Kevin Jones February 19, 2020 You’ll often hear me speak of a pair of values that I treasure the most in people, humility and respect.

These two values go hand-in-hand in how we hold them and act upon them. Since any word can have multiple definitions, let’s get some clarity on how I see each of these terms. I like to think of humility as the absence of bad pride or arrogance. You may be curious as to how I see good and bad pride, and the best way I’ve heard this explained is by Seth Avett’s (Avett Brothers) lyrics: “The pride your Momma had and not the kind that makes you bad.”  With respect, it’s having an admiration not for titles or socio-economic status, but what makes people special: their abilities, certain qualities represented in their character, and their achievements, both individually and with others.

One of the reasons I relate so well to these values, and their high esteem in small towns and rural America, is because of my roots in the High Country of western North Carolina. I was raised by a single mom, and she instilled these values in my siblings and me on a daily basis. But she wasn’t unique—that was our culture in Ashe County. In small places like my hometown of West Jefferson, we always knew who the wealthy folks were, who inherited what from whom, and we also knew—because it was most of us—who lived a more humble existence.

We knew who the pastors were, the bank president, the mayor, as well as who owned the big Christmas tree farms (that’s the big industry in my neck of the woods).  And yet, we didn’t confer any status or merit on any of those people, much less their kids or relatives, without them earning it—and some of them certainly did.  These lessons weren’t just said, we just breathed the air of that place, and it permeated these values of humility and respect. The thing that I love most about consistently challenging myself to live these two characteristics, and also consistently responding with these as my top advice, is that you cannot live an entitled existence while striving to be humble and respectful.  Respecting our fellow man (and woman) is the cheapest for us to give, yet most valuable gift they can receive.

As I shared recently with some incredible community leaders in my hometown, I’ve taken these Ashe County values in my travels around the country and around the world and applied them to virtually everything. Nearly every day, some kind of interaction triggers one or both of these perspectives, the dual lenses through which I see the world. When one of my colleagues comes to me for mentoring, I am immediately humbled. I find the respect I give people increasing and decreasing primarily based on my perception of their contributions and core values. 

I am far from perfect, and none of us are expected to be. But my challenge to myself and any of you reading this is to stay constant in pursuit of these virtues of humility and respect. Sometimes, it’s easy. It’s really easy to promote or reward someone, out of respect, when you see them showing initiative, and achieving crazy new levels of greatness. Other times, it’s hard. I’ve left situations that were really good for me when I felt like those around me would not honor these values and therefore failed to treat people right. I simply can’t abide by blatant arrogance and a lack of respect, especially for people who, while they may not have yet arrived in their careers, are giving everything they have and are progressing toward their goals.

But to have sustained success and joy in this journey, there are no other characteristics more critical than humility and respect.

Abigail Lucier February 10, 2020 I am amazed by the culture we’ve been able to create at Celero and how it’s taking hold across four companies that joined our family last year. One aspect of culture building, that I’ve noticed as especially crucial in a high-growth company that’s pulling together new acquisitions frequently, is communication.

Communication is the conduit of culture. When we’re communicating properly with each other, our culture grows. Conversely, when we aren’t communicating properly, culture withers. So, what does communicating properly look like? It starts with open dialogue, versus dictating what you want from others.

Since I’ve been at Celero, I’ve been learning to become an active listener. Being a great listener, who is not just eager to share their own thoughts, is critical for developing a healthy culture and a workspace where people are free to explore their ideas and collaborate to make them reality. Good listeners acknowledge that effective communication is about both talking and listening. Exchange is a two-way street. We must be able to send a message as well as receive them. While we might not always agree with that message, I do think that it’s important to at least be open to anything that your colleagues are trying to tell you.

To be able to sit down and actively listen to what somebody has to say, whether it’s about the project they’re working on or the difficult day they’re having, or whether it’s something going on at home or something great that’s on the horizon for them---being able to sit there and listen, not only will you gain an incredible amount of insight into their life and work, but you might be surprised to find that you’re also going to gain a significant amount of perspective into your own life and work. I believe that listening with intent is the catalyst to forming a connection with another person and ultimately a stronger bond amongst team members within your workspace.  

