Lead the People

Ron is an entrepreneurial executive leadership coach and Dream Team Architect who works with leaders and organizations to identify executive opportunities and challenges which evoke transformation in leadership and organizational engagement. He is a co-founder of PIQue Coaching & Strategy Group, a boutique coaching and strategy company that has developed an innovative approach to personnel and professional development for leaders committed to growing high performance teams in organization’s. Ron is a certified coach through The International Coaching Federation (PCC) and the Coactive Training Institute (CPCC). He is a trained “Mental Fitness Coach” through his work with Positive Intelligence and is a certified partner with The Predictive Index. He also has a passion for coaching executives who are in transition and for working with people in addiction recovery. He currently coaches as part of the CoachSource community of coaches and is active throughout their network. Top 3 Takeaways Help wanted. There will be times in your leadership and your life when you need assistance. Don’t fall for the fallacy of pure independence. Ask for help as readily as you offer help. Make yourself uncomfortable. Personal transformation requires a significant amount of change. This can feel unsettling but is required for growth. Get real. Look to the most meaningful experiences you’ve had—both positive and challenging—as marking the path of your authentic leadership style. From the Source “I think one of the things that is really a launching point for any kind of personal transformation is willingness and intention.” “I've learned that men in general really have a hard time asking for help. Men do not like to ask for help, so recognizing that you can't do things on your own, that you need to ask for help is really the first step, and it’s the number one challenge.“ “You have to rewire your mind, and in the work that I have done on myself, it was very much about rewiring thought patterns.” “I think the same thing holds true for leaders. It's how do you create new habits, new ways of doing things, creating new narratives inside yourself, that then lead to you being able to transform and change?” “I think one of the key things for any leader and anybody that's going through personal transformation is you've got to get comfortable with discomfort." “The thing about the saboteur is it inhibits us from being happy and inhibits us from being as productive as we would as we would want to be, both personally and professionally.” “We're all a product of all of our experiences. So it's the lived experiences that we had and then ultimately how we can connect and show up in an authentic way for others?” “One of the reasons I love coaching so much is because coaching actually gives me permission to show up in probably the most real and authentic way that I can because you're creating a container, a very intimate container with a client to do the work of transformation.” Connect with Ron Website: http://www.pique.coach LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rongarfield/ Email: ron@pique.coach

Joel Goldberg is an Emmy Award winning broadcaster. keynote speaker, and published author. He began dreaming of a career as a sportscaster at a young age, always wanting to deliver news of the previous night’s game to his grade school teachers. He’s spent more than a quarter century on television, relying on relationship building to tell athletes’ stories. Joel’s unique access enables him to share lessons learned from the baseball field to the board room as a motivational speaker and to homes everywhere through his business podcast. Top 3 Takeaways Change the game. The latest generation to enter the game has grown up in an entirely different environment. Give them the opportunity to provide input and make an impact. Be a switch thinker. Make great use of the the data and analytics you have. At the same time, don’t neglect your intuition and willingness to use both sides of your brain. Leg it out. If you want to achieve something in your life, you’ve got to be willing to hustle and make it happen. From the Source “The 22 year olds, the 25 year olds right now are totally different than the 20 somethings 10 years ago, and some of that is just the evolution of time, the evolution of technology. The guys that came in 10 years ago had social media, but it was still pretty new.” “What can you do that's different than everyone else to get ahead? That's the race that's going on in baseball right now.” “I'm not anti data. I'm not anti any of this stuff. I'm all for change and progress. Don't forget to trust your instincts sometimes.” “We do need to embrace all of this technology, but I think those that are going to rise above the rest are going to add that human element to it.” “It's always about the customer. It should always be about the customer.” “It always will be about wins and losses. It'll always be about your sales sheet and your numbers, but what do people want? What do the customers want? What do the fans want? We have to give them what they want.” “I tell people all the time, no matter what the profession is, you have to do whatever you can to get your foot in the door.” Connect with Joel Website: http://www.joelgoldbergmedia.com Instagram: https://instagram.com/joelgoldbergkc LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joelgoldbergkc Small Ball Big Results (Book): https://amzn.to/44iEb3H References Take Me Out to the Ballgame (Right After We Hit the ATM): https://www.playma.com/news/mlb-game-costs-report/

