Tommy Gonzalez recognized at El Paso City Council for lifetime achievement award

by Staff

EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — El Paso city manager was recognized Tuesday by council members after being awarded for his leadership skills at the national level.

Tommy Gonzalez is the first Mexican-American to receive the E. David Spong Lifetime Achievement Award.

Gonzalez was presented the award by the Malcolm Baldrige Foundation in National Harbor, Maryland.

Recipients are recognized for their leadership excellence.

"The focus of what you should do when you're leading an organization of this size is really listen to the board, which is the council, listen to the team that actually executes the work. A lot of what we did early on in the process was get the feedback from our team. And work to make it better for them and make the organization better, function better, that they could do their work more effectively and get a better result," Gonzalez said at Tuesday's council meeting.

Gonzalez has applied the Lean Six Sigma methodology and the Baldrige Excellence Framework to inspire city employees to become leaders, according to a city of El Paso spokesperson.

A plaque from the council was presented to Gonzalez.