Today in Leading with Strinks, I am with one

of the largest players in the healthcare industry, the chair and CEO of the Striker Corporation. Kevin, it's great to be here with you today.

Thank you for having me.

Kevin, as we're diving into Strinks, can you talk a little bit about how you first learned about Strinks and kind of what your strengths journey was? Well,

when I joined Striker 12 years ago, I realized that Strinks was pervasive across the company. It had been in the culture for 20, 30 years, and I wanted to take the strength-finders test right away. I was already familiar with Q12 because I used that engagement survey at a previous company, but had never done Strinks training before in my life. And it was fantastic. I learned about my own strengths myself. I'd done a lot of other things in the past around self-analysis and different types of surveys, but Strinks, to me, is the most powerful thing. That I've done in my career.

So when you first took it, individualization was your number one strength. You also have Lerner in your top five, Achiever Activator in Positivity. When you first saw that collection of words, what was going through your mind?

Well, I was surprised by individualization. I just didn't understand what does that mean exactly. Because Achiever Activator, I could see that positivity. I could see that. Lerner, after I read about it, I said this absolutely. I'm always asking questions. I'm always curious. But that was the one that mystified me a little bit. So then I read through the descriptor of it. It became obvious that that absolutely is my top strength. Learning to be able to relate to different types of people. And some people like more in person. I adapt my style to suit sort of how people behave versus having a militaristic approach to treating everybody in exactly the same way. Some people need to be in person. Some people are better on the phone. And I sort of adapt my style to the audience that I'm around. And I've just do that sort of naturally without even thinking. Now, after

you had seen your top five, how did you think about your leadership differently? Did you have a coach that worked with you on this? Is it something that you just kind of picked up intuitively? Learners typically, when they get new information, they go as deep as they can on it. What was your experience with it? Well, for

me, I thought about my team. Because not only did I do strength finders, we did a team blend. So that team blend was really fun. Because you got to see other people's strengths and see how the team sort of behaves together. And one of the things I quickly picked up upon was the activator one. Which is a strength, but could also be a derailleur in a CEO position, or even as that, initially I was the head of orthopedics prior to being the CEO of Striker. Because activators like to get a lot of things going. And if you get too many things going, frankly it causes a bit of chaos in your organization. And it sort of reminded me when I was leading a previous organization, how people would try to tell me to slow down and not too many things and stay focused. And so I asked, actually relied on my other teammates, to say, listen, you better slow me down sometimes. Or if I'm brainstorming or thinking out loud, maybe it's better just to write it down instead of saying things, until I have a thought that's really well formulated. Because people will just grab on to things I say because of the position I'm in. And they'll just start launching initiatives. And maybe that's not the best for the organization. So you have to watch out that your strength can actually turn against you if you're not careful.

As someone that leads with individualization, I often wonder if, because people with individualization have this sort of inherent ability to understand the idiosyncrasies of every individual person. What did that mean to you when you actually saw the strengths of people that you knew so well? What did it sort of tell you, I kind of already knew that. Now I have words to label these things. What was that process like? I would say,

yes, because the individualization is so high, I really understand people a little bit better than maybe others at first glance. But it enabled me to go deeper. And it enabled me to make sure that my behavior was consistently lining up. Because even because you know something doesn't mean you actually behave that way in a large team dynamic. When I'm dealing with people individually, it's automatic. But it helped me with the team dynamic of making sure I would call out certain people who would just not lean in as quickly. Or sort of the activator, tell them just to sort of let this other person talk. Let's, we'll get to you. So it just helped me with team management more so than with the individual management. Because that sort of happened automatically. Now,

strengths as you mentioned, being such a part of the culture, it's in so many conversations throughout the company. I spoke to a few of your colleagues and said even yesterday, strengths was a dominant part of the conversation that they were having with you.

How is it that you accomplished that? Like I say, it started well before me a long time ago. I think it was Sai Johnson who initially first brought it. One of the large group presidents of Striker within the MedSurg but it spread throughout the whole company. It's a common language. And so when people, when you have a common language, it unifies people. It gets people talking. And it's very productive. And to me, the first time in my career where focusing on strengths is frankly a better use of your energy than trying to focus on people's weaknesses and fix people, so to speak. Which is kind of how leadership was taught when I first joined the workforce. It was like identify the weaknesses. But someone's weaknesses will never be their strength. You can get better. You should be aware of your weaknesses. But you'll never be amazing at something that you're weak at. You could become sort of acceptable. You're never going to be great at it. But if you can lean into people's strengths, it's obviously a better use of your energy than spending time on weaknesses. So to me, once I learned about it, it became sort of obvious. I don't know why it wasn't taught 30 years ago so much. Now