Keisha A Rivers harnessed the lessons learned while leading during a harrowing Hurricane Katrina experience to become an award-winning international speaker, change agent and learning leader. As Chief Change Officer and President of The KARS Group LTD, she focuses on equipping organizations and leaders to navigate The People Side of Change. She is a TEDx speaker, host of the Equipped for Change podcast and author who has been recognized for her leadership and influence through such designations as "2022 Enterprising Women of The Year" by Enterprising Women Magazine; "50 Most Influential Women of 2021" by the Mecklenburg Times for her leadership in the Charlotte area; and "10 Most Influential Black Women in Business to Follow in 2021". Keisha holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.Ed. from University of New Orleans, and a Certificate in Women's Entrepreneurship from Cornell University. She is a Certified Diversity Professional (CDP), Certified Diversity Executive (CDE), Certified Talent Optimization Consultant, HRCI and SHRM Recertification Provider. Top 3 Takeaways Change is personal. When things shift on us, we’re the ones who experience the consequences. When we initiate change that impacts others, we need to heighten our awareness of how they’re likely feeling. Next not new. There is no so-called new normal. Change has always been constant, and now it’s happening faster than ever. As leaders, we need to get good at absorbing and leading change. Bring them along. To smooth out the change process, engage those impacted each step of the way. Give them time to absorb change and a means of retaining their agency during and after the shift. From the Source “Anytime you have to build, anytime you are adjusting, adapting, creating something new, you have to build in time for the learning.” “Change management is managing the process. It is looking at the steps we need to take, the plans we need to make, the resources we need to allocate, how much is this going to cost. These are the things that you feel you can control. Change leadership is all about the people side. It's how do we get people to shift the way they are thinking in order to do something differently?” “That's the one thing when you are leading people through change. You have to include them in the conversation around the change. You have to help them see themselves in what this looks like for them, not just for the organization.” “You have to sit in the discomfort, and you have to take the time to recalibrate your thinking. You have to shift your own thinking about what's going on. So stillness breeds strength, and it cultivates strength because you don't have the distraction of trying to move away from what is disconcerting to you, from what is causing fear.” “When you're sitting in stillness, you get a chance to stop the spiral. You get a chance to really evaluate what needs to be done and you get a chance to envision yourself in a position of success, where you can see the pathway. You talk about creating your story, you can see yourself in that new story.” “Leadership is more around influence. It's around how do you influence people? How do you position people? How do you encourage people and have people shift their thinking about whatever it is that's going to happen so that they will do things that are going to be mutually beneficial?” “There is always some way that you grow, learn, develop. What people tend to do in the midst of change, in the midst of a change process, Is that instead of them figuring out ways to support themselves to love themselves to, to, um, to be able to, to understand themselves, they tend to beat themselves up.” “Here's the thing I always tell people: you want to create an environment where your people feel seen, they feel heard, they feel valued, and they feel safe. And it's not just physical safety, it's really psychological safety.” Connect with Keisha Website: http://www.karsgroup.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karivers Instagram: https://instagram.com/karsgroupltd

Chris is a husband, father, people and idea person. He helps energize people and teams through reframing stress, uncovering strengths, and cultivating connection. He’s been to 50 countries, worked with leaders on every inhabited continent, and hopes to get to Antarctica someday! Top 3 Takeaways Create space. Our organizations and relationships at work have the potential to be places we go for healing and reinforcement. Making this a reality requires a new leadership approach. Be present. When you’re holding space with another person, do the little things that let them know you’re fully present with them. Turn off the phones, face them, and be all about them in that moment. Learn to love again. We don’t use the “L” word often enough at work. When we care deeply about those around us, we don’t have to make it awkward. We need to find our own way to let our love shine through. From the Source “Essentially, it's this sense that all of us are longing for wholeness, right? All of us are longing for integration, and every interaction is an opportunity to move closer to that or move further from it.” “So what if we could use that to create and cultivate these healing spaces? And the workplace is ready for it. As humans, we’re ready for it. So I guess the question is, are our organizations ready for it?