Diversity Leadership Series | Angela Reddix and Jack Ezzell
after I became a CEO. I was going back [to] this small town in North Carolina with my wife, and we were going through, and we passed by a service station. My wife looks over at the service station [and] she says, “Oh, I know that guy. I think he might have been one of my boyfriends.” …. I said, “Hahaha, if you had married him instead of me, you would be the wife of a service station attendant.” She looked at me and said, “If I had married him instead of you, you would be pumping gas and he would be a CEO.” You talked to me before about how proud you are of your kids and your family, I too … [am] blessed with [my] family but [also with] the family I have in my company. … Those are just the things that really matter.
Reddix: Yes, love is everything — Tina Turner, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” When you’re talking about leadership … you’re not supposed to have relationships. [Human resources], you’re supposed to be
stiff, and that doesn’t work today. People bring their whole selves to the office. If you can’t have compassion and love and understand that that is someone’s child, that’s someone’s wife, husband, and their spirit matters, and how you build them up or you tear them down, it matters. It’s not just affecting the team in the office, but they take this stuff home and you’re impacting a household. In this world today, mental health is such an important thing for us to consider as leaders and most leaders aren’t trained to even understand mental state of mind.
Ezzell: What tips would you give to those … who are starting businesses and are con- cerned about what are the keys to success? What are some of the tips that you’d give to business owners?
Reddix: It’s the African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” I will say tip No. 1 is, you
don’t have to do it alone. In order to not do it alone, you really need to understand where you’re trying to go. You have to be very clear with your vision because you attract those people in your life who can support that vision. No. 1 is to ensure that you build relation- ships [so] you don’t have to do it alone. No. 2 is, it’s not about getting there fast. … You have to build it to last and doing that, that means one step at a time, but … build it with the end in mind. I think the third thing — which probably is the first thing — is really, you can’t give what you don’t have, so you have to take care of self: mind, body, spirit. You have to have a foundation of that.
There’s a lot of bling out there sparkling.
Everyone seems to be moving so fast, social media, you can see everything or what you think you see, which may or may not be real, but you really have to almost have blinders to be clear with what you’re called to do. And when you’re walking according to your purpose, somehow things just align. ■
“The fundamental role of a business is to make a profit. What one chooses to do with that profit is a different story,” Ezzell said. 34 | NOVEMBER 2021 Photo by Kristen Zeis
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