In Episode 8 of the Being Human is Good For Business Podcast we talk to Gary Cohen, CEO at Qualitor Automotive Inc.
Over the course of his 32-year career, Mr. Cohen has held leadership roles at top consumer products and companies, such as Timex, Playtex, Proctor & Gamble and Gillette.
Innovation Leader, Qualitor Automotive CEO Gary Cohen
In the five years he was Gillette’s head of innovation for the Oral-B brand, Gary and his team doubled the size of the business, developed a billion-dollar brand, ideated 30 new products many of which went on to be $100 million product lines, and 15 years later they are still seen on supermarket shelves. The brands were instrumental in the valuation of Gillette when it was sold to Proctor & Gamble.
“Without a doubt, building emotional intelligence in our leaders fueled this innovation,” says Gary. “Only by listening generously can you thoroughly understand where someone is coming from so that together you can overcome challenges. By having real empathy for your colleagues and your customers, you can generate truly great ideas.”
His executive coach, Trilogy Effect Managing Partner Heather Marasse says, “It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest person in the world, if you don’t constantly practice your leadership skills, nothing changes. That’s why I appreciate the way Gary continually works on his own development as a leader. I admire the way he successfully links the ‘soft stuff’ of emotional intelligence to real world innovation and business success.”
In this podcast, Gary breaks down the leadership tools and techniques he uses to build successful teams and outstanding businesses. Learn how:
The practice of generous listening creates possibility
Designing conversations for action can accelerate innovation and growth
The Enneagram provides a framework to build self awareness and communications competencies for leaders.
Resources:
Listen Here:
Please subscribe to the Being Human Is Good for Business Podcast on iTunes, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and Spotify (links below) or wherever you get your podcasts. Please rate us and leave a review!
Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts I Heart Radio Spotify
MACHINE GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
What follows is an AI-generated transcript. It may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the podcast.
The Being Human Is Good For Business Podcast Episode 8 Transcript
Gary Cohen: [00:00:00] We doubled the size of the business in a five-year period. We became one of Procter and Gamble's billion-dollar brands. We'd like to think we were instrumental to the value creation of Gillette when they sold the business to Procter and Gamble.
Voice Over Man: [00:00:21] Welcome to the being. Human is good for business podcast. In each episode, the leadership development experts at trilogy effect explore how the process of self-discovery unleashes potential in assault. Now here's your host. Sherrilynne Starkie.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:00:39] Hello, I'm your host, Sherrilynne Starkie. Welcome to the Being Human is Good for Business podcast. Today. I'm joined by Heather Marasse, the managing partner at Trilogy Effect, the group of leadership development experts.
And today we are also welcoming as our guest, someone who Heather has coached and supported for many years. And in many different leadership roles. So, Gary Cohen is the CEO of Qualitor Automotive, North America's leading supplier of parts for the automotive aftermarket. And in the past, he's held senior and executive roles with Timex, Playtex, Gillette, and many other household names.
Welcome to the show, Gary. Welcome to you too, Heather.
Heather Marasse: [00:01:22] Thank you. I'm happy to be here with Gary.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:01:25] Well, let's start at the beginning. Gary, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your career background?
Gary Cohen: [00:01:30] Well, I'm a global consumer products CEO currently, as you said, I'm CEO of a small private equity backed aftermarket auto enterprise.
We sell wiper blades for cars and break hardware components, and these are all aftermarket parts. So, after you buy your car, these are parts that you would get at a retail establishment or an installer. Well, I've been a CEO and general manager for over a decade. I would say marketing and new product innovation is my domain expertise and very much my passion.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:02:06] What, in your opinion makes a successful leader in business?
Gary Cohen: [00:02:11] That's a good question. I would say there's a, there are many fundamentals to it. One is obviously vision. Setting a vision for, an enterprise, strategy and execution. I see them being very complementary. It's great to have a strategy, but you need to execute against it.
