Contributed by: Ross Lenhart
Senior Vice President, Stein Communications

It was a magical career. I was indeed fortunate. After 42 years and working directly with 142 different colleges, universities, and prep schools, it’s time for me to settle in, do some reading, play some golf and tennis, and enjoy the fine attributes of Pawleys Island in the lowcountry of South Carolina. It was a wonderful journey from my graduation day at Marietta College in 1966 into the world of college admission and then further into the realm of college and university marketing in 1976. It was challenging, fun, and interesting, and throughout my career, the magic for me has always been in the people.

What other career would have brought me into contact with great minds that value perhaps our greatest calling — the betterment of our world through the education of youth? Traveling from one college to another to discuss their missions that were often wide and varied and how best to represent them to their publics introduced me to men and women who care about society and its future — men and women of a higher calling. Faculty, admission folks, advancement and public relations professionals, presidents, college counselors, coaches, students, maintenance personnel and so many others — the magic on campus for me was always in the people.

I was allowed to coordinate and discuss ideas with my colleagues who are blessed with highly creative minds that can conceptualize and coordinate information into what amounts to a work of art that is effective in communicating an institution to the marketplace. They will always have my respect and, yes, envy. Art directors, writers, photographers, and web managers and designers — you always made life so interesting and worthwhile. You provided the coordination and camaraderie to make me look good. Yours is such a special type of magic –- found only in the stars.

My close colleagues whether in support or with whom I worked or traveled, and thus who had to listen to my boring stories over and over and over again — you all were brothers and sisters in this effort –- your support, your ideas, and your dreams with mine are cherished and are indeed magic and always will be.

I have always saluted my competitors. It is only logical to me that those who have chosen a career path similar to mine have never known my disdain but rather my respect. I have watched many of them with admiration when they have found new and wonderful ways of doing things, and thus I have often said, “I wish I would have thought of that.” The magic of competition is that it only makes all of us stronger.

But the real magic comes from the students that all of us — the college administrators, faculty, and we on the outside — serve. We must never forget our altruism in dealing with the education of young minds. During the privilege of my membership on the board of trustees of my alma mater, I found that oftentimes, I had to remind my peer board members from the commercial world that “education is different” – simply put, education isn’t soap. I firmly believe in that or I wouldn’t have stayed around so long. The young people in those countless focus groups tended to educate me, to give me hope, to invigorate me, to provide ideas in different strokes with different colors, to keep me young. Talk about magic – that was always magic. The education of our young people must be about honor, integrity, and character. Those who continue to work in the arena of educating our young people and of communicating such values must never lose sight of them and what our world is about – and our world has never been complicated; it’s been very simple – it’s merely the magic that transpires with a professor on one end of a log and a student on the other.

It was a wonderful journey, a magical journey. There are so many – oh, so many who helped me along the way. You will forever have my gratitude. As Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote, “In the end the great truth will have been learned, that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer than the prize, or rather that the effort is the prize, the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game.” And the game for me was all about the magic of people.

And Kathy, save the last dance for me.

Contributed by: Michael S. Hyatt
President and CEO, Thomas Nelson Publishers

In 1991 I, along with my business partner, suffered a financial meltdown. We had built a successful publishing company, but our growth outstripped our working capital. We simply ran out of cash.

For a while our distributor funded us in the form of cash advances on our sales. But eventually, their parent company wanted those advances back. Although we didn’t officially go bankrupt, the distributor essentially foreclosed on us and took over all our assets.

This was a difficult time personally. I was confused, frustrated, and very angry. Initially, I blamed the distributor. If they had only sold more, as they had promised us, none of this would have happened, I thought. It’s their fault.

But eventually I looked in the mirror and had to acknowledge that I could not move on until I learned from this experience. Though incredibly difficult and humbling, I am now thankful for this period in my life. I learned some critical, life-changing lessons. I am convinced that I would not be where I am today if I had not had this failure.

But not every failure ends so well. Sometimes, people suffer a setback and never recover. I don’t think it has to be this way. It is all in how you process it. I am convinced, that if you are going to succeed, you must learn to deal powerfully with failure.

