In this episode of The Disruptive Successor Show, Jonathan chats with Ashleigh Walters, a business executive with a proven track record of leading transformational change. Ashleigh is the author of Leading with Grit and Grace and she turned around a 50-year-old industrial furnace manufacturing and service business owned by her husband's family.

During her tenure at Onex, Ashleigh became the president and she led the effort to turn the company into an employee-owned ESOP business. She attributes part of her success to her coach-approach leadership style which came about as she herself admits that she did not know everything when she started leading. Ashleigh left the company in December 2022 to become the Chairperson.

The ESOP allowed the employees to buy the company without having to come up with any money. The employees funded the purchase of the business through the tax savings they made since they were no longer taxed on the income of the business. Ashleigh explains that the ESOP culture allowed for more employee engagement, which only increased after the employees became owners.

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

ASHLEIGH: Ownership created employee engagement and self-policing

"I think that culture piece is really important because now you have owners in the company. And so what happened was they just had a stronger engagement. Once they became owners, they took even more pride and responsibility and wanted to make things better and they wanted to learn more about the business and how they could impact different pieces."

"But the other thing that happened is we started seeing what I'll call policing within the employees. And so if you weren't doing what they felt like you should be doing, we're told to pick up the pace. We're all owners, we're in this together. And if you're not going to pick up the pace, get out of here."

ASHLEIGH: Do a gut check about doing something differently

"Anytime I have that gut check, I'm like, ah, I don't like that. Then I find another way. For instance, performance appraisals, and yearly annual reviews. I got rid of them. I did a gut check. I thought my managers hate doing them. People hate having them done. They hate being rated. It creates chaos and turmoil in our organization and I thought why are we talking about the past? That's how we came to the coach approach. Why aren't we looking to the future?"

Connect with Ashleigh and get her book:

LinkedIn | Website | Amazon

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