Nichol Sees Servant Leadership As Path To Higher Performance

A good servant leader puts the needs of others first.

It’s a guiding principle for Tyson Foods Inc. executive Jason Nichol. During a recent interview, Nichol said that during a 20-year career in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry, he’s come to value his professional responsibility of investing in people and seeing them flourish.

That hasn’t changed now that he works for one of the world’s largest companies.

“I have always tried to grow as a servant leader, and I see my job as knocking down barriers for others to put them in a position to win,” he explained. “I get a lot out of that, and Tyson’s leaders practice servant leadership every day, led by Donnie Smith. So this [job] has been a really good fit for me personally.”

In March, after less than two years of working for the company, Nichol, 44, was promoted by Tyson Foods to oversee the account of one of its largest customers — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the largest grocery retailer in the U.S., responsible for almost 17 percent of Tyson Foods’ FY2015 sales.

Before the promotion, Nichol was vice president of the company’s Walmart Fresh division.

He manages approximately 60 employees who work on the Walmart team. Besides driving future growth with the retailer, Nichol spends the majority of his time leading strategic “big-picture” issues that are important to both companies, including matters of animal well-being and sustainability.

Nichol joined Tyson Foods by way of its acquisition of The Hillshire Brands Co. in 2014. Nichol joined Hillshire in April that year as vice president of Walmart Consumer Brands. Tyson Foods formally struck a deal three months later to buy Hillshire for $8.5 billion, and the merger — the largest in the history of the U.S. meat industry — was finalized in September.

 “It seemed like two great organizations that would come together and make a difference in terms of becoming a world-class food company,” Nichol recalled. “You combined the operational expertise of Tyson with the marketing and innovation of Hillshire, and if you did that right, you could really create something special. That’s how I started thinking about it from the very beginning.”

Nichol began his career in 1994 as a South Carolina-based sales representative for cookie and snack manufacturer Nabisco. In 1996, he and his wife were dispatched to Bentonville in order to work on the company’s Walmart supplier team.

In 2000, Nichol was hired by Canadian soft drink manufacturer Cott Corp. to direct the sales and marketing efforts of its Bentonville supplier office. He rose through the ranks and in 2005 was named vice president of the company’s Walmart North America team. The following year, he was recognized as a Forty Under 40 honoree by the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal.

Nichol went to work for The Scott’s Miracle-Gro Co. in 2008, eventually becoming the lawn and garden company’s West regional vice president in 2012.

The job first took Nichol and his family to North Carolina and later to Texas before returning to Northwest Arkansas in 2014 to work for Hillshire. Even though he was born and raised in Texas, Nichol viewed the career move as a chance to come home.

Two of Nichol’s children, in fact, were born in Northwest Arkansas — an 18-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son.

But in 2009, he and his wife, Michelle, also adopted a boy from Russia, who recently turned 10.

 “We had heard of other folks adopting and through that, we learned that there are 150 million orphans in the world. And that number was staggering to us,” Nichol recalled. “We said, ‘We can’t [adopt] them all, but we can [adopt] one.’ That’s how we approached it.”

Nichol said he is excited about his daughter’s upcoming high school graduation, and that time spent with family is his favorite hobby, particularly with his two sons, who both have cerebral palsy.

 “When our youngest son was presented to us as an option for adoption, it was almost a no-brainer because he has the exact same condition as our oldest son has, with cerebral palsy on his right side,” Nichol explained. “We looked at it like we were the best option for him to give him the kind of care he needs.”

Nichol is a board member of the nonprofit New Beginning Children’s Homes in Centerton.