Chapter 13 in Why It Matters: Reflections on Practical Leadership is titled Keys to As. As I noted in the chapter, very few leaders receive “A”s from everyone they lead, because a leader’s decisions won’t be well received by everyone. As more decisions are made, more and more followers are disappointed in the leader.
At a mid-point in my career, I began compiling a list of attributes and actions of exemplary leaders. Later, I labeled my list, Keys to “A”s. To date, there are twenty-five keys on my keychain, all beginning with the letter A. In this series of blogs, I’ll address each key. No doubt, based on your experiences and observations your keychain will differ from mine. However, I suspect you will agree with me that the most important key is Attitude.
Exemplary leadership begins and ends with attitude. Churchill said, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”[i] General Jim Mattis noted, “The Marine philosophy is to recruit for attitude and train for skills. Marines believe that attitude is a weapon system.”[ii] He also observed, “Attitudes are caught, not taught.”[iii] As I mentioned in my previous blog, early in my chancellorship at the University of Arkansas, legendary college football coach and athletics director, Frank Broyles, advised me to “have an attitude of gratitude.” Attitude matters! It matters a lot. Donald Smith (Tyson Foods) told leadership students, “A positive attitude is a force multiplier.”
In speaking to my leadership class, Motorola’s Greg Brown, said, “Be an energy giver, not an energy taker.” Harry Potter fans will quickly recognize energy takers are dementors; they suck the life out of you. Attitudes are contagious. A person with a bad attitude is an energy taker. A person with a good attitude can light up the room.
We can’t control a lot of things in life, but we can control our attitude. Also, we can control our effort. Attitude and effort can be a powerful combination.
Although I never thought I was the smartest person in the room, my attitude was no one would out-work me—I put in the effort to be successful. Beginning in junior high school when I mowed lawns in the summer, to working at a Dairy Queen franchise during my high school years, to waiting tables at a sorority house and working summer jobs while in college (delivering milk and hauling hay on a dairy farm, paving highways, and installing windshield wipers in school buses on an assembly line), to becoming employed by Tennessee Eastman Company, to becoming an instructor at Virginia Tech, to working for Ethyl Corporation in the summer, to working at North American Aviation in the summer, to teaching at Ohio State and so forth up to the present, I’ve worked hard. I have no regrets. I was fortunate. I enjoyed what I did—attitude makes a difference!
Walmart’s Judith McKenna reminded students, “You choose your attitude.” J. B. Hunt’s Shelley Simpson said she was not a gifted athlete in high school, but she worked hard, won the hustle award and became a starter on the team. She told students, “One thing you can control is how hard you work.” She has walked her talk; it has served her well; she is now J. B. Hunt’s CEO.
Fans of novelist Lee Child’s Jack Reacher will not be surprised to learn that he agrees with Simpson: “It’s something they teach you in the army. The only thing under your direct control is how hard you work. In other words, if you really, really buckle down today, and you get the intelligence, the planning, and the execution each a hundred percent exactly correct, then you are bound to prevail.”[iv] Hard work is necessary, but not sufficient. Based on my experience, hard work coupled with a positive attitude will lead to success.
Before reporting for his first job at Tyson Foods, Donald Smith’s father told him, “Get to work before everyone else, work harder than everyone else, stay longer than everyone else, and one day you will become everyone else’s boss.” Unfortunately, his father died before Smith was named Tyson’s President and CEO.
Charles Swindoll said, “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think, say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company… a church… a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we embrace for that day. We cannot change our past… we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play the one string we have, and that is our attitude… I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you… we are in charge of our Attitudes”[v]
Next: Keys to “A”s in Leadership–Part II – Alignment
[i] See https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/winston-churchill-quotes.
[ii] Jim Mattis and Bing West, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead, Penguin Random House LLC, New York, NY, 2019, p.15.
[iii] Ibid, p. 81.
[iv] Lee Child, Blue Moon, Delacorte Press, New York, NY, 2019, p. 331.
[v] See https://www.insight.org/resources/daily-devotional/individual/the-value-of-a-positive-attitude.
