The Female Leader

TYPE C: THE MANAGER

We have been pulling your leg a bit. In the long run, relaxing and romance can also be a substitute for the stress and strain of your daily life. For most types of manager repress their power because it doesn’t make them popular: they are generals. They create order, and clear the way. That’s realistic, not bad. A team is lucky to have someone like you.

You have excellent organizational skills and are able to inspire people to carry out tasks with care and on time. You will even conquer men in accordance with your personal needs. In business and accountancy your experience and your analytic way of thinking is indispensable. You have the numbers in your head, the goal before your eyes and your heart in the right place.

Many visionaries need this type, who can pull in the reins and kick ass until they begin to make something of their talent. A company founded by a visionary and a manager doesn’t necessarily lie under a good star. One is from Mars, the other from Pluto. The visionary has scarcely had the idea, when the manager comes along with the objections. That sucks up energy. When manager types start up a business one often feels from the beginning like being in the tax office. What is lacking is the mediating unit of the promoter type.

The manager type has many personalities. After all, she has to tame the temperamental visionary and put the breaks on the promoter pushing ahead, and harness them both. That takes a lot of courage and assertiveness. The manager type has to bring ideas and strengths into a system, which means drawing up rules, directing the course of action, and seeing that goals are achieved and pay off. And that they are realistic.

Managers are the champions who do all the dirty work. The have to protect the business from the competition as well as securing it from the inside. They lead battles, develop strategy and win victories for the company. They are among the rarer species among the leaders. Where the promoter sees opportunities, the manager sees problems. And so it is not by chance that Steve Job’s counterpart is Bill Gates. He is the perfect organizer, the powerful coordinator and the field marshal. His genius lies in his strong will, and his power to fight for his system. His courage and his brilliance in thinking strategically have made him the richest man on earth. This brilliance has enabled him to take on challenges which would send most of us fleeing in panic. It was he who ensured that his computer system was used by IBM and would thereby become the world’s leading software.

Managers are strategists. They know how to delegate and how to build teams which can carry out their mandate. They are the hardliners, who get the best out of their teams and demand that they exceed their limits. Hence the word“generalissimo”. Generals are managers.

They don’t wage war, but deal with the details and the victorious outcome. They don’t shrink from attacking others, although they take pains to stop it from coming to that. They make great sacrifices when they have to. They know how high the price they have to pay is in order to achieve success. All genuine managers are hard-bitten realists who accept reality as it is - in complete contrast to the great illusionist the visionary and his idealist in the shape of the promoter.

Products and goods have to be sold, delivered and stored. Someone has to do the accounts. At the end of the day the books have to be balanced. Has anyone thought of that? Exactly. That’s why the manager type is indispensable. The number of idealistic businesses taking off and followed by a rapid decline is legion. Pure management consists in keeping track of numbers and goals. Things such as logistics or accountancy are often the domain of managers.

Managers are responsible for the complete organization. They are born supervisors, helmsmen, tax advisors or lawyers. They set up the rules of the business game and ensure that everyone sticks to them. They are often the spoilsports in an organization.

But they are the ones who are responsible for success. Adventures are not their thing.

Franchises are made for them. When they bump into a visionary/promoter team however, the latter can be thankful that they put the shop in order. They draw up the handbooks and instructions for success – which will happen if everyone keeps to them. It isn’t exciting. But Murphy’s Law applies just as much today as it ever did: everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Make sure that the manager has checked everything before you start your business. Visionaries like to evade problems and objections. Promoters run a mile from them. Managers confront them directly. Be thankful for these brakemen.

On the other hand of course a manager knows that his true capital lies in the two other types. Pure “manager firms” are ones that at some stage run themselves. It’s not a good sign when the rules are more important than the people. Their system becomes too inflexible and sooner or later will collapse like scaffolding without a wall.

Leadership: the power of three hearts

T

o say it again: you have something of each type within you. And that’s good. For in thebeginning you are on your own. And you need all three figures to create a successful business.

Whichever type corresponds most to you, you will have to deal with the other two later on. It will be wonderful when you can get out of this and finally only have to do what you want to. Logically this relief will have a great effect on your career. But all three elements are integral leadership qualities. The synergy between them brings out that energy that customers trust. If they are united in one person right from the start, so much the better! One day your business will grow so large that it functions without you and you only have to draw the profits. The conditions are: that you see your business as an organization which is a permanent learning process which means that you share your sense of curiosity and master all the abilities that lead to success, and creates new leaders alongside you.

Believe us, this way of learning is fun. While you learn what works and what doesn’t, you get to know yourself and your team better and better. It’s wonderful to work with other people. Getting to know other people on your journey through the business world broadens your perspective and brings more and more people into play with curiosity of their own. This is not about business but about an adventure. And it’s not called “going on an adventure” for nothing. Find your role and find the language for it.

