A Conversation with Julie Cary, Advisor & Board Member
What does great leadership look like? My conversation with Julie explores her leadership philosophy, values, and approach to creating a culture where people deliver a unique customer experience by living the company’s core values and brand promise. This post—full video interview included at the end—unfolds her leadership journey and the insights she has so generously shared to set other leaders up for success, exemplifying what great leadership looks like.
Julie Cary has been leading others for nearly 30 years. Now retired, with a side of consulting, she spent her career in various marketing roles spanning packaged goods, hospitality, and wellness, serving in Chief Marketing Officer roles for the last 15 to 20 years.
For Julie, leadership centers on culture. In her view, great leadership begins with establishing the right environment and assembling a team of people who want to accomplish great things together. When people feel connected to the leader, the organization, and the purpose of the work, they begin to see themselves as part of something bigger while also benefiting personally from the experience.
“I’ve learned over the years, forming the right culture, the right dynamic, is the most important part of leadership.”
Julie learned the most about culture during her time at La Quinta, where the CEO at the time was a strong proponent of culture, frequently repeating the phrase that culture eats strategy for lunch.
She says while this line is interesting, it’s true that culture starts with articulating your mission, vision, and core values and then living by those core values making sure they show up in everything from hiring and making tough decisions to planning workplace events. “I think articulating it first and living by it is an important way to begin to set culture, but everyone has to live it in addition to the leadership team.”
Julie cautions that culture does not sustain itself automatically; it must be reinforced by continually asking whether decisions align with the organization’s core values. “Bringing those values into decisions and talking about them when you make important decisions are ways to keep it alive because it can dissipate pretty quickly.”
Culture is what shows up in daily decisions.
Julie’s values include integrity and transparency, customer centricity, innovation, and uniqueness, and passion.
For her, integrity and transparency go hand in hand. Doing the right thing and being open in difficult conversations are critical leadership responsibilities. It means saying what you will do and then doing what you said you would do. While it is sometimes necessary to pivot, she believes it is important to help people understand the reasoning behind those decisions.
“Integrity is definitely a core value that has always been the most important thing for me.”
Customer centricity, innovation, and uniqueness also influence how Julie approaches leadership. She believes the customer must remain at the center of the conversation, with questions like: Are we doing what is best for the customer? Will this create a great customer experience? Does this align with what our customers want and need from us? And what do we need to do differently than our competition to be able to attract that customer and give that customer this great experience?
Customer experience is culture in action.
Passion is another value that has fueled Julie’s career. She believes it is important to enjoy the work you do, maybe not every hour or every day, but most of the time. Julie adds that it can be difficult to feel passionate when there is not a cultural fit with a company. That value has shaped her career decisions. “I’ve worked for companies that I thought lined up and didn’t necessarily line up, and it was hard for me to be passionate and be really engaged, and I didn’t really last at those companies very long.”
Julie shares one of the most pivotal moments in her leadership journey, one that came during her time at Gerber, after a year of delivering exceptional results. With a love for the company and confidence in her performance, she was certain she would be promoted to Vice President.
“I had killed it in terms of results. I mean there was no arguing that I had killed it and so I’m expecting to be promoted to VP. I’m ready. I’m waiting, right?
And I didn’t get it.”
Instead, her leader offered feedback that she needed to work on her leadership. “Julie, there is no doubt that you are amazing at marketing. You’ve delivered great results this year, but you need to work on your leadership.”
She remembers being so mad that she couldn’t even ask follow-up questions. Later, reflecting on the conversation, she asked herself what she was going to do.
She decided to learn from it.
Great leaders aren’t the ones who never receive hard feedback. They’re the ones who grow from it.
That decision led to a deeper conversation with her leader and the opportunity to attend a leadership program at the Center for Creative Leadership. Through assessments, feedback, and reflection, Julie gained a clearer understanding of both her strengths and her opportunities.
She shared that she had always been such a hard charger that she assumed everyone thought like her, that everyone was motivated in the same way. Instead, she had to learn how to lead not only a team, but individuals, recognizing that people are not all wired the same and are motivated differently.
Looking back, she describes this as a pivotal moment in her career, believing that if she had been rewarded for her results, she might not have developed in the areas she needed to.
“I don’t think if I had just been rewarded for my results that I would have developed in those areas that I needed to when I needed to.”
When offering advice to the next generation of leaders, Julie encourages people to learn by watching other leaders in action, not only what they say, but what they do. Becoming a student of leadership, she believes, is one of the most powerful ways to grow. “These are good lessons to learn, about maybe how you want to do something or how you don’t want to do something.”
She also encourages leaders to ask for feedback saying that while feedback is essential for growth, it can be difficult to receive. “Sometimes we just get defensive because that’s human nature and we miss opportunities to do things that might benefit us.” When receiving difficult feedback Julie suggests asking: If this were true, what would I do differently?
Finally, Julie believes that as a leader, it is important to champion others by offering support, direction, guidance, and advice, particularly when someone shows strong potential. Teams may not always appreciate the push in the moment, but strong leadership requires leaders to invest in developing others.
“We need as leaders to remind ourselves that we probably got to where we are because someone championed us.”