These conversations can be very motivating, and they encourage us to lean on each other versus going it alone. When you’re down on a particular day, your colleague can pick you up by helping you gain some perspective. As a result, things might not seem so bad after all, and they can help you find a way to recover and succeed. That project you’re complaining about might not be as difficult as you think, and you may just find yourself receiving the support you never knew you needed.

Being able to communicate your own thoughts effectively, while also actively listening to the contributions of others, is incredibly important.  I’m very thankful that this dynamic of two-way communication is yet another great aspect of our executive team’s approach to leading people. What they understand—and what I now understand as well—is that achieving big goals isn’t always about getting people to “buy in” to one general concept or theme. We are teammates here, not people to be sold on one person’s ideas or strategies. What this ethos speaks to is a willingness to trust each one of our colleagues to contribute their ingredient to Celero’s recipe for success. While creating a team of people that buy in to the program they are a part of is important, the way you go about doing so is far more important. Our executive leaders rely on the feedback of their team members to keep the business engaged and moving forward. If your team is left feeling as though they aren’t welcomed to make contributions, they will most likely feel disconnected from the program and culture.

When we trust each other, and we’re able to communicate that trust, not by trying to persuade each other but through genuine, two-way conversations that promote the best ideas and make us all better collaborators, there’s nothing we can’t achieve together.

All too often, we try to distill the concept of leadership into a philosophy or a set of values. While these are certainly components of establishing a company culture where people thrive, I subscribe to the concept of leadership that’s behavior-driven. Most of all, I think those of us privileged enough to be in positions of leadership must think about everything we do—in addition to everything we think—in order to have people follow us and accomplish great goals.

The notion of “walk the talk” is an oversimplification of what I’m describing. As our company’s chief operating officer and co-founder, I can’t do every single person’s job alongside them. Rather, it’s more about how I act in my own position and how I relate to them that’s relevant to leadership.

My accountabilities in fostering a performance-driven, inspiring company culture at Celero align with how I act toward others here in three key areas:  showing integrity, creating and keeping lines of communication open, and being a good human being.

Showing Integrity

Personal integrity refers to one’ ability to live in accordance with their code of ethics, or values.  When we live by our values—when we walk the talk—we are strengthened by our own internal sense of integrity and are perceived by others as having high credibility. 

When we strive to live with integrity and are perceived by others as having high credibility, this overlapping or alignment of values is what we desire.  For me, it means being authentic, following through on my commitments, and keeping promises. It also means saying no to opportunities that compromise us, our people, or our partners in any way.

Communication, Communication, Communication

When people know they can count on you, the next step is to simply stay in touch, whether that person works next door or in a remote location relative to your own.  Often it means just being seen, present, and accessible.  When we sit down and talk to people, it’s imperative that we’re present, focused, and actively listening.

Communication in a growing company takes on a lot of forms. People need to hear from their leaders when big things like acquisitions happen. But they also need to hear from us frequently on the many projects and pieces of work that drive us forward each day.  If things are going well, they need to hear that praise and credit given appropriately. And if things aren’t going so well, they need us to keep it real and keep it direct. Folks can’t improve at what they’re doing without something real and true for holding themselves accountable.

I have to admit, communicating frequently and appropriately about our progress together is one of the larger challenges of a fast-growing company like Celero.  Better communication is a goal for me this year at work and at home.

Being a Good Human

It’s hard to remember sometimes that we’re all just people. We get wrapped up in everything we’ve got going on, as well as meeting the expectations of others and ourselves at work. Another way for us as leaders to make people feel like they are at a home away from home, a place where they can work safely to achieve their goals, is to offer them constant reminders of our humanity.

This means keeping your door open, figuratively and literally, where people can share with you anything and everything that’s troubling them and impeding their progress, both on work projects and growing as an individual. It’s also important, while you have that door open, to keep yourself open; that is, show all aspects of your personality, whether it’s your sense of humor, irreverence, or alternative ways of thinking. When we as leaders show our complete selves—as opposed to “Work Jeff” versus “Home Jeff”—our people will be more comfortable in their own skin, and our team, our customers, and our partners will see more benefit as well.

When people work in an environment facilitated by honesty, communication, and treating people in ways where we can all express our full humanity, great things happen. We don’t just talk about these things, but rather, we do them. While I’m certainly not perfect, abiding by these principles and acting upon them mindfully as much as I can leads to much of my personal success in working with others.

