I recently went one-on-one with Jason Gamel, CEO of ARDA, the trade association and governing body for the vacation ownership industry.
Adam: You did your undergrad at the University of Michigan and went to law school at the University of Florida before pursuing a career as a lawyer. You were an associate at a big law firm. You left the law firm to join ARDA. You then left ARDA to take an in-house legal position at Wyndham before returning to ARDA as CEO. You’re now thrust into a position where you’re managing a number of your former peers and colleagues. What have been the keys to effectively leading your former peers and colleagues?
Jason: I drew from a lot of experience the first time around when I worked at the trade association. And I also had some good mentors in my world that helped me understand a few things going into the latest stint that I’ve had as president and CEO. So let me take you back for a second, Adam, back to 2005. So, in 2005, and we’re going to be standing inside of a file room, because the first time that I was at ARDA, as you mentioned, I was there as a Vice President of Government Affairs. I came in to work for a leader in our industry who had been there for almost 30 years working for ARDA. When I started, the goal was for us to flip-flop roles and me to manage her and the team after a year, which did happen, peacefully and happily. However, one day I decided it was time to change the filing system, that I didn’t like the way all the documents in our files when people still had hard file copies of things in drawers. I thought there was a better way for me to understand it and for all of us to look at the filing system. So, the four of us that were in the office at the time were standing there, and we started talking about ideas. And I started seeing something change in my coworker’s face and demeanor. It was an uncomfortableness. It was a frustration. And then there was a small comment or two about, well, I think the filing system is just fine, or this is very logical the way it’s organized. As we continued to talk, finally, after about 30 minutes, she looked at me, looked at others, she put her head down, and just walked out the door. I thought to myself, OK, well, let me think about this. So we stopped for a second. I went back and realized, well, why did I want to change the system? Was it needed? Or was it just because it was something that I thought I wanted to leave my mark because I was the leader now and I realized I made a very important mistake, which was not understanding the effect that you have when you come in as a leader and you start changing systems, you start thinking about things, especially in a small organization, how is that going to impact those people who’ve been there for a while or who may have come up or drawn that system up? How are they going to feel about your changes? Have they bought in? I realized I did not seek buy-in individually before we got together in a group. Now we fast forward to 2019. An understanding that buy-in was so important when I first started at ARDA, for those who I had worked with prior, I spent a lot of time with people individually before making any big changes or declarations of how we were going to do things differently. I also had some ideas that I was able to draw on from the time I was at ARDA, some things that as a member I also saw. So I came in with some credibility of looking at these issues for 10 or 15 years both inside and outside to understand what kind of changes were necessary. Then it was to look for individual buy-in and understanding that I wanted input from people before any of these changes were announced. So it wasn’t done in a group setting where I could either snuff out, I would say, any real positivity that could have been there, or people would have felt muted and not in a place where they could express any type of concerns because it was done in a group setting and they wouldn’t feel comfortable. While you might know the landmines or where they are or the issues at hand, so much of it goes back down to making people feel heard, understanding that your ideas were vetted, especially ones that could be sensitive like that, and that people had buy-in before you went to anything large scale on the change side to make sure that it was going to be a successful long-term change.
Adam: How can leaders build trust with the former peers and colleagues who they manage and lead?
Jason: I’ll give you two primary ways that trust building goes within the organization, at least as I have run it over the last several years. The first will be with responsibility. Trusting that your peers, or those who used to be your peers, now the people who are working for you do their job and have the lead way and latitude to make decisions on their own. You’ve got to trust that they understand your voice once you’ve communicated it or the interests of the organization. As a leader, if you’ve communicated that properly to your key lieutenants that work for you within the organization, you need to let them do their work, make decisions on their own, succeed or have maybe missteps along the way, but always be supportive if they’re really operating within the organization’s best interest and within the guidelines that you provided them. That, to me, has been so important with this organization, especially when you’re trying to do a lot with a small staff. You can’t micromanage decisions. I can’t second-guess decisions all the time. I have to let people have the latitude to be able to go out there and do things, make mistakes if they need to, or have great successes because they were able to do things on their own. That, to me, was the first way that they gained trust. The second way was, quite honestly, through information. People trust you when you share information with them, when you share sensitive information, not giving up secrets. If you’re constantly communicating and providing them information that they find is important for them to do their job or makes them feel like they’re part of the organization. That’s always been a way that I have received the confidence of others when they can tell me what’s going on that they might not share necessarily with everybody. But they’ll share with me because they feel comfortable sharing information with me. That builds trust, too, that there’s a reciprocity there, that I could do the same thing back to my leaders when I still continue to have bosses. But the rules are important for me to be able to share information that can be reciprocal. And that’s a way that really, especially with people that I’ve worked with before, it shows trust. It’s just like a trust with a spouse. It’s that information sharing and being open with people that they are going to find comforting, and something that makes them feel trusted.
