Page 38 - Fearless Leadership

What It Means to Be a Fearless Leader 25

The Impact. Word spread quickly about the senior team’s new
behavior, and people tested the senior leaders to make sure it would
last. They found that leaders who were former adversaries now
worked well together.
Lewis and his senior leadership team chose to transform the
entire company starting with their leadership body of 200. Leaders
and employees learned the same behaviors and methodology for
working together in high performance teams and transformed the
organization. The turnaround: profits increased tenfold, and the
portfolio grew from $4.5 billion to over $15 billion. Product inno-
vation soared with 60 percent of the business coming from new
products. The company was publicly recognized as one of the
top 10 employers in Canada, and employee engagement scores,
measured by an outside third party, climbed from 69 percent to
85 percent.
Lesson Learned. It takes only one leader to start the process and
build a high performance organization. Lewis did not wait for things
to happen; he made things happen. His courage to transform the
leadership body, then the organization, inspired everyone to learn
and grow. The company transformed from “good enough” to becom-
ing a world-class organization in which people today continue to pro-
duce unprecedented business results.

Fearless leaders like Lewis create a powerful context for change and
unleash people’s courage. They create an environment in which people
take 100% accountability for business results and their impact on others.
In this uncommon atmosphere, people work together as committed part-
ners and stand for the success of each other. They coach each other on
blind spots, turn automatic behavior into extraordinary behavior, and rap-
idly resolve challenges.

IT ONLY TAKES ONE PERSON TO CHANGE
You do not need to wait for others to change or hope that the organiza-
tion will wake up and transform. You have the power to influence change,
and fearless leadership provides you with the methodology.