Kevin Jones January 27, 2020 I recently had an opportunity, a long time in the making, to go back to my hometown in Ashe County, North Carolina and address the latest graduating class of a wonderful regional leadership development program, Leadership Ashe.

While I certainly took a few moments to reminisce about the past, I found it appropriate to think along with these impressive, selfless folks about how we shape the future by how we approach the present. While not an original concept—it’s often attributed to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and seen in faith devotionals—I love the idea that “today is day one.”

What a great idea that is for approaching the new year that’s upon us, the notion that today is day one. It’s about so many things, depending on your context. In a faith journey, for example, today is day one often means shedding the burdens of yesterday, those areas where you fell short of your best, the ways in which you hurt others, or the guilt you carry from these times of your life. Being our best selves means not being self-defeating.

I consistently think of the today is day one concept and try to apply it to my work here at Celero. And when I do so, it’s almost the opposite of that faith journey, where you’re setting yourself free of yesterday’s troubles. Don’t get me wrong—I’m all for leaving failure behind, after taking your necessary lessons from that to make yourself stronger. Rather, it’s more about the concept of the value we bring, to our company, to each other, to our customers.

As we sit here in January of 2020, the beginning of year two at Celero, after a very successful first year, it’s still day one. The journey still lies ahead of us. The mistakes, beliefs, and achievements of the past certainly help dictate our starting point, but it’s all in front of us yet again. And most importantly, to stay fresh as leaders, we have to come in and look at things with the perspective that it is our first day on the job. That’s how new leaders and consultants are initially impactful. They don’t have the legacy skeletons, pride of authorship, relationships, and barriers built slowly over time. They come in with fresh eyes, identify the issues, and solve them.  I challenge myself and my generals to do the same every year:  “What would you do if you knew nothing and no one and this was your first day?”

I love how this concept applies to everyone, whether you’re a young high school student, somebody’s grandmama, or a 48-year-old fintech executive like me. Thinking about one of my favorite Avett Brothers lyrics—”Decide what to be, and go be it”—my own concept of day one means that we start all over again. We start all over in proving our value to others, fulfilling our individual purpose, providing for others in our lives, and impacting our communities.  I must do all of these things in my role as CEO at Celero, and day one means being accountable to everyone in my life and my pre-ordained purpose in this world, to use my gifts and the qualities others develop within me to shape a better future.

Yesterday’s gone, today is right in front of us, and tomorrow is coming like a rocket. What will you do today, on your day one, to shape a better future?

Somebody recently asked me what I love about working at Celero, and I thought of an answer much as you’d expect a veteran marketer to give.  Anyone and everyone in the marketing world has accepted the basic foundation of the profession as the “Four Ps.”  The concept that balancing price, product, promotion, and placement is the secret to managing your marketing mix has been marketing canon since 1960, and it’s just as relevant today.

For anyone interested in knowing what working at Celero is like, I’d like to advance that we have our own Four Ps.  The first P for me is People.  From our CEO down to our newest employee, everybody brings something special to work every day. Everyone here is committed to building a high-performance culture, where we set new standards for customer-centered innovation and our commitment to be a high-tech, high touch company. We are a diverse group of women and men, people fresh out of school and industry veterans with decades of experience, from all sorts of socio-economic backgrounds, and as my colleague Abigail Lucier has so eloquently noted, we take that diversity and unify with our sense of purpose to make our company great.

My second P is Productivity.  Our people are driven, and I love working with people who are determined to be successful and are willing to live by daily measurements of success. Those measurements could put a bad P—pressure—on us at times, but at our company, we have a highly collaborative culture. We have big goals, but only because our customers and partners have big needs to fill. At Celero, we want to become the household name for small and midsized merchants looking to grow quickly and sustainably, which is a monumental challenge as we enter year two of our existence. But here’s the rub, and it’s good: You never feel like you’re in it alone, because this team always has your back. We succeed together, and we sometimes fail together, but in all things, we produce together.

The third P of working at Celero is Passion.  We have people who seriously love what they do. We have multiple people at every level of the company who have been working in payments and fintech for decades, and they act like it’s their first day on the job. They love making a difference in the success stories of our small and medium-sized business customers.  They love making our various partner financial institutions more effective for their merchants as well. This passion isn’t just palpable at our offices across the country, it’s also contagious, and it drives you to give your best, too.  

