This isn’t the usual post about SEO, content, or web design. Instead, it’s a look back at what I learned from my father about managing and leading people — lessons that shape how I run Emulent today.
A History
My father grew up in Ridgewood, NJ — the son of a brilliant engineer who held many patents and a schoolteacher of nearly 50 years. He attended Paul Smiths College in northern New York and met my mother while working summers on my grandparents’ farm.
Unlike most careers today, his ran nearly 30 years at the same packaging company (Jefferson Smurfit, later Smurfit-Stone, then Stone Container). He started in the maintenance department fixing the plant’s large machinery, then worked his way up through every position — eventually being appointed GM of the Northeast Region. He later joined a competitor as a production manager and now serves as Regional GM over seven manufacturing facilities across the Northeast and Midwest.
Although I’m still being taught today, below are 11 things I learned from him about business, management, and leading a team. Some lessons have stories behind them; some were observations; others were comments said in passing that grew into convictions.
1. If You Ask Someone to Do Something, Make Sure You Can Do It — or at Least Know What It Takes
My father worked his way up through every position at the plant, learning the skills it took to succeed at each level. That is a big part of why he could relate to everyone in the company — and it is where many managers fall short.
If you hand someone a project, you should understand the scope of the work, the pitfalls that can develop, and what success actually requires. That belief is what pushed me to build my first group of test sites to learn SEO by doing, and later to learn CSS, HTML, and most of the other skills I might ask a team member to use. Learning by doing is still how I sharpen the insights I need to lead well.
2. Provide Solutions
If you point out a problem with a process or product, bring a solution with it. Otherwise you are just being negative. And make the solution more than an opinion — back it with numbers and implementation costs. The more clearly you can prove the value of a solution, the more likely it is to be used.
3. Be Positive
Plenty will go wrong, and plenty of your best suggestions will be overlooked. My father’s advice was simple: stay positive when faced with adversity. There is no perfect job where everyone always agrees with you, so a leader learns to roll with the punches, look at the positive side, and stay persistent.
4. Nothing Takes the Place of Persistence and Determination
My father instilled this Calvin Coolidge quote in me early, and I still know it by heart:
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent.”
It is one of the forces that keeps me pushing forward whenever I am told, “It can’t be done.”
5. Lead by Example
When the plant ran behind schedule, my father went in on weekends — early, before the 6 a.m. shift — and I would tag along. In the middle of the plant, near the big presses and the corrugator, summer temperatures climbed well past 100 degrees.
A brand-new air conditioner sat in his office collecting dust. When I asked why he never turned it on, his answer was immediate: what message would it send to the people working in 100-degree heat if their leader sat in an air-conditioned office? If they don’t have AC, neither do I.
6. Your Job Is to Build Valuable Employees and Teams
When you move from doing the work to leading the people who do it, what you are judged on changes. Your team’s successes and failures are a direct reflection of yours. The job becomes building strong teams and helping each person grow their skills — there really is no “I” in team.
7. Don’t Be Afraid of Conflict
There is a difference between causing conflict to be difficult and causing conflict to make a product or process better. The first moves nothing forward. The second — raising a concern, staying positive, and backing your view with data that explains why the change matters — is how things improve.
8. Close the Loop
If you ask someone to do something, show them the result of what they did — or hold them accountable when it didn’t get done. Closing the loop builds trust in your leadership, builds confidence in your team, and shows every person that their work has unique value toward the team’s goals.
9. Build Confidence
Around the plant I saw every management style: micro-managers, managers who led through fear, and the ones people actually respected. Watching my father talk with team members, his tone always built confidence — he could say exactly what needed to be said while leaving people feeling how valuable they were.
10. Stay in the Trenches, Don’t Separate Yourself
My father was rarely in his office. He was out on the plant floor talking with employees — even if it was just ribbing them about their team losing that weekend. I didn’t realize it then, but he was building rapport and trust by being in the trenches instead of managing from behind a desk.
It is why I have never taken my own office. I would rather work alongside my teammates than be a leader who manages from a distance.
11. You May Not Be Friends Outside of Work, but at Work, You Will Work as a Team
My father coached every baseball and basketball team I played on through junior high. One summer in Ilion, NY, a feud between two of my teammates spilled onto the field and cost us a game. After the game he pulled them aside: whatever issue you two have off the field, it does not come through the gate. Step on the field, leave it outside, respect each other as teammates, and work together to win.
We won the championship all three years the two of them played together.
The Quote on My Desk
I hope these stories give you a few insights for leading your own team — I’m still working many of them into my own style. I’ll leave you with the quote my father gave me just before I left for college. It sits on my desk to this day:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — Theodore Roosevelt