Happy Holidays to All!

Best wishes to you for a happy holiday season and the best new year!

It's Not Easy Being HOT...

...and by HOT I mean a Hands-On Teacher... (if you don't understand this post so far, I have not lost my mind...it's a MGT 3120 thing...)

It is a tough task to run a community of individuals where authority and respect have to be earned every day. Few people can do it well, consistently and successfully, because it demands an unusual combination of attributes. But these are characteristics you too will need as you take your rightful place among the management ranks of the future. I try everyday to hold on to these ideals, and they are what I also wish for you to find and maintain:

A belief in oneself is the only thing that gives an individual the self-confidence to step into the unknown and to persuade others to go with you where perhaps no one has taken them before. But this has to be combined with constant self-questioning, the humility to accept that one can be wrong on occasion, the acceptane that others also have ideas, and that listening is as important as talking.

A passion for the job provides the energy and focus that will drive your organization and you must always try to act as an example to others. But this also has to be combined with its opposite, an awareness of other worlds, because a sole focus on your own ideas can turn to blinders, and an inability to think beyond one's own box. Great leaders find time to read, to meet people beyond their own circle, to go to the theater or see films, to walk in other worlds.

The leader must have a respect and love of people, because in a community of individuals, those who find individuals a pain and a nuisance may be respected or feared, but they will not be willingly followed.

Yet this attribute, too, requires its opposite, a capacity for aloneness, because leaders have to be out front. It is not always possible to share one's worries with anyone else. Few will thank the leader when things go right, but many will blame the leader if things go wrong. Great leaders have to walk alone from time to time. They also have to live vicariously, deriving their satisfaction from the growth and successes of others and giving those others the recognition that they deserve.

Living with these paradoxes requires great strength of character. It also requires a belief in what one is doing. Although it may seem so now, money alone may not be enough to provide the motive to live with these contradictions. Even a love of power is insufficient, because power irons out the contradictions rather than holding them in balance. I believe great leaders are bred from great causes, but leaders at their best will also breed great causes. Until and unless business embraces a cause bigger and more beneficial to society than enrichment of self and shareholders, it will have few great and memorable leaders that will stand the test of time.

I wish you all the best as you carve your own way through this management maze. It has been a pleasure and honor to have met you all. Please come back and visit me...even if only through this blog in the future.

--prof K