Earn Your Respect

Which skills or competencies do you believe are most critical to your leadership success and why?

One thing about my background is I come from a very large family. There were 10 children in my family and I'm number nine of 10 children.

Whoa! Wow.

And so, I learned very quickly how to get along on a team and I knew that I would not always be the center of attention on that team, and in fact, as number nine, I had to earn my respect, and that experience for me really shaped who I am and it's interesting now that I'm also ninth president of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

That's a lucky number, number nine!

And I say number nine is my lucky number, but I understand what it takes to lead within a very strong team of very capable and qualified people, and that's what we have at the Kellogg Foundation and that was my life with my siblings, all very smart and bright; you weren't the smartest, everyone had high levels of intelligence and capacity, and so when you're in that space, as we have in the Kellogg Foundation you have to, I call it using your reverent power, not authoritarian power, not your Queen-King power, but it's more your reverent power: how are you connecting with people? How are you allowing them to continue to believe that their own strengths are valued and respected? And sharing that space where we're all having to earn our own credibility in the moment - it's not a given, and I think that's just who I am, I'm a collaborator, I believe in the gifts and the synergy that people have when they come together.