Name: Jeff Charron

Title: Director, Organizational Effectiveness, Culture, and Change

Organisation: Pratt & Whitney

Jeff Charron is the Director, Organizational Effectiveness, Culture, and Change at Pratt & Whitney. Jeff and his team focus on the strategy and leadership to help deliver solutions that drive results, evolve the culture, and promote a best-in-class employee experience.

Jeff has been married to his wonderful bride of 29 years and has four children ranging in ages from 22 to 11. Additionally, he is a retired Air Force Officer and Master Executive Coach who believes his life’s work is helping others achieve their leadership, personal, and professional goals. A key element and common theme in his leadership philosophy is a belief in a “constant pursuit of better…” as an individual, team, and organization.

Outside of work, Jeff enjoys spending time with his bride celebrating and supporting their children’s interests in addition to cycling and reading. Jeff has a Bachelor's Degree in Human Resources Management, an MBA, and is currently working on a Doctorate in Organizational Leadership.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Jeff's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

A challenge for me as a leader has been managing and aligning strategic and tactical stakeholders. I would not define myself (nor would any one define me) as politically savvy; however, I understand that skill in navigating corporate politics could remove barriers for the team and pave the way for greater degrees of success. Unfortunately, knowledge and skill are very deferent things. I know the importance for a leader to be politically savvy; I am still working on developing the skills to apply it. Luckily, I have people around me that ask the right, tough questions, that force me to slow down and consider the broader landscape.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

My first leadership experience came while serving in the U.S. Air Force. A week after graduating leadership school, my manager called me into his office, congratulated me for graduating at the top of my class, and told me that my reward would be supervising 15 people. I was 23 years old.

My manager was also an exceptional mentor who guided me along the way. This first leadership experience was humbling, terrifying, and rewarding each and every day. This was the moment in time that catalyzed my journey as a life-long student of leadership. I believe there are no leadership experts, we are all practitioners. Since then, the art and science of leadership, and helping people get better at it, has been my passion.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

An ideal and mostly typical work day begins when I get up before 6:00, pour my first (of many) cups of coffee, and dive in to school work for about an hour. It is surprising, even to myself, how much I enjoy this time of day. Reading, researching, and writing about leadership theory and application is almost fun (I can't believe I just said that!)

7:00 is taking kid to school, breakfast, more coffee. I get dressed and logged in to work by 8:00. My work day varies considerably from day-to-day and week-to-week. The typical agenda items are meetings with teams, 1:1s, coaching leaders, facilitating workshops, strategic planning, and tactical reacting. I'm incredibly fortunate that I have a team of brilliant people that often think steps ahead of me. I do my best to keep up and provide value when I can. I try (and mostly succeed) to log off each day by 5:00.

I have a wonderful family life that I don't want to miss. The evenings are often spent playing sports/games with the younger kids, and uber-ing the older kids to their activities. We prioritize family dinner, even if we just stare at each other, we are all there eating a meal together. The night typically ends with reading to my youngest (currently it's Harry Potter...AGAIN).

My home office is in between my sons bedroom and mine, I have a (bad) habit of popping into my office and checking my work phone before bed. As I write this, I realize that there is almost never anything on my phone that couldn't wait until the morning. This is a habit I'm committed to breaking...starting tonight!

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

During my end of year discussions with my team, I asked each of them to provide me feedback and advice on what I could do better as a leader. One simple thing that came to the surface was that I unintentionally could be a blocker of information. I take the information I learn in meetings for granted; I assume if I know it, then everyone must also know it. Obviously this is far from the truth. Since then I've committed to letting information pass through me to my team. I try not to spend meeting time on this; instead I'll send a flow-down e-mail for them to read when they can. I'm still working on building the habit; but recent feedback signals that I'm on the right track.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Multipliers by Liz Wiseman. I have spent the majority of my career as a leadership instructor, advisor, and practitioner. I could spout off all the relevant leadership theories and models of the last century. I thought I new something about leadership. And then I read this book! I realized that the leadership theory and models are great, but through Liz Wiseman's research, experience, and story telling, she was able to bring true leadership to life, through the eyes of the follower.

The premise of the book is we are all accidental diminishers; however, if we thoughtfully adapt our leadership behaviors we could multiply the capability on our teams without adding headcount. I recommend this book more than any other to leaders, aspiring leaders, and those interested in the social phenomenon that takes place between a leader and employee.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

The advice I give to new leaders is to invest in developing your communal leadership behaviors first. These include emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, and listening. These behaviors all lead to trusting relationships which is at the root of successful leaders, teams, and organizations.

Also, as my first leadership mentor told me all those years ago...if you're not constantly reading and learning about leadership, your wrong. None of us are leadership experts, we are all learning practitioners.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

As a new leader in the Air Force, one of my direct reports asked to speak with me about something personal at the end of the duty day. This is a bit unusual, but I wanted to be a good leader so I agreed and spent the remainder of the day leading up to the meeting trying to prepare. I knew he had just come back from a trip back to his hometown so I suspected it had something to do with that.

When the meeting began, I started executing the interpersonal communication checklist I just learned in leadership school, and I was checking all the boxes. Open and establish rapport (check), ask questions to get to the point (check). And that's as far as I got with the checklist.

He shared with me that his high school girlfriend (that he just went home to see) was diagnosed with HIV. To his credit, he knew he was going to floor me with this and gave me a moment to recover. I realized in about 15 seconds, that more than anything else, you have to be a human first. My rank, position, or authority was irrelevant in this moment.

We worked through that conversation and several more in the following weeks. About six months later, he pulled me aside and thanked me for creating the space to help him feel comfortable enough to talk with me about this and just by the fact that I was willing to really sit in this with him, made all the difference for him and his family.

Some people may disagree with me, but I strongly believe that to be effective as a leader you have to actually care about the people you lead. After all, the true measure of a leader is taken through the eyes of the follower. It's the difference between a leader and someone who leads.