Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/124472
Who Needs Relationships? In a 2007 survey released by executive search firm Spencer Stuart, corporate recruiters overwhelmingly agreed that MBAs need enhanced interpersonal skills. These include the ability to serve a wider range of audiences—such as customers, employees, and stockholders— while tolerating intense scrutiny and relinquishing command-andcontrol leadership approaches. More recently, Harvard scholars Srikant Datar, David Garvin, and Patrick Cullen described this pressing need in their 2010 book, Rethinking the MBA. They wrote: "The landscape of business is shifting from leaders who had high authority and faced low conflict to leaders who have lower authority and face greater conflict. Leadership skills that worked in the old model are unlikely to work today. MBAs need to understand how to work 'through' people, how to motivate and inspire. That takes skill and practice. MBAs need to ask themselves, 'How do I engage people to accomplish a task while I remain in the background?'" In the mid-2000s, we became fascinated with this new brand of empathy-centered leadership and set out to interview individuals who embodied it. We started by focusing on two individuals whose 42 May/June 2013 BizEd visions of leadership are nearly identical: Doyle Williams, who spent 12 years as dean of the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, and Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson, who guided Delta's workforce through the trauma of post-bankruptcy and a merger with Northwest Airlines. Both had dramatic stories to tell about leading stakeholders through periods of transformational change. More important, although the organizations they led couldn't have been more disparate, both were empathy-oriented leaders who emphasized relationshipbuilding—and their approaches bore little resemblance to the "leader knows best" attitude taught at most b-schools and practiced in most executive suites. From their stories, and the testimony of their staff members and other stakeholders, we can learn much about the human dynamics of effective contemporary leadership. And we can then teach these leadership essentials in our business school programs. How Do They Do It? We analyzed reams of interview transcripts from personnel and stakeholders at Walton College and Delta Air Lines, and we also studied the work of independent leadership experts, to pinpoint five core principles inherent to the Williams-Anderson prototypical brand of leadership: Empathizing: Listening and responding to others' feelings and concerns; thinking and perceiving as they do. Former Delta CEO Jerry Grinstein told us, "The most critical factor for any leader of any organization is empathy—a sense of humanity and decency to others." Involving: Inviting stakeholders to participate meaningfully in the change process so they feel ownership in the organization's destiny. Toward this end, Williams orchestrated a massive strategic planning exercise involving faculty. (See "Winning Faculty Support," page 44.) He also created several dean's advisory boards comprising students, business professionals, alumni, and donors. Communicating: Sharing thoughts and information with stakeholders continually, candidly, and personally—and seeking their viewpoints in return. Anderson told us that nothing was more important than his contact with Delta employees via every available medium, but the most meaningful and impactful contact was in person. (See "Finding Common Ground," page 46.) Persisting: Understanding that organizational change is a sequential process that takes time, patience, and determination. Williams never conceded failure; if one approach didn't work, he assumed that another one would. Envisioning: Imagining a shared, desired goal that fuels every- Mar ia Te ij e i ro Te ij e i ro/G low Imag es Unfortunately, most of those questions still persist today, 15 years after one of us—David Pincus—made that presentation. That's because business schools are plagued by a very large blind spot: They don't understand or know how to teach the relationshipbuilding skills required for contemporary business leadership.