Conversation 13: Quality of People

Could you please summarize what we’ve covered?

Let’s do it together.

In order to manage we need to decide and implement. It’s impossible for one person to make good decisions all the time. We need to consult with others. We need a complementary team, composed of different people with different styles. Naturally, this generates conflict.

When time comes to implement the decision we need common interests of those whose cooperation we need for the implementation to be successful. That also creates conflict of interests.

But we make it work by creating a climate of Mutual Trust and Respect, so we can learn from each other. We talked about creating common vision and values, the right (PAEI) structure, and the kind of communication needed for collaborative decision making. But we also need the right kind of people, who command and grant trust and respect. We have to create a group of colleagues.

We look for someone who will complement our argument by pointing out the weaknesses. By incorporating criticism, the argument grows stronger.

That is, as long as there is mutual respect.

Absolutely. Conflict does not destroy a marriage. Conflict is to be expected because we each fell in love with and married someone who was different from us. What destroys a marriage is not what we fight about, but how we fight.

A study conducted at Yale University followed a select group of married couples over many years. The purpose was to find the personality traits that predict which couples will stay together. What they found is very interesting. There are no personality traits that predict who will stay married. Instead, they found that what predicts the survivability of marriages is not the differences in personalities, but how the couples handle the differences. I believe mutual respect is the factor that determines how the differences are handled.

Marriage counselors are reporting something else very interesting. The reasons people divorce are the same reasons they marry. We are attracted by our differences, not similarities. Since we know we are not perfect individually, we usually choose a mate who is strong in ar- eas where we are weak. This is wonderful before we get married, but what might happen later? The differences that were so attractive before become a source of difficulty later. People who cannot handle those differences end up divorcing or suffering a lot.

A marriage may also have conflict in capi. Conflicting interests are brought about by dual careers. What is good for one might hurt the interests of the other. Couples should not dream about a utopian marriage in which there is no conflict. Expect conflict and learn how to harness it, rather than running away from it or getting depressed about it.

Can conflict be constructive in a marriage?

Sure. For example, in some marriages, conflict is a source of bonding. Some couples grow closer after their conflict than they were before. Other couples grow further apart with each fight. What is the difference? It is not the content of the conflict, but how they handle it.

You have probably had a fight with your spouse or someone else close to you. Years later, you don’t remember the details of the fight, but you never forgot how it was fought. You still get a bad taste in your mouth remembering it. What you will never forget is whether you can trust and respect that person.

It is Mutual Trust and Respect that make conflict constructive or destructive. I have advice for you: Any time you disagree with someone, watch closely how you disagree more than what you disagree about.

I must respect people in spite of their being different in style and judgment.

As Otto von Bismarck said, “Respectfully even to the gallows.”

I must develop a system that nurtures mutual trust in spite of the conflict of interests.

Leadership excellence can be achieved in an organization of colleagues who communicate well, and who are also friends and thus cooperate. They have Mutual Trust and Respect for each other, so they have both synergistic and symbiotic relationships.

I can see the banner covering the building: “Managerial excellence through teamwork: cooperation, communication, and Mutual Trust and Respect.”

Not bad!

But how do we know whether we have that communication, cooperation, respect, and trust?

You can see it in body language. When a decision is made in a climate of mutual respect, people turn to each other. They congregate and make decisions together. They face each other. Once they agree on a decision, if they also trust each other they can afford to turn their backs to each other while implementing the decision.

In a climate without MT&R, body language is just the opposite. Because people don’t respect each other’s opinions, they will most likely turn their backs to each other during decision making. When they set out to implement the decision, because they don’t trust each other, they will face each other and inspect each other.

Tell me which way you face during decision making and implementation, and I will tell you how well managed your organization is.

Is there another way to tell how well managed an organization is?

Yes. Making a decision together, rather than individually, takes more time. In organizations managed with mutual respect, it takes longer to make a decision because people make it together. But implementation is swift because people trust each other to perform the assigned tasks. They aren’t back-seat drivers, and there are no arguments. Disagreements were dealt with proactively in making the decision.

