Learning from Giants
by Carmen P. Hidalgo

Many an article has been written on leadership and the different skills you need for it: positive reinforcement, active listening, constructive feedback. Yet no one seems to be able to categorically say how one becomes a leader or makes someone else into one. All successful stories of leadership seem to be a fortuitous combination of genes, mentoring, and incredible luck. Even the definition of leadership itself is iffy. How do you know when you’ve become a leader—is it because people tell you? And in that case, do you need the approval of others to become a leader? Assuming that leadership is dependent on the support of others, if you make unpopular decisions, are you still a leader?

The fact that the concept of leadership is so indefinite leads to the conclusion that it is a highly personal experience, one that you have to “feel” your way through with fingers crossed, believing in something greater than yourself and hoping for the best. As Frank Billano, certainly a seasoned leader, said to me, “It doesn’t sink in until you’re in it.”

That being said, we can always use a little help from those who’ve passed this way before us. If leaders are men who stand on the shoulders of giants, then we would do well to hear from the giants themselves: Frank Billano, President and GM of Interphil Laboratories, Inc. and concurrently CEO of Interpharma Manufacturing Division; Vic Quisumbing, President and CEO of Philippine AXA Life Insurance Corporation; and Manny Blas, former President of Sara Lee.

LEADERSHIP AS A CALLING

I am a leader by default, only because nature does not allow a vacuum.
- Bishop Desmond Tutu

“There are a lot of good managers, but very few leaders,” Vic Quisumbing tells me.

It makes sense that there should be a difference between the two. One is obviously higher up on the thought hierarchy than the other. But there is another fundamental difference, one that lies in passion and vision. “Leadership is less stable,” Manny Blas elaborates. “Managing people is about maintaining and controlling. Leading people means bringing them in new directions.”

How do you know when you are one and not the other? Does that child in the playground—who determines the game to be played and directs all the other children like a little general—necessarily grow up to be the CEO of the multinational firm?

Many leaders feel that they knew they had become leaders by virtue of the trust placed in them by their superiors. Immense responsibility was suddenly thrust upon them, and they simply stepped up to the bat—with the support and guidance of their mentors. One day, Vic’s boss told him that he should move out of sales and into management. He objects vehemently to the idea and recalls, “My boss told me that a man who has all the qualities of a leader but refuses to lead is a selfish man. I thought about it, and I realized he was right.”

Obviously, in order for Vic’s boss to have chosen him, he must have seen a spark in Vic. Vic was, in all probability, the little general in the playground.

There does seem to be an element of choice in the matter, though. “When I first started out,” recounts Frank Billano, “I was someone that you would bump into on the street and not take note of. There is no intellectual difference between a clerk and a leader. It’s all in how you envision yourself.”

So, in order to make a leader, the general from the playground has to be spotted, nurtured, given responsibility, and in the end has to choose to take on the role.

It helps, however, for other people to urge him along. “I think I knew I was a leader when my boss was in Hong Kong and people started asking me what to do!” laughs Manny.

LEADERSHIP AND POPULARITY

Leadership is not a popularity contest.
- Anon

In all cases of leadership, the support of others seems to be key to one’s success. You can’t begin to think of yourself as a leader unless other people concur, and you can’t get to where you are without the guidance of mentors. At a certain point, however, leaders have to stand on their own. They have to make tough decisions, often with recriminations from the people they lead. It is a fine line to walk, this balancing of believing in yourself and listening to your people.

“When majority of your people don’t do what you want, it’s time to step back and ask yourself why,” Frank suggests. “As they say, when 80% of your people follow you and 20% don’t, you can blame the 20%. But when 10% follow and 90% don’t, it’s time to blame yourself.”

However, you can’t always rely on the popularity of your decisions to gauge the correctness of your decisions. The perception that you are a principled person seems to be more important than popularity with regard to the decision-making functions of a leader. With shifting times and sometimes shifting morals, people need to be able to count on their leaders to stand for something. “People follow leaders whom they believe will do good for them,” states Frank. “That is why you must never bank on HR to relate to your people for you. You don’t have to be a friend to everyone, but you have to make them believe that you have their best interests at heart.”

In the end, though, you have to stand on your own. “I’ve had to make decisions that went against traditional `good business sense’,” says Vic, “because it was the right thing to do. But I’ve always believed that the world’s economy is different from God’s economy.”