“ “The more that we can be those people that see the value, that see the importance, the significance of the person right in front of us, that in and of itself is strengthening.” “We have these assumptions that people can compartmentalize so well. The reality is that it's incredibly draining to try to compartmentalize these things that we all carry this emotional weight, these griefs, on a small scale to a large scale and to act like that's not affecting our capacity or to try to disregard it and just go on with business as usual, that's not sustainable.“ “So do we even notice the nuance and the contours of somebody's world? And that has to do with slowing down, right? Paying attention and being fully present. So often we're just moving so fast, or we're so, so focused that we don't even notice those little opportunities, right? To lean in and invite somebody to be seen.“ “I love what you talked about, the live wire, that spark of joy. One of the things that I really try to pay attention to—I actually have a post-it note underneath my monitor, right underneath you, purple, that's appropriate, it's on brand with Matt—and it says, ‘Am I having fun right now?’ And that's a simple, simple barometer for me of, ‘Do I want to continue in this? Is this where I want to be right now? And, what kind of presence, what kind of energy do I want to bring to it?’” “Things just go so much better when I put love first and then results follow. When I try to lead from results and then kind of like, squeeze in a little bit of love where possible, usually, A) there's no room and B) it doesn't really work.” “One of the things that I try to help people see is that, usually, as a leader, we're dealing more with polarities and paradoxes than we are problems. And so, making that distinction and seeing that, ‘Look, this isn't an issue of do you value him as a human or do you get him to do his work, it's yes, AND.’” “Then I realized, wait a minute, one of the reasons that self care doesn't really happen is because we think about it in an over individualized way. But if you emphasize belonging, self care follows, but if you emphasize self care, it doesn't stick.” “It's really about setting that container of love, results happen within the context of love, but results brought without that container of love result in alienation, right? Separation, frustration. It's counterproductive. It backfires.” “So I like to try to reframe stress for people, and self care around stress doesn't mean you're not stressed because you're inadequate, you're stressed because you care. And the invitation is to actually include yourself more in all of that caring that you do. So self care isn't caring less, right? For others, it's actually just expanding the circle of care to include yourself in it.” “I think it's so important for leaders to do the work to excavate and reflect on what fills your tank.” Connect with Chris LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisfailla/ Website: http://www.christophersparks.com References Where in the World? https://www.watercoolertrivia.com/trivia-questions/geography-trivia-questions

Episode Sponsor The Predictive Index: https://www.predictiveindex.com About Jonathan Jonathan Ribskis is the Director of Talent Optimization for Builtech Services, a nationwide commercial general contractor with offices in Chicago, IL and Charlotte, NC. He began his career with Builtech Services in Chicago as a superintendent, working for a company of just 4 employees. He then worked in estimating and eventually project management, where he spent the majority (11 years) of his career. In 2017, he relocated to Charlotte, NC to launch the company’s Southeast office. In 2021, he moved out of project management and into his current role, which he absolutely loves. He is responsible for all aspects of talent strategy and vision, including hiring and building teams, career development, mentorship, leadership and engagement, safety and people operations (HR). He does all this through the 4-pointed lenses of how to best attract, engage, develop and retain talented team members. With Jonathan’s oversight and leadership, the company has successfully launched an internship program, mentorship program and a Senior Leaders/Emerging Leaders program. During his almost 16-year tenure at Builtech, they have grown from 4 employees to over 95 and from annual sales of $4 million to $280 million. Builtech has been named a Best Places to Work by both The Charlotte Business Journal and Crain's Chicago Business for the past few years. The company has an unheard of 6% unplanned attrition rate. Top 3 Takeaways Keep it real. When stretching workers, allow them to make mistakes from time to time. Every worker—even an intern—needs opportunities to develop new skills which inevitably means failing. There’s always time to learn. Fit leadership development into the normal flow of business. Early breakfast sessions, working lunches, or standing meetings are great places