Gov. Hutchinson talks leadership, core values with honors students
Determining one’s core values is the first step to effective leadership, Gov. Asa Hutchinson told honors students at National Park College Monday.
Students in the NPC Honors Seminar class, who complete coursework focused on leadership and ethics, asked the governor to visit and share how his personal values impact his leadership style. According to Hutchinson, his path to government was paved later in life, as it was not part of his initial plans.
“Whenever I was in the fifth grade, I wanted to be a farmer,” he said. “Whenever I was in high school, I was delighted to work in a factory. That was my job in high school. Whenever I went to college, I picked my major in accounting because it was the first major listed in the alphabet. Whenever I was a senior in college, I got into debate and it caused me to go to Clemson Law School and read some cases, and I fell in love with the law. I said, ‘Forget accounting, I’m going to law school.’”
Hutchinson said his happiest years were raising his children on a 15-acre rabbit farm in Bentonville while practicing law in the square long before becoming Arkansas’ governor.
“People ask me when did you decide you wanted to be governor,” he said. “I never even thought about being governor or having that opportunity in life until I was in my 40s. So life is not always planned for you; life unfolds. The key is to be ready for how it unfolds and the opportunities that are presented to you.”
Care values of hard work, responsibility, a sense of community, and helping others he learned growing up on a farm have shaped his leadership style, he said.
“Then you overlay those core values that still impact me too today with faith and the values that come with your belief system,” he said. “Those are defining times in your life and you have to determine for yourself what are your core values. If you don’t have core values, then what is your decision-making framework?”
Hutchinson said he was drawn to practicing law because it is a tool to administer justice and “to be a part of the
justice system that is one of the great values of America.
“Despite the fact that I’ve had a long career of public service, I was a practicing lawyer for 25 years and tried real cases in the courtroom and loved the experience because it was a part of justice and helping people through very difficult times,” he said. “Determine your core values and that’s what should shape your decision-making.”
Some of his most valuable leadership skills, he said, were learned as captain of his college soccer team, and also as crew chief of the gymnasium cleanup crew, adding “it’s amazing what you can learn by leading a bunch of college kids on cleaning up a gymnasium.
“I encourage you, don’t think when you talk about leadership ‘Well, I’ve got to wait until I’m elected to office,’ or ‘I’ve got to wait until I’m elected president of a class,’ or some other position,” Hutchinson said. “Look at your leadership opportunities that can come sometimes in unusual ways.”
One leader who Hutchinson said he has always admired and got to know very well was Sam Walton.
“If you read some of the stories on him, one of them that I love is, of course, he loved to go bird hunting,” he said. “He’d get in his little plane and would go to Iowa to do a little bird hunting, and he would stop off, and he would circle his Walmart store in his plane to see how full the parking lot was. He believed in management by walking around. It wasn’t the management necessarily in his office in Bentonville, but it was being out in the stores and seeing what was happening. So he was always the manager and leader by walking around and seeing what’s happening.”
As governor, Hutchinson said he likes management by walking around as well. When he was head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Hutchinson said he did the same thing, going to a rave undercover at 2 a.m. to see what was happening.
“That made a lot of people nervous, but that’s how you learn what’s going on,” he said. “I’d be out in the field. As governor, I’ve been on raids with probation officers, so I’ve been out in the field. I’ve learned you shouldn’t do that as governor, by the way, because they recognize you. But I try to get out … following a Sam Walton principle of leadership by walking around.”
Hutchinson concluded with looking toward Arkansas’ future as opposed to all that has been accomplished in recent years.
“I’m running for re-election based upon the future and that’s what people want to hear,” he said. “I’m talking about transforming state government, tax cuts to be more competitive, raising teacher pay next year and the two years after that. It is about the ideas that we present that can make a difference in Arkansas and job creation. That’s, to me, about leadership and the vision — plans for the future — and that’s what I’ve got to convey over the next few months to all the Arkansas voters.”