Howard Wander likes to joke about his wife’s claim that he makes at least one wrong move every single day. He doesn’t question her opinion, and in fact, he is comfortable adding that his partners on the management committee at Fort Lauderdale-based Kelley Kronenberg feel the same way about him.
“I think that’s a sign of strength to be able to say that you’re wrong and admit that you’re wrong,” says Wander, one of the managing partners at the 140-employee law firm. “That’s a key essential to leadership. Nobody is right all the time.”
But it takes more than humility to succeed in today’s business world. Wander credits his ability to work with his management team and work through their collective mistakes for the firm’s growth over the years from two offices and seven lawyers to eight offices and more than 50 lawyers.
“Part of it is questioning each other,” Wander says. “We are all different, and we come from different backgrounds, and we approach things differently. But we have a shared vision of our future. Sometimes we think it’s a different road to get where we want to be and we don’t always agree on that, but we have that shared vision of what we want to obtain.”
The key to coming up with a good model, where you sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, but you ultimately get to the same place, is constant communication.
