Success Labs Leadership Profiles: An Interview with Bill Phillips
Bill Phillips is Success Labs’ founder and chief visionary officer. He has a Ph.D. in career counseling from the University of New Orleans and has more than 20 years experience in competency based development, talent management, succession planning, development planning and executive coaching. Bill has facilitated lectures, appeared on radio and television to discuss career development issues. He has also developed assessments and software used in career counseling and development.
Learn more about Bill Phillips and his approach to leadership and professional development in this leadership profile.
What's your leadership philosophy?
I think the great leaders are the ones with a vision about where they want to go, accompanied by the passion to fuel getting there. In addition to having vision and passion, real leaders need the ability to instill passion in those around them.
Which business leader(s) do you look up to and why?
I have had the pleasure of working with some great leaders. They almost always have that vision and passion I just spoke about previously combined with great people skills. I’m really impressed by the leaders who can articulate their vision so that people at all levels will understand and be inspired.
What's the hardest leadership lesson you ever had to learn?
I tend to enjoy the innovative process a little too much and have learned over the years to seek a lot of critical feedback on new concepts and ideas before moving forward. Every time I operate in a vacuum it tends to come back to bite me.
What's the most common weakness you see in leaders and how do you help them improve on it?
Most leaders, especially senior leaders, get too involved in the tactical business operations and don’t spend enough time being strategic. More than likely, senior leaders have the ability to be strategic, it’s just a matter of helping them carve out the time to devote to that aspect of business. That sounds simple, but finding and spending time on the strategic operations is not easy to do for an extremely busy executive with looming deadlines.
Describe a client whose leadership growth has especially impressed you?
The clients that have impressed me the most are the one’s who have had to make behavioral changes to be successful. I have had a couple of brilliant, hard-driving clients who would not stop to listen to those around them. One client would not only not listen, but would also interrupt others to move things forward more quickly.
Interrupting was a habit and behavior that my client needed to change. It seems like it would be easy to stop interrupting people, but it takes a concerted effort over a fairly long period of time, with lots of solicited feedback to change a behavior. The clients who have successfully shifted their behaviors for the better are the ones that I’m most impressed with because I know what an effort it takes to do this.
Success Labs is a full-service, strategic organizational and leadership development company located in Baton Rouge, La. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to explore their business potential and improve their company and cultural performance. Contact us to get proactive about your people strategy.
