Unlocking Communications Lessons from Investor’s Business Daily

Top 5 Learnings from my favorite IBD section: Leaders & Successes

Jun 12, 2024

Hello, It’s Julia, Founder of The Switchboard, a newsletter exploring the ways we communicate and connect at work and beyond. Thank you for being part of our community. I’m grateful to you for reading, reacting and commenting. If you enjoy this edition, consider sharing it.

There’s one section of Investor's Business Daily that I enjoy reading as fast as they are published — Leaders & Success highlights career and life stories of CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs across industries. The editors elevate leaders’ stories who may not be as widely known, but who have achieved success often against the odds.

As an interviewer, I admire these articles for the stories they weave together with leadership lessons applicable to any career. The communications learnings stand out the most to me because of its importance as a leadership skill. I selected five recent favorite stories with lessons on resilience, empathy, simplicity, teamwork, kindness, values and change through a communications lens. Learn more about these leaders with me:

📛 Sylvia Acevedo: past CEO, The Girl Scouts USA
⛰️ Erik Weihenmayer: Adventurer, Author, Founder and Disability Advocate
🥞 Julia Stewart: past CEO, IHOP and Applebee's
🧲 Lonnie Johnson: Inventor, Super Soaker
⛽ Tom Love: Founder, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores

1. 📛 Sylvia Acevedo: past CEO, The Girl Scouts USA

Leadership Lessons: Stay Strong with Resilience

Growing up, Sylvia experienced financial hardship. Selling cookies as a Girl Scout taught her resilience from a young age. Mentored by her troop leader, she never gave up on making her sales goals even when she was turned away by potential customers. Despite Sylvia’s excellent grades, her college counselor discouraged her from attending college because of her background. Family was a top priority — she put college on hold to pay for her grandmother’s funeral.

Ultimately, Sylvia went on to her dream college, became a rocket scientist for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and worked for IBM. Tragically, when she was 28, her family suffered a terrible loss when her father killed her mother and then himself. It was a painful time that she now speaks openly about as a champion for mental health.

"I'm so grateful for all the therapists who helped me. I learned about forgiveness and letting go of shame. I worked through the trauma so that I could be whole and not defined by that moment."

Later in her career, as CEO of The Girl Scouts, Sylvia took the 100-year organization digital, from cookie sales to new badges with 126 new STEM badges.

2. ⛰️ Erik Weihenmayer: Adventurer, Author, Founder and Disability Advocate

Leadership Lessons: Champion Teamwork. Encourage Acceptance.

As a child, Erik Weihenmayer lost his vision due to a rare eye disease. But he didn’t let that stop him from pursuing his passions. He has climbed major mountains, including becoming the first blind person to summit Mount Everest in 2001. He is also an author and nonprofit founder: No Barriers helps people overcome challenges

While training is important, Erik emphasizes teamwork and generosity as critical to his success.

"I had to attract a strong team and they had to train a lot to be part of these historic things. I want to climb with solid friends whom I trust to help us get through hard situations together.
…I always want to be able to contribute. It might be helping them set up the tent or giving them my (energy bar)...If you're unappreciative, no one will want to take you under their wing," he said. "It's got to be reciprocal. It can't be one-way."

When someone makes a mistake such as dropping him while belaying, he doesn’t make teammates feel badly for the error:

"Forgive quickly, move forward and not dwell on what went wrong."

After a negative experience, it is important to analyze what went wrong in a positive manner rather than guilt-focused by asking:

“constructive questions: How do I attain this goal with the tools I have?
…It's not enough just to win yourself. You've got to help elevate the team around you.

3. 🧲 Lonnie Johnson: Inventor, Super Soaker

Leadership Lesson: Never Give Up. Embrace the pivot.

As summer heats up, the super soaker water toy is one of the most popular ways to cool down while having fun. It took seven years and numerous rejections to become a reality. The Inventor, Lonnie Johnson holds more than 130 patents.

His career has spanned research scientist for Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a stealth/nuclear technologist at the Air Force and a spacecraft system design engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

While working days, he would spend late nights and early mornings inventing:

"Great ideas are amalgams of several things that are out there. But no one ever thought of putting them together."
…Finding the ultimate solution may involve "shifting gears and taking a different direction."

4. 🥞 Julia Stewart: past CEO, IHOP and Applebee's

Leadership Lessons: Choose Empathy. Embrace Simple Communications.

From waitress to CEO of IHOP, Julia Stewart has been a trailblazer for women in the restaurant industry. When she was 16, she spilled syrup on two customers. The restaurant manager responded with empathy, and she’ll never forget the lesson he taught her. Even after the syrup spill, the couple went on to become her loyal customers over the years.

"To be a great leader you have to show you care. Whenever I visited a restaurant, I always went to the back of the house first to talk with the dishwashers and the cooks. You can never forget who makes the restaurant run."

Julia has also embraced the power of simple communication simply to employees:

"The key is to communicate that vision up, down and sideways. Every employee needs to understand why and how their job matters to that vision."

5. ⛽ Tom Love: Founder, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores

Lessons Learned: Treat People Well. Commit to Values

A US Veteran and Chickasaw citizen, Tom Love opened a grocery-convenience store in Oklahoma with a $5,000 loan and saw an opportunity for a values-driven business in 1964. 60 years later, it has remained a family-owned business that is worth $9.7 billion with 39,000 employees and 600+ travel stops in 42 states.

Tom’s leadership style was credited with growing the company. His daughter, Jenny Love Meyer, who is Chief Culture Officer and Executive Vice President looks back at his legacy as a people champion:

"He was confident in others and when you are confident in others, they have confidence in themselves.
…Whether it was with business partners and team members in our local stores or customers, those relationships enabled him to know ideas and opportunities and identify ways we could get better."

Tom’s work was grounded in values, including the importance of the customer and employees. Over the years, he added hot food and warm showers to support truck drivers. He visited competitors’ stores to inspire ideas, talked to employees and customers and asked what could be better. Jenny reflected on her dad’s leadership legacy:

"Hire the right people, enable them to do their job (and) get out of their way.

He treated everyone with dignity:

“It was how he showed up and respected people, regardless of their position. That fueled our culture. Even through the (tough economic times) of the 1980s he retained people in the business, and they worked hard because of him and how he treated them."

📚 Bonus

What’s on your summer reading or listening list? Reply or message me with your favorite for a chance to be featured in a future edition of this newsletter. The deadline is Friday, June 14th end of day.

Thank you for tuning into this edition. I’m grateful to you for reading, reacting and commenting. If you enjoyed what you learned, consider sharing it with a colleague or friend. Signing off for this edition. — Julia

The Switchboard