Great leaders are decisive and they're very ethical. And I guess I would add, the soft skill, which is listening and empathy. You hear a lot about EQ and that's very much. part of leadership today and listening and empathy are two skills that Heather and I have worked on a lot in our organizations and very much ties into the work that Trilogy Effect does.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:03:03] So you said it's a big part of leadership today. Do you think that it's been a changing trend since you started, being in leadership positions yourself?
Gary Cohen: [00:03:14] I'd like to think I always had it, but I, I will be humble and say that I learned it. And I've, it's a skill that I continually hone and I'm not perfect at it, but I don't think it was appreciated as much when I started my career as it is now.
And because I focused a lot of my early career with Heather on innovation and new product development, that was part and parcel to the tool kit of. Helping make me and our business successful.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:03:47] And would you say that's a trend that you've witnessed as well? Heather?
Heather Marasse: [00:03:52] Yeah, I wouldn't have thought about it that until Gary mentioned it here, but I can look back and think about my early years in business and he's right.
Listening and empathy. And this whole field of emotional intelligence and even the field of leadership was kind of underdeveloped and underappreciated. It was kind of the. School of Hard Knocks be tough kind of thing. Right. And we got so far with that and then businesses started not to do so well in the late eighties and into the nineties.
the world changed and you needed to be a lot more agile and effective with the human element in your business. And that called for some additional skills. And like Gary said, it's not like people didn't have those skills, but they were under-emphasized, and I say underdeveloped.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:04:46] And Gary, would you say that this a lot of leadership that the EQ part is plays an important role in innovation?
Gary Cohen: [00:04:56] Without a doubt.
One of the tools that Trilogy Effect, espouses is generous listening. Listening for issues, listening for where somebody is coming from. So, you're not just stepping on their toes and you're solving problems together. And if you have empathy, either for somebody on the other side of the table, in terms of, how to solve a problem together, or just even in general, listening to consumers and listening to, or developing consumer insights.
You can generate great ideas together, but it starts with listening and seeking to understand so that you're not just cutting off dialogue and because so much of innovation is allowing that space for conversation to take place.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:05:46] Can you tell us a little bit about that experience? Like how did you guys come together and, what was the first experience of working together?
Gary Cohen: [00:05:54] Like, yeah, that's a, that's a great lead in, so. In 1999, I worked at Gillette and I made my mark in consumer products. We, I worked on some amazing brands with a lot of great people. I worked on Right Guard. I worked on Gillette, the flagship brand, both for male shaving and female shaving. And then in 1999, I was appointed to a newly created role as head of innovation for Oral-B toothbrushes. Oral-B was a small innovative company that had purchased from out in California. And in 1999, somebody in headquarters decided to move Oral-B to Boston. IT was in San Francisco and I think at the time it was the dotcom boom. We did a corporate restructuring and I think we had a hard time getting key talent in San Francisco, but also, there was a thought to consolidate our R and D teams from Germany and our corporate headquarters into Boston to help us with our innovation pipeline.
So, I was a part of this new organization that was created in Boston and a new role to help, with our innovation platform. We tried to recruit a lot of folks from San Francisco, but at the time, very few people wanted to move to Boston. So, I inherited a new role with virtually no people. And I was given a new primary new R and D team that was comprised from a few corporate folks in Boston who had worked some on the oral care business with a new R and D team from our Braun unit in Germany. Very dedicated, amazing R D folks who only a year before were making coffee machines and electric razors. We had a few existing dental experts that joined us.
So, we had a great brand. What I would consider a loyal and passionate organization, but no product pipeline to speak of new, new product pipeline. So, I was panicked, and I knew Heather from work with her former colleagues that had worked with the Oral-B team and that there was some acceptance of the principles that Heather's team had worked on.
Primarily working with teams. Willing to be facilitated, trying to generate ideas. So, I interviewed Heather and her team, and we hit it off right away. And we took a risk together because as I said, I had no pipeline of new products. I was building this from ground zero and importantly, I really didn't know too much about my R and D team.
So, in a way it was very much like a cultural integration. a new pro an M and A type of situation when you buy a new company and you must have two organizations come together and, one, one might be the acquiring company and you must get everybody to work together. Well, this was like that only on a different scale in that there was no requirement company. We were just thrown in a room together and said, okay, go, go work. And to this day, it was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my working career because of those interesting dynamics and Heather was there right at the beginning, I was very lucky that we had some marketing people that were willing to take some risks.