I think there are at least five components to turning failure to your advantage:

Acknowledge the failure. This is where it begins. To my knowledge, I have never fired anyone for failing per se. Failure is natural if you are striving to deliver big results. The problem comes when you fail and then refuse to acknowledge it.

Several years ago, I had an employee who was floundering. He wasn’t delivering the results we expected. That was certainly a problem, but it wasn’t the primary problem. The problem was that he refused to acknowledge that he had a problem. He kept defending himself. In doing so, he only convinced us that he didn’t “get it.” As a result, we had no choice but to let him go.

Once you acknowledge failure, you take away its power. You can then begin to turn it into something positive.

Take full responsibility. You won’t get anywhere as long as you blame others for your failure. As long as the responsibility is external — outside of you — you are a victim. Why? Because you can’t control others. You can only control yourself.

But when you take responsibility for the failure and become fully accountable for it, you take back control. Suddenly you realize that you could have done things differently. You open the door to possibility — and to creating a different outcome in the future. But this can only happen when you acknowledge the failure and own it.

Mourn the failure. I am not simply exhorting you to have a positive attitude. Failure stings. It hurts — sometimes deeply. Many times there are very real and serious losses. Often times there is collateral damage. Other people are hurt. Sometimes innocent people.

It’s okay to feel sad about these things. Sometimes it takes a while to recover. When I had my financial setback in the early 90s, I mourned for weeks. It couldn’t be rushed. In fact, I think the reason I was able to bounce back relatively quickly was because I mourned the loss so deeply. I dealt with it thoroughly and got it behind me.

Learn from the experience. Even failure can be redemptive if you learn something from it. It doesn’t have to be career-ending. In fact, it can be career-building — if you take the time to wring all the juice out of the lemon.

Honestly, there are just some things you can’t learn — or won’t learn — without failing. I wish it were different. But pain is a powerful teacher. Like Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher, once said, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” So true. But it only makes us stronger if we thoroughly process the experience and determine what we could have done differently and will do differently next time around.

As Ilene Muething of Gap International has taught me, it is helpful to ask “What was missing?” rather than “What went wrong?” The former shuts down possibility and often results in blaming. The latter opens up possibility and results in learning.

Change your behavior. George Santayana, another philosopher, said, “Those who cannot learn from history are destined to repeat it.” And we really haven’t learned anything until it affects our behavior.

If we keep doing the same things that led to the failure, we are destined to get more failure. We have to be willing to change. And it really does start with us. This is the one thing we have control over.

Enter whole-heartedly into the next project. You can’t allow failure to hold you back from the next venture. If you fall off the horse or a bicycle, you have to get back on — immediately.

If you don’t do this, the failure gets magnified in your mind. Wait long enough and you might never get on at all! Instead, you have to put the past behind you and move forward.

Again, failure is inevitable if you are going to tackle significant goals. You have to learn to make it work for you. In doing so, you are planting the seeds of your eventual success.

—
(c) 2007, Michael S. Hyatt. Used by permission. Originally published at www.michaelhyatt.com.

Contributed by: Knowledge@Wharton

You know the type: coworkers who never have anything positive to say, whether at the weekly staff meeting or in the cafeteria line. They can suck the energy from a brainstorming session with a few choice comments. Their bad mood frequently puts others in one, too. Their negativity can contaminate even good news. “We engage in emotional contagion,” says Sigal Barsade, a Wharton management professor who studies the influence of emotions on the workplace. “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.”

Barsade is the co-author of a new paper titled, “Why Does Affect Matter in Organizations?” (”Affect” is another word for “emotion” in organizational behavior studies.) The answer: Employees’ moods, emotions, and overall dispositions have an impact on job performance, decision making, creativity, turnover, teamwork, negotiations and leadership.

“The state of the literature shows that affect matters because people are not isolated ‘emotional islands.’ Rather, they bring all of themselves to work, including their traits, moods and emotions, and their affective experiences and expressions influence others,” according to the paper, co-authored by Donald Gibson of Fairfield University’s Dolan School of Business.

