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Leadership and Legacy

In Memoriam: Dr. Robert (Bob) A. Gregory and Guy Seaman

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. ~ John Quincy Adams

Today more than ever, we all need to be leaders, no matter what our job title. And we need to lead in different ways – most of us are leading people who don’t ‘report’ directly to us in a line management sense. We need to influence people to join with us in order to achieve our goals. And the way you are ‘being’ a leader is going to be different to the way I am ‘being’ a leader. We might be doing different things, but even if we do the same things, it comes across differently because we are different people. We embody leadership differently.

Every one of us leaves a legacy behind, no matter how long (or short) our lives, no matter how many (or few) people we touch. There will always be the material aspects of our legacy, of course - charitable foundations, trusts, prizes, books, photos, paintings, poems etc. But our spiritual legacy, the essence of ourselves, our greater connectedness, is a true reflection of the way we lead our lives.

I’d like to give you two examples of leaders I look up to who have left an amazing legacy – a long shadow. They are Dr. Robert (Bob) Gregory and Guy Seaman.

Guy died in March and Bob in June. They knew each other and many of our friends and colleagues were friends and colleagues of Guy and Bob as well. So many of the people we know are impacted by the void they leave behind.

Bob and Guy had more in common as leaders than they differed, even if they each embodied leadership differently:

They saw themselves as being first and foremost in service to others
They knew themselves well
They were humble
They listened to others non-judgementally
They made each person they met feel special, capable and able to take that next (challenging) step
They took responsibility (didn’t wait for it) and got important things done.

I met both of them when I worked with BP. I met Bob on my first day when I was parachuted in to contribute to ‘OD Boot Camp’, an organisational development programme for colleagues in our team. Bob sat at the back - I think he liked to ‘conduct’ from the back. After the day’s work was finished, he invited me over to chat. I remember his eyes – they looked deep. And this was his leadership style – to connect and to stay connected. Not just to connect to me, but also to connect me in to his network. And what an amazing network it was! But I get ahead of myself. Bob was a man who touched people deeply. He was very intelligent and well read. He had high principles and integrity. And he clearly ‘got’ me.

We became close friends. But then, most people whom Bob met and liked became friends. He inspired incredible loyalty in people. This came out several years later. We had worked together on leadership programmes, he in the US and my colleagues and I in Europe. And even when I left BP, he kept in contact. In early 2007 he was diagnosed with Melanoma. In the beginning few knew about it – he wanted to fight it and not worry what people might say or think. It made him re-evaluate what he would do, so and he retired from BP in September. In July a Lifetime Achievement Party was arranged for him. And I found out a lot more about my dear friend. His life story is about leadership and leaving a legacy:

Bob was the youngest of 10 children, born in Eastern Tennessee. His father always told him ‘to do things right’ which led him to want to make a difference. He did not come from a privileged background yet he managed to put himself through University and gained a Doctorate in Educational Psychology. He chose the path of Industrial and Organisational Psychology because he thought he would have a larger impact by working inside organisations.

He joined the United States Air Force in 1968 as a Staff Psychologist and ended up at the Air Force Academy where he was a Professor in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Leadership.

I got to see the legacy from the first part of his life because people from each part of his life spoke at the celebration. There was an amazing lady who had sat next to him in first grade. Then some of his students from the Academy came up to speak about how Bob had impacted their lives – still connected, good friends and learning from Bob. I met many of his friends and family – and we are still in touch. He had connected with people throughout his life, when I met them, I also felt a deep connection with them.

After 20 years in the Air Force, Bob retired and moved to the Center For Creative Leadership (CCL). After nine years there he moved to see what corporate life would be like and became the Senior Vice President of Learning and Development at Chase Bank. Then finally, he came to BP. People from each place he had worked stood up to speak about him, as did several of his friends. They had all been touched. He had made a difference to each and every person there in the room that night. I’m not sure how many there were – but more than 50. Many could not be there. I was not the only person to fly over to Houston from Europe to be with him.

He was learned, creative and a wonderful person to develop ideas with. He cared deeply about others. He was generous, warm, funny, courageous and human. He always knew someone who could help. He always stood up for what was right. He fought his disease courageously and went out fighting.

I also met Guy at BP, again through my work in leadership development. Guy and I ran a programme that Bob had helped to design for senior leaders.

Guy had a very large funny bone - he was always gently teasing people, taking the mickey out of himself and others and immediately putting them at ease. He too was passionate about developing others, but he did so in quite a different way to Bob. He came at leadership from having been a leader in corporate life. He was a story teller – wonderful stories, told to make a point. He loved his work and worked very hard – almost too hard sometimes. He always gave 110%.

He had started out studying at Agricultural College and then gone to Argentina where he worked as a Gaucho (you can imagine the stories he told about that period of his life). He had done many things in his career; sold tractors, worked for a bank, run a small engineering company. He finally joined The Challenge Partnership, where he worked in the area of Leadership Development and it was through this company that he was engaged at BP.

He was a hoot to work with – but always clear about what we were about which was developing leadership in people, in particular asking the questions that would ‘wake them up.’ For he believed that everyone has the capacity for leadership, but sometimes they just don’t know it yet.

Guy was an ‘external’ consultant and when I left BP he was very supportive – we eventually developed four new programmes on Leadership and Change with two other colleagues who had left BP when I did. We call our group ChangeMonkey – a name he liked because of its playfulness. He was tireless in all he did, an amazing source of energy. Also a source of ideas, techniques, tools, methods and all in service of developing leadership in others. We learned a lot together, he was very much a team player.

The ‘ChangeMonkey four’ used to work together developing our new, innovative programmes and then he would announce that it was time for a break – the dogs needed a run. So, we would continue our discussions while we walked the dogs (who had been patiently waiting in the car). And come back refreshed, invariably with new ideas that would not have come any other way.

Like Bob, he kept in contact with people. There wasn’t a week that went by that I didn’t have an email or a telephone call, not always to do with our work together. Guy knew Bob, of course, and they were great friends. He had been a bit subdued when he heard about Bob’s illness.

Guy had a hip replacement at the end of the year, but was back at work as soon as possible, pushing himself as before. At the end of March, he died suddenly of a stroke. We were all shocked, no one more so than Bob, who wrote a letter to Guy’s wife, despite being very ill himself by that stage.

Often people will say ‘he made a difference’ about someone. With both Guy and Bob, people will tell you exactly how each of them made a difference. These were life defining moments. Both friends are sorely missed.