Learning from bosses, including bad ones

Sometimes bad bosses teach good lessons.

"You can learn a lot from leaders who aren't very good, who aren't very effective," said H. Paulett Eberhart, chief executive of CDI Corp., a Center City-based engineering and staffing company with $1.1 billion in annual revenue.

"You can remember how you felt," she said.

These days, there's a lot of attention being paid to female executives. City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown has been pushing for more women on executive boards. On Thursday, an audience of 1,000 - most of them women - packed the grand ballroom of the Hyatt at the Bellevue in Center City to listen to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, talk about her much-discussed recent book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

Eberhart, who just finished the book and pronounced it interesting, already knows about the leaning-in part. She's been doing it for decades. Some leadership traits are natural, but, she said, others are learned - and bosses, both good and bad, turn out to be the teachers.

Eberhart tells the story of one boss conducting Eberhart's annual review.

"He opened up his desk drawer and he pulled out this list and basically, this was the list of everything I had done wrong in the last year," she said.

"I just looked at him, with this bewildered look, and I said: 'Why didn't you tell me this earlier? I mean if I did it in January, why didn't you tell me so I could have corrected it?' "

The lesson?

"Don't save it up," she said. "Immediate feedback is important." The experience changed the way she conducts evaluations.

"One of the things I've learned to ask is, 'Were there any surprises?' " she said. "Because if there is, I haven't really been doing my job throughout the year" as an effective communicator.

Eberhart, married with three adult children, grew up in Lima, Ohio, and now lives in Center City.

A certified public accountant with a current license, she spent 26 years of her career with Electronic Data Systems - EDS - the company founded by former presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2008.

"Everyone learned from Ross," she explained, diplomatically. "He had a very visible management style and created a distinct culture."

At EDS, she advanced through the ranks, with titles that included four presidencies.

She later led Invensys Process Systems, a $1.7 billion company, and then, before coming to CDI in January 2011, served as chairwoman and chief executive of HMS Ventures, a privately held real estate and consulting services firm in Texas.

Once Eberhart embarked on her corporate career, she had plenty of opportunity to experience the good and the bad in bosses, including some who joined her organization from the outside.

"I had a boss one time that basically was convinced, before he even came in, that he was going to change out all the players on the team," she said.

"I remember talking to him and saying, 'Well don't you think you should get to know some of us better first, because somehow we got the company from here to here to where we are today. So, we've done some things right.'

"I would like to say I won that battle. I didn't," she said with a laugh. "I stayed, but in a different role."

The lesson?

"Out of that I've learned you've got to take the time to understand the people and the resources and the capabilities that you have and . . . evolve your opinions over time."

Sometimes, Eberhart said, someone's style might make him appear to be a bad boss, when that's not actually the case. One time a new boss, the chief executive, asked her how she felt about a board presentation she had made. She gave it a positive review. He did not.

Instead, he told her several ways she could have handled it better. "I was devastated," she said.

She thought about it, and the next morning, she was waiting outside her boss' office when he arrived.

" 'Let me talk to you about the things that I thought went well,' " she told him. "He looked at me and said, 'Why sure, Paulett. Look, you did a thousand things right.' " He explained that he was only trying to help her improve.

"Something I had taken as personal," she said, "he took it as a coaching."

The lesson? "Not to react immediately."

Headquarters: Philadelphia

Employees: 9,300

Local employees: 175

Businesses:

Global Engineering and Technical Services - does project-based work for companies.

Professional Staffing Services - provides engineers, technology specialists on contractual basis.

Management Recruiters International - recruiting franchise.

Industry specialties: Oil, gas, chemicals, aerospace, industrial, high-tech, other.

2012 Revenue:

$1.1 billion

2012 Profit:

$19.1 million

SOURCE: CDI Corp.EndText