Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows Quotes

“Anchors are fools with substance, and the truths they dispense, though clothed in comedy, take precedence over amusing antics. They are professional fools, intelligent fools that know exactly what they are doing. Discerning and wise, these fools coax, cajole, instruct and criticise their leaders, transforming their mindsets, anchoring and initiating changes in their behaviour, without fear of retribution.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“The central message of Consiglieri is that the best leadership teams beat to a reciprocal drum. Find out what your C needs and they will show you what you need. Responding to A/C problems and successes in an emotionally intelligent way will service a relationship that could define your tenure.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Bad As beget bad Cs, so take a look at yourself.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Remember that Cs spend years perfecting the art of acting in your best interests. How much time have you devoted to thinking about how to make your C’s job easier?”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“The fixer is less concerned with atmosphere and empathy. They are there to get the job done. Like the defender in football, they can anticipate danger, stop the opposition from attacking and prevent goals being scored.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Those Cs with a natural ability for delivery create an environment in which their A and everyone else can thrive. They set the tone in which their As would like their affairs to be conducted and act as cheerleaders for the cause. They ensure the survival of the organisation’s best ideas in a hostile environment.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“The C can be a Lodestone who liberates, an Educator who enlightens or an Anchor who helps the A remain authentic, but they must also, in some way, help their A deliver successful outcomes. The C’s reputation as someone who makes a difference rests more with what they make happen than what they say. Cs deliver in many different ways, some by keeping the peace, mediating and making sense of agendas; others by radiating energy, ideas and creating environments in which positive action thrives; others by fixing whatever needs to be fixed to get the job done; still others by seeing several moves ahead and playing the game with constructive cunning. All are legitimate leadership contributions.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Those who rely on their spouses to keep them in check, to hold mirrors up to their excesses, to act as sane sounding boards, tend, in my research, to enjoy a more profound sense of well-being.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Cs, in my experience, make better silent witnesses than As. They prefer to observe than to grab the microphone, they enjoy the distance, they are able to suspend judgement, and they often have the courage to see in themselves what they might prefer not to.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“In his book How to Get Out of this World Alive, Alain Forget offers us a four-step process by which we can anchor ourselves. Distancing lets us witness our self; discernment reveals what lies beneath our dysfunction; disidentification comes from letting go; and discrimination takes us to places where our ego might not wish to wander. The more the A can be their own anchor or, to use Forget’s word, seeker, the better.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Anchors can expect more from their Cs than simply the honour of serving them, but great friends find giving help even more enjoyable than receiving it.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“it may be right for the business to close down a nice-to-have in-house function in favour of outsourcing, but the A loves the people in it, they bring a smile to his face and he’ll hate himself for turfing them out on the street, all for some minor incremental cost saving – so the friend tells him not to do it. Friendly Cs raise a red flag when they see their chum veering off-piste behaviour-wise, and hold a mirror up to any sign of madness.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Friends in high places are understandably treated with suspicion, particularly when they are appointed without the kind of qualifications or life experiences we would expect.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Mike Phelan, Sir Alex Ferguson’s last assistant manager, said that one of his greatest contributions to the Ferguson leadership was to make his boss laugh. In my interviews, the same comedic quality was attributed to another of Ferguson’s coaches, Steve McClaren, to both John Prescott and Alastair Campbell for Tony Blair, and Nicki Chapman for her many artistes. Funny Cs can break down the structure of A opinion, and put it back together somehow modified, all in a pleasurable whirl.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“As the A, it is easy to drift, placing every question, issue or challenge into one’s central belief system. The A feels no need to weigh up decisions according to the agonisingly delicate nuances of the individual situation. The Anchors around the A must not wed themselves to a particular dogma. To them falls the task of countering their A’s fatally expansive view of the world with clarity, healthy scepticism, constant questioning and sense-making. This is the real work of leading as a C: leading as reading – carefully, clearly, slowly – the situation as it unfolds.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Those coaches who are prepared to give brutally candid advice, to ‘speak truth unto power’, as fearless Mandarins are charged to do by their ministers, act as Anchors to their As. The A’s authenticity is under constant attack from others’ sycophancy and the A’s own vanity. Anchors both ward off and exorcise these demons.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“You have to understand your players’ idiosyncrasies, know what makes them tick, know what makes them angry. You have to know how to handle the player. One of the things that players often forget is that coaches have their own lives to live as well.