“As a leader, I put myself in a vulnerable position”

Willem van der Leegte only gives personal interviews on rare occasions. “It’s about our company and not about me”. Quite extraordinary, then, that this morning, Willem took the time to speak to David van Iersel and a room full of enterprising members of 24 uur in bedrijf. Of course, his father Wim van der Leegte, who passed away last year, was the first topic of conversation. Since Willem took over his father’s role as chief executive of the family-owned industrial group VDL Groep in 2016, Wim has not been involved in the day-to-day decision-making processes. “It was helpful that we often shared the same mindset and practices. And if we disagreed, we kept talking until we were on the same page again.”

text: Colette de Vries, photo: Charlotte Grips

What is the most important thing you learned from your father?

“Oh, I could talk about that all day. My father could delegate better than anyone. He was able to do that because he knew a bit about everything. In other words, before you delegate, make sure you first have knowledge and experience across the board. As a leader, you have to do the really big things as well as the really small things. When you do the latter, you make people feel like they make a difference to you. Anything between big and small you can delegate.”

How do you view your childhood?

“My father was rarely at home, but he was always there when I needed him. In terms of quantity he may not have been around much, but in terms of quality he was even more present. He was there for all the important moments of my life.”

VDL Groep evolved from a metal processing company based in Hapert to a billion-dollar conglomerate. Will it remain a family-run business?

“Yes, that’s a must. My brother, sister and I all think in generations. We want to make sure that we pass on the business we inherited from our father to our children a little better, healthier and more sustainable. All of our visions focus on that. This is also set out in our family covenant. My father always said: ‘I’d rather have good shareholders than bad directors’. I prefer to have them both. But emotions come before fiscal matters.”

VDL does a lot for the Brainport region. What do you see as the biggest opportunity for the region and what is your biggest concern?

“Geopolitically, globalisation is coming under increasing pressure. It is becoming more and more about local for local. We’re in three continents, but we make the biggest investments in Europe, especially here in the Brainport region. The quantum leap in scale we’re facing as a region is a formidable challenge. Construction of new housing is far too slow to be able to accommodate the population growth in our region. And the power grid is getting crowded. Grid congestion is literally causing plants to shut down. Fortunately, in our region we are good at what’s called triple helix collaboration. They should do more of that in the Hague, too. Having the confidence to involve the business community, to find common ground when things aren’t working out and to figure it out together. If we continue along our current path, we won’t achieve the growth. The Netherlands seems to take the value of a company like ASML for granted and obviously struggles when it comes to planning for scarcity issues. We’re afraid to make real choices. Making no decision is perhaps the safest, because then you can’t do anything wrong either. But then again, when you zoom out, we live in a beautiful country. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

At the beginning of the month, VDL Nedcar said farewell to 10 years of building cars for BMW. A tough one for VDL. How do you handle adversity?

“We saved Nedcar from collapse in 2012 when Mitsubishi left. We started with 1,450 colleagues, grew to 7,200 people in 2018 and last November we had about 4,000 employees. We did everything in our power to continue producing cars, but it just didn’t worked out due to deals that ended up falling through or that were scrapped, for instance US President Biden’s ‘Inflation Reduction Act’, which heavily subsidises the production of home-grown electric cars. The fact that we did not manage to secure a direct contract with BMW, who we have been building cars for in Born for 10 years now, is something that affects me personally, but I know we did everything we could.”

What kind of leader are you?

“I recently got a nice compliment from a co-worker who said: ‘You’re actually really normal’. And that’s exactly how I want to be. I behave in the way I’d like others to behave: honest, open and direct. No politics or beating around the bush. Making yourself vulnerable and being a leader rather than acting like a leader.”

On a final note, do you have another big dream?

“Well, I had a dream the other day where I had a dilemma, and I wanted to ask my father about it. In the dream, he came up to me and we gave each other a hug. Then I said: ‘Wait, I need to ask you something else’. Then he gave me a firm handshake and said: ‘You don’t need to ask me anything, you know it yourself’. So I can move forward with that. I’m taking my father with me on my path along with all the wise lessons he gave us.”