An “affective revolution” has occurred over the last 30 years as academics and managers alike have come to realize that employees’ emotions are integral to what happens in an organization, says Barsade, who has been doing research in the area of emotions and work dynamics for 15 years. “Everybody brings their emotions to work. You bring your brain to work. You bring your emotions to work. Feelings drive performance. They drive behavior and other feelings. Think of people as emotion conductors.”

In the paper, Barsade and Gibson consider three different types of feelings:

• Discrete, short-lived emotions, such as joy, anger, fear and disgust.
• Moods, which are longer-lasting feelings and not necessarily tied to a particular cause. A person is in a cheerful mood, for instance, or feeling down.
• Dispositional, or personality, traits, which define a person’s overall approach to life. “She’s always so cheerful,” or “He’s always looking at the negative.”

All three types of feelings can be contagious, and emotions don’t have to be grand and obvious to have an impact. Subtle displays of emotion, such as a quick frown, can have an effect as well, Barsade says. She offers this example: “Say your boss is generally in very good humor, but you see him one day at a meeting and his eyes flash at you. Even if they don’t glare at you for the rest of the meeting, his eyes have enunciated some valuable information that is going to have you concerned and worried and off center for the rest of the meeting.”

Barsade suggests that while some people are better than others at controlling their emotions, that doesn’t mean their coworkers aren’t picking up on their moods. “You may not think you are showing emotion, but there’s a good chance you are in your facial expression or body language. Emotions we don’t even realize we are feeling can influence our thoughts and behaviors.”

The researchers’ paper discusses a concept known as “emotional labor,” in which employees regulate their public displays of emotion to comply with certain expectations. Part of this is “surface acting,” in which, for instance, the tired and stressed airline customer service agent forces himself to smile and be friendly with angry customers who have lost their luggage. That compares to “deep acting,” in which employees exhibit emotions they have worked on feeling. In that scenario, the stressed-out airline worker sympathizes with the customer and shows emotions that suggest empathy. The second approach may be healthier, Barsade says, because it causes less stress and burnout, particularly emotional exhaustion from having to regulate one’s emotions and “play a role.”

But is there a downside to being too authentic? If the company is losing money and experiencing the effects of downsizing, should the manager, feeling stressed and overwhelmed, convey his despair to his workers? Or should the manager try to appear cheerful and act as if nothing is wrong? Barsade says it’s possible for the manager to convey emotions that are both authentic and positive, saying something like, “I know you’re worried. Things aren’t looking good, but you know, we have a way out of this and we can work [on it] together.” The employees will appreciate the honesty and take comfort in the optimism, she says.

Emotions as Valuable Data

Emotional intelligence — buzz words already familiar in psychology and education — is now talked about in business circles as well, Barsade says. Business schools are teaching executives how to be emotionally intelligent, and how to manage the emotions of their employees.

“The idea behind emotional intelligence in the workplace is that it is a skill through which employees treat emotions as valuable data in navigating a situation,” according to the authors. “Let’s say a sales manager has come up with an amazing idea that will increase corporate revenues by up to 200%, but knows his boss tends to be irritable and short-tempered in the morning. Having emotional intelligence means that the manager will first recognize and consider this emotional fact about his boss. Despite the stunning nature of his idea — and his own excitement – he will regulate his own emotions, curb his enthusiasm and wait until the afternoon to approach his boss.”

Barsade says research suggests that positive people tend to do better in the workplace, and it isn’t just because people like them more than naysayers. “Positive people cognitively process more efficiently and more appropriately. If you’re in a negative mood, a fair amount of processing is going to that mood. When you’re in a positive mood, you’re more open to taking in information and handling it effectively.”

While you can’t necessarily change your coworkers, people can take steps to avoid catching a negative mood, according to Barsade. They can tell themselves before attending a staff meeting that they are not going to be bothered by the person who shoots down everyone’s ideas, or that they are not going to let that person become the focus of their attention at the meeting (reducing the possibility for contagion). Or they can change their office routine. Barsade gave the example of a manager who was dragged down at the start of every day when passing by the desk of an employee who either grunted or gave no acknowledgement. The manager took control and simply started following a different route through the office.

