Freedom, Inc_ - Brian M. Carney [85]
In the end, despite the clear demonstration that he “didn’t like the word ‘manager,’” Gore said to Chase: “You can do what you want, just … don’t … bring that card around here. If you decide to put that stuff on your card, I don’t want to see the card. I don’t want anyone else to see the card. It’s for the marketplace only.”
“And so,” Burt concluded, “I put ‘regional manager’…on the damn cards.”
Help received and case closed? Not so fast.
What about that “damn”? It hinted that Bill Gore’s lecture had had an effect. Chase still thought he needed the cards, but now he wasn’t any happier about it than Gore was.
“‘Regional manager’ seemed kind of harmless,” explained Chase. “But then … as an experienced person now, I was helping to articulate the culture…. As a role model… I wanted to practice the culture. I wanted other people to practice what we want to do and I’ve got a title on my card [that got] in the way.”
That was the solution Gore hoped Chase would find by himself, the type of nourishing leader he hoped Chase would develop into. And though Gore took a risk and needed plenty of patience, Burt Chase proved he was worth it. “We were a no-titles organization by Bill Gore’s definition and it took this example to really prove it to me,” Chase explained. But then Chase delivered the real punch line: “I realized that it wasn’t just as an associate [for my colleagues] that I shouldn’t have this title; it really didn’t serve me well in the marketplace anyway.” A “manager” title, Chase explained, didn’t just make others feel inferior. It also prevented him from nourishing their growth “because the way you develop relationships, truthful, honest, open, frank relationships,” Chase continued, “is to get to know somebody, get to know them for what they know, so that they can take advantage of your strengths and what they know about you; you’ve got to talk to each other, so it’s not the title on the card that gives them that information, it’s the conversation that gives them that information.”
Bill Gore’s nourishing leadership had won Chase over and made him enthusiastic not only about taking part in building a freedom-based environment in the company, but also about developing into a nourishing leader himself. From a “simple associate” Chase became a nourishing leader who practiced in his new job the management practices that fully satisfied his own people’s needs to be treated as equals, to grow, and to self-direct. But this was also an illustration of something else: Chase’s story is also one of a “simple associate” who became a natural leader, who took responsibility for solving problems that business situations demanded.
Bill Gore’s approach for growing natural leaders was “to take a chance and give somebody an opportunity” to lead, said Chase. If you took that opportunity out of a person’s hands, he wouldn’t be self-motivated to take part in building a freedom-based environment—or for leading the business.
It worked out fine for Burt Chase. He spent all forty years of his professional career at Gore, assumed more and more leadership responsibilities, became a self-appointed theorist of Gore’s culture, and eventually wrote a book on it. It was Chase—though he has been retired for some time already—whom Gore’s PR person appealed to in order to explain to us the company’s culture and its emergence. Not a bad career for a person who failed sales tests before joining Gore.
Here, by the way, is one test Chase failed to pass in an insurance company, as he recounted:
“If you walked into a potential client’s office and the receptionist said he’s busy right now, but you could see through the door that he was in there, sitting at his desk, would you find a way to skip the receptionist and talk to