Perhaps most exciting is our fourth P, Possibilities. A driving ethos of our team at Celero is to never accept that we’ve “arrived.” When you’re in the business of technology and working to solve problems for customers, applications and challenges will continue to evolve. Being arrogant about our success will be the first element of our failure, so we are committed to being humble and go about our work each day creating possibilities for the future, for our partners, our merchants, and our people.

I’m sure others could come up with their own ways of expressing why they love working at Celero, but the Four Ps work for me!

Abigail Lucier December 20, 2019 In the digital era, society has created what I think of as a cult of leadership. Whether it’s somebody like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (and I could go on and on), we’re groomed to worship these super-geniuses. As I think about culture, it dawns on me that we never hear about any of the thousands of people who work for these companies. Do you really think that Steve Jobs, or his successor, Tim Cook, had or has all of the great ideas at Apple? That’s silly, but it’s also where we are as a society.

As we are celebrating Celero’s first year, I’ve found a particular aspect of our emerging culture not only noteworthy, but also something that’s actually changed how I choose to interact with my colleagues here. I’ve witnessed this dynamic on a daily basis, so I know it’s not a fad or a fluke. What I’m talking about is selfless leadership.

Many of us are taught that in order to compete and win in corporate life, we need to be a little selfish and make sure we take credit for successful outcomes. What I witness here, from leaders like Jeff Brown, Kevin Jones, and many others, is a simple sharing of the wealth or giving credit to any and all who deserve it and doing so openly.  

My job is in project management, and at a startup like Celero, those projects can be anything from overseeing an office buildout, managing an integration, or guiding a workstream. When I think about getting in the weeds of a project, the day-to-day grind, and the overall amount of calories that we’re all spending together on a project, I often pause to also think of the amount of people, intellect, and the overall amount of blood, sweat and tears that can go into every project all the way through to completion. It’s humbling to think of all the people that are involved in everything we do. And then I think about the number of times that I have heard our leaders Jeff or Kevin, or Scott Farace or Jim Harris, call out people who played pivotal roles in a project’s success.  When they give this credit, they not only do so publicly, but also never take credit themselves. For our leaders, it’s all about the team. While they are all industry veterans and actual thought leaders in payments and fintech, you’ll never see cults of leadership developing around them, because they prefer to share the success.

To me, this selfless leadership dynamic is perhaps one of the most inspiring things that I’ve witnessed since joining Celero. To see how natural it is for these guys to sit there and publicly give credit where it’s due, and to really make it a point to not stand up and say “I did it, it was me,” and to actually do the opposite of that. To not take credit for anything, to stand back and say, “I could not have done this without you, you, you, and you,” well, that’s significant.

Furthermore, the people they recognize are often those who probably think that their names would never be recognized or brought up in conversation. For me, this kind of recognition, whether fulfilled or neglected, can be what makes or breaks an employee—I firmly believe that. So being able to win as a team and to lose as a team, but to also give credit and to pat someone on the back when they have done an incredible job is incredibly noteworthy. This culture of the selfless leader is one of the driving forces behind our culture at Celero, and as we grow, our leadership will naturally expand to include many others. I am confident that this element of our culture is something that we will continue to embed in who we are and prove foundational to our success as we move forward.

Kevin Jones November 26, 2019 Growing up in the High Country of my native North Carolina, I’ve always loved to ski. For a mountain boy like me, being on a snowy slope with friends or family is truly my happy place.

I can remember the first time I went skiing with a few good friends, included among them was Travis Mash, my best friend to this day. My first trip to the local slopes was a big one—we skied for three days straight. The first day, we all fell down A LOT, and we laughed about it together that night. The next day, Travis and I continued to fall quite a bit, while one of our friends fell a little, and two guys in our party of five didn’t fall once!

On the final day, Travis and I still fell down a ton, one guy fell a few times, and those same two guys didn’t fall at all.  You’d be accused of being reasonable if you thought that the two guys who quit falling after day one were the smart ones in our group. And maybe they were, in the eyes of some.  But only two of us were skiing the most difficult slopes—known in ski parlance as black diamonds. And while I don’t know about those other three, I’m still skiing those black diamonds.

