10 questions with TCSG commissioner Greg Dozier

Greg Dozier has done a little of everything in Georgia—he’s worked as the state’s chief financial officer, overseen the Department of Corrections, and run the Department of Driver Services. Since early 2000 he’s worked as commissioner of the Technical College System of Georgia, which encompasses 22 colleges, 88 campuses and 12,000 employees. Dozier answered 10 questions from Engineering Georgia ranging from his hometown to his service in state government, with responses edited for clarity and space.

EG: What is your hometown, and how did it shape you?

Dozier: Covington, Ga., is my hometown, and I still live there. So it’s shaped me greatly. When I was younger, it was not considered part of Atlanta, so we were a very small town. We’re now over 130,000 residents. We now have local jobs in our community, and we’re an extension of Atlanta. So as I have grown from being a young person who felt like he was in rural Georgia to leading the Technical College System of Georgia, I believe my hometown has grown at the same time.

EG: Did you have a person or mentor who influenced you growing up?

Dozier: My grandfather was my biggest mentor. He was a cook in World War II, and in 1956 he opened a catfish house with a small grocery and gas station across from it. We all had to work, so I learned at a very young age how to serve customers and cook fish. He would raise Caine if I didn’t keep the tea glasses full or if the hush puppies ran out. One day I got brave enough to challenge him and said, “I don’t know why you keep fussing at me. You know I’m going to give them more tea and hush puppies.” He said, “Son, you just don’t understand. The more tea they drink, the more hush puppies they eat, the less fish they’re going to eat. Which one do you think costs this company more money?” It was a two-fold realization for me that really stuck—this is a business about service, but also about profitability, and you have to make both of them.

EG: What’s your leadership style, and how was it developed?

Dozier: I hope I’m a servant leader, and a transformational leader. I hope that I bring vision and I do it with a humble service mentality. But there are also times you have to be very authoritative, and there are times you have to be really good at delegating. I’m a very detail-oriented individual, and I can get in the weeds really quick. So I try to let my folks lead. But also, if I see something that’s going down the wrong pathway, I’m very hands-on as well. So I really try hard to be a servant leader and a transformational leader, and I hope I balance those other leadership styles when needed.

EG: What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your career?

Dozier: I grew up a really a quiet, introverted young person. So for me, it’s just been a challenge to really step beyond what my natural instincts are. I look back at Driver Services, and learning how to manage the emotions of young people trying to get their license, or the disappointments of mothers and fathers, or the failures in how we treated folks sometimes. Those were difficult times for me to learn to navigate and balance. But it’s the small things I think are the hardest—those times when you have something unknown that you have to step out on. And for me, those have been the ones that have really made me grow the most.

EG: What do you look for in a potential hire?

Dozier: I have to find somebody who has purpose. When you’re looking for somebody to be part of your team, they need to realize they need to be a learner. They also need to know that they need to step up and lead. And how do you balance that? But if they don’t have purpose to the mission, those other two things really aren’t going to connect the dots, and they’re probably not going to be with you very long. So as I interview and talk to folks, I really try to find their purpose. That’s the main thing.

EG: Is there a favorite recent book that you’ve read?

Dozier: One that really still comes back to me is “Excellence Wins” by Horst Schultze, who ran The Ritz-Carlton. He really lays out what service is. He has a statement in there that’s pretty simple, but gets to the jist of it: he says, “Ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen.” That’s how he wants to serve. And through that, he talks about purpose. He talks about, what was your goal? What’s your goal of how you serve folks, and how you treat each other? There are so many things that play into that. A more difficult read is “Good to Great” by Jim Collins, which talks about having the right people in the right seats on the bus, and how important that is in running an organization.

EG: What do you like to do in your free time?

Dozier: Like most folks, I’m consumed with the family. I’m blessed to have a wife and two daughters. My daughters are getting older, and the older one is getting married, so I’ve been consumed with a wedding plan. But beyond the family I’m very active in my local church, and as far as just for fun I love to boat and play golf.

EG: What does your typical day look like?

Dozier: I don’t have a typical one. It’s either being on the road, traveling to a college or an event, going to speak to a group here in the office, or being in the weeds on something like I mentioned earlier. But I really don’t have a typical day. I can be in the office today, in Savannah tomorrow. The next day, I can be up in north Georgia. I can be meeting with a CEO of a company, or meeting with just a young person trying to figure out their pathway. It’s really neat that I get that opportunity to do something unique and different every single day.

EG: What’s your favorite thing about the Atlanta area?

Dozier: You can’t help but love the Braves. Being a Georgian all my life and starting to work in Atlanta in the early ’90s, when they had their run, that excitement from years ago still hits me when the Braves are starting the season. But we have so many other great things, whether it’s food, the aquarium, the College Football Hall of Fame, the World Congress Center. I went to the boat show a few months ago. So you have so many opportunities in the Atlanta area. But we’re also pretty blessed as a state, in the fact that we have our coast all the way to the mountains, and with the state parks that we have. We’re just really blessed here in Georgia.

EG: What advice would you give someone interested in serving in state government?

Dozier: Like we said earlier, I’d ask, what’s your purpose? If you’re going to serve in state government, are you coming to really make a difference in your communities and the families that you see every day? And if so, how are you going to do that? Are you a problem solver? I really believe too often we come in and we do a task without realizing that being a public servant means we’re trying to make people’s lives better. To do that, you have to solve their problems, not yours. You have to move the organization you’re in for the betterment of those you’re serving.