to bring in leadership lessons. Use the tools. Jonathan and his teams have had great success using The Predictive Index and its talent optimization platform. Trying to build a company without the proper tools is a recipe for disaster. From the Source “In construction, there are problems, but instead of hiding them or trying to solve them behind the scenes, we try to pull our clients into it, put it in front of them, and say, ‘Hey, we're working on this for you’, and that builds trust because we're just being very transparent with them.” “We don't call them interns. We try not to make that obvious. You're just a Builtech team member for the summer or for the winter or whatever it is, and you have responsibilities just like our full-time staff.” “We give our interns opportunities to fail and to make mistakes. That means financially sometimes. And we're okay with that. We feel like that's part of the learning process.” “We realized we need to focus on Gen Z, we need to give these folks the tools to move them up through their careers, hopefully with us, and so we launched a mentorship program.” “I have buy-in from our ownership on these programs, and I have their support. So that's what makes these things a lot more effective.” “A big focus this year has been the topic of delegation. We've done some training around delegation. We've provided resources around how to properly delegate, not just throw it away and and hope it sticks, but to actually give structure to it.” “If you do some research across the industry—and we're a part of some peer groups that are other general contractors—[unplanned attrition] is 15%, it's 20%, sometimes it's even higher. So we are very proud of the fact that we've been under that 6%.” “People are complex. I think that's what we've learned a lot through the use of, of our, uh, spending time and studying and learning. Predictive index is the complexities and the nuances of everyone.” Connect with Jonathan Website: http://www.builtechllc.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jribskis/ References “Built to Last” trivia game: https://www.rakenapp.com/blog/10-incredible-feats-in-construction-history

Matt Lesser is the Founder/CEO of Uniquely Normal, LLC, which exists to equip and train leaders to build flourishing team members and organizations through empathy, empowerment, and excellence. Matt has had the honor of training leaders, teams, and boards in over 40 countries over the past 20+ years. Prior to launching Uniquely Normal, Matt served in C-Suite roles in private equity, banking, and industrial supply and distribution. Matt spent the first 15 years of his career leading his familys business in the wholesale (later adding retail as well) petroleum industry. After starting the business over after less than a year at the helm, the business grew from 3 people to nearly 200 and revenue by 20x before being sold.  Matt earned undergraduate degrees in business from Indiana University and an MBA from Taylor University. Matt is certified in nearly 20 personality, team building, and leadership assessments. Matt is a best-selling author and his first book, unSatisfied: When Less is More, was released in October 2022; his second book, unEngaged: Building Flourishing Organizations will be released late 2023. Matt also serves as an Adjunct Professor, and he has served on several Boards of Directors in businesses and non-profits both domestically and internationally. Top 3 Takeaways Don’t wait. Rather than constantly feel like success is just around the corner or “I’ll be happy when…” make a commitment to creating and experiencing success here and now. Soft is strong. Too many people mistake being transparent and vulnerable as weaknesses, but enlightened leaders know that these are the essential building blocks of trusting relationships. Give get. Employers who invest in their aspiring leaders will reap the rewards of loyalty, effort, and performance. If you want these outcomes, provide gobs of coaching and development first. From the Source “You have to identify, ‘Okay, what is my why? Why am I here?’ On this earth at this time in history, you know? ‘Why was I not here a thousand years ago or five thousand years ago or a hundred years ago? Why now?’ I think until we really get serious about identifying the WHY and identifying what we're passionate about what we're called to do then I think we have this in this internal sense of ‘I don't have a purpose. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm just going to get on that hamster wheel and just go because that's what we're supposed to do. That's what works.’