Booker T. Washington's Three Most Effective Leadership Skills

Please bear with me. This is a financial blog, but I reserve the
right to occasionally discuss leadership skills and traits. It's not enough to
*know* the inner workings of finance & lending, but you also must be able to
instill in others a passion and drive to effect the same change you wish to
effect.


Three Traits of Leadership in
Booker T. Washington

As seen in Chapters 9-13 of Up From Slavery


He began with his students to work on building a kiln, which would burn clay into bricks. With these bricks, he would eventually construct what we know as Tuskegee University. Yet do we know how close these grand buildings came to not being built?

Just imagine for yourselves. You’ve never built a kiln before and have no experience in it. Even before making a kiln, you had to spend hours of back-breaking work, up to your knees in Southern mud, gathering the clay that would be used to produce the bricks that would eventually come to be known as the halls of Tuskegee.

Your first kiln fails. What do you do? Some would leave, but a good majority would probably try it again, we would hope.

Your second kiln ultimately fails as well. Ok, this is where most of us here would likely give up, maybe 1 or 2 diehards would continue on…maybe.

Third time’s that charm, right? This kiln, the third one, is built and ready for burning the clay into bricks. It’s only a 7 day process. Somewhere on the 5th or 6th day, the kiln fails. To add insult to injury, it’s in the middle of the night as well. This is where all of us close up shop, change careers, and move to a different country…guaranteed.

But for those who believe otherwise, would you put up one of your prized possessions as collateral for trying another kiln? Washington pawns his watch for $15 (remember, it’s around 1875), builds another kiln, this one works, and years later he reports that the Tuskegee students manufactured 1.2MM bricks just ‘last season’.

This, friends, is what we call persistence; dogged, rough, masculine, back-breaking, sweat-dripping, bone-crushing persistence. He did not believe in failure.



Try this one. You now have a building. The kiln worked. Congratulations. Now you must furnish it. You have students, but no kitchen, no stoves to cook with, no dining room for them to eat in, and the only place for a “dining room” is the room you made by excavating a large amount of dirt from underneath the building.

On top of that, there is no furniture for the students’ boarding department: no bowls, spoons, or plates for them to eat with. There even was an argument one morning between two young students on whose turn it was to have the coffee cup.

Not every student is even guaranteed a meal, since there may not be enough food to go around that day. You never know. In fact, Mr. Washington noticed that one, young girl didn’t get anything to eat that morning for breakfast. Dejected, she ambled over to the well, hoping to find just one cup of water to quench her thirst and maybe calm her hungry stomach. Seeing that the rope for the well bucket was broken, and that there was no way to get any water, she dismayedly said, “We can’t even get water to drink at this school.”.

Booker T. Washington says, “I think no one remark ever came so near discouraging me as that one.”

I ask you this. How do you think our current business leaders would treat this? What would our spiritual leaders say? What would our motivational speakers offer up as an answer to comfort the little girl who couldn’t even fill her hunger that morning?

I warrant that we wouldn’t even know how to answer her, because we aren’t familiar with difficulty to that degree. But, what did Washington do?

He says, “As I look back now over that part of our struggle, I am glad to see that we had it. I am glad that we endured all those discomforts and inconveniences. I am glad that our students had to dig out the place for their kitchen and dining room…had we started in a fine, attractive, convenient room, I fear we would have ‘lost our heads’ and become ‘stuck up’. It means a great deal, I think, to start off on a foundation which one has made for one’s self.”

This, friends, is what we know as vision. This is the vision that sees a harvest in place of rocky, barren ground. This is the vision needed to make anything get off the ground and soar.



Lastly, imagine this. You are the leader of a fast-performing business. Your profits are soaring, and your earning are up 24% year-to-date, and it’s nearing the end of the 4th quarter. Your bonus looks like your annual salary, which should make a good present for this solid year of growth. Your board of executives look up to your for advice, wisdom, and direction. People invest in what you say and there is copious buy-in to your beliefs.

How did you get there?

Well, how did Booker T. Washington get there? After all, he is one of the most remarkable men of the turn of the century, and will be memorialized among the hearts of any people trying to better their situation.

He got there by getting buy-in. He asked for other people’s thoughts, regardless of how high or low they were. He valued others so much, that he would ask the student body two or three times during the year what they thought the college could do better. He actually asked for criticism.

When was the last time you saw a Wall Street Journal article with the heading, “CEO breaks ground by asking for criticism”? You won’t see it in our culture. We’re much to attuned to ourselves. However, Washington was attuned to others and the welfare of their particular situation…so much so, that he mentions meeting students in the chapel for conversations and discussions about how they can better the school. He says, “These meetings, it seems to me, enable me to get at the very heart of all that concerns the school.”

Why did he do this? Just because he was humble, meek, and mild? Maybe a cursory synopsis would determine this, but not really. He did this to instill in others a sense of ownership. After all, are not students the marrow of the school?

If you wanted your Board of Executives to instill vision and passion in their managers, all the way down to each and every individual person in your company, wouldn’t you want to cultivate a sense of responsibility in your executives? Wouldn’t you want to place upon him the burden of always thinking ways of doing it better next time with less cost or more efficiency?

Washington says, “I have often thought that many strikes and similar disturbances might be avoided if the employers would cultivate the habit of getting nearer to their employees, of consulting and advising with them, and letting them feel that the interests of the two are the same.”

And, he’s right.

This, friends, is a teachable spirit.

Booker T. Washington has exhibited three strong traits of a good leader, destined to effect change. Persistence, Vision, and a Teachable Spirit. Employing just one of these will get you success. Employing two will grant you and others around you success. But, to grasp all three in Trinitarian utility will break the ground for unparalleled achievements.


*Quotations taken from Washington’s autobiography, Up From Slavery (Chapters 9-13)