Leading by example – Jonathan Fanning

Jonathan Fanning

Author Jonathan Fanning spoke at this summer’s National Pest Management Association’s (NPMA’s) Academy event about about leadership and who we are becoming as leaders. He’s an advocate of being a leader in both your personal life and professional career.

Fanning defines being a leader as establishing a trust factor. He wants to make sure that people know they can trust him, that he cares about them, and that he is there to help them. This would be applicable to employees and customers as well, establishing those great relationships by earning the trust of those people in your business and continuing to make sure they know you want to help them. Here are a few additional points Fanning made:

• Love, care, serve.
• Create a memory, make the memory and make the time, spend the time.
• Make a “reality check” for yourself. Build one, whatever you need it to be. He gave as an example the story of how one foodservice CEO does a reality check every week by just giving himself the number “25.” He would go to 25 of his stores and monitor them, to create an atmosphere of him being a leader — and creating more leaders within the culture of each location.
• You as a leader in your life are the only one who can make what you dream or want to create happen. Find what you want your thumbprint to be and create it. Fanning shared how Walt Disney had a dream for an “Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.” What Disney needed, he created, and that model became EPCOT.
• Engage others. Pull them in with you.
• Look for a way to lead within your companies and have leadership goals. Challenge yourself. “You’ll find setting these goals will have a ripple effect within your company culture and atmosphere,” Fanning told the audience. If you are in a meeting, spending time with family, etc., be there. Be present in that moment to create those memories.

CLARK is general manager of Dugas Pest Control of Baton Rouge, La., and chair of the National Pest Management Association’s Leadership Development Group. TESH is sales and service manager of Pest Management Systems, Greensboro, N.C. Contact them via PMPEditor@northcoastmedia.net.