WOMEN AT
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Cheryl Bachelder
CEO, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen
I would call it proof that servant leadership drives superior results.
How has your life experience made
you the leader you are today? My
leadership approach was developed by
my first mentors—my parents. In our
home, every dinner table conversation
was a leadership lesson. We would talk
about our experiences that day, and
with our parents’ guidance we would
find the lesson in that experience. My
father was a manufacturing executive
responsible for leading plants. He would
come home at night and tell us about
a decision he made that day and, most
important, “how” he made that decision. He taught me that leadership is
about the values that show up in your
daily decisions.
Has mentorship made a difference
in your professional and personal
life? To be honest with you, my worst
boss was the most important mentor
of my leadership life. Until you have
conviction about what bad leadership
is, you can have no conviction about
what good leadership must be. When I
analyzed the actions of my worst boss,
it made me decide what kind of leader
I wanted to be going forward. And it
made me certain that I must aspire every
day to be a great leader for the people
entrusted to my care. I’m imperfect,
and like everyone else, self-interest gets
in my way. But I want to get up daily
and chase a higher standard: that of
Role models? As I gained experience
and responsibility in the workplace,
my father was my most important role
model, and he was also my advisor. He
helped me think through important decisions, asking me the tough questions
a leader must wrestle with on behalf of
the people they serve. My father passed
away five years ago, but his voice is still
very active in my daily decisions. He
would always close our conversation
with, “Do the right thing, no matter
what the consequence.”
Management gurus or books that
have deeply affected you: I am
an avid reader and learner—and that
means I love books. I love finding books,
buying books, hearing about books,
and reading books. Anyone who has
worked with me can attest that if you
get a gift from Cheryl, it will probably be a book! From all of my books
on leadership, there are two thought
leaders who have heavily influenced
my approach. First, the essays of Robert Greenleaf, a middle management
leader at AT&T who authored the ideas
that are called “servant leadership.”
He put on the table the premise that
leaders who serve the people and the
enterprise—not themselves—are the
best leaders. Service above self—that
SYSTEM REVENUE: $2.3 billion
NO. OF UNITS: 2,225
PUBLIC OR PRIVATE: Public since 2001
GROWTH PLANS: 13–15 percent in longterm earnings
FOUNDED: 1972
BEGAN FRANCHISING: 1976
YEARS WITH COMPANY: 7
YEARS IN FRANCHISING: 16-plus
“I want to get up
daily and chase a
higher standard:
that of serving
the people and
the enterprise
well at Popeyes.
When I do that,
I am a better
leader.”
serving the people and the enterprise
well at Popeyes. When I do that, I am
a better leader.
INTERNATIONAL LOCATIONS: 456
has become my mantra for leadership.
Second, in 2001, I was greatly influenced
by meeting Jim Collins, author of Good
to Great. This is a research-based book
that concluded that the CEOs who put
the best interests of the people and the
enterprise ahead of themselves had
the best financial performance results.
Collins called this Level V leadership.
Female leaders you admire: In
the restaurant industry, Sally Smith at
Buffalo Wild Wings has been an important role model to me. She was one
of the first female CEOs in our business, and I have learned a great deal
from watching her approach. First, I
found we had things in common: our
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