Leading Quietly

Badaracco calls them "quiet leaders"-people who choose responsible, behind-the-scenes action over public heroism to resolve tough leadership challenges. These individuals don't fit the stereotype of the bold and gutsy leader, and they don't want to. What they want is to do the "right thing" for their organizations, their coworkers, and themselves-but inconspicuously and without casualties. They do so by being baldly realistic about the complexities of their own motives and those of the dilemmas they face. In today's fast and fluid business world, nothing is as it seems. And they know it.

Drawing from a four-year study of quiet leadership, Badaracco presents eight practical and counterintuitive guidelines for confronting situations in which right and wrong seem like moving targets. Grounding each strategy in an engaging story, he shows how these "non-heroes" succeed by managing their political capital, buying themselves time, bending the rules, and more.

From leaders in the executive suite to aspiring leaders in the office cubicle, Leading Quietly compellingly shows how patient, everyday efforts can add up to a better company and even a better world.

To his credit, Badaracco celebrates modest, unassuming men and women with their mixed and complicated motives. Like most of his audience, those men and women will probably never be in the limelight but make the world a better place through countless, small, often unseen efforts. Badaracco convincingly demonstrates that it is given to almost all his audience to learn and practice the simple virtues of quiet leadership, e.g.: Restraint, modesty, and tenacity.

Contrary to some wisdom, quiet leaders
1) Buy time.
2) Drill down into the political and technical elements of the problems they face.
3) Invest their political capital wisely.
4) Nudge, test, and escalate gradually.
5) Find ways, when necessary, to bend the rules.
6) View compromise as a high form of leadership and creativity.

In his recently published Good To Great, Jim Collins interestingly comes to the conclusion that the CEOs of great companies turning around good companies successfully are usually humble, modest, and tenacious. Is quiet leadership from top to bottom within any organization the future?

In a second edition of Leading Quietly, Badaracco could perhaps use both success stories and failures to illustrate each guideline for practicing quiet leadership. Often, failures are more valuable learning experiences than successes. Furthermore, Badaracco could perhaps further elaborate on white-collar criminality that can have an impact on quiet leaders as well. Quiet leaders at companies like Enron and Andersen could have been pressurized to violate the law and could eventually not simply walk away from their organizations because of their sense of duty and/or their responsibilities towards their family, especially in a downturn economy.


Provocative and clearly argued   January 29, 2002
Jeffrey L. Seglin (Boston, MA USA)
66 out of 72 found this review helpful

Professor Badaracco acknowledges here what conventional wisdom on business ethics might suggest before he presents a well-argued case for why the stock responses that call for black and white behavior are not always the most effective options for individual choices. Badaracco's take that the quiet leader doesn't knee-jerkingly draw a line in the sand and say, "this is right; this is wrong; I will not cross this line" might strike some readers as coping out or compromising at the expense of doing the absolute right thing. But careful readers will discover that Badaracco's notion isn't to cave when right action is called for, but rather to look more broadly at the issues and make more informed decisions. Main strengths: 1) provocative, well-articulated argument; 2) clarity of writing; and 3) clear case studies to support argument of the book.


Thankyou To Amazon.com   December 17, 2002
R. Stockton (California, USA)
26 out of 27 found this review helpful

"Leading Quietly" is the result of a professional five year study on leadership by Joseph Badaracco. It is NOT your run-of-the-mill "how-to" book on the subject, designed primarily to make money. That sets it apart from all the other books out there. As a Harvard professor, the author uses the same type of case study methodology as is used in the MBA and Law School programs. I found that "Leading Quietly", standing alone, was enjoyable and useful enough to recommend to everyone interested in character and leadership. But, following suggestions I read on Amazon.com, I went on to read Norman Thomas Remick's "West Point: Character Leadership Education....Thomas Jefferson", and found the combination of the two books to be a dynamite education on character and leadership. I can only say thankyou to Amazon.com for leading this horse to water. I strongly recommend that you do the same ----- if you really want to be a good leader.


