Why leaders should build community, one connection at a time |
04-14-2026IMPACT COUNCIL
Why leaders should build community, one connection at a time
Helpfulness is so basic but so profoundly important.
[Photo: Getty Images]
The Fast Company Impact Council is an invitation-only membership community of top leaders and experts who pay dues for access to peer learning, thought leadership, and more.
Any leader who steps into the role of CEO at an established company competes with the legacy of their predecessors. Only some of us are lucky enough to have had a mentor come before them, one who was as vested in their successor’s success as they were in their own. Jerry Lee, now a retired architect and executive director of our MG2 Foundation, was my CEO predecessor at MG2 and my mentor.
Jerry has always understood growth as something far deeper than financial success. From the earliest days of his career, he learned that resilience and purpose come from how we show up for others. “Part of being generous,” he once said in a commencement speech at Washington State University, “is basically being helpful.”
Helpfulness—it’s so basic, but so profoundly important. He learned the value of helping from his parents. “My mom and pop had a grocery store in Seattle, and it was in a rough area—all the businesses around their store........