The Faithful Manager: Using Your God Given Tools for Workplace Success. Anthony E Shaw

process, you safeguard your involvement adequately through documentation.

      Your agreement with your own manager is to take the right action in a reasonable time that finally resolves important issues and sets the foundation for lasting solutions. Sometimes you have to stretch just beyond your normal reach to grasp the truth. Your credibility and track record for bringing back the truth are the down payments on that agreement.

      Our first set of management tools is the set with which we are born – our inherent humanity, our moral compass and our soul. As we grow and mature, these tools are honed by our experiences with parents, family, friends and the world outside of our homes and schools.

      We learn how to recognize each tool and its utility in different situations. Life demonstrates how to adapt our approach to fit each situation successfully and make ethical choices.

      When we are listening with open hearts and minds, we learn and carry that knowledge forward with us to face new situations. And we do this with enormous personal satisfaction, a satisfaction that comes from within.

      Clara Knopfler survived the Nazi death camps with her mother. When she gives witness to her experiences now she relates the following piece of advice from her father,

      “Always learn as much as you can because no one can take away what is in your head.”

      Her father meant not only book learning but also the learning gained through sometimes bitter experiences that test our humanity, values, ethics and spirit. This learning transcends graduate degrees and case studies. This learning is imprinted on your soul. Listen to it because it is the most human part of you, the part that knows right from wrong, decency from disrespect and how you want to treat and be treated by your colleagues. It is the opposite of selfishness.

      The most fundamental part of your role as a leader is to use that learning to direct how you apply all of your tools to fulfill your managerial responsibilities. The author of the classic management text “Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies,” Jim Collins concluded in a 2001 study of leadership published in the Harvard Business Review that the best leaders “possess a paradoxical mixture of personal humility and professional will. They are timid and ferocious. Shy and fearless.” According to Collins, these leaders, whom he calls “Level 5, great leaders,” exhibit “the virtue of chivalry.” They are self-effacing, generous of spirit and praise, committed to excellence and patient.

      “There is no limit to what can be accomplished if it doesn’t matter who gets the credit.”

      The principle is very clear to me: a self-centered person cannot be truly successful either within or outside of the workplace.

      I am reminded of my Uncle Harold. He was my mother’s brother, one of five boys and two girls. At the start of World War II, all five of my maternal uncles volunteered for the military. Of the five, only four returned alive. My Uncle Harold re-upped and became a career soldier. He served at the Battle of the Bulge. He served during the Korean War. He gave his country over twenty years of service. When I was ten, in 1965, he returned to his mother’s (my grandmother’s) home, ending his military career as an officer. I have a vivid picture in my mind of him on that day: he wasn’t tall but he stood ramrod straight. He wore his Army dress uniform – the brass buttons sparkled and his battle ribbons and medals were numerous. I admired how he looked in that uniform: I was too young to be aware of how proud he was of his country and how proud I was of him. To me, he was every inch a hero. But he said nothing of his service. He just took off that beautiful uniform and hung it neatly in a closet, never to wear it or refer to it again. I would sneak peeks at that crisp jacket and imagine how I would look in it. But he never talked to me about what he did and saw while wearing it. He just went about his business. To this day, when he is long gone to his reward, I cannot imagine him saluting himself, in public or in private, or using his military service to ask others to give him something or vote for him.

      He was chivalrous in the most generous and self-effacing way – he gave to his country and to the men he led without either expecting or wanting praise and thanks. He had the inner, self-satisfaction of duty. He led and lived by example.

      Lesson:

      I can hear my beloved stepfather, watching me at age 11 trying to cook, “You’re going too fast. Slow down and pay attention. You’ll always burn your eggs like that.” Sure enough, I didn’t get it right until I lowered the heat, let the egg come to room temperature before I cracked it, waited until the grease was hot enough, and took my time to handle the pan and spatula properly. He could have said nothing and let me learn by trial and error. He could have taken over and fried the egg for me. He could have admonished me that I was about to burn down the house! What he did was give me a patient, non-judgmental lesson, in a knowing but not condescending voice. On my journey whenever I fry an egg, I think of his advice.