Visionaries like to talk about their ideas and plans in the grand manner. Promoters use words as stepping stones for action. Managers like to discuss and “review” every possible thing to focus as exactly as possible on results and goals. Whatever your role is, you will give your best performance in it.

Your business project starts with you alone. And, alas, there are only three hearts beating in your breast. If you can balance these three powers perfectly you can only win. Once your inner visionary, promoter or manager is awakened and steadily comes to fruition, you learn to control yourself, to find your balance and to navigate your business in a straight line. Thus your project becomes the springboard for a successful career. Your competence in this area will automatically attract specialists from every single field. Note down their telephone numbers. Employ them as soon as success comes and you can pay them. It pays off. You will have more time than before and earn more money than you would have thought.

If your business grows, you have to realize quickly where your strengths lie and which people you need. Look back at your projects in the past. Ask friends and trustworthy acquaintances how they see you. Note, which jobs were the easiest, and which brought in cash the quickest…and which was the most fun. Your business is like a game. Soon you will need a player for every position, an ideal team. There is no doubt such people exist. And you will find the right people for the right team. If your staff is all doing what they like doing best, your workplace will be bursting at the seams with harmony and energy. The main thing is that the three types understand, complement and overlap each other in their spheres of competence. And then you have a team of leaders. Then others can only step aside when you come rolling.

The mental strengths and weaknesses in companies are always underestimated. Relationship complications are the dream killer number one in firms. In the mid-term they lead to disaster. In such cases many entrepreneurs draw back because they are disappointed that they haven’t communicated their energy to the others. Your dreams will only come true if you establish an energetic social network in your company. The challenge is to create an organization that works for you, not you for it.

A too dominant visionary will steamroll promoters and managers with muddleheaded concepts that aren’t from this planet. A promoter on her own will push her employees in a vague direction that will lead to disaster. A manager on her own will create a bureaucracy that will collapse under its own weight. Success comes from team players who know their place

and their function in the organization and have the necessary respect for one another. But we have not got that far yet. You are still on your own. Your curiosity and your desires should be your stimulation. The maverick and pop star Madonna who is dedicated to music (her own label is called “Maverick”) was right in the quotation above when she said that most people don’t say what they want. Even if it was in another context. Next to the text she is portrayed nude carrying a whip.

Personal values are the signposts of your career

A

nyone who passes general values off as personal ones is a hypocrite. Of course we all want peace, think war is evil and famine dreadful. Of course we want everything to be all right in the world and for everyone to get along with each other. There is nothing worse and more hypocritical than someone who passes these values off as their own – as if they were the pope.

Death is a good yardstick to get to know your personal values. Not just any death - but your own. The philosopher Martin Heidegger once pointed out that we never experience our own death, only those of others. If we envision our death, we move into another sphere.

We leave everyday life and its commonality with its rituals, conventions and clichés – what Heidegger calls the “inessential core of being” - completely behind and encounter the essence of our character and recognize what is real and what we live for: our values

It is not by chance that a deep personal experience is often at the beginning of a thorough reflection on the value of life. A heavy illness, a sudden redundancy, a difficult break up with a partner or bankruptcy can lead to you thinking for the first time about the real values in life. Possibly you feel disappointed, conned, abandoned, and punished. But why this whining? This is the beginning of the rest of your life. And possibly the real beginning of your success. What will people say about me at my graveside? The answer is synonymous with the contribution you made to the human race: your worth, your values, those attributes for which you want to have the thanks and recognition of your fellow human beings.

It is only recently, possibly since the end of the industrial age and the beginning of the service age, that work can even be fun. We don’t have to work as hard as before. And we can choose for ourselves what we want to do. If you follow your own way, you don’t have the feeling of working. You feel led on by your sense of curiosity. You aren’t dealing with something, something is dealing with you. If the “background program” consists of your own values, you have your model. Tie this model to your curiosity and your life will pay out in cash. It is not normal in our latitudes to connect economic success with these values. No, it is even considered reprehensible to want to earn money from your personal and social interests. According to the protestant ethic – one of the founding tenets of western civilization – hard work is the only way of being redeemed after death and received into eternal life. Work in this sense is more of a punishment or probation: the exile from paradise is the beginning of the necessity of working, and work is the only way back to heaven. “First comes work and then pleasure” is the well known formula of our social system of values, which vulgarizes this principle. Or: “work is work, beer is beer”. Work in its classic meaning is martyrdom: it causes pain. And it should cause pain. Work, as Karl Marx had already concluded in the 19th century, is alienation from oneself.

The question is not how you live, but why.

F

or the first time it is possible to abolish the historical separation of “work” and “pleasure”, “9 to 5” and “5 to 9”, working hours and holidays in our modern economy. There are more and more people who are actually able to make use of the German shop opening hours because they are no longer forced to work during this time.

