What strong leaders are made of

Entrepreneurship, self-confidence, healthy (or even not so) arrogance, risk tolerance, selfishness and even narcissism - this is what strong leaders seem to be made of. A completely different point of view is shared by the chairman of the board of directors of Alphabet, former president of Stanford University, John Hennessy. In the book “Leadership Principles” ( published by Mann, Ivanov and Ferber), Hennessy writes that one of the most important qualities is modesty. We publish a chapter in which the author reveals this thesis using examples from personal experience.

“It is unwise to be too confident in your own wisdom. It is useful to remember that the strongest can be weak, and the wisest can make mistakes.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Most of those who look at the phenomenon of leadership from the outside believe that the main quality of a leader is confidence. Indeed, if you are not confident in your own strategy and your role, you are unlikely to be able to lead others. Who would want to follow a leader who does not fully understand his own plans or capabilities! But what is the basis of confidence?

I think true confidence - not a mask, not a show of bravado, not a false confidence (the worst of all), but a true awareness of one's own strengths and character - comes not from selfishness, but from humility. Overconfidence reflects only our strengths, but does not take into account either our weaknesses or the strengths of others, thereby exposing us to the risk of making catastrophic mistakes. Modesty points out the sources of our weaknesses so that we can correct them, and makes it possible to earn the right to confidence.

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Learn humility when asking for help

Fundraising is one of the best ways to practice humility in a leadership position. When you interact with thousands of employees, tens of thousands of students, and manage billions of dollars in budgets and funds, power can get to your head pretty quickly. The modest task of raising money can serve as a great antidote.

If you add up all the preparations that go into a successful fundraiser, it turns out that I spent between a third and half of my time as head of a university looking for funds.

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As president of the university, I was well aware that I served only as an instrument in these operations, and did not carry them out myself. My work—whether it was a speech to a regional alumni gathering, a private meeting with a potential major donor, or an interview with an alumni magazine—only complemented the collective efforts of numerous specialists. And this also served as a source of modesty: I had to constantly remind myself that it was not me who made the deal. Many people worked hard to get the other side to say yes, but I just closed the deal. If I had made a mistake or given the wrong impression, many months of hard work would have gone down the drain. I was also aware that both alumni and major donors were meeting not with me, John Hennessy, personally, but with the president of Stanford University, who would one day be someone else.

At the same time, I understood the importance of my role as the main representative of the university. Major donors wanted to say hello to the president, not because I was him, but to ensure that the initiatives they decided to support would be received with due consideration and supported by university resources. They asked me to put my reputation against their money. A serious request, but it was their right.

When it comes to particularly large donations, they were almost always made face to face, without the presence of other employees. Just me and this famous, extremely successful and incredibly influential man. He knows exactly what he wants, provides gigantic funds for our needs and demands endless dedication from me. If this doesn’t make you feel humble, then I don’t know what to say!

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Develop humility

The ability to act in accordance with the moment is not natural to me, and mastering this skill was not easy. In the first half of my career, every speech I gave was accompanied by a lot of slides and presentations, usually replete with diagrams, text and equations. As a university president, I found myself dealing with groups of varying sizes, from one major donor to 200,000 graduation guests, without a single slide or presentation—sometimes with little time to prepare. Perhaps this practice is not too difficult for some, but definitely not for me. I had to learn on the go. At first this scared me.

Fortunately (although at that time such a prospect did not seem like any kind of “happiness”), I began to learn this at the start of my career. In 1986 I was 34 years old. Two years earlier, we had founded MIPS Computer Systems, and its business had taken off. Expecting explosive growth, we recruited employees. But, unfortunately, the pace has slowed down significantly. We continued to expand, profits remained quite good, deals were still being closed, but expenses increased even faster. We should have started raising funds earlier, but after the change of CEO this was impossible. As a result, the money ran out, and there was a possibility that we would go bankrupt next month.

We had no choice: layoffs were brewing. Of the 120 employees, 40 had to be fired. Management decided to keep all the engineers, so they had to choose between the rest of the employees. We announced our intention on Friday morning, and by noon everyone who had been laid off had left the company.

It was terrible. I never thought we would have to go through this, and I didn't want it to ever happen again. Such moments—if we are humble enough to accept them—provide an opportunity to learn from mistakes and change course.

