Ask questions instead of giving direct orders.
—Dale Carnegie
Everyone who was ever a guest of Theodore Roosevelt was astonished at the range and diversity of his knowledge. Whether his visitor was a cowboy or a Rough Rider, a New York politician or a diplomat, Roosevelt knew what to say. And how was it done? The answer was simple. Whenever Roosevelt expected a visitor, he sat up late the night before, reading up on the subject in which he knew his guest was particularly interested.
For Roosevelt knew, as all leadership masters know, that the royal road to a person’s heart is to talk about the things that he or she treasures most.
Talking in terms of the other person’s interest pays off for both parties. Howard Z. Herzig, a leader in the field of employee communications, has always followed this principle. When asked what reward he got from it, Mr. Herzig responded that he not only received a different reward from each person but that in general the reward had been an enlargement of his life each time he spoke to someone.
Today’s leadership masters must get along with everyone, not necessarily as a best friend, but certainly to the degree that race, national origin, religion, generation, or personal lifestyle choices do not intrude. The chairman of a large manufacturing company puts this principle in perspective. “Eighty to 85 percent of the people entering the workforce in the twenty-first century will be minorities, women, or immigrants,” he says. “This is not some distant point in the future; we’re there right now. So, unless you want to avail yourself of only 15 percent of the talent out there, you had better get comfortable with diversity starting now.”
Historically, ignorance has always been at the root of intolerance. Here is the flip side of that sad fact: The best way to gain respect for another culture or any form of diversity is to educate yourself about it. The late Arthur Ashe certainly had abundant talent as a tennis player, but that’s not what led him to choose the game as a career. “I knew there was a lot of travel involved,” Ashe once said. “That’s really what I was looking forward to. I wanted to visit all those places. I wanted to see the things I’d only read about in the pages of National Geographic. I welcomed the opportunity to learn about them.”
Exposure to anything new can evoke very different attitudes in different people. We may feel self-satisfied and even haughty about who we are as individuals and about the culture we come from. We may look down at people who have another sort of background. Maybe they’re not as technically sophisticated, as well educated, or as physically healthy as we are. That is one way of looking at it. Another is to say, “Yes, their present circumstances are different from mine. They may have come from a rich theological or cultural heritage from which I can learn. They may have seen things I’ve never seen. They may know something I don’t know.”
For a leadership master the second viewpoint is the only approach.
Today, nations right beside each other can have totally different cultures and so can people who live next door. These differences must be acknowledged, respected, and responded to. After leading a very diverse workforce for a number of years, a computer executive offers some excellent advice: Try to avoid making comparisons. Try not to say anything that sounds like “Around here we do things this way.” People feel very insulted if you suggest that their way of doing things is somehow inferior, whether you’re talking about their home or their home country.
Practically speaking, the first step toward living comfortably with diversity is a very simple one. Put yourself in the other person’s place. No matter what their differences, we’re all living, breathing human beings and our similarities are actually a lot more pronounced than our differences. Look for those things we all have in common. We all have pressures at home. We all want to succeed, and we all want to be treated with the same dignity, respect, and understanding.
Empathy, or seeing the world through another’s eyes, is something a leader needs to accomplish on a daily basis. People have always wanted to be treated as individuals, but today they acknowledge their individuality in many new ways. It is not just a matter of saying “Good morning” or “Thank you” anymore. A lot of ethnocentric assumptions have to be put aside, and a lot more awareness has to take their place.
In some parts of the world and within some races and religions, it’s considered rude to seem too friendly or inquiring. There are people who want routine business encounters to be just that, without much small talk or questions asked or answered. It’s not hostility; it’s just a sense of social distance. Other cultures, of course, have very different expectations. It’s considered insulting if you don’t smile, say hello, and pass the time of day for a while, even if you’re pressed for time. If these two viewpoints meet head-on, with neither one knowing much about the other, there will be problems. That’s what happens when people haven’t educated themselves about diversity so that real empathy can become possible.
Instead of making people feel different, many successful leaders are learning how to make people feel important. This takes more than one or two gestures or compliments. It’s a process that consists of many little touches, sometimes over a significant period of time.
An executive in the garment industry describes her experience with this. “Times were tough for us in the late ’80s and early ’90s,” she said. “But our people were incredibly wonderful in helping us get through, and they come from all over the world. I like to think it’s because over the years we tried to build a sense of real closeness. We recognized our differences. We found out what they mean and what they don’t mean. We certainly didn’t ignore them, but we also learned to look beyond them.”
In this particular company, recognizing differences meant gently correcting a visiting executive when he referred to female employees as “girls.” It meant counseling a young man about his fear of driving on the freeway, so that he could get to work on time. It meant learning Spanish. It meant leaving the door of the president’s office open.
Years ago an insurance agency moved into a building that housed several other offices. On his first day in the new location, the president of the agency knocked on the door of the office next door to introduce himself. When a young man opened the door, the insurance agent was surprised to encounter a strong aroma of incense. Behind the young man he could see a dimly lit room hung with tapestries and exotic artwork. It looked like something from a fairy tale, but it actually was the outer office of a jewelry manufacturing and polishing business. The young man and his brother owned the business. They had recently arrived from Lebanon and they were looking forward to pursuing their careers in a country where bombings and civil war were not a way of life.
Although the insurance man and the jewelry manufacturers had very different ideas about how their place of business should look, they became good neighbors and eventually close friends. They learned from one another, not only about their work, but also about every aspect of their lives. They learned to see each other as individuals, not as symbols or stereotypes of some alien civilization.