“ “One of my favorite exercises that I do with leaders is fast forward to the end of your life and look back, what do you most want to be remembered for?” “I've worked with leaders all the time that set very, very high standards, high bars. And in their moments of transparency, they'll say, yeah, I can't meet my own standards.” “I learned to do less, but do it more focused, more intentional and with purpose. I talk about for, with and on purpose, and it's completely changing my whole perspective of life. It's changing me and it's changing my family too.” “Now I find it's much easier for me to say no, because if somebody asks you why, why are you saying no? Well, because it doesn't align with my core. It doesn't align with who I am. It's misaligned with my core values. There are other people out there that I'm sure they'll say yes to it, because it aligns to their core values, but this thing does not.” “Anybody that comes in your organization, [you need to] really identify quickly, why are you here? What is your purpose here? Where do you fit in? Where do you want to go? And we're going to invest intentionally in you from the very beginning to help you get there. Those are the organizations I think that are breeding loyalty and commitment like we're not seeing right now in, in the workforce.” “If people are our most important asset, why don't we view them as being on the balance sheet? And so I think it's a mindset.” “In my second book coming out, I talk about being, becoming, belonging, and then doing. I think if organizations can figure that out and how to help people understand who they are, where they want to be, what they want to become, how they belong in their organization, and then focus on the doing, I think they'll have an employee that will last, be committed and loyal to them like they haven't seen.” “The third book is all about, if you're serious about building this kind of a culture where you intentionally address the pains, the headaches when it comes to people, here's how you can do it. Not a magic formula. It's about being intentional and about a lot of hard work and getting it done. It will be released at the end of September.” Connect with Matt Website: http://www.uniquelynormal.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-lesser/ Email: matt@uniquelynormal.com

Luann Abrams is the founder of CEOX, an organization whose mission is to elevate women into CEO, C-Suite and board roles. She is a partner in The Abrams Group, advising, investing in, and supporting the people, companies and causes that will leave it better. Prior to starting CEOX, she ran FoundersPad, an early-stage venture fund with a dedicated mentorship program in Bend, OR. Luann has a background in aerospace engineering and spent most of her 15 years in aviation working for a start-up aircraft company in Bend, OR. Here she led the certification engineering program at Columbia Aircraft where she oversaw the certification of several aircraft models and ensured that all designs met applicable regulations. Due to her diligence and integrity she was granted the authority to sign off on regulatory compliance on behalf of the FAA prior to aircraft delivery. When she is not working and living the Bend life with her husband and two sons, you will find her curled up with a good book and a hot cup of coffee. Top 3 Takeaways Women are winners. Luann cited some very compelling research on successful business outcomes that often fall to woman-led companies. We need to level the playing field. Beat the system. Whether by design or by default, women face a number of obstacles preventing them from rising to the CEO role. Understand and offset these wherever possible. Listen up. Even if you’re not a C-suite leader, you can be an ally for women’s advancement. Be proactive and ask women across your organization about the work experience they’re having then pipe down and listen up. From the Source “There's a lot of research showing that women-led companies grow faster, they generate more revenue, they use invested dollars to better effect, they exit earlier, and honestly, my favorite statistic is that they have happier employees. I just like to think about a world with more happy people in it.”​​ “Worldwide, women really only make up about 5% of CEOs, so there is a long ways to go yet.” “There is a lot of deep seated bias against women still. We have really grown up in a world that was designed by men for men and not necessarily in this patriarchal ‘we want to keep women down’ way, but just that was the reality of the situation. So we have this complete societal structure that was really created for men's success. It was not created for women's success. So every step of the way, women have barriers to getting to that top spot, to even excelling in their career in general and. It's often really not seen by both men and women.” “A study just came out yesterday that I was reading about that shows that high level women are often not given promotions and they're not given pay raises because they're seen as loyal so they don't need to have those additional incentives to stay at a company. Whereas men are seen as more often jumping ship to the next best thing. So more and more companies are incentivized to give them promotions and give them pay raises.” “Most board roles—most C-suite roles in general—are really hired within who you know. I think most people's first place they go to look for anyone is their own network, and most of us have networks that are most reflective of ourselves because we network with people that make us feel comfortable, and we feel most comfortable with people that look like us and think like us and act like us.” “If there's one common sentiment I hear across the women of CEOX is that they want their next thing to be impactful. It's not just about making money. It's really about leaving the world a better place.” “You have to take the blinders off. I can't even tell you how often I will do one of my talks in a big group of people, men and women, and I will get men coming up to me saying, ‘Oh, I had no idea that stuff happened.’ For example, women get interrupted 30% more than men get interrupted in a meeting. Men aren't aware of it because it doesn't happen to them.” “Listen to the women that you are working with and understand some of the barriers they're facing.” “I always say that if somebody is feeling comfortable enough to give you that feedback, that is actually a compliment to you because it means that they trust you. You will take it as it's meant to be taken, and that they trust you with solving it. You really need to be concerned if you're not getting any negative feedback ever. That's the big red flag.” “I love the idea that if I place a woman in a CEO role, she's now surrounded with a bunch of really smart, experienced women that she can go to for help if she needs it to navigate some of the difficult things that she's going to find in those roles.” Connect with Luann Website: http://www.projectceox.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/luannabrams/ Reference (“She E O”) “Women CEOs of the S&P 500” - https://www.catalyst.org/research/women-ceos-of-the-sp-500

Robert founded INTRIGUE (formerly ITM Speakers) based on the idea that communication started with intrigue and ended with impact. He guides the company using lessons learned from decades as a high-tech marketing executive at companies such as ADP, Ceridian and SmashFly Technologies, and skills he's developed as an actor, playwright, programmer, electrical engineer, photographer, videographer, and musician. Robert has been on stage at national and international events as well as being published by such wide-ranging places as the Java Developer's Journal, The Compensation Handbook, and Concord Theatricals. Top 3 Takeaways Tell the whole story. Rather than simply present the facts, be sure to take your followers on a journey. Appeal to their need for relevance, relatability, and reassurance. Practice makes persuasive. You’ve likely seen a smooth and polished storyteller before. What you didn’t see is the number of hours and cringey attempts they put into honing those skills. Make a similar investment in your own storytelling. Make it stick. The benefits of a great story last long after the telling is done. The emotional shift you create can help those around you get over their obstacles and warm up to change. From the Source “Storytelling is the way that our minds absorb and store information.” "It's actually putting information into a format that the brain will naturally absorb and remember, and using all of the different elements of storytelling to hit all the levers in the brain. So not only remember and store this, but store it in a place where you are going to call upon it early. It's basically putting it at the top of the stack.​” “Leadership is sales. You're just selling an idea, not a product.” “It's showing your passion because how do you expect people to be passionate about something unless you can convey your passion in it? And if you are stuck in this whole features, facts, function world of ‘I'm going hit all the logical triggers’, but you don't transmit the passion to people, they're not going to be able to apply their passion to the project in which you need them to buy into.“ “The funny thing is this: tell an authentic story, even if it isn't yours as long as it resonates with you. You could share that story and say, ‘I heard this from my friend yesterday’, but if it means something to you, your authenticity will go through that story just as effectively—I should say, nearly as effectively—as a story of your own.“ “A lot of people are afraid that they can't tell a story. Well, it's a skill like any other, it can be taught. It can be learned. It can be practiced. Oh God, please practice! It's one of those things where people have to practice.” “if you know the structure and you know how to do an effective story, you can actually. Overcome the bad habits or not be afraid of the good ones. and there's a balance between detail and brevity, and you have to have enough detail to make the story interesting and real. But you need to know when to edit yourself and cut it off to the point where it's not going to get too long.” “Can, can I just talk about PowerPoint for one second? It's the great crutch, the necessary evil, and the villain of many stories. It can be an effective thing, and it's good to have visuals. Visuals are very powerful. The thing is that when I talked about editing yourself, that's the biggest thing that when I work with companies, and I take a look at their standard decks and I get to say: ‘Who owns the narrative on this slide? Do you own the narrative, or is it a pick your own adventure for the person looking at it? Because if it's a pick your own adventure, what you're doing is saying, please ignore me.’“ “In the beginning, you have to prove that you're worth listening to really quickly. You've got about 30 seconds to get people interested and to prove that you're worth listening to. Don't waste the time on, ‘Hey, this is my company, and this is where we're founded, and how many employees we have.’ No one cares. You haven't earned the right for them to care. So how are you going to open with some intrigue, something interesting that you're going to teach them?