But for the most part, these were people that didn't know each other, didn't trust me, didn't trust themselves, but also because they all came from different backgrounds of business and culture, we had a very, what I would call liberal high-tech R and D group in Boston that were willing to just work on anything that we asked them to.
We had a few dental professionals who were amazing, but very purist in their ways. And never met a marketing claim that they liked because unless we prove the world was round every time, they, they were very hesitant to come along with us. Well, we established this team, Heather and I set a mission and.
We did the normal, norming and storming and traveling and had dinners around the meetings and eventually got to a rhythm where we had quarterly innovation reviews for at least for a six-year period. It was again, just a, a great experience for me professionally and in a very successful one as well for the entire company.
Heather Marasse: [00:10:51] That business grew incredibly over the period that you were in there.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:10:55] Let's talk a little bit about the success that, that you achieved there. Can I get some examples of the innovation that came out of that shop?
Gary Cohen: [00:11:05] Sure. I mean, I'll, I'll start with the end. We doubled the size of the business in a five-year period.
We became one of Procter and Gamble's billion-dollar brands. We'd like to think we were instrumental to the value creation of Gillette when they sold the business to Proctor and Gamble. Right. We created about 30. What I would call 30 legitimate new product ideas in that five-year period. And what I'm most proud of if you've ever been associated with people that work on consumer products.
What I love about it is you can go to the store and say, I worked on that. Or you can say I've made that packaging, or I worked on that product. Probably most of the products we developed during that time. Right. It's still on the market 15 years later. Wow. Yeah. And many of them were hundred-million-dollar product ideas.
So, it was just an impactful period for the brand. And we made so much in such a relatively short period of time. So that, that to me was a real lesson that when you put the tools to work innovation on overdrive can happen. And in our case, it was from zero to 60. We really did have nothing when we started.
One of the principles that comes out of the Trilogy work is granted trust. And we begged for it initially because these were people that weren't coming willingly. And the reality is even though I buy a hundred percent into granted trust, and it's a way to get the game in play.
There's nothing that replaces the built trust as well. And that comes through several meetings and several years of working together. F
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:12:53] For our listeners who don't really, or maybe it might be the first time they've heard about the concept of generous listening. Can you explain it for us?
Heather Marasse: [00:13:02] Well, that was, we could do a whole other podcast on that, but I think the short version of it is human beings by nature are we're survival animals.
We seek to survive. We seek to keep things safe and predictable because we need to survive. And because of this, we do have a filtration system that we listen through some very predictable filters that keep us safe. So, we listen for confirmation of what we already know. We listen for judging and assessing.
We listen for taking, we take things personally. Everything's about us. We listen for whether we're going to look good in a situation. And we listened through a filter of resignation, maybe I've been there and tried that and got the t-shirt. All those filters are just part of what keeps us safe and familiar with what we know.
And if that's where we listen from, we are shutting down possibility. We're already knowing everything and we're letting a whole bunch of stuff slide past us because it's not getting caught in our filter. And so, what listening generously is about is to, we can feel those filters happening inside of us when people speak, they're always there.
But once you notice that they're there, you also then can notice what you're not listening to. And that's what we call it. It takes a real generosity to hear past our filter. Just because what's coming at me. I don't like it doesn't mean it's not valid. But for me to honor the validity of that given that I don't like it takes real generosity. So that's what we mean by generous listening.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:14:56] That sounds powerful, Heather, it seems that this kind of listening can open creativity and find ways to speed up progress.
Gary Cohen: [00:15:08] We set up a mission and vision of what was possible for our organization.
That took a little bit of time. Most organizations when they do a mission statement will take six months and they get all the, they get all the pens out and the red ink, and everybody talks about it in debates. Well Heather's concept, which I thought was, was novel is we did a mission statement in about an hour, an hour and a half. And we got everybody to align on what that was.
