As a teenager in Lethbridge, Alberta, Pete Wamsteeker was looking more for a job than a role model when he found both. A man who attended the same church owned a local feed business. He approached the 15-year-old about working for him.

In his first real manager, the boy found someone who handled adversity with grace, followed good values, and invested a lot of time in other people. "There was no value judgment" of other people in the owner, Wamsteeker says. "Often, you'll hear people say 'That guy's a clown.' I never ever saw that with him. Everybody was important. It was all about serving people well and, 'You have to respect people for who they are.'"

Over the next few years, the businessman challenged his young employee. "I was a 15- or 16-year-old kid, and he would say things like, 'What are your plans?' 'What are you doing?' 'Why would you go to college?' Some would say it was in a Socratic way, but he would challenge me about what I learned and why I did the things I would do."

As the end of high school approached, Wamsteeker applied to and was accepted at several colleges. The manager kept pressing the young man about his intention to leave a stable job in his hometown.

"It got to be the summer between my senior year in high school and my freshman year in college," says Wamsteeker. "He pulled me into his office and he said, 'Now, I really want you to consider whether you want to go to college. You could stay here, and I'll pay you this kind of money, and you really don't need college. You're suited for this business.' He was going on and on, and I felt like, 'Enough already! No more!'"

The businessman kept testing the then 18-year-old's resolve, asking what he was going to do with his education and whether he realized the sacrifices he would have to make to attend school. "Man, that's going to be expensive! Do you know how much college costs these days?" asked the manager.

"I'm perfectly aware of how much it costs," Wamsteeker said.

"What does it cost?"

Wamsteeker quoted the cost of tuition at one of the schools he wanted to attend. The feed business owner pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check to contribute to Wamsteeker's tuition.

"He ripped it out and said, 'You'll come to work for me next summer? I think you're the kind of guy who has a place in this business long-term. I'm awful proud of your resolve."

The feed business owner supported Wamsteeker during his college years and -- more for the reasons behind his generosity than through the money itself -- made a lifelong impression on the kid he hired in the hallway at church. "It's very reinforcing," Wamsteeker says. "He grew up with the right values. He's done the right things, and you have to be proud of that. You have to listen to him because he knows what he's doing. This guy modeled values for me in everything that resonated with me. I was always afraid of letting him down."

Just before Wamsteeker graduated from college, his employer sold the business to Cargill, the Minneapolis-based food and agricultural conglomerate. In the process of negotiating the sale, the manager arranged for Wamsteeker to keep a job with the business.

Two decades later, Wamsteeker is an accomplished Cargill manager applying the principles he first learned as a teenager. His team says he applies those principles quite well. Both in their numeric responses to Gallup's employee engagement survey and in interviews, the team rates Wamsteeker exceptionally high as a manager -- particularly on how well he encourages their development. That aspect is the sixth of 12 crucial elements Gallup discovered in its research into what makes a team productive and profitable. (See graphic "The 12 Elements of Great Managing" at the end of this article and see "Feedback for Real" in the "See Also" area on this page.)

Converting tradition to vision

Wamsteeker needed everything he learned about being a mentor when he was asked to leave Canada to reinvigorate Cargill's U.S. pork business in mid-2002. Decades-long trends had changed the nature of the industry and unsettled the company's place within it.

Founded in 1865, Cargill is one of the world's largest privately held companies. The uninitiated may associate the enterprise with some of the more quaint aspects of its history, such as the Saturday night "barn dance" it sponsored generations ago on a high-powered Minneapolis AM radio station or the "pretty print" material used for feed bags so farmers' wives could make them into tablecloths or clothing. Back then, the business model was not much more complicated than farmers raising hogs and Cargill selling feed. Traditional concerns -- weather in the American Midwest and matching mill capacities with demand -- loomed large.

Pork production today is more scientific, more concentrated in the hands of large companies raising hundreds of thousands of pigs, and, in some cases, done by enterprises that have their own milling facilities to make feed. "The pork marketplace has consolidated out of the hands of what you and I would term the classic American farmer into the hands of a much more businesslike person who is really about operating a manufacturing facility," says trading specialist Mark Hulsebus.

The challenge for Wamsteeker was to improve Cargill's position within an industry that needs less of what the company traditionally delivered. From a business perspective, a pig is just an organic version of the most basic accounting equation: revenue – expenses = profit. When everything is working well, it costs about $100 to get a pig from birth to market and then the animal will sell for about $120, giving the producer a $20 margin.

But factors outside the producer's control -- many of them moving with global financial markets -- can reduce, eliminate, or even invert the profit. If poultry farmers raise an abundance of chickens, it depresses the price of both chicken and pork. Pig feed is primarily made of corn (for carbohydrates) and soybeans (for protein). Higher oil prices are creating greater demand for corn because companies can use it to make the alternative fuel ethanol. The price a driver pays at the pump is connected to the price of the bacon he had for breakfast.

Copyright Ó 2007 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal