This blog post is the first in a series that will dive deeper into The Principles of Truly Human Leadership, from the revised and expanded 10th anniversary edition of Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family. The revised edition will be available October 21, 2025.
I came from a very traditional business education.
I received my MBA and I started my career as an accountant before my father invited me to join Barry-Wehmiller, where I became CEO upon his untimely death in 1975.
For the first half of my 50 years as CEO, I did what I was taught to do. I was a nice guy, but I played by the traditional rules of business. I focused on increasing revenue and shareholder returns. I saw people as functions for my success. If we needed to lay people off to balance the budget sheet, so be it.
I managed people, I did not lead them.
Things began to change for me when I started having what I call revelations about leadership. These were ideas that just came to me. I would ascribe them to a higher power because I had no understanding of how I came to these ideas on my own. They were so foreign to the way I was taught and the way I approached my career in business.
In all my education and early experience, I was never taught the true responsibility of leadership.
A 40 Hour Week Opportunity
When I was in my 30s, facing the challenges of raising a blended family of six children while leading a struggling company. I was fortunate to be part of a vibrant church led by an inspirational rector, Ed Salmon. I envied how he had the opportunity to touch the 500 members of the congregation with his message week after week.
As I listened to his sermon one Sunday morning, it dawned on me that I too had a congregation — a much larger one comprised of the thousands of team members in our business. And while Ed had only one hour per week to reach his audience, we have our team members 40 hours each week.
In that pew on that Sunday morning, I realized that my leadership of the business was a tremendous opportunity to touch the lives of those in my care.
Everyone is Someone's Precious Child
Some years later, I attended the wedding of my good friend’s daughter.
There I sat on that day, enjoying the splendor of the scene unfolding before me: The proud father walking his precious daughter down the aisle. Her mother smiling adoringly from her seat of honor in the front row. Both parents filled with hope and excitement about the life that awaited their precious daughter.
Upon reaching the altar, the bride’s father offered his daughter’s hand to the groom and then spoke the ceremonial words “Her mother and I give this daughter to be wed.” Those words, of course, are tradition. The meaning behind them, however, is deeper: “We trust you with our daughter, a most precious human being, and expect through your union you will love her and take great care of her and allow her to grow into all that she was meant to be.”
And that was the moment that it became crystal clear: every single one of Barry-Wehmiller’s team members are like that young lady. They are not functions for my success. They are people. Every single one of them is someone’s precious child, with hopes and dreams for a future through which they can realize their full potential.
As leaders, when someone “walks down the aisle” into our organization, we are called to be stewards of that life.
These were two of the experiences that shaped my understanding that we must view leadership as a responsibility—an awesome responsibility.
The Impact of Your Influence
According to many sources, we spend 1/3 of our lives at work or 90,000 hours of our lifetime. And that number was calculated at only 36.5 hours a week! Just as I realized in that pew many years ago, that’s a tremendous amount of time that is spent within the care of a leader. A tremendous amount of time for inspiration or fulfillment or discouragement or worse.
And if every one of those people who spend so much time with us, the people we are privileged to lead, is someone’s precious child, we are bestowed with the awesome responsibility to provide the care and inspiration and support that that precious human being needs to become everything he or she was meant to be.
The weight of the responsibility of the privilege of leadership gets even heavier with another realization: The way we lead impacts the way people live. The conditions, environment, and relationships dictated by your job profoundly shape your overall health and well-being.
Though I became aware of my influence on our team members during work hours, when I grasped the ripple effect my leadership has on our team members’ lives outside the workplace, it was profound.
Embracing the Responsibility of Leadership
In my business school education and experience in the business world, I was never told that the way I would lead Barry-Wehmiller would impact people’s health and the way they would treat their family. I thought it was all about paying people fairly and giving them a competitive benefits package in return for their role in our organization.
The one thing they very rarely teach you in business school is the way we lead impacts the way people in our span of care live— how they treat their families, how they engage with their communities, and how they experience life.
The first of the Principles of Truly Human Leadership is: Leadership is a privilege. Leaders need to embrace the profound responsibility for the lives entrusted to them.
This is now my calling, to help other leaders understand the impact their leadership has on the lives of others.