In a badly managed organization, where there is no trust and respect, people make decisions very fast because they make them individually. But implementing takes forever, because of the back-seat driving and continuous second guessing—because there is no trust.

Well-managed organizations manage the “long short” way, while badly managed organizations take the “short long” way.

This helps me understand the Japanese approach to management as compared to the American approach. In the United States, decisions are made quickly but implementation is slow. In Japan, it takes a long time to make decisions, but implementation is fast.

A German manager once asked me why a Japanese competitor was so fast with innovations, when the German company had the same R&D budget. I replied, “They are faster because they are slower.” He thought I was trying to be funny.

The Japanese practice a lot of mutual respect. One characteristic of Japanese culture is that losing face is shameful. One may even be driven to commit hara-kiri because of it. And to cause someone else to lose face is even worse.

What about mutual trust?

Japanese companies are committed to the employee for the long term and expect the same commitment in return. This mutual commitment creates a climate of mutual trust. It is this trust that nourishes a win-win climate and encourages cooperation.

Unfortunately, it’s not always that way in America. Sometimes management takes care of itself first and the employees later, if at all. When a company is in trouble, management uses its golden parachutes and fires the workers. Then Americans are surprised that unions don’t necessarily want to cooperate with management. Why should they?

When you trust and respect, you care; and when you care, you listen; and when you listen, you learn. The end result is a symbiotic synergistic relationship.

Some relationships are only synergistic without being symbiotic. Democracy, capitalism, a market economy—these systems are designed for growth. They are synergistic but not sym- biotic; the rich might get richer while the poor get poorer. Conversely, the socialist system tries to coalesce interests—the proletariat, intelligentsia, farmers—into a classless society. Communists tried to create a symbiotic society, but it wasn’t synergistic. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill observed, “Capitalism is an unequal distribution of wealth. Communism is an equal distribution of poverty.”

So what do we need? Both systems?

Yes. A true social democratic system that is both synergistic and symbiotic. In other words, one that prospers and grows while protecting the common interest of the total society. The short description of this hybrid system will be adversarial relations outside the company—market economy, capitalism in market forces—and socialism, caring for each other, inside the com- pany. This includes the community because the people working in the company belong to that community.

The Common Denominator of Success

The success of any system—whether it is micro or macro, whether it is a single human being, a family, an organization, or a society—can be predicted by one and only one factor: the ratio of external integration to internal disintegration.

DIAGRAMA

External integration is the amount of resources an organization invests in identifying and satisfying client needs, and finding changing opportunities that the company’s capabilities can satisfy profitably. Strategic planning and marketing perform this role.

If you take all books on marketing or strategic planning and summarize them, then summa- rize the summaries, at the end the kernel of knowledge is this: how to match opportunities to capabilities successfully. It involves, for instance, market segmentation and product differentiation, among other things.

Internal disintegration is how much managerial energy is wasted inside the organization, and is a function of Mutual Trust and Respect. If there is little or no Mutual Trust and Respect, the energy spent on internal disintegration will be very high. It is wasted on rumors, accusa- tions, judging each other, and destructive conflicts.

The laws of physics tell us that energy at any point in time is fixed. There is no perpetual endless energy. What I have discovered in my work is that this fixed energy is allocated in a predictable way: First it goes to handle internal disintegration, then what is left, if any, goes to external integration.

Can you give me an example please?

Assume you visit a friend who is in a hospital. He was in a car accident. The doctor might ask you to limit your visit to no longer than five minutes. Why? Because your friend has no energy for you. He needs all his energy to heal himself. Sick people sleep a lot because they need the energy to get better. Imagine you are very ill, and someone wants to discuss with you a strategic plan on how to penetrate, say, the New York market. You will probably tell her to come back later. Why? You have no energy to deal with the subject.

The secret to finding another person is finding yourself first.

Since human energy, at any point, is fixed, the amount of energy available for external integration depends on how much energy is spent on internal disintegration. The formula applies to individuals, to family life, to com- panies, and to countries.

If people suffer from low self-esteem, low self-respect, and low self-trust, they’ll be riddled with inner conflicts. They may be good looking, smart, and rich, yet they will be unable to have a successful relationship or career. Most of their psychological energy is spent dealing with problems that stem from their low self-respect and self-trust.