But you enjoy “working” whenever you want to, including weekends or in the night, if you go your own way. You do what nourishes you, permanently and gladly. Someone who is comfortable with himself knows his worth, his values and the price at which he can sell himself.

To reach that stage we must go back to death again. How do I feel about the thought of it? Am I frightened of it? What stops me from dying? Is there anything for which I would give my life? To answer such questions to yourself is anything but deadly. It enables you to think about life and its value. If there is anything worth dying for, then it is also worth living for.

What obsesses you so much that you would dedicate your whole life to it? And why aren’t you doing it? Because we all prefer to play it safe.

In the classical division between job and pleasure we land in a job after our training that we like more or less, receive compensation for the time we spend there, instead of uniting work and pleasure. We would have to suffer less and would not abandon ourselves to partially senseless occupations, hobbies or chronic partying. What are you waiting for? Your old age pension?

Use questions about death to discover possibilities. Devote some time to it, a little solitude, and pen and paper. No distractions, no email nearby, no cell phone, not even a normal phone. Rent a hut on an alpine meadow. Do not take your partner with you. If I had only a year to live, what would I do in the time remaining? What should take priority? If the doctor told you that you had only thirty days to live, what would you concentrate on? And what if it were only a day, an hour? And how much time would you spend in self-pity?

The answers to these questions are the beginning of a lifelong search for the really important things in your life – the much quoted “meaning of life”. Your meaning, your values.

The secret is this. If there were no death we would not think about our lives. Death is there to make sense of our lives. A rich, meaningful life therefore entails coming to terms with our own death.

Then we see ourselves as we really are. The closer we get to our own real values, the more alive we feel. You can judge your values by the vitality and energy within you. They will be carried over into everything around you, including employees and customers, once these values become “lived”.

They are deep and therefore longer lasting than everything else. One of the largest and most successful hotel chains in the world is the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In his autobiography the heir to the chain explains the fundamental principle of its long term success. The “core values” of the founder have been passed on from generation to generation and taken up by all employees. It doesn’t have anything to do with visions on the drawing board during weekend conferences, but with deep human values that are according to the Hyatt family genuine and long lasting. Above all “the spirit to serve”.

The possibility of always being able to perceive what guests lack and what they expect, to put oneself in their place or their character and their demands, automatically raises the quality and promotes progress, so that there is hardly one stone left upon another in spite of the lasting values in the over 70 year old history of the Hyatt chain.

Its reputation as one of the leading international hotel chains justifies these “core values”, in accordance with the Lampedusa motto: “Everything has to be changed so that everything can stay the same.”

Paradigm of values: “the performance scale”

T

he following seven chapters describe all the stages in the development of a business up to the moment when the original occupation becomes a business. You have to cross these “seven bridges”-there is no way round.

The only alternative is to stand still or to go back. There is no compulsion: you will find yourself automatically on a higher level. That can be recognized from the mental development of the company, its state and your own state of mind. However once you have adopted the road to a self-employed career, it would be sad to back down.

Look at it as your preparatory phase before your personal big bang, after which you will get in on the act in the world of business and thereby realize your personal goals and become increasingly fulfilled.

The performance scale (see Fig. 1) outlines your business activities. The subsequent development up to the launch is not only intended for the planning phase, but for you to discover your mission, to set goals, to learn how to sell and to try out a succession of projects in order to test whether your dreams can be realized out there in the real world.

The lower half of the performance scale can be called the theoretical, the upper the practical. We prefer to talk about the conception and the action phases.

Our approach has nothing to do with numbers. If you are looking for a business plan you won’t find one here. Although we strongly advise you to make one.

A large misunderstanding in our modern discourse is that for example artists and other “woolly-headed idealists” in our society are prevented from doing business. In the case of artists, writers or theatre people, commercial success through entertainment, for example, makes them downright questionable. At the same time good artists have always been interested in money. Andy Warhol painted dollar bills and maintained that he had portrayed what he loved the most.

Fortunately today the paradigm is changing: you have to link your ideas to business or you won’t be taken seriously in the market. Your ideas, plans and dreams end up as a “hobby” in your back room, or your relations support you, “the great artist”, so that you can pay at least a part of the rent and the grocery bills? Can that be satisfying? Not just that.

Figure 1: Performance Scale no. 7 – Sage Learning Method ©

The old paradigm follows this very curious idea in our culture that creative people and everyone who follows their dreams and their sense of curiosity should have the grace to starve to appear credible. You can prove that you are not a “woolly-headed idealist” through projects. It would be fatal to let everything be driven in support of your dreams and dedicate yourself exclusively to this ideal. You turn your ideas into projects which will show how much energy is really invested and how many consequences this idea really has. Through projects you come into contact with reality. They are limited by time and yield a concrete result - possibly even real money without substantial investment.

These projects are genuine experiences and give you feedback whether your idea or your business is going in the right direction.