There are a few good lessons here. First, you need to set high goals for yourself, and everyone knows this to be true. But the second lesson is just as important, if not more so:  to succeed, you have to be willing to fall down to progress. Third, it’s always easier to push yourself to take risks and succeed when you see others around you doing the same. Thanks, Travis, for inspiring me way back then and even today. 

As we continue to talk about building a high-performance culture, I’m often asked what the driving ethos of a company should be, in order to reach this aim. Many people mistakenly think that it’s simply down to setting big goals and holding people accountable to them. While pushing people to achieve big things is certainly a fundamental behavior to success, every behavior stems from a mentality or philosophical approach.

Not all of these mentalities or approaches are good. Many are as simple as giving big rewards to those who close business and firing those who don’t—think of it as the Glengarry Glen Ross philosophy (“Coffee is for closers!”). While that makes for a fun movie experience, it’s not a recipe for leading people to big, sustainable success. Neither is the “getting people to buy in” approach—leading people to achieve new heights isn’t about persuasion.

So, what’s it all about? If you think about it, building a business successfully, whether you’re performing a role here at Celero or working in a small business, is about freedom.  It’s about the freedom to think, the freedom to create, and the freedom to necessarily reinvent yourself and your strategy on a daily basis. To achieve sustained growth, you can’t just repeat what made you successful yesterday. Every business in America has competition, and those who rest on yesterday’s ideas get their lunch eaten today and tomorrow.

So how do we get this freedom we’re talking about, if we’re not the CEO or business owner. In the case of Celero, it’s about granting every person here that freedom. And it’s not just saying, “Be free and have success!”  That’s as silly as it sounds when you read it aloud. Rather, it’s the opposite—we have to free each other of fear. We can’t be afraid to take risks, make mistakes, and be bold.

I say those three things—taking risks, making mistakes, and being bold—in a certain order for a reason. My team has set some pretty high goals for themselves by which we measure our performance. In fact, like most good teams, we’re constantly raising our standards, based on where our competition lies and especially on customer needs. In order to maintain this commitment to continuous improvement, we don’t need buy-in. We need for people to take risks. It’s only when we take risks that we can better what we did yesterday.

When you take risks in business, as Travis and I did on those black diamonds, you sometimes make mistakes and fail. I happen to believe and know that we hire really intelligent people at Celero—people like Deidra Parsons make sure of that. One thing I’ve observed through the years is that intelligent people aren’t submissive, and they don’t shrink from the challenges they face simply because they’ve failed or made a mistake. They come back harder and stronger—they’re emboldened by their failure to produce and what they’ve learned from it. While nobody likes failure in the moment, the kind of people I’m describing—those true high performers and leaders—begin relishing the challenge all over again even before the wounds have healed.

The best people, who are leaders no matter where they function within an organizational chart, are what I like to call “battle-hardened,” and you can’t be battle-hardened without losing a few along the way. Losing breeds resilience, and resilience is what fuels us for the long haul in life and in business.

Every day, I approach my teams and individuals, listening to their approaches—to see if they’re thinking big enough—and watching how they go about achieving their goals—to see if they are taking those necessary risks to achieve more than they did yesterday. If they’re not thinking big enough and risking enough to sometimes make mistakes, it’s my job to give them that freedom all over again.

And while for each of them it’s about that freedom, for me, it’s simply about cashing that check that I’ve written. The way you give freedom often has less to do with encouraging risk than it does to do with punishing failure. While we can’t tolerate recklessness, we have to give grace to those who abide by these principles of taking risks, making mistakes, and being bold. I find that when you give people even just a little room to see their ideas through, their wild successes far outweigh any temporary setbacks.

Abigail Lucier November 22, 2019 As I continue to think about our culture and what will make it strong, I notice that many companies fall short of creating great cultures because they only focus on the positive. While positive recognition is certainly very important and completely missing in many workplaces, it’s only half of the equation.

It’s important to recognize hard work, great efforts, and outstanding performance results, but you’ll fail to optimize your culture if you neglect to recognize and accept mistakes as genuine human error. This second piece is equally, if not more, important as you give people the time to find the right answers and prevent the same mistakes in the future. To achieve this, our leaders must extend a measure of grace to each of us, and they should know our capabilities and motivations well enough to know that we’ll get things right when given the opportunity to grow and learn from a mistake.

