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To succeed, today's leaders must learn to master these polarities. They must be humble yet decisive, vulnerable yet strong, cautious yet bold, forgiving yet demanding, and certain but willing to change. As F. Scott Fitzgerald put it in The Crack-Up, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Our ultimate goal is to encourage CEOs and other leaders who radically focus on financial performance to unleash their inner visionary and their leadership potential—to become someone who can see multiple possibilities for personal and organizational growth and generate a holistic impact for all stakeholders. We want to take command-and-control-minded executives and teach them to act as more human leaders and partners who collaborate in empowered networks. We help leaders who rule and control through their own sense of certainty switch to a mindset of rapid, deep learning and discovery. And finally, we hope to persuade them to see the world in all its wonderful diversity and to be their best authentic selves.

If some of the world's best CEOs have discovered the importance of the human side of leadership and have taken the time to go deep within themselves to build that capability, then surely this approach will be valuable to many others in all types of organizations. Our humble hope is that if you apply this inside-out approach for change to yourself, your team, and all your employees, you will be well on your way to becoming a great human-centric leader and an inspiring role model in your organization and beyond.

PART ONE

IT STARTS WITH YOU

 

CHAPTER ONE

HUMILITY

YOU'RE NOT THE SMARTEST PERSON IN THE ROOM

At a Bower Forum meeting held in Frankfurt, Germany, the CEO of an Asian tech giant explained how he had an extremely complicated relationship with his board. The chairman had been the previous CEO for twenty years and had helped build the company into a powerhouse. The trouble was that the chairman was still heavily involved in running the company, making it very difficult for the CEO to do his job. The CEO knew he needed to make major changes in the company, but he was struggling to get any agreement from the chairman, who ruled with an iron fist. While the CEO felt shackled, he also was conflicted because the chairman was his mentor and he wanted to stay loyal and figure out a way to work collaboratively with him.

One of the other CEOs in the room said, "You can't do this on your own. First off, to work more collaboratively with your chairman you have to understand him better and figure out who are his influencers on the board and who are his friends. You need to talk to these people and get useful input on what the chairman is thinking and then figure out how to influence him." The first CEO explained to the group that an Indonesian investment fund, which controlled some 30 percent of the company, had a strong relationship with the chairman and influenced his views. The CEO, however, didn't have any sort of relationship with them. The other CEOs at the forum told him he needed to fly to Indonesia and start reporting quarterly results in person to the fund managers. That way he could get to know them and ask for their help in persuading the chairman to work with him to make the changes he needed.

Then another CEO chimed in: "Once you understand what your chairman is thinking, you should have a frank conversation with him where you lay out the facts and arguments for your strategic plan. But don't hit him all at once. Have a series of discussions laying out your agenda in bite-sized chunks and tell him, 'Here's what I'm thinking about at this point in time.' Then tell him you'd like to come back in another week and talk more, and then keep doing that until he's won over."

Over the next several months, the CEO reached within himself, realizing that he indeed couldn't go it alone. He sought out investors, friends of the chairman, and others, asking their advice on what the chairman was thinking and the best ways to approach him. Eventually the two rivals began to see eye-to-eye on the company's strategy and worked together to move the business forward.

The CEO of this Asian tech giant is a great example of a leader who benefited from the first element of the Bower Forum process. He took an unbiased look at himself and realized that he was stalled at his job and didn't have all the answers. He realized he needed to become a better listener and reach out to those who could help him perform better. He then built an outside network of advisers to help him figure out how to work with his chairman to form a mandate for change. He had been trying to go it alone, but after feedback from other CEOs he came to realize that he is not expected to go it alone. He wasn't always the smartest one in the room.