“Lead with vision and inspire with action.”
Sam Reese is CEO of Vistage Worldwide. Vistage is the world’s largest CEO coaching and peer advisory organization for small and midsized business leaders. Vistage has membership of 45,000 business owners and CEOs in 30 different countries around the globe.
Previous to Vistage, Sam was CEO of Miller Heiman a leader in the sales performance consulting business, and before Miller Heiman Sam was VP of Sales at Corporate Express which is now Staples. Sam and I met back in 1994 when was leading a sales team at Kinko’s (now FEDEX).
I’ve known Sam for 30 years, and consider him to be one of those great leaders who can drive sustainable results while also creating a culture where people are valued, challenged, and developed to be better versions of themselves.
He is a remarkable executive leader and good friend. Join us for a conversation on what leaders need to be doing today and into the future to be successful.
- Develop your people and then work hard to keep them. Sam was given advice early in his career that as leaders our primary job is to develop others so they become the so capable and talented that your competition wants to recruit them away. Then, we have to work hard to keep them by creating the environments where they can continue to grow and develop into better versions of themselves.
- Lead with vision, mission and purpose while keeping “purpose” out front and center every day. Purpose or why we do what we do drives engagement and helps people connect their contributions to the bigger agenda. Sam shared gave an example of keeping purpose out front. To this day he starts his team meetings by asking his team members to share a story of how they helped their customer.
- Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s easy to get pulled off our vision when we think it’s out job to remove all ambiguity. Things are changing so quickly that we need to be okay with not knowing all the answers. What we thought was the right answer or course of action yesterday may be the wrong answer today.
- Command and control leadership is dead. People don’t want to be led by leaders who direct and control things. We need to hear from our team members, and learn to listen intently. We also need to put our egos aside, and avoid driving our agendas.
- Lead with the right question rather than the right answer. Many of us have been promoted because we know the right answers. As we take on bigger roles, we can’t know everything so we have to ask more than tell, and rely more heavily on those who are closest to the action.
- Practice vulnerability and transparency. Vulnerability can be seen as weak, even risky when leaders are with other leaders or in a competitive situation. When we don’t open up as to what’s really going on we invite others to do the same; and when we create cultures where it’s not safe to be open to address the real issues, that’s when you need to worry.
- Hold people accountable and jump into the details when needed. One way to hold people accountable is to have regularly scheduled weekly 1:1 meetings with each of your team members. Sam recommends we start our 1:1 meetings with these 3 simple questions, “What’s going well?” “What’s not going well?” and “Where do you need my help?”
Favorite Quote: “Weak is he who permits his thoughts to control his actions; strong is he who forces his actions to control his thoughts.” – Og Mandino
Book Reference: The Greatest Salesman in the World
