Corner Office: Lynn Good of Duke Energy, on Effective Leaders

Q. Were you in leadership roles early on?

A. No, I had a childhood that would be called ordinary. But my parents taught us about responsibility and instilled incredible confidence in us. My father was a World War II Marine who became a high school principal. He always had a heart for students who maybe were underprivileged or had difficulty of some sort. My mother was also a teacher; both had an incredible work ethic. They also told me that I didn’t need to pursue traditional roles.

Other lessons from them?

They demonstrated accountability to me through actions. When I was growing up, we had a widow living next door to us. So the habit was that if we went to the grocery store, we called her first. If we cut our yard, we cut her yard, no questions asked.

When you graduated from college, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to do?

I went to work in accounting, at Arthur Andersen. At one point it was the crème de la crème. I wanted to work there because it looked like the hardest thing I could find, and I loved being on a steep learning curve. I progressed quickly, and two years out of college I was managing a small team of people.

What did you learn from that experience?

The beauty of it was that we worked together around a table. I could see when someone was frustrated or had a difficult meeting, so I could keep in touch with what was going on. I would typically stay after they left so I could get a gauge of the work they produced, so I had real-time feedback about whether an assignment was working, and I could adjust. The feedback loop was almost immediate, so I had a chance to practice.

Have you heard feedback over the years about your leadership style that caused you to make some adjustments?

I can be incredibly focused, and I can appear impatient. So I’ve learned to slow down, get to know people and provide more context. There’s nothing wrong with getting to the point pretty quickly, but it’s also helpful to give people an opportunity to talk about their work.

You faced a pretty tough task as a new C.E.O. — merging the staffs of Progress Energy and Duke Energy. How did you decide who was going to be on your leadership team, particularly since there were people you already knew from Duke?

There is a comfort level with people you’ve known for a long time — you’ve been in the foxhole with them. But when you bring an organization together, you need to be agnostic about background, and to interview on capabilities and track record. So we went through interviewing processes to pick the best person for each role.

So what questions did you ask? Let’s say you’re interviewing me.

What have been some of your specific responsibilities? What successes have you had? How do you think? I’m looking for creativity. I’m looking for an ability to lead. I’ll ask about failures. What have been some things that have changed you and developed you over time?

What are your best interview questions?

Why do you come to work in the morning? What makes you passionate about what you do? Why did you choose the career that you did? How do you want it to develop over the next five years? What makes you uniquely qualified for this role? I try to engage people around what makes them passionate about what they do, because people who love what they do get after it every day.

Other things?

With people at this level of their career, it’s no longer about whether you are the smartest subject-matter expert in the room. It’s whether you can be effective in leading a diverse team. Can you adapt? As you think about developing people through their careers, you’re looking for that transition from being the smartest person in the room — and caring so much about that — to being the most effective. It’s about how to develop a team. It’s about how to solve something where the solution isn’t obvious. Effectiveness comes from those qualitative things that give you the ability to network, communicate and lead people toward an outcome they can’t see.

What advice would you give to graduating college students?

I’ve had an interesting career in that I was with Andersen when it went out of business. So in my 40s, everything I’d worked for disappeared. That changes you. It causes you to refocus on what’s important. So I’d say: “Be passionate about what you do, but also be passionate about your relationships and family and other things in life. That’s where happiness is. It’s not all about career.”

Did the experience of seeing Arthur Andersen go out of business make you more risk-averse or more tolerant of risk?

Between March 2002 and May 2002, the firm disappeared. It was a crazy time, because I really didn’t have time to think about a career move. I was focused on getting clients and people from Point A to Point B in a way that preserved as many jobs as possible. Later, I had a chance to re-evaluate what I wanted to do.

Risk is an interesting way to think about it, but I would say it refocused me on the importance of family and where happiness comes from. The lesson was that I’m not defined by my career, so I need to be prepared at any time to go or to change careers. There’s a freedom with that. It’s not that you’re disloyal or don’t like what you do or aren’t passionate about what you do, but your asset is you. It’s not who you work for. So is that risk-taking, or just recognizing that a career changes over time and you have to be ready at any point?

Economix Blog: Bernanke Defends Stimulus as Necessary and Effective

The Federal Reserve’s chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, picked an unusual time to offer his most recent defense of the Fed’s campaign to stimulate the economy: 7 p.m. on a Friday night in San Francisco, 10 p.m. back home on the East Coast.

The basic message was the same as Mr. Bernanke delivered to Congress earlier this week: The Fed regards its current efforts as necessary and effective, and the risks, while real, are under control.

