If there is fear, there is a reason - our job is to find the reason and to remedy it. Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover.

Said Ferriola: “We encourage our people not to fear failure. You cannot stretch the limits of your knowledge, your imagination, or your skills, if you’re afraid to fail. It’s very typical to hear a manager or a supervisor coach a new teammate by saying something like: ‘If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing the limits of your abilities.

But through that coaching he also showed them how to coach their people and teams, which made them much more effective managers and leaders. Time and time again, they note that whenever they face an interesting situation, they ask themselves, what would Bill do? And we realized, we do it, too. What would Bill do? How would the coach handle this situation?

...Bill always reminded us that managing these people is one of the bigger challenges of the job. He called them “aberrant geniuses,” and said, “You get these quirky guys or women who are going to be great differentiators for you. It is your job to manage that person in a way that doesn’t disrupt the company. They have to be able to work with other people. If they can’t, you need to let them go. They need to work in an environment where they collaborate with other people.

Leadership is not about you, it’s about service to something bigger: the company, the team. Bill believed that good leaders grow over time, that leadership accrues to them from their teams.