Leading the Way Podcast: Tom Leppert, Former CEO, Turner Construction
As the former mayor of the city of Dallas, Texas, and CEO of multiple companies, Tom Leppert is able to provide a unique perspective on the leadership differences between the private and public sectors. In this week’s episode of the i4cp radio show and podcast Leading the Way, we discuss the challenges leaders face today, the responsibility of community involvement, and the importance of diversity and inclusion.
Tom shares his expert opinions on what makes a city attractive for businesses, how he accomplished this in Dallas, and what CEOs look for when considering relocation. He delivers his personal strategy of how “framing issues in a different way is what makes the difference,” a valuable lesson he learned while working in the White House during the Ronald Reagan administration.
Tom also addresses his concerns of trust and transparency in government, providing keen insight on what needs to change in order to succeed in the future, while also pointing out how these same principles apply to the business world.
Key Soundbites
- Advice to young professionals – “I tell people what you need to do is feel underwater. Get much more from an experience than you think you can handle because that’s really the only way you can grow.”
- On leadership - “Set a vision, a direction, where you want it to go, have that sense of where you need to be, and then marshal the resources to accomplish that.”
- On innovation – “Understand how you frame problems and how you approach problems from different perspectives.”
- On trust - “If you, as a leader or as an organization don’t have trust, you cease to have any credibility to lead or to exist, and that’s one of the challenges that we have today. When you’re losing trust in institutions, then those institutions don’t have the foundation to survive. An individual leader has to have trust. The trust comes from diversity, a set of ethical values, principles and consistency in knowing their interests are secondary to the organization or to the people.”
- On community – “I am a great believer that we all have an obligation to return something to the communities that we participate in. Corporate executives get so isolated that they don’t understand the real world. And so if you get involved in organizations in the community, you really see the real world.”
About Leading the Way
Leading the Way is a weekly radio show and podcast series that highlights influential business leaders and leading people practices from i4cp. Co-hosted by Emmy award-winning television anchor and radio host, Scott Murray, and i4cp’s Angel Carlton, the show features interviews with respected business leaders from the world of business, sports, entertainment, healthcare and philanthropy.
The show airs live every Sunday at 4 pm CT on KLIF 570 in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, the global audience is invited to listen live on www.klif.com and the weekly podcast debuts on iTunes or Google Play and the i4cp website the following week.