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Sir Alex Ferguson explained to me the importance of coaching: We take coaching very seriously at this club. Players do not choose what to do in training. At other clubs, left to their own choice, the players would choose to have a kick around. They can play six-a-side at Liverpool. Not at our place. We coach them, drill them and they practise … We start skills coaching as early as six years old. Character coaching becomes critical between sixteen and eighteen. Players have to learn about failure. We cannot guarantee every Academy player makes the first team. Ninety-two current players in the league came out of our Academy. But remember, they can get injured; they can hit a run of bad form; they may never make it. For those who don’t, at least we trained them in character.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Microsoft’s newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella wasted no time inviting Bill Gates to become his consigliere, a shrewd use of the founder and former chairman’s expertise in technology and experience spanning four decades as the A.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“The philosopher needs to give an independent point of view that challenges. They are best when they have points of reference that lend authority to their counsel, when their interventions, if not always welcomed by the A and the executive team, are rooted in years of frontline experience.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“I used to look forward to the time of day when my philosopher’s head would pop around my office door with an invitation, ‘Mr Chief Executive, I wonder if you might have a minute?’ This meant it was time for a fireside chat without the fire, some parental tutelage, unrequested at the time and unforgotten since. Simonds-Gooding’s were laser-like interventions, counsel dispensed as or before situations arose or as the occasion demanded. He was clear from the outset that he would be the philosopher, which meant, he said, that I had to be the butcher willing to get blood on my hands when necessary. Every great organisation had one of each, he said, ‘and I’ve had my turn at butchery.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“If Lodestones liberate the A and leave him unencumbered, Educators enlighten him.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“One thing Angelo Dundee had no time for was cotton wool or sugar-coating when he saw his man Sugar Ray Leonard losing his fight with Tommy Hearn: ‘You’re blowin’ it son, you’re blowin’ it!’ was enough to change the course of the fight. If you want to take on the job of cornerman, to be Dundee to your prize fighter, try at all times to describe your contribution as modestly as he does: ‘I just put the reflexes in the proper direction.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“You should take a bow as a Lodestone if you can answer these questions positively: Does your leader trust you to support them when they are flying high? Can they rely on your strength when the pressure is on and they are in the spotlight? Are you in constant training to ensure that, in the moment, you are the strongest link? If you were not there to act might there be no act at all?”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“One Lodestone who really knows what it means to carry weight is the circus underman. He lifts and supports the other members of an acrobatic team and is never happier than when they dazzle in the limelight.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“As well as a caddie the Lodestone is a roadie, readying his A to take to the stage.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Often themselves outstanding golfers, caddies lighten the load by feeding their As information on how the course works, estimating the yardage of each hole, suggesting the club they might choose and advising on the direction and speed of the wind. More importantly, say the best golfers, a caddie imparts calm, confidence and focus. They contribute to the certainty of their A’s decision-making. In some cases, the club lugger may prove to be the decisive factor, the difference between winner and runner-up.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Lodestones also take friction out of the system. People are understandably concerned to meet the expectations of their leader, particularly one who has a strong personality. Imagine that one such A asks a rhetorical question in a meeting. Someone eager to please or frightened about perceived lack of contribution decides to act on the question. Within days, an internal industry has been developed to try to answer the A’s question; within a week, the project has grown a life of its own; after three months of late nights, heated debate and takeaway pizzas, an answer to the A’s long-forgotten question lands with a thud on their desk. The A thumbs through the thick folder, calls in their C and, baffled at its origin, asks ‘What on earth is this all about?’ An answer from the C along the lines of, ‘Well, you asked this question in a meeting three months ago,’ wouldn’t cut it. The A didn’t mean for the machine to go into overdrive on their behalf and will be angry that you let that happen. People have suffered as a result of thinking too hard about what the big guy (or gal) wants. The intimidating A has got limited time. People are too nervous to stick their head around the door and ask, ‘Hey, boss, that question you just raised in the meeting, do you want someone to take a look at it, or were you just thinking aloud?’ A confident Lodestone may not even have to ask the question. They will have an instinct about what is important to the A based on the A’s current agenda, which will enable the C to prevent friction, and months of wasted effort, by telling their colleagues, ‘Don’t bother with that one, the boss was just asking a question.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“A lodestone means a ‘leading stone’ with a naturally magnetic quality to it.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best

“Smart Cs are never too senior or too important to act as Lodestones to their As. The Lodestone takes jobs off the A’s plate, frees them from the bland fodder of management and releases them from whatever ties them to the table of everyday leadership. When we think of the great organisational freedom fighters we think of our assistants–personal, executive and managerial.”
― Richard Hytner, Consiglieri - Leading from the Shadows: Why Coming Top Is Sometimes Second Best