Distinguished Business Leader Speaks on Conscious Leadership
“For me, true success and happiness is following my own purpose. None of us ever created this business to make money. That was a byproduct of following our values.”
This was the message delivered last week to MIU business students by Scott Brickman, retired Chairman and CEO of the Brickman Group, the largest commercial landscape maintenance firm in the US. Mr. Brickman has received many awards, including Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and the Society of Financial Professionals National Capital Business Ethics Award.
Scott Brickman
His talk, entitled “Conscious Leadership,” was part of MIU’s Distinguished Lecture Series.
Mr. Brickman talked about the “15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership,” an approach developed by Jim Dethmer and his colleagues. Conscious leadership organizations focus on long-term results rather than short-term profits. They also value team performance, compassion and caring, training and development, and transparency. Rather than using bonuses to motivate employees, conscious leadership organizations use higher forms of motivation such as intrinsic rewards to leverage each individual’s unique capacities.
Mr. Brickman also practices the Transcendental Meditation™ technique, which he described as the basis of everything he practices. “When you know what consciousness is,” he said, “it drives you to a well-rounded life, which is success.”
The Brickman group was founded in the 1930s by Mr. Brickman’s grandfather. His father later took over the company. It was Scott Brickman who built the company into the national leader it is today. He also serves as a board member and an advisor to many organizations, and he and his wife, Patrice, spend a great deal of time on a variety of philanthropic causes.
Mr. Brickman was introduced by Jeffrey Abramson, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at MIU, who had met Mr. Brickman five years ago. The Brickman Group was providing landscape maintenance services for the properties owned by Mr. Abramson’s company, and Mr. Abramson decided he’d like to meet its president.
“Mr. Brickman showed the students that outer success is based on inner development,” said Dr. Scott Herriott, co-chair of the Department of Business Administration. “He explained that the landscaping business is not really about trucks and shovels, the physical level. The Brickman Group used Deming’s principles of quality management, and that made them more profitable. But the company also took great care to develop a culture of trust, openness, and caring for people. This created a powerful value of loyalty that made the company genuinely successful.”