One of the most controversial trends in American business is the transfer of manufacturing work beyond the borders of the United States. The controversy involves the possibility that American workers are being deprived of jobs, as well as the possibility that foreign workers are being exploited by very low wages. These are complex issues, but there’s no doubt, in some countries around the world, that survival is very difficult. When the owner of a large American manufacturing company visited a factory in Southeast Asia, he was deeply affected by the hard work being done. The need of the workers for any job they could get was clear to him.
As it happened, the American executive had been a student of Dale Carnegie. He recalled reading a story that Carnegie told many times over the years. The story concerned James A. Farley, Franklin Roosevelt’s campaign manager during the ’20s and ’30s. Farley made it a practice to write down, and often to remember by heart, the names of everyone he met on his travels around the country during political campaigns. This would include many hundreds of people. Then when he returned home, after weeks on the road, Farley immediately set about a task that he considered hugely important. He sent a personally signed letter to every single individual he’d encountered on the road. This of course was smart politics, but it was also a gesture that must have had immense meaning to thousands of people struggling to survive during the years of the Great Depression and Second World War. Many probably kept their letters from Jim Farley for the rest of their lives.
As he toured the Southeast Asian manufacturing plant, the American executive thought about Dale Carnegie telling that story, and before he returned to his hotel, he had obtained a list of the names and addresses of every worker at the factory. Then, back home he sent a personal letter to every one of those names. This task took several weeks. The executive couldn’t even pronounce many of the names, but he knew this was something that the factory workers would never forget. He also knew that it was one of the most positive things he had ever done in his business career—not because it made a lot of money for him, but because it didn’t.
As a leader you must be aware of the demographic sensitivity of today’s highly charged workplace. Small gestures mean more than ever before. Returning a phone call, remembering a name, and treating people respectfully all add up to leadership mastery. Failing to take care of these things may be nothing more than simple carelessness, but it can be misinterpreted as something much more serious by people who feel vulnerable and powerless.
As a Chicago advertising executive reports, “The small but significant gestures are what separate you from the crowd. You’ve got to get into the habit of making people feel important and unique, especially if they don’t quite feel that way themselves. You’ve got to say, ‘Regardless of our differences, so much about us is the same. We are in this together. You’re concerns are my concerns.’”
This is really nothing more than applying the Golden Rule in the workplace. Treat everyone like a colleague, don’t patronize, don’t condescend, and by all means don’t berate.
Given the dramatic changes in the American workforce, why are so many managers failing to get the message? Why are some people still denied equal access to hiring and promotion? Why do lawsuits cost companies millions of dollars when these abuses come to the surface? Often the reason is low self-esteem. Not on the part of the victims, but in the people who ostensibly hold power. “Managers feel exposed,” says the vice president of a large investment bank. “They think their egos are always on the line. Many of them are really very decent people. But when certain managers meet somebody who doesn’t know how important they’re supposed to be, they tense up. They adopt an unnatural style. They’re not really gruff or blunt but they think they’ve got to act that way. It’s overcompensating for their own sense of discomfort.”
Does this cover work? It rarely does. As the bank executive explains, “People rarely respond to intimidation or manipulation, and when you’re dealing with people from different cultures or backgrounds, those kinds of behaviors are magnified by the distrust that’s already present. Instead of letting their negative behaviors be magnified, leaders should make an extra effort to show consideration and respect. Today you can’t make easy assumptions about how your words and actions will be interpreted. You’ve got to take the extra step.”
Another executive puts it this way, “In our own minds we’ve got to be prepared to forget about our titles and our incomes. We’ve got to strip all those things away and focus on the contribution everyone is making, regardless of their position in the organization.” And that’s actually a very healthy thing to do. If you can’t meet people without pinning all your medals on your chest, maybe you don’t deserve those medals anyway.
Successful executives are often people who have spent years acquiring and getting comfortable with power. They are men and women who have learned how to assert themselves and move to the front of the pack. But the new workplace demands learning some humility. This is true particularly for people who have made their mark a decade or so in the past. While this is a challenge, it is also an opportunity.
One executive in commercial real estate found a great way to disengage himself from his impressive title in the corporate world. “I was a company president when I was in my early thirties,” he said. “I felt very important because of that. Then I’d come home and the baby would be wet and I’d be changing a diaper and it immediately brought me back and gave me perspective. My family is what really kept me in balance.”
Other leaders have accomplished the same thing through sports, religious affiliations, parent associations, and school. Leadership masters do whatever it takes to see things through other people’s eyes, especially if those eyes are used to looking out on a very different environment.
1. Honoring and respecting diversity and maintaining a work environment that does so too are key to mastering leadership. List three things that you can do to further encourage diversity in your organization.
2. It is important both personally and professionally to be able to put yourself in another’s shoes. Empathy is a trait that should be valued and practiced. How empathetic are you? Next time you struggle with someone, take some time after the struggle to sit quietly and imagine the situation from his or her perspective. To do this, you must totally let your own opinions and agenda go. Then write any new insights or ideas you gain from practicing this exercise.
3. Sometimes we can get lost in the might of our ego. It is important, no matter who you are, that you are able to disengage from your title or status. There is no true power in arrogance. It only alienates you from your peers and subordinates. How can you cultivate more humility in yourself? List three steps that you can take to further develop your humility.