How Tragedy Affects Direction

We’d like to share a few powerful stories of people who have dealt with their personal upheavals in different ways.

Humanization of a Leader: Jim

Jim Renier was the CEO and chairman of Honeywell in the nineties. Before reaching the top of Honeywell, Jim was a hard-driving executive with a reputation for forming competitive relationships with others in order to achieve his goals. With a doctorate in chemical engineering and the scientific mind to match, as well as a strong personality and a highly aggressive leadership style, Jim was not always a warm-and-fuzzy leader who was beloved by his employees. He was smart, strategic, and great at getting results, though, and this kept him moving forward.

The biggest setback I ever had in my life was my divorce from my first wife. That was a big one. It was not only that, it was that I was then separated from my three very young children. I was just getting going and building some assets, and they were all stripped away. At the end of that process, I was divorced; I had lost all my assets and I was living in a rooming house. I still had my job, and my children were living about an hour away. I was still in a formative part of my career. I had no money for a house or anything. I would visit my children every weekend, and there was no place to go because I didn’t have a home. That was my situation, and I went through a whole process of “What am I trying to do? Where am I going? What is important? What is not important? How am I going to behave?” All of that, as well as examining what the aspects of myself were that contributed to the situation. It had to do with, “What is my attitude and my attitude toward my ex-wife? What am I trying to do with the three children I have? What am I trying to do with my career? Where does it all fit together?” I would say of all the things in my life, that was the fork in the road. It could have gone in a very different direction. I spent six years on my own. I didn’t just quickly look for a wife; a lot of people make mistakes that way. I think Socrates said it all. He said, “Know thyself.” Until you really know yourself, you can never reach down and grab all the strength that’s within you. You have to know who you are. The things that differentiate you, the things that make you strong and good, the things that are your shortcomings that will probably never change.

Ray Viault, vice chairman, General Mills

As he was rising through the ranks of Honeywell, Jim’s wife became ill with cancer. He spent a great deal of time taking care of her, as well as their young children. Then she died, and Jim eventually returned to work but not as the same type of person and leader he had been. The entire process of nursing his wife, grieving for her when she died, and then helping his children come to terms with their loss and raising them as a single parent was no doubt emotionally difficult for Jim. He was placed in a situation in which he had to act differently from the way he ever had before and had to confront intense feelings.

When he returned to work, by his own report Jim became a changed man. The experience had humanized him. He was more in touch with his feelings and was much more empathic and compassionate than he had been before. Jim became a different kind of leader—a scientist interested in human relationships. He launched a program at Honeywell designed to help other results- driven engineering leaders understand the importance of self-esteem. Jim also talked about this passage in a very public way, helping people understand how the issues he confronted ultimately changed him as a person and as a leader, giving him the emotional maturity necessary to be selected as chairman of Honeywell and be an effective leader of the company.

Regression as a Leader: Drew

Unlike Jim, Drew was an empathetic leader from the start. He worked his way up to the top HR position in his corporation, in part because he was an excellent administrator but also because he did a great job of supporting the development of talent within the company. Drew’s team enjoyed working with him and felt that he was a supportive and caring boss.

Drew was happily married with three children. The middle son was an athlete—a football player who tested limits. Drew had tried to set limits, but his son generally ignored them, and Drew was not a strict disciplinarian. One night, Drew’s son left a party drunk and drove his car into a tree. He survived the accident but his back was broken, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down. Drew blamed himself for the accident. He plunged into a deep depression, berating himself for failing to be more strict and more effective as a parent in communicating to his son the dangers of drinking and driving.

Two days after the accident, Drew returned to work. Though everyone knew what had happened, he declined to share any information other than to say his son had been injured in a car accident and was still in the hospital. He resisted his manager’s entreaties to find out about what he was experiencing or might need. Drew insisted that work was the best therapy, and he began spending long hours at the office. It was almost as if he felt he could submerge his guilt in work.

As a consequence of his son’s paralysis, Drew’s behaviors changed, not necessarily in an overtly negative way. He began to emphasize details—a reasonable trait in an HR department head. But so much of his time and attention were focused on little things that some big things were ignored. For instance, he fell far behind schedule on a critical project—a revamp of hiring protocols designed to meet new legal requirements—because he was focused on a new software implementation. Though Drew remained approachable and empathetic, everyone noted that his empathy seemed more perfunctory than heartfelt. He’d listen, nod, and express the right sentiments, but he always seemed distracted.

After two years, the company demoted Drew. It wasn’t that he had become a poor leader. He had simply regressed. The HR department was not functioning as smoothly or as innovatively as it had in the past, and Drew did not appear to be engaged.

Drew regressed as a leader, not because of the tragedy in his life alone but because he was unable to grieve his loss, confront his guilt, and move on. It’s impossible to know whether Drew would have been able to rebound from his loss had he accepted his manager’s offer of help, had he been more open with his team and himself about his feelings. The odds are that adversity provided an opening for him to know himself better. Alas, either because of his background, beliefs, or behavior, he could not summon the resolve to actually accomplish this.

Transformation as a Leader: Guiliani

Consider a third leader who was transformed by tragedy: Rudolph Guiliani. Before 9/11, some people viewed New York’s mayor as arrogant and abrasive. After 9/11, his image changed because of how he responded to the terrorist attack and the loss of so many people. He didn’t respond with fist-shaking threats against the terrorists or the studied calm of someone playing the role of leader. Instead, he shared his grief with the openness of an ordinary human being, and he made himself available to those who needed consolation, inspiration, and hope. Nothing he said or did seemed scripted. He was real, emotional, and thoughtful. Because he allowed his true nature to emerge in this difficult time, he became an incredibly powerful and effective leader. His vulnerability created a bond with millions of others who shared his grief, sense of loss, and humanity and demonstrated what effective leadership really should be.