Robert Hargrove

A Visit with Tony Mayo of the Harvard Global Leadership Initiative

Last week I had a meeting with Tony Mayo, professor of the Harvard Business School’s Global Leadership Initiative. It was a cold blustery New England day and I wandered through Harvard Yard in shoes that felt two sizes too small trying to find Tony’s office in the Gallatin Building.

It turns out that the front entrance of the Gallatin, a Georgian brick building that reminded me of “merry ole England” was under construction, so I wandered around the building looking for a side door. I eventually happened upon the entrance of the antique brick building with a green door that looked like something right out of Charles Dickens.

On the front entrance of the door was a small brass sign marked “Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness,” which looked so quaint that it struck me as humorous. I half expected Admiral Nelson of the Royal Navy or his secretary Bob Cratchit (A Christmas Carol) to be on the other side of it.

After entering the building, I found a contemporary office with a helpful administrative assistant who directed me toward Tony Mayo’s digs in the next building over. Tony was as charming and as gracious as he could be throughout the whole meeting, as I explained bumping into the arcane “Institute of Strategy and Competitiveness.”

“Oh that’s Michael Porter’s office,” he said (the world famous strategy guru.) After a chuckle or two we got down to discussing Tony’s program at the Institute for Global Leadership Development. We both agreed that leadership development was probably more important for corporate competitiveness than strategic mapping.

Tony explained that the GLI program was based on (a) a group of 120 30-something executives visiting HBS for a few weeks to get schooled in the classic case-study approach; (b) a virtual team experience based on a business simulation after they left Harvard and returned to work; and (c) a 360 feedback with some minimal executive coaching.

Tony said that he had no pretensions about the GLI program being the greatest thing in the world, but it was as he put it “definitely helpful.” I then took Tony through an overview of the Masterful Coaching approach, emphasizing the MC Paradigm of Leadership Development: (1) Leaders develop in the process of producing extraordinary results; (2) Focus on an Impossible Future not leadership gaps; and (3) Coach people on real goals, real problems, in real time.

Tony’s generously acknowledged the MC approach as transformational, where as the HBS approach was very transactional. We both at that point pledged to keep the conversation going in order to explore possibilities for collaboration. “Harvard is thinking about whether or not they want to be in the coaching business. And so let’s keep up the dialogue.”

At the end of the conversation I asked Tony what he was passionate about and he admitted that it wasn’t coaching. He said he was passionate about the research he was involved in about great leaders of the 20th century business.

I looked at a book that he wrote on the subject called, In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the 20th Century. On the cover were some famous leaders like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jack Welch, Henry Ford, as well as some unsung heroes that Tony said he actually found more interesting.

After listening to Tony talk about this I chimed in, afraid of not being professional but being my usual provocative self, “Tony, it seems like you are interested in great leaders after the fact, what they achieved after they became (great) leaders. I am interested in great leaders before the fact, that is to say, how one ordinary person with talent and ability actually transforms into an extraordinary leader.”

I looked at Warren Buffet’s picture on the cover of Tony’s book and asked Tony, “Did you know Warren Buffet once left Grand Central Station on a Saturday morning bound for Washington DC in hopes of meeting the man who would become his mentor, Leo Goodwin, the founder of Geico Insurance (a company Buffet owns today)?” Tony acknowledged he hadn’t heard about this.

The story goes that it turned out that the office was closed on Saturday, but Buffet banged on the door and was admitted by the janitor, who called “the old man” and told him he had a visitor. The old man graciously invited Buffet up to meet him and thus began a relationship that had a powerful impact on Buffet’s development as both a leader and business savant.

I said, “If you look at each of the people in your book, I am sure there was a coaching and mentoring tale behind it.” Tony agreed that if you looked at leadership from that perspective, you would probably find many such tales. “So why isn’t coaching and mentoring part of what you do at the Harvard Business School?” Tony smiled graciously and we agreed to keep the conversation going.

As I left the office that day I kept thinking about “Leadership Before the Fact” vs. “Leadership After the Fact.” I decided to look into the Buffet story and other stories. Little did I know at the time that this thought would lead me into an investigation of the roles that mentors play in developing high potential people.

(In the coming weeks I plan to blog often about the new investigation I am making into mentoring high potential leaders.)