Relationships That Sustain Great Leaders

Forget the playbook—on The Unlock Potential podcast, David Archibald and Victor Burrill talk about what no one tells you about being a CEO.

What do a Fortune 500 CEO, the Vietnamese business landscape, and the quiet power of saying no have in common? According to Victor Burrill—Chief Connecting Officer of the Business Executive Network – they’re all part of the leadership equation. Burrill recently joined host David Archibald, General Director of the Al Naboodah Group, the largest distributor of Harley-Davidson and Triumph motorbikes in Vietnam, on Unlock Potential, a podcast dedicated to exploring leadership, strategy, and sales through candid conversations with business decision makers.

Each episode offers listeners a behind-the-scenes look at how seasoned executives think, act, and adapt. In this installment, Archibald and Burrill cover everything from emotional discipline and vulnerability to the cultural nuances of managing teams in Vietnam. The result is a rare and practical conversation between two leaders who’ve spent decades in the field, and who know the difference between managing people and unlocking their potential.

What Does It Mean to Be a Leader?

Though most tend to think of leaders as individuals at the forefront of the action, Victor believes great leaders often play more of a supporting role. Consider the orchestra conductor. While this person enables the action, they aren’t the ones producing it. Without the conductor, the musicians wouldn’t know what to play. A leader is someone who provides guidance and simultaneously takes a step back in order to let the team shine. During their conversation, David and Victor also discussed the elements that make up a great leader. Based on his decades of experience working with all kinds of leaders, Victor highlighted a few key traits that he believes separate the good from the great.

• Quiet Confidence – The first thing Victor mentioned was the fact that rather than being boastful or showy, real leaders possess a quiet confidence. They never feel the need to prove their value to others and more than anything, they let their work do the talking.
• Stoic Focus – Great leaders know how to maintain a level of stoicism in the face of both good and bad days. We all experience highs and lows, but the way you react to these events without letting emotions take over separates great leaders from the rest.
• Knowing When To Say No – Referencing Seth Godin’s 2007 book, “The Dip,” Victor explains how winners aren’t those that never quit, winners are those who know when to quit things that don’t serve their main goal. This is why it’s so important to know when to say no—you can’t be available for everything.

Leading With Humility: The Power of Not Knowing

The ideal leader is often thought of as someone who seems to know it all. They never falter, fumble, or fail, instead, they’re the picture of composure and confidence, with the answer to everything and a get-up-and-go attitude to back it all up. Unfortunately, thinking a leader ought to be like this can have more of a negative effect than a positive one. According to Victor, “a leader’s biggest blindspot is oftentimes a lack of vulnerability.” Overcompensating in the other direction leads to arrogance, tunnel vision, and a generally unpleasant demeanor. Instead, being able to ask questions, seek advice from others, and not let your position as leader dictate how you behave, can end up opening up more doors for you than you might fear it may close.

This is the whole principle upon which the Business Executive Network is built: Realizing you don’t have all the answers and being humble enough to get another perspective.

Figuring out how to run a business in a foreign country isn’t a simple task. Victor recalled a conversation he had with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company who advised spending a couple of months getting to know the inner workings of the business in a new country—Vietnam or elsewhere—before making any brash decisions. Ask a lot of questions and, as David put it, don’t tear down any fences until you know why they were put up in the first place. Far too often foreign executives come into a new setting with their preconceived notions of how business should work, only because that was the way it worked previously. This rarely sets you up for success.

A Few Final Pieces of Advice for Leaders of the Future

For our future leaders, Victor had a few parting pieces of advice. For one, he suggested having something of a north star to serve as a compass for where you want to be in the next 10, 20, 30 years. This doesn’t have to be set in stone, but having an idea of where you want to go in terms of a career allows you the time to gain experience and expertise in a specific field.

It’s important to understand that a good deal of success depends on how willing you are to sacrifice other things for that one goal. This doesn’t mean becoming monastic for the sake of a single path, just that it’s important to recognize where and how you allocate your time.

Finally, while there’s something of a trend in Gen-Z and Millennials to go bouncing from job to job, Victor believes spending more than a few years at a company allows you to really become valuable there. Getting to this point can lead to various opportunities, such as being put in a managerial role that otherwise wouldn’t have happened if you had moved on prematurely.

Want to listen to the full podcast? Scan this QR code for Unlock Potential’s episode featuring Victor Burrill.