Charlie Wilgus

If you like what Bill Russell did with the Boston Celtics, winning two NBA championships in three years as player-coach of the Celtics, you may appreciate the important role Charlie Wilgus plays with Lucas Group. Charlie is a self-proclaimed player-coach for Lucas and, while he may not have won any NBA championships, he commands respect and produces results for one of the premier executive recruiting firms in the country.

“I can’t ask my team to do anything that I haven’t done myself. I need to show them that I’m doing all of the same things that they’re doing. Equally as important, I want their success first. My success is through being part of the team.”

Such a selfless and productive managerial approach has been highly effective for his team and Lucas Group. Consider this example from a company in the steel industry in the Southeast.

Eight years ago, a Sales Manager from the company contacted a member of Charlie’s team and confided in him that he wasn’t happy in his current job. This person had known the Lucas Group recruiter from when they had worked together in the steel industry and felt like he might be able to help him find a more suitable position.

Without assistance from Lucas, this candidate client took a Sales Manager job for a company in Chicago. He quit after three days and contacted Lucas again for assistance. Charlie’s recruiter asked him to give him four days to find the right position for him. If he couldn’t do so in four days, he told him to pursue his own leads. In four days, the Lucas Group recruiter secured four interviews which, within a week, turned into four job offers. Lucas Group advised him as to which job they felt fit him the best, even though it meant a much smaller commission for them. “It’s much more of a karma feel where we’d rather give something away because we know that it will come back some day.”

Karma, indeed. That normally would be the end of the story in the typical recruitment dynamic. But, because of the honesty and integrity displayed by Charlie’s recruiter, Lucas received an almost immediate referral from their recently-placed candidate—a referral they immediately filled. Ultimately, Lucas placed three more people at three different companies and have more than made up for the lost commission from the initial placement. But the best news, according to Charlie’s recruiter, is that his former candidate-client is, seven years later, has become General Sales & Marketing Manager for the company at which Lucas Group placed him.

Charlie is able to foster that type of success because of both the Lucas Group culture and his own mentoring style. His managerial area covers a broad array of industries, with little overlap. “It’s a team environment, but an individual sport.” Nevertheless, Charlie preaches the gospel of peer-to-peer cooperation; not competition. It’s probably no accident, then, that one of Charlie’s recruiters has won the top cross-selling award for Lucas Group in back-to-back years.

He points to the Lucas Group culture as being an important differentiator for him, his team, and his clients. He describes it as a cradle-to-grave environment and really provides recruiters with the tools, support and incentives they need to be successful. “It really is a family culture. It was started 40 years ago. But we’ve been able to maintain a family culture all across the country—from New York to Miami to LA to Atlanta. I came to Lucas Group from a culture that was very hard core, management by fear, very high pressure. We work extremely hard here, but we don’t work like that. I came from Lucas to get away from that. We’re changing the way people do executive recruiting and succeeding very well in the process.”

What are his keys to his management approach?

• Manage people differently but treat everyone fairly and equally.
• Play no favorites.
• Empower people to be more than they ever thought they could be.

Such an approach may not win any championships, but it has made Lucas Group the premier executive recruiting firm in North America