The Leadership Spotlight continues this week with Eric Lackey. Eric has been with Dave Ramsey’s organization for almost eight years with the IT team.
His team is responsible for a wide range of technology including order entry, CRM and ERP software, networking, security, systems management and user support. Prior to joining Dave Ramsey’s office, Eric worked at ISDN-Net for five years as an applications developer. Eric earned his bachelor’s degree in computer information systems at Middle Tennessee State University.
Eric is a Tennessee native, but lived for a short time in Arlington, Texas, before moving back to Tennessee. Eric and his wife, Rachel, have two children, Mason, age 3, and Myla, 3 months. The family resides in Franklin, Tennessee,, and attend Clearview Baptist Church. In his spare time, Eric likes to be on Center Hill Lake spending time with family and friends.
CLo: What is your role in leadership?
EL: Director of IT
CLo: What is the best advice you’ve ever received about leadership?
EL: Have confidence as a leader to hire people who are smarter than you.
CLo: What is the biggest challenge facing leaders today?
EL: Having time to step back and work on my team is one of my biggest challenges. In IT, you don’t always know what each day is going to bring, and you are often happy to make it through the day. When you are busy working on day-to-day issues, it is difficult to do long-term team strategy and planning.
CLo: How do you continue to improve yourself as a leader?
EL: Read, meet with and learn from other leaders, attend leadership conferences, accept leadership positions outside of work.
CLo: How do you invest in others?
EL: I make sure that my team knows I’m available to them whenever they need me — whether it’s a project or a personal issue. I also try to push my team to make sure they love what they’re doing. I love coming in and working through the technology challenges we face each day, but if your heart isn’t it then it’s easy to get burned out quickly.
CLo: What was the last book you read?
EL: Point Man: How a Man Can Lead His Family – Steve Farrar
Related articles
- Leadership Spotlight: Teresa Duke (chrislocurto.com)
- Leadership Spotlight: Thom Carlin (chrislocurto.com)
- Leadership Spotlight: Kraig McNutt (chrislocurto.com)
- Leadership Spotlight: Brent Spicer (chrislocurto.com)
- Leadership Spotlight: Neal Webb (chrislocurto.com)
Resources:
Leading High Levels of Communication and Accountability
I can agree with what Eric said about being so busy that you can’t step back to work on long term planning and strategy. As a busy leader it seems that the busyness of the daily grind can choke out the stuff that really matters. Any suggestions on how to handle this? This might be a good idea for a future post for you. I’m sure you have experience to share that we could glean from!
There is a tendency to have IT people in the background (Sort of out of the way unless there is a problem), so it’s nice to have one of us (It folks), spotlighted. Leaders invest in their people, but i never thought of the angle of focusing on making sure your people love what they do. Great idea.
Thanks! We love our IT folks!! They make our lives so much easier.
I love, love, love what Eric says about how he improves himself, reading, learning from others, attending conferences, accepting roles outside of work – all of which are incredible habits for self-improvement.
Eric sounds like a terrific leader – and we need more of those.