Leadership Lessons from One of the Greats, Dr. John Dempsey
Sandhills Community College is located in the idyllic town of Southern Pines, NC. For many, Southern Pines and Pinehurst mean world class golf. For me, I think world class leadership and Dr. John Dempsey.
I had the great fortune to be hired by Dr Dempsey for my first head coaching job in 1986. At that time, he was President of Belmont Abbey College, a small Catholic school outside Charlotte NC (interestingly, the late Al McGuire coached there in the 1950s). Dr. Dempsey hired me as head basketball coach and athletic director. Like many young coaches (I was 31) I thought I knew a lot about coaching. Not only did I have a lot to learn about coaching, I needed to learn even more about leading!
That's where Dr. Dempsey comes in. I had no idea I had landed with a college president who would teach me so much about leadership, not only during my time at The Abbey but over the decades since then.
I am a keen observer. Always have been. And watching Dr. Dempsey be Dr. Dempsey gave me a front row seat to so many invaluable leadership lessons. Among the many lessons:
Treat everyone with respect.
Live your core values. Don't just say you have them. His Sandhills CC Core Values are exactly how he lives his life: Excellence, Opportunity, Integrity, Respect, and Helpfulness.
Live up to your promises.
Listen to the voice of those who are "in it" everyday. That could be the coaches in sports or the students at the college.
Take care of those you lead.
Put your people first, not your career.
Do your job and don't take shortcuts.
Share your heart and get to know your people.
The position someone holds is not as important as the person someone is.
If you believe enough in them to hire them, then empower them to do their job.
And maybe the biggest one of all is: have a daily goal of putting a smile on someone else's face. When you touch enough people that day, that becomes a high shift in the vibe of the environment!
These are just some of the reasons why he was a leader everyone wanted to follow. I say was because he will be retiring in December after 33 years at Sandhills, during which time he built the college into one of the finest community colleges in the country. He did what all leaders strive to do -- leave it better than you found it. And Dr. Dempsey did that; not just for the schools he worked at, but all of us he touched as well.
*As a side note: Dr. Dempsey's other accomplishments are many and varied, but he won't tell you about them. Some aren't surprising, but a few others may be. After only a few years as a formal program, Sandhills won two national basketball championships -- an accomplishment that thrilled Dr. Dempsey. And -- an avid golfer, he is a member of Golf Magazine’s panel that selects the top 100 golf courses in the world.