Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark

Mary, Crown Princess of Denmark

Karin Palshoj & Gitte Redder

London, Allen&Unwin, 2005

Table of Contents 

Because she believed what her mother had told her, she kissed the frog. He turned into Frederik, the Crown Prince of Denmark. The next morning he asked her to marry him, which she did.

What her mother didn't tell her is that if you marry a once were frog, you end up in a leadership position. So she's on a learning curve. And she's doing well.

But who is she? And what can she teach us about what it takes to become a leader?

Mary Elizabeth is the youngest of the four children of John and Etta Donaldson. Her fairy tale story, which is well told by Palshoj and Redder, is short and sweet.

She was born on 5 February 1972 in Hobart, Tasmania, which is Australia's often forgotten island state. She was educated in state schools and at the University of Tasmania from which she graduated in 1994 with a combined degree in commerce and law. She moved to Melbourne soon after her graduation, took professional certificates in advertising and - except for about six months of working and travelling in Europe and America - worked for a number of Australian and global advertising agencies as an account manager.

On 16 September 2000, during the Olympic Games, Mary met Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark at a Sydney pub - the Slip Inn. A year later she moved to Europe, first to teach English in a business school in Paris and then to work for Microsoft in Copenhagen as a project consultant for business development, communications and marketing.

On 8 October 2003, she and Frederick were officially engaged. On 14 May 2004, they were married. On 15 October 2005, Mary gave birth to Prince Christian. On 21 April 2007, Princess Isabella was born. Mary is due to have twins in January 2011.

From a leadership perspective, Palshoj and Redder get going in chapter five, a chapter on going to princess school. A chapter that raises an unanswerable question that's difficult to resist. Are leaders born or made? Did Mary Elizabeth Donaldson come into the world on 5 February 1972 with everything it takes to be a leader? Or did she begin learning to be a leader only when she and Frederick were officially engaged on 8 October 2003?

As it stands, the way I've posed the problem is absurd.

In 1972, she couldn't speak English or Danish. She still had to learn all the things one learns at school and at university and working for an advertising agency. Also the things one learns by playing the piano, the flute and the clarinet.

And what one learns from playing games. Team games like basketball and lacrosse and field hockey. Individual competitions like swimming for one's school or riding one's horse. Finally, there are the things one learns in a marriage and from being a mother. Both of which are good environments for learning to be a leader.

OK. So let me try again. How about this more sophisticated formulation of the problem?

In 1972, when she came into the world, did she have everything it takes to LEARN what she has learned? Or was she taught to have what it takes to learn how to be a leader? In other words, how many of the qualities that people ascribe to Mary aren't innate? Things like her competitiveness, her determination, her curiosity, her reliability, her emotional intelligence? How many of these traits are qualities her parents and some of her peers and colleagues gave her or helped her to acquire?

So, now we have three options.

Leaders are born. Leaders are made by the environment in which they live before they become leaders. Leaders are made by being taught how to be leaders in the same sort of way that tennis players are taught to be tennis players. 　

Because we aren't yet smart enough to do a DNA analysis of Mary's genetic inheritance, we simply don't know what was there on 2 February 1972. The book on Mary's life - both before she was engaged to Frederik and subsequently - give us lots of evidence for the other two options.

Having parents that affirmed what she wanted to do instead of insisting on what they wanted her to do, helped to give her confidence in herself and fired her ambition. Having a horse helped her to develop all kinds of qualities. Like the courage to trust her horse in a jump. The discipline and patience for performing in the dressage. The ability to work with people of all ages and across gender differences.

Going to princess school also has left its mark. Mary has learned the language of Denmark Inc., both literally and metaphorically. Things like the body language that goes with being a royal instead of a commoner. The ability to retain one's privacy while belonging to a country. The ability neither to encourage nor to offend the media.

Both lists point towards how Mary has learned and is learning to be a leader. They point to qualities and behaviours that fuel her visits to places like disadvantaged migrant areas, as well as to her participation in an anti-bullying program for schools. In particular, they point to the values that created the Mary Foundation. It has two major aims. To advance cultural diversity. And to assist people who aren't part of a community because of circumstances which isolate or exclude them - like ethnicity or illness.