“Commentators have raised two broad concerns surrounding the outlook for long-term rates,” Mr. Bernanke told a conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “To oversimplify, the first risk is that rates will remain low, and the second is that they will not.”

If rates remain low, it may drive investors to take excessive risks. If rates jump, investors could lose money – not least the Fed.

Regarding the first possibility, Mr. Bernanke said that the Fed was keeping a careful eye on financial markets. But he noted that rates were low in large part because the economy was weak, and that keeping rates low was the best way to encourage stronger growth. “Premature rate increases would carry a high risk of short-circuiting the recovery, possibly leading — ironically enough — to an even longer period of low long- term rates,” he said.

At the other extreme, Mr. Bernanke said the Fed could “mitigate” any jump in rates by prolonging its efforts to hold rates down, for example by keeping some of its investments in Treasury and mortgage-backed securities.

Three more highlights from the question-and-answer session after the speech.

1. Mr. Bernanke, asked about the outlook for the Washington Nationals, responded by accurately quoting the “Las Vegas odds” of a World Series appearance: 8/1.

2. Although the decision may be made under a future chairman, Mr. Bernanke said the Fed should continue to offer “forward guidance” — predicting its policies — even after it concludes its long effort to revive the economy.

“Providing information about the future path of policy could be useful, probably would be useful, under even normal circumstances,” he said in response to a question. “I think we need to keep providing information.”

3. Not surprisingly, Mr. Bernanke often is asked to reflect on the financial crisis. He offered something a little different than his normal response on Friday night.

“In many ways, in retrospect, the crisis was a normal crisis,” he said. “It’s just that the intuitional framework in which it occurred was much more complex.”

In other words, there was a panic, and a run, and a collapse – but rather than a run on bank deposits, the run was in the money markets. Improving the stability of those markets is something regulators have yet to accomplish.

Oratory Techniques for Effective Opening Statements and Summations

Without question, the ultimate goal of every trial lawyer is to win. To accomplish this goal, the lawyer must find a way to capture the jurors' attention with an impression that will last beyond summations and well into deliberations. To this end, the manner in which an argument is communicated can be as important as the content of the argument itself.

In every trial there are key facts and positions that must be emphasized. While the trial lawyer can certainly emphasize a key fact, position or argument by raising or lowering his or her voice, that technique, by itself, is not nearly as powerful as other rhetorical devices available to the trial advocate. Certain techniques in speaking to the jury can and should be utilized to bring forth your points in the strongest possible fashion.

THE RULE OF THREES

The "Rule of Threes" is a powerful communication device that we have all seen while growing up -- even if we have not noticed it as such in everyday life. A simple look at stories, phrases and slogans with which we are all familiar proves the point. It is hard to find anyone who is not familiar with "The Three Little Pigs," "Three Blind Mice," "Goldilocks and the Three Bears," The Three Musketeers or The Three Stooges. It is equally hard to find someone who is not familiar with the sayings and phrases "I came, I saw, I conquered," "Go, fight, win" or even "Three strikes and you're out." It is these titles, sayings and phrases that are easy to remember and should serve as a guide for the trial lawyer.

Indeed, throughout history, powerful public speakers have used so-called triads to bring home a lasting image. Martin Luther King Jr., for instance, in his speech "Non-Violence and Racial Justice," utilized the phrase "insult, injustice and exploitation" followed a few lines later by "justice, good and brotherhood." To the opposite effect, Alabama Governor George Wallace, during his 1963 inaugural address, stated his position in harsh and ugly terms: "Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

For the trial lawyer's summation, this device allows you to emphasize a point and then instantly re-emphasize that same point by repeating some of the language just used, adding to that language for emphasis, and then stating that same point or theme with a change in voice. If used properly, this technique will drive the point home for the jury and leave little doubt as to the importance of the point or position taken by the advocate.

Imagine, for example, the scenario in which a lawyer represents a man in a wrongful death case. That man was driving with his child when his car was struck at an intersection by a truck. As a result of the severity of the impact the man's child -- his daughter -- was killed. In this example, the trial lawyer could begin the summation by presenting a bare bones statement of his position:

"A man was driving a car. His daughter was a passenger in the car. A truck went through a light, struck the man's car and, unfortunately, the little girl was injured and later died. The truck driver was negligent."

Compare and contrast that beginning of the summation to one with use of the Rule of Threes:

When John Smith got into his car that morning he could not have imagined what was about to take place.