WasteExpo 2024: Waste Connections CEO Ron Mittelstaedt on servant leadership

During a CEO Spotlight session at WasteExpo 2024, Waste Connections CEO Ron Mittelstaedt spoke with incoming National Waste & Recycling Association President and CEO Michael E. Hoffman about the importance of company culture, strategies for addressing labor challenges and managing waste disposal in a flat economy.

Here’s how Mittelstaedt described the company's servant leadership approach to management:

“From our standpoint, culture is everything. To us, culture is sort of the unspoken, unwritten but understood common language within an organization. It’s the why behind what people do. And it guides us every day.

"The thing we try to do at Waste Connections, as we’ve grown now to over 23,000 people, is to try and keep it familial. We want to function and act like a family. Families take care of each other. They fight. But they’ve always got each other’s back. And that’s how we’ve tried to build Waste Connections over the decades.

"Servant leadership is the underpinning of what holds that together as a company, as a culture. This is our 19th year pursuing servant leadership. I say pursuing because it’s not an initiative. It’s not a program. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a philosophy. It’s a way of doing and being.

"In management, our people are accountable to us for accomplishing objectives. That's what we do in business. "But servant leadership says that we’re accountable to our people. We’re accountable for taking care of them the best we can, both professionally and personally in their lives, and helping them succeed. And that takes a lot of buy-in. That’s not for all leaders. But if they’re going to be a leader in our company, it’s something they’ve got to believe in. And they can’t fake it, because it’s very easy to see through.

"A lot of people want responsibility. Not a lot of people want accountability. Accountability is about people. Responsibility is often about results. And we seek out leaders who are willing to put their people first.

"How do we know that? We measure it. We constantly measure it with our employees. … Our employees are given feedback tools—or mediums, I should say—as a way to talk about whether they feel their leader is accountable to them or not.

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"Our employees measure their leaders, and it affects their compensation. Every leader in the company’s compensation is tied to serving and what their employees think of them, how they how they model servant leadership. Do they walk the talk? Do they take care of them? Do they feel they can trust them? Do they feel that they can confide in them if something personal is going on, and that they will help them through it? All of those things are measured for every leader in the company.

"The whole objective, ultimately, of servant leadership is not only making competitive people, it's trying to create an empowered workforce. Because an empowered workforce leads itself. They make the right decisions on their own, they don’t have to be told what to do. That’s ultimately the objective, if you can get to that. And we’re always trying to.

"If you can get to that, then leaders can make decisions on how to move the business forward dynamically. Otherwise, you’re always putting out fires.

And if you ever feel as an owner or leader that you’re constantly putting out fires, take a step back. It’s probably a good indication that you’re not really leading, you’re just sort of managing the day-to-day situation."