“Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
A recent article in the New York Post captured the tragedy of 35-year old Leo Lukenas, a junior banker with Bank of America (BofA). It seems Lukenas suffered a massive brain hemorrhage after regularly putting in 100-hour weeks. His boss, Gary Howe, described as the “hard-charging boss of the Wall Street giant’s Financial Institutions Group,” lost a third of his team following the death of Lukenas.
The bank had installed a reporting system which required bankers to report weekly hours and stop when they hit 80. But according to the Post article, “the decision came around the same time as an explosive Wall Street Journal exposé on how BofA managers told direct reports to lie about their extensive hours even when they exceeded the 80-hour limit — put in place more than a decade ago following the death of a 21-year old intern who worked continuously for three straight days.”
Yikes! And I thought marketing was demanding. What would propel a leader to push support staff beyond their physical limits? And why would you think lack of rest is an asset? Science says otherwise. According to the World Economic Forum, those who spend eight or more hours sitting per day have a 125 percent increase in heart disease and a 50 percent increase in death from any cause.
“A U.S. Gallup poll of nearly 240,000 full-time workers found that 10.8% of these workers have received a depression diagnosis. For employers, the truly damning result of the study was the calculation of how much depression costs them: roughly $23 billion a year.”
The reason leaders push so hard has more to do with culture, and the culture at BofA has been in transition of late in an effort to avoid the kind of outcomes that derive from onerous work conditions.
One has to ask, what does this say about leadership? While bad leadership, as noted above, can be a nightmare, lack of leadership is no panacea. On the other hand, good leadership means having a set of standards and behaviors that guide you. This is critical when recessions or bad leadership is having a toxic impact in other parts of the organization with whom you must interact.
But what qualities make for good leaders?
Eight essential qualities of a great leader
Here’s a look at eight essential qualities of successful leadership according to The Harvard Business Review.
Authenticity: In order to motivate others, colleagues must believe that you are consistently presenting your true nature…your best self. Leaders have an innate self awareness that translates to success. Others see it and want to be part of it.
Curiosity: Leaders can analyze situations and business interactions from the viewpoint of outside stakeholders, such as customers and competitors. This results in more informed decision-making.
Analytical savvy: Can you break down complex challenges, and come up with better-working solutions? Leaders constantly analyze trends, leveraging their experience, and being able to stay on top of the direction their industry is taking.
Adaptability: Technologies like AI are changing everything, and leaders must be able to adjust to the evolving demands that result. If you are adaptable, your team will follow suit.
Creativity: This is all about new ideas; some incremental and others breakthrough. The biggest change agent ideas come not only from creativity but from the ability to adapt and accept suggestions that you can then test out. It’s really a combination of creative thinking, lack of fear, curiosity, sharing, and analytical testing of possibilities.
Comfort with ambiguity: Often conflicting ideas come up in business, and leaders have to grapple with a host of dynamics that may be at odds. This is where critical thinking comes in; being able to see the pluses and minuses in each point of view. Once you’ve made a decision, having gone through a thorough process of discussion and analysis of the data, be prepared to defend with confidence.
Resilience: Working on assignments without a clear definition of what success looks like is not unusual in today’s dynamic and tech-forward environment. Successful leaders recognize the fluid nature of things and strive to understand the cultural context. They show resilience by recalibrating if they’re veering off course.
Empathy: Building trust means actively engaging with team members, stepping into their shoes, and identifying common ground. When you develop emotional intelligence, you have a better feel for the challenges teammates are working through. Although research shows that we all have the tendency to bond with others who are like us, leaders need to deliberately seek out those who are different.
The above qualities are relevant no matter the business you work in. However, having spent a couple of decades in marketing, I would add a few ‘don'ts’ that I learned over the years:
Don’t cancel the people you supervise: I was working at a global agency when we landed a new client, The Aspen Skiing Company. It wasn’t a huge account, but promised to be a lot of fun. My team and I immediately went to work posting theme ideas of the wall when the executive creative director came in and told us this. “Forget it; we already sold the theme “Only in Aspen.” There went all our excitement and enthusiasm. We lost one of our best designers over this.
Don’t share your personal love life with colleagues: I had a business partner who had a rather fraught dating life; constantly changing one partner for another while always going back to a guy who was abusive to her. One day, an employee asked to speak with me. He told me that my partner was constantly seeking his advice about her relationships, and he said, “C’mon; this woman signs my paycheck.” I moved swiftly to end this destructive dynamic. Only wish I knew about it earlier. We also lost talent over this one.
Don’t hire your client: We made that mistake with a young guy who worked for a tech client after the business was bought out and he lost his job. One of the reasons we liked him so much is that he’d take all of our advice and approve everything we did. Problem was, when he had to take the lead at an ad agency and sell campaigns, he lacked confidence. He was constantly waiting for someone to tell him what to do. We did; we told him it was time to go.
Don’t let business partnerships grow toxic. This can happen over time. It’s essential to be on the same page, particularly when it comes to leadership. At my old agency, we periodically worked with trainers and business psychologists who could lead us back from the brink and help us deliver a united front. Consistent leadership often needs the helping hand of a psychological leader.
Leadership is rarely loud or bossy. I’m reminded of the film The Pursuit of Happiness starring Will Smith as Chris Gardner, a salesman down on his luck, out of a job, and with a small son to support. Gardner goes to astounding and sometimes excruciating lengths to land an unpaid internship and eventual position as a stockbroker. He shows another great leadership principle: having the will to never give up on your goal. In a nice flourish, Gardner and his son end the film walking down the street in triumph. As they do so, they pass the real-life Chris Gardner, who at the time of filming had found continued success, eventually launching his own brokerage firm.
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