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Meeting of the Minds: Can You Learn How to Lead?

Learning leadership skills and gaining leadership experience are important features of a Shipley education. Our panel of experts discusses the intricacies of what it takes to be an effective leader.

 
Our Experts

Fredricka Brecht ’68
CEO Coach, Vistage International
After founding Pennzoil’s international division and working as a private consultant, Brecht joined Vistage International to lead CEO peer advisory groups. 

John Fry
President, Drexel University
Since 2010, Fry has led Drexel University in setting a new standard for cooperative education and becoming a powerful economic force in the greater Philadelphia area. He is the father of Nathaniel ’13 and Phoebe ’19.

Ray Smith
Chairman, Rothschild Continuation Investments
Smith served as Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications for over 25 years, transforming the company into the largest communications corporation in the country. He is the father of Matt ’83 and Paul ’85, and grandfather of Max ’13, Katie ’14, and Lydia ’21 Frorer.

Elizabeth Schafer Vale ’72
Senior Adviser, Promontory Financial Group
Before Joining Promontory, Elizabeth was Senior Adviser for Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign. During 2009-10, she worked in the Obama Administration as White House Business Liaison, creating the White House Business Council and serving as its first executive director. Before that she was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley and a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). She is the mother of Ann '03.
Q. How would you describe your leadership style?
Brecht: Twenty years ago my approach was probably more authority-based than the collaborative and persuasive style that I try to employ today. I came to learn that while I had all the authority in my organization, ultimately, I had none of the power. It’s only my employees that have the power to accomplish the goals of the organization. That’s a critical thing for a leader to learn.
Fry: The key to good leadership is enfranchising people—to make them believe that they are truly owners of the organization, the strategy, and the direction in which we’re heading. The success of anything that I’ve been involved in is not because of me, but because of a group of people who worked well together, felt strongly about what we were trying to do, and had a real sense of ownership.
Smith: My leadership style is straightforward. It starts with what it is we are trying to accomplish—our goals. Then, we determine the strategies that will allow us to reach those goals in the short run, the intermediate run, and the long run. Next, we establish metrics that measure our progress and an information structure that communicates to the organization how well we are doing. As the plan unfolds, there must be consequences, positive and negative, all agreed to earlier in participative objective setting. Finally, we must see that every member of the team has the skills needed to accomplish the tasks they are assigned—and train those with deficiencies. This transparent approach must be implemented with a great deal of humanity, individual care, and a ton of personal communication.
Vale: I lead by helping to create a community around me. I love being part of a team with people pulling together for a mission that’s bigger than any one of us. Everywhere I’ve gone, whether it’s Morgan Stanley, the White House, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, my team is our team, with people empowered in their roles. Then we all lead.
Q. What are the most important traits a leader should have?
Brecht: Mature leaders are committed to developing others and inspiring others to excellence. They understand that their own achievements are only possible through others, so they have to trust their employees enough to enable them, to ask them for their input so they have a stake in the outcome. Successful leaders also need to express themselves effectively and create absolute clarity on the organization’s vision, its compelling value proposition, and what’s required to deliver on these.
Smith: Leaders must have integrity. They must tell the truth, keep their promises, and do what they say they’re going to do. Good leaders must be good observers and good listeners. They must have the intelligence to understand what they are observing and be flexible enough to change course when circumstances change. They must be open to criticism and suggestions—even those poorly stated. They have to be hard working and diligent. Finally, they can only be effective if they are innovative and not wedded to the status quo.
Vale: A good leader is inclusive, nurturing, and encouraging. A good leader will thank people when deserved. A good leader has values you admire, has a clear mission, and is relentless in the face of adversity. A leader has to believe in his or her people, give them reach assignments, and empower them.
Q. What is the power of good leadership?
Brecht: The leaders we choose to follow are the ones whose exemplary spirit creates an environment where we achieve, whose faith in our ability to step up to the challenge inspires us to do great work. So it gets back to tapping into the power of extraordinary performance that your employees are capable of delivering.
Fry: To summon people to greater deeds than they would have normally thought they could achieve. Creating extraordinary teams that can do things that no one ever thought possible. It means having a sense of vision; it also means having a sense of people.
Q. Can you teach leadership?
Brecht: I believe you can teach leadership if you have a willing learner. At a certain point, an individual can become sufficiently impressed with how hard it is to be an effective leader, and then they will begin a process of self-examination and determine what they need to change in themselves to be able to inspire others to excel. Once they see the need and they become a learner, they can accelerate if you give them the information and the role models to follow, and they can become a sponge for learning and adapt leadership skills to fit their organizations.
Fry: The most powerful way to teach leadership is by giving students a chance to lead and giving them permission to take risks. That way, failure is a part of learning how to lead. Ultimately, the best way to learn how to be a leader is through constant trial and error.
Q. What role do you think educational institutions should play in developing leaders?
Brecht: The closer you can bring students to experiencing the challenges of running an organization of other people—the more exposure you can give them to the challenges, and to role models—the earlier you can start them down the path of leadership. Because then they have a structure in which they start to fit what they learn when they go to work.
Smith: One obvious role is to develop fundamental skills—reading, writing, arithmetic, and history, with an emphasis on the abstract as well as the practical. Really great schools contrive ways to model values, standards, and ethics—and the skills required to work in teams.
Q. What advice would you give someone who is taking a new leadership position?
Fry: Identify what you want to accomplish, deconstruct it, and then work your way backwards. It starts with a lot of listening, data gathering, and relationship-building. You may not be ready on the first day—nor should you be—to announce what you want to achieve, but you should have a mental picture in your head. And it’s okay to alter that picture. But you should, in a very deep way, understand what you think your job is and what you want to do to leave the organization better than when you found it.
Smith: Stay away from generalities. Learn the fundamentals of the job. Understand the objectives, strategies, conventions, and the needs of the people involved. Then and only then, improve the process. Take risks and change traditions. In other words, learn the ways of Apple (or Google or Verizon), then change the ways of Apple.
Vale: Start by getting to know the people you are leading, and add to them people who are better than you are. Engage these people by listening to them and delegating authority whenever possible. I don’t believe in imposing from the top, though leaders need to be decisive once they’ve listened to a number of opinions. That way, your team will have buy-in whether or not you have made a decision that they agree with.
Q. What has Shipley taught you (or your children/grandchildren) about leadership?
Vale: That leadership is very much individual, with not just one recipe for success. Learn where your gifts add the most value, get in that place, and then be authentic.
Brecht: I think it’s the grace and the doing that caused others to want to work for me and to take pride in themselves when they knew that their work impressed me. What I’ve been talking about in terms of leading others and inspiring them and having faith in them and how you react to their failings and their successes, all of that comes back to what Shipley talked about in saying courage is not enough. You’ve got to employ grace. Grace is compelling. And boy, when grace is absent, you know it right away.
Smith: Shipley taught both my kids and my grandchildren that they could be special. Special is not who you are, but what you do. All of my kids have learned that they have the ability to be special, and it will be based on not what they say, but what they do. And that means what they do with and to others.
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The Shipley School is a private, coeducational day school for pre-kindergarten through 12th grade students, located in Bryn Mawr, PA. Through our commitment to educational excellence, we develop within each student a love of learning and a desire for compassionate participation in the world.