Get the Lead Out: Bonus Track with Dean Hybl

I met Dean digitally during my stint as a Bleacher Report writer. I was covering the Dallas Cowboys and Super Bowl XLV events. XLV (which looks like a t-shirt size for offensive linemen but is actually the Roman numeral 45) remains the only Super Bowl to date held in Dallas/Fort Worth (which is to say "Arlington"). Dean also wrote for Bleacher Report at the time.

Dean Hybl is the Executive Director of Ten at the Top, a regional organization in Upstate South Carolina that fosters regional collaboration and partnerships around issues that impact economic vitality and quality of life. Before moving to the Upstate and becoming the first Executive Director of TATT in 2010, Hybl spent five years working on regional collaboration in the Orlando area with the Orlando Regional Chamber of Commerce. He previously spent 15 years working in college athletics, serving as the Sports Information Director at Hampden-Sydney College (1990-1996) and Rollins College (1996-2005).

Dean is a past recipient of the Welling Award for Regional Collaboration, Upstate Forever’s Land Planning & Policy Champion Award and the Urban League of the Upstate’s Corporate Citizen Award. Ten at the Top has been recognized for excellence by the Alliance for Regional Stewardship, SCDHEC Bureau of Air Quality, the South Carolina Chapter of the American Planner’s Association, and the Urban League of the Upstate. In November 2023, Hybl was recognized by SCBIZ Magazine as one of the 50 Most Influential Business Leaders in South Carolina.

How do you define your role as a leader?

Being a leader is different than being “the boss”. It is not necessarily hard to become a boss as experience and past success will help get you opportunities to manage people and lead organizations. However, I believe that being a true leader goes beyond title and personal accomplishments. Great leaders make other people around them better and focus on what is needed to accomplish the task at hand. Sometimes that means you are in charge and heavily responsible for the success of an effort. Other times it means taking a supporting role and being the person behind the scenes that makes sure that others within your team have what they need to successfully execute the effort. When you are a true leader, people will come to you to help address issues and create success, regardless of your position or title.

Great leaders make other people around them better and focus on what is needed to accomplish the task at hand. -Dean Hybl

What do you consider your greatest strength and how do you play to it?

I am not looking to be the “smartest guy in the room” when we are working on an initiative. Instead, I want to surround myself with people who are subject experts and make sure that I am helping them to identify the need or challenge and then listening to them as they describe possible solutions. I think my background as a journalism major helps me to gain an understanding of a situation and then turn what I hear into actionable steps to address the issue.

What do you see as your biggest weakness and how do you strengthen it or minimize any negative impact it may have on your effectiveness as a leader?

I would say the biggest challenge with being in organizational leadership is transitioning into the role of managing people. Though I supervised some staff members from the beginning of my career, it was only when I became an Executive Director that I was solely responsible for managing professional staff members. Based on prior work experience I had an idea of the work culture I wanted to create, but I quickly learned that managing a team is a series of trials and errors.

It took me several years before I was able to find the balance between managing the team (instead of micro-managing) and allowing them to feel vested in the work and able to reach their full potential. Avoiding the temptation to do everything myself was a big adjustment early on and still is at times a challenge. ??

How do you measure your success as a leader?

The work of our organization is to bring stakeholders together to build the collective capacity of our region around a specific issue or opportunity. I measure my success in accomplishing that mission and as a leader based on the continued interest of stakeholders across the region to participate in our efforts and to continue to seek out our involvement as a neutral convener.

If I was not trusted as a leader and our organization not trusted as a true partner and connector, key stakeholders would not entrust their time and resources to our efforts.

Which leader(s) most impacted you and how?

I was very fortunate that after completing professional internships with the Philadelphia Eagles and Richmond Braves (Atlanta’s AAA team at the time), I was hired at 22 years old to be the Sports Information Director at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. The Athletic Director who hired me was Louis F. “Weenie” Miller, who was a former college basketball, baseball, and football coach who had left college athletics in the 1960s to work in private business before returning in the mid-1980s to serve as the Athletic Director at Hampden-Sydney. You can expect that anyone who could pull off going through life with the nickname “Weenie” had to be a character and Coach Miller was. He was also a compassionate leader who taught me that our most valuable resource is time and that taking the time to listen to people and learn about them is a surefire way to earn trust and ultimately accomplish the things you are looking to do. It has been nearly 35 years since I was a 22-year-old newcomer at H-SC, but I still remember and utilize Coach Miller’s philosophy of listening and learning about people. I believe it is a critical element of leadership. It has worked very well for me throughout my career. ?

What has changed most about leadership or what challenges do leaders face today that they not have faced in the past?

During COVID everyone who manages people had to not only worry about their work production but also about how their staff members' families were adjusting to the quick flip that the world did in March 2020. We suddenly needed to pay attention to the mental health of our staff and their families as their ability to produce at work was directly tied to how they and their families dealt with the pandemic. Eventually, the theme of work-life balance emerged. Though it has now been four years, it still seems very evident that employees across the globe are much more interested in working for companies that offer flexibility and ways to maintain a balance between their professional and personal lives.

Someone has just stepped into a new leadership role. If you can only impress upon them one thing, what is it and why is it important?

Don’t feel like you have to know everything or solve every problem on your own. I believe an important part of leadership is knowing your limitations and not being afraid to admit that in some circumstances you do not have the answer or know what might be best. You cannot, however, drop the ball and leave people to fend for themselves. You still need to try to come up with an option or solution, but do it in a collaborative way that reflects your vulnerability, instead of feeling you have to immediately make a decision even if you don’t know what might be the best option.

Author's Conclusion

Dean brings a unique perspective to our discussion on leadership. I am glad he is wrapping it up for us. Good word, Dean!

it seems very evident that employees across the globe are much more interested in working for companies that offer flexibility and ways to maintain a balance between their professional and personal lives. -Dean Hybl