Introduction

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.
—Horace

Note: We are indebted to the work of many people in considering how leaders actually develop, but several people deserve special mention. Morgan McCall was a pioneer in defining the importance of experience in developing leaders. Joseph Gabarro has researched and developed the concept of transition experiences in leadership effectiveness. Recently, our colleagues Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins have also focused on transition experiences in leadership development.

One of us met recently with the new CEO of a large company who was profiling his team of direct reports. As the CEO talked with us, he focused on the skills and background of each direct report. Impressed with the diversity of the group, we asked, “Is there anything that everyone on your team has in common?”

He nodded. “At one point or another, each one of us has been fired.”

The CEO said this proudly. To him, being fired was a badge of merit. His direct reports had been through tough times and learned from their experience. Because they had once been terminated, members of his team had grown personally and professionally. Difficult, unpredictable events had forced them to turn inward, address their flaws, and seek to understand how they may have contributed to their own dismissal. Termination had tested their resiliency— a trait crucial to leadership in competitive businesses. They were survivors.

We bring this up because, contrary to expectation, successful careers are not continually successful. In fact, even the most honored, effective, and acclaimed leaders go through periods of uncertainty, frustration, and failure. These periods can be triggered by both professional and personal events: coping with a bad boss, going through a divorce, taking over a demanding new assignment, living abroad, and many others. They can be periods of great growth and learning, or they can be times of stagnation, denial, and even regression. We call them predictable, intense passages because that is exactly what they are.

Thirteen Common Passages

We have selected thirteen passages to describe in this book; we’ve devoted a chapter to each one. But we don’t intend the passages to represent a complete list of life and career experiences. Rather, we have chosen the thirteen that senior leaders mention most often and describe as particularly compelling or intense. If you work long enough, you will experience many of these passages, perhaps all of them. When you do, you will find them to be emotionally, intellectually, and even spiritually intense.

And they are passages because, as the word indicates, they take you from one place to another; you see the world and yourself differently after you’ve gone through the events and emotional states that define each passage. What you may not experience is permission to discuss these experiences openly and share your insights with others, because many companies today prefer to avoid addressing either the passages or their significance.

Our goal is to help you understand, learn from, and navigate the passages successfully. If you do, you will dramatically increase your leadership effectiveness. If you don’t, you’ll risk bypassing the most important leadership development experience you can face: your own life.

Our Sources of Insight

We’ve based our observations and advice on the experiences of real executives who have gone through these predictable, intense passages. We have interviewed over seventy-five managers about their own development as a leader and coached hundreds more in CDR International/Mercer Delta leadership programs that are conducted every week throughout the world for global companies such as Novartis, Merck, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and many others. In these programs, we have the chance to work intensively with senior executives who have opened up to us about their lives and leadership experiences. These are real executives, and we have collected their stories through one-on-one interviews and ongoing conversation.

In these pages, we’ll tell the stories they shared with us. In some instances, we’ll disguise identities because of the personal nature of the stories and our agreement to maintain confidence. In other instances, executives have given us permission to use their names. This is an especially courageous act, because some of these individuals are revealing mistakes and failures, along with their deeply emotional reactions to them. Some of these leaders have been specifically interviewed for this book; others have been our clients and colleagues. We are especially grateful to those who agreed to be interviewed for this book: Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic; Joseph Beradino, former chairman and CEO of Arthur Andersen; Robert Glynn, chairman and CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric; Thomas Ebeling, CEO of Novartis Pharmaceuticals, and Ray Viault, vice chairman, General Mills.

Our Credentials

All three of us have been in senior positions with major companies, including Honeywell International, General Electric, Citicorp, Ford, Kraft, and Novartis. More recently, we’ve served as business advisers and executive development consultants, primarily with CDR International and Mercer Delta Consulting, to many major corporations, including Intel, Nike, and Bank of America. We’ve also been coaches to CEOs and other top executives within these organizations. In these personal, advisory relationships, we’ve been privileged to see well-known global leaders from a different perspective—often able to glimpse what is beneath the role and the public face. The content of these private conversations has both inspired and informed this book.

Some of the tales we’ll tell are cautionary in nature. Although the passages may be predictable, an individual’s response is not. There are dangers to a career of going through a passage in intellectually or emotionally dishonest ways. Denial may seem useful in the short term, but, in the long run, honestly acknowledging the extraordinary challenge of leadership passages is most beneficial. Many of the stories provide hope, as well as a roadmap for dealing with setbacks and perplexing, unfamiliar situations. By employing the techniques we have used to help leaders meet these challenges, you’ll be in a better position to deal with whatever work and life may put in your way.