What Leadership Looks Like

 For the Strategic Management course I’m teaching at Ohio Dominican University, I recently presented the topic of “Conscious Leadership”.  One of the learning outcomes was “exhibiting an appreciation for the importance of integrating ethical concerns with business objectives and strategy”.  There was a lot of great reading material, information about various leadership styles, examples of great leaders, really, a wealth of good information.

As I often do, I took my own road. I thought back and found some great speeches illuminating leadership that culminated movies I loved.  Some examples:

• Kurt Russell giving his motivational speech to the Team USA hockey team right before they stepped on the ice to play the unbeatable (well, maybe not!) Russian team in the 1980 Olympics memorialized in “Miracle”.
• Keanu Reeves in the huddle for the last play of “The Replacements” giving his teammates that last bit of inspiration they needed to win the game.  I love this movie, and one of my favorite all-time movie lines, “Winners want the ball, when the game is on the line”.
• Robin Williams breaking all of the rules and teaching his students what they really needed to know in “Dead Poet’s Society”.  “Rip It Out!”
• Al Pacino in his epic rant at the end of “Scent of a Woman”, allowing Charlie to stay in school rather than get expelled.  “When the shit hits the fan, some guys run and some guys stay!”

OK, maybe I got more out of this part than my students, I tend to believe great cinema is lost on the youth, they have too much information bombarding them all day to appreciate great drama.  As usual, I digress.

What I thought might be more useful for them and might impact them more was to hear some of my experiences regarding great leadership.  I worked in the business world for about 40 years, and I saw my share of great leaders, and not so great.  I think each of us has our own perception of great leadership. There are many types of leaders, and not all of us view a leader the same way, but I gave them examples of what I believed great leadership looks like.  I started with someone famous, I’m sure not familiar for them, but still a famous person from our country, who personified great leadership:

Dwight Eisenhower

I’ve read about Mr. Eisenhower before, but his story is compelling for several reasons.  He started out growing up very poor in a small town in Kansas, where most of the children never made it through high school.  His early military career wasn’t much better, and no one would have ever imagined where he would end up in life.  He ranked 125^th out of 164 men at West Point and was constantly in trouble for misbehaving.  One of his most important lessons was to smile even at adversity.  After a knockdown from a boxing coach, the coach said, “If you can’t smile when you get up from a knockdown, you’re never going to lick an opponent.”

This comment resonated with me, I often had situations at work where I was deep in thought or worried about something, and my personnel would see me looking this way.  Within a short period of time, rumors were flying about what was going wrong in the business.  People watch you; people see how you are acting.  As Mr. Eisenhower said:

“I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory – that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow.  To translate this conviction into tangible results, I adopted a policy of circulating through the whole force to the full limit imposed by physical considerations.  I did my best to meet everyone from general to private with a smile, a pat on the back and a definite interest in his problems.”

 

After his inauspicious beginnings, Eisenhower went on to the Command and General Staff School where he finished first in a class of 245.  He became the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in World War II, a Five Star General in the US Army, and the 34^th President of the United States from 1953-1961.  One of his key attributes was that he always gave credit to his people when things went well, and he always took the blame when things didn’t go well.  He fully supported those who worked for him.

 

I think I found Mr. Eisenhower’s leadership style so compelling because it so closely matched the leadership style of the greatest leader I worked for: 

Jim Crane

Jim did more for my career than anyone else, even me.  He saw something in me, that others probably didn’t see, and I also didn’t see.  Early in my career at Barco, I served in various divisions as a Controller.  I would have probably spent my life as a Controller, but Jim kept encouraging me to look higher, grow my career into something more.  While there is nothing wrong with being “just” a Controller, I was excited, and scared, to strive for something more.  Jim put me into a role at Barco Simulation as an Operations Manager.  Eventually, I was elevated to the position of Site Manager, and eventually General Manager.  None of this would have ever happened if Jim hadn’t seen something in me.

 

Jim was undoubtedly a “Servant Leader”.  Jim had so many traits similar to Mr. Eisenhower, but some key ones that made him such an incredible leader were: 

• Similar to Mr. Eisenhower, he passed out credit to his personnel when things went well, and he absorbed the blame when they didn’t.
• He had a great deal of patience and allowed people to work their way to a solution rather than dictating how to get there.
• He emphasized celebrating success; he wanted people to feel good about our accomplishments
• He would allow personnel (me) to vent their concerns, express their displeasure about decisions, and would hear them out, but you also knew when the conversation was over.  It still felt good to at least get to air your feelings.
• He was very forgiving of mistakes, even when they were monumental mistakes.  You knew what you did was wrong, but once it was done, it was done.

