【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】[解析] 23-30
F: Let's welcome Mr. Leonard Abess, chairman and CEO of the bank. When Leonard Abess sold a majority stake in the Miami-based City National Bank last fall, he did something very unusual. He took $60 million of that money and gave it out as bonuses to 399 current bank employees and 72 former employees. He did it without calling in a public relations firm or the media. In fact, he wasn't even on site when the money was given out. Today, we are going to talk about the motivation behind his gift, leadership and the current economic crisis. Thanks for joining us, Mr. Abess.
M:Thanks for having me.
F: To begin with, can you explain in a little more depth exactly why you decided to distribute $60 million to your employees, when you could just as easily have given that money to a charity of your choice or some other nonprofit group?
M:It wasn't so much that I suddenly decided to do it. I knew I was going to do it for a very long time... for probably more than 20 years. I just never thought that Iwas solely responsible for the success of the bank. I owned the bank. I enjoyed the profits, the dividends. I also always realized that while there were 400-plus people doing the work, making it successful, the profits were going in one direction. We certainly compensated very well. We were in the top 25 banks in the country in compensation per employee.
F: You speak of compensation. How was compensation calculated in your bank? In what way was it different from others?
M:As I said just now, we had excellent compensation. I felt, particularly based on longevity, that these people were owners. They acted like owners. They worked like owners.... I wanted to acknowledge that. Unlike many companies, we didn't just pay it out in huge ways to the top people. But I had a formula based on how long people had been there. The longer you were there, the more money you got. In many companies, the people who stay the longest are closer to the bottom of the compensation scale. People near the top tend to move around a lot more.
F: I was struck when I was reading about this gift by how incredibly long some of these people have worked at the company—39 years, 43 years, 51 years. How do you explain that longevity at a time when many employees expect to stay no more than three to five years at a job before they move on?
M:I do think that faster turnover is truer today, but many people who entered the workplace 40, 50 years ago, did hope to stay at one place and retire there. Over the years, I never really liked separation, unless I instigated it. So I would always encourage people to stay. I would be very open to what they wanted. We provided, I think, an atmosphere of caring. We were always there. I know my employees. I know their names. I know their spouse's names, their parents, their children. I think we had an atmosphere that, for people, was comfortable and they felt welcome in, so they stayed.
F: While your gift is extraordinary under any circumstances, it's especially noteworthy now, given the state of the economy and the fact that hundreds of thousands of people are being dumped from organizations where they have worked, in some cases, for decades. Did the economic crisis motivate your gift in any way? I know you said you had always planned to do this. But did the crisis sort of update your timeline?
M:No, it just made it more meaningful. And it made me think harder about the amount.
F: You have an undergraduate degree from Wharton. Do you think that ethical issues—including how you treat employees, how you compensate yourself—can be taught in school? Or are they learned at an earlier age and/or in the home? Where do we get our ethics?
M:I think we get them at home, at the dinner table, in the community, at church or temple, or wherever we go for spiritual guidance. I also think ethics can, must, be talked about in the schools. It's a combination of all of the above. But I've never really felt the schools are responsible for teaching ethics or morality. I think they're responsible for enforcing it. But I think it has to be learned at home and in the community.
F: Here's an easy question. From your perspective, when will this financial crisis be over?
M:I think we're in trouble for quite a while. But I think that the financial system is totally broken. And I think that propping it up with huge sums of money is not going to solve the problem. We are doomed to repeat this. I think that it's going to take a long time to get this healthy again. Now, when I say that, it doesn't mean we're not going to have a boom economy again—down the road. Maybe sooner, I don't think we will, but we might. We have to fundamentally re-engineer our worldwide financial system. That's going to take a lot of time.
F: In your opinion, what the three most important attributes of leadership?
M:Oh, boy. I can think of many important attributes. But I think that leaders have to lead by example. That's extremely important. I think leaders, as part of that example, have to have a clear moral compass, clear ethics. I think true leaders leave their egos somewhere where no one can see them. I think that leaders respect people. They respect communities. To me, leadership really is leading by example—motivating people, being human, just being real and talking to people. Another thing is listening—leaders listen. Leaders listen well, and finally, they respond well.