, make for better leaders. This goes against what we all know as the stereotypical leader — loud, strong-willed and and an all-around extravert. But Adam Grant, associate professor of management at the Wharton School of Business, claims quiet leaders are more effective motivators.

He told of his experience working with a call center whose employee turnover rate exceeded 400% annually. The call center’s mission was to contact university alumni to solicit donations. Employees sat for eight hours a day, reading from a dry script and accepting continuous hang-ups as a part of the job (for about every 100 calls, one person would donate). As part of Grant’s consulting job with the call center, he was faced with a monumental task: Figure out how to motivate employees.

He decided to bring in scholarship recipients so call center employees could see that their hard work has afforded individuals the opportunity for a higher education. First, he brought in an outspoken, enthusiastic student who was class president in high school and involved in various activities within his university. He had a prepared speech and, according to Grant, was a natural born public speaker.

Grant tracked the success rate of calls for the next four weeks and found that employees were making more calls and more donations were coming in. His plan had worked. But could it work better?

After one month, he brought in another scholarship recipient. But this one was quiet, shy and uneasy speaking to groups. What sounds like a awkward presentation that would have little to no effect on employee motivation turned out to be exactly the opposite. The impact was powerful and surprising. The number of calls made almost doubled and donations spiked to a level never before seen.

The conclusion: The introvert provided the most motivation. Grant stressed that extraverted leaders are so obsessed with being the center of attention that they very rarely inspire or motivate others, besides themselves, that is.

According to Grant, the following can help one lead more quietly:

  1. Lead by doing
  2. Outsource inspiration (Grant points to programs that John Deere, Volvo and other companies use)
  3. Embrace the other 80/20 rule (introduced by Jim Quigley, who will never speak more than 20% of the time in meetings he leads, claiming he learns not by speaking, but by listening)

Other resources on the topic:

 

12 Leadership Lessons from Jane Hertzmark Hudis

Posted on by

Jane Hertzmark Hudis

The focus of the annual Wharton Leadership Conference is, of course, leadership. And among the prestigious speakers at the day-long event was Jane Hertzmark Hudis, the global brand president of Estée Lauder, where she is responsible for overseeing the global growth of the flagship brand in more 135 countries and territories. Having worked her way up in the company over 27 years, she knows a thing or two about leadership. And this is what she shared with us:

  1. Listen — “In order to be a good leader, you have to be a good listener.”
  2. Vision — “It’s about focus — what to do and what not to do. Leonard Lauder always says, ‘If you can’t see the future, you will never get there.
    buy sinequan online www.mariettaderm.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/pdf/sinequan.html no prescription pharmacy

    ‘”

  3. Team — “Your team is everything and you need to have the right balance of people. Speed [in acquiring the right team] is not of the essence.”
  4. Hire people smarter than you — “Don’t be threatened. I want people who want my job. There’s no substitute for great talent.”
  5. We, not I — “Nobody does it alone.”
  6. Global empowerment — “We empower [other countries and cultures] to give us feedback.”
  7. Communication — “There is no substitute for personal, verbal communication.”
  8. Relationships are forever — “Develop relationships that matter. Everybody comes back to you. Treat people kindly.”
  9. An object in motion, stays in motion — “Once you get a business moving, you have a really good chance of success.”
  10. Be your own entrepreneur — “At the heart of any great organization is a bunch of great entrepreneurs.”
  11. Strategy is not for a lifetime — “You need to check in on it. We do it formally once a year. You have to be flexible.”
  12. Achievement — “Going beyond where you thought you could go.”

Yesterday, I wrote about other qualities that top CEOs said make for good leaders and I will continue sharing insights from the conference next week. Stay tuned.

Leadership Lessons From the Corner Office

Posted on by

Yesterday, at the 16th annual Wharton Leadership Conference, I was lucky enough to hear musings from Adam Bryant, senior editor for features at the New York Times, where he not only leads a team of reporters but also authors the popular “Corner Office” column in the Sunday business section and online — a recurring piece that he first began writing in 2009.