 As I said, my career would have been very different if it weren’t for Jim Crane.

 

The other great leader I had the pleasure to work for was completely different, but great just the same, he was larger than life:

 

Michael Gerster

As noted, Michael was larger than life, in so many ways.  Michael is relatively tall, and he has this presence about him.  He would briskly walk through the building, stopping everywhere to talk to anyone and everyone, he always wanted to hear what people had to say.  He talks in a deep, booming voice, and to be honest, when I first started working for him, I didn’t think I could do it.  He was always yelling at me, and I couldn’t figure out why he was always yelling.  It wasn’t until we had a meeting with our auditor, Jan Fischer from Roedl, that I understood.  We were leaving the meeting, and Jan was laughing, and I asked why.  He said, “typical guy from Cologne (Germany).  They always yell when they talk”.  I finally figured out Michael wasn’t yelling at me, it’s just how he communicated.

 

For those a bit older like me, we had this phrase, mostly related to sports.  We’d say, “I’d run through a wall for him.”  Michael was one I would run through a wall for.  He was a great leader, and our people would do anything for him.  Some key traits Michael possessed: 

• Michael is probably a Transformational Leader, he is always looking to do whatever he can to improve the processes and the business.  We would complete a week-long Kaizen event, we’d be exhausted, and Michael would say, “What can we do better?”  He never was satisfied, but it was really in a good way, he just wanted us to be as good as we could be.
• He is comfortable with business leaders, but he is also very comfortable with people on the factory floor or anywhere within the business.  Michael would walk the factory floor, talk to the people, find out what was going right or wrong, and then he would come to our Senior Management meetings and tell Klaus and Erich, our Operations leaders, what he found out by talking to the people on the shop floor.  Our people loved Michael, with good reason, he cared about them and cared about what they had to say.

 As noted, Jim and Michael are no doubt the best leaders I’ve ever worked for.  I’ve worked for many leaders, most are in the middle of the road, and then:

 

If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say ….

OK, I have worked for two poor leaders, but I won’t mention names, that wouldn’t be appropriate.  But I will note some of the behavior that I found distasteful in their leadership styles: 

• They were habitual liars.  In one of the cases, I really believe he was a pathological liar, he would lie to me about the financial statements that I prepared.
• They treated employees like indentured servants.  They really showed very little value for the people that worked for them.
• They spent the company’s money like there was no tomorrow, at least spending it on themselves.
• They ran the business individually, rarely involved senior leadership in any important decisions.
• Neither of them had any regard for women, particularly in any type of leadership position.
• They were both unethical, no moral compass whatsoever.

As I went through this process, teaching my class about what leadership looks like, I came to a conclusion or feeling about it, at least for me.  I think you can see, Jim Crane and Michael Gerster were completely different in their leadership styles, but in their own way, they were great leaders.  In the case of two poor leaders, I’m not sure if it’s my value system that is guiding me or that poor leaders have common traits, really not sure.

 

From my perspective, I really struggle when people are dishonest.  I had a difficult time working with, or even talking to, either of these individuals, they had such a propensity to lie.  The other for me is how you treat those around you.  My Dad was a truck driver, and he always taught me, no matter what someone does in an organization, you value them.  Everyone is important.  I didn’t appreciate the way they treated others, putting them in a caste system or ranking based on where they fit in the organization. 

 

I’m really not sure there is a formula for being a great leader, it comes in many sizes and shapes, and besides the two great ones I’ve noted, I’ve seen some really good ones, throughout the organizations I worked for.  Maybe at the core is the antithesis of the poor leaders I identified.  Honesty, valuing personnel, no matter where they are in the organization or what they look like, those are the critical aspects, and how you display your leadership is a matter of personality or style.

 

The good news is, I learned so much from all the leaders I’ve encountered, but specifically, these four.  I learned what great leadership looks like, and I’m so grateful I had the opportunity to work for Jim Crane and Michael Gerster.  In the case of the other two, I learned some valuable information also.  I learned how I don’t want to be treated, and how I won’t treat people who work with me.  All in all, great lessons. 

 

Living a Dream

 What did you want to be when you grew up?  I wanted to be a baseball player!  I wanted to be a pitcher like Bob Gibson, or more like Vida Blue, because he was left-handed like me, and he pitched for the Oakland A’s, my favorite baseball team, next to the Pirates.

OK, that dream died quickly because I really wasn’t that good of a baseball pitcher.  As I grew up, as I prepared for college and throughout college, I wanted to be a sportswriter.  I would eat and breathe anything related to sports or writing, I devoted myself to honing my skills to become the best sportswriter I could possibly be.

