Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Build Common Ground, and Reap Big Results

CHAPTER SEVEN

Grow to Be a Collaborative Leader

ON AUGUST 31, 2004, two months before the U.S. presidential election pitting George W. Bush against John Kerry, Arnold Schwarzenegger strode on stage to speak at the Republican convention in Madison Square Garden. The California governor had become one of the most improbable political leaders in the United States. A seven-time Mr. Olympia bodybuilding champion by 1980, Schwarzenegger had reinvented himself as a Hollywood movie star, famously uttering in his thick Austrian accent, “Hasta la vista, Baby” in Terminator 1, 2, and 3. Then, in 2003, when California held a special election, the terminator had seized the opportunity to run as a Republican. He became the governor—or the “governator” as ...