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Leadership without Ego

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Abstract

Leadership is not about what sets you apart from those you lead – it’s about what binds you together. It is not about controlling others – it’s about trusting others. It’s not about your achievements – it’s about unleashing your team’s greatness. In short, leadership really isn’t about you – it’s about your people. Take Bob Davids, co-author of this book and successful leader of six businesses in fields as diverse as engineering and winemaking. His achievements often came thanks to being able to refrain from acting when others might have found intervening irresistible. By trusting his employees to be better than him in their area of responsibility and letting them act, Bob unleashed the human greatness that no one else – including employees themselves – suspected. Yet to lead without acting does not mean doing nothing. It means creating conditions in which things happen by themselves. Leadership without Ego is about a transformation of the concept of leadership in the past two decades: a change of beliefs about how best to lead, along with radically different leadership practices. The ideas in this book have already changed the fortunes of hundreds of businesses and the lives of tens of thousands of employees. They can do the same for your business, your people – and you.

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Notes

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    Reinventing Leadership, with Warren Bennis, New York: William Morrow, 1995, p. 33.

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    Radica Games is a mutinational company that produces electronic games.

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    John Wooden and Steve Jamison, The Essential Wooden, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2007, p. 81 (from preseason letter to the team 1969).

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    Silas Redd was the founder of IGT.

  9. 9.

    The Essential Wooden, ibid., p. 70 (the emphasis is by the authors).

  10. 10.

    The Trust Factor, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994, p. 56.

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    Personal interview, September 25, 2007.

  12. 12.

    Personal communication with Bob Davids.

  13. 13.

    The Essential Wooden, ibid., p. 82.

  14. 14.

    The Essential Wooden, ibid., p. 95 (the emphasis is by the authors).

  15. 15.

    Personal interview, April 8, 2005.

  16. 16.

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    Democracy in America, Vol. II, Book IV, Chapter 6, p. 319 (cited in W. Röpke, A Humane Economy, Wilmington, DE: ISIS books, p.159).

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  27. 27.

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  28. 28.

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  34. 34.

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  35. 35.

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  36. 36.

    Reinventing Leadership, ibid., pp. 111–2.

  37. 37.

    Personal interview, September 25, 2007.

  38. 38.

    “The Rarest Commodity Is Leadership Without Ego ,” Bob Davids TEDxESCP talk, February 24, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQrPVmcgJJk, accessed May 22, 2017.

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    Personal interview, September 25, 2007.

  42. 42.

    The Trust Factor, ibid., p. 56.

  43. 43.

    Personal interview, September 25, 2007.

  44. 44.

    Bill Gore’s internal memo, “The Lattice Organization—A Philosophy of Enterprise,” May 7, 1976, p. 4.

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    Tao Te Ching (The Definitive Edition, trans. J. Star), New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001, Verse 66, p. 79.

  47. 47.

    La Tâche and Richbourg are two of the most outstanding Burgundy Pinot Noir domains.

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    Personal interview, September 25, 2007.

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    The Trust Factor, ibid., p. 59.

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    John Wooden and Steve Jamison, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1997, p. 117.

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    In his book The Human Side of Entreprise (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960/2006) Douglas McGregor coined the term “Theory X” to denote the organizational environment in which people are viewed as inherently disliking work; requiring coercion, control, and direction to put forth adequate effort; willing to avoid responsibility and seeking security above all effort.

  53. 53.

    Gordon E. Forward , interviewed by A. M. Kantrow, “Wide-Open Management at Chaparral Steel ,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1986, p. 97.

  54. 54.

    The Trust Factor, ibid., p. x.

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    C. I. Stubbart and M. B. Knight, “The Case of the Disappearing Firms: Empirical Evidence and Implications”, Journal of Organizational Behavior 27 (2006): 79–100.

  56. 56.

    The Trust Factor, ibid., p. x.

  57. 57.

    The Essential Wooden, ibid., pp. 30, 33 (the emphasis is by the authors).

  58. 58.

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  60. 60.

    B. M. Carney and I. Getz, Freedom, Inc., Crown Business, 2009, pp. 34–35 (revised edition, 2016).

  61. 61.

    “Freedom from Contract: Solutions in Search of a Problem?” Wisconsin Law Review (1963): 777–820, 792.

  62. 62.

    Ibid., pp. 793–4.

  63. 63.

    Personal interview, September 25, 2007.

  64. 64.

    “The ‘What’ and ‘Why’ of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior,” Psychological Inquiry 11, no. 4 (2000): 227–68, 247.

  65. 65.

    Servant Leadership, Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2002, pp. 39–40.

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Davids, B., Carney, B.M., Getz, I. (2019). Leadership without Ego. In: Leadership without Ego. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00323-4_1

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