Leadership and Balance

by Gail McGovern
Address to Certificate Recipients

Gail McGovern

Let me begin with heartfelt congratulations to you and your families. So many of you have additional daunting responsibilities and you've added to your days by attending classes. This is a phenomenal accomplishment and you should all feel extremely proud. I received my MBA while working full time, so I have an appreciation of what you've achieved. The fact that you're here means that you've mastered the art of time management--a trait that will always serve you well, regardless of your pursuits.

I want to talk to you today about leadership in business. But before I get into detail about the traits of great leaders, I would like to emphasize what I consider to be the overriding principle of leadership: A true leader is someone who has the trust of the people he or she leads. Whether they are generals in the Army or surgeons in the operating room, leaders motivate people to act simply because people trust them to be leading for the common good. Trust is character and character comes from trying to live a lifetime of good works.

Trusted leaders can enhance a brand. A marvelous example of a leader who accomplished this is Jim Burke, former CEO of Johnson and Johnson. When Jim Burke addressed the public to describe the steps he planned to take regarding the Tylenol tampering incident, consumers' affinity for Johnson and Johnson, and specifically for the Tylenol brand, actually increased.

So, a true leader is a trusted leader. Now I would like to talk to you about specific traits that comprise effective leadership.

Everyone claims to know what characterizes a great leader and at the same time no one really knows for certain. I'm told that great leaders are very tall. I'm told that great leaders are excellent communicators and have bass voices that would impress James Earl Jones. I'm told that great leaders invent things like the computer chip, see things that are invisible to mere mortals, and have the ability to hurl thunderbolts. I'm told all manners of fantastic things about leaders, but I want to relate to you five real things that have worked for me in my career as a leader.

Number one: Effective leaders recruit great people to work for them. There is a saying that I think is apt: Rulers are known not only by their deeds but by the princes and princesses they keep around them. The key to staffing is to attract, retain, and motivate the best people. I'm choosing every one of those words very carefully. But the most important word is "best." I didn't say "good" or "really, really good" people. You've got to staff with the best people.

What I have learned is that if you have even a one percent nagging doubt about a candidate, then he or she is wrong for the job. I'm not saying don't take staffing risks, just don't take people risks. Let me give you an example of when taking a risk is right if the person is right. I had to choose an executive to run Fidelity's phone operations. The leading candidate was a person who had never answered customer telephones before. Now I have him running our phone organization, which handles 26 million phone calls a year. He wasn't a person risk; he was just a staffing risk. I looked at him and thought here's a man who can do absolutely anything. I'm going to put him in charge of the phones. And, I am happy to say, my estimation of his capabilities is proving right: He is doing a wonderful job managing Fidelity's phone operations.

But staffing isn't just pound-for-pound individual performance; it's also chemistry.

I learned this the hard way. I once had what I thought was the "dream team." I had the best product person, the best R&D person, the best marketing person, and the best operations person in my organization. What I learned is they were all the best people, but the chemistry wasn't there; they really didn't like each other. I would hold staff meetings, and they'd all be constantly running out of the room. I thought they all seemed to have a lot of crises to manage that couldn't wait. It turns out they just didn't like being in a room together.

The combination you need then is the best staff coupled with great chemistry. If you're going to place a candidate into a firm, you've got to figure out if they are going to fit. They may be the best individual performers, or the best experts in a particular discipline, but you've got to visualize them sitting at the table with the other people in that group.

Make sure that when a member of your staff walks into a room, everyone's face lights up, a sure indication of teamwork. You won't get teamwork if the people don't like each other. Unfortunately, I have learned that people really don't change that much.

We're all frustrated missionaries. We think we're going to sit people down, give them feedback, and they will see the errors of their ways and they're going to get great. It doesn't work that way. Everyone is born with their own unique wiring. If you have given somebody feedback three, four, and five times, you're probably not going to change them. There's an old adage: People don't change, so change people. A better approach is to staff with the right people the first time.

The second trait of effective leaders is that they embrace change. People say, "Oh, I hate change." But they really don't hate change. They may simply hate uncertainty.

If you don't like change, you really can't survive in corporate America because everything is changing. Technology is changing, regulations are changing, customers are changing, competitors are changing. If you don't like change, and you don't love this changing pace, you're going to get nauseous on this roller coaster ride. Learn to love change, embrace change. The people who are the most successful, like Jack Welch of General Electric, are people who learn to anticipate change. They knew it was coming, and they changed before the change crashed on their particular beach.

Great leaders also course correct as environments change. Bill Gates is a great example. At one point he thought the Internet would amount to little or almost nothing. He said that for about one month. The next month he said, "Oops, the Internet is everything," and marched his entire firm to that drumbeat. So embrace change and anticipate change. You'll actually be happier at work.

The third trait is resiliency. Be resilient. This is so important, particularly when you're leading a group. I once got off the elevator one morning with a frown on my face because I had forgotten to pick up my dry cleaning. I walked to my office and everybody saw my frown and concluded: "The business is in trouble." Leaders live in a fish bowl. If you don't project confidence and good humor at all times, it rattles and unsettles people.

Make sure you're resilient. We all are going to make mistakes, and we can't brood on them; we have to move ahead. Being paralyzed by the past is a sure way to failure.

Resiliency is all about powering through. It's not worrying about what you could have or should have done. You have to let things roll off your back and keep marching forward. The people who eat themselves alive, who constantly churn and analyze and re-analyze, are the people who aren't successful. Sometimes being resilient is easier said than done, but, nevertheless, great leaders always demonstrate this important quality.

