If you are not familiar with Max Bazerman, you should be. Dr. Bazerman is a legend in academic circles.
The award committee who granted Bazerman the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organizational Behavior Division of the Academy of Management wrote, “Max Bazerman has had an important impact over many years in the area of decision making in organizations. Even more impactful, however, is his research on negotiations in organizations. Not only is it foundational, but coupled with the developmental aspects of instructional materials based on his research it has transformed the topic of negotiations into a near universal part of all MBA programs. The instructional approach he developed with his colleagues constitutes the basis of the vast majority of those programs. His work as a doctoral student advisor has also led to an extremely large number of important faculty at top institutions who evidence his commitment to excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service.”
The last sentence is one I want to focus on – “His work as a doctoral student advisor has also led to an extremely large number of important faculty at top institutions who evidence his commitment to excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service.”
One of the doctrinal students Dr. Bazerman advised was Katy Milkman, PhD. Katy is an award-winning behavioral scientist and the James G. Dinan Professor at the Wharton School. She has worked with dozens of organizations to encourage positive change, including Google, Wal-Mart, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the American Red Cross.
In Katy’s outstanding new book How To Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, she discussed Dr. Bazerman in her chapter on Confidence. You can order a copy by clicking HERE or on the image provided.
If you enter into Dr. Bazerman’s office you will quickly notice a floor-to-ceiling canvas poster on one of its walls. It is a “family tree” given to him on his 50th birthday by a former student. The poster is similar to many family trees. His name is at the top of the tree with many, many “branches” underneath.
There is one very unique quality to this “family tree” however.
The family is not blood relatives but world-class scholars he has advised and mentored. Below his name are dozens or people he has personally mentored followed by the dozens and dozens of people they subsequently advised. His “tree” includes senior professors from many of today’s leading academic institutions. Katy notes that Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Stanford, Duke, Cornell, UCLA, Cal-Berkeley, Northwestern, and many others are all represented.
So how did Dr. Bazerman influence so many other top leaders?
Katy mentioned the following:
- Responded to emails within hours, not days.
- Quickly read draft manuscripts and offered valuable comments on how to improve them
- Held weekly meetings where students shared feedback with each other on research projects
- Hosted dinners where students could meet visiting faculty and experts in their field
- Taught a doctrinal seminar
- Encouraged advanced doctrinal students to work with newer doctrinal students
- Rarely offered unsolicited advise
While each of these are outstanding in their own right, many reading this post will realize countless leaders do something similar. So what was the secret sauce of Dr. Bazwerman’s leadership style?
Confidence, Faith, and Belief
Here’s what Katy said, “After thanking me for the praise (of his mentoring techniques), he insisted it was unwarranted. Though he offered a few tips on how to help PhD students achieve more, the main thrust of his message was that great students simply found him. ‘I’ve worked with students who range from very smart to spectacular,’ he said. In Max’s view, it was the talent of his students, not the quality of his advising, that made him look so good.”
She also added, “Max had insisted that there wasn’t anything special about him that helped his students succeed. It was something special about his students. When I emailed asking for his mentoring secrets, he’d explained that his students ranged ‘from very smart to spectacular.’ His unshakeable faith that each student he advised had remarkable talents, I now realized, was a bedrock of Max’s advising success.”
In conclusion, what is The #1 Thing Leaders Must Do To Influence As Many Other Leaders As Possible?
You must believe each leader you encounter has remarkable talents.
Concluding thought – If you want to influence as many leaders as possible in your lifetime, you must believe they are very smart to spectacular. You must believe great leaders find you, you don’t find them. You must believe they are capable of extraordinary things. And you must believe the leaders you influence have remarkable talents.
Do you? If not, it is time to start seeing them in a different light.
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