And the, and it wasn't so much that the goal was to develop the perfect mission statement. It was to show that you don't need to do something in six months, you can do it in an hour and a half and get it to work. And that was the beginning of showcasing to people that innovation and innovative companies get things done very quickly.
They make decisions very quickly. They don't dwell. They don't talk all day; they try to get decisions done. We can talk about some of those additional tools, but from setting that mission of what's possible not bound by what we know, but another exercise of, okay, how do we become a billion-dollar business?
And what's it going to take to get there? And what do we have to put in place that then enables those conversations? To take place of cause you're not going to get there incrementally. You're going to have to do some wild things sometimes. And you're going to have to, not only aside from getting the resources required, but just change the way you behave and change the way you make decisions was, was really empowering to people.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:16:52] Let's fast forward to today then. And talk about what's going on in Gary's life these days at Qualitor. Can you tell us a little bit about your organization and what your current challenges and ambitions are?
Gary Cohen: [00:17:07] Sure! I lead two business units. One is a B2B business that sells break hardware kits. And I also have a consumer business where we sell wiper blades under the Michelin trademark.
We have the license to sell Michelin wipers globally, and I'll focus on the consumer piece because that's a lot of where I've brought many of the tools that Heather has taught me over the years, that I've employed at Playtex and Timex as well. And we're consumer business and consumer businesses live and die on innovation, new products and marketing those new products.
So, it's been great to bring some of those tools to the party. We have a very, very impressive leadership team. From R and D to marketing, all functions are very strong and it's great to see them except some of the tools that I've brought from Heather. I have learned to listen and to try to educate people on generous listening and conversations for action.
And occasionally, call people out when we might go off the rails a little bit on either taking too much time. But I think in general, when organizations understand that speed is of the essence decisions can be made quickly and how you can do that, especially in this zoom teams environment where you can't always get together in person, which is probably a whole other podcast episode on how to be innovative online. We've been quite successful with bringing in new products to the marketplace and using some of the tools. And just the other day we were talking about conversations for action, something that I learned from Heather.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:19:03] Can you share with us a little bit about how that came up or is that too soon to talk about that.
Gary Cohen: [00:19:11] Oh, no. Maybe Heather, do you want to explain the concept a little bit? Cause I think it's, to me, it's, it's one of my favorite tools in the box.
Heather Marasse: [00:19:22] And it's so deceptively simple, but not easy. What most people don't realize is that there are only five specific speech acts that cause action.
Most of us just kind of relate to conversation as kind of this amorphous thing. And its people talking and people listening, but which is often the case, but if you want to produce results, you need to put things into action. And so, there were only five ways to speak that cause action. They are promises.
So, I'm going to promise to do something by a certain date. There are requests. I would like you to do something by a certain day. Proposals, which are, I would like this collective to move in this direction specifically by a certain date. Offers, which is I offer to do something by specific dates. And invitations. I invite you to do something by a certain date. Those five speech acts are the things that move anything into action. And when we become rigorous with that and keep track of it, capture our promises, capture the requests. It's a way of really ensuring that your projects are in motion and accountabilities are clear.
And everything's transparent. People know who's doing what, because so many times during the meeting, the action gets muddled up with other stuff, other conversation. It's not clear who's doing what, or we forgot to put a due date on things. And so being rigorous with what causes action makes your results a lot more likely.
Gary Cohen: [00:21:19] I'm a big believer. As I said, the best leaders have that balance of strategy and action. Strategy is all about choices and action is how you get those choices in play to get them developed. And there are many organizations, large and small, that have a really hard time with accountabilities are getting actions done.
And it's that knowing, doing gap. People know what needs to get done, but it's not always getting it in place. And you've heard of the concept of an action register. The simple, like who's going to do what, when. That's broad, that's generic. Everybody understands it. How you use it and how you populate it as the, as the hard thing.
I mean many organizations in the meeting will not use an action register, but at a high level, they'll say, all right, I think we know what we need to get done. Then maybe some will document it. Having a conversation that gets that populated can take a lot of time unless people are very specific.
