PBN 2020 Leaders & Achievers Awards
Karl Wadensten | CEO and president, VIBCO Inc.
KARL WADENSTEN, VIBCO Inc.’s CEO and president, doesn’t hesitate when asked to name the single-most important characteristic of any leader: humility.
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Why? Because humility allows leaders to appreciate, seek and apply the wisdom of every person within an organization, regardless of that person’s position in the hierarchy or any other qualities. Wadensten views every employee as knowledgeable in their jobs, with ideas worth listening to for the organization’s benefit.
VIBCO, based in Richmond, manufactures pneumatic, hydraulic and electric vibrators for asphalt, concrete, food, chemical, pharmaceutical and agricultural uses. Ted Wadensten, Karl’s father, founded the company in 1960 and his son took over the CEO reins in 1991.
Wadensten said his humble openness to the contributions of others is an outgrowth of his father’s early-career experience, when he watched the opposite mechanism at work. In the late 1950s, Ted Wadensten worked in the U.S. as an employee of a Swedish road-building equipment manufacturer.
American users balked at using the equipment, and Ted Wadensten drew designs for many small adjustments to make the equipment more functional for them. His American boss steadfastly refused to forward his designs to the top managers in Sweden, even though one of them liked his work after taking a quick glimpse at it.
Seeing his valuable contributions sidelined, Ted Wadensten left that company and founded VIBCO, his son said.
One very important product – and reward – of skilled leadership, Wadensten said, is when a business is passed on and nurtured through generations of a family. He is the second generation to run VIBCO, and his four children continue “learning and leading.”
As a boss, Wedensten said, “you have to stop and be humble, and take it all in.” He said many VIBCO employees “are so clever and so ingenious. They have thoughts and ideas that are elegant and simple to do.”
The emphasis at VIBCO is so employee-centered, Wadensten said, that his attitude is “we build people and the outcome is a good product.”
