Every successful organization has at least one or two high-profile risk-takers who triumph in the end and are a company’s public face, getting all the attention and kudos. Joseph L. Badaracco, the John Shad professor of business ethics at the Harvard Business School, calls them heroes. But in his new book, Leading Quietly: An Unorthodox Guide to Doing the Right Thing, Badaracco argues that heroes are not the only leaders a company needs in order to succeed. In fact, the most impressive, effective leaders are often the unsung ones, those who labor patiently in the shadows.

Nurturing any sort of leader is an increasingly important challenge in today’s complex workplaces. Badaracco, who has written frequently about ethical management and leadership in past works, including Leadership and the Quest for Integrity (with Richard Ellsworth) and Business Ethics: Roles and Responsibilities, believes that important lessons can be learned from the everyday obstacles that must be overcome by those toiling in the background. With this latest book, Badaracco provides case studies of quiet leaders at work, and gives tips and practical advice to those who want to function ethically without risking their careers. This excerpt focuses on the story of a marketing rep who was stuck between his company’s sales policies and keeping a vital customer. Here’s how he managed to bend the rules with integrity while making the sale.

-Mindy Blodgett, CIO senior editor

Frank Taylor was a senior marketing representative for Cybersystems, a major computer company. One of Taylor’s clients was Robertson & Bayless, a large Chicago law firm. Over the years, it had been a good customer, though Taylor’s dealings with the firm had been a roller-coaster ride.

Despite these setbacks, Taylor finally got the order. After this success, Taylor viewed the next year as a "make-or-break" career opportunity, a chance to establish himself as one of his company’s star salespeople.

However, by November of the next year, Taylor hadn’t made his quota. Although typically this would have worried him, he was working with Robertson & Bayless on a sizeable deal that would make up for his shortfall. The firm was poised to buy a couple new servers and several dozen desktop machines for its litigation area?until Taylor’s roller coaster swooped around another curve.

Taylor had planned to sell the law firm the S50 server, which would meet the needs of the litigation area for several years. However, Cybersystems had just announced the introduction of an even more powerful and less expensive server, the S60...[which the law firm] decided [to] purchase. He went to work immediately and, with the help of two senior account executives, developed a new offer. They would sell the firm two of the new S60s, along with several disk drives they were planning to purchase in the near future anyway at sharply discounted prices. The new offer was worked out under the terms of a sales promotion program called Win-Win, whose aim was to give sales reps the flexibility they needed for tough accounts. [The firm] agreed to go ahead with the proposal?if the new servers [could be] connected to two older computer networks in the firm.