Leading through Constraint

On November 12, the School of Professional and Continuing Studies (SPCS) was privileged to host a meeting of ChamberRVA’s Leadership Unscripted series in the Heilman Dining Center’s Westhampton Room. SPCS 2016 graduate Fred Gatty, who earned a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies through the School’s Weekend College program, served as the event’s invited speaker. Highlighted in this profile are leadership lessons Gatty shared from his experience as an organizational leader and executive coach.

From promise to practice

When Fred Gatty, C’16, returned to the University of Richmond to complete his bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies through SPCS, he was working full time and raising a family. The choice required late nights, careful planning, and sustained focus. More importantly, it required honoring a commitment he had made to himself years earlier.

“Returning to SPCS wasn’t just about completing a degree,” he explained during the Leadership Unscripted event. “It was about keeping a promise I’d made to myself years earlier.”

Lesson 1: Lead self to lead others

From that experience, Gatty developed a leadership principle that begins with self-leadership. SPCS provided the structure and flexibility to practice accountability in real time, which reshaped his understanding of authority. “Leadership authority doesn’t come from a title; it comes from whether you can trust yourself to do what you said you’d do, even when it’s expensive and inconvenient,” he said.

Meeting deadlines after long workdays, preparing for class while parenting, and staying the course through setbacks formed a daily discipline. As a result, he learned that credibility with others grows from consistency with oneself.

Lesson 2: Separate constraints from projected limits

Gatty’s second lesson emerged as he navigated feedback about returning to school. Some colleagues warned the plan would be “too hard.” SPCS helped him test that claim against reality. Because the School is designed for working professionals, he found that his constraints were acknowledged and addressed through program design, faculty responsiveness, and a cohort of peers with similar responsibilities.

“SPCS exists precisely because that’s not true,” he reflected about the idea that school and full-time work are incompatible. “What they were really saying was ‘I couldn’t do that,’ and projecting their limitation onto me.”

This insight now guides his leadership practice. He asks teams to examine whether a barrier is truly structural or simply an assumption. “Is this actually impossible, or just unfamiliar to the person telling me it is?” has become a guiding question.

Lesson 3: Execute through constraint

The third lesson is an approach to execution: lead through constraint rather than around it. Gatty did not wait for a quieter season to enroll. Instead, he accepted that ideal conditions rarely arrive and treated the realities of life—Friday evenings in class, weekend readings, and family needs—as the context in which leadership happens.

“Waiting for perfect circumstances is just another form of deferral,” he noted. “Your constraints aren’t reasons to defer action; they’re the conditions under which you lead.” In this way, SPCS functioned as both classroom and laboratory. Each semester required prioritization and tradeoffs that mirror organizational life. The outcome was not only a degree, but also a durable method for making progress amid complexity.

Impact today

Today, Gatty helps leaders and organizations align people, purpose, and performance to build cultures that work. He describes his practice as operating at the intersection of strategy and humanity, where transformation begins. The habits he refined at the University—keeping promises to self, interrogating assumptions, and executing within constraints—remain the backbone of that work.

And Gatty hasn’t completed his educational journey. He earned a master’s degree in organizational leadership at The George Washington University, and he’s pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. As a self-identified late bloomer, Gatty offers this closing bit of advice: “It’s never too late to pursue your dreams.”