Geoff Peterson smoked a pipe. Over thirty years ago he was
my third line manager – I think that’s right, my boss’ boss’ boss. He had a
goatee and he was a thinker. He would call you into his office because by
talking to us people lower down the food chain he would find out what was going
on. I worked for ICI – a company that was then more bureaucratic than any
public service: you knew everyone’s grade and what the pay scales were and the
increments each year were absolutely standard. And like a good hierarchy
talking to your boss’ boss was a rare event indeed (talking to one’s own boss
was sometimes hard).
Geoff would sit you down in his office and ask you a
question. As he finished asking the question he would start filling his pipe.
Now, pipe smoking isn’t really about smoking. It’s about all the boring and
reaming of pipe and bowl. It’s about the challenge of getting the thing lit and
then keeping it lit. So the process of kick-starting the pipe was a long one –
and it was longer than the time it took you to answer Geoff’s question. Of
course Geoff was too busy with his pipe to say anything so silence reigned.
Now, silence is embarrassing ... but you sat there. And Geoff kept playing with
his pipe. Eventually fear would get the better of you and you would start babbling. And it was that babbling that Geoff was after – he wanted to hear the real stuff, not the stuff you trotted out for form’s sake. So you would end up talking yourself into a hole – but giving Geoff what he needed. He was, as a result, a man in a senior position in a very hierarchical organisation who was almost intimately connected with what we did and with our problems – and all because he said nothing. Leadership is not about talking: it’s about getting others to talk. If you have got others to talk then you cannot have the data you need to make a decision – to lead.
I used this trick years later. The government decided that it needed to do a review into something or other and A Great Man was commissioned to undertake this review. I was foolish enough to volunteer to write the corporate submission to this review (I will never do anything like that again!) and I ended up going along to meet The Great Man. I was supposed to be accompanying the regional CEO who was really the mouthpiece but he was taken sick so I was on my own. Not a problem – you get to a point in your life when you no longer worry about what people think if you!! I walked into a room full of bureaucrats sitting around a large table at whose head was The Great Man. We shook hands, sat down and he said “Well, what’s your first point?” Not much by way of ice-breaking but I trotted out the first message. I finished. He said nothing. I said nothing. Silence reigned for maybe 30 seconds (which is a long time) and the bureaucrats began to shuffle. He gave in first!! “What’s your next point?” he asked. I replied. Same process. Silence. Discomfort from the audience – but that was it. After that we had a really good conversation. I suppose it was a power play though for what purpose I don’t know. But, thank you Geoff Peterson!!
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