So, does what I've mentioned, as well as what I don't have the space to mention, settle the question? Have her experiences in the 30 years before she and Frederik were engaged, as well as the seven years she's been in the princess school, made her a leader?

Yes. Mary has spent 37 years learning how to be the leader she is and is becoming. Some of the learning was explicit. Most of it was implicit.

And yet, a worry remains. Because we don't know what her genetic inheritance was, perhaps she has learned what has made her a leader only because she was born with what it takes to learn what she has learned!

That, for what it's worth, is my bet.

Some of us have been fortunate enough to be born without the leadership gene. Without the gene that gives us the energy and the ambition to learn the things that have made Mary a leader. In other words, all sorts of people and experiences - from your parents to the people in HR departments to books - can teach you how to kiss a frog. But only if you aren't born with froggy-phobia.


James Moulder (plato@sims.com.au) is a retired business school academic who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His hobbies are theology and poetry.

　

Please note that the Palshoj and Redder book was published in 2005. For information on what has happened since, I drew freely on what's at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Crown_Princess_of_Denmark 

Companies that Changed the World

Companies that Changed the World:
From the East India Company to Google Inc.
Jonathan Mantle
London, Quercus, 2008.

Table of Contents

Why's a wonderbra, a biro and a coke bottle a sexy combo?




Easy!


Each of them is made by a company that changed the world. And so did the companies that made your Swatch, your VW, your Nokia mobile, your IKEA furniture and your Walkman. And so did the other 42 companies that Jonathan Mantle introduces to us. From the oldest to the most recent. From the Honourable East India Company that was created in 1600 to Google which began in 1998.

This book was made for different reading styles. It works for a cover to cover approach. It also works for a need to know approach. For being used as an encyclopedia when you are curious about one of these 50 companies.

Best of all, it can handle various playful approaches, like what's the difference that makes a difference between the three motor-car manufacturers in the cast? Between Ford and Toyota and Volkswagenwerk?

How many of the companies are in the transportation business? For sure, there's Central Pacific and Union Pacific, Boeing, Virgin and the three motor-car manufacturers. But what about Thomas Cook and Western Union who move money about?

Two more of the same kind of question, but with a "the answer's not in the book" twist. First, why are so many of the companies that changed the world in the entertainment and information sector? Companies like Disney, EMI, Penguin, Sony, Nokia, CNN, Endemol, Al Jazeera and Google? Second, if Intel didn't exist, how many of the companies talked about in the book could not make what they are making today?

I enjoyed reading the book from cover to cover. I enjoyed these and other playful questions. Like what these companies teach us about being entrepreneurs and leaders, as well as about having or losing a value based culture. But what I enjoyed most were the chapters on three of my favourite companies: Disney, Sony and Swatch.

I like learning about - or being reminded about - Disney because I like learning about or being reminded about Walt. About his sleeping and day-dreaming his way through school. About his refusal to allow education to cripple his imagination. About him going bankrupt and being close to being bankrupt for more than two-thirds of his life.

There's also good news. More than a third of the world's population has seen at least one of the films he made. The legendary conductor, Leopold Stokowski, begged to be allowed to conduct the music for Mickey Mouse as The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

And there are the quotable quotes.
- If you can dream it, you can do it.
- It's kind of fun to do the impossible.
- Animation is a way of story telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.

Sony's story is about the marriage of Masaru Ibuka's engineering mind and Akio Morita's marketing hunches. Their first product was an electric rice cooker. It failed to sell. Out of the failure came a decision to move from imitating to innovating. And so to the first tape recorder, the first transistor radio, the first Walkman - that nobody except Morita believed would sell - and the first PlayStation.

Masaru Ibuka's legacy reached into education. Into the Sony Fund for Education and into his book, Kindergarten is Too Late. In the book he argues for an idea that's as revolutionary as any of his inventions: the time between nine months and three years is the most significant stage in a child's development.