When human beings lack self-respect and self-trust, most of their energy is spent between their ears. They are worried about what people think of them. They are trying to find out who they are and what they should do. Little energy is left over to deal with the outside world. Before they can meet someone else and develop a relationship, they must first learn to trust and respect themselves. The secret to finding another person is finding yourself first.

You probably know of some physically attractive people who have little or no success with the opposite sex. At the same time, you probably know people who are not especially attractive but who are very much in demand. What is happening? The first type exudes no energy.

Lacking self-trust and respect, these people project indecisiveness and rejection. The other type, who do respect and trust themselves, have all their energy available to focus on their partners. They are attractive because they exude energy. The condition for loving others is loving yourself first, but that does not mean being selfish. It means having mind, body, emotions, and spirit all in synchronicity, and having trust and respect for those four aspects of one’s self when they are in conflict.

Respecting your own vulnerability and weakness, and trusting that you will eventually find the right solution is the secret of success. Success is not the destination, but the condition of your journey. Self-respect and self-trust means having faith in yourself—a precondition for having faith in others. There is no faith unless you love yourself, and to love yourself means to accept your inner conflicts and integrate your mind, body, emotions, and spirit into a whole. It is this peacefulness and self-acceptance that make people attractive and beautiful from the inside out.

People who are in inner conflict are tense and spread pain around them. They are neither good spouses nor good leaders. Having a facelift, driving fancy cars, or indulging in other forms of conspicuous consumption will make them physically attractive, but only for a short while at best. Physical beauty is skin deep, as they say.

Educating our children means instilling trust and respect. Self-trust and self-respect. Respect for the body and for the emotions. Respect for parents, elders, teachers, the society we live in, and, yes, respect for the flag.

It is more important to educate children to “be” rather than to “know.” What children know will often become obsolete in a very short time. Who they are will last a lifetime.

You know, I think the (A)s took over educational institutions. They measure know-how ad nauseam with standardized testing. It is an efficient education, but I doubt its effectiveness. It teaches you to know but does not teach you to be.

I agree, but let’s continue to the next level of analysis. Let’s assume that we have people who are centered, who have self-respect and self-trust. They have energy to deal with the outside world, except that they have a disastrous family situation devoid of respect and trust. They have problems with their parents or spouses or children. Where is their energy spent now?

Research shows that executives who go through a divorce are practically useless to the corporation for about two years. They can’t succeed during that time, not because they are objectively bad, but because at that point in time their energy is going somewhere else. For them, success is to survive the upheaval with the fewest scars possible. Perhaps one source for the slow decline of productivity in the United States is the breakdown of the American family. One thing is certain: Low American productivity is not caused by a lack of technology or financial resources.

Let’s look at the next level now: people who know who they are, who they are not, and have a supportive, respectful, and trusting family. All their energy is available to deal with their career, but their organizations have no culture of Mutual Trust and Respect. Marketing is fighting sales; production is fighting engineering; accounting is fighting everyone. When the client arrives, what can this person say? “Come back tomorrow, I am exhausted today.”

Now, let’s assume we have an organization with common vision and values, and the right structure, process, and people. It has developed and nurtured Mutual Trust and Respect, but it operates in a society riddled with corruption and hatred between religions, nationali- ties, and races. Now what? Can it compete well internationally? Where is the energy of that country going? How much energy is there left if the unions fight management, the military fights the government, and the government fights the people? Without respect and trust, where is the money going? To Switzerland! The country might be rich in resources, but it cannot succeed because its relationships are bankrupt.

If we are strong inside, we can deal with any outside problem and handle it as an opportunity.

Compare the successful economies of Japan and Switzerland, nations with few physical resources, to some of the developing nations rich in oil, gas, diamonds, and other resources. The developing nations can’t use their resources constructively because of their and handle it as an internal conflicts. Colonial powers exploited them, and the native governments often behave the same way after independence. The colonial powers brought the missing elements of (A) and (E) to the colonies. In order to dominate, colonizers would often dis(I)ntegrate a colony by turning one religious or ethnic group against the other. When the colonialists left, they took away the (E) and left behind a huge (A) and a broken (I), thereby causing low (P). This is the inheritance of many Third World countries.