The Best Way To Lead -- Quietly   February 7, 2002
P.K. (Boston, Mass. USA)
28 out of 34 found this review helpful

This book is intellectually well done, from the way it is written to the supporting arguments used. One does not have to agree with everything to rightly judge this as 5 stars. For a completely different presentation and a more "stoic" philosophical approach, I also recommend reading "West Point" by Norman Thomas Remick (available right here from Amazon.com).


The Importance of "Small and Obscure Deeds"   February 25, 2003
Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful

Jim Collins and his 21 associates committed more than 15,000 hours to rigorous research on the 15-year performance record of 1,435 companies (that had appeared on the Fortune 500 list) as candidates for designation as "good-to-great." They then shared what they learned in a book. One of the revelations which surprised me most was that what they call "Level 5 Leadership" invalidates conventional wisdom concerning the so-called "charismatic" CEO. (Please see pages 17-40 as well as pages 72-73 in Good to Great.) After four years of his own rigorous research, Badaracco seems to have arrived at many of the same conclusions that Collins and his associates did. For example, that the most effective leaders are passionate about the organizations they lead but not about their own careers; that they are relentless in the pursuit of what Collins calls Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) but, meanwhile, manifest impeccable personal as well as professional integrity; that they are (in Badaracco's words) "quiet leaders because their modesty and restraint are in large measure responsible for their impressive achievements."

Badaracco goes on to note that because many big problems can only be resolved by a long series of small efforts, "quiet leadership, despite its seemingly slow pace, often turns out to be the quickest way to make an organization -- and the world -- a better place." Invoking metaphors, I presume to suggest that the so-called "charismatic leader" resembles a Roman candle or perhaps a single sparkler whereas the "Level 5 Leader," the Quiet Leader," resembles a Bunsen burner. Navy fliers training for duty aboard aircraft carriers are told, "There are no old, bold pilots." Badaracco correctly asserts that preparation, caution, care, and attention to detail are usually the best approach to everyday challenges. "What usually matters are careful, thoughtful, practical efforts by people working far from the limelight." How long might it take to achieve a BHAG? Collins suggests ten to 30 years..."or more." The leadership required over such an extended period of time (leadership which includes but is not limited to the CEO) reflects a specific way of thinking about people, organizations, and effective action. "It is a way of understanding the flow of events and discerning the best ways to make a difference." Moreover, Badaracco adds, "...in a small way, quiet leadership is also an act of faith: an expression of confidence in the ultimate force of what [Albert] Schweitzer called 'small and obscure deeds.'"

The material in this brilliant book is carefully organized within nine chapters whose titles correctly suggest their respective focal points. For example, in Chapter Eight ("Nudge, Test, and Escalate Gradually"), Badaracco suggests that quiet leaders "prefer more cautious, modest ways of thinking and acting. Instead of hunting confidently for the [in italics] right answer, they concentrate on finding the right ways to to eventually get sound, workable answers." For them, unlike those who are impulsive and flamboyant, "leadership is a process, often a long and oblique one, not a single or courageous event." They are practical but NOT expedient. They focus on what is reasonably attainable rather than on what is ideal and, therefore, almost never attainable. They "buy a little time" (the title of Chapter Three) inorder to drill down deeper to reveal the technical and political elements of the questions to be answered and the problems to be solved. They have a bias for action but only after sufficient (albeit imperfect) preparation. Their core values are non-negotiable even as they view compromise as being essential to consensus. The "eloquence" of such women and men is expressed by what they and their associates accomplish together each day, to be sure, but also year after year.

Badaracco includes an especially apt quotation in his Introduction. It is an excerpt from Schweitzer's autobiography, Out of My Life and Thought, and provides what I consider to be an appropriate conclusion to this review:

"Of all the will toward the ideal in mankind only a small part can manifest itself in public action. All the rest of this force must be content with small and obscure deeds. The sum of these, however, is a thousand times stronger than the acts of those who receive wide public recognition. The latter, compared to the former, are like the foam on the waves of a deep ocean."