The Greatest Leader I Ever Met

In June 2018 my Dad was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukaemia and given 3 months to live. He died just under 3 months later, on 2nd?September. I was devastated. He had been a huge figure in my life for over 50 years and life without him being there was difficult to comprehend. He had always been there. The banner photo of my Dad with my Mum, my brothers and me was taken just a few years before his death.?

I was very lucky in the Dad department; in fact I hit the jackpot. He was much more than a Dad. Over the fifty years I knew him, he was a father, a friend, my number one supporter, a teacher, a coach, a mentor and a boss. There was almost nothing I didn’t talk with him about, almost nothing I didn’t share with him.?

In his later years, after he had retired, we met for lunch every few weeks in his favourite lunch time restaurant. He loved a carvery. We would spend about two hours just talking about what was going on in each other’s lives. I had spent almost 20 years working with and for my Dad in our family business. After I left in 2008 to become a psychotherapist, he was curious, though we couldn’t talk about the details for obvious reasons. When I trained as a coach in 2016, he became fascinated. He loved any conversation that was about the growth and development of people. My Dad always loved people, and he really loved to see people growing, stepping into their potential and fulfilling their dreams.?

He particularly loved seeing this in his three sons. He loved teaching us things like water skiing and snow skiing. When we were playing rugby, he was always, by far the loudest supporter on the touchline on match day. When we joined the family business, he was relentless in his efforts to show us everything he knew about business and about people.?

He was a great believer in building his business by working with great people, giving them big challenges and letting them get on with it. The first job he gave me when I joined the business was to manage one of the biggest stores in the business. All I had was a business degree and a load of enthusiasm and a willingness to learn. But I also had my Dad.

I learned so much from him. He taught me about people, about service, about building strong relationships, about creating great partnerships, about possibility, about belief and about taking the occasional risk. He once went out and bought stock for three new stores he was opening without knowing where the stores were.?

You see, for me, my Dad was the greatest leader I ever knew.

He started with nothing, left school at fifteen and served his time working for his uncle in his drapery store. When he was nineteen, he moved to work for another uncle in his drapery store in a town about ten miles away. But he didn’t want to be an employee, he wanted to own a business and after a few years of persistence he persuaded his uncle to sell him some shares, eventually acquiring a controlling interest. Once he had paid the bank back for the money he borrowed to buy the shares, he started opening stores.?

By the time he retired in 2005 the business was trading in over 20 locations across Ireland and employed over 400 people and had several hundred more people working within the stores for concession companies.

He knew how to make things happen. He was a visionary. He was willing to take a chance when he saw an opportunity. There were two other areas in which his leadership stood out for me, and I will take the next few paragraphs to say more about them.

He knew what his job was, and he let everyone else get on with their job. For him he focused mostly on two things, the strategic direction of the business and on the people who were in the business.?

I’d often wander into his office to bounce something off him, and he’d be sitting with one page on his desk. It might be a sheet of figures or the floor plan of a shop or the street map of a town or a map of the whole country. But he’d just be sitting thinking about the next big thing for the business. The next town or towns we should be trading in. Or a big layout change for one of the stores. Or the layout for a new store. Or he’d be thinking about the next products we could be selling. Or a restructure of one of the teams in the business.?

Before I’d even get asking my question, I’d get ushered into a seat beside him and he’d share what he was thinking about or the idea he’d come up with. I knew I wouldn’t be the only person that would hear this. He’d canvas all the people in the business who he thought were important in the decision to hear what they thought. He didn’t ever seem to have hundreds of things on his mind. He usually just had one and whatever that one thing was he would in his own words, ‘devour it’ before he made a decision. And when he made the decision, he backed himself and went for it. Going for it usually meant making sure the operational teams knew what had to happen and when it needed to happen and then he us get on with it. As soon as he could, he got back to having one page on his desk, thinking about the next big thing for the business.

The other area my Dad most inspired me in, was his ability to inspire people. He had an amazing ability to see what was possible in the future and enrol others into the same vision. Looking back, it was almost as if when the business grew, he grew … or was it the other way around? It didn’t matter what he saw to be possible, he would enrol and enrol and enrol until people started to see what he could see and then possibility would open up for the business. It didn’t matter what it was. He might be enrolling the buyers in a totally new product department. Or enrolling the ops team in a new store or stores. Or enrolling a store team in finding a way to keep trading during a major store refurbishment. Or enrolling a member of sales staff in a new product that was coming to their department.?

He was also brilliant at enrolling people in what he saw in them that they often hadn’t seen for themselves. He could enrol someone, in whom he saw great potential, into seeing a great future for them in the business. He could enrol people in achieving a target or overcoming a challenge that they didn’t think they could achieve or overcome. He could enrol people into believing in themselves … sometimes by just telling people he believed in them and sometimes by just giving them a job, letting them get on with it and not micro-managing them.?

Because my Dad was constantly inspiring people, letting them do their jobs and leaving people feeling better about themselves after he spoke with them, people loved him. People loved working with him and for him, they loved seeing him coming to visit their store or their area of the business and he loved seeing them. My Dad was simply brilliant with the people who worked for him, and they would have done anything for him.?

I’m not sure how to finish this now. What occurs to me is to ask you … Who is the greatest leader you ever met? What was it about them that inspired you? What did you learn from them? What have you implemented from what you learned and what have your forgotten about? Have you reached your potential as a leader??

Do you have someone in your corner who sees the limitless possibilities that exist in you and for you? If not … call me! I may be able to help.

Much love

Peter