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CHAPTER 14: SHAPING CULTURE AND VALUES 441

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IN THE LEAD into the nation’s largest oil refi nery business, he also instilled a culture where peo-
ple care about one another and the company. Many of the refi neries Valero bought
were old and run-down. After buying a refi nery, Greehey’s fi rst steps would be to
assure people their jobs were secure, bring in new safety equipment, and promise
employees that if they worked hard he would put them fi rst, before shareholders
and customers. Employees held up their end of the bargain, and so did Greehey.
Greehey maintains a strict no-layoff policy, believing people need to feel secure
in their jobs to perform at their best. “I see this cycle with companies where they
fire and they hire and they fi re and they hire,” he says. “Fear does not motivate peo-

ple.” Of course, Greehey occasionally has to do some firing of his own—specifi cally,

he’ll fire any executive who is condescending or uses profanity when addressing
subordinates. “Right now morale is so high in this refi nery you can’t get at it with
a space shuttle,” an electrical superintendent at St. Charles said in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. “Valero has been giving away gas, chain saws, putting up trailers
for the employees. They’ve kept every employee paid. Other refi neries shut down
and stopped paying. What else can you ask?”
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When leaders like Bill Greehey maintain their commitment to ethical values
through hard times, they help the organization weather a crisis and come out
stronger on the other side. Several factors contribute to an individual leader’s
ethical stance. Every individual brings a set of personal beliefs, values, personal-
ity characteristics, and behavior traits to the job. The family backgrounds and
spiritual beliefs of leaders often provide principles by which they conduct busi-
ness. Personality characteristics such as ego strength, self-confi dence, and a strong