William M. Fischbach

Q: What most notably stands out about your leadership style or what is an example of leadership success you can share with our readers?

My leadership style is shaped by my eight years as an active-duty U.S. Army officer. In Iraq and Afghanistan, I witnessed great leadership and, at times, poor leadership. I’ve distilled my leadership philosophies into Five Pillars of Leadership: (1) put the needs of others before your own, (2) lead by example, (3) be accountable to yourself and hold others accountable, (4) be magnanimous in victory, and (5) have courage.

Courage is often misunderstood as simply being daring or taking risks. That’s part of it. But courage really means summoning the will to do things you find uncomfortable or even terrifying. To instill courage in others, you must put them into challenging situations. For the attorneys on my team, this means empowering them with higher levels of responsibility and decision making, knowing that sometimes they may get it wrong. I often tell them, “I’m not here to tell you how to suck an egg; I will just make sure you don’t choke on it.”

Q: What impact has COVID-19 or the disruptions of the past 18 months had on you as a leader?

COVID-19 started as a public health emergency and quickly became very politicized and divisive. People typically avoid the usual Democrat-vs-Republican squabbles in the workplace. But with COVID, we couldn’t simply avoid talking about it. We had to engage with colleagues over an issue that people were deeply divided over. This created conflict and resentment. As business leaders, our focus should be restoring the pre-COVID levels of teamwork and workplace cohesion.

Q: What do you feel we can be doing as a business community to empower economic growth here?

I will suggest two that may be novel. First, we must learn from the leadership failures in other major cities that destroyed their business environment. When I first set foot in Afghanistan in early 2002, it was like a post-apocalyptic Colorado. There were pristine, magnificent snow-capped mountains in the background, while the foreground was strewn with broken vehicles, inoperable equipment and other shattered remnants of the Soviet military. Our leaders promised we would not repeat the mistakes of the Soviet occupation 13 years prior. That promise aged poorly. When I go to my hometown of Los Angeles, I see a dysfunctional city whose woes are traceable to decades of leadership failures. We must have candid discussions about the leadership failures in other cities and implement policies accordingly — even if it means being unpopular with our own political team. My friend Senator Kyrsten Sinema exemplifies this leadership.

Second, we must improve our efforts to market Arizona as an ideal business environment. Every few weeks, I come across a foreboding expose — typically in a newspaper in one of those dysfunctional cities — claiming that Arizona is a desert wasteland that wasted its water profligately. In reality, Arizona is a model of groundwater management. In good years, we “bank” water in our aquifers. And Phoenix’s water supply largely comes from Salt and Verde Rivers, both of which are far more drought resistant than the Colorado. And yes, summers are hot here. But have you ever spent a winter in Ohio or Michigan? You don’t have to shovel heat.

Q: What is new and notable for your company’s near future that will impact our economy?

My day job is leading a boutique litigation practice group at the Phoenix office of Tiffany & Bosco, P.A. We have seven lawyers on my team and we handle the full spectrum of civil and commercial litigation disputes. Growing has allowed us to continually deliver the best results to our clients. Additionally, every team member is expected to dedicate significant time serving the community.

My “other” day job is serving as board chair for Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona and its enterprise partner Thrive Services Group, Inc. Both are nonprofit organizations that fund their missions through business lines and social enterprise. For Goodwill, that’s thrift retail. Goodwill just opened an adult high school called the Excel Center where students of any age can earn a high school diploma rather than a GED. We provide child care and transportation vouchers, all at no cost to the student. Thrive’s newest initiative is a coffee company called Noble Ground. We just opened coffee shops in Phoenix and Flagstaff and a kiosk in the Suns Arena. The revenues generated by Noble Ground will fund education and affordable housing initiatives. We call it “Coffee for a Cause.”