Being present allows you, as a leader, to connect personally with your people, and personal connections help you build your intuitive feel for the business as well as for the people running the business. They also help to personalize the mission you’re asking people to perform. Dick Brown’s personal connections at all levels of the organization at EDS fostered a degree of commitment and passion that simply wouldn’t have existed otherwise. We know of no great leaders, whether in business, politics, the military, religion, or any other field, who didn’t have these personal connections.
