Leadership Lessons from Jon A. + CFA

This is a post from Jon Acuff (writer and speaker) about leadership lessons from Chick-Fil-A, specifically Dan Cathy. I trust it can be an encouragement and challenge to us all to lead in a way that prioritizes people.


3 things I learned from spending 10 seconds with a billionaire

Fourteen years ago, I used to hang out with Dan Cathy, the CEO of Chick-fil-A a lot. I know what you’re thinking, “Of course you did, Jon, couple of billionaire ballers like you? You had a ton in common!”
That’s fair. At the time, he was the CEO of one of the fastest growing restaurant chains in the country and I was funny. OK, I was a little more than that, I was also a hungry writer, willing to jump at any project that I could. So when a friend connected me with Dan and asked me to help him write a few leadership ideas, I was all in.

I knew it was a special opportunity at the time, but looking back on it, I didn’t fully grasp what a learning experience that 18 months together was for me. I would say it’s hard to pinpoint my favorite thing he taught me, but it’s not. It’s very easy.

We had a 10-second interaction I still think about to this day. Here’s how it happened.

Dan and I were meeting at the Georgia Dome the day before the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. He was scheduled to meet with key personnel and I was there to workshop leadership ideas with him. We were down on the field when his cellphone rang. “Excuse me for a second Jon, I need to take this call.” He left for a few minutes and then walked back.

“Sorry about that,” he said, “That was a sophomore from the high school Sunday School class I teach. He wanted to see if he could get some tickets to the game tomorrow.” That 10-second interaction was an instant masterclass in leadership. Here’s what I learned.

1. If you’re too successful to serve others, you’re not really successful.
Dan is a billionaire and he was still finding time to teach a high school Sunday School class. I know some thousandaires that are too busy for people. “Once you hit that sweet thousandaire level, that mid-level Kia level, you don’t have time for the little people!” But Dan did. He hadn’t “arrived” in the sense that he no longer had time for people. He still put a priority on serving others. I saw this behavior countless times. The first thing he would do when we’d visit a Chick-fil-A together was empty the trash. The billionaire CEO was not too busy to take out the garbage.

2. It’s good to be available for interruptions.
There’s a real temptation for successful people to crawl into cocoons of their own making. They get surrounded by layers of subordinates until they’re completely disconnected from the real world. Their assistant has an assistant who has an assistant. It’s almost as if the higher you climb the ladder, the further you get away from those messy, distracting things called – humans. This is dangerous because the more successful you get, the more people tell you want you want to hear. (Emperor’s New Clothing.) Dan was doing just the opposite. The kid in his Sunday School class had his cell phone number. Did that mean Dan occasionally got interrupted? It did, but the human connection was worth the interruption to Dan.

3. People are the point.
The next time someone says to you, “I hate to bother you,” pause and think to yourself, “What have I done to make this person feel like a bother?” Sometimes, it’s my face. When I’m in the middle of a project and someone asks me a question, I can look up with a mean mug that seems to say, “I was in the middle of writing the Magna Carte, this better be very important!” I’m working on that, I promise. One of the signs that people trust you, that they want to follow you, that they feel safe with you, is how often they connect with you. Another way to say it is, “People who don’t feel important won’t bother you.”
When I was writing this newsletter, my youngest daughter, who is out of school for a snow day, busted into my office. She wanted me to read an English paper she wrote in 2022 that she had recently found on her laptop. I’d love to say that I always get those moments right, but that wouldn’t be true. There’s plenty of situations in the past where I reacted with impatience. This time, because I was writing this exact principle, I made time for the moment even in a busy day. People aren’t a bother. People are the point.

Last year, I was invited to speak at a Chick-fil-A event in Nashville. I got to tell this story from stage and Dan was in the audience. He might not have even remembered those 10 seconds, but I sure do.

Here’s to leaders who pick up trash, teach Sunday School when no one expects them to, and make people the point.
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Jon