Cracking the Leadership Code

Draw on “connection, communication and collaboration” to establish your position as a leader.

In 1999, Alan Hunkins sought to become the executive director of a nonprofit leadership development group in New York City. He had worked hard for the group and had no doubt that the organization’s members would elect him as the executive director at their annual meeting. Instead, 85% of the members voted for a successful businessman named Gary who had little knowledge of or experience with the organization.

Gary later explained to Hunkins why he won. He’d gotten to know the people at the organization by taking them out to lunch or coffee, probing their views on the nonprofit’s work and asking them what direction they thought it should take. He had explained to them why he wanted to become executive director. Gary asked them to let him join their team, so he could boost the organization’s prospects and to vote for him as executive director, so they could together work for its future. Hunkins, on the other hand, had assumed that the board members would know about him and his hard ...