“Sometimes the unthinkables do happen,” Chancellor Wolf Yeigh told students, alumni and faculty who attended a University of Washington Bothell business leadership talk.
To prepare for a crisis, Yeigh advised the Business & Organization Leadership Development (BOLD) audience to be mindful of not only what you know but also the unthinkable.
And, when a crisis hits, follow three C’s: Communicate, stress Core values and Care, Yeigh said Tuesday night to about 40 people at the North Creek Events Center.
One BOLD member in the audience, Gui Fialho, says he learned to be proactive, not reactive, in a crisis.
“When you face a problem you have to be proactive and have your values fresh in your mind, so you can solve the problem based on what you believe in,” he said.
Another BOLD member, Erika Springer, (photo right) says Yeigh stimulated great discussion.
“Chancellor Yeigh brought attention to how crisis leadership can be implemented on a global, national and community scale, which is crucial to understand social and economic impacts of different peoples,” Springer said.
The leadership lessons talks are one of the scheduled events by BOLD students. The group also visit businesses and meet with top executives throughout the year.
Yeigh says BOLD is a program “that translates what you learn in class to actual hands-on experience in the workplace.”
That was echoed by Jacob Woo, (photo left) one of the 12 students who started BOLD in 2012. With degree concentrations in accounting and finance, he’s already working full time at HaloSource, a Bothell company that sells water-filtering technology around the world.
“You get a better idea of where you’re going and where you want to be,” Woo says of his experience with BOLD.
Springer says “meeting these partners every month gave me the confidence to go out of my bubble a little bit.”
Fialho, a 22-year-old mechanical engineering student from Curitiba, Brazil, is making the most of his year at UW Bothell by taking part in the BOLD activities.
“I’m learning leadership is multi-cultural,” says Fialho, (photo right) whose native language is Portuguese. “The difference in being a leader doesn’t depend on language. It depends on your attitude,” he said.
Register now for the next BOLD talk on May 17 featuring Phillip “Flip” Morse, senior vice president of Nintendo, speaking on What I learned about leadership from rock 'n' roll.