Frank has had similar experiences. “I’ve had to make some non-negotiable decisions because I knew that to do otherwise would have been bad for my people, and sometimes those people only realized years later that I was right!”

LEADERSHIP AND GUIDANCE

Leadership is a combination of strategy and character. If you must be without one, be without the strategy.
-General H. Swarzkopf

If you can’t always rely on public consensus to tell you, how do you know what to do? What will tell you, in the face of ambiguous issues or intense opposition, that you are certainly, categorically right? Many leaders have been guided by mentors throughout their careers. “It’s been my luck in the world that I’ve had good mentors—from kindergarten all the way up to general manager,” says Frank with a grin.

Manny has had similar luck. “I have had good bosses all my life. I’ve had bosses that I didn’t particularly like—because they were obnoxious or abrasive—but none of them was unprincipled.”

Guidance from others is all well and good on your way up, as a salesman struggling to make his quota or a line manager putting out fires. Once you’re at the top, however, there isn’t someone to tell you what to do anymore.

“You have to figure out what your priorities are,” says Frank. He emphasizes, “I always tell people this. Your priorities don’t have to be the same as everyone else’s, but you have to be sure of what they are.”

Vic puts work third on his list of priorities, after God and family. Money comes in last. Early on in his career, he made a decision not to bring work home. As soon as the work day is done, Vic says, he leaves work at the office and concentrates solely on his family.
There have been times that he’s refused to attend work functions on the weekend because of obligations to his family. This would seem to most people like a strange formula for an executive, and one that could potentially get you into trouble.

Frank disagrees. “If you make money your priority, you might win now, but you will lose later. You lose your employees, your clients, your family, and your friends,” he states emphatically. He obviously has a priority list similar to Vic’s.

LEADERSHIP AND MISTAKES

You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.
- Colette

Leaders are people, and people make mistakes. The difference being that leaders’ mistakes are under the scrutiny of hundreds—if not thousands—and that there is frequently proof. The only thing for a leader to do at times like those is to put on a sheepish grin, say sorry, and try again. Sometimes that works, but there are times when it doesn’t.

What are mistakes that leaders can recover from and what are mistakes that will destroy them? Common opinion seems to say that mistakes having to do with character or integrity will follow a leader forever, whereas bad business decisions or ventures will be forgiven. Provided, of course, they don’t happen too often.

“Every leader has a batting average,” asserts Manny. “You can’t be making the same mistake over and over again, or your employees will lose confidence in you.” I venture to add that you can’t be making different mistakes one after the other, either, or people will start to wonder if perhaps they couldn’t do your job better than you after all.

LEADERSHIP AND MENTORING

The number one failure of leaders is their failure to reproduce other leaders.
- Dr. Jack Elwood

Arguably the leader’s most important role is to create more leaders. “I believe that instead of training leaders, we should be training the mentors,” Frank pronounces. He believes that those at the top have to learn to spot and nurture young talent, and then be big enough to make way for them.

“At 58,” he exclaims, “I should be retiring! There are CEOs who are even older than me. If the old leaders don’t step down, how can new leaders come in? But part of the problem is that even if the old leaders step down, who will fill their shoes? They haven’t trained the young to take their place.”

In a culture which places heavy emphasis on seniority and obedience to elders, it is a challenge to cultivate the characteristics that make for bright young leaders: assertiveness, initiative, dominance, confidence, and to a certain extent, bravado. Vic believes that in order to mold the new generation of leaders, we have to teach them “not to challenge authority, but to challenge ideas.”

“How can you even obey if you don’t understand?” he poses. Vic tries to take extra time with young people in whom he sees potential and the capacity for change.

Manny thinks it crucial to show young people that teamwork does not equate compliance and uniformity. He cites the example of Michael Jordan, an excellent star in his own right who operates within a team by setting high standards for the rest of them. He underscores this point with, “The role of teammates is to lift each other up, to challenge every person on your team to be better.”

In the end, what can be garnered from these conversations with industry giants is that, despite numerous similarities in experience and lessons learned, leadership is a personal journey. It is one that, if successful, sees fruition with billions of people (as with presidents of countries), hundreds of people (as with CEOs of companies), two-three people (as with parents), or one person…as we are all leaders of our lives. Perhaps author Anthony Jay said it best when he said, “The only real training for leadership is leadership.”