“ “You don't want to win the hour you're with someone. You want to win the five minutes after you leave. They're still remembering you.” “Metaphor takes people out of their world, takes them away from their core objections and gets them starting to agree with you.” “We don't have to just be in sales to think we need to tell better stories. If you're a leader, you need to invest in learning how to tell great stories.” “Let's take it from a pure leader perspective. You are putting forth a policy change, or maybe you're acquiring a company or maybe you're changing direction of your company. People are going to be looking at that after you're done, and they go back to their desk, and they're thinking, ‘okay, do I buy into this?’ And you could give 'em all the logic you want, but they're going to be relying on what feels right.“ “When it gets down to shifting the mindset of your employees or your partners or your investors, don't be afraid of using the same tools of storytelling that you would in a sales process because again, you are pitching ideas, and you want to get them leaning a certain way.“ Connect with Robert Website: http://www.intrigue.cc LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattsonr/ “Stories from the Silver Screen” Reference The Anatomy of Story by John Truby: https://amzn.to/4660A5J  

Kit Campoy spent 24 years leading teams in retail stores. In 2022, she threw her store keys in the safe and left the career she loved to write full-time. She now writes, reads, and talks about leadership daily. She advocates for frontline leaders on LinkedIn and through her newsletter, The Voice of the Frontline. Her book, The Retail Leaders Field Guide: How to Run a Kick Ass Store Where Everyone Wants to Work is available now. Top 3 Takeaways Be prepared. Like many leadership situations, being a retail leader requires flexibility. Go ahead and make plans, but plan on changing those plans along the way. Be brave. Sometimes a situation may become unworkable. Rather than continue to sacrifice your mental wellness, you may want to take a step back or away in order to break free. Listen up. You may be the leader, but that doesn’t mean you’re expected to know everything or make perfect decisions. Allow for team participation and work together to move forward. From the Source “You step into the store with an idea of how the day's going to run. ‘I'm going to write my schedule, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.’ And who knows? A customer could come in with a huge problem that you have to sort out and fix, or corporate could change direction on a dime, and you have to throw out all of your plans. Or three people call out sick and you have to be on the floor with one other person and now you're really short staffed and you can't get the work done that you had planned on getting done.” “Like most places, you have to have a backup plan. You have to have a plan, and then a backup plan, and then a next backup plan. So that's constantly running in your mind. And then you also have to teach your support staff how to do that as well if you're not there.” “We're going to get through this day. However we can get through this day and we're going to support each other, and we'll figure it out. We always do.” “It was stressful. It was chaotic. But I think that's when you're like, ‘Okay, you know what? I'm going to take an extra break. I'm going to walk around the mall. I'm going to buy everyone coffee.’ Whatever you can do to lift people's spirits and be like, ‘All right, we're going to get through today. Tomorrow's another day.’” “Things evolve, and I felt like, “Who am I writing this for? Like what's the point of this newsletter?’” “For people who are creatives, they get very caught up in ‘Well, I started this project. I want to make it work.’ And it's okay if it doesn't work. You still learn something, you still got something out of that process.” “When we would get in leadership huddles at my store, that's how we spoke to each other: quick, direct, ‘This is what's happening’, ‘Who's doing this?’, ‘This directive is stupid’, ‘We're going to leave this to last.’ So yeah, that voice was very easy to cultivate and tap into because that was just how I led people.” “I didn't have any fear at all. It was just like, ‘Good, this is what I'm doing. This is how I talk. This is how I lead. This is my honest opinion of what's going on in the retail world in frontline work.’” “They started to write me up for some ridiculous things. I was written up for quote unquote ‘not being seen as a leader in the building’. And so then what, right? Like, what's the action plan? What do I do in this person's eyes? How do I make myself seen as a leader? There was no action plan. There was no follow up. There was no ‘these are the things that we wanna see out of you’. It was definitely a way to push me out.