Episode Details
Episode 03 of the Speed Mentorship podcast is with one of the garage door industry’s top CEOs. Jeff Meredith is a top-notch leader with tremendous advice.
Highlights
Looking for specific advice? Below is a list of the questions asked to Jeff Meredith as well as the time where you can find them in the video posted above.
- 1:15 | Jeff Meredith Background
- 2:15 | In your role as the CEO, what does a typical day look like for you?
- 4:30 | What things are you not focused on?
- 6:30 | What would you say are your most successful habits or routines?
- 8:02 | Do you have a sleeping or exercise schedule you maintain?
- 9:18 | What are some of your weaknesses and how do you manage or overcome those?
- 11:30 | How do you manage stress appropriately? Do you have any techniques that help you cope with that stress?
- 12:50 | How do you keep your ego in check?
- 14:40 | Do you have a work-life balance? How do you keep it in a healthy balance?
- 17:00 | What are some of the most common leadership issues you're seeing with young leaders today? And what kind of advice do you have for them? How are you continuing to coach them or help them through some of these, challenges?
- 20:00 | What kind of advice do you have for a younger generation?
If you don’t want any criticism, then by all means don’t do anything new or different.
Key Takeaways
The other areas are organization alignment, leading, coaching, and guiding my team and then interaction with Blackstone and our board. Keeping them engaged and tapping into their expertise.
I cut out about 65 meetings and backed out of some of the strategies. I’m focusing on a few initiatives that need some extra push, but I want my leaders to be able to lead.
By scheduling thinking time to think through the things that we want to accomplish. Often if you spend some time out thinking about your competition, you won’t have to outwork them because you have a better game plan.
Take time to determine the traits or items that make you a good leader and spend time checking yourself against those traits. Adjust and continue to make yourself a better leader. You may start to notice that some of your actions are not aligning with the type of leader you aspire to be.
If you are unable to delineate the work or the life in a way where you’re not present for either part of it, that’s where it breaks down. The thing that matters the most is having the conversations, and taking the time to be a part of it all.
To begin with, people forget what made them worthy of the role, and they start to manage the team because they have a new responsibility that they must prove they are worthy of the role. You still have to be yourself and tap into other strengths. You can’t do it all to prove yourself.
Don’t assume that you are entitled to anything. Earn your spot on the team every day.
Discussion Questions
Take a few minutes to reflect on what you’ve heard and create some actionable next steps items. Below are a few questions based on the episode to help get you started on your speed mentorship journey.
- What meetings could you give up? By giving up those meetings, how would you empower your team to grow? How would you spend your new extra time?
- What are 3 leadership traits that you would like to grow? How will you keep yourself responsible to your continual growth in these areas?
About the Mentor
Jeff Meredith Jeff Meredith is Chamberlain Group’s Chief Executive Officer. Jeff began his Chamberlain Group career in 2019 as the President and Chief Operating Officer, leading the Residential, Commercial, Automotive, and Delivery Business Units. In addition, Jeff also leads the Sales, Marketing, Sales Operations, Customer Experience, and Connected Services functions within the organization.
Jeff excels at developing a clear strategy and succinctly communicating that vision to a broad array of stakeholders. Jeff merges his background in engineering, sales, marketing, and tech to guide Chamberlain Group’s transformation to be the industry leader in connected access solutions. In his role Jeff is responsible for delivering the company’s P&L, strengthening the core hardware business, building the install base of connected users, and transforming the company to access solutions.
Prior to joining CGI, Jeff was the SVP & General Manager of Lenovo’s Global Consumer
Business Unit. In this role he was responsible for the $11.5B P&L, Product Portfolio, and
Marketing for all of Lenovo’s Consumer products including PCs, Tablets, Gaming, AR/VR, and Smart Home. Jeff was responsible for a 27% increase in Lenovo’s overall revenue and restored
the #1 global market share position for Lenovo’s consumer PCs.
Jeff previously held executive leadership roles at Lenovo, including VP & GM of Android & Chrome Business Group, VP & GM of the Tablet Business Unit, and VP Marketing for Americas, Europe, Japan and ANZ, Imation/3M, VP Global Marketing & Product Development, and Lexmark, VP of Worldwide Marketing.
Jeff is an Advisory Board Member for Northwestern University’s Master of Science, Product Design, and Development Management (mpd²) program. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a Master of Business Administration from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management.
Jeff is married with three children, is an avid Chicago White Sox baseball and Kentucky Wildcats basketball fan and has a knowledge of pop culture that may surprise you.
