Two special qualities that define a leader.

• Author: HORTON, THOMAS R.
• Position: Brief Article

Taste and sensitivity have a lot to do with a CEO'S success. Are you, as board members, attuned to these needs?

SOME TIME AGO I was talking with a group of corporate directors about the characteristics of an ideal board member. After discussing such essential traits as integrity and commitment, I remarked that impeccable taste is a quality greatly to be desired.

"Are you saying," a colleague interrupted, "that if I drink beer with Dover sole, you wouldn't consider me for your board?"

"Only if your beer is in a glass," I retorted, half-facetiously.

He continued, "What does anyone's taste have to do with anything?"

In leadership positions, taste can have a lot to do with everything. A person of taste is a person of high standards. He or she knows how to judge quality and instinctively recognizes excellence, and shoddiness. Whenever I succeed in recruiting a person of extraordinary taste to a board, the new arrival always enriches the level of discussion and elevates the governance process. Moreover, the comportment of incumbent board members visibly improves, as the new director becomes an instant role model.

A few of the incumbents, however, remain oblivious to the superior ways of the new director, which brings me to a second valuable quality -- sensitivity. Some individuals seem almost to have antennae, invisible but very real, that are sharply attuned to others. They can hear even what is not spoken. A board blessed with such talent possesses a human early-warning system and is not likely to be blindsided by unforeseen events.

If such qualities as taste and sensitivity are valuable at the board level, just think of their worth as part of a CEO's makeup.

To my way of thinking, taste is not a matter of style or fashion, which are ephemeral, but rather a sure sense of what is appropriate or "fit." Over the years one's taste can be developed through conscious and persistent observation of others. The quality of sensitivity is more complicated and perhaps less learnable. Its essential ingredient is an intrinsic interest in, and a genuine liking for, other people. By this I do not mean a generosity of spirit to man and womankind or an abstract devotion to the human condition, but rather an authentic, heartfelt concern for other individuals, including (especially including) those with whom we interact every day. Akin to taste, it is nothing less than an abiding consideration of other people, a trait also found, not surprisingly, at the heart of...