Vic’s leadership philosophy is all about caring for people. His mentors in his earlier career ingrained in him the power of treating people with respect, from the newest graduate to the highest executive. Like all great leaders, he focuses on results. He is all over the plans, objectives, and milestones for his team to achieve stretch outcomes. But the key to his leadership style is painting the big picture, surrounding himself with talented people and getting the best from them. He has found that people are at their best if he creates a culture of mutual respect.
The global pandemic reinforced his experience of the value of mutual respect and how important empathy is in building it. Last year he started in a senior role around the same time as his team moved to working from home. To get to know everyone, he set up a regular call with each member of his team. The idea was not to talk about work, but to find out how they were going in their personal lives. They talked about whatever they were dealing with, whether that was home-schooling their children, the challenges of ageing parents or their own health and well-being. He had a wonderful experience because they could share their stories with him, and he could do the same. The calls left him with a sense of how remarkable and strong people are and how caring they can be.
It is no surprise that each one of his team members asked Vic how they could help him in his new role, despite the enormous business and personal challenges they faced themselves. The runs are now on the board. Vic has made his mark in his new role, and he is very sure that the personal connection he established with each of his team members and their mutual respect are yielding results well beyond what he expected.
There is good support for his leadership philosophy of caring for people in the World Economic Forum report on future skills which suggests it is human “soft skills” that will become valuable in the future — skills such as empathy, context sensing, collaboration, and creative thinking.
🙋♂️ How do you create an environment of mutual respect? 🙋♀️
Best Regards, Brian