Read an Excerpt

Finding One’s Voice
 
 
Ruth was right. Zoe, now a flourishing four-year-old, and I have a very special relationship. These days, her voice and touch are as important to me as my voice and touch were to her four years ago. This interdependent relationship, it seems to me, is one of the results of trying to be a good leader, of composing voice and touch. There is, of course, a prior task—finding one’s voice in the first place.
 
One of the ways I have found my own voice over the years is to write. So here is another book, Leadership Jazz. I truly hope that it will help you think about the work of leaders, that it will help you in some modest way discover some of the essential elements of leadership. Perhaps more than anything, I hope that together we can ponder the mysterious energy lying impounded in the connection between voice and touch. After all, a leader’s voice is the expression of one’s beliefs, and the first four chapters especially deal with what we believe. A leader’s touch demonstrates competence and resolve, two qualities we can discuss in the rest of the book.
 
Whether leaders articulate a personal philosophy or not, their behavior surely expresses a personal set of values and beliefs. This holds true for people in businesses and hospitals and colleges and families. The way we build and hold our relationships, the physical settings we produce, the products and services our organizations provide, the way in which we communicate—all of these things reveal who we are. Such is also the case with organizations. General Motors and Exxon have genealogies, personalities, and reputations just as surely as you and I.
 
Leadership can never stop at words. Leaders must act, and they do so only in the context of their beliefs. Without action or principles, no one can become a leader. This conviction is woven like a red thread through the following chapters.
 
A great many people in positions of leadership are not waiting around for national or international leaders or for Fortune 100 CEOs—or for me—to tell them what to do. They realize that the work of leadership belongs to the thousands of college presidents, hospital board members, people in state and local government, parents and teachers, and people in business organizations large and small. They have already embroiled themselves in the good work of being and becoming leaders. They are eager to equip themselves to do their jobs better.
 
Leadership is, as you know, not a position but a job. It’s hard and exciting and good work. It’s also a serious meddling in other people’s lives. One examines leadership beginning not with techniques but rather with premises, not with tools but with beliefs, and not with systems but with understandings. This I truly believe.
 
On a recent trip to England, I looked out of the window just before sunrise as the plane circled over central London on its way to Heathrow. The gauze of a light fog diffused the yellow lights of the city and created a brief but exciting feeling of a new Narnia. I was looking at something I had seen many times before through a new lens.
 
Leaders need an ability to look through a variety of lenses. We need to look through the lens of a follower. We need to look through the lens of a new reality. We need to look through the lens of hard experience and failure. We need to look through the lens of unfairness and mortality. We need to look hard at our future.
 
What will be needed by the next generations, our own children and grandchildren? When will we stop being boxed in by national boundaries and cultural stereotypes? What does it mean to modulate individual rights with the common good? Are we ready to make a commitment to civility and inclusiveness? Are we ready to think seriously about a fairer way to distribute economic results among all people? Where will we find new metaphors for these essential ideas?
 
I enjoy jazz, and one way to think about leadership is to consider a jazz band. Jazz-band leaders must choose the music, find the right musicians, and perform—in public. But the effect of the performance depends on so many things—the environment, the volunteers playing in the band, the need for everybody to perform as individuals and as a group, the absolute dependence of the leader on the members of the band, the need of the leader for the followers to play well What a summary of an organization!
 
A jazz band is an expression of servant leadership. The leader of a jazz band has the beautiful opportunity to draw the best out of the other musicians. We have much to learn from jazz-band leaders, for jazz, like leadership, combines the unpredictability of the future with the gifts of individuals.
 
Leaders certainly need to know where they stand. But how do leaders stand? A sound philosophy isn’t enough; we all need to connect voice and touch. So much discussion these days talks of ethics as a legal line in the sand, a prohibition against certain actions. But leadership is constructive, the right actions taken in the context of clear and well-considered thinking. The active pursuit of a common good gives us the right to ask leaders and managers of all kinds to be not only successful, but faithful. While measuring success in our society seems to be hardly mysterious enough, judging faithfulness is another matter. After all, a philosophy of leadership or management cannot be caught like a cold.
 
In an effort to be helpful, let me suggest five criteria as a way to start thinking about faithfulness.
 
Integrity in all things precedes all else. The open demonstration of integrity is essential; followers must be wholeheartedly convinced of their leaders’ integrity. For leaders, who live a public life, perceptions become a fact of life. Leaders understand the profound difference between gestures and commitment. It’s just impossible to be a closet leader.
 
The servanthood of leadership needs to be felt, understood, believed, and practiced if we’re to be faithful. The best description of this kind of leadership is found in the book of Luke: “The greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules, like the one who serves.” The finest instruction in how to practice it can be found in Servant Leadership by Robert Greenleaf, a lovely grace note to the melody in Luke.
 
Accountability for others, especially those on the edges of life and not yet experienced in the ways of the world, is one of the great directions leaders receive from the prophet Amos. Amos tells us that leaders should encourage and sustain those on the bottom rung first and then turn to those on the top. Should we call this the trickle-up theory?
 
There is a great misconception in organizations: that a manager must be either in control or not in control. The legitimate alternative is the practice of equity. This is surely a reasonable component in anyone’s philosophy of management. While equity should certainly guide the apportioning of resources, it is far more important in our human relationships. (See “A Key Called Promise” for more about equity.)
 
The last criterion for faithfulness (in this list, that is; of course you will think of more) is that leaders have to be vulnerable, have to offer others the opportunity to do their best. Leaders become vulnerable by sharing with others the marvelous gift of being personally accountable. People in a capitalist system become vulnerable by creating a genuine opportunity for others to reach their potential at the same time that all work together toward corporate goals.
 
In finding one’s voice and connecting it to one’s touch, three questions come to mind: “What shall I promise?” “Can the so-called bottom line truly be the bottom line?” and “Who speaks for whom?” I hope you’ll find your answers somewhere in this book.
 
You’ve recently been promoted. You’re now a vice president or a provost or a department supervisor. Now the work begins. You haven’t arrived, you’ve only begun to travel. In the same way, having children means only that the work of becoming a parent has begun. The biological event is very different from the love and commitment, the skinned knees and dirty diapers, the faithfulness to homework and Little League, the sacrifices for tuition and music lessons, the laughter and the tears—these kinds of things add up to earning the title “Mom” or “Dad.”
 
One becomes a leader, I believe, through doing the work of a leader. It’s often difficult and painful and sometimes even unrewarding, and it’s work. There are also times of joy in the work of leadership, and doing the work of a leader is necessary in our society.
 
I hope that Leadership Jazz offers you some clues as to how leaders might act and what kind of thinking might precede action, whether you’re parent or teacher, president or supervisor, preacher or member of Congress. I hope that reading this book will encourage you to see the breadth and depth of potential that exists in the work of every leader. I hope that you, too, will discover that so much of leadership is music from the heart.