The tragedy of colonialism is not what the colonists took out of the colonies, but the culture and system they left behind or reinforced—a culture of elitism, exploitation, control, and bureaucracy. Third World countries now need to bring the weakened (I) component of their culture together. Peace first. Peace among Muslims and Hindus. Peace in Angola, and in South Africa. Only after (I) grows will the next job be to debureaucratize the government, i.e., reduce (A). Only then can these countries build (E)ntrepreneurship and, as (E) increases, (P) will start growing.

For success, a culture of MT&R is critical and indispensable for sustainable economic growth.

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Absolutely. What you have is the result of who you are, while who you are is not the result of what you have.

What all the above examples illustrate is that success comes from within. Too many companies worry exclusively about strategic planning and about how to beat their competitors. They are like the universe: expanding in the margins while collapsing at the core.

Success comes from the inside. If we are strong inside, we can deal with any outside problem and handle it as an opportunity. If we are weak inside, then every outside opportunity will be perceived as a problem.

The problem with America is America, not global competition. It is the American system that has less Mutual Trust and Respect than, say, the Japanese. Who are the Americans beating? Societies with even less Mutual Trust and Respect than the American system. True, we have to take into account other factors such as size and resources, but just imagine how much more these countries could be doing if they could capitalize on Mutual Trust and Respect.

In a recent lecture in Johannesburg, I said that South Africa is at a major intersection in its his- tory. It can become either the Switzerland or the Balkans of Africa. It will depend on whether it can develop a culture of Mutual Trust and Respect.

So the way to improve the performance of a company, a country, or a person is not by changing strategy, but by changing the internal environment?

Right. Once you change the internal environment, the right strategy and direction will emerge more easily. Without a healthy internal environment, even the best strategy will have great difficulty being implemented.

But if that’s true, some countries could be very successful.

Sure. Take Israel, for example. It has people from more than seventy different countries who have come together after being separated for two thousand years. It is a true United Nations. These differences create a tremendous amount of energy, which, if channeled with Mutual Trust and Respect, could make Israel an enormous success.

What stands in its way?

Historically, Jewish people were prohibited from having a country of their own and from doing manual labor. They were therefore unable to develop strong (P) and (A) traits, and developed strong (E) and (I) qualities instead. For (E)s, respect is a challenge. (E)s are usually quite arrogant and feel they know better than others. Trust is also a problem for (E)s. They have strong tendencies toward paranoia. Furthermore, for Jews, especially after thousands of years of persecution culminating in the Holocaust, trust does not come easily.

Increasing the level of respect and trust in Israel would take more than just talking. In light of the Jewish historical experience, realistically speaking, Israel can’t take chances and act as if it trusts the world. It is thus in trouble, although it seems to be doing well economically.

Using the same tools of analysis, there will be no peace in the Middle East until MT&R is established.

What about Europe?

Europe as a European Union could have been a giant. It is rich with cultural diversity, a market economy, and open borders. It could have become a serious contender for world leadership if it overcame its history of disrespect and mistrust.

But that did not happen.

In spite of common market, it is without common fiscal and monetary policy. The system has too much (A).

Looking at our chart, I notice something that you haven’t explained yet. Why is the road to destructive conflict a straight highway, while the path to constructive conflict appears to be a complicated route?

DIAGRAMA

The road to destructive conflict is easy because there is nothing you need to do to make conflict destructive. It is destructive by itself because of change. As we discussed earlier, if you leave a machine unused and unattended for a while, it won’t start. “But I didn’t do anything to it,” you might complain. That’s right, and that’s why it won’t work.

Time is change, and unattended change is destructive by its own nature. This is the principle of entropy, in which every system naturally tends toward chaos. To make change constructive, you have to work on it.

But why the complicated exit to constructive conflict? Why is the exit sign in small letters?

So that only people who drive slowly and carefully can see the sign pointing to the exit.

Why must they drive slowly?

