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News | Aug. 7, 2020

San Joaquin’s Kotta recognized as the DLA Distribution 2019 High Performing Leader of the Year

By Annette Silva, DLA Distribution San Joaquin Public Affairs

Distribution Process Worker Supervisor Nicholas Kotta of the Bin Distribution Division’s Mechanized Packing Branch at Defense Logistics Agency Distribution San Joaquin, California, was selected as the DLA Distribution High Performing Leader of the Year.

“Mr. Kotta clearly exhibited the attributes of a servant leader, inspiring his team and peers with a positive attitude, compassion, commitment and the emotional intelligence to maintain the highest ethical standards of high-performance leadership,” said Bin Division Chief Anthony Zuk. “His selfless professionalism and outstanding leadership throughout the year was essential to the success of our organization’s achievements, embracing the commitment to achieve global distribution excellence.”

Kotta is an outstanding leader. Through his inspiration, motivation and participative leadership style, his branch consistently exceeded outbound key performance metrics, processing approximately 77% of San Joaquin’s mission workload for calendar year 2019.

He is an optimist. His exceptional leadership, guidance and optimistic outlook was evident by his team’s high level of audit readiness. Adopting a participative leadership approach by addressing quality issues through solicitation of his team’s ideas infused with his own, employing effective job instruction methods and establishing quality controls, allowed his team to achieve a quality rating of 99.8%.

Kotta led the way in the Bin Distribution Division’s ongoing cross training initiative, ensuring over three-quarters of all distribution process workers assigned to the packing function were also trained in the pick and stow functions. This allowed for reallocation of resources when workload demanded, maximizing resource efficiency while reducing the need for overtime. His efforts led to an overall decrease in reliance on overtime hours by 45%, while simultaneously increasing the lines per paid equivalent for mission workload by 10%.

His mentorship led to a leadership style of inclusiveness, empathy, self-control and motivation, setting a standard for his peers to emulate based on the foundation of job relations.

“A direct reflection of Mr. Kotta’s outstanding commitment to strengthen our leadership team was demonstrated in his tireless efforts to coach his peers across the entire distribution center on the tenets of servant leadership and the importance of emotional intelligence. Mr. Kotta is most deserving of this prestigious award,” commented Zuk.