NGC Experience: Leo Gaev

Leo Gaev didn't come to the Foundation for Effective Leadership program looking for someone to teach him how to run a business. He'd been doing that for twenty years, mostly on his own terms.

It was his wife who nudged him toward it. She'd gone through the same program as a small business owner and founder of a nonprofit, and kept coming home from sessions saying the same thing.

"You really need to do this. You would get a lot out of this."

Gaev, owner of Leo Gaev Metalworks, Inc., had built his business largely through self-reliance. "I've been in business for a long time and pretty much mostly bootstrapped my experience. I’m self-taught in a lot of ways, not a lot of formal business experience other than kind of inherited and gained."

Once the program got started, one of the things that stood out most was how much time the cohort spent in small groups and one-on-one breakouts. It was more intimate than he'd expected, and more valuable for it.

"I didn't anticipate how much time we would spend in the breakout rooms in one-to-one groups or small groups of three to four. I really enjoyed that part."

He also found unexpected value in hearing from people who operated inside large, formal organizations, a world quite different from his own.

"It was really interesting for me being a business owner and employer to hear directly from folks who were coming from different backgrounds and different work experiences, working in bigger companies. It's interesting to see how other people run businesses coming from much bigger companies."

The most impactful part of the program for Gaev was the long-term visioning exercise, something he had wanted to do for years but never carved out the time for.

"That was something I had never done before and always wanted to do, but it's hard to make time to do. It just gave me an opportunity, literally time to do it and give it deep thought. Even though I've been in business for 20 years, I potentially still have 20 or 30 more years to go, and I see this as being a long-term investment. I feel like I wing it a lot of the time in terms of how to approach certain business decisions. Giving myself a framework, forcing myself to think a little more strategically in terms of long-term horizon, literally what do I want to be doing in 25 years, where do I want to be, where does my income come from, getting down to a granular level and forcing myself to answer those questions was really, really helpful."

The final session on personal impact also left a mark.

"The last session where we worked on personal impact was very interesting, more on a personal level. How do I come across as a leader, as a professional? What impact do I have on other people in a subtle or not-so-subtle way? Being the owner of a small business with only four people, I spend a lot of time with my employees. I spend more time with them than I do with my family. Getting some understanding of how I convey information, how I communicate, the things that are said or not said, that was very interesting to me."

One of the most concrete outcomes from the program and his one-on-one coaching sessions with Brian was developing a formal set of company values, something Gaev had never done before.

"A lot of my values are also the company values, but it's not clear cut. One of the hardest things I struggle with in my company is retention, keeping people around. One of my goals for doing this program was to think more holistically about how I can create more investment on the part of my employees. It was kind of an aha moment when I was like, if I develop these company values and articulate them, that will help give everyone more of a purpose. It will be a way for people to see how they fit into the bigger picture."

He put it into practice almost immediately, weaving the conversation into employee reviews.

"I've had the opportunity to talk about my company values and test out this conversation that surrounds, okay, here's what we stand for, this is what I expect from you, here are the goals that I want us to reach together within the context of these common values. That was pretty cool."

When asked what he would say to someone skeptical of trying another leadership program, Gaev pointed to Brian directly.

"I think Brian is the selling point of this program. His level of organization is just apparent from day one. I was pretty skeptical of all of this being done over Zoom, but I was very impressed with the format and the flow. There was no downtime. Brian did a really great job of maximizing our time together. It's highly efficient."

For Gaev, what you get out of the program comes down to what you put in. "It's really just all about what you put into it."

His advice to anyone just starting is simple but worth sitting with.

"Let go of any assumptions you have about what you think of yourself as a leader. Coming at it with a beginner's mind and a blank slate is going to give you the biggest opportunity to just be a sponge and see what new experiences come. There's so much to gain by letting go of who you think you are in the context of your work or your profession."