Lead without fear
Lindgren has learned plenty about leadership in his time at
Sunkist, but there’s one business lesson that he takes with him
that comes from outside of the business world.
“I had a friend who was a great athlete, and I asked him one
time, ‘How do you do this?’” Lindgren says. “He had all this
national claim and attention, and he told me, ‘My motto is that
I hate to lose, but I never let the fear of losing interfere with
how I play the game.’”
That fearlessness is something that Lindgren has applied to
his leadership tactics ever since. And while he appreciates the
consensus he builds at Sunkist, he knows it’s not worth anything if he can’t push final decisions out the door.
“One of the things that I’ve learned is that you are the leader
for a reason, and you’ve been selected to do that,” he says. “So the buck stops here, and the final decisions have to be made by
you.”
That’s not his way of saying forget the team, but he knows
that there are times that you simply can’t get a final move from
a larger group, and when push comes to shove, you have to be
willing to make the big decision and present it to your people.
“I consider myself to have a very participative style of management, so I like to build up consensus, but I guess the only
regrets I’ve had over the years are when I have not ended up
using my own individual judgment,” Lindgren says. “At the end
of the day, you’ve got to sort everything out and make the decision. I’ve had ventures that I’ve not gotten involved in that I
maybe should have because I got overly cautious advice or
times where I was pushed by advisers to do something I wasn’t sure about. Over the years, my experience has been that my
judgment, combined with the best advice I have available, is
the thing that I have to lead with. At the end of the day, you
have to go with your judgment, and you’re going to win more
than you lose.”
HOW TO REACH: Sunkist Growers Inc., (818) 986-4800 or www.sunkist.com