3 Leadership Principles That Leonard Grape Learned

Leonard: That’s a really very good question. I think primarily Sean, in terms of a leadership principle. It’s having the right vision and learning how to do foresight for where you want to bring your team. As a manager myself during this time, usually will do a lot of the corporate disciplines back then. When you like, you’ll have the setup like your five-year plan, and even before you do that, you’ll have established a very strong foundation on who you are in terms of the unit back then, and I was still in Ayala Land, plus really making sure that you establish the foundation.

The first key principle that I think really works well for me is the ability to have foresight. Ireland is a 30-year company and they’re considered a pioneer in terms of master planning communities. So I was really very fortunate to be part of our organization at that time when it was doing a lot of expansions, doing several sub-branding for their different business units. So visioning for me was really very important. That’s the one.

The second is culture. And when I say culture, it’s not just about understanding your values and their standing, your core principles, but it’s really knowing who you are as a leader and how you translate that in the way you do things on a day-to-day basis.

And then maybe the third one is really knowing the financial aspect of the business. I want to contextualize my answer to being a business leader and businesses at the end of it all. It also has to be a healthy profit and loss statement. So those three things are really very critical for me and I felt were foundational, foundational of how I am now. The way I translate that was when I started my company, the venture. The first thing I tried to really sit down and think about is What do I want to happen here? Even if there’s not a lot of clarity yet shining at the beginning. In fact, I didn’t know where I was going. I really didn’t know what to do. All I knew then was I needed a new beginning and I wanted to quit my tenured job to control more of how I’ll develop my career. But I needed to really sit down and have something that I can hold on to as a vision. At that time, I think it was as simple as building a company that will help entrepreneurs with their branding and communications requirements. It’s that generic for me, but that was strong enough for me to say, Hey, this is something that I can do. And if everyone involved some people here, it’s something that we can all latch onto at the beginning.

Second, when I started the Vineyard, I was very intentional about the type of company, at least right now we were starting the type of company culture that I want. Back in the day, of course, I experienced some culture clashes, if I may, or where I had to deal with a boss or with a business transaction within the company that I felt wasn’t really 100% aligned with who I am. So the way I do that now would be to make sure that those experiences that they didn’t like exactly, I wouldn’t have to bring it back now that I’m starting my own culture. The financial aspect is really thinking big while we’re starting small, meaning When I started the Vineyard, I already knew that I’ll have to make sure that they set up very proper financial operating principles. So that’s why even then we were really starting to serve a lot of clients. I already brought in someone who can help me with a financial Pro-forma to make sure that when I make decisions, it has to be a business decision that will be for the benefit of the company. So I guess those three leadership principles if I can call those leadership principles, Sean.