Q & A: On showing the human side of your top executives, with USG Corp.’s Matt Gonring

When USG Corp. CEO Bill Foote lost his wife to cancer, he didn’t do what most CEOs would have done: suffer in silence, and show a strong face to the company and the business world. Foote did just the opposite. He met with employees and managers to discuss his grief; he talked openly with other executives about his struggles as a single parent; he cut his business travel in half and cut back his hours to spend more time with his teen-age daughters. It’s such a rare occurrence for a CEO to open up like this that USG corporate communications VP Matt Gonring wanted to tell the story to the public, and the result was a story in the Sept. 10 Wall Street Journal. Here, he shares with RR the details behind the WSJ story. (125 S. Franklin, Chicago, IL 60606)

What made you want to tell this story to the world?