Name: Ron Reich

Title: Founder

Organisation: RLB Training and Development

Ron has 30 years of training and development and consulting experience. His background is broad based, having worked for some major organizations such as Toshiba, The Chubb Corporation and Organon Pharmaceuticals. He's done consulting work in many industries including medical, assisted living facilities, manufacturing, high tech, retail, pharmaceuticals and banking. The majority of his work through these years has focused on leadership/management development along with corporate training and organizational development. An avid reader Ron loves to share the latest thoughts and philosophies about these topics with the groups with whom he works. He's passionate about the work he does and makes the workshops as interactive and fun as possible. His only request is for participants to arrive ready to participate and have some fun along the way.

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

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

Cheers,

Jonno White

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

As a consultant and advisor to leaders, one of the biggest challenges I've encountered is getting Senior Leaders to understand they need training and development. The will talk about how "their people" need it, and not readily commit to improving themselves

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

I'm not sure there's one enough room here to explain. I realized I had the ability to coach, persuade and influence people from early on in my career. Working as a sales trainer and coach, people were listening to me and implementing recommendations and sharing with me how helpful the recommendations were.

As a little baseball coach in my 20s I also helped me to develop my leadership skills. Dealing with the parents of teenage boys and the boys themselves led to great lessons. Setting expectations, giving feedback, coaching and dealing with conflict effectively are all examples.

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

I'm a big believer in Steven Covey's work from the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. From Habit Three (Put First Things First) I schedule my top priorities for each day, including at least an hour a day for myself (Habit Seven, Sharpening the Saw). I make sure they get done and then the lower priority items get done after. I am one who is disciplined and this kind of formal structure works for me.

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

The reinforcement lesson for me was that many times people within organizations are unaware of what their actual needs are and how critical it is to keep asking questions to uncover the true core issues.

A company asked me to come in conduct some management training. After our initial discussions I shared with them that they needed much more than that, formal culture development, senior leadership needed to take place and then we conducted the management training initially requested.

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?

I am a voracious reader and there isn't just one book to which I can refer. For organizational development and culture development, my recommendation is "The Advantage" written by Patrick Lencioni. It's about how organizations need to become "heathy through the development of a formal Mission and how to formulate organizational priorities.

For seasoned leaders, I love the book "Leadership is Language" by David Marquet. He focuses on how much talking are you doing as a leader (it should be very little), the types of questions to ask to elicit solid information from colleagues. For newer leaders I love the book "Leading at a Higher Level" by Ken Blanchard.

He takes the readers through Situational Leadership focusing on the task at hand, along with the readiness level of the person performing the work. Based on that, the leader knows whether to direct, coach, support or delegate. All of these books have impacted my leadership because I refer to them often when speaking with clients, use the techniques themselves and recommend clients read them for further knowledge and reinforcement.

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

Get to know yourself extremely well, the better you know yourself, the more effectively you'll work with others.

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

I, along with a colleague were responsible for running the Future leaders program at a Pharmaceutical company many years ago. I had a conversation with a gentleman who went through the [program over 20 years ago and he shared with me, "That was the foundation and basis for how I do my job every day." He's a Senior Leader now in the Pharma industry. The work I do makes a difference and that is so important to me.