Name: Nucor CEO Says Trust Is Key to Being a Great Leader
Uploaded: 2016-10-11
Duration: 4 min 8 s
Description: John Ferriola explains

People are talking a lot about leadership these days, especially with the presidential election coming up. As a CEO, what do you think makes a great leader? What is the key characteristic you look for? A good leader has to have passion okay. He has to have integrity, and he has to have courage. If the leader doesn't have passion for his company, for his business, for what he does the team is not going to have the passion in whatever sport or business that is. You need to have integrity without integrity you cannot enlist the trust of your team and without their trust it's a problem. And the last thing I always say is courage, because courage is important. Sometimes, you really have to have a lot of courage to truly have integrity, particularly when no one is watching. right? It usually takes a lot of courage to have complete integrity. And that's why courage is also a factor. People say about you that you delegate a lot, you empower your employees What is your leadership style like? Describe it. I'm a people person. I love talking to people. I got to tell you, I don't like email. Okay / I don't like text messages. I like to talk to people. A great tool that I've discovered that I use a lot is face time, because it allows me to make the call, limit the travel but still look into the person's eyes. And at the end of the day, if you want to really understand what's happening with your team on a issue that's happening with a teammate, you need to look at them. I understand that Nucor has never laid off any of its employees, and this goes back to the 60s. Why is this an important policy for your leadership? We constantly say, as many of our competitors say, our teammates are our most important asset. Well, how do you look at someone and say you are our most important asset? At least until business gets bad in which time we're gonna put you out on the street. That doesn't work. That doesn't elicit trust between management and the team. Our team is our most important asset and the way that we show it to them, the way that we convince them, convince them that we really mean this is during the worst of times we do not lay them off. So leadership is a lot about vision and it's about a corporate culture and getting people to follow that corporate culture. So what is your message To the people who work at Newcor when it comes to leadership. When I met with the leader, the message I give them is, if you got good people, okay, trust them. Let them make the decisions. Let them do their work, okay. Also, when it comes leadership, I tell them, first thing I tell people when they come in to my office and to elevate to a leadership position. You know, this is gonna sound unusual to you but lead with a servant's heart, okay. We are there to serve our teammate make sure they have what they need to do. People ask me all the time, how many people work for you today? And I tell them, none but I work for 24, 000 people. My job is to make sure they have what they need. For their success because of what their success we have new course success. John you have spent your whole career in the steel business. First at Bethlehem Steel and then at Newcore for many, many years rising up to become the CEO. What's What's the best leadership advice that you ever got and why did it guide you over so many years? Well there was two people that had really large influence on my leadership style. The first was a gentlemen with Bethlehem Steel when I worked for that company, he was Mike Zier. And the most recently Band Miko was was my predecessor at New Core. And both of them gave me a very similar message, and that's why it stuck with me cuz they were both great leaders. I admired them, and both basically said the same thing. Work hard, work harder, and work hardest, okay? And the second piece of advice that they gave me was this. Trust your team, empower your team. You can't do it all yourself Okay. Make sure that your team knows you trust them. Give them the ability and the opportunity to make decisions. Respect them. Okay, appreciate them. And have an interest in them. And if you do all of that you'll be a good leader, and if you're a good leader your team will perform for you. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]