Students

Taking the lead: W. P. Carey joins SIM to develop business leadership

Harold Geneen of IT&T once said “leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned.” Since 1992, the Society for Information Management has been taking that same approach in helping high-potential managers discover and refine their own leadership styles through regional forums. Now, one of these seminars is coming to the W. P. Carey School of Business starting February 2, 2012.

2011-12-05

“Leadership cannot really be taught. It can only be learned,” according to Harold Geneen, the man who steered International Telephone and Telegraph Corp. from being a mid-size firm to being a multi-national conglomerate. Since 1992, the Society for Information Management (SIM) has been taking that same approach in helping high-potential managers discover and refine their own leadership styles through regional forums. Now, one of these seminars is coming to Arizona State University’s W. P. Carey School of Business. Called the SIM Leadership Development Program, this nine-month course convenes for two-day sessions held every six weeks starting February 2, 2012. The six sessions bring leaders-in-training together with corporate executives, academics, advanced practitioners and peers for what most program graduates call a life-transforming experience. Who and how “This is not a course that teaches you the 10 things you need to know to be a successful leader,” says program facilitator Bob Rouse, who has been involved in the SIM program for more than 10 years. “The course is about discovering what your own authentic leadership style is.” Learning your own leadership style takes self-examination, explains Bill Harrison, a veteran facilitator since 1995. Consequently, class number one starts with 10-minute life stories each participant must share, as well as exercises around some decidedly non-technical items, such as fear and trust. “We ask people to list the people and things they trust and why,” Harrison continues. “Then we run a discussion around what happens if those people or things are taken away from you. Eventually, we get to things like your faith, which can’t be taken away from you. It’s a lesson about learning to trust in your own values.” In another exercise, participants anonymously write fears on three-by-five cards, and the group discusses how they’d tackle those fears. “It does a lot for speaking from the heart,” Harrison explains, noting that leadership demands “living your values, not putting up a false front, so your people will know who you are and what you’ll stand for.” Rouse adds, “If you do not lead from your authentic strengths, people won’t follow you. They won’t give you their allegiance and allow you to influence them as much as you’d like to. Oh, sure, they’ll follow your orders. But you’re not going to get their hearts.” Made, not born It’s said that leaders are made, not born, and along with self-discovery, the SIM program instills habits of leadership. Some of those habits come from books -- 30 of them -- that are required reading for the course. “The book list is a way to get people used to reading regularly and learning continuously,” says Rouse. “We want people to recognize that you need to keep learning day by day, all the time, not just about yourself but also about the world.” Hence, the eclectic nature of the book list, which includes some classic business books, such as Max DePree’s Leadership is an Art and The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem, as well as a few books you wouldn’t expect to see in a business seminar. Participants read Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl’s chronicle of life as a concentration camp prisoner, Two Old Women, a novel about aged Alaskan women who are abandoned by their tribe, and Orbiting the Giant Hairball, a Hallmark veteran’s views on moving beyond the “giant hairball” of rules, policies and traditions that clog creativity in corporate life. There’s even a book called How to Read a Book, a 426-page tome described by Harrison as “a long and tedious thing that no one reads entirely, including the facilitators. A great book, hated by all.” So why is it on the list? “A lot of people open books, start with chapter one and read straight through,” Harrison notes. “This book lets people know it’s OK to scan; you don’t need to read the whole book.” How to Read a Book tells readers how to do that effectively. Even if program participants don’t read all of a book, they will need to talk about it. “Early on, I take two sheets of paper with the questions ‘what did you like about the book’ and ‘what did you learn from the book’ written on them,” Harrison says. “Then I tell the group to take their sheets about liking the books and throw them away. We don’t care if you like the book. We focus on what you learned from the book.” Often, he adds, people walk into class disliking a book and deciding to take a second look after someone else praises it. The process mirrors course lessons on seeing and valuing other people’s viewpoints. Elements of style “There are some major components people need to pay attention to if they’re going to be successful leaders,” says Rouse. “One is their own traits, the way they are, the way they react to people or surprises.” Traits, he explains, stem from family and early experiences and include such things as seriousness or jocularity and shyness or extroversion. “You need to know your traits because they impact how you interact with others.” “Another thing we work on is feedback and giving feedback continuously, rather than only in a yearly review,” Harrison says. To hone skills, each of the 30 books gets discussed with a course participant acting as discussion moderator. At the end of the discussion, other participants must provide feedback, which teaches feedback skills and reinforces the idea that “feedback needs to be instant and constructive.” Relationship management is also a frequent topic covered, because, as Harrison says, “people don’t move up the corporate ladder without it.” An aspect of relationship management he covers is “helping the boss do the right things. Instead of looking at individual goals and micromanaging them, look at your boss’ goals and help your boss achieve them.” Then, too, there’s recognition that upward mobility isn’t a pre-determined path. “At this stage in your career, you’ve probably been through career planning at your company, and you get the idea that career progression is some kind of mechanical, upward movement if you just work hard enough at it,” Rouse says. “But every one of the CIOs that come to talk to our group has a different story. Some had good bosses, some bad. Some stayed in IT, some spent time working within business units. The process, the journey, is always unique and patterned by who you are.” Perhaps that’s why the power of self-reflection shows up in the leadership program’s results. “Out of around 3,000 program graduates, we have at least 100 who are now CIOs,” Rouse continues. “We have a number who have become lead technical contributor for their companies. No one reports to them. They move from project to project, pushing and leading others from a perspective of experience and technical knowledge. You can’t buy that kind of leadership. You have to develop it.” For the next generation Program participants and their corporate sponsors credit SIM’s course with providing the spark of such leadership. Gary Bussell, a vice president at JP Morgan Chase, called the seminar, “One of those rare, life-changing events we all home to come across once or twice in our lifetimes. I went in hoping I’d become better in my job. I came out realizing it’s not about me becoming better. It’s about the plurality of us becoming better together in every area of life.” Debbie Jowers, administrative director of applications at Texas Health Resources, called the program a “tremendous growth opportunity” for one of the managers who reports to her. “When I polled his team for comments for his current review, the responses told the story,” she said. “They used the word ‘leader’ to describe him, not ‘manager.’ With the recent loss of Steve Jobs, Michael Goul, IS professor and chair of the W. P. Carey School’s Information Systems Department, points to the program as a tool for keeping the leaders’ seats filled. “You have to have succession planning throughout the company,” he says. “It’s good business and key if you want to move your business forward.” Plus, the program, Goul says, is a good opportunity for corporate professionals to open a dialogue about promotion potential. “I hear students say their conversations with bosses get bogged down in project details or maybe a talk about yearly performance,” he explains. “If you’re at a point where it’s time to find out what it takes to move up the corporate ladder or be satisfied where you are, this course is door-opener to initiate that conversation about progressing in the business.” Bottom line

• The W. P. Carey School of Business is partnering with the Society for Information Management to offer a regional leadership forum.
• Consisting of two-day sessions held every six weeks for nine months, the program is called the SIM leadership Development Program and begins on February 2, 2010.
• Participants read 30 books to be discusses in six sessions. They also meet business executives and build a professional network while learning to identify, define and hoe their own leadership styles.
• Alumni of SIM leadership programs call the seminars life-changing events.

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