234: Dean Hallett | Starting Hallett Leadership After Impacting Organization And Culture At Fox And Disney

Episode 234 gets into the swing of things with guest Dean Hallett, Founder & CEO of Hallett Leadership. During his 17-year tenure at Fox Studios, where he served as CFO, Dean developed a unique and highly effective 9-month leadership training program for early and mid-career managers. The program’s success at breaking down silos across Fox, and fostering a culture of collaboration, led to Dean’s promotion to Senior Executive VP of Operations & Management. Today, the program Dean pioneered at Fox is called the Accelerated Leadership Program (ALP), which “develops tomorrow’s leaders today.”

Decades of experience in a space is something that gives refinement we highly desire when we are looking for a person of quality. Dean has some baseline rules for leadership, as well as understanding of how to facilitate levels of leadership underneath him.

I spoke with Dean about a variety of topics related to leadership, his experience at Fox and Disney, personality traits that matter in organizational leadership, and more.

Show notes:

• how Dean deviated from his earlier public accounting track to his positions as CFO of large corporations
• why being somewhat introverted can bring value to an organization, and how introverts sometimes have the most to offer
• what some examples of Dean providing leadership consisted of
• how the reward structure of a corporation affects what people target their efforts toward, and how shifting this reward structure is important for improved culture
• what some of the qualities are that Dean looks for in people working around and under him, to have a highly-effective organization
• why letting people work their own way and be creative leads to positive and potentially surprisingly positive results
• how Dean feels about feeling comfort in life, versus expanding one’s zone
• what books have been read by Dean for understanding, including Collaboration Begins With You by Ken Blanchard, and The Tao to High-Performance Leadership by Jack Zwissig
• why storytelling has a compelling force to it
• how being fearful of training and developing your people sends them away, as opposed to the alternative

It was a pleasure to speak with Dean during this episode, and hear some other stories about his life experiences. He is a full person, as I would describe it, and is on the way in his new path. I always connect more with individuals building their own name and entities. You can check out his coaching material at Hallett Leadership.