Excerpt from Wall Street Journal Custom Content Article                           Essential Materials 

​

Enterprises thrive on the collective effort of teams that nurture individual talent. Mike Brandmeier, President and CEO of Toray Plastics (America), Inc., speaks about building team spirit based on values that resonate across the Pacific Ocean.

 

Tell us about your leadership philosophy, which helped you win a regional Strategic Leadership Award. How does it help you build successful teams focused on a common goal while also fostering individual talent?

 

There are many kinds of leadership style. Mine is to consult and to guide. To inspire the best from the best, a leader must give his teams a creative stake in their work and control over their outcomes. That requires a lot of trust. It means trusting your people to work things out and make the right calls. As the leader, I have to be the coach who listens carefully, who creates an environment that fosters success, and who then praises his people for what they’ve accomplished.

​

A former president of our largest client gave an inspirational speech on what he called “servant leadership”. The corporation exists to serve society, not the other way around. It’s a message I took to heart.

​

To be a successful leader, you have to move beyond the straight management-by-objectives approach. Don’t misunderstand me; we are goal-focused and our success hinges upon our meeting objectives. To meet targets, however, you have to inspire people, make them believe that the team’s objectives are truly important. By working together as one, we achieve goals for the good of society.

​

I’m an admirer of President Theodore Roosevelt and in particular his speech “Citizenship in a Republic.”

​

In the speech, Roosevelt salutes the indomitable spirit of people who, no matter how difficult the challenge, rise up time after time and continue to do their best. Among them is that individual “whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause.”

​

It is that kind of spirit that leads our people and our teams to make such a positive contribution to society. In cherishing it, we embody the best of both worlds—we share common traits of curiosity, perseverance, diversity, creativity and, above all, commitment, which make a difference to humanity’s common journey.