Virtual Strategist

Downturns occur in almost every business, but in today’s turbulent business environment -- characterized by a wave of CEO scandals, revelations of corporate corruption and greed, and a spate of corporate failures -- leadership has never been in greater demand nor in shorter supply. We thought it might be useful, therefore, to offer a perspective on leadership and, in particular, to explore some of the myths and mysteries surrounding the topic. Specifically, we wanted to examine what leadership is and who, in fact, could be called a leader. We also wondered whether leadership characteristics are innate; whether terms as passion, vision, and predisposition to change are meaningful in describing leaders’ traits; and whether leaders share certain key assets. Below, we explore these issues and invite one leader, Doris Christopher, founder and chairman of The Pampered Chef, to tell us what she’s learned about leadership, followership, and leading her company.

It has frequently been said that leadership involves just three things—“a leader, followers, and a common goal.”[1] Though the latter is often ignored, it should not be. The goal is as significant as the other two.[2] In fact, the leader and followers join together in pursuit of the goal, thus equalizing the two.[3] Many of the thorny issues related to leadership are introduced in the ‘Primer on Leadership” found below.

What do leaders actually do?

Leaders “mobilize others toward a goal shared by leader and followers,”[4] taking others toward the object of their joint quest.[5] They have a transformational impact, an ability to “unite followers and to change followers’ goals and beliefs.”[6]

Is there a difference between leaders and managers?

Yes. The two are different roles individuals play. More importantly, they are complementary systems of action both of which are necessary for succeeding in today’s turbulent business environment.[7]

Is there a leadership personality type or set of competencies that differentiate leaders?

Yes, again. The leadership literature stresses the leader’s role in dealing with change, in direction setting, and inspiring and motivating relevant constituencies.[8] For Maccoby, the “productive narcissist” embodies the traits of today’s dynamic leader, i.e., rejecting the status quo and visioning to effect change.[9] Bennis emphasizes the leader’s adaptive capacity—i.e., the ability to transcend adversity and learn from failure. Ultimately, leadership involves three fundamental qualities: a clear sense of direction for the business and the ability to communicate it; the ability to inspire and motivate people to implement that direction; and adaptive capacity to transcend adversity.

Are leaders always leaders?

No. For the most part, successful leadership cannot be considered separately from its context; the type of leader who is effective in one kind of business often runs another into the ground.”[10]

Is there a leadership experience?

The consensus is that there is such an experience. Bennis alludes to the “crucible,” calling it the transformational experience in leadership development [11] Others cite the leader’s sense of separateness from his environment as a key differentiator. The “twice-born” personality is said to explain why some leaders are motivated to seek opportunities that deeply affect human, economic, and political relationships.[12] Haas speaks of the “born-twice experience,” which enables leaders to grow by mastering their painful experiences.[13] [14] Ultimately, such experiences involve self-discovery, introspection forged from suffering, and an ability to refocus and develop a fresh perspective. [15]

In 1980, armed with an idea for a direct-sales kitchen tool business and a $3000 loan, Doris Christopher founded The Pampered Chef. By 2004, the company had grown to become a multi-million dollar enterprise. How was Christopher able to achieve this? First and foremost: sharing her passion and communicating her vision with her coworkers and independent kitchen consultants -- something she continues to do to this day, She communicates that vision, worldwide, to over 70,000 sales people or, as Christopher calls them, “kitchen consultants.”. They provide the context for her leadership. But Christopher also stresses her role as a manager. While she sees herself as a change implementer, she feels the company needs both strong leadership and strong management. And she has taken steps to assure it benefits from both. For her, a good leader must not only be able to construct a vision but to turn that vision into a reality via workforce motivation and alignment.

The challenge, says Christopher, is one confronting most companies: how to provide an inspirational vision to staff and consultants and to communicate it in a way that offers clear direction but still leaves room for creative flexibility and empowerment. Underscoring the importance of creating a vision-based goal that she and her sales team share, Christopher devotes much time contemplating that vision and traveling around the country articulating it and making it her kitchen consultant’s vision as well. Moreover, in working with these consultants, Christopher builds a sense of community among her consultants by creating a set of shared symbols and values and performance incentives. These not only provide symbolic linkages but also strengthen performance by offering a progressive system of rewards— that is, the better the consultant’s performance the more awards he/she receives.

Christopher’s happy childhood dining experiences inspired her to envision a business aimed at increasing people’s enjoyment of mealtimes around the family dining table. In transforming that vision into a business reality, she stresses the role the company’s organizational structure and independent consultants play. Today, The Pampered Chef offers some 280 different products—many of which are unique--but what differentiates the company from competitors and has enabled it to succeed, Christopher explains, are the independent kitchen consultants, who believe passionately in the products they sell and who share their knowledge and fervor with the customers. Indeed, the realization of Christopher’s vision is due in great part to the dedication of these consultants and their expertise at selling.

Christopher readily acknowledges that organizations succeed or fail based, in part, on how well their leaders lead and, in part, on how well their followers follow. Indeed, insisting on the importance of effective followership, she works hard to motivate and develop it. In particular, she strives to align her kitchen consultants to the company vision by taking every possible opportunity to communicate that vision — enthusiastically, understandably, and frequently. Not surprisingly, she is passionate about her role and her company’s mission and tries to recruit others who believe in the mission as strongly as she does. Indeed, to ensure the company achieves its corporate goals, she has innovatively structured The Pampered Chef to offer its consultants monetary as well as non-monetary incentives. Finally, she knows only too well that for effective followership to occur, followers must feel empowered; and has worked hard to make certain that they are.[16]

As Christopher sees it, for an organization to succeed, its leader must know how to turn his/her vision into action. It’s not enough to provide a stream of creative or new business ideas or to write the perfect vision statement: The real test of leadership, she argues, is to make the business idea work and/or the vision comes to pass. A true leader, she says, “takes initiatives and risks, formulates ideas, and continuously offers guidance and solutions. He/she regularly interacts with the people around him, aligning them to his/her ideas, goals, and vision.” He should lead by example as well as by providing employees with training and learning opportunities.

