Thoroughly Counterintuitive Approach to Leading

Bob Sutton:

You and I have been e-mailing about leadership traits, and at one point you suggested, "Good leaders know when to be boring, vague, emotionally detached, and authoritarian." Under what circumstances might such traits be desirable? Start with boring.

There are two situations in which it's a good idea to be boring. One is when you're working on something but, so far, all you've got is bad news. Under those circumstances, any outside attention is bad.

Don Petersen was the CEO of Ford after the Iacocca era, and he was responsible for turning the company around. He told me a story about being invited to speak at the National Press Club. He didn't want to do it. At the time, Ford had no good cars at all. But he and his PR chief decided he would go and give a speech about the most boring subject they could think of. At the time, that was safety. He practiced speaking in the most boring way possible, using the passive voice and long sentences. He put up charts that were hard to read, and then turned his back to the audience to talk about the charts. After that, the press lost interest in him for a while, so he could concentrate on doing the work.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 13, 2012 2:10 AM
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