A funny thing happened along the way.  Apparently, the dream of writing for a newspaper became virtually everyone’s dream, because at one point, statistics said that if every journalist died today, there would be two coming out of college to replace them.  If I were lucky, I could find a job at a small, local paper, starting off writing obituaries and announcements, and maybe, I could eventually work my way up to writing real news stories.  While I’m sure some or many were willing to pay those dues, I wasn’t, I gave up that dream, and lived the dream of most young people, I became an accountant.

Because of my love of literature and writing, I also had a dream to write a book.  To a certain extent, that dream was even bigger.  I don’t know if any of you have tried, but writing a book is incredibly hard work.  It takes a great deal of thought, planning, imagination, perseverance, pain, suffering, and, oh yeah, talent.  At one point, many years ago, I wrote a short novel, but I can safely say, it really wasn’t very good.  I have no idea what I ever did with it, I just didn’t see any real value in what I had produced.

A new dream crept in recently, and this one really came out of nowhere.  About two years ago, I completed my Yoga Teacher Training and became a Registered Yoga Teacher.  Now, the main reason I did this was purely to learn more about yoga, I had no aspirations to teach or do anything with the certification.  Out of the blue, I want to own a yoga studio! Spoiler alert, I don’t own a yoga studio.  I did research it though, I read how to start one, looked at properties, considered getting some consulting from studio owners, but I never took it past the thought stages.

Do you ever wonder, what separates those who live their dream and those who just, well, dream?  Specifically, I’m referring to the old saying or challenge you would get growing up, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  For whatever reason, some of us nail it, and some of us don’t.  What separates those who succeed from those who still dream about success or gave up on that dream long ago?

As you can possibly tell, I’ve put a lot of thought into this one.  I’m fascinated by the difference, the edge, the drive that some people have that others don’t.  I’m going to share three stories with you, people I’ve had the opportunity to live vicariously through.  It will become obvious why I picked them, but they lived their dreams, and they lived dreams that in essence parallel mine, but they made it happen.  I’ll share their stories, and I’ll share my thoughts on how or why they succeeded, by knowing them or simply watching them.

Are you out of your fucking mind?

Dejan Kovacevic just passed the 10^th anniversary of launching his online sports journalism outlet, DK Pittsburgh Sports.  He has created an incredible website that provides outstanding coverage for all the sports teams in Pittsburgh.  The success of this site is amazing, and really, is incomparable.  

I’ve followed Mr. Kovacevic’s writing for many years, back when he was a writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and then with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.  When he created his own forum, I abandoned all the other news outlets and moved to his site.

There are good reporters or sportswriters out there, but Mr. Kovacevic is not just that.  He is an incredible writer, who can create a beautiful story, who just happens to write about sports.  I’ve read good sports writers in my lifetime, but there are few, very few, who can bring such life, such humanity to a sports story, and I love to read whatever he writes.  As I noted in a previous blog, he could write about bocci ball, badminton, curling, whatever, I’d read it, even though I’ve quit watching sports.  He is just that good.  And probably the best piece I’ve ever read from him is the story of how he launched this site 10 years ago, it was a work of art, detailing the reaction from a friend (noted above), the discussions with his incredibly supportive wife, Dali, and just the whole process of how this came to be.

I had the privilege of visiting his headquarters/shop recently, and I got to meet and talk to Mr. Kovacevic for the first time ever, and it didn’t disappoint at all.  What I loved the most was hearing him talk about the writing process, I had just commented on his piece from the previous night’s Pirate game, and how much I loved it.  He explained to me that he missed an opportunity and didn’t quite capture the story as he would have liked to have.  That is why he is so good, even when he produced a great story, he felt it could have been better. 

Blood, sweat and tears

Many years ago, when I worked at Barco, I had a colleague at our headquarters in Belgium, Ann Galland, who worked in marketing.  I knew Ann, we had a professional relationship, but honestly, not a strong one, simply because she was in marketing, and I was a Chief Financial Officer, our paths didn’t often cross.  We had a good professional relationship, but that was about it.

We became Facebook friends, and over the last few years, I had noticed Ann wrote a novel, titled “Aroma”, I think back in 2022.  I was fascinated how in the world she did this, as noted, it’s an incredible amount of work.  I would read her posts on Facebook, and I’d see book signings, information on how well her book was doing, book reviews, whatever Ann posted about her book.