And I'll just give you examples. And this goes back to Oral-B or even my current organization. And I think part of it is human language. We all try to be nice to each other, and sometimes nice, doesn't get it done. And, and its human nature, not to want to hold people accountable, but then people get disappointed when they don't get stuff done.
And so, a simple example in a conversation of somebody might say, well, wouldn't it be great if, or I wonder or ask should we do this? Well, if you say, should we do this? You're giving you're inviting people to say yes or no, or maybe. But then you might have a 10-minute conversation at the end of that conversation, was there any action that came out of it? And so, Heather's tool that I've tried to employ is to let everybody know that they're, they're a player in this game. And if they want to get something done, they can say I'm going to do it, or they can ask somebody else to do it. And probably the hardest thing for a team dynamic is to ask a peer, would you do this for me?
And it's even harder to say, would you do this for me tomorrow? But if you don't, nothing gets done. You just talk. And stuff happens. And then you have the next meeting, and somebody will say, wait a second. I thought you were going to do that. And somebody might say, well, no, I never said I was going to do that.
And it's the conversations. The intentions might've been there, but the conversation didn't happen to get it on the action register. And so, what we try to get our teams to understand is if you want to get something done, ask somebody. Now many times the leader can do that, but in a team dynamic where everyone's a peer, and more and more of our teams today are working teams that shouldn't need a supervisor.
You can have a leader, but you shouldn't need the boss, always in the room. That peer-to-peer conversation is very important to make offers, to make requests. And that's how you get stuff on the action register. And then the discipline of coming back to it, every meeting. So. Heather would facilitate our Oral-B meetings and every meeting started and ended with the action register. Who's going to do what, when and then that would be the first thing we reviewed at the beginning of a meeting. But then that entire meeting was facilitated by Heather calling people out to say, you just spoke five minutes are you asking something to get done? Heather's famous line would be.: Is that a request hidden in a question? Because people would ask questions and they just would not feel comfortable asking a peer to do something.
Heather Marasse: [00:25:06] The other thing that I think happens when you work this way, is this whole area of accountability, then the notion of it becomes less scary.
Because accountability is just holding us to account for what we said would happen. And then when you look at what did happen, it's not about making anyone right or wrong. It's simply about now, where are we? And you learn that it didn't happen then, but I'm going to get it done next week because we had some delays in the supply chain.
Good. I mean, that's probably not going to take us off course, but it keeps us in full transparency around what we're being held to account for and the implications that has and everything else. And it allows people to start relating to accountability as this isn't something to be afraid of. It's something to just be in communication for.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:25:58] I know that one of the tools that the team at Trilogy Effect uses a lot is the Enneagram framework. Is that something that you use in your teams, Gary?
Gary Cohen: [00:26:08] I have, I've used it in many of my leadership teams and it's evolved over the years. I think Heather, we may have just introduced it to Oral-B towards the end.
Yeah. We used it at, at Playtex and Timex and I enjoy it tremendously. I'm a continuous learner, so I I'm a sponge when it comes to personality profiles. I've done many different profiles. And what I like about the Enneagram is that many of the evaluations and guides are publicly available.
So, you can buy books on all the different types. I'm an Enneagram Type 3, the achiever, although I cross a little bit into Enneagram 6 of my data and analytical zone. So, I can confuse people, but I also confuse people on Myers Briggs. So at least you know that it's consistent. There’s, there are some, some parallels, but I've used it for our leadership team to understand how we approach leadership.
And more importantly, how we each approach our own leadership styles. There are a lot of Type 3s in business. What's the Enneagram type for our strong-willed?
Heather Marasse: [00:27:24] The Type 8, the challenger.
Gary Cohen: [00:27:28] What I love about the Enneagram is just how the Type 8s, the impact that they can have on organizations and what Enneagram types, we must be careful. The best thing about Type 8s is letting them see who they're all about because many of them just operate without even knowing that. But for me it's been so great to understand a little bit about my leadership profile. Explain to my team, this is how I lead. This is where I might get into trouble. This is how I'm wired. And whenever you do that, no matter what the personality profile, it just helps people understand you a little bit more. And then you will always get that aha moment of, Oh, now I understand why you do this.
