21 Great Leaders: Learn Their Lessons, Improve Your Influence (2 page)

Our world is crying out for leaders. Who should the next leader be? The person next to you? The person behind you? Nope, you’re it. You’re the next business leader, community leader, youth leader, or civic leader our world is looking for.

After decades of study and experience, I’ve concluded that the essence of leadership comes down to seven key ingredients—the Seven Sides of Leadership:

1.
Vision
. The first task of leadership is envisioning a clear idea of what you want to achieve then inspiring your people to transform your vision into reality.

2.
Communication skills
. Next, the leader must be able to communicate the vision to the team or organization. Communication skills are essential to leadership.

3.
People skills
. Great leaders have the people skills to help people feel confident, energized, and motivated to achieve great things. People skills are vital tools of influence that can be learned and improved with practice.

4.
Character
. Good character is essential to trust. People decide whether or not to follow you based on whether or not they perceive you to be a person of good moral character.

5.
Competence
. People are willing to be led by those with proven competence as leaders. The word
competence
encompasses the word
compete
. Competent leaders make organizations competitive.

6.
Boldness
. Boldness is a form of courage, the willingness to take reasonable risks in order to achieve worthwhile goals. Boldness is not recklessness or throwing caution to the wind. A bold leader seizes timely opportunities, acts firmly and decisively, and avoids second-guessing. The confidence of a bold leader inspires optimism throughout the organization.

7.
A serving heart
. An authentic leader is not a boss but a servant. Followers don’t exist to serve the leader; the leader exists to serve, empower, equip, motivate, and inspire the followers. Serve them well, and they will turn your leadership vision into a reality.

Some people are naturally gifted with some of these traits, but I’ve never known anyone who was born with all seven. Fortunately, the Seven Sides of Leadership are learnable skills. We can acquire them and improve them with practice. The more complete we become in all seven of these traits, the more effective we will be in every leadership arena of our lives.

This book consists of twenty-one leadership biographies. Almost every one of these leaders has had a powerful impact on the way we live our lives today. If George Washington or Abraham Lincoln had never lived, if Walt Disney or Steve Jobs had not persevered through setbacks and failures, if Rosa Parks had surrendered to injustice, or if Pope John Paul II or Ronald Reagan had not survived their 1981 assassination attempts, we would be living in a very different world today.

Almost every one of these twenty-one leaders exemplifies all Seven Sides of Leadership (I say “almost,” because I see Steve Jobs as a fascinating exception). I could have easily placed Walt Disney in the boldness category, yet I think he best exemplifies a leader of vision. Ronald Reagan foresaw a world beyond Soviet Communism, and that marks him as a man of vision—yet he is justly known as the Great Communicator, so I have placed him in the communication category. Franklin D. Roosevelt was certainly a bold leader, a man of visionary ideas, and a leader who communicated brilliantly through his “fireside chats,” yet a close inspection of his career shows that he led largely through his people skills.

None of these leaders was perfect as either a leader or a human being (though two have been beatified as saints). I don’t hesitate to show their flaws, because we can learn as much from mistakes and failures as we can from successes. Here are twenty-one flesh-and-blood human beings like you and me. We can emulate their virtues, learn from their flaws, identify with their struggles, and take away lessons that will transform our leadership lives. If you want to lead a team, a company, an industry, or a nation, why not learn from the best?

At the end of each chapter, you’ll find a list of leadership lessons I’ve drawn from the life of each leader. As you read, you may discover some additional insights of your own (if so, please write and share them with me!). The twenty-one leaders in this book are the best the leadership world has to offer. The lessons of their lives and the genius of their words are here to be plucked and savored straight from the vine.

Discover these rich lessons, apply these insights to your leadership life—then go make some leadership history of your own!

Pat Williams
Orlando, Florida
January 15, 2015

VISION

W
ALT
D
ISNEY

Dream, Believe, Dare, Do!

If you can dream it, you can do it
.

W
ALT
D
ISNEY

I
n 1986, I moved my family to Orlando, Florida, on a quest to achieve the impossible. I was possessed by a vision to build a new NBA franchise in a city that had no pro sports tradition. My partners and I would have to build a fan base from scratch, create a team out of thin air, and build a world-class sports arena before the NBA would even listen to us.

Many experts told me I was crazy; it would never happen. Miami, maybe. But Orlando? Forget it! But I couldn’t forget it. The vision would not let go. So I turned for insight to another dreamer who had come to Orlando and achieved the impossible: Walt Disney. I knew he had also heard throughout his career, “It can’t be done!” Yet he had proven the naysayers wrong every time. He had built his Magic Kingdom out of dreams and pixie dust.

I had to know his secrets. So I began an intense study of the life and leadership traits of Walt Disney. Out of that study came a wealth of leadership insight and two of my most popular, bestselling books,
Go for the Magic
and
How to Be Like Walt
.

Though Walt Disney never lived in Orlando (he only visited central Florida a few times before his death), the city bears the imprint of his personality. His vision for Walt Disney World transformed Orlando into a city like no other. The soul of Walt Disney lives in this place.

In those early days, I had many conversations with longtime Disney executives Bob Matheison, Dick Nunis, and Bob Allen. All were personally mentored by Walt. I learned so much about Walt Disney that I felt I knew him personally. Thanks to the lessons I learned from Walt’s life, we ultimately achieved our “impossible” dream of the team we call the Orlando Magic.

One summer evening in 1989, I had dinner with Dick Nunis, who started as a Disneyland ride operator in 1955 and ultimately became head of Disney Attractions. Dick told me story after story of Walt’s leadership life. I asked him to sum up the success secrets of Walt Disney, and I wrote down his insights on a paper napkin.

“First,” Dick said, “Walt had integrity—you could trust him. Second, he could see the future—he was a visionary. Third, he had great people skills and knew how to get the best out of everyone. Fourth, he was a great motivator and coach. Fifth, he was a bold risk taker—but he only took calculated risks. Six, he was eager to learn from everyone. Seventh, he invited people to challenge his ideas so he could continually improve them. Eighth, he looked at every project and problem from all angles. Ninth, he was fanatically committed to excellence.”

There were many insights compressed into that brief description of Walt Disney. One that jumped out at me was Dick’s statement that Walt “could see the future—he was a visionary.” Over the years, I continually encountered similar observations from people who knew Walt.

Imagineer Bob Gurr, who designed many of the vehicles still used at Disneyland, told me, “Walt always saw the entire picture. He was the grand master of the vision.” According to film critic Leonard Maltin, “Walt was a futurist. Walt was a visionary. There was no single more forward-thinking person than Walt Disney.” And Disney historian Paul Anderson said, “Vision—that was Walt’s special gift. He could envision Disneyland in every detail, and he pursued it relentlessly when everyone else predicted failure.”

World
magazine editor Marvin Olasky described how Walt’s vision transcended the times in which he lived: “Walt Disney built his vision in the 1950s and early 1960s when the Cold War was at its height and the likelihood of nuclear disaster seemed high. He wanted Disneyland to be not just a theme park but a portal to a better time and a different world.”
¹

Bob Matheison told me about working with Walt during the planning of his Florida project. “Walt was always thinking far out into the future,” he said. “He’d become irritated and impatient with our limited thinking. ‘You aren’t thinking far enough ahead,’ he’d say. ‘We haven’t even begun to think big!’ ”

Walt died five years before Walt Disney World opened in Florida in 1971. Mike Vance, the creative director of Walt Disney Studios, was there for the opening ceremonies. Someone said to him, “Isn’t it too bad Walt Disney didn’t live to see this?”

“He did see it,” Vance replied. “That’s why it’s here.”
²

Vision is the First Side of Leadership. Walt Disney set the standard for visionary leaders.

Walt Disney was born in Chicago on December 5, 1901. He spent his happiest, most formative years on a farm outside of Marceline, Missouri. There he developed an interest in drawing animals. The Santa Fe railroad passed near the farm, and Walt loved to climb a hill and watch the trains pass by.

When Walt was nine, his family was forced to sell the farm and move to Kansas City, Missouri. There Walt met his boyhood friend Walter Pfeiffer, who introduced him to the world of theater and motion pictures. Those were tough times, and Walt had to help his father, Elias, deliver newspapers to more than seven hundred customers. Walt arose at 4:30 a.m. and had to finish his route before school. It was exhausting work, and Walt’s schoolwork suffered. Throughout his life, Walt had nightmares about delivering newspapers in the snow.

In 1917, Elias Disney moved his family to Chicago. There fifteen-year-old Walt took night courses at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Patriotic to the core, he dropped out of high school at age sixteen to join the army but was turned down for being underage. He joined the Red Cross as an ambulance driver, but by the time he got to France, World War I was over.

In 1919, Walt moved to Kansas City, where his older brother Roy (his future business partner) worked in a bank. Walt took an advertising job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio, where he met animator Ub Iwerks, who later helped Disney create Mickey Mouse. Iwerks was still working at Walt’s side forty years later, designing the special effects for
Mary Poppins
.

Walt founded the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in 1922, which produced animated cartoons for theaters in Kansas City. Though his Laugh-O-Gram cartoons and Alice Comedies (combining animation with live action) were wildly popular, the proceeds didn’t cover the generous salaries Walt paid to his growing stable of employees. His financial woes grew, and he was evicted from his studio building. In July 1923, he filed for bankruptcy.

Despite having failed, Walt remained optimistic. Though he had only forty dollars in his wallet, he bought a first-class train ticket (he was going in style) and set off for Hollywood.

“It was a big day,” Walt later recalled, “the day I got on that Santa Fe California Limited. I was just free and happy.”
³
But, he added, “I’d failed. I think it’s important to have a good, hard failure when you’re young. I learned a lot out of that.”
⁴

In October 1923, twenty-one-year-old Walt Disney and his brother Roy started the Disney Brothers’ Studio, located on Hyperion Avenue in Silver Lake, near Hollywood. Walt convinced Ub Iwerks to join him in California. In 1925, Disney hired Lillian Bounds as an animation cel inker—and after a brief courtship, they wed.