Barsade’s research has taken her into a variety of workplaces, most recently long-term care facilities. Her research found that in facilities where the employees report having a positive workplace culture — she calls it a “culture of love” — the residents end up faring better than residents in facilities with a less compassionate and caring work culture. The residents reported experiencing less pain, made fewer trips to the emergency room, and were more likely to report being satisfied and in a positive mood.

Overconfidence Online

E-mail, instant messaging and video conferencing have introduced new challenges to the workplace, Barsade adds. E-mails and instant messages can be misunderstood because they are devoid of facial expressions, intonation and body language — cues that help convey emotions. Some people, she says, work hard at making their emails neutral, with the downside of sometimes sounding curt. On the other hand, while some writers may add a smattering of exclamation points, question marks and capital letters in an attempt to convey more emotion, this can also be a dangerous route, particularly when attempting humor or sarcasm to drive home a point.

“How can emotions be best conveyed via these media?” the paper asks. “What is the effect of conveying emotionally charged messages via text, when these messages are more likely to be misconstrued? How must we re-think emotional contagion and other social processes in an organizational world in which many meetings take place online?”

The paper cites a study showing that people tend to be overconfident about their ability to convey the emotion they wish in an e-mail, particularly when they are trying to be funny or sarcastic. “Video conferencing, also increasing in its use, has more cues, but it is also not yet the same as interacting face to face, particularly in group situations. Given that these technologies continue to grow as a primary means of communication within the business world, it is crucial that we understand how the interpretation and communication of affect occurs in these contexts,” the paper says.

Workplaces need to get smart about the best use of e-mail, Barsade states. Her advice is that “if something is important, and you know that the emotional context is going to be an issue, then pick up the phone; don’t just rely on e-mails.” And even the phone may not be good enough. “Sometimes, if it is really important, you just have to fly to where they are and meet them face-to-face to get the message across.”

—
Reprinted with permission from Knowledge@Wharton — the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Contributed by: Ross Lenhart
Senior Vice President, Stein Communications

When I approach October, it’s mental and habit — it’s the coming of the NACAC Annual Meeting, and I smile. I smile because this event means so much to me, for it was at my first NACAC national meeting that I started my professional life. It was 1966, exactly forty years ago in Washington, DC, at that famous convention hotel the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue. As a brand new upstart admissions counselor, I was privileged to have rubbed elbows with and listened to such giants in my field as Bill Wilson from Amherst, Jack Hoy from Wesleyan, Ferne Horne from Mount Lebanon High School, and Jim Cavalier from Sewickley Academy. I was also blessed that my own boss and mentor, Jack Scott, Director of Admissions at Marietta College, chose to take me along. I have been attending ever since, first in college admissions for ten years and then as an exhibitor for another thirty. Why do I smile? At each meeting, the people get younger, and thus the ideas seem to get fresher. That’s why I am looking forward to my fortieth meeting in Pittsburgh next month. NACAC has provided me with both professional growth over this long career, and also a darn good time — and, folks, there is nothing wrong with that.

As someone who visited high schools in my first ten years of professional life, I used to comment that the best way to get to know an urban area or a city is through traveling to its schools. I traveled extensively early on throughout New England and the Middle Atlantic states and later throughout the Southeast. NACAC, through its national meetings gave me the opportunity to visit other places. After my first meeting in Washington, the next was in Minneapolis. In the Twin Cities I found a whole new world. I looked forward to returning again and again in 1982 and 1996. If you go to NACAC continually, you find yourself crisscrossing the United States, east coast, west coast, with an occasional visit to the south. From Minneapolis we went to New York where I can remember seeing a smiling Johnny Carson passing through the lobby. We then went to Chicago. Chicago was memorable because of the times. The 1968 Democratic Convention was fresh in our minds, and an association dealing with access to higher education was not immune from protest from the outside. I can remember watching Colonel Day, the burley but very gentlemanly Director of Admission at West Point, physically removing a profane outside participant from the lectern. The Chicago of 1994 was so different. Jogging near the lake in the art museum area in the breeze and sunshine was so calm and pure pleasure.

