Business

Saturday November 14, 2009

Up close and personal with Jack Leslie

BY CECILIA KOK


Jack Leslie, Weber Shandwick chairman gets ...

IF there’s one value that could sum up Jack Leslie’s personality, it must be servanthood.

Attributing this value ingrained in him to his family upbringing, the veteran communication strategist and chairman of the world’s leading public relations company Weber Shandwick says: “That’s what I believe I am here to do – to serve my people and my family.”

Leslie says he learnt from an early age that serving is the way to behave and get fulfilled in life.

Reminiscing how his mother would always be at the forefront of the neighbourhood to offer food and shelter to needy people, especially women – those who had been abused, and unwed mothers who had been rejected by their own family members – Leslie shares: “We always had somebody else living in the house with my parents, besides the five children (he and his siblings) … and it was always somebody in need.”

From this, Leslie has always believed in the obligation to serve; and that there are many different ways one can serve the larger community.

In one’s capacity as a leader of a company, for instance, he says one can serve the needs of one’s subordinates by helping them to succeed.

“The real test of one’s leadership is the extent to which one’s subordinates ask him or her for help,” Leslie says.

“When your own people stop asking you for help, you know you are not leading them anymore,” he explains.

So many leaders are so intimidating and inaccessible that their subordinates do not approach them for help, they just wait to be told what to do, and that, to Leslie, is not good leadership.

Importance of doing good deeds

Leslie was in Malaysia recently as one of the speakers for the “Agents of Change in Social Responsibility and Philanthropy” session at the ninth Forbes Global CEO Conference in Kuala Lumpur. During a short break at the conference, he managed to squeeze in time to share some of his thoughts with StarBizWeek.

Pointing out that it is important to build a corporate culture, with a strong appreciation for the values of corporate social responsibility, Leslie says doing good does not necessarily have to be in conflict with the ability to make a profit.

“You can still be highly profitable and do good,” he says, adding: “Really smart companies can make more money by doing good and creating customer loyalty than companies that do not understand the linkage between profits and addressing social needs.”

“Some companies look at doing good as just something that they could leave to their foundation to do as part of community service. But really successful companies understand that addressing social needs is an obligation,” Leslie opines.

Leslie’s participation in the recent Forbes Global CEO Conference was his first-ever trip to Malaysia. But he says his stay was too short, and his schedule too tight, for him to get much of an impression of the country, except that he “gasped at the sight of the high-rise and sophisticated buildings in the city centre”.

And that’s because for a New Yorker like him, skyscrapers are a semblance of a country’s vitality and growth.

“The global financial crisis has taught me to have a greater appreciation for the importance of Asia for future growth,” Leslie says, adding that he has always been particularly optimistic about China, which he believes, “in many aspects, will help pull the rest of the global economy back to growth”.

His bullish outlook for China prompted him to take his two daughters with him for a long stay in the country about 10 years ago, because he already believed then that the country would be very relevant to their future, and he wanted his daughters to start developing a deep appreciation for China’s culture and potential.

“They are very lucky children ... they’ve been to all over the world because daddy takes them there,” he says.

But their family trips are not just for fun. Leslie wants them to learn “what’s life all about.”

When he took them to Africa several years ago, for instance, Leslie’s hope was that his daughters would learn to care about other people, and to appreciate all that they have, and then, give something back to society.

“It was more than just a safari trip,” he says.

“I took them to visit refugee camps and homes for the underprivileged people because I really don’t want them to go through life not recognising that they have an obligation to serve,” he adds.

Leslie himself is active in many charity works in Africa. He was recently anointed by US President Barack Obama to be the chairman of the United States African Development Foundation Board of Directors. The foundation, which operates in 20 African nations, is a government agency that focuses on expanding access to economic opportunity in the impoverished continent.

On his thoughts about Obama, Leslie says: “He is a transformative president.

“I began to realise during Obama’s campaign that there is a difference between a campaign and a movement ... a campaign has a beginning and an end; it is about a man or a woman. But a movement does not have a definitive end; it is bigger than an individual, it is about a cause.”

Leslie has been a Democrat supporter since high school. In fact, upon his graduation in the late 1970s from the Georgetown University in Washington, the United States, he landed the job in the office of the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

Political involvement

But it was pure serendipity that he got involved in politics. As in most things in life, you don’t really plan, he says.

In 1980, Leslie helped out in Kennedy’s attempt for the US presidential election, in which the latter lost to incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter. Leslie went on to work for other Democratic candidates during the early part of the 1980s, which, in the US political history, was the glorious period for the party.

“But I lost in just about every campaign that I worked in, so at one point I decided to leave the United States and travelled the world,” he says.

Leslie became a consultant and media adviser to various politicians in other countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia, from the mid 1980s to the late 1990s, and was involved in several high-profile campaigns that marked some of the most exciting events in world history.

For instance, in the mid 1980s, Leslie worked in the Philippines with former president and late Corazon Aquino during the revolution against Ferdinand Marcos, and in Chile, during the opposition “No” campaign headed by Ricardo Lagos against then head of state General Augusto Pinochet. (Pinochet subsequently left the presidency in 1990 and was succeeded by his political opponent Patricio Aylwin in a democratic presidential election.)

Leslie regards his involvement in political communications as the most formative experiences in his career, in the sense that he could look more broadly in terms of communications and the business that he practises today.

“We need to understand an environment – politically, socially, economically and culturally. And from that, construct communications strategies for our clients,” he says.

Despite the global financial crisis, Weber Shandwick has been able to increase its market share in the public relations industry.

“Our business has been fortunate ... we are doing well,” Leslie says, attributing that partly to his committed and efficient staff all over the world.

In addition, he says, the group has a very diversified client base – a lesson the company learnt since the dotcom bubble burst in 2000.

“Most of our clients are leaders in their own sectors and they recognise that in tough times they have the opportunity to increase market share by not cutting back dramatically on their marketing campaigns,” Leslie explains.

As for his outlook on the global economy, he says, “I think we are on the right track.Things are getting better, but we still have a long way to go.”

  • E-mail this story
  • Print this story