Too often businesses, large and small, have structured themselves to
be goal- oriented. Milestones, statistics, and the bottom line are
pursued like quarry – pelts to be displayed on the belts of CEOs.

Business leaders cannot be faulted because we have become a product of
our post-twentieth century western (American) culture that sees
society in terms of winners and losers. Worth is too often ascribed to
birth order, gender, race, region, class and any other characteristics
that can be assigned a category.

Over coffee, Paula Marshall and I conversed about the state of
performance, leadership, and Tulsa, from her new book, Finding the
Soul of Business. Much of her 25 year reign as the CEO of The BAMA
Companies reveals just how they have sustained success and why they
are revered in the hallways of Fortune 500 leaders.

Performance: In your book, you talk about performance effectiveness
results from when one “leads from the heart and mind” what does this
mean?

Paula Marshall: Most business are structured by appraisals, bonus,
pay, etc. and thus ultimately by numbers, as Deming said if a business
is run solely by the visible numbers it will ultimately always get
into trouble. Business sustained success is about numbers, but it is
also about more, it is about knowing your people and understanding
where they are and who they are and what is happening in their lives.
This is the SOUL of a business and it drives what a business’ SOUL
will be, stand-for, and sustain.

Performance: Take the concept of a businesses SOUL deeper, what is it
and why is it important?

Paula Marshall: Human beings are evolved. No matter what your religion
or environmentalist views, we have come here some how as humans, but
we are not mechanical. A lot of leader’s today seem to have forgotten
this. Over the past 20 years we have allowed far too many drivers,
political correctness, and other self-serving initiatives to actually
cleanse the workplace of common sense and humanity. You can’t even
tell someone that they look beautiful without fear of a law suite. We
have become too plastic as corporations, like mummies and people of
performance are withdrawing from organizations today due to a sense of
no longer wanting to participate in this model. We need to be
professional yes, and we also need to get back to having a SOUL and
have a sense of feeling, caring for one another.

Performance: As a leader, how do you see the Generational Diversity
impacting organizational success in the future?

Paula Marshall: Since 1927 this has been a common ingredient for BAMA
and for the way our family has functioned. My Grandmother raised my
father and my father raised me to understand that the generational
understanding and respecting one another is essential to human
effectiveness. In the early years my Father entrusted all or recipes
to one lady who wrote them on a towel, this caused some interesting
quality issues when I took over and she passed away. Growing up it was
common place to spend time with my Father traveling to our employees
homes and interacting with them and they with me, so understanding
that generational diversity is your generational wealth is how we
operate. Any leader that does not get this should resign. In fact the
edition of TIME (November 2009) is talking about what we have known
for decades, it depicts one of America’s critical impasses; we have
become, at least by perception, and old white mans exclusive corporate
America out of touch with reality and main street. We are an aged
society of business leaders and a work force of younger energy and we
must bridge the gap!

Performance: As a woman in business and as a successful woman CEO,
what does this mean for performance?

Paula Marshall: Great question. This has evolved over the past 20
years! Early on there was a lot of resistance to women in general in
leadership roles. I also believe there are actually fewer women in
leadership roles today because they have decided it is not worth the
politics and games necessary to succeed, and that family-life balance
may be more rewarding. I believe a lot of women are choosing to opt
out of corporate America and opt in to women owned businesses. And
because of this there are a lot of powerful creative feminine energy
missing in the corporate America space today.

Performance: If you had two-minutes to mentor a high potential, what
would you share with them?

Paula Marshall: First off, I believe everyone is a high potential, the
difference is how the see that potential and when do they wish to
exercise it. Given that, I would share two critical points:

1. Develop your Personal Mission Statement,
as this leads your every action. Invest time in developing your
Mission. I learned a lot from Stephen Covey’s 1st Things First book,
as this drives your success and it will help define your truer purpose
for being where you area and where you are headed!

2. Then take daily action against this Personal Mission Statement.
This will allow you to take control of your life and take the actions
necessary to have meaning in who you are and what you do. This drives
your self worth and passion, and that gives you meaning every day.

Performance: Who is responsible for the competency development of
people within an organization?

Paula Marshall: The leader!

Performance: How important is soft skill (EQ) and hard skill (IQ) to a
person’s professional development and their value and worth to an
organization in their future?

Paula Marshall: No one really considers that today in Corporate
America and that is one of the reasons I believe we have been
successful for nearly 100 years and in today’s challenging market. At
BAMA we have realized that at the early operational stages of an
employees life-cycle it is disproportionately weighted toward hard
skills and as a person progresses upward in the organization it
becomes less hard skill and much more soft skill, which is what most
people actually lack. And by the time a person is in senior leadership
it is almost exclusively soft skill necessary for peak performance.