Five Minutes with Howard Haas
Howard Haas spent 19 years as CEO of Sealy. After he left the mattress business, he joined the GSB faculty, creating the Practice of Leadership in Business course in 1988. The course took off. “At the time, I felt like someone in the desert carrying a canteen of water to the very thirsty,” he said. When he started, despite camping out at Regenstein Library and reading everything he could get his hands on, Haas found that much of the literature on leadership was not relevant to business. Turning inward, he mined his own experience and eventually wrote The Leader Within (Harper Books, 1993). This fall, after almost two decades, Haas will teach the course for the last time, sharing his classroom with Linda Ginzel, clinical professor of managerial psychology, who will take the class into the future. That’s the ultimate test of leadership, says Haas, adjunct professor of strategic management. “If you’ve done it well, you can tur n over the reins to the one who follows you.” Chicago GSB Magazine recently spoke with Haas about what makes a good leader and whether leadership can be taught.
Can anybody be a leader?
Sure, but you have to have the motivation and discipline. It’s not easy. If it were easy, everyone would be a leader and there would be no followers! On the first day of class, I say, “Every one of you can be the CEO of your company within 10 years if you don’t destroy yourself on the way there.” And I believe it.
What qualities are essential for a good leader?
Technical competence, because you have to demonstrate exceptional proficiency in at least one area. Competence in listening to and communicating with people. Conceptual skills, meaning the ability to cut to the heart of complex issues. A good perspective on your own life, because if you can understand the context you’re operating in, you can project yourself into a more rational and predictable future. Good judgment and good character, because people will look at you through a magnifying glass for every flaw, and you’ve got to be beyond reproach. Optimism, because leaders are purveyors of hope, and they have to believe in a vision for the organization even when they aren’t completely certain that it’s the right one. The ability to provide balance, because if you have a favorite group, your strength will be diminished. And belief in a vision, the power of change, and the willingness to take risks to get there.
What’s it like to be the CEO?
If you’re the leader of your company, it won’t all be great. It’s an unrelenting, 24-hour job. You’ve got to take care of yourself. There’ll be some tough stuff. The first time I was involved in litigation, I was on the witness stand for 11 days being cross-examined as an adverse witness. Until it was finished, I wasn’t sure that I could handle it physically or emotionally.
What’s the CEO’s job?
The CEO is in a position to see the whole business in reality—to cut through all the fables and the implied knowledge to get to the core and make good business decisions. And the good business decisions are certainly anchored in the Black-Scholes option pricing model, discounted cash flow, and all the techniques we teach here. But if you can’t see reality, you only run the business on myth. Myth on top of myth makes a lot of mistakes.
“On the first day of class, I say, ‘Every one of you can be the CEO of your company within 10 years if you don’t destroy yourself on the way there.’”—Howard Haas
How do you teach leadership?
Our objective is to help people find the leader within themselves. The students have got it; they wouldn’t be at the GSB if they didn’t. I give them a lot of readings and we have discussions. I tell them about the lessons of my own experience. I bring in outside speakers, generally CEOs, who talk about their own leadership journey.
For the final paper, they interview a wide range of current CEOs about whether what they’ve learned in the classroom rings true in business environments. I say, “You’re going to have to go out and prove it. You’re going to be in the offices of major CEOs, talking to them one on one, as an equal, and I want you to be prepared to handle yourself.” And they do. Students say, “One of the best things that happened to me was I spent two hours with the president of Boeing.”
I’m not the Delphic oracle, giving them the principles of leadership. My role is simply to provide students with a flexible leadership framework and the tools they need to make good decisions inside that framework. They gain confidence in both the tools and the framework because they speak to CEOs who have validated them.
Why did you spend your time teaching at the GSB?
I can show the students something that other academics can’t because they haven’t been there. I’ve been there, been through it all. I’ve failed and I’ve been very successful. I want to give something back to the next generation of business leaders. That’s why I do it.