Have you ever noticed how people in conflict behave? They are in pain. And what do they do when they feel pain?

They speed up.

Yes! They speed straight down the highway of destructive conflict. They raise their voices, talk faster, call other people names, or even storm out of the room. What’s happening? They can’t take the pain. Those who relax, slow down, and keep a cool head have a chance to resolve the conflict, or at least a chance to understand it. They’re the ones who can see the sign and take the constructive road.

How do you slow down?

The tougher the situation is, the more relaxed everyone needs to be. I have found by working with senior executives around the world that the most successful ones are those I call “duck managers.” A duck appears calm as it floats along on top of the water, but under the water its feet are paddling as fast as they can. Likewise, a good manager can be relaxed in spite of the conflict. He doesn’t lose his head or objectivity about a subject, and never deals with conflict in a destructive, disrespectful way.

You mean a good leader is a person who knows how to disagree without being disagreeable?

That’s right. Think Yiddish, act British. Or, to quote an English proverb, use soft words and hard arguments. This principle applies to everyone—not only to managers, but to spouses, children, and parents as well. Some people do the opposite and agree disagreeably. Even if you reach an agreement with them, you don’t want to repeat the experience. It was too painful.

Yes, I know. Arguing with emotional people is exhausting.

That is true in international relations too. How we handle our enemy is extremely important. Never show disrespect to your enemy. You will never find peace that way. Even wars have to be handled respectfully. You must communicate trustworthiness or the end of one war will simply sow the seeds for the next one. The resentments Germany harbored after World War I sowed the seeds of World War II. After World War II, however, the United States wisely proposed the Marshall Plan to Europe, and the United States reconstructed Germany. If it had not done so, Germany would not be part of NATO today.

You must always leave a way for your opponent not to lose face, or the next time you will face a far more determined enemy. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, it is reported that then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger prevented the Israelis from advancing too far into Egypt, claiming that Egypt must not be crushed or Israel would never find peace.

A system must be based on trust and respect and should control any attempts to destroy that base.

How about anti-democratic parties within a democracy?

In my judgment, democratic societies act properly when they ban parties that are antidemocratic and have no respect for the democratic process. Otherwise, totalitarian political parties can gain power democratically and then abolish the democratic system, as the Nazi party did. This should not be allowed. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse expressed this well when he wrote, “There can be no tolerance toward systems that renounce tolerance.”

The political application of Mutual Trust and Respect is very interesting, but right now my problems are with management. Tell me more about the kinds of people needed to make conflict constructive.

The People Factor: Identifying Leaders

To make conflict constructive, one of the factors we must focus on is the people; we must have people who command, and grant, respect and trust.

Staff people (as opposed to line managers, who have to produce the results for which the company exists), have a functional responsibility in marketing, data processing, or accounting. You may be able to put up with their individual style as long as they know their professional field. But once people become line managers, who they are is more important than what they know. If they don’t know something, they can hire whomever they need to advise them. A very successful corporate president once told me, “I have three doctorates although I never finished high school.” I asked him how that was possible. “Easy,” he said, “I hired them.” Know-how is easy to get; you can hire good people. To be is much more diffi- cult. Being trusted and respected is critical for being a leader.

But what do you do with people who do not grant or command respect and trust?

Recommend them to your competitors. That will undermine those companies more than your most competitive products. Sow dissension within your competition. Let them start fighting and wasting energy while you surround yourself with people who command and grant respect and trust, and emerge victorious.

What about people who have only one of these characteristics? For instance, what if they command respect but don’t grant it?

That’s not good in the long term. People who give respect but don’t command it aren’t good even in the short term. If the people aren’t trustworthy, I don’t care how much they know, they cannot succeed as leaders, managers, or parents. Period.

Tell me how much respect you command and grant, how trusting and trustworthy you are, and I’ll tell you whether you’re a good leader, a good parent, or a good spouse. In short, I’ll tell you what kind of a human being you are.

So being the right kind of human being is part of managing well?

That is the essence of it all. A good manager (or parent, or spouse, or political leader) is not valued for what he knows but for who he is. It is easier to hire someone who is and teach him to know, than it is to hire someone who knows and teach him to be.

