by Ian Buchanan

Created on: May 11, 2010   Last Updated: May 12, 2010

There is no magical formula for achieving success; rather, certain individuals have a combination of qualities that generate loyalty and support from subordinates that result in superior team performance. The key is a leader’s ability to build and motivate a team that wants to work well. Hiring and communicating are certainly important, but the very essence of leadership skill is that the credit is naturally given to the team, and a gifted manager takes great satisfaction when his or her team stands up to receive the recognition the manager has nurtured them to earn. Let me give a real life example.

A young man worked in a dark dusty corner of a huge warehouse in the early 1960s filing hundreds of invoices every day. His boss was only interested in numbers, and so he received negative feedback whenever there were unfiled documents at the end of the day. He later worked in the accounts payable department, and again his experience was governed by the number of invoices processed each day. What struck him was the general approach of management to denigrate the rows of employees, and the lack of human concern practiced by the supervisors.

This man worked there for ten years, but at the same time he attended university in the evening, and eventually attained a degree. He then received a promotion into the HR division, and later became a supervisor in the marketing department. From the very first management assignment he was determined to treat his subordinated with respect, and he saw his role not as a manager but as an encourager. He had spent so many years working for people who hogged the glory and he had felt the injustice as a subordinate who didn’t share in the rewards heaped on the managers. Like so many other employees, he had experienced the very worst and depraved subjugation a business can commit.

He grew to become  an enthusiastic delegator, assigning tasks to people that stretched their ability, but he was right beside then to provide advice and tools to get the job done. He intervened when another manager slighted one of his employees, but he equally demanded this staff conduct themselves with professionalism and respect for others. Over the later years employees sought to work for him and many of his subordinated followed him into the senior corporate ranks.

This now older man was nominated for the corporate award of excellence three times, but declined on each occasion. Many of his employees received this award, to the point they had a higher percentage of recipients than any other department for many years. He was tremendously proud of his subordinates who were acclaimed, and his satisfaction to stay in the background ran in the face of most executives who are driven by self promotion.

He retired recently, not only from the business world, but also from a number of not-for-profit boards on which he had sat, and when asked what the secret to his success had been he said he felt compelled to help each person rise to the best of their ability, and he reflected back on his early experiences to constantly remind him of how dreadful it had been working for people whose interests never went beyond themselves. His success came from being a simple decent person who genuinely rejoiced in others success. That’s almost biblical. 

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