individualization, your number one. What does that mean for a CEO to have individualization number one? How do you use that on a day-to-day basis? Well, what helps me a lot is if I walk into a manufacturing facility,

if I go to France or if I go to another country, I can relate to people pretty easily. And part of it is also my experiences where I've lived in four different countries. I've been in four different industries. And so it makes me approachable. And that, I think, as a CEO of a large company, people being willing to come up to me and talk to me or send me emails or send me texts and not be worried about the level of my position in the organization. I think it's helpful to a culture of openness, of transparency. And so I lean into it. And I'm not afraid to walk around and talk to people and have them approach me. Sales meetings are great. I love that. I go to about 25 to 30 of those every January, February. It's a busy schedule. But being able to be with the Salesforce and have them know that we're there to support them and be able to be comfortable on the stage in front of 2,000 people, but equally comfortable standing at the bar and having a one-on-one conversation. That strength has helped me be able to just relate to all kinds of every level of our employee and everywhere in the world. And I'm lucky to have that as strength. And I think they're all strengths. I always tell people, look, there's not a weakness finder. It's a strength finder. So whatever your top five are, leverage those strengths and use those strengths. It doesn't matter what they are. And in my case, it's individualization. But I think it gives me a little bit of an advantage in respect of, I like being open, transparent, having people voice their opinions. But by having that as a strength, it makes it easier for people to be able to speak up and not be worried about it or have different styles of dealing with different people or different organizations. You're more flexible. So I don't have this stress code. Every division has their own dress code. So when I'm going to visit endoscopy in San Jose, I call ahead and say, like, how should I dress? If you have individualization, you're not thinking about, well, here's what the thing should be. It's not a command and control mindset. I just don't have that mindset. And in a decentralized company, it fits very well, where each division has their own personality. The mission and values are consistent. The use of strength is consistent. But each division kind of has their own personality. If you're a bed and stretcher division versus a neurovascular, coiling business that saves people's lives, if the patient doesn't work, the patient actually dies. So you have very different kinds of products and we allow that type of flexibility and personality for the different divisions.

If somebody had just taken strengths and they found that they also had individualization as their number one, what advice would you have for them?

I would say make sure you're around a lot of people. If you have individualization number one, you like being with people. That you want a job that has a lot of interaction because you get energy from people and you give people energy if you have high individualization. So that would be my interpretation. I don't know if you would agree with that for Gallup. But I think I'm at my best when I'm out with people. Zoom makes it a little harder. You can still do it. But you need that sort of interaction with people to give you energy and really for you to give them energy. That's what I would say.

Learner is your number two. It is. I've worn out a lot of bosses with a lot of questions. What are the things you're learning at once?

I'm just constantly curious. I'm a constantly curious learner. Even business reviews where when I'm meeting with whatever division and going over the results, it's always about asking questions. And I think the more senior you get in an organization, the questions you ask are more important than the answers that you give because the leaders are the ones that should be making decisions. I should be deciding for them or telling them what to do at this stage of an organization. So having learner is great because I'll ask them questions. But they'll then take those questions and figure out what they want to do with it. I'm not there to tell them what to do or how to do it. Just to sort of make sure their thinking is as complete as possible. That they're not missing something. That they're being fulsome in their thinking and not just rushing ahead to a conclusion. For me, it helps me be adaptable. I've gone to different countries like I said in different industries. And I can pick things up pretty quickly. And a lot of it's by asking questions. I joke in the company that I use the I'm new phrase all the time. I've used it my whole career. So I'm new here. Please tell me about this or that. And when you say that, people will explain it to you. And they don't feel threatened because you're new. You're just trying to learn. And sometimes I say it even though I want to test an idea. But I don't want the person to be defensive about it. So I just say, well, I'm new. And I remember my boss at one of my previous jobs says, why do you say you're new? You've been in this job for three years. You're not new anymore. I've only been in the industry for about five years. And you've all been in the industry for 25 years. So I'm still sort of new. And so everyone left. But being that learner helps, I think, the entire groups make sure that their thinking is complete. And sometimes somebody has an idea that they just haven't worn confident to throw on the table. And if they see me throwing ideas like that, then they say, well, okay, maybe I shouldn't be afraid to ask a question. Because sometimes I'll ask a question and they'll, but the answer is pretty obvious. And so they'll say the answer. I'm like, oh, okay, I should have known that. But I don't even worry about it. It just doesn't bother me. I don't worry about having the question look silly or something like that. We're all part of the same team trying to win. And so it's just part of who I am. And like I say, some of my early bosses luckily tolerated me asking them