As I sit in a comfortable orange rolling office chair I am across from the CEO of Imavex which is an Indianapolis area based technology and digital marketing organization. Gerald Stanley and his business partner Steve Burzynski have allowed me to invade their day to learn about their company, but more importantly, to me, how they lead it well.
Gerald is a man of many hats. He is the CEO of this organization, helps coach a high school football team, serves on the board of a faith-based non-profit organization called Hands of Hope and is the father of he and his wife’s four children two of which they adopted from another country. With all that and the family friendly travel baseball organization Orange Baseball as well as One Orphan Foundation that he and his business partner founded I think he is either crazy or a great leader. By the end of our conversation I realized he was definitely the latter.
As we talked Mr. Stanley explained to me three foundational principles that guide not only his leadership, but the organization as a whole.
- Entrepreneurial – As an established organization that has been serving clients since 2001 they do not want to get stale and apathetic so they strive to take appropriate risks to help the organization grow. At times those risks do not work, but from my observations during our conversation these men learn and grow from mistakes instead of letting them define them and get them stuck. In true entrepreneurial fashion he understands the process of risk, fail, learn, change, and do it all again.
- Servant Leaders – Both Gerald and Steve model servant leadership which is demonstrated in how they treat employees and structure their organization. Steve entered our meeting and I asked him what his three key leadership principles were and each principle defines what both men model as servant leaders: be genuine because it earns respect, be consistent as it earns credibility, be empathetic because it helps you connect and builds trust. These are not just theory, but practice for these two men and are foundational to their business culture.
- Ownership – When he explained how their organization is structured this ownership idea was clearly evident. In their company three values drive their strategy and they have flattened their structure in a manner that these values are driven not by them, but by the employees. In each area an employee leads the growth and is equipped to bring results. This ownership is evidenced in another way. Both them as leaders and those they lead are accountable to each other and when there are mistakes in projects they have an organizational culture that expects people to take responsibility for their actions and make the appropriate adjustments.
One last question I asked them was how they develop leaders in their organization and the answer came in the form of an expectation: bring solutions not problems. I am not sure where you are in your leadership journey, but with those you lead are you a task master or servant? Are you still taking risks or is something holding you back and maybe even need help thinking into those challenges? Do you exemplify the traits of a servant leader and own what you have been entrusted with both when things go well and poorly? What is one way you can grow as a leader after learning these ideas? Lead well both at work and home and let me know how I can help you on the journey.
©2018 Wheeler Coaching Systems, All Rights Reserved