In a striking example of initiative taking and idea transformation, Christopher created The Pampered Chef to fulfill her vision of offering high-quality kitchen tools to ease meal preparation and thus enable people to share more relaxation time with family and friends. She took risks and endured hardship and setbacks but never relented on her idea that the world lacked something she could create, something that offered it value. Indeed, though reluctant to describe herself as a “productive narcissist,” Christopher bears some resemblance to the type of passionate, risk-taking, change-the-world personality to which Michael Maccoby alludes in his book.^{^[17]}

Christopher understands well the importance of communications as a mechanism for motivating, inspiring, and aligning people within her company—that is, to get people moving in the “right” direction and to get their help in implementing the vision and strategies.[18] Moreover, given the multinational nature of her business, she works hard to effectively communicate with diverse audiences-- coworkers in other parts of the organization, the consultants, suppliers, and end-customers—who also represent a variety of cultural backgrounds and may speak a number of different languages.

Not surprisingly, Christopher avows to spending a significant amount of her time communicating, regularly talking to large numbers of people to mitigate the difficulties of getting them to appreciate alternative visions of the future and, equally important, to actively support change. The company publishes a monthly newsletter, which serves as its primary instrument for reaching the 70,000 consultants, and also holds national meetings to bring the consultants together.[19] It makes extensive use of the Internet to provide interactive platforms to stimulate dialoging, teaching, learning, and customer and consultant feedback.

For Christopher, the major communications challenge is achieving credibility—that is, getting coworkers, consultants, and customers to believe the message, be energized by it, and willingly participate in its implementation. What is she doing to increase that credibility? “It’s a matter of establishing a track record of integrity and trustworthiness. It’s of critical importance that the mission, strategy, and goals are articulated clearly from the top and in a manner that stresses the audience’s values,” she says. Moreover, she underscores the importance of providing communications that motivate and inspire rather than those that imposes order or control. She adds: “Our consultants are very independent and the company can’t dictate to them. We try to get buy-in, to get people to believe in the company’s vision and mission.”[20]

An avid learner, Christopher recognizes the crucial role of teaching and learning in generating organizational knowledge and maximizing staff talent and skills. However, she asserts that the teaching/learning cycle at The Pampered Chef is made more complex by the fact that there are 70,000 plus kitchen consultants who need constant information and updating on the company’s product line. In order to inform, motivate, and instill the company’s values, Christopher relies on diverse tools -- the monthly newsletter, national meetings, e-communications, and video seminars, among others-- as the basis for the organization’s teaching structure.[21] Despite her admiration for formal programs based on interactive, virtuous-teaching-cycle models that companies such as GE and other large organizations utilize, she doesn’t necessarily feel that such models are appropriate for The Pampered Chef. Nevertheless, she will continue to focus on improving teaching and learning within the company.

Until now, Doris Christopher has spent little time thinking about the nature of leadership, But Christopher is a leader. And, in common with other leaders, she exhibits a key differentiating characteristic: the desire to lead. She also shares with them a critical interrelated set of traits:

The desire and vision to change the world as well as the charisma to convince others to buy into that vision.[22] Visioning, motivating, empowering--these traits and an insistence on good management have enabled Christopher to grow The Pampered Chef into a multi-million dollar business, a business so successful it caught the eye of its new owner, Warren Buffett.

Warren G. Bennis and Robert Thomas, Geeks & Geezers (HBS Press, Boston, 2002), p. 137.
Gary Willis, “Biographies of Franklin Roosevelt,” in Certain Trumpets (January 1, 1994).

Gary Willis, “Biographies of Franklin Roosevelt,” in Certain Trumpets (January 1, 1994), p. 17.
Gary Willis, “Biographies of Franklin Roosevelt,” in Certain Trumpets (January 1, 1994), pp. 17-18.
Gary Wills, “The Call of Leaders,” in Certain Trumpets (January 1, 1994), p. 17.
Gary Wills, “The Call of Leaders,” in Certain Trumpets (January 1, 1994), p. 19.
Karl Kuhnert and Philip Lewis, “Transactional and Transformational Leadership,” in Academy of Management Review (January 1, 1987)
John P. Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” HBR (Dec. 1, 2001), pp. 3.
John P. Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” HBR (Dec. 1, 2001), pp. 4-5.
Michael Maccoby, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (Broadway Books, 2003), pp. 6.
Michael Maccoby, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (Broadway Books, 2003), p.11.
Bennis and Thomas, Geeks and Geezers (HBS Press, Boston, 2002), pp. 17-18. The crucible is defined as a severe test of patience or belief; and how to make meaning out of difficult events. (Bennis and Thomas, p.4)
Abraham Zaleznik, “Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?” HBR (May-June 1977), p. 9.
Haas and Tamarkin, “New Strengths from Old Wounds,” in The Leader Within (Harper Business, 1993), p. 73.
Source Unknown
Haas and Tamarkin, “New Strengths from Old Wounds,” in The Leader Within (Harper Business, 1993), p. 73.
See interview with Doris Christopher, Appendix I.
Michael Maccoby, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (Broadway Books, NY, 2003), pp. 99-150, 171-172.
See John Kotter, “What Leaders Really Do,” Best of HBR (Dec. 1, 2001), pp. 3-12.
Doris Christopher interview, Appendix I.
Doris Christopher interview, Appendix I.
Doris Christopher interview, Appendix I, pp. 6-7.
Michael Maccoby, The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership (Broadway Books, 2003), pp. 11, 153.