When professionals don't practice what they preach 11-05

When professionals don't practice what they preach

We've all heard the stories of prosecutors who break the law and spiritual leaders who preach modest living while amassing fortunes, but there's more to take away from this tendency than just irony.

By Katherine Reynolds Lewis

FORTUNE -- When Carlos Greene worked in retirement planning for a major mutual fund company, none of his colleagues knew that he was carrying nearly $40,000 on five different credit cards.

The debt built up quickly after a few key decisions Carlos, now 49, and his wife Katherine made when they moved to Cincinnati for Carlos's new job: deciding Katherine would stay home with their young boys without crunching the budget numbers, then buying a big house and a nice new car. Pretty soon, Carlos was on a strict budget, unable to drive anywhere but work or home because of the cost of gas, limiting family entertainment to movie night at home, and juggling bills at the end of every month to get them all paid. The low point came when he covered the holes in his dress shoes with cardboard when it rained, since he couldn't afford to replace them.

"It became extremely stressful, and I was thinking, 'I'm in the financial services industry, I should know this. I should have planned this out better,' " he recalls. "It's hard for a man to swallow. I felt so frustrated and upset with myself."

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He's not alone in his failure to follow his own professional advice. We've all heard the stories of prosecuting attorneys who break the law, spiritual leaders who preach modest living while amassing fortunes, headhunting firms with disastrous CEOs, and primary care doctors who are overweight and smoke. But is there a lesson to be learned beyond appreciating the irony (and perhaps a bit of schadenfreude when a moralizing politician is caught with a prostitute)?

It's first important to understand what may drive a person who built a career following one philosophy to personally indulge in the exact opposite. It could be that he chose a profession in an area of temptation as a defense mechanism in an attempt to protect himself from an inner flaw, says Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist and executive coach based in New York.

"There can be deep psychological reasons for that," Dattner says. "The areas that fascinate you can also be your areas of weakness."

For instance, someone with a strong rebellious streak may choose a law-and-order profession to try to curb that flaw, or an anorectic may become a gourmet cook who enjoys watching others eat. But in times of stress, a person is prone to succumbing to the suppressed trait that led to his career choice, whether breaking the law or binge eating.

These individuals may be trying to compensate for a weak spot by developing strategies in work life that help combat it. Someone who's chronically disorganized may become a professional organizer to find solutions to her chaos. Even if she can't consistently apply those strategies in her own life, she can easily understand her clients' struggles and give them useful advice. "We're often best at doing for others what we're worst at for ourselves," Dattner says.

Peter Schweitzer, 60, rabbi of The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in New York City, grew interested in Judaic studies in college and decided to become a rabbi in the Reform movement, despite the fact that he had never really given his beliefs in God much consideration. But later, as a young rabbi officiating at funerals, where the 23rd Psalm was standard fare, he found he could no longer bear to tell mourners to find comfort in a God that was anything but caring in those moments.

"There is pain. We do need to moan. We are upset right now. This is a tragedy," Schweitzer recalls. "It was getting too hypocritical for me to be me. I said, 'I have to be honest; I can't do this any more.' I have to find a new path."

He worked in publishing for a while and became a social worker before finding his way to Humanistic Judaism, in which many different beliefs are accepted and a premium is put on honesty. He volunteered as a rabbi in his current congregation before it grew large enough to offer him a paid position. Schweitzer says he feels he's a more compassionate and effective rabbi to members of his congregation who question their beliefs because of the path he took.

"I'm clearly an atheist. I don't wave it around," he says. "It's not what we don't believe, it's what we do believe that matters ... I believe in human ability to face things. I believe in resilience. I believe in humor, courage, thinking. I believe in the strength of community. It's very, very powerful and it transcends lots of things."

As for Carlos Greene, after hitting bottom with soggy cardboard in his shoes, he and his wife overhauled their lives to reduce expenses, pay down their debt, and avoid filing for bankruptcy. They sold their five-bedroom dream home with a finished basement and moved into a small two-bedroom townhouse where their two sons shared a room and the dog slept wherever she could. It took nearly three years of scrimping and saving to pay down the credit cards, and both Greenes vowed never to fall back into that hole. The next time they moved, they spent less on a house than they could afford. And he began taking the free seminars and educational opportunities that his firm provided, to improve his budgeting and personal finance skills.

More than a decade later, Greene says he feels that the experience has helped him in his work as a financial services professional. "I see our clients and our customers as real people. I have a lot more compassion for where they are," he says. "It gives me greater perspective on asking the next-level questions to make sure they're in a good space to truly be able to save for retirement."

Indeed, Dattner says that when evaluating a professional who doesn't practice what he preaches, the key question is to ask whether he slips up once or twice, or if he perennially violates the rules he says you must follow -- with no sign of reforming. The latter individual is a hypocrite who should be avoided, but the former might actually have more insight and wisdom to offer. After all, would you want a dietician telling you how to lose weight if that person had never struggled to stick to an eating plan?

"I'd rather have somebody who has the issue themselves; that makes them much more credible," Dattner says.

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Warren Buffett is bullish ... on women 05-11

Warren Buffett is bullish ... on women

Warren Buffett with the late Katharine Graham of the Washington Post at his 50th-birthday party in 1980

(Fortune)

In an exclusive essay the Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA, Fortune 500)chairman and CEO explains why women are key to America's prosperity.

