Given a Second Chance, A Boss Learns to Favor Carrots Over Sticks

As a manager, Bill Prince bulldozed his way through problems, projects and - when they got in his way - people. He was demeaning to subordinates and disdainful of bosses, and as a result his fast-track career at BellSouth ground to a halt.

But Mr. Prince is proof that, on occasion, a leopard can change his spots. With the help of an under-standing boss and a program that forced him to face his deficiencies, Mr. Prince changed his style. Now 54 years old, he has started his own business with an eye toward expansion and is even starting other businesses, something he says he would never have risked before for fear of alienating his staff. “I went through life thinking I was a top manager and couldn’t understand why I didn’t become a vice president,” he says. “As it turned out, I had some blind spots in my management style that I wasn’t aware of.”

It’s the eternal management conundrum: Are employees moti-vated more by fear or affection? For decades, bullying managers ruled American business. “It’s my way or the highway” was their anthem. But in the information age, products increasingly come not from an assembly line but from employees’ heads. And with workers job-hopping fearlessly in a talent-short market, managers are finding that showing a more compassionate side work’s better.

When Mr. Prince joined BellSouth in 1964 after graduating from college, the only thing that seemed to matter was results. After 15 years, he had become a middle manager and part of the com-pany’s high-potential development program by turning around underperforming organizations in a dozen cities. But he says he did it in a “brusque and unfeeling manner,” firing people in droves. And those he sacked may have been the lucky ones: Survivors were treated coldly, praised infrequently and publicly demeaned for mistakes.

Eventually, Mr. Prince’s career bogged down. Others got promotions he felt he deserved, and he grew bitter toward higher management. “I didn’t always treat them with the respect I should have,” he says. When a general manager didn’t fire an employee for a security violation, as he had recommended, Mr. Prince went to the manager’s boss to suggest discipli-nary measures - for the GM. “I had low tolerance for executives who wouldn’t deal with summary judgment when I felt we needed it,” he says.

After 30 years with the company, Mr. Prince found himself in an executive support position, headed nowhere. So he quit in 1994 and joined A&A Services, a telecommunications-services outsourcing firm owned by Art Hall, a former BellSouth colleague. He started as a senior consultant and was named executive director within 90 days.

But Mr. Prince’s tough-guy management style hadn’t changed. Mr. Hall recalls driving home from a seminar and asking if Mr. Prince would be able to respect him as boss. Mr. Prince responded, “That’s up to you,” according to Mr. Hall.

Mr. Prince acknowledges he didn’t show Mr. Hall the proper respect. “It was like, ‘Just get out of my way and I’ll get the sales and profits, “‘he says.

Employees complained that Mr. Prince pushed too hard and, treated them rudely, Mr. Hall recalls. “People were saying, ‘This guy is toxic.’” So Mr. Hall called Mr. Prince in for a talk, offering to find him a program that would help him change his behavior. Mr. Prince got the message: “If I didn’t want the help, he’d arrange a graceful exit.”

The cure was an intensive leadership-development program run by Atlanta psychologist Robert L. Turknett. He put Mr. Prince through a battery of tests and sought assessments from 22 former bosses, peers and subordinates going back 15 years. “He had a bull-in-a-china-shop approach to managing people,” Mr. Turknett concluded. “He essentially saw people as instruments to get things done through, but didn’t concern himself with their feelings.”

Mr. Prince learned that people saw him as overly frank and often offensive. Nonverbal signals were also a problem. “I could look at you and you would know you were an inch tall,” he says. He traced some of this behavior to a broken home. “It instilled in me a hard-nosed disposition,” he says. “I was going to do whatever it took to survive.”

Fortunately, he was also a man of strong will. He started making a list of desired behaviors: Treat employees the same as clients, don’t go home with any relationships still damaged, take responsibility for your own actions. “I always said, ‘That’s just the way I am,”’ he says. “Bob told me that being hard-nosed was a choice.”

Mr. Turknett gave him homework: Focus on one person for a week, stressing the positive things that person has done. Write the things you value about the person. “He would come back and say, ‘It’s like a miracle; he’s like my best buddy-he’ll do anything for me,’” Mr. Turknett recalls. After the initial program, Mr. Prince returned monthly for 90 minutes of coaching and feedback.

Now, as the CEO of his own company, Mr. Prince is careful to focus on fixing the problem, not condemning the person who made the mistake. “Ten years ago, I probably would have glared at that person, gritted my teeth to indicate how upset I was with them personally,” he says. “And I would have done it in front of other people.”

Mr. Hall confirms that the change in Mr. Prince’s approach was dramatic. “When I asked where do you want to go to lunch, he said, ‘Where you want to go, Art?”’ Mr. Hall says. “Before that, no matter what, he wanted to make the decision.”

Source: Wall Street Journal / November 30, 1999