But the bitter lessons did not end there for me. Our CEO Bob Miller considered it necessary to hold a meeting for all “survivors” that same day, at lunchtime, at all costs, and asked me to speak. I would have preferred to refuse, but I knew it was my responsibility as one of the founders. I acknowledged that we had made a number of mistakes and then tried to paint a picture of a bright future for the company. Now I'm glad I gave it then, because that speech (though I had no way of knowing it), both parts of it - admitting mistakes and motivating employees - served as excellent preparation for my future career.

Twelve years later, when my appointment as president of Stanford University was announced, I had to go on stage in front of an audience of several hundred people and give a short speech in which I had to briefly outline my thoughts about the new position and the future of the university as a whole. To be honest, this was the first time that I gave a formal speech without relying on audiovisual material. I could give a good professional lecture or conduct a seminar in the classroom, but now everything was different, and I was nervous as hell. How did I manage to survive this? I was humbled by the choice and focused on how honored I was, how much my predecessor had done for Stanford, and how I hoped to help the university become even better.

The situations described prepared me for the circumstances I faced throughout my professional career, including the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis, as discussed in Chapter 5, “Courage.” Each of these events both made me humble and challenged me to find the strength to take on the challenge. They helped me truly become a leader.

Humility and Ambition

Before I conclude my discussion of modesty, I will add that when I think about this quality, I am not just talking about an innate trait (although if you think about how lucky you were to be born in the first place, it should make you modest). I will not even mention modesty based on self-denial. I'm talking about learned humility, which every leader must cultivate in himself - it is no less important than courage and determination. A humble leader gives others the opportunity to report on his accomplishments—he doesn't personally need to. He is aware and openly admits that there are things that he may not fully understand. He willingly accepts help when he feels he needs it. He takes advantage of every opportunity to learn from mistakes and never shy away from a challenge because he sees potential for development in it.

However, modesty does not mean a lack of ambition. Abraham Lincoln was modest but very ambitious. The same can be said for myself, but my ambitions are not about personal gain (although I do love to win at gambling and golf): I always want to benefit the organization and community I serve. Perhaps the only way to combine humility and ambition is to direct your ambitions to benefit others.

Modesty as the basis of personal growth

Shortly before leaving the presidency, I reminisced with Isaac Stein, one of the trustees who brought me to this position. Isaac, who by that time headed the board of trustees, was actively searching for my successor. He said: “You know, John, your main character trait that allowed us to elect you as president was the ability to grow over yourself in the process of work.”

I took his words as a compliment and tried not to cringe too much at the thought of how inexperienced I was when I took over this position 15 years ago. For Isaac, my ability to grow was more important than anything else, although, according to him, he did not expect anything like this when he hired me. Now the board he chairs is trying to develop ways to evaluate this quality so that it will be at the forefront of the search for who will replace me.

But how to assess the ability for such growth? I suppose through the assessment of modesty. If you realize that you still have a lot to learn, that others are superior to you in one way or another, that the ideas of many are always worth more than the opinions of one, all you have to do is be humble and focus on how to become better in your position.

It can be said that when a leader puts humility at the forefront, his very role changes. I learned this back in MIPS. In a startup environment, when you are desperately short of time, and minor mistakes can turn out to be fatal, you cannot lead by separating yourself from your employees: everyone on the team should be equal. Your job is not to tell others what to do, but to dedicate yourself to helping them become better people. That's why at MIPS, when we were preparing to send our first microchip to the factory, and there was no one to do the final checks, I sat down at the computer and began writing programs myself to generate tests.

The first CEO of MIPS, Waymond Crane, acted in a similar way. He first announced that the general meetings were being moved to Saturday morning because he wanted to convey to all employees that we would be working at least half a day on the weekend. When convening meetings, he explicitly hinted that the entire leadership (including himself) should attend them. True, he sweetened this demand by grabbing a box of donuts. The same CEO wiped down the counters in the dining room with his own hands, wanting to show that he did not consider himself superior to others. In the stressful world of a fledgling tech startup, this gesture made a deep impression on me, and I still cherish the memory of it to this day, which in some ways influences my behavior as a leader.

Although I, like most people, could use more modesty in many ways, I will be the first to admit that by nature I am not a modest person at all. However, I realized the importance of modesty. Perhaps the most serious situations in which humility is required involve poor decisions. All leaders make mistakes, and it is better to accept them, have the courage to admit them and decide how to proceed. This book describes situations in which I needed to do just that. Not the most pleasant procedure, but modesty makes it much easier.