Finally, there's Swatch's story, which is actually Nicolas Hayek's story. It's a cheeky story. Instead of supervising the liquidation of two major Swiss watchmakers, he bought the two companies. Instead of competing with the Japanese on quality, he chose a head-on confrontation with their products. Instead of marketing a watch as something one kept for life and handed down the generations, he got buyers to believe they had bought a disposable item. A fashion accessory, with Swatch standing for "second watch".

The market - in particular, the yuppie market - caught the mood. People began buying more than one model. Some of them wore two models at a time, either with one on each wrist or with the second one as a pony tail band. Between 1983 and 1993, Hayek took the Swiss share of the global watch market from about 15 percent to more than 50 percent. The first models have become collector's items which change hands for vast prices. Not least of all, because partnerships with well-known popular artists helped to underline the cutting-edge lifestyle imagery of the brand.

For Disney, as well as for Ibuka and Morita, failure came in their first ventures. For Hayek it came when he moved into partnerships with Volkswagen and Daimler-Benz to create the first "Swatchmobiles", the Eco-Sprinter and the Eco-Speedster. Hayek pulled out in 2005, because research and development costs were so high. But the concept of a car that's 2.4 metres long and 1.4 metres wide hasn't gone away, with millions of customers in 25 countries, predominantly in Europe and North America.

Each of the other 47 companies are as interesting and instructive as these three. The statistics also are interesting: 25 of the companies are based in the United States of America (USA); 21 in the evolving United States of Europe (USE); two in Japan and two in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and Qatar). And for those who prefer images to numbers, there are delightful photographs of early advertisements for the products and services that launched these companies. And so, it's easy to recommend Mantle's book, both as fun to read and as a source of wisdom about leadership, as well as about creative thinking.

James Moulder (plato@sims.com.au) is a retired business school academic who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His hobbies are theology and poetry.

Exemplary Leadership

Exemplary Leadership: A Jossey-Bass Academic Administrator's Guide
James Kouzes and Barry Posner
Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2003
Table of Contents

If you have questions about leadership - in general or related to your situation - you may want to send them to James Kouzes at jim@kouzesposner.com or Barry Posner at bposner@scu.edu.

This book is for anyone who has a status position in a university. For anyone who is a rector or a vice-rector - a dean or a deputy-dean - a head of an academic or administrative department. It's also for two other groups of people. For those who aspire to have one of these status positions and for those who are looking for criteria they can use to do two things. To evaluate the performance of people in these positions or to elect people to these positions.

But, for those who have one of these status positions, there's a qualification attached. The book was written for those who wish to add value to the status they have. The value that comes from shifting the focus from what's being done to what could be done instead. The value that comes from having the courage to guide people within one's sphere of influence to places where you and they have never been before.

So, if you want to stop showing off in the shallow end of the pool, what must you do to prove yourself in the deep end?

Kouzes and Posner (K&P) have a three-dimensional answer. A slogan. A five-step guide to being an exemplary leader. And a set of suggestions to help you add value to the status position you have, or aspire to have.

The slogan is rooted in their research, as well as in the leadership literature. Leadership is a relationship. Either an effective relationship or an ineffective one. In either case, it's a relationship between those who have a leadership label and those who do or don't admire them.

Yes, it's as straightforward and as tough as that. Admirable leaders have credibility. And they are credible when they meet two conditions. They know what they stand for; know what they will and will not do. And they do what they say they will do. In K&P's summary: If people don't see consistency - if, for example, special favours seem to be shown, or staff are maligned, or colleagues are denigrated, or responsibilities are not accepted - they conclude that the leader is not serious or a hypocrite.

The five-step guide to being an exemplary leader are the Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership that are rooted in K&P's research, teaching and consulting. These are the practices of Modelling the Way, Inspiring a Shared Vision, Challenging the Process, Enabling Others to Act and Encouraging the Heart.

The behaviours that constitute these practices are pretty intuitive:

- Modelling the Way includes establishing principles concerning the way people should be treated and goals should be pursued. It also includes creating standards of excellence and modelling what it means to strive to honour them.