San Antonio in 1972 is so memorable, because I had no concept of the Riverwalk before I went — what a great convention in a great city. It was highlighted by Russ Gossage, Director of Admissions at Trinity University, hosting the whole convention to a barbecue in his backyard. San Antonio in 1983 was no surprise — we knew what to expect, but San Antonio in 2001 was held in the wake of 9-11, which was on all of our minds. I had just moved to Atlanta in 1975 when that city hosted the convention and I felt that my new hometown did a marvelous job. Each meeting for me has its own set of personal memories. It was in New York in 1989 where Stein’s Rob Glass and I did our famous Siskel and Ebert-like presentation of college recruitment publications in front of a packed house at 8:30 in the morning. My oldest son, Scott, who later became the subject of a NACAC Journal article, “Travels With Scott,” joined me to see The Phantom of the Opera — a father-son event that I have always remembered fondly. San Francisco is San Francisco. I have been blessed twice in 1971 and 1997. I always attempted to see something in areas in NACAC cities that I normally don’t travel to. During the first San Francisco convention, a group of us rented a car and traveled down by Monterey to see Stanford. It was a wonderful drive. Now it is rather humorous, but in the San Francisco meeting of 1997, our exhibit and display box was shipped from Atlanta with the wrong display — it contained a display from another division of the company. We had fun with a table, some samples, a white tablecloth, and loads of competitor onlookers with grins.

Seattle was a good one to see the beauty of the northwest and eat loads of salmon. I took the MTA in Boston to go to the Kennedy Library. Boston makes me think of baseball. During all NACAC national conventions, we fans are always either caught up in the World Series or the Divisional Playoffs. Oftentimes this situation has been tough for a Braves season ticket holder like me, but, then again, it has always been tough to be a Braves fan at World Series time. I saw the Cardinals in St. Louis. As a southerner, Louisville did me proud. Salt Lake City gave me the opportunity to examine my ancestry. In Tampa I lost weight by walking from the hotel to the convention center in the humidity. Orlando was pure Disney and fun. Long Beach was living on the Queen Mary. We were all impressed by the cleanliness and friendliness of Indianapolis. Los Angeles was Los Angeles. To this day, having started my career in Ohio, I am a loyal
OACAC-er — Cincinnati was a great meeting.

Still the magical meeting continues to be Washington 1966. It was the start of a wonderful life and fine professional journey. I owe the folks at NACAC a vote of thanks for crisscrossing me over the country for the last forty years, and for the hard work of all the local-arrangement volunteers who have made all of my Octobers worthwhile. But worthwhile is what NACAC is all about. I always remember it is only about a kid’s choice of a college — a serious life-changing decision in the middle of an impressionable youthful time. And here is a professional association filled with wonderful people who have an awesome duty to protect, value, and ensure that the process is kept within the best interest of that young person. NACAC professionals and all the nationwide volunteers who make these national meetings what they are have my gratitude. They have made my Octobers. Pittsburgh was great in 1993 and will be again in 2006. Damn right, it’s my fortieth!

Contributed by: Dr. Jonathan Byrnes
Senior Lecturer, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
President, Jonathan Byrnes & Co.

What are the essential qualities of an effective leader? Can these be recognized in young people? Can they be developed?

These questions were the topic of a meeting I recently had with a top admissions officer of a leading graduate school of business. This official was reflecting on the profile of applicants to be accepted in the school. She wanted to be sure that this profile was the most appropriate one, and not take anything for granted.

Great leadership seems easy to recognize, and you usually can tell when someone is lacking in leadership qualities. But how do you define it? This is a critical question both for selecting and developing your subordinates, and for developing your own leadership capabilities.

Here’s a definition of leadership that has stuck with me: Leaders are “people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion.”

Not surprisingly, I heard this definition in a presentation given by the admissions officer and a colleague of hers. And, in fact, this admissions officer was showing leadership by inviting me and others in to talk about admissions profiles: She was taking an already excellent process, and rather than being complacent with it, she was making it even better. She was leaving her footprints in her area of passion.

