Page 178 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

LEADERS ARE GREAT LISTENERS

before in a supposedly civil setting, and I was afraid the next barrage would
be headed in my direction.”
Later, Harris took Rodriguez aside and told him that Lyndon Johnson
had taught her that technique to help her establish her position of author-
ity quickly whenever she was faced with resolving disputes. Although
Rodriguez liked Harris, he was reasonably anxious about her. “As a psy-
chiatrist, I was trained to listen to my body and my thoughts. How I feel
about people when I’m with them tells me something about the way they
are communicating with me and the way I’m responding,” he explained.
“I decided that her approach to establishing rapport was not my personal
style and would not serve me very well, especially since respect and trust
are so important for negotiations in my field.”
When President Jimmy Carter lost his bid for reelection and Ronald
Reagan took office, Rodriguez received a new principal at Health and
Human Services: Secretary Richard “Dick” Schweiker. Rodriguez was
relieved to find that he and Schweiker had similar personalities.
Schweiker was an intense observer, listener, and team leader. When it
came time to make leadership decisions, he asked his people to give him
information so that he could process it with them. He then would lead
the team toward making a collective decision. Schweiker employed a
disciplined, methodical approach to collecting and sorting through
information, and he took an impatient young Rodriguez to new levels of
critical thinking.
“He repeatedly impressed on me that I hadn’t stretched my mind and,
in some instances, my soul adequately in preparing my work,” Rodriguez
recalled. “He could point those kinds of things out in a very effective,
kindly way. He taught me a lot about decision making by critically listen-
ing and probing, by crystallizing thoughts, and by extracting the four or
five things that are most important for a decision so as to lead to effective
priority setting and consensus building within a defined time frame. He
helped me organize my executive thinking and my planning skills in
ways that really served me well in my subsequent professional and personal
life. During my Fellowship, as I struggled with many months of negotiation
with the Office of Management and Budget over proposed cuts in
Great Society health and social service programs, I was always impressed
with the strength that Secretary Schweiker brought to negotiations by
conveying dignity, respect, and a sheer command of facts that allowed

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