Keith said:
>One of the ironies about being truly open in North American Business is
>that you can be perceived as weak. Even though listening/directing/leading
>are effective ways to get the job done with maximum commitment of your
>people, executives are often looking for the 'cowboy' with the answers.
I don't doubt this a bit.
However, it's worth noting that the American Management Associations,
which at one time (and perhaps still today) takes large amounts of data on
managers that attend their short courses (of which there used to be many
and may still be). Their analysis (circa 1974) showed that "successful
managers" usually fit one of two types--not just one type.
One type is the hard-driving, chain smoking, stay late, keep your
secretary after hours, make a lot of noise (perhaps this is the cowboy
type, then again perhaps this is an insult to cowboys???). The other type
is the type Keith describes--the soft-spoken good listener type.
This doesn't argue against anything Keith said, but perhaps it adds
something about the limited perspective of boards of directors that are
looking for the first type exclusively.
John N. Warfield
Johnwfield@aol.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>