Page 77 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

as vice chair of Bain and Company, a business and strategy consulting firm;
CEO for Primerica, a financial services company; and CEO of Diversified
Distribution Services for The Travelers Group before becoming vice chair-
man of Citigroup. Dawkins also earned a master of public administration
degree and a doctorate from Princeton.
Through those incredible achievements, Pete Dawkins has gleaned an
immense body of knowledge about what it takes to be a successful leader.
However, there is one simple thing that he says has been the key to his lead-
ership success: He keeps a laserlike focus on his people. Whether he was
leading an airborne company parachuting into enemy territory, a corpo-
rate board trying to widen the company’s profit margin, or a football team
striving for a perfect record, his people always occupied the center of his
attention. “People skills are simple but essential. In any team or organiza-
tion, people need to believe that their leader knows them, understands
them, and cares about them,” Dawkins explained. “That doesn’t mean that
you’re their buddy; it doesn’t mean that you aren’t tough. I don’t think peo-
ple want their leader to be their buddy—they want to respect their leader.
Of course you have to have skill competence; you have to know what
you’re doing. But you also have to have people competence.”
Dawkins says that to have people competence is simply to have regard
for the individuals who are part of your team or organization. He knows
the names of all the secretaries and clerks in his office and greets them
warmly whenever he sees them. He knows the names of all the people who
clean his offices at night. “The folks who work closely with me, I know if
they’re married, unmarried, who their kids are, if they’ve had an accident
or been sick, what they do for fun,” said Dawkins. “You don’t learn those
things as a mechanical checklist; you just do it naturally. In doing so, you
build a reservoir of trust and regard where people understand that you care
about them not just because of what they can do for you or for the orga-
nization but because they are human beings. That is much more powerful
than people seem to regard it.”
Mitchell Reiss (WHF 88–89) shares Dawkins’s view that a leader’s focus
on his or her people is an incredibly powerful tool. He learned that valuable
lesson during his White House Fellowship from his principal, the National
Security Advisor and former Secretary of State and former White House
Fellow Colin Powell. “Two weeks after I started my Fellowship there was a
picnic over the weekend for the National Security Council staff and their

62