Steve Jobs died this week. Steve Jobs left the world a legacy of brilliant accomplishment. The economic value of his company rivals that of much older more established Exxon Mobil as America’s richest company. Jobs was exacting, creative and driven. He pursued excellence with apparent single minded determination. He experienced his own failures, such as one time being fired as CEO of Apple after starting the company himself, as new opportunities to prove himself and his vision. Jobs did not sulk, he instead helped found and develop Pixar animated studios, home of the Toy Story franchise and other great animated films. Yet from all accounts, Steve Jobs was also a prick to work for. The polite way this is often said is that when it came to his employees “he didn’t suffer fools gladly”. He was notoriously demanding of those who worked for him and of himself. Happiness, to Steve Jobs, was a by-product of success, not a goal in and of itself.
On a local level former Mayor Ray Mariano now head of the Worcester Housing Authority has come out with what I believe is a courageous, bold and brilliant proposal to end what is often complete dependency on government housing by able bodied inhabitants. Ray Mariano is also, by many accounts, difficult to work for. Yet his results are impressive.
Ben Masterman, who owns Masterman’s in Auburn, is such a great leader and boss that he gave one employee $10,000 when she left the company to go to college. The type of loyalty this man inspires is through caring and benevolence; that’s Ben Masterman’s leadership style.
The other extreme in leadership style was exhibited on CNBC last Friday morning during “Squawk Box”. Alan Greenspan, the former longtime chairman of the Federal Reserve was being interviewed along with Peter Orszag, the former head of the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama. At one point Peter Orszag, upon being interrupted by Chairman Greenspan began to defer to Greenspan, who softly said, “No, please, excuse me, I didn’t mean to interrupt, please continue”. Here were two of the most powerful men in America both humbly expressing their own reserved self-restraint and person intellectual modesty. One didn’t get the impression that this was a disingenuous show of humility solely for public consumption, but a true expression of open, honest respect for another persons’ dignity. One was left to wonder, can one really get to be that powerful and still defer to the sentiments of others so graciously. It was a different kind of leadership. A gender oriented take on leadership is expounded by Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Polities and Rutgers University’s. She said in a New York Times article:
“[T]he shorthand of it is that women run for office to do something, and men run for office to be somebody”.
Obviously, there are different styles of leadership that work. I myself have exhibited both in my own career. It is interesting to think long and hard about which one best gets the job done. It’s also interesting to think about how expansively we define what the “job” is. How narrow or wide should our definition of success be? Is producing a product that people want, giving many people jobs and increasing shareholder value a great definition of success? Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates might say yes, as would many of us. But pornographer Larry Flynt could make the case for himself using the same criteria; the consumer wants the product, lots of people have jobs with his company and the shareholders who own stock in his company are happy with their returns.
If the usual definition of success is too narrow, what is too expansive? If every endeavor is evaluated by “Did you make the world a better place, and by how much?”, most of us would live a life of frustration , as day to day responsibilities often consume this worthy, yet very difficult to achieve goal.
As a threshold question we should ask ourselves, “What are we and our leaders leading us to?” Is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow money, power, advancing the world’s knowledge or increasing our sense of a shared humanity? Once we answer the question of what we value, we can evaluate who best to lead us.
This is Randy Feldman on WCRN’s Mid day Report.
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