Earlier this year, I attended a leadership retreat hosted by one of our clients, SS&G. SS&G is a public accounting firm rated as Ohio’s “Best Place to Work,” and this leadership retreat is one reason why: SS&G’s leaders have face-time with cool people and provocative ideas. Dan Colantone talked about how to attract and retain talent to the region. The head of Olympic Steel talked about how he approaches growth, reinvestment and profitability. And Walt Bettinger spoke about Lessons in Leadership.
I took notes. The back story on Walt is that he started a company when he was 22 years old, and sold it to Schwab in his early 30’s. Most of his lessons in leadership have come since Schwab acquired his company. Walt was a great entrepreneur, but it took an arm around his shoulder and straight talk from a Schwab legend to nurture Walt’s abilities as a leader.
Following are my notes from Walt’s remarks:
A leader is a person whom others want to and choose to follow. A leader’s responsibilities are to:
- Create a purpose for the organization, beyond making money;
- Establish principles for decision-making and behavior; and
- Empower entrepreneurship among those for whom it’s not natural.
Humans have a desire to lead… and be led. Walt and his mentor dug through volumes of research on leadership, and found these - somewhat unheralded - traits of superior leaders:
- They are highly self-aware - they know their strengths and weaknesses and have emotional intelligence;
- Leaders are optimistic - they have a positive view of the future;
- They show vulnerability;
- Leaders have integrity - they do what they say they will do;
- Leaders demonstrate stability;
- They have empathy for self and others.
Walt was candid that the greatest lessons he’d learned - both in his individual professional journey to a leader, and in his role with rebuilding Schwab’s direct investor services - came through difficulty.
It was in an honest - and somewhat brutal - conversation that he was told he lacked leadership skills… and then offered assistance to develop them. It was after losing thousands of clients in the early 2000’s that Walt learned hard lessons like price does matter, that your current customers should be treated as well - if not better - than your new customers; and that people choose or leave you because of how they feel.
It seems that Walt was demonstrating many leadership skills - vulnerability, optimism, and empathy - in simply sharing his story. Now that’s alignment! I’m lookin’ for Walt to succeed Chuck, when it’s that time.
