All Posts by Ann Tardy

0 I want to Lead like Ilene Gordon

In the Corner Office in the Business section of the  New York Times, Ilene Gordon, CEO of Ingredion, took the opportunity to pay tribute to mentoring then and now.

The Impact of a Mentor

Following business school, Ilene was responsible for acquisitions at Tenneco when a self-appointed mentor saw potential in her. He recognized her intellect, ambition, and focus, and challenged her to run those businesses she was acquiring. He put her in a job bigger than her and committed to helping her hone her business skills. Today she is on Fortune magazine’s list of 50 Most Powerful Women in Business as the President/CEO of a Fortune 500 company with $6.2 billion in net sales.

Ilene’s Commitment to Being a Mentoring CEO

Ilene excites people with opportunity as her Mentor did for her. She is committed to:

• Seeing potential in others where they don’t see it themselves
• Stretching people who demonstrate talent, people skills, and drive
• Putting people into roles they’re not quite ready for
• Allowing people to grow into those big roles
• Offering young managers an opportunity to share with the board how they’re creating value for the company

Her Belief in the Lasting Impact of Mentoring

Ilene believes that people carry their mentoring experiences with them. “I’m not just hiring the person sitting there. I’m hiring the four people who mentored him. I don’t think there’s anybody who’s successful in their role today who hasn’t been mentored by somebody.”

In each interview, she asks:

• Who mentored you?
• Who did you learn from?
• What was their expertise?
• What companies did they work for?

What can we do to become a Mentoring Leader like Ilene?

• Make a list of your own Mentors and acknowledge their influence on your success
• Discover people’s list of influencers
• Work to earn a spot on their list
• See what they don’t see in themselves
• Take a risk on their potential
• Push people into their uncomfortable
• Allow people to surprise you

It takes courage to leverage the spotlight of the NY Times spotlight to mentor aspiring, inspiring, and expiring leaders everywhere. Thank you, Ilene, for influencing each of us to make a difference by leading with a mentoring mindset.

Who do you know who leads like Ilene Gordon?

0 Joy is a Leader’s Job

Aretha Franklin was on to something. She sang it loud and proud, “all I want, honey, is a little respect.” And that applies to work as well. The number one reason people leave a job? A disrespecting boss. Not lack of money. Lack of respect.

What if joy was a leader’s responsibility? A skill required. An expectation of good leadership. A competency no less important than thinking strategically or leading change.

What is joy?
Great delight or happiness caused by something good or satisfying (thank you, dictionary.com). Could work really be the source of delight and happiness? Yes! And as leaders, we have an opportunity to fuel it.

So why should this be our job as leaders? As columnist Steven E.F. Brown summed it up in the San Francisco Business Times, it’s all about “karma.” Here’s a snippet from his recent article:

“To understand karma you just need to think about why you don’t pee in your own bath. Because you’re the one who has to sit in it! If you are an unhappy, cruel, ungrateful person, you make the people around you similarly unhappy, cruel and ungrateful, and you have to live among them.”

That’s why joy is our job as a leader. Because who wants to spend the majority of each day working in a miserable, disrespectful, crappy environment? Create delight, joy, satisfaction, respect, and you get to work in it too!

Still not convinced? Here are a few more reasons to choose joy as a competency:

1. People watch you to determine how to act (called, “social cognitive theory”)
2. Happy employees make happy customers (which generate more money)
3. High retention and low engagement are costing you thousands of dollars
4. You deserve to love your job too

So what would joy look like as a leader competency?

• Creating a vision with/for the team
• Partnering with people for their success (not yours)
• Intentionally listening to people’s upsets (that’s without looking at the phone even once!)
• Addressing conflict as a repairable “missed expectation”
• Considering others’ ideas
• Approaching mistakes as opportunities to learn
• Communicating the “why”
• Getting to know people personally
• Showing appreciation and recognizing efforts daily (not once a year on a performance review)
• Staying curious instead of jumping to judgment
• Treating people like new friends
• Remembering that people want to feel like the world really does revolve around them
• Helping people connect the dots between their job and the difference they make with their work

What does all of this require? Courage and confidence to be remarkable. And relentless kindness. No exceptions.

What does joy as a leader competency look like to you?