The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

Tim Russert was not only a highly respected journalist, as a Vice President at NBC News, he was a manager, and a real leader. And by all accounts, he was the kind of leader who did a remarkable job of inspiring OOMPH! from those who called him “boss”.

During all this weekend’s tributes to Russert on his and competing networks, I’ve been struck by the descriptions of the man, not the journalist. He listened to the people entrusted to his leadership. He cared about them as human beings. He recognized that they had lives outside their work, because he had a life outside his work. And he spent time finding out about what was important to his employees.

When you’re gone, or retired, or have moved on to another phase in your career, will people talk more about the quality of the work you did? Or the quality of the person who did the work?

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.