Mindset of a leader.

• Author: Bower, Marvin

Among the toasts at Sir Ian MacGregor's 80th birthday party that I attended in New York in 1992, four members of the small party of colleagues and close friends rose to express their appreciation for Ian's role in developing their careers at AMAX Inc., where they then served as officers. AMAX is where Ian spent the last years of his impressive American career before he moved back to the United Kingdom, where he was appointed head of the British Steel Corp. and the Coal Board by Prime Minister Thatcher. He was knighted for this.

At breakfast with Ian the next morning, I told him he must have been greatly pleased by the praise of his former colleagues. My longtime friend typically replied, "That's not so great. Every leader is supposed to develop his people."

All leaders are, indeed, responsible to their companies and to their people for developing the potential of their constituents and for bringing along new generations of leaders from these constituents. But true leaders, such as Sir Ian, know it and do it gracefully and without fanfare.

I have observed that most successful chief executives pay careful attention to developing their successors, and those who don't are quite rightly sharply criticized for not doing so. Shell and General Electric give particular...