If we were to randomly read some resumes, we would find that what people write about themselves is (P) and (A) oriented: what they have done, what degrees they’ve earned, and what titles they’ve held. It doesn’t tell us much about who they are as human beings. Are they respected? Do they disagree in a way that is enriching to others? Do they even know how to disagree? The resume does not say whether they are trustworthy. Maybe they’re human sharks who attack the moment they smell blood. Maybe they’ll knife you if you turn your back on them. This information doesn’t appear on a resume, but it’s the most important thing managers need to know about a person they are going to hire.

How do you decide whom to hire then?

Call former employers to find out whether your applicants are trustworthy and respected. Ask how they contributed and how they handled disagreements. You want to know what kind of people they are.

Isn’t it difficult to get that kind of information?

Yes. In the United States there are laws that make this information difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, you should look for leaders. Remember, the difference between managers, mismanagers, and leaders can be expressed by the (PAEI) code. Mismanagers have one or more blanks in the code. Any single blank makes them mismanagers. Managers have a complete code but have low (I). For example, big (P)s with small (aei)s are normal managers. They are (P)roducers. They’ll be good first-line supervisors but won’t go beyond that unless they are flexible and willing to learn and change. To be a leader you must have high (I) plus one or more of the other roles.

In a complementary team, people have to link up. People with blanks in their code cannot link up with people who excel in that missing role. What’s more, people who are not well rounded will have considerable difficulty changing and growing.

Leaders—who by our definition should have high (I)—are aware of their strengths and weak- nesses. When you interview someone for a job, one of the first questions should be, “What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?” The person who says “I don’t have any weaknesses” or “my weaknesses are my strengths” shouldn’t be hired. People who don’t know their weaknesses don’t know who they are. I would be afraid of working with them or for them.

Why would they be a problem?

To command and grant respect, you have to know who you are. Only by knowing who you are will you be able to identify what other styles you need to build a complementary team.

I can identify the styles of those around me, yet I’m having difficulty identifying my own style in (PAEI) terms.

This is common. My friend, Professor Sam Culbert of the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, says it takes two to know one. No one knows himself in a vacuum. We see ourselves through the eyes of others. We know ourselves through the impact we have on others. Logically, if we know the managerial style of others, it makes sense that others will know our own style. They respond to or cope with our style. That’s why Lone Rangers develop gofers, Bureaucrats have yes-yes clerks, and Arsonists prefer subordinates who behave like claques.

If you want to know who you are, watch the impact you have on others. Be sensitive to how people react to you. Watch how your subordinates and peers behave. Be open to receiving feedback.

Many years ago I was lecturing in Mexico. I lectured in English and was assisted by a simultaneous translator. I grew tired of the translation because the audience was reacting to the material a minute later—my lecture was out of sync. So I asked the audience whether they would prefer if I spoke in Ladino, the fifteenth-century language I used with my family, a mixture of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. The audience agreed.

It was quite arrogant on my part to lecture twentieth-century material in an archaic language, but I tried, and something very interesting happened. When I asked the audience, in fifteenth-century Spanish, “Did you hear me?” they winced as if I had said something very strange. I asked in English, “What did I say?” Someone answered, “You asked us if we felt you. The verb to hear in modern Spanish is escuchar and you were using the word sentir, which means to feel.”

At that moment, I had an illumination. Five hundred years ago, the senses of hearing, feeling, and listening could all be expressed in one word: sentir. It really means to sense. Even today, in modern Spanish, when somebody is hard of hearing, people say he is mal de sentido, literally “hard of feeling.”

What has happened over the last five hundred years? In Spanish, we now have several words instead of one from the past. It means some people can hear without listening, and some people listen but don’t feel what you say. They can repeat every word, even analyze them, but they don’t feel what you say. Five hundred years ago, since sentir was only one word, it meant that people heard, listened, and felt what they heard. They were more in touch with each other.

Interesting. The same is true in Greek. On the island of Corfu, where they speak a somewhat older dialect of Greek because of its isolation, the words for feel and hear are the same too.