Heather Marasse: [00:28:12] Exactly. This is how it looks on the outside, but now I understand what's going on in your skin.
Gary Cohen: [00:28:20] I'm perfectly comfortable letting people know why I think I'm wired like I am and, and how it was even reinforced in the day. A of Type 3s they always want accolades. They want to perform; they want to succeed. When I was a young child, I had two grandmothers, two great grandmothers and a mother.
I always had somebody. Giving me compliments telling me what coat to wear when I was walking out the door. But that's part of the, the performance side of it is, I always felt as though, as I was performing. Well, interesting, when I got to Gillette, that was only reinforced even more. You got rewarded if you gave a great PowerPoint presentation to the senior leaders of the company, and then eventually if you could present to the board, that was the end all be all. And it was all about coming up with a great plan, but then presenting it. And I went to other organizations where that wasn't as appreciated as much, but that's just how I was wired.
So, when I come up with a board presentation and I'm trying to weave it the way I thought it was accepted at Gillette and people look at me like I'm on another planet, I always must remind them. Well, first, I'm wired this way. And second, for 20 years of my career, I was rewarded for that type of performance.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:29:37] How are you using it in your current role?
Gary Cohen: [00:29:41] Yeah, we've done, we've worked with my leadership team, because I'm still at the company. I won't give you all the details, but yeah, Heather and I have done several sessions with our team and it's been helpful for the team to understand themselves and they've taken it to their teams as well. And so, I've gotten nothing but positive feedback. Once those sessions have been run. People come back and say, Oh, I didn't know he was a Type 8. And when you have two Type 8s on the same team you must make sure that you don't leave knives on the table.
But once people understand that that's how they're wired, it just breaks down so much of the conflict.
Heather Marasse: [00:30:23] It's that whole once we remind ourselves of the humanity around the table, it's a good thing for business.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:30:34] What do you appreciate about Trilogy Effect's approach to working with the companies that you've been working with them at?
Gary Cohen: [00:30:43] I appreciate Heather. I appreciate the tools. I appreciate that I've been able to utilize the tools both with Heather, but also on my own. They're very much common sense. When we started this conversation, it sounded like a black box and a little academic, but when you really get down to the nuts and bolts, we're humans, we're human systems.
It's how we interact with each other. It's how we communicate. And those are lifelong skills that are important to have. And it's been very important for me to, to bring those tools and skills to whatever organization I've been in. I'm not perfect. So, there've been plenty of times where I've had to remind myself that those tools are in my toolkit and even to bring it to family and to personal discussions.
We get so wired on accomplishments and results that we forget that the human element is so important. So, if there's one thing I've learned as a leader from Heather and the team it's that, that continually learning process, the 360, the self-evaluation the asking people for input doesn't stop. And if you're any type of competent leader, you're always seeking out that information and trying to improve yourself and, and I've not stopped. So, I have Heather and Trilogy Effect to thank for that.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:32:07] Wasn't that lovely? And Heather, what have you learned by working with Gary all these years? What’s the biggest lesson you've learned?
Heather Marasse: [00:32:14] Well, I appreciate. and I think it's something that he and I share. I appreciate the way Gary continually practice it. There's one thing about knowing stuff. There's another thing about putting it into practice. So, the smartest people in the world, if they're not putting into practice, what they've learned, nothing changes.
And so, I really appreciate the way Gary takes on ongoing development. And the link that he just instinctively has always known, but also puts into practice around soft stuff and innovation. The soft stuff really can drive innovation to a whole new level.
Sherrilynne Starkie: [00:33:03] So thank you to Qualitor Automotive CEO, Gary Cohen, and Trilogy Effect Managing Partner, Heather Marasse for joining me today on the show. And thanks also to all you listeners and make sure that you never miss an episode by subscribing to our podcast. And please leave a rating or a review and recommend us to your friends and family, anyone really, who wants to learn how to become better, stronger, or more effective as a leader.
Thanks once again for joining us. I’m your host, Sherrilynne Starkie, and this is the Being Human is Good for Business podcast.