Mindful Leadership: Emotional Intelligence Collection (4 Books)

CHAPTER TEN

REALITY AND THE

IDEAL VISION

Giving Life to theOrganization’s Future

FOR MANY YEARS, Shoney’s restaurant chain had a close-knit group of executives at the top—people who knew each other well, shared history and beliefs, and generally thought they had it figured out when it came to how to manage the business. The problem was that there was a lot of cronyism at the top, too. It was really an old-boys’ network of white, male senior executives—and there was an underlying culture that promoted from the buddy system and left people of color by the wayside.

All of that changed, however, in 1992, when the company was forced to pay $132 million to settle a class-action lawsuit from 20,000 employees and rejected job applicants, who claimed ...