- Inspiring a Shared Vision is about implementing a set of passionate beliefs about what the part of the university which one leads can become. For rectors and vice-rectors these beliefs refer to the whole institution. For deans and deputy-deans these beliefs refer to the faculty they lead. For heads of department they refer to the departments they chair.

- Challenging the Process is part of inspiring a shared vision. It involves looking for opportunities to change the status quo; looking for ways in which things can be done differently, or done more effectively and efficiently.

- Enabling Others to Act is necessary because the goals that leaders have to achieve can be achieved only by teams in which there is mutual respect and trust; by teams in which people are encouraged to use the skills and knowledge which they have.

- Encouraging the Heart is about failure and success. About learning from - and assisting others to learn from - the mistakes that are inevitable. But it's also about celebrating success and creating the new goals that success makes possible.

The research that enables K&P to cover these five practices with illuminating examples goes back to 1983! It's rooted in what followers told them they looked for in a leader. In other words, this stuff comes from the people in the trenches. It doesn't come from their commanders! And it isn't theoretical stuff. It's about the behaviours that do and don't match each practice. And so, if you haven't got a copy of the book, you can get into what it's about by asking yourself when someone is or isn't in line with each of these things; when, for example, someone's behaviour does or doesn't encourage the heart. Better, you can invite the people who report to you to give you their lists of behaviour that counts for or against each of these five things.

Finally, there's the last chapter of the book. The chapter which argues that leadership is everyone's business. Why? It's possible to acquire the behaviours that are in line with the five practices. More importantly, it's possible to stop behaving in ways that are out of line with them. For sure, being a leader, as well as learning to be a leader, involves making mistakes. So does driving a car and learning to drive a car.

So here's a final K&P punchline:

We're all born with various sets of skills and abilities. What we do with what we have before we die is up to us.

an uncomfortable postscript

Most of the people who hold faculty positions in a university - myself included - don't want to be leaders. We find teaching and research more interesting and more challenging. So it may seem that K&P's slogan, guides and suggestions aren't for us, except as criteria for deciding who to elect as rectors or vice-rectors, deans or deputy deans, or as the head of a department.

Not so, say K&P. There's a sting in the tail of their book. Research shows that what followers look for in a leader, students look for in a teacher or lecturer or dissertation supervisor!

They spell it out on pages 11 and 12:

Like an admirable leader, an admirable faculty member is honest, forward-looking, competent and inspiring. Who'd want to take a course from someone who wasn't competent or wasn't very excited about the subject matter? How about instructors who don't do what they say they will do? Students say that their best teachers are able to get them to see the "big picture"; to understand how what they are being taught would assist them in a workplace. And they are forward-looking, with a sense of how things in their field could change in the not too distant future.

So, yes, this book is about exemplary teaching as much as it's about exemplary leadership. And so those of us who aspire to be admirable teachers could turn K&P's Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership into Five Practices of Exemplary Teaching by asking ourselves what kind of lecture-room behaviour does and doesn't model the way, inspire a shared vision, challenge the process, enable others to act and encourage the heart. And, if we are genuinely committed to these five practices, we'll find ways in which students - perhaps after they've graduated - can tell us when we did and when we didn't do what we were trying to do.

All of which means that this book is for everyone in a university environment. For those who have leadership positions, as well as for those who have teaching positions. It's for anyone who wants to add value to the status they have by delivering what their followers or their students are looking for.

one more thing

If you haven't got the time to read these 104 pages, there's another way to go. Invest in the 16 page Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership. When you have, first work through it on your own and then with the people you lead. It contains two case studies, short descriptions of each of the Five Practices, a section on learning to lead and background information on the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI).

If you have questions about leadership - in general or related to your situation - you may want to send them to James Kouzes at jim@kouzesposner.com or Barry Posner at bposner@scu.edu.

James Moulder (plato@sims.com.au) is a retired business school academic who lives in Melbourne, Australia. His hobbies are theology and poetry.