Costco CEO shares the job that 'really developed my leadership skills'—even though he only did it for a year

Costco CEO Ron Vachris leads a company with roughly 341,000 employees spread across more than 900 warehouses around the world.

But the 60-year-old executive first learned some of his most important leadership lessons more than three decades ago, when he was in charge of just a single store, he told U.S. News & World Report in November. “That was the time that I really developed my leadership skills,” Vachris said, describing his time managing an individual Price Club warehouse location for the first time in 1992

Specifically, he learned “the importance of surrounding yourself with great people, and putting them in the right places, and really strategic thinking,” he said. Those takeaways fit well with the long-standing culture at Costco, whose co-founder Jim Sinegal counts Price Club founder Sol Price as a mentor. The two companies merged in 1993.

Since launching Costco in 1983, Sinegal has preached the importance of hiring people who exude integrity and passion for the business, and then treating those employees well with generous wages and plentiful opportunities for advancement.

“It’s really pretty simple. It’s good business. When you hire good people, and you provide good jobs and good wages and a career, good things are going to happen,” Sinegal told U.S. News & World Report in October 2009.