“I believe that every county has a leader. We need leaders, people who have a vision of what they want to do and can engage the skills of the other people that are needed to make it happen.
Myself, I think it takes three things to be a leader. Firstly, it’s important to listen. People who listen are people who win. When I was serving my time, I would have considered myself a good listener, and on several occasions, the guy I was serving my time to would give me the time to explain and teach me the right way to do things. I was prepared to listen, and when I started my construction business, I was prepared to listen to carpenters and block layers, and I learned a lot from the people who worked for me. You can learn a lot from people who have gone before you and made mistakes and accepted that they have made mistakes; sure, I’ve made some myself. But you have to take the time to listen.
Secondly, I’d be a great believer in getting people you can work with as a team, and I think that whole team focus is so important. Give people an opportunity to be part of it. And at the end of it all, they need to be rewarded. At the year-end, they need to get a bonus for their efforts. I think in most good companies, that happens. The day for not recognising people in a company is long gone. Everyone has a role to play. Some play a greater role than others, and some show more interest. Working together as a team is the only way forward, which requires communication. Leaders can’t just come into the office daily, close the door and leave that evening expecting everything just to happen. You must communicate with your people and let them know the good and the bad.
The third thing is a sense of realism. I’d say that you need to be competitive to become a leader, to say to yourself, “I’d like to achieve that”. But it’s also necessary to approach it with a sense of reality too, to ask yourself, “how will I get there, and what will it take?” We were a successful building company for 30 years before we started to think about the Tullamore Court Hotel. There were many things we had to do before that before we could achieve our aim. We had to talk about the site and the location of the sites and then do a deal with the people who owned the site. Achieve what you aim to achieve with a realistic plan. People often don’t go into that detail to examine the pitfalls. There are downfalls in every business. You can find a situation where you are losing money, and you have to find out how to get out. That happened to me once, and I did get out. If you want to be successful, communicate with your team, be ambitious but realistic and listen, listen and learn from the real world”.