The fourth trait of leadership is making decisions purely based on what's good for the business. That sounds simple, but it is actually difficult. I know we all fall victim to this kind of thinking: "What would the Chairman think? What will my boss think? What will my colleagues think? What will my team think?"

Then you know what happens? You triple think, you quadruple think. Before you know it, you don't even remember what your own motives are. If you just stop and say, is this right for the company? Is it right for our shareholders? Is it right for our employees? Is it right for our customers? Is it right financially? You answer those questions affirmatively, then it's the right thing to go do. It's as simple as that. When you're making a decision, don't be political about it. Just simply ask, "Is it right for the business?"

There are times you're going to be overruled. There are times your boss is going to say, "That's interesting, but I don't agree." That may well happen from time to time, but at least your motives won't be questioned. When you wake up in the morning and you look at yourself in the mirror, you'll feel better about yourself because your motives are pure, and they make sense, and they embrace integrity and honesty.

The fifth trait, the one I'm the most proud of--is maintaining balance in your work and personal life. This is challenging. But, as leaders of your business, the people that you're recruiting are looking to see if they can make a go of the job you are placing them in. They are asking themselves: "Can I have a life if I work here?" We've got to make sure the answer to that question is "Yes." If the answer is "No," then we're not going to be able to attract, retain, and motivate the best people. We've got to make sure our companies are great places to work.

My advice about balancing work and home is to treat the appointment that you have with your family, your friend, your significant other, or your spouse, just as you would treat an appointment with the CEO of your company. It's that easy.

You sweep your work up in a briefcase, and you go home, because the work is going to be there the next morning for you. It really is. Now, by the way, I don't want to paint a picture that I work 9 to 5; I do not. But I try as hard as I can to get home at 7. Very often, after my family time, when my daughter and husband are asleep, I find myself reopening that briefcase. The work comes back out. I'll send out e-mail; I'll answer voice mail.

But I consider my family life like an appointment I cannot break.

When I was growing up in business, the phrase for women was: "You can have it all." You cannot have it all. Something is going to fall off the table. I don't know what, but something will fall off the table. The whole trick here is just figuring out what you care about the least and then letting it fall off, without feeling guilty about it.

My home is usually a little messy. My clothes are never back from the dry cleaners on time. I have rented videos that I've returned without watching them. These are things that just regularly fall off the table in the McGovern household and I let them go without guilt.

Another thing I do to ensure balance is I always try to bring a little bit of my home into the office. In my office, there are dozens of pictures of my daughter and husband in every nook and cranny. When people come into the room, they usually ask, "Oh, is this your daughter?" I make sure I know the names of every single one of the kids of my direct team as well as the names of their spouses. I usually try to start off every conversation with a personal note, because I think it's important for people to realize that we have lives outside of work.

But, here's the other side of the equation: Try not to bring the office home. This is easier said than done. I walk to and from work. I have about a 20-minute walk during which I'm unloading my mental disk from my brain. I get in a family state of mind. While walking home I'm turning on the mom or wife or friend portion of my life. I'm shutting the work disk down. I try the whole way home to get to the point that when I walk in the front door, I will have left the office in the office.

If you are taking the office home, here is a technique that works like a charm. I learned this by accident: Explain what is bothering you to a child. I have an 11-year-old daughter and I've been doing this for eight years. I have described my work issues to my daughter and find the more I try explaining a situation to her, the sillier I feel. It would be one thing if I walked into the house and said, "Your mother, the brain surgeon, just lost a patient." But usually I agonize about more trivial incidents. After she and I talk, I often scratch my head and think, "Out of the mouths of babes comes real wisdom sometimes."

Explaining to a child what you do will give you some perspective. It may not be the proper perspective, but it will allow you to be able to chuckle at seemingly insurmountable problems.

Try to leave the office in the office. Try to take a little bit of your home into the office. And if all else fails, tell your problem to a child because you'll suddenly realize they're not as big as you thought they were.

Let me summarize the five traits of successful leaders. It's staffing with the best people; learning to embrace and love change; being resilient; making decisions based on what's right for the business; and making sure you strike some balance between work and your personal life. Balance should be easier for you, since, as I said in the beginning, you've mastered the art of time management. Don't lose that. And remember: true leaders are trusted leaders.

I would like to close by congratulating you, the graduates, all of you who are the future leaders sitting right here in our midst. You are to be commended for having worked so hard to achieve your educational goals. You are now prepared for new horizons and new challenges. I wish you good luck and God-speed on what I am sure will be all wonderful and rewarding journeys. Thank you very much.

About Gail McGovern

Gail McGovern is president of Fidelity Personal Investments, a unit of Fidelity Investments, the nation's largest mutual fund company. Fidelity Personal Investments employs more than 6,000 employees and services some 11 million accounts with combined assets in excess of $550 billion dollars.

Before joining Fidelity in 1998, Ms. McGovern worked at AT&T, where she began as a computer programmer. She rose through the ranks from computer programming, to sales and marketing, to general management, and ultimately became executive vice president for the consumer markets division.

Ms. McGovern received a BA in theoretical mathematics from The Johns Hopkins University in 1974 and an MBA from Columbia University in 1987. She serves as a trustee of Boston's Children's Hospital and of her alma mater, The Johns Hopkins University.

Photo by Sam Ogden.