Truth 17. Great leaders make their people cry

A couple of years ago, the chairman of Rackspace, a fast-growing Web hosting company that’s regularly on Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For list, asked me to spend 2 weeks interviewing its employees who deeply love their work. The main question: What makes you proud to be a “Racker?”

In one interview, the CEO described a time when he felt especially proud of his people. It was during an emergency years ago when, he said, everything they worked for over the previous 9 years was “on the razor’s edge.” A truck had crashed into their data center, threatening to destroy the physical plant.

As these things typically happen, it was at night. But it was “all hands on deck” for everyone, and the parking lot was as full at 2 a.m. as it would be at 2 p.m. Inside the building, everyone was there, he said, with his eyes moistening, his throat tightening with emotion. Their children, in PJs, slept on the floor by their parents’ cubicles. “I didn’t ask them to come,” he said. “Word just got out somehow, and everyone was there, on the phones, taking very difficult calls from upset customers, doing what they had to do to keep us up and running.”

Another employee emotionally told the story of another near disaster. A Florida customer had to be evacuated in advance of a hurricane. Rackspace techs duplicated their servers, adding them to Rackspace servers already operational in San Antonio. They told their customer to forward all their phone calls to San Antonio so that the Florida company’s customers would never know the difference. Then they cleared out a few cubicles in San Antonio so that their Florida customer could relocate some people and keep their business up and running while the wind blew. The wind did blow, destroying the Florida building. But the business prevailed. Because of caring.

Another hurricane, by the name of Katrina, brought thousands of survivors into San Antonio. Graham Weston, the chairman, donated a vacant department store property he owned to be used as a shelter for the incoming. In a matter of just a few hours, Rackers cleaned out the building and set up 2,500 cots, a cafeteria, men’s and women’s showers, even a beauty parlor. They also set up computer stations and cable televisions (it pays to have at least one techie in the family, doesn’t it?) so that the survivors could keep up with the news and reach out to scattered friends and family.

One Racker emotionally told of his proud moment: The first person to get off the first bus from New Orleans was an elderly lady who broke into tears. And the human aspect of what he was doing went straight to his heart. Three days later, he finally went home for a little shut-eye.

While interviewing an executive admin, I asked her what’s special about working for her boss. It wasn’t the money. It wasn’t the cool factor of working for the chairman. It wasn’t the array of Beemers, Mercedes, and Land Rovers in the parking lot—and the prosperity possibilities that those cars represent. It was her children.

“He always remembers my children,” she said through tears of her own. “He never forgets their birthdays and Christmases. Never.”

Managers who are “just okay” know how to get people to come to work—largely by disciplining the slackers. Great managers know how to move their people to action. They help their employees make the connections of the human impact of what they do: how their efforts restore hope, relieve pain, and bring beauty into the world.

Great managers know how to move their people to action.

This level of deep caring is enough to move people to more than just action. It’s enough to move them to tears.