Executive-in-Residence 3/18/10 – D. Allan Walker

Longwood Alum Speaks at Executive-in-Residence Series

Date: 3/18/10

By John Ivey

D. Allan Walker who graduated Longwood University in 1985 was the speaker, on Thursday March 18, for The College of Business & Economics Executive-in-Residence series, a program bringing business leaders to students to share their experiences and insight into the business world. Walker is currently the chief marketing officer of Virginia Asset Management, an independent financial and benefit planning firm. He has worked for companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Rogers Benefit Group. The topic of Walkers presentation was “Leadership: Resisting Temptations Stay the Course."

After giving an overview of how he has come to where he is in his career Walker moved into the primary focus of the lecture, leadership which he defined as the capacity to rally men and women around a common purpose. To outline this Walker stated 21 key points, however he mainly focused on only four of these points, which he called the four C’s. The four C’s are Confidence, Commitment, Cooperation, and Creativity. He then proceeded to describe each of the four C’s individually explaining how each key in becoming a good leader.

For the first C, confidence, Walker described it as showing self-discipline, competence, discernment and a positive attitude. Self-discipline he explained is achieved by planning; this is one of the most important aspects of a leader. Competence he described as the ability to build knowledge. In addition, competence encompasses the ability to motivate others and doing more than what is asked every time, this was summed up when he said, “quality is never an accident.” Discernment he portrayed as the ability to get to the root of problems. Positive attitude he expressed as quite simply bringing a positive attitude to the job, to improve on this he suggested “dinning on positive things”, such as working out and looking at past successes.

Next Walker moved onto commitment, which he described as exhibiting true commitment, focus and relationships. True commitment he explained what attracts and inspires people to take action, which is essential when it comes to a leader. Focus, the ability to stay on topic he explained is essential for a good leader. Also, he explained how we should use our focus which is 70% on strength, 25% on new growth, and only 5% on our weakness. He explained that we should mainly focus on and develop our strength and not as much on our weakness to help develop our best qualities. Relationships he describes as the ability to get along with people, summing it up with “it’s what you put into people (as a leader), rather than what you can get out of them.”

Then Walker quickly moved thorough Cooperation, focusing on teach ability, which he described as a leaders ability to learn, grow, and gain knowledge every day.

Subsequently, he talked about the last C, which is Creativity which he described as passion. He described passion as a person’s enthusiasm and energy a person brings to a job. Passion he explained comes from a deep love of what you enjoy doing. This type of person has the ability to “make things happen.”

In his closing Walker focused on the need for young leaders to “move!”, “seek a mentor!”, and most important “make a difference!” These things he explained are essential to becoming a leader in addition to the four C’s. He ended with the statements “there are always new leadership opportunities avail themselves”, meaning there are new opportunities around every corner and “there is a balance between a professional life and a personal one”, meaning life is not all about business, so live your life to the fullest.

Over all I really enjoyed this speaker he gave one of the best Executive-in-Residence presentations that I have seen in my more than two years of covering Executive-in-Residence speakers. He exhibited every one of the key points he spoke about and presented his material in a way that regardless of your learning style, audile, visual or otherwise; you learned exactly what he was talking about. One of the things that set this speaker apart from the rest was his explanations of how to implement his ideas which made understanding him much easier for everyone who attended. I find a relation to management here though leaning how all levels of management should operate because by applying these ideas any company will greatly improve.