When he started interviewing leaders of the world’s largest, most successful organizations, he decided he wasn’t going to ask them simply about their business strategy. He began asking broad, open-ended questions about the most important leadership roles they’ve learned throughout their life.

buy cenforce online www.northwestmed.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/cenforce.html no prescription pharmacy

“We have to make sense of leadership for ourselves,” he said. “I started asking why some people get promoted over others time and time again. This is what separates leaders, from what I’ve learned, and I believe these qualitites are truly useful in any context.” They are:

  • Passionate curiosity — “A deep sense of engagement with the world, how things can be made to work better, these two words are greater than the sum of their parts”
  • Battle-hardened confidence — “Track record for tackling adversity, these people know things are going to come out fine”
  • Team smarts — “The organizational equivalent of street smarts, you know who to talk to to get things done”
  • A simple mindset — “Refers to the ability to take the ocean of data we all have at our fingertips and distill it down to the one, two or three things that are important”
  • Fearlessness — “Some CEOs take a lower-rung job to run a smaller division so they could learn more”

Bryant also discussed some unique interview questions that these CEOs at different companies adhere to, including:

Zappos: What is the biggest misperception that people have about you?
“I think the biggest one is that I’m pretty insanely competitive, but it turns out that that question is just the setup for the punch line, which is ‘what’s the difference between misperception and perception?

buy desyrel online www.northwestmed.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/jpg/desyrel.html no prescription pharmacy

‘”

Google: On a scale of 1-10, how weird are you?
We’re all weird to some degree. i like this question. it signals to job candidates that everybody’s weird and we want to bring that weird here — not too much, but some. if someone screams 12, you can move on.

ING Direct: There are five animals (rabbit, lion, cow, horse and monkey) and you’re about to go on a journey but you have to leave one behind. Which one do you chose?

“According to the test, each animal stands for something, and apparently this test tells you about the person you’re interviewing,” Bryant said. “I chose rabbit, and the guy I was interviewing for the column said that rabbit stands for love, meaning I’d be willing to work for three weeks straight and make it up to my family later on. My wife read it when it came out. And, well, it’s kind of hard to claim you were misquoted in your own article.”

Colonel Jack Jacobs: Leadership Learned Through War

Posted on by

Colonel Jack Jacobs has one of the most impressive resumes ever seen.

Col. Jack Jacobs believes that "at certain levels you have to be somewhat of a Maoist."

He is a Medal of Honor recipient, he holds the McDermott Chair of Humanities and Public Affairs at the U.S. Military Academy, he was founder and COO of AutoFinance Group and managing director of Bankers Trust, he is currently a principal of The Fitzroy Group (a London-based real-estate development firm), he serves on several charitable boards, he is the vice chairman of the Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation, he is the author of the award-winning memoir If Not Now, When? and he is an on-camera analyst for NBC.

Just reading that can make anyone feel a bit inadequate.

But Jacobs did not accept the invitation to speak at the 15th Annual Wharton Leadership Conference so he could brag about his accomplishments. Far from it. In fact, most of his bio I learned from the conference material, not from his speech.

Jacobs was there to speak about how he learned leadership from his experience in Vietnam. Simply put, he believes in four “principles of war.” Those being:

  1. The objective: “You must tell a soldier what the mission is before he’ll do what you say.”
  2. Unity of command: “Don’t have one person reporting to two people — respect the chain of command.”
  3. The truth: “Honesty is very important when running any organization.”
  4. You’ll make mistakes, but do nothing that is immoral or illegal: “Anyone who says they don’t know what’s immoral or illegal is a liar!”

Jacobs is Brooklyn-born straight-shooter whose accomplishments in life have more than proved he knows how to be a leader in any given situation, whether on the field in combat or in the office with the board. His speech made those in the audience laugh, cry and feel uplifted and motivated — all at once. Proving, once again, that Col. Jack Jacobs has an overwhelming command over people. He is a natural leader.

Check back over the next couple of days for more posts relating to the amazing speakers I was fortunate enough to hear at the Wharton Leadership Conference, including Jane Golden, executive director of the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program and James Quigley, author of As One.