Neill McNeill's Blog

I usually shy away from interviewing athletes or people involved in athletics. I just don’t consider it my area of expertise. After all, I never was a great athlete; I don’t report sports on a daily basis; and we already have a great group of sports experts down the hall from the newsroom.

But sometimes sports transcends into news. Such is the case with my most recent “Newsmaker” interview. Ron Wellman is Wake Forest University’s Athletic Director. Here you have the only person in the Piedmont-Triad who was deeply involved in two of our area’s major “news” stories over the last year: the sudden death of Wake Forest Basketball Coach Skip Prosser and the near departure of football coach Jim Grobe to the University of Arkansas.

Many have praised ---and deservedly so—Wellman’s calm and professional leadership as being a key to the university’s moving through those two “crisis” events while at the same time guiding his department into one of the most successful periods if not THE most successful period in Wake athletic history. It’s one of the reasons Wellman is the National College Athletic Director of the Year.

Several things struck me during the two hours or so I recently spent with him. First and foremost, he’s a nice guy. We had enjoyable conversations about non-athletic things—like raising daughters and mutual friends and acquaintances we have in the Winston-Salem area.

But his leadership style description made an everlasting impression. When I asked him to describe this philosophy, he said it’s relatively simple:

1)       Hire good people

2)       Support those individuals (let them do their jobs)

3)       Be cheerleaders for them

4)       Hold them accountable for the product they produce

He described the key to his success in two words: good coaches. You see Wellman considers hiring THE most important thing he does professionally.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to talk to him about his hiring strategies, but you get a feeling he puts a lot of time into it (He admits interviewing Dino Gaudio 8 hours!) and probably approaches it the way a good coach considers recruits—constantly looking for good talent and not making hiring decisions on a whim only when he needs to make a hire.

People skilled at hiring are underappreciated in our society because the people they usually hire get all the publicity. You get the feeling Wellman wouldn’t have it any other way.

Now I’m not saying Wellman’s perfect or that every single hire he’s made has been perfect. (I doubt he’d disagree.) But it certainly looks as if he’s found a formula that works and one more leaders (both in and outside of sports) should consider.