Personally, I don’t think that all leaders are capable of this. In fact, this is probably one of the biggest factors that separates the great leaders from the mediocre ones. One thing that seems to unite all of us as humans is not our capabilities, but rather our ability to fall short of a goal. We are united in the fact that we all mess up from time to time. Nobody is perfect. We messed up yesterday, we might mess up today, and we could fall short tomorrow! I think what’s important is what you learn from these shortcomings and failures. If you have a leader that’s there to coach you through a mistake and help prevent it in the future, that’s worth its weight in gold. Instead of beating you over the head with your mistakes, a great leader will position you for success moving forward. You’re ultimately going to win in that situation, every single time.

Don’t get me wrong, while I firmly believe we should all extend a certain amount of tolerance for honest mistakes, that does not excuse poor performance on a consistent basis. The employee must display an aptitude for personal and professional development for these methods to work effectively, or you could find yourself spending calories on someone that would be better suited in another position altogether.

When leaders work with their people to create a culture of grace and equip people to do better—as good people want to do—the right culture is going to emerge. Then, you will have a cultural cornerstone of honesty, where leaders are free to say, “Hey, you made a mistake and I didn’t like it, but here’s what we’re going to have to do to make up for it as we move forward.” At the end of the day, if that same leader can stress to you how important you are to the team, and how they cannot do this without you and they don’t want do this without you, you’ll be able to forge a genuine bond and trust. Leadership that understands human error is inevitable and coaches their team through failures, will not only create a happier workplace but a more productive one as well.

Honesty and trust. Grace and equipping. These are the values upon which we are building a great culture here at Celero.

Abigail Lucier November 8, 2019 A lot of companies talk about their culture, and it’s often a misapplication of the term, when they are really talking about values or drivers of their work. Values without daily action is just an empty gesture, but the way we live our values—and do so together—is when you begin to cultivate a culture. 

When I think of culture, in the world as well as in the workplace, the one word that comes to mind is unity. I think of people coming together with genuine acceptance of one another and individuals being recognized and appreciated for who they are.

Celero is a large and fast-growing company with a wealth of diversity in thought and backgrounds. It’s this unique combination of individuals coming together that makes working at Celero special. I’ve developed an appreciation for this diversity that helps me become a better project manager.

It’s important to recognize that diversity brings many life and work perspectives to the table. We see the value of diversity, in our operations at Celero, on a daily basis. Each employee has something different to offer the company, whether they have 20 years in the industry or are coming to Celero fresh from other sectors.

I think that we, not only as a society but also as a working team, must recognize that it is through our differences and our individual qualities that we can actually become united in one thing. And that one thing is that we are all different, and we all have something unique to offer.

At Celero, unity doesn’t mean we all have to think or believe the same things; it’s quite the opposite, actually. We welcome a variety of thoughts and opinions, and we believe that our differences make us a stronger team. A strong, unified sense of teamwork can be felt in both our internal communications as a company, and in what we do for our clients.

When it comes to culture, I don’t believe that one person is more impactful than the other as none of us can do this independently, without the help or assistance of other team members. The moment you try to identify the impact one can have or contribution one should make, based on something like title, is the moment you will start to limit one’s ability to make an impact. This could be counterproductive to establishing a strong culture as I believe a healthy culture is one that empowers each team member to be held to the same standard.   

The power of having a strong company culture shouldn’t be underestimated, as there is a remarkable amount of trust that transpires for this to happen successfully. We don’t just work alongside each other at Celero; we take individual ownership in what we do. Each person is expected to carry their responsibilities by owning them. We’ve found that team members are genuinely happier, as well as more productive, when they can cultivate freely. When you are trusted to do a job, you feel empowered and inspired to do more and this is a significant indicator of what our culture is like at Celero. 

Every company culture is going to be different.  Regardless of the individual characteristics that make your company special, unity is an inherent part of any strong company culture. It is through these differentiating, individual characteristics that we can come together as one team.

Kevin Jones October 1, 2019 I’ve been tasked with leadership for most of my career. People often ask me what it takes to be an effective leader, and I often answer that to become a good leader, you need to be a good follower first. Subscribing to this maxim is important for people at all levels of an organization. Even as a CEO, I must follow the leadership of my board of directors, which includes some of my most trusted advisors and investors.

