The following interview with Stephen Vecchitto, Founder and Managing Director at Advenir Living, was pulled from Episode 227 of the Apartment Life Leadership Podcast and was edited for length and clarity.
How would you define leadership?
Leadership is not a title. Leadership is a behavior. It's somebody who is serving, guiding, working with people directly, and giving them targeted care.
To me, serving means you have to be among the people. You can't be up in your silo directing everybody. You have to know who you're working with and who you're leading. You have to participate with them. You have to be seen. You have to be heard. Your behavior counts.
As a leader, I’m also called to guide and give targeted care. Leadership means making the hard decisions. It means taking a direction that we weren't heading in. I call it a pivot. That pivot is the leader's responsibility to make and go in the right direction that is then going to serve the project, serve our investors, serve our people.
What else helps define a great leader?
The other idea that's always in my mind is bringing order. I'm really a guy of order. I'm disciplined. I need order in my life. So, part of our mission as a leader is taking chaos and creating order. I think each of us every day, whether it's family, the Yankees, my golf game, there's chaos, right? Taking that chaos and creating order out of it is really critical for a leader. You're creating a clean path to walk and to take action. And this also sets the tone for those who are following you. It brings calm to the rest of the group. Now you want their input, and you need their giftedness and skills as well, but it does bring a calm to the group to know who’s in charge and helping bring order.
Tell us about the C's and what those mean.
The other responsibility of the leader is to provide targeted care. To do this, I use the four C's. I need to be a cheerleader. I need to be a coach. I need to be a counselor, and I need to be a composer.
To be a cheerleader, I need to be patient, listen, encourage, and cheer them on. I also need to help them where they need direction, initiative, or feedback.
That leads to coaching. I feel like I'm a coach rather than a captain of the team. I need to coach and mentor my people so that they understand the end goal, what good performance looks like, what discipline looks like, what patience looks like, and how to listen to others to achieve a good result.
Then, as a counselor, I think it's up to us as leaders to see the pain and problems around us. You need to perceive what’s going on with someone you're engaging with. You need to see that there may be an outside distraction or an issue they're dealing with, such as family, health, or finances.
As leaders, you need to counsel people through that and understand them. And again, have patience, listen, and try to provide good advice even when it's not asked.
To be a composer means to be a designer or creator. How do we make whatever's happening today? Maybe we're working on something and then suddenly we’re taking two steps back. That's okay. It's for a reason. Let's retrench Let's do this over again, or let's figure out another way. Being a composer is the design aspect of leading.
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