A Leader Lost, Lessons Learned.

“For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings.”
– Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of Richard the Second.”

This past week, I learned that a friend and mentor, Christian Bredo Berghoff, passed away in April. Our world is slightly darker without Chris, and I wish to share a bit of what I learned from his words and from his work.

Berghoff liked to describe himself as a peddler. He was also an entrepreneur, executive, and educator. In 1985 he founded Control Products, Inc., and led it to international prominence as a designer and manufacturer of electronic components. (The firm is now an Emerson Climate Technologies company.) Control Products’ sustained success was driven in large part by its founder’s commitment and strategy: he built trust-based relationships on the basis of honorable conduct and faithful performance.

As much as any business leader I have known, Berghoff exhibited ELA’s Virtues of Ethical Leadership: Service, Clarity, Creativity, Competence, and Courage. What we teach (or preach), he practiced, with great success: Control Products succeeded by turning arms-length customers into shared-destiny, strategic allies through uncommmon openness and honesty; by establishing clear, mutual expectations; and by demonstrating the capacities to innovate and execute. With their allies, they created, captured, and shared real commercial value based on trust. Berghoff extended that same commitment to candor and shared success with his employees as well, hiring with great care, investing in his people’s ongoing development, and assuring that the workplace was often a place for fun, as well. He was always “cultivating his farm team,” building relationships with professionals he would hire when the time was right. He was almost as proud of Control Products’ one-hole “golf course” and employee fitness facilities as he was of its customer list or its lab facilities.

Berghoff was a gifted and enthusiastic educator, teaching for many years for the University of Saint Thomas’s Opus College of Business, and presenting to varied audiences, including a couple of Hill Center events. While he regarded his ethical practices as a source of competitive advantage, Berghoff was nonetheless eager to share them with others, advancing the practices of ethical business leadership one class, one audience, one leader at a time. The StarTribune obituary stated simply, “He was a valued business mentor to hundreds of students and colleagues.” I am proud to count myself among them.

I am less proud of a final lesson that Chris taught me, however indirectly. Over the past year, I tried to reach Chris to tell him about Ethical Leaders in Action. When he didn’t respond, I found myself making any number of assumptions. Most were more about me than about him. I now realize that he was quite busy: fighting cancer, caring for his family, participating in his community, and securing the future of his business. Lesson learned, again. I miss him.
CAW