Here are just a few of the important ways we can develop ourselves as followers, so that our leaders can help us reach our full potential.

Be Character-Driven

Being a leader or follower takes character, because having character is the foundation upon which we build trust with others. Being character-driven yields great credibility in friendships, marriage, and parent-child relationships, and it’s just as effective in professional life.

Anyone who reads my work knows that there are two character-defining values that I hold above all others:  respect and humility.  Those who respect others—not based on job titles or perception of power—but on personal merit, show that they are open to learning. When you place respect on others, you are, in fact, anointing them to share their views as equals. Respect shows honor, and you’ll get honor in return.

The other big character-driver for me, the yang to respect’s yin, is humility.  When you are humble, you are literally placing your own ego in submission to your desire to learn. In effect, it’s doubling down on the respect you place on those who merit that respect. You’re effectively saying to them, I can’t do this alone, and I know you have something valuable to contribute. When a true leader detects both respect and humility on your part, there is no limit to what you can achieve together.

Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes

I work very hard to create cultures where my team and I can take risks in the service of our clients, stakeholders, and each other. When you’re all in it together, there should be room for everyone to take the risks necessary to raise their performance standards higher day after day. I often tell team members that you will not ever “ski the blacks” unless you are willing to fall.

To be a good follower and leader, it’s imperative that you take risks. No leader can afford to manage to the status quo, which is the enemy of growth. Rather than covering your behind, you need to put yourself forward, knowing that you’re going to fail sometimes. A true leader will recognize those who fail, learn from those failures, and achieve even bigger success along the way as the greatest assets of their organization.

Be Accountable

While it’s fine to take risks and make mistakes, it’s unacceptable to lack accountability. Accountability, like respect and humility, is a character-driver and trust-builder. When your leaders know you are accountable, they are more likely to give you plum assignments that will help you grow, because they trust you. Whenever I need to delegate leadership in an area, a person’s accountability is just as important as their performance. Just like a mutual fund disclaimer—past performance is not an indication of future returns—we know that counting on someone means that you’re able to trust them when the chips inevitably are down.

It’s also critical to helping your leadership assess where real problems lie in an organization or externally. If you’re willing to step up and own your mistakes, it’s that much easier—in this business world that often feels like it moves at the speed of light—for everyone to re-chart the course necessary to achieve the goal.   Being accountable is not only right from a moral perspective, but also from a practical point-of-view. Accountability increases efficiency. The fact of the matter is that any good business is going to make mistakes, and the higher the accountability in the organization, the more time we spend fixing problems and the less time wasted on figuring them out.  

Seek Mentorship

This world is bigger than all of us, so we need to know that we’re in it together, not just as teams, but with someone who has our back. At every level of my career—performer, manager, middle manager, executive, founder, and CEO—I’ve had at least one, if not several go-to mentors. 

Mentors can do many great things for you. They can validate your great ideas, shoot down your terrible concepts, or help you work through those that deserve more attention. They can help you trust your instincts or help you identify situations where you might need to gather more data versus making a gut move.

Perhaps most of all, mentors can help us by simply being good humans. Those of us who care about being the best we can be at home and at work can be our own worst critics. I can tell you genuinely that one of my favorite aspects of mentoring is helping someone I love to pick themselves up after a failure.  Giving that energy back to someone who works hard, is trustworthy, and is full of that humility and respect I covet is a real blessing to me.  

See a Bigger Picture than Your Own

When you decide to become a great follower, it’s also imperative that you’re able to see a bigger picture than the one that’s your routine perspective. We have to empathize with our leaders to know how they contextualize their decisions, so that we can have greater understanding and meet the needs of their organization.

There’s always a bigger picture. If you’re a sales performer, your manager may have full profit-and-loss responsibility that forces certain frameworks on their decisions, contrary to your own context that’s centered on revenue.  Even as wide and complicated of a perspective as I have in my CEO role, does my leadership at LLR, our major investor, have a bigger picture than Celero? Of course they do, and what we achieve needs to fit in the context of their entire investment portfolio.

It’s easier to see how to be a good follower when you don’t have any management or leadership responsibilities. Many of you reading these thoughts of mine, however, have those kinds of responsibilities. You must be extra diligent to not only build your leadership, but also strive to become a better follower every day. Here’s the best part—doing both adds up to being a successful professional, and more importantly, a better person.