E-mail a friendDr. William Baker
airdate May 11, 2009
In a 40-year-plus career, William F. Baker has produced some of the industry's most respected programs and won seven Emmys. He was instrumental in establishing the Disney and Discovery Channels and introducing Oprah as a talk show host. Baker's radio and TV positions include CEO of the Educational Broadcasting Corporation, licensee of New York's Thirteen/WNET—where he's president emeritus. He's co-authored two books and, in '07, was inducted into the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Management Hall of Fame.
Leading with Kindness author says movies lionize the wrong kind of management style. (1:30)
Full interview. (13:39)
Dr. William Baker
Tavis: Dr. William Baker is an Emmy-winning television producer and the former CEO of Channel 13, the largest PBS station in the nation - of course, New York City. During his tenure in public television he helped create a number of notable programs, including some show hosted by a guy named "Charlie Rose." (Laughter) Love Charlie.
His new book is called "Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results." Bill Baker, nice to have you on this program.
Dr. William Baker: Oh, honored to be here, Tavis, thank you.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here. Let me start with the obvious question for me, at least, which is why the obsession for you with kindness?
Baker: Well, I'll tell you. I spent the last 30 years of my life being president of something - either public television in New York for the last 20 years, and Westinghouse Television before that, and I thought I - and I have a Ph.D. in industrial psychology.
All the research says being nice to people is what really pays off, but I've seen movie after movie, and I think the thing that finally pushed me over the edge was the NBC series with Donald Trump about you're fired, and I'm thinking, my gosh, my gosh, why are we lionizing the wrong style of management? We're asking people to manage people in a way that they shouldn't be managed. That if you want to get a lot out of people you should be nice, you should be kind.
And then, of course, the meltdown of the entire economic system. And there's some argument that says it may have been unkind leaders who really triggered all this off. We did some research and the research said if you are a bully boss, people working for you don't tell you what's going on.
Well, if you're riding the wave and everything's going great, maybe you don't need to know what's going on. But when there's trouble ahead and you don't know, you drive the Mercedes right off the cliff.
Tavis: What does it mean to lead with kindness? How does one lead that way?
Baker: Okay, first I should say that a kind boss has compassion, he or she has integrity, and is grateful - displays gratitude. A kind boss, though, is not a doormat, is not somebody that can be walked on, is a person that is not afraid to say, "Hey, you're not doing your job," or "I'm sorry, I do have to let you go because you're in the wrong place for your skills."
You have to remember a quote that is often attributed to Gandhi - "Don't mistake my kindness for weakness." And so kind bosses are not weak people at all.
Tavis: What leads you to believe that leading that way - that is to say, with kindness - helps you get more results than leading another way?
Baker: Well, for the research of the book we did two things. First, we looked at all of the studies or many of the studies in the field of industrial psychology. By the way, they're becoming more and more popular, studies looking at the world from the employee's point of view. And they pretty much are all in sync, and they say being nice to people pays off.
And then we did some research on our own. We went and we studied the publisher of our books, the American Management Association, and they have a huge database and we sampled that database online, and we asked people about the kinds of bosses they had through a series of questions and what their behaviors were to those bosses.
And there were huge percentages. The majority of people who had kind bosses said they kind of went out of their way - I'm summarizing - went out of their way to deliver for that person. And if they saw trouble, they would tell the person because they weren't afraid of him or her.
Whereas people with unkind bosses, with bully bosses, said, "We just kind of keep our head down and if there's trouble out there, we're only going to speak when spoken to."
By the way, there have been other studies - for example, the "Harvard Business Review" came out last year with a study paralleling some of our work that show that there are an awful lot of companies all over the world, because some of the studies we did were outside of the United States as well, where they found that companies and individuals that had this characteristic tended to really deliver way ahead of others.
Tavis: What's the trick - and that might be the wrong word, Bill - but what's the trick, what's the methodology for being kind to employees when the message you have to deliver is not kind or good news?
Baker: Yeah, well, of course that's a real problem today. Let me just answer that as best I can, because it's not easy. I think the first thing is to be genuine. I never forgot, it happened at actually our television station in New York. One of the people that we liked an awful lot had to be let go just for economic reasons - these places are under terrible economic strain.
And the boss happened to be a female and she had to do the letting go, and she was so compassionate in that process the person that got let go called me and said, "You know, I felt so sorry for her." (Laughter) "Telling me that I was getting fired. And I love this place, and if there's ever a job again, I want to come back."
And I thought to myself, this executive of ours at our television station is really a wonderful, skilled, kind boss. She was being genuine, she was being truthful, and I think that's the operative word here - genuine.
Tavis: Are there settings in business arenas where it's more challenging to be kind?
Baker: Yes, of course. First of all, in the not-for-profit world I think there's an expectation - more of an expectation of civility, but the truth is you've got to be that way everywhere.
One of the best examples I have in the book is General Marty Steele. General Marty Steele is a Marine. He was, I think, the number two Marine in America. Who could be tougher? But yet his whole philosophy is leading with kindness.
So it has to be applied across the board. It's a lot easier if you're running a not-for-profit institution because there's that level of expectation, but it's necessary if you're running a Wall Street institution because you can see how some unkind bosses got them and us all into trouble.
Tavis: What would be the best advice for Wall Street bosses, since we've discussed this a couple of times, about what they ought to be doing going forward, and finally what would your advice be for our, relatively speaking, new president for how to lead with - can you lead a country as big as this with kindness?
Baker: Well, I think for the Wall Street people, I think many of them have caught on. I'm seeing more and more, back in New York, the leaders being really genuinely kind and open people - people who are not afraid to say, "I don't know, but I'm going to do my best and try to do the right thing."
So I see that all over. By the way, a sidebar - I'm now at universities, particularly at Fordham University in New York, and Columbia; and I'm seeing students, more than ever before, faculty members at major universities all across the country are saying students now are looking at doing good more than just making money. These are business students very often who used to be only interested in one thing - making money.
And to answer the question about our president, I think he's certainly - I don't know him, but I think he certainly has an image of a kind leader, and you should also know that one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest president in the history of America, Abraham Lincoln, there's been a lot of studies about his style, and pretty much all the studies say this was a genuinely kind man.
So there's a good model.
Tavis: I'll take it. The new book from William F. Baker is "Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results." Honor to have you on the program.
Baker: Honored. Honored to be here.
Tavis: Thanks for the conversation.
Baker: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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