Adam: What were the keys to rising in your career and to ultimately going from an individual contributor to a leader?
Jason: I think there are two things: One, it was always working, quite frankly, as hard and smart as I possibly could. I say that in a way, especially early in my career, how important it was for me to, first of all, be willing to do things that perhaps others weren’t willing or able to do. And it was picking careers, because in law, for instance, there are lots of different things you could do. There’s, we’ll say, the sexier areas of law. There are things which some may consider grunt work and others do not consider as high profile. I was willing to do whatever it took to be able to get myself in front of clients and be successful as fast as I could. And sometimes that meant doing the things that other people didn’t want to do. I did that and made a career out of it. In my world, that was, for instance, working with sales and marketing clients. It was working with people who took high risks. It was working with people who are very entrepreneurial. That was exciting for me because I learned a lot from those clients. I learned how to be business-minded early on in my career. And I also learned what hard work was and what it was going to take to be able to succeed. That really drove me to getting that first job with the Trade Association back in 2004, once I moved out of a straight-up legal career into legislative and lobbying work and leadership, when I realized there was a lot more work ahead after those six years at the law firm. But it was something that, as a basis, as a core principle, as far as my own work ethic, and what I was willing to do, and the type of work I was willing to accept. It was really being a little bit selfless. It was willing to take opportunities when they were presented and work my tail off, quite frankly, Adam.
Adam: What were some of the challenges that you experienced transitioning from individual contributor to leader and how did you navigate them?
Jason: One of the biggest challenges I think you deal with a lot of times as an individual contributor is not seeing, we’ll call it the big picture. In my career, when I dial myself back to about 1999, when I was just really getting moving as, we’ll say, the individual contributor, I saw my role at the law firm as producing hours and getting business. And then those two things would eventually lead me to a partnership and greater things at the law firm. What I failed to realize about being part of the bigger picture, part of being that team, was really looking at your own goals and realizing that sometimes you’re going to put your individual goals to the side to make sure you have success as a team. And perhaps early in my career, I ignored those calls of people when they asked me to do something, or I was part of a team doing some work that maybe I didn’t think was as important to me as an individual or even the team. I didn’t listen to leadership, and that got me in trouble, quite frankly. It took me a while before I was able to put it into focus. You had to put your needs to the side, especially as that individual contributor, when you’re starting to be part of a team. Even if you don’t like it, even if you don’t see the vision, you’ve got to give your leaders the benefit of the doubt and trust them until they prove otherwise. That’s something that took me a little while to figure out, and it wasn’t without a bit of a rocky go during my career before I finally got that right.
Adam: What were the most important skills that you had to develop and how were you able to develop them?
Jason: Skills so often, depending on which philosophy you look for as a worker, there are those who spend a lot of time and effort to try to become better in areas which they may consider to be a weakness or an opportunity. There are those that go to the opposite end and say, I’m going to go ahead and play to my strengths and really take the time and effort, really focus on my strengths and make them really good, find a way to manage around my weaknesses. Early on in your career, it was so difficult because you had to be technically proficient to begin with. And technical proficiency takes work. regardless of whether you’re good at it right away or it’s an area which you need to be better, whether that’s knowledge of law, writing, for instance. Communication was so key. Learning how to talk to both coworkers and clients in a different way that they could understand and have confidence that you knew what you were talking about, and were giving them great advice. That was the one skill in particular that I saw early on my career that needed work, and one that I really, really focused in on doing, which was figuring out how to communicate the way that your client needed the information served to them, not the way you wanted to present it to them. That was probably one of the first skills. Technical proficiency was important. And then maybe last, but certainly not least, was that ability to be able to understand your role in a group. That was so important, especially working in teams. You needed to understand that role, how to play that role, and when and if you ever needed to step out, when was it appropriate to do so for the benefit of the team.
I think you really need to be aware of your leadership style. What kind of leader do you want to be? Because there are so many different ways that people can be an effective leader. It may be somebody who truly loves to control the conversation. They’ve got the ideas themselves. They’re more in control, and that’s what they think. There are those who love to generate ideas and then let staff or people who work with them run with ideas. There are those who love contributions from all parts of the organization, or some who like it only from their leadership team. So much of it depends on the organization you’re working for, but I think it’s important to be aware of your leadership style and understanding how you want to lead an organization, which may not always be known when you move into that role, but it’s something you need to be aware of from day one.
