# The best human-centred leader Alexis has seen

- **Episode:** [113](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/113.md) (2024-07-09)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** human-centered-leader, example, leadership
- **Time:** 14:18–17:01 (start 858s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/113?t=858](https://truthliesandwork.com/113?t=858)

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[14:18] Al Elliott: I say the best human-centered leader you've come across, who springs to mind?
[14:22] Alexis Zahner: I would have to say we had an incredible conversation about a year and a half ago now on We Are Human Leaders with the— he was the current CEO of WD-40 company at the time, a gentleman named Gary Ridge. So he was a man who was responsible for— oh, I would not like to think how many thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, or at least tens of thousands of human beings. And Gary was just the most warm-hearted, gentle, open-minded human being. And he'd started WD-40. His story is incredible. He was effectively in Australia, is where he originated from, and he was bootstrapping it from his house here in Australia, and then moved out to San Francisco where he's been based for a long time now. But I think what makes Gary so special is the adult relationship that he's been able to broker with his employees. And when I say adult relationship, Gary does not micromanage. The WD-40 company has no managers per se. They have only coaches. So the way that they run their entire company is about recognizing that every single human being has the innate capacity to be brilliant. And our job as coaches within their organization is to—
[15:40] Al Elliott: Yeah
[15:41] Alexis Zahner: create an environment where that human being's brilliance can come through in any job that they do. So that might be the person who's putting the red caps on the top of the WD-40 bottle on the production line, or it might be the people who are running the people and culture department, whatever it may be. But the way that he has structured that company— and by the way, this is a company that has a 98% employee engagement rate and a 98% employee satisfaction rate. Wow. Statistically improbable data given the scale of the company and how many employees they have. But it's just testament to when you have the right people from the top down fostering a culture that everyone matters, everyone creates meaning in their work. And I think one of their ethos was something like, we're here to create memories for the people that we serve, or something of that ilk. Just incredible. Just an incredible, incredible man. So for me, Gary really embodies everything that we talk about at Human Leaders. And he's just— he's also a brilliant example that it can be done at scale at a massive publicly listed company. I think it just gives us a really good blueprint that, you know, there's no excuse for not being able to do this. It takes willingness and investment in ourselves and in our workplace culture to get there, but it's certainly possible at all size company in all industry