Unit of One Anniversary Handbook

Learn the difference between direct and indirect leadership -- and then apply it to yourself. Most companies are still dominated by numbers, information, and analysis. That makes it much harder to tap into intuition, feelings, and oblique thinking -- the skills that leaders will need to succeed in the future.

Which of these two messages do you think motivates a team more effectively? Case 1: "Here is this year's profit-and-loss objective. If we make our numbers, you will get your bonus at the end of the year, with stock-option vesting in three years. Oh by the way, we believe people are our most important asset." Case 2: "Here is our philosophy: Take care of your customer. Take care of your fellow team members. Then tangible results will follow."

I think the answer is obvious. The first approach will work well in the short term -- but the team will not feel better for having done it. The second approach is sustainable, can be scaled up to include large numbers of people, and the team will feel better about its performance. If you work with the whole person, and their whole mind, you will reach a better place -- for them and the company.

Noel Tichy
Director, Global Leadership Program
University of Michigan Business School
Ann Arbor, Michigan

The most important job for a leader who wants to win in the 21st century is to create more leaders, at more levels of your company, than the competition. This is a job that's too important to outsource: leaders with a proven track record of success -- rather than professors or consultants -- are the ones to develop more leaders.

It takes a "teachable point of view," a teaching method that enables you to make your tacit knowledge explicit. You'll need three things: your own ideas, deeply held values, and a way to energize the emotions of your people. The ideas come first -- how do you combine changes in the external environment, people, capital, information, and technology to succeed? Then you need to state the values that you want to build into your organization to support these ideas. Finally, you need to create positive emotional energy -- not by cheerleading a vague set of abstractions, but by energizing your people around clear expressions of your ideas and values.

You don't have to be a world-class orator to be a world-class leader. What really counts is the sincerity of your message.

Maggie Hughes
President and COO, LifeUSA Holding, Inc.
Minneapolis, Minnesota

I find it amusing and frustrating -- and often quite appalling -- how few business leaders recognize that people should share in the value they create. At LifeUSA, our employees have options on nearly 2 million shares of company stock. It seems like common sense to us. So why is it still so uncommon in most companies?

Sharing the wealth creates a vested interest for everyone to succeed. It's a powerful mechanism for accountability. And it encourages people to innovate and provide unbeatable service.

Nobody wins unless everybody wins.

Patrick Kelly
Chairman and CEO, Physician Sales & Service
Jacksonville, Florida

Real leaders set goals that are ambitious and simple. If you want to develop an effective mission for your company, keep it to one sentence -- literally.

Over the last 15 years, we've had three different mission statements at PSS. In 1988, we vowed "to be the first national physician supply company." We achieved that goal in 1994. In 1994, we vowed "to do a billion dollars in sales by the year 2000." We expect to achieve that goal by 1998. Last year we vowed "to be the first worldwide distributor of health-care products."

We're not sure when we'll achieve that. But we will.

WindEagle and RainbowHawk
Ehama Institute
Los Gatos, California

The Old Chiefs said that leading in the Way of the Council meant encouraging each person to step forward and share their gifts for all the people. The chiefs listened deeply and saw to it that all perspectives were shared in the Council with respect and honor.

To be an inspirational leader, you must awaken values, awaken your people's remembrance of their power to create, and call your people to be their best. To do this, you will need a true mind of sincerity, benevolence, strictness, wisdom, and courage.

Leaders today, like the Old Chiefs, need to teach by example, get all the people involved, gather all perspectives, and create an organic whole. We need a better way to draw forth the energies of all the people. People don't want autocratic regimes. They want wholeness, participation, balance.