“ “I thought that I was going to show up to work and work hard and just move up. My whole life, that's what I thought. I’m just going to work hard, and I'm going to be honest, and I'm going to be good to people,and I will just keep getting promoted. And it's not like that. Life is not like that. And that's a really hard lesson to learn.” “My district manager was shocked that I was leaving. I just said, ‘You know what? I came here to learn how to run bigger teams and larger buildings, and I've done that and I'm done. So I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm not doing this anymore.” “I went on LinkedIn and I did a survey, and I said, ‘Hey, do y'all want a book from me? Would that be helpful?. And it was overwhelmingly ‘Yes, please write us a book!” “That was the same when I led teams. It was just like, ‘Hey, this is the initiative. This is the directive. This is my idea of how we're going to proceed with this, but what do you guys think? Does that make sense to you? Should we do this differently?’ Seek feedback from everybody around you. You never know. Even sometimes my 17-year old sales associates had fantastic ideas, so just listen to everyone in the room." Connect with Kit LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kit-campoy-you-got-this/ The Voice of the Frontline (Substack): https://kitcampoy.substack.com/ The Retail Field Leader’s Guide: How to Run a Kick-Ass Store Where Everyone Wants to Work (book): https://amzn.to/3NCWA3Y  

Dr. Susan Landers has thirty-four years of experience in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She practiced in academic medicine (on the faculty of two medical schools) and in private practice. She authored over thirty peer-reviewed academic papers. She found her work in the demanding environment of the NICU rewarding & managed to postpone burnout until the end of her career. Susan and her physician husband raised three children (now all young adults) while they practiced medicine full time. She’s the author of a memoir titled So Many Babies: My Life Balancing a Busy Medical Career and Motherhood. Susan enjoys recounting some of her best, and worst, life experiences, and how she managed to stay resilient. She likes to share with other professionals what she learned along her journey as an ambitious, successful doctor. Top 3 Takeaways Leadership can be high-stakes. Dr. Landers’ experiences in the NICU may be unrelatable for those of us outside of medicine, but our leadership outcomes are incredibly meaningful in their own right. We need to match that intensity. Get personal. People handle stressful situations differently. Get to know your team members well and work hard to meet their needs while helping them perform at their best under the circumstances. Be the home team. Your spouse, partner, or family members may not come to work with you, but your work comes to them. Stay close to one another and co-develop strategies to meet all the demands you face together. From the Source “I enjoyed working with the babies and the moms and dads because they were sort of imagining what their children could be. It was an emotionally raw time, especially for parents who had an unexpectedly preterm or sick baby, and that drew me to that field.“ “It's a place where there's lots of heartbreak that usually gets healed. Most of the babies recover and grow and thrive and go home. For some people—a smaller percent of the tiniest preemies and the sickest babies—the heartbreak doesn't mend and they lose their child.” “I liked the blend of surgical and medical. I liked getting to know the families. I loved working on a team.” “The public doesn't realize that it's not just the doctors and the nurses, it's all the support staff.” “I loved the way when a baby was really, really sick, everybody jumped in. Very few words were spoken, and we all did our jobs, did our jobs well, and hopefully at the end we were rewarded.” “Most people were so fearful that they hung back psychologically until they either understood what was going on or felt more comfortable and could ask questions. Most people got quiet and introspective.” “[Dads] were great about asking questions and writing things down and taking instruction. The mothers really needed to be allowed to touch and talk to and sing to their baby. That was the thing that would always take them from fear or grief or terror to being a mom.” “It's very, very challenging for a leader to draw out what's going on with the team members and how that person's attitude affects the product or the service that you're delivering.” “The first 10 years of being a mother, I had to learn how to be a good enough mother and leave my work at work and not bring all the stresses of the NICU home with me.” “Two full-time jobs in medicine are not compatible with having a normal family life. We didn't have a normal family life.” “For parents today who are both professionals, both working full-time, I wanna just say it is not easy if you and your spouse are juggling childcare work, maybe sick parents, not to mention a pandemic.” “The communication has to be clear. The support systems have to be there. There has to be a way for the couple to maintain their relationship because the family dies if the couple doesn't stay together.” “Over the years, the whole practice became family friendly. I mean, not all the time, but because men and women have different priorities. Most of the time they learn to accommodate wives and mothers because we're different. We just think about things differently. We carry our children's problems to work with us.” Connect with Dr. Landers Website: http://www.susanlandersmd.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-landersmd/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drsusanlanders