Are Leaders Born or Made?

Steve Adubato is joined by four leadership experts to discuss the age-old question, are leaders born or made? The panel also reveals the skills a leader needs to possess for success, and the significant ways technology has changed the game. Guests Include: Laurence M. Downes, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, New Jersey Resources; Karen Carpentieri, Vice President, Human Resources, Berkeley College; Carolyn J. D’Anna, CPA, Partner, Chief Human Resources Officer, CohnReznick; Ira D. Robbins, President, Valley National Bank.

6/10/17 #3010

 

 

 

 

Excerpt:

"Welcome to Caucus, I'm Steve Adubato. So what does it really take to be a great leader? Why is it important to coach and mentor those on your team? Here in the studio to discuss the keys to great leadership in the workplace we have Larry Downes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of New Jersey Resources, Karen Carpentieri, Vice President of Human Resources at Berkeley College, Carolyn D'Anna, Partner and Chief Human Resources Officer at Cohn Reznick, and finally, Ira Robbins, President of Valley National Bank. I want to thank all of you for joining us and in fact Ira, that is a relatively new title for you? A few months. Since January, so it's very exciting. Congratulations. Thank you. And let me just say up front that I have conducted leadership development and coaching at your place, your place, and your place, and I know your operation well. All of you committed to leadership development. All of you committed to mentoring and coaching, and let me start with you. The question that most people ask... many people ask about leadership. Can you actually teach it and coach it? Or in fact is the job to go out and find natural born leaders? No, I think you can teach it but I think what is very important is to have a very clear definition of what leadership is. There's a lot written about leadership as you know and what we have done first of all is we have a set of goals that we want every one of our employees to be a leader. And when we define leadership, we define it as learning, teaching, and sharing. An example I can give you... we're in the safety and reliability business. Middle of the night, the heat goes out. The customer calls in. Who is the last person that they want to see? It's me. They want the woman or the man that can solve their problem and at that moment in time, that individual is the leader of our company. That's what we're trying to share. And so, to Larry's point, what's so interesting about this, and we've talked about this before because the Human Resources operation at Valley reports... It's part of your portfolio if you will? Yes. And you and I have been talking about leadership development/succession planning for a long time and the CEO, the Chairman Jerry Lipkin there for a while and he and other folks..."