In the flood of words written recently about women and work, one related and hugely significant point seems to me to have been neglected. It has to do with America's future, about which -- here's a familiar opinion from me -- I'm an unqualified optimist. Now entertain another opinion of mine, Women are a major reason we will do so well.

Start with the fact that our country's progress since 1776 has been mind-blowing, like nothing the world has ever seen. Our secret sauce has been a political and economic system that unleashes human potential to an extraordinary degree. As a result Americans today enjoy an abundance of goods and services that no one could have dreamed of just a few centuries ago.

But that's not the half of it -- or, rather, it's just about the half of it. America has forged this success while utilizing, in large part, only half of the country's talent. For most of our history, women -- whatever their abilities -- have been relegated to the sidelines. Only in recent years have we begun to correct that problem.

Despite the inspiring "all men are created equal" assertion in the Declaration of Independence, male supremacy quickly became enshrined in the Constitution. In Article II, dealing with the presidency, the 39 delegates who signed the document -- all men, naturally -- repeatedly used male pronouns. In poker, they call that a "tell."

Finally, 133 years later, in 1920, the U.S. softened its discrimination against women via the 19th Amendment, which gave them the right to vote. But that law scarcely budged attitudes and behaviors. In its wake, 33 men rose to the Supreme Court before Sandra Day O'Connor made the grade -- 61 years after the amendment was ratified. For those of you who like numbers, the odds against that procession of males occurring by chance are more than 8 billion to one.

Watch an interview with Warren Buffett on women, work, and other wisdom

When people questioned the absence of female appointees, the standard reply over those 61 years was simply "no qualified candidates." The electorate took a similar stance. When my dad was elected to Congress in 1942, only eight of his 434 colleagues were women. One lonely woman, Maine's Margaret Chase Smith, sat in the Senate.

Resistance among the powerful is natural when change clashes with their self-interest. Business, politics, and, yes, religions provide many examples of such defensive behavior. After all, who wants to double the number of competitors for top positions?

But an even greater enemy of change may well be the ingrained attitudes of those who simply can't imagine a world different from the one they've lived in. What happened in my own family provides an example. I have two sisters. The three of us were regarded, by our parents and teachers alike, as having roughly equal intelligence -- and IQ tests in fact confirmed our equality. For a long time, to boot, my sisters had far greater "social" IQ than I. (No, we weren't tested for that -- but, believe me, the evidence was overwhelming.)

The moment I emerged from my mother's womb, however, my possibilities dwarfed those of my siblings, for I was a boy! And my brainy, personable, and good-looking siblings were not. My parents would love us equally, and our teachers would give us similar grades. But at every turn my sisters would be told -- more through signals than words -- that success for them would be "marrying well." I was meanwhile hearing that the world's opportunities were there for me to seize.

So my floor became my sisters' ceiling -- and nobody thought much about ripping up that pattern until a few decades ago. Now, thank heavens, the structural barriers for women are falling.

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Still an obstacle remains: Too many women continue to impose limitations on themselves, talking themselves out of achieving their potential. Here, too, I have had some firsthand experience.

Among the scores of brilliant and interesting women I've known is the late Katharine Graham, long the controlling shareholder and CEO of the Washington Post Co. (WPO)Kay knew she was intelligent. But she had been brainwashed -- I don't like that word, but it's appropriate -- by her mother, husband, and who knows who else to believe that men were superior, particularly at business.

When her husband died, it was in the self-interest of some of the men around Kay to convince her that her feelings of inadequacy were justified. The pressures they put on her were torturing. Fortunately, Kay, in addition to being smart, had an inner strength. Calling on it, she managed to ignore the baritone voices urging her to turn over her heritage to them.

I met Kay in 1973 and quickly saw that she was a person of unusual ability and character. But the gender-related self-doubt was certainly there too. Her brain knew better, but she could never quite still the voice inside her that said, "Men know more about running a business than you ever will."

I told Kay that she had to discard the fun-house mirror that others had set before her and instead view herself in a mirror that reflected reality. "Then," I said, "you will see a woman who is a match for anyone, male or female."

I wish I could claim I was successful in that campaign. Proof was certainly on my side: Washington Post stock went up more than 4,000% -- that's 40 for 1 -- during Kay's 18 years as boss. After retiring, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her superb autobiography. But her self-doubt remained, a testament to how deeply a message of unworthiness can be implanted in even a brilliant mind.

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I'm happy to say that funhouse mirrors are becoming less common among the women I meet. Try putting one in front of my daughter. She'll just laugh and smash it. Women should never forget that it is common for powerful and seemingly self-assured males to have more than a bit of the Wizard of Oz in them. Pull the curtain aside, and you'll often discover they are not supermen after all. (Just ask their wives!)

So, my fellow males, what's in this for us? Why should we care whether the remaining barriers facing women are dismantled and the fun-house mirrors junked? Never mind that I believe the ethical case in itself is compelling. Let's look instead to your self-interest.

No manager operates his or her plants at 80% efficiency when steps could be taken that would increase output. And no CEO wants male employees to be underutilized when improved training or working conditions would boost productivity. So take it one step further: If obvious benefits flow from helping the male component of the workforce achieve its potential, why in the world wouldn't you want to include its counterpart?

Fellow males, get onboard. The closer that America comes to fully employing the talents of all its citizens, the greater its output of goods and services will be. We've seen what can be accomplished when we use 50% of our human capacity. If you visualize what 100% can do, you'll join me as an unbridled optimist about America's future.

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