I’ve been consulting for many years with an international food safety company called Neogen, and their products are a big reason why you can trust the milk, beef, and pork you buy at the supermarket. Every year they send their executives to my heart-led leader retreats, so I’ve got a pretty good feel for their quality of leadership.
The Director of Sales and Marketing at Neogen is a guy named Tom Schultz. If you remember the old Marlboro ads from back in the day, well, Tom is the closest thing to the Marlboro Man I’ve ever seen. He’s got the jeans, the cowboy hat, that buttery Southern drawl—he’s straight out of central casting. When I fly to Lincoln, Nebraska, to meet with the Neogen team, Tom picks me up from the airport in his pickup truck looking like he just finished driving cattle. Then, he’ll tip his cowboy hat and cook me the best ribeye steak I’ve ever had.
Despite his high-powered job title, you’ve probably guessed that Tom isn’t your typical corporate executive. He didn’t study economics at Yale and go on to business school at Harvard. Actually, Tom used to be a firefighter. He routinely risked his life to run into burning buildings. When you and I think about teamwork, we think about getting tasks done efficiently, about crushing a presentation, or closing a big deal. For Tom, it means everyone getting out alive. Teamwork meant having the back of the guy next to you and knowing that they had your back, too. In my world, if a team fails, you lose money. In Tom’s, you lose a life.
“We all knew if we didn’t perform as a team, we would all die,” Tom told me recently. “We all performed our jobs knowing that.” Now, since Tom transitioned away from the firehouse and into Corporate America, he’s striving to bring his understanding of how teams function with him. These days it seems that everyone is out for the biggest paycheck, that loyalty only extends as far as your benefits package. The person next to you in the board room has your back as long as their Christmas bonus is bigger than last year’s. Tom readily admits that it’s sometimes a struggle identifying genuine leaders—the kind he took for granted in the firehouse when he was surrounded by people who would literally put their life on the line for each other. Yet he succeeds because he looks for the kind of traits you don’t find on a traditional resume.
Kenny Stauffer knows firsthand just how special of a leader Tom Schultz is. Or, more importantly, just how special working for a heart-led leader like Tom is. Kenny recently shared with me that Tom is the only boss he’s ever had that would run into a burning fire for him. That Tom would take a bullet…literally die for his team. You can imagine just how much trust, love and accountability is on Tom’s team.
Now, I’ve never been a firefighter. I’ve never run into a burning building to rescue someone. But I understand just how special genuine loyalty is. For fifteen years, the person who had my back was Cathy DeGraff. She was my right-hand woman way back when I was CEO of Up With People, and then she helped me start my own organization. For fifteen years she was the Chief Operating Officer of Tommy Spaulding Companies in charge of the day-to-day operations of both my for-profit and nonprofit operations. I trusted Cathy with my life. I would have run into a burning building to save her, and she would have run into one to save me. That’s not the kind of loyalty you find on a LinkedIn profile.
Cathy retired two years ago, and I’ve struggled ever since to fill her shoes. Two COOs have come and gone since her. They had all the right credentials, all the right education, all the right work experience, but they weren’t firefighter leaders. It wasn’t until I looked past the resume that I finally found my next Cathy. Her name is Danielle Charest, and I hired her because she looked me in the eye and promised to have the backs of everyone in our organization, no matter what.
If you’ve been reading my blogs, you’ll know that my stepson, Anthony, is a sophomore at the United States Military Academy at West Point. What I’ve realized watching him grow as a man is that leadership has nothing to do with your credentials. It has nothing to do with what corporate America calls “domain expertise.” Pop quiz: what school has produced the most high-level executives in the history of the United States? It’s not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or any of the Ivies. It’s West Point Military Academy—a place where you go to serve your country and learn to be part of a team. West Point alumni have been CEOs of massive corporations like Johnson & Johnson, Equinix, Procter & Gamble, 7-Eleven, SoFi, and countless others. You don’t go there to learn how to make profit-and-loss statements, but that hasn’t stopped West Point from being the most successful “business school” in the world.
After Anthony graduates and finishes his tour of duty with the U.S. Army, he’ll have his pick of where to work because companies are starving for leadership. They’re starving for firefighter leaders like Tom Schultz, who understands what it actually means to have another person’s back. They’re starving for firefighter leaders like Cathy DeGraff, who knows more about loyalty and quiet competence than anyone who’s ever graduated from Harvard or Yale.
If you are in the position of hiring someone in a leadership role at your organization, maybe it’s time to put down the resume and look past the GPA, MBA, CPA, or whatever other three-letter credentials we’ve been told matter. Keep watch for firefighters, policewoman, Army Rangers, public-school teachers, nurses, or anyone who’s had to truly look out for another person day in and day out. They’re the ones who will introduce real leadership skills into your organization and redefine its culture. And when it matters most, they won’t run for a slightly higher paycheck. They will have your back—every time.