If football taught Phil Gallagher anything, it was that each of us responds to different kinds of motivation and a leader’s job is to find the key that unlocks each member of his or her team. When Phil was a freshman in high school, his coach told him he was too small to ever play varsity football. Phil responded by working his tail off in the weight room, ultimately captaining the varsity team in his senior year before playing college ball at Westchester University in Pennsylvania.
Years later, as a volunteer high school coach, Phil realized that the kind of tough love his old coach laid on him wasn’t effective for everybody. “Some kids need a kick in the butt all the time,” he said. “Others need you to throw your arm around their shoulders and nurture them a bit, and suddenly they’re a whole new person. It’s the same in the business world when you work with a diverse staff.”
Football taught Phil that emotional intelligence is a better guide for leadership than IQ and he has made it the hallmark of his leadership style as the CEO of Avnet, a Fortune 500 technology distributor and solutions provider. Now in his 40th year with the company, Phil leads more than 15,000 employees across 140 countries and enjoys a remarkable 91 percent CEO approval rating from his employees on Glassdoor.
Phil doesn’t believe in quick fixes and argues that integrity, the first among core values, has to be developed in the way we behave in the here and now—and over time. “There’s an old saying,” says Phil, “that people build trust penny by penny and spend it like a buck. You have to prioritize standing by your word.”
You will learn:
- 9:00 Why substituting the word “we” in place of “I” immediately builds trust.
- 11:30 What makes a great teammate.
- 15:30 The steps to a successful merger or acquisition.
- 16:30 How to prioritize your tasks in alignment with your values.
- 20:00 Why you need to walk into the office with good news, and run in with bad news.
Resources:
- Connect with Phil Gallagher on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Avnet.
- The Lou Holtz book Phil referenced.
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