Some companies have a culture of relentless, almost compulsive, improvement. No matter how good the company is, it should be doing better. It reminds me of a Smithsonian exhibit on American ingenuity, “If We’re So Good, Why Aren’t We Better?”

By contrast, other companies are smugly stuck in the past. I remember one vice president telling me that his company was doing everything right because “if there were a better way, we would have found it, and we’d be doing it.”

The lesson: When you have the lead, step on the gas. After all, that’s how you got there.

In recent columns, I explained the nature of paradigmatic change in “The Challenges of Paradigmatic Change,” and described how to manage it in “Manage Paradigmatic Change.” In this column, I discuss the nature of effective leadership, and outline how you can develop it in yourself and others.

Ambidextrous leadership
In a sense, great leaders have to be ambidextrous. On the one hand, they have to be able to execute capably within the current business paradigm, “the way we do business.” On the other hand, they must be able to reflect on the current paradigm, find ways to fundamentally improve it, and manage the large-scale change to a successful conclusion. You need two hands, and a lot of commitment, to change the propeller on the airplane in mid-flight, but that capability is the essence of successful leadership.

Think of it this way: Someday your current job will be a line entry on your resume. Under the entry, you’ll have two or three bullets to describe your major accomplishments. “Did a good job of doing what always was done” can’t be one of them.

“Doing a good job of doing what always was done” is the ante; it’s what you have to do to keep the job. The bullets, your major accomplishments, come on top. They are your successes at changing the current paradigm, and this is how you showcase your leadership.

By the way, there is a lot of power in reflecting at the beginning of a new job on what you want the two or three bullets to be, and deliberately setting about building them over the course of your job tenure. Otherwise, you run the risk of having them simply be the incidental byproduct of what opportunities happened to come your way.

Can you be a good leader without being a good manager? In my experience, the best leaders are also great managers, and the best managers have strong leadership capabilities. To be successful, you must have both a passion for improving your organization and the capability to drive your efforts through to completion.

It certainly is possible to team someone who likes to change things with someone who prefers to manage stability. In fact, the most effective teams have one person who constantly pushes the limits and another who constantly ensures that the organization doesn’t blow up. The former winds up going slower than he or she would like to, the latter winds up going faster than is comfortable, and the compromise is great for the company. However, both members of the team need to have the full capability to manage ambidextrously. Otherwise, they will not have the common understanding and mutual respect to agree on the compromises necessary to create an effective course of action.

Managing the day-to-day, which is the core requirement of any position, is no small task. It requires that you produce consistently good results, meet objectives, and constantly “tune up” the business processes that you’re employing. Success involves competence, ability, and teamwork. You can and should derive a great deal of satisfaction from doing a good job at this, but don’t mistake day-to-day management for leading paradigmatic change.

Leading paradigmatic change.
Quantum change management is very different from day-to-day management. It involves conceptualizing and creating fundamental improvements that change the way business is done. For example, finding ways to improve customer service levels, like order fill rates, is a day-to-day accomplishment, while developing and implementing intercompany operating ties, like vendor-managed inventory, is a quantum change to the way that business is done.

In order to lead paradigmatic change, you need eight essential characteristics. These characteristics are over and above your day-to-day capabilities and the domain knowledge you need to analyze what to do.

