ABSTRACT
Great coaches make great leaders. Yet great leaders are not always great coaches. Jim Kenney was one of those great coach leaders and the kind of person everyone wanted to work for. When he went to work as the president of the Sales Division of Campbell Soup, the company had just survived an agonizing decade of wringing profits from cost-cutting. The team he inherited felt uncertain and apprehensive. Jim came on board and took his time getting to know his executive team and getting out to meet key customers. He let it be known that he was there to listen and learn. During his first year, he spent significant time really getting to know his executive team and asking them to collaborate with him in establishing a three-year plan. They also worked together to build a set of core values that clarified what the Sales Division and the company stood for. These values became the foundation for guiding the decisions with customers, employees, and shareholders. Jim then identified the core competencies that would
serve as success criteria; these competencies were directly linked to the company’s core values and the new long-range business plan. Jim took his time building relationships with each of his direct reports, talking to each of them about what the competencies meant in terms of success and strengths. He encouraged them to let go of the limiting beliefs that isolated them from each other and limited their contributions to their own functional areas. Jim emphasized the fact that each one of his team was a wealth of information and that he expected each person to share best practices with one another.