Much to my surprise, this year Ann published another novel, “Bitter”, which also has done incredibly well.  I must confess, I haven’t read them, when I looked on Amazon, it only had a Dutch version, so I can’t comment on how good they are.  But it’s safe for me to say, based on some of the reviews I’ve seen, she’s done quite a good job.  Some examples:

• "Bitter" is an immersive reading experience that exceeds expectations
• For fans of subtly written stories full of emotions and depth, this book is an absolute must-read
• Ann Galland proves her talent once again, and "Bitter" stands proudly alongside her predecessor as a strong novel full of intriguing characters and unexpected twists

After seeing all the reviews and success of her second novel, I reached out to Ann, and simply asked, what is the secret of her success?  Her response was relatively simple:

“There is no secret….it is just blood, sweat and tears.  Hard work.  I think, and being lucky that the market notices you have written something that is a lot better than average?

I get the first part, I’m sure she worked incredibly hard on this.  Not sure she gives herself enough credit for the second part, she obviously has written some very good novels, and while there could always be a certain level of luck involved, I think it probably pales in comparison to the quality of what she has written.

You will do great things

Have you ever met someone, and quickly you realize you are in the presence of someone special?  That’s the way I felt when I met Carley DeMarco. 

About two years ago, I did my Yoga Teacher Training with Carley and eight other young ladies, and while all of them possessed certain gifts, Carley had something special about her.  She was incredibly bright, knowledgeable about many topics, very articulate, a vociferous worker, she seemed to be involved in so many endeavors, I had no idea how she was able to do so much.

After a period, as we were walking through the woods at our YTT training center, I made that comment to Carley, I started it off with “You are doing great things, and you will do great things”.  She is one of those people who you know will be incredibly successful at something, or whatever, they set their mind to.

As we all left our yoga training, some of us, many of us, felt we probably wouldn’t teach yoga, we just wanted the experience.  Carley did plan to teach, but she took it to a whole new level.  Carley opened a yoga studio in Clayton, Georgia.  Keep in mind, I think at the time, Carley was 28.  She had the courage, the business sense, the vision to open a yoga studio.  While on a certain level, I was shocked and amazed, then again, I wasn’t.  As I said, I just knew Carley was destined for doing what many of us only dream of.  While she had to deal with “messy schedules, a never-ending to-do list, and sometimes, loneliness”, she also was able to experience a “heart beating out of chest kind of excitement and a sense of purpose that comes with it”.

Which brings me to the reason or root of this post, how or why do some live a dream, and why do some just dream?  I don’t think there are any simple answers, but from my small sample size, based on people who have done or accomplished what I would have liked to have accomplished, I have a few ideas.  I don’t believe there is any secret formula, but I think there’s a mixture, and a higher dose of one rather than the other in some of the cases, but here goes:

·       You must be very talented at whatever it is.  That is clearly true for the three profiled above.

·       You must be willing to work incredibly hard.  I don’t mean just hard, I mean dedicating massive amounts of time and effort into the endeavor, and essentially living it.

·       You must be driven, insanely driven, you must have such passion for whatever that dream is, and you aren’t willing to let that dream go.  There will be times where self-doubt comes in, when you, or those close to you, believe you are insane, but that passion will override any of those doubts, and you will believe that you will succeed. 

Am I jealous?  Oh Heavens, no!  I am so happy and excited for each of them, and to be honest, it’s been fun to watch.  I love to see Ann’s posts of her books’ successes; I look forward to them and enjoy her success.  Carley is one of the most incredible people I’ve had the honor of spending time with, and I can’t wait to see what she does and how successful she becomes.  When I had the chance to finally meet Dejan Kovacevic in person, I was giddy.  For me, he is an icon of writing, and I could have listened to him talk about writing all day.  Not one bit of jealousy, I love to see how each of them has succeeded so tremendously.

Where did I fall short?  Probably on a certain level, talent.  I was a good writer, but probably not great.  When it comes to hard work, I used to say at WIKA, no one can outwork me, not necessarily something to be proud of, but I never shied away from work.  I would have to say the biggest area where I fell short was just not quite enough passion to make it happen.  I think there were too many other things, or really, too many other people that I loved too much to take any more time away from them than I already was.

And all is not lost.  Laurel and I have created a yoga space in our home, and we offer free yoga one night a week, so far.  We’re trying to provide yoga to those who can’t afford studio fees.  No, I don’t own a studio, but I’m happy with what we’ve created.

As for my writing, I’ve decided to write a children’s book.  I’m in the early stages, I have the premise, the storyline, I have a plan for the illustration, and I’ve done quite a bit of research on what makes a children’s book successful.  I have no grand plans to be an ongoing writer, but I want to at least give one book a shot. 

Alas, I think my sports writing career is well behind me, but that’s OK.  And I just don’t see myself pitching in the Major Leagues someday, but I think I can live with that.  I’ll have to let those two dreams die a much-needed death….