• Capacity for passion. First and foremost, you need a burning drive to make things better. Change management is a grueling process, and passion will see you through it. Some managers just seem to have “fire in the belly.”
• Perspective. In order to convert passion into action, you must be able to “step back” and “view” what you’re doing even while you’re doing it. This is what the admissions officer was doing when she was reflecting on whether the admissions profile was correct, even while she was busy with her day-to-day activities.
• Creativity. Once you have a perspective on your business process, it takes creativity to see fundamentally new and more effective ways to do things. Some people are more naturally creative than others, but you can get your creative juices flowing by surveying a variety of business practices in a variety of companies. In good measure, business school case studies offer this perspective. So do business magazines and other publications.
• Organization skills. Leading major change requires both soaring creativity and mundane practicality. You have to translate a broad vision into a very well organized, practical, step-by-step program. Otherwise, people won’t have the confidence needed to let go of the old “tried and true” way of doing things.
• Teamwork. Virtually all major change involves engaging, persuading, and working with other people. You have to have the organization’s best interests at heart, and really be motivated to make things better for those you seek to lead. With this attitude, and a good practical plan, people will be inclined to follow you.
• Persistence. After passion gets you started, persistence is what carries you through. I can think of several brilliant, creative, passionate managers who came up with great ideas but lost interest when it was time to slog through the implementation. Ultimately, they designed great plays but they never put the points on the scoreboard.
• Open-mindedness. Large-scale change necessarily involves a good measure of learning by doing. By definition, you’re sailing into uncharted waters. A good leader needs a high level of tolerance for ambiguity.
• Integrity. Last, but by no means least, leaders need integrity. This doesn’t just mean not breaking the law. That’s honesty, which certainly is an important component of integrity. But integrity goes beyond that. It is a matter of being genuine, being motivated by your deeply held values to make your organization and your coworkers better off. This is where the passion, persistence, and teamwork come from. Without integrity, you’re simply promoting yourself, and people will not follow your lead.

Can leaders be developed?
Like anything else, leadership ability is distributed throughout a population. Some people are “natural” leaders, others prefer to operate capably within a well-defined context, and many people are somewhere in between.

Natural leaders have important core abilities, but they often need careful training in the more practical aspects of converting a creative vision into a concrete program of action. Very often, they need to understand the length of the change lifecycle so they don’t underestimate the importance of persistence.

Most people, however, can develop their leadership skills by working at it. The process starts with the recognition that leadership requires “ambidextrous” activities. The first hurdle is recognizing that excellence at the day-to-day is critical, but it is not enough. The second is the need to look inside yourself and decide whether you are willing to be uncomfortable for a prolonged period while you conceptualize and lead the change. The ultimate reward is the deep satisfaction that comes from seeing something new that wouldn’t have been there if you had not created it.

Once you decide to become a leader, you can develop the characteristics you’ll need by being thoughtful about the accomplishments that you want on your resume, and deciding to devote the time and attention needed to achieve them. Like anything else, practice makes perfect.

To be a great leader, you need a certain level of intellect, but not necessarily great genius. You need a certain level of social skills, but not necessarily those of a great salesperson. However, you do need a compulsion to operate at two levels: to be a great doer, and a great reflector.

Most importantly, to be a great leader, you need to find what you really like. That’s where the passion, commitment, and integrity come from. In my experience, the most important underlying factor in leadership is whether a person has searched out and found a great match between what’s in his or her heart, which is what he or she really enjoys, and the work situation.

Think about the definition of leaders, “people who leave their footprints in their areas of passion.” It’s easy to focus on the first part, how to leave footprints. But the real power comes from the second, working in your area of passion.

How can you recognize leadership potential in a young person? The most important clue is whether the person has identified and sought out a work situation in which he or she feels real passion. If a person doesn’t have the drive or ability to get his or her own situation right, how will he or she be able to do this for a company? If you’re doing what you really like, you almost can’t help but feel passion toward making it better.

_____

Copyright © 2005 Jonathan L. S. Byrnes. This article was originally published in the September 6, 2005, edition of Harvard Business School Working Knowledge (HBSWK) newsletter.

Jonathan Byrnes is a Senior Lecturer at MIT and President of Jonathan Byrnes & Co., a focused consulting company. He earned a doctorate from Harvard Business School in 1980 and can be reached at jlbyrnes@mit.edu. You can read more of his articles on his web site.

Are you passionate about the admissions counseling profession? Do you have a great story about students you have impacted? Would you like to be included in the only book of its kind?

Dr. Jean Norris, well known for her work in advocacy of the admission counseling profession, seeks nominations and submissions of college admissions counselors for inclusion in a book promoting the profession. If you, or someone you know, has worked in the profession for a minimum of two years, has an interesting story and would like to be considered, please contact Jean Norris directly at jean@nortonnorris.com.