Taco Bell CEO's tip for success: 'Don't try to be a black belt at everything'

Sean Tresvant is the first Black CEO to run the Mexican-inspired fast-food eatery. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Taco Bell’s CEO Sean Tresvant believes there's no need to pretend to be a jack of all trades to get ahead. Tresvant, who has previously held executive positions at Nike and Sports Illustrated, told Fortune that a manager’s strength lies in admitting what they don’t know.

It was also the leadership advice that he was given when he took over as the company's CEO in January. As a first-time CEO with a background mostly in marketing, Tresvant said it empowered him to tackle the new job head-on. “When I transitioned from being the chief brand officer to the CEO, some great advice I got was, don’t try to be a black belt in everything,” Tresvant said on LinkedIn’s podcast This Is Working With Daniel Roth. The 43-year-old added that it was the “biggest surprise” during his transition to the leadership role. Since then, instead of trying to become an expert on everything, he tried to “be a black belt in marketing and be a brown belt in everything else.”

Another thing that smoothed out Tresvant’s transition into his role as the Taco Bell boss was knowing his strengths and weaknesses and going to those who have different skill sets. “That’s what I think helped me to be successful early on, because I’m not trying to be everything,” he said at the podcast. “I understand I’m not a CFO, but I have a great CFO who can lead the business.”

On being asked if it is difficult to admit that even as a business leader he doesn’t have all the answers, Tresvant said that’s “great leadership”. He added that teams suffer when leaders “try to be everything to everybody and try to be a little bit too micro and don’t empower their teams to lead.”