#176: Leadership Lessons (from Beatrice Tollman)
Good morning friends
If you’ve had the kind of week I had, then you’ll appreciate this baffled tiger and this curious baby elephant. In fact, even if you’ve had the best week of your life, these snippets will make you even happier.
If you like your smiles to be a touch more high culture, then this recent painting by Nigerian artist Kelechi Nwaneri might do the trick.
And in other news, I had a haircut.
This was me for a lot of the last three years. For my fiftieth birthday in April, I had a trim and looked like this. Last week I wanted freedom, I sat down in Musa’s chair and said, ‘take it off’. This is me now. For my clients who’ve been asking for a haircut, I eventually did it 😉 I could’ve been a bit more smiley…next time…
/ strategy
Last week’s letter was about the theory behind love and leadership.
Yes, it is strange that we need research and theory to say that it is okay to care at work, but it is what it is.
Now, that we’ve got the theory in place, we’re turning our attention to a real-life example, the leadership of Beatrice Tollman.
Tollman is co-founder and president of Red Carnation Hotels. South Africans will know them because of the iconic Oyster Box and Cape Town’s Twelve Apostles.
The group also developed the exclusive Xigera Lodge, which is an unparalleled celebration of the best of African artistry and design (showcasing artists like Andile Dyalvane, Adam Birch, Conrad Hicks, Fani Madoda and Zizipho Poswa).
In addition to the uncaring leader, there’s a myth that says you don’t need to pay attention to the details, that leaders only care about vision.
Master strategist, Jim Collins observes “There is a paradox evident in those who build the great companies. On one hand, they concentrate on high-level vision and strategy while, on the other hand, they involve themselves with seemingly trivial details. The acceptance of the paradox lies in understanding that details are not trivial. Details matter. The most effective leaders are obsessed with both vision and details. They are fanatical about getting the details right.
How you deal with certain details is actually a very high-level statement—a statement about the core values of the company. Involving yourself with certain details can send a very powerful symbolic message.”
Tollman lives this principle.
She starts each day reading reports sent by the General Managers of Red Carnation’s 17 properties. The reports often run more than 100 pages. She keeps her finger on the pulse.
She extends the concept of love and care to her guests, paying close attention to their comments saying, “Your guests teach you your business”.
This is true for any business. What your customers say you are, you are. If you don’t like it, it is still right, it just means you’ve got work to do.
How she deals with the details is instructive.
Tollman observes that “… without your staff, you haven’t got a hotel, I don’t care how many people you’ve got working there, if they don’t know what they’re doing or they don’t care, it doesn’t matter’ and her son, and fellow executive Brett, observes “We have a high level of respect for each other”.
The Tollmans take the principle so seriously that when they purchased a hotel and discovered that the staff had been forced to take salary cuts for the past few years, they repaid them the difference.
Paying attention to the details is important. Doing so in a way that builds people and makes them feel safe is critical. You get that by being clear about outcomes, investing in their growth and showing that you care.
She says, “The thing that means most to me in the hotel business is that anybody can do anything, and anybody can be anybody”. Good businesses and good leaders make that a reality.
It’s not a story that conforms to the ‘lean and mean’ mythology. It’s a story based in love. The results speak for themselves.
//self
When I start working with clients, I ask them if they keep a journal of any kind.
I am not fixated on what the process is, but I know that reflection –personal and professional – is powerful. It gives us perspective, it helps us learn, it builds our ability to pay attention.
Quite often the answer is “I’d love to, but I don’t know how” or “I used to, but I don’t have time”.
I like this “question-a-week program” from Ray and Myers Creativity in Business.
Answer one question a week. Keep track of the ones that help or challenge you most, bank them as the basis of a more consistent reflection practice.
- This week who or what was my teacher?
- This week what did I learn?
- This week how did I judge myself?
- This week what did I observe?
- This week what did I forget?
- This week how did I take care of myself?
- This week what was my relationship to time?
- This week what permission did I give myself regarding emotions?
- This week what did I notice about love?
- This week what truth did I find?
It’ll only take ten minutes a week and within a month, you’ll be a better version of yourself.
You can read more from Creativity in Business here.
/// soul
For the last few weeks, we’ve been living in Cape Town’s CBD before moving to the seaside navy town (are there navy towns that aren’t seaside?) of Simons Town.
We’ve begun and ended our days with strolls in the Company Gardens.
The gardens are gorgeous.
They’re populated with all sorts of trees. I often stop to speak with the old magnolia. I have quieter, shyer conversations with the grove of wild figs, they’re more serious, a touch more intimidating, they carry the intelligence of centuries.
Self-assured squirrels plant themselves in your path, clear in their expectation that you’ll deliver a peanut or two, disgusted when you don’t.
The Gardens are also, for me, tinged with sadness.
Their entrance has the powerful words of the preamble to South Africa’s constitution etched on brass plates; half are stolen. South Africa’s Parliament building remains burnt, unrepaired, 18 months after the fire that shocked the county. Both are sad symbols.
Tour groups stop in front of statues of Cecil John Rhodes, Jan Smuts and Queen Victoria. Earnest guides recite their patter and my soul sinks.
Why have we not given them the opportunity to speak of South Africa’s richness?
I can’t help but wonder what conversation might happen were Rhodes twinned with a statue of businessman J.T. Jabavu or murdered trade unionist Neil Aggett, if Smuts was matched by O.R. Tambo on one side and Albert Luthuli on the other, if as you walked on from them, you encountered Ruth First and Charlotte Maxeke, if the monuments for the fallen soldiers of the World Wars were watched by Chris Hani. What kinds of conversations could be created?
I think that if that were done, tourists and school children would leave with a far greater sense of the complexity of life. Yet, for some reason it hasn’t. And so, history is partial, incomplete and in that stunted telling reduces the possibilities for the future.
It is for this reason that I salute the people of Victoria Girls High.
The school was named for that Victoria, yet in an act of profound humanity and imagination they commissioned artist Robyn Pretorius to create this portrait of Victoria Mxenge.
Mxenge was a lawyer and activist. Like her husband Griffiths, she was murdered by the apartheid state. Author Ursula K. Le Guin has noted that ‘change often begins in art’.
Celebrating her alongside the school’s namesake is as Pretorius says, ‘a momentous occasion of change and transformation’. They remind us that we can all contribute, we can all create the possibility for others to imagine life anew.
Mxenge was fond of these words, “They tried to bury us, but they did not know we were seeds.” They have power for all of us.
With love
Karl