Adam: How can new leaders most effectively communicate with the people who they’re leading?
Jason: If you’re a new leader in an organization, especially if you’re new to the organization, those first words that come out of your mouth, whatever they are, the tone you’re going to set immediately when you get into an organization is going to define a significant portion of your tenure and have such a big impact on your success. If you’re collaborative, if you’re directive, if you’re dictatorial in your tone, all those are going to set a different message. I’d say the one thing people need to do in this world is practice. It’s a little bit silly and basic, but you’ve got to practice. You have to really say it in a mirror, how you’re going to say your hellos. You’re going to have to say it, looking at yourself, what message are you going to deliver, and how are you going to convey to your new team that you’re there for them, that you’re all in it together. I think that’s extremely important. Especially in small organizations like ARDA, we have only 23 staff members. If they are all critical to the success of the organization, they need to feel that way. They need to feel embraced. But they also need to feel, and this goes through communication, saying the words the right way, that they’re accountable for their actions, that people will be held responsible for anything that they do. And they’ll be praised for their successes. And they should expect for a conversation to take place if there are opportunities to improve. Those communications and setting those expectations That is so important day one. So that way, everyone understands where they stand and feels like there’s a level playing field and understands what success is going to look like.
Adam: What are the technical skills that new leaders should develop and how can they develop them?
Jason: Some of the technical skills could be as basic as how do you write? For me, I will say I always struggle with spelling errors. It tends to be something that you get moving too quickly. You look at something. I’m like, oh, man, I misspelled that word again. I’m the worst when it comes to texting. I try to excuse it, but I also try to get better. I’ve used various tools over the years, including Grammarly-like tools, to be able to help myself with this. You realize you’ve got to do sometimes just the basic stuff, right? It seems obvious, but you might not be the greatest writer out there. Some of us may have better skills when we speak than when we write. I find that I’ve got to work on some of those technical aspects because I do write for a board, an executive committee that’s full of CEOs and very successful business people. You need to be able to communicate and write, for instance, in a technical way, so that we understand. It’s also technical about your association. For me, it’s a trade association. You need to know the laws as they apply to trade associations. You’ve got to understand what’s different with a trade association than a private business. You need to be able to understand and explain your community to others about why is it important to be part of a group of other trade association executives. So there’s a world that you will find, depending on the business you’re in, you need technical knowledge, skills, of your basics of your organization, you need to understand that some might say that it’s a profit and loss statement. I was not the best accountant in college. Let’s just say that’s what kept me from going to business school. The reason I went to law school was the inability to fully understand accounting. But I also know I have lots of people around me that are good at the technical aspects of accounting. So that’s where I do truly manage around the weaknesses I have, what I believe to be in my overall leadership game. That’s important to understand where they are and the technical expertise you need, specifically, to be able to communicate and lead an organization. For me, it’s also in the vacation ownership industry. Having practiced law in that world for so long, I came in as a technical expert in timeshare and vacation ownership. which was very helpful. I was also an expert in the regulatory world. That’s very helpful to a job as a trade association executive. So part of it is knowing what you need to make people feel confident that you’re the one that can lead an organization to success.
Adam: What do you believe are the keys to effective leadership and what can anyone do to become a better leader?
Jason: Communication really can’t be overstated. I find that in addition to communication, one of the things I really find is so important for people: you’ve got to learn your listening skills. We talk about that active listening world. The thing I find is if you aren’t really using those ears to hear what’s going on in your organization, to talk to individuals to figure out exactly what’s happening in the org and what their opinions are, you’re going to miss out on so much great information. And I think when you look at how leaders kind of get in, and maybe the biggest pitfall that a leader can make is when they move directly into a leadership position, it is trying to do too much all at once. That might be one of the biggest lessons learned and the biggest things when people are thinking about moving into that leadership role. So many times, people feel like it’s a mandate to do so much on day one or week one or month one, not realizing that their leadership tenure is going to be there for a while that their will serve by listening, understanding the organization, being thoughtful about what they do, and then making the impact that they hope to make.
[Humility] is one of those hallmarks of leadership. Really, if you aren’t able to trust your team, you aren’t able to empower them to be professionals and to accomplish a goal, you need new employees. It’s really as simple as that. You have to have those people. You have to trust your employees that they’re going to be able to do that, or else you’re not going to be able to do your job very well.
