Smart and Nice: The Leadership Equation

“I have two criteria for hiring: Are you smart? Are you nice?”
– Gail McGovern, Chair, American Red Cross

I worked for Gail McGovern. She knows leadership. Gail’s been Executive Vice President at AT&T, President of Fidelity Personal Investments, and co-chair of the Johns Hopkins Board of Trustees. Trained as a mathematician, she understands the importance of intelligence, skill, and performance. But she also insists on something equally vital — being nice.

We’ve all heard the saying: Half of any job is getting the work done. The other half is how it gets done. That’s easy to say and hard to live.

Workplace pressures — deadlines, budgets, politics, difficult personalities — can make “being nice” challenging. And yet, kindness and respect are exactly what hold teams together when things get tough.

I’ve had to make painful leadership decisions: layoffs, reorganizations, service cuts, firings. None of that felt nice to those on the receiving end. One boss told me I was too nice, and another told me I needed to be tougher. Striking the right balance isn’t a formula; it’s an ongoing practice shaped by culture, timing, and circumstance.

Being nice isn’t about being sweet, or even about personality; it’s about behavior. It’s about how you:

  • Listen and communicate.

  • Disagree respectfully.

  • Support colleagues and staff.

  • Acknowledge mistakes.

  • Say “thank you” and “I’m sorry.”

In the end, effective leadership requires both head and heart — intelligence that drives results, and kindness that sustains relationships.

Leadership is about being smart and being nice.

Let’s discuss how you bring both to your leadership.

“I made a mistake.”

“We were naïve. I had to admit that I made a mistake.
I figured that was part of my job…admit mistakes and move on quickly.”

– Ryan Carson, CEO, Treehouse

Now this is a corporate Learning Culture in action.

In 2013, Portland online-education company Treehouse generated national buzz when it made the radical decision to eliminate managers and let employees self-manage. At the time, Treehouse won praise in some quarters for experimenting with a completely flat organization structure.

Treehouse wasn’t alone. San Francisco software project hosting company GitHub tried it. Las Vegas online clothing retailer Zappos is trying it.

It didn’t work. Last week, CEO Ryan Carson went public with the news with exceptional candor. He announced that a layer of management had been reinstituted.

Regardless of whether a flat organizational structure was a good decision to begin with, this is a great example of a corporation being a Learning Culture. Here’s why:

Innovated. Treehouse had a vision for the kind of company it wanted to be. It identified a way to operationalize its values. After examination, it tried something different for reasons it considered solid.

Admitted. “It didn’t work.” No dragging it out. No papering over the reality. No blaming others. No issuing a press release full of obfuscation. Just a straight-up admission from the top.

Pivoted. After giving its model time to work, and then some time trying to fix it, Treehouse reinstated a management structure quickly. It didn’t reintroduce management incrementally or hesitantly.

Shared. By going public, Treehouse provided an opportunity for the rest of us to reflect on and learn from their experiment. The company also garnered praise for its candor.

 

Let’s discuss ways your business or organization can be a Learning Culture by learning from mistakes.

Learn Before You Leap.

This is a great example of an organization leading with the principles of a Learning Culture. And it’s a government agency.

My client, the Oregon Health Authority, recently had a longtime administrator retire. This manager had led a large, complex and visible department for more than 20 years. The department is very busy, and constantly juggles the needs and priorities of funders, contractors, community partners, constituents, advocates, policy makers and more. There’s a ton of work to be done all the time, so the pressure to fill the position quickly and be fully-staffed is real.

Rather than act reflexively and rush to fill the job as-is, my client made the decision to stop, take a step back, and ask the following questions:

1) Are the structure, role and expectations of this Manager position still current?

2) How might the department this Manager leads be more effective, current or relevant?

Even more impressive, my client didn’t just ask these questions of itself. It engaged a wide variety of external stakeholders in this assessment, too.

That’s a learning culture in action. Asking questions. Challenging assumptions. Reassessing. Willing to change. Always learning. And then moving forward.

 

Let’s discuss ways your business or organization can be a Learning Culture.