You want a leader, spouse, or parent who not only hears or only listens to what is being said, but feels what is being said. Our technological and economic development has been accompanied by increasing emotional and social isolation. I find people in developing countries hear and feel what I say better than those in developed countries.

I had another illumination when I was in Chicago one cold winter. I was driving my car in a big snowstorm. Outside it was freezing, but inside the car it was so warm that I removed my jacket. I sat only an inch and a half away from the freezing cold, yet I was very comfortable.

The same phenomenon occurs emotionally in modern life. Technology has trained us to tune out. We box ourselves in. Out there, people are falling apart emotionally, but we stay within our own space and pay no attention to them. We have learned how to separate feeling from hearing from listening. Consider the expression “tune out.” We treat people like a radio station we don’t want to listen to.

For some people, the time it takes to make the transition from hearing to listening to feeling is quite long. A friend told me that his dog senses instantly how he feels when he gets home from work. As soon as he walks through the door, the dog either jumps on him or, if he is upset, goes to the corner, curls into a ball, and waits. On the other hand, it takes my friend forever to communicate how he feels to his wife. By the time she hears, then listens, then feels, he is even more upset.

Let’s summarize: For good leadership we need Mutual Trust and Respect, which means that good leaders are people who command and grant respect. What sort of people are they? First, their style is well rounded. They don’t excel in everything, but they’re capable of ad- equately performing all roles. They have strengths and weaknesses, but no blanks in their (PAEI) code.

Second, good leaders know themselves. A way to know yourself is by paying attention to what you do to others. Are you aware of how others respond to you? That will tell you who you are.

Good leaders are people who hear, listen, and feel. They do not just hear without listening or listen without feeling. They are sensitive to the impact they have on others. They are conscious. They are present.

People who don’t know themselves are usually the ones who think they know exactly who they are. They live in a vacuum; they don’t allow feedback from the outside.

Good leaders accept their strengths and their weaknesses, because the first condition for accepting the weaknesses of others is accepting your own. If you cannot accept yourself, how will you accept others?

I hear you loud and clear. Mutual Trust and Respect must begin with self-respect and self-trust. These qualities grow from the inside out. To achieve good leadership, first look inward.

Good leaders can identify in other people the strengths that they lack in themselves. This is very difficult, though. Big (E)s can identify other big (E)s, but they don’t know how to identify and evaluate an (A)’s strengths. They don’t know what criteria to apply. As a matter of fact, they don’t even like (A)s.

That’s why good leaders should have a well-rounded style. They are in touch with what they do, have a balanced view of themselves, accept their weaknesses, and can identify the strengths of others in areas where they are weak. Furthermore, they accept others who are better than they are in certain respects, because they accept that they are not good at everything. They can deal with the conflicts that stem from those differences. They are secure enough not to be threatened by disagreements. They can hear, listen, and feel. In essence, they can create a learning environment.

Can you list the qualities of a good leader?

Sure. Good leaders are people who:

1. Have a well-rounded, flexible style

2. Know themselves

3. Are aware of their effect on others

4. Have a balanced view of themselves

5. Accept their own weaknesses

6. Can identify strengths in others

7. Accept others who are different

8. Can harness conflict

9. Create a learning environment

In short, they are mature people.

Yes, maturity makes good leaders. Maturity comes from experience, and experience comes from making bad judgments and learning from them. The process of maturation is accompanied by pain. It involves losing attachments to your past to make space for new attachments in the future. Not everybody knows how to lose those attachments, how to let go. Winning is easy, losing is difficult. A good leader is one who comes out a winner after he loses. The road to heaven is through hell.

So you are against the fast track that allows young business school graduates to start at the top of the management pyramid?

Absolutely. They are frequently propelled to the top by what they know, not by who they are. They don’t have the experience that teaches them maturity and humility. Good leaders are humble. They know their weaknesses and seek the assistance of others. In Spanish there are three levels of knowing: 1) to know information; 2) to know how to do something; and 3) to know how to be. In modern society we overemphasize the knowing of information, the how-to, and almost ignore the critical importance of how to be.

Leaders must know how to be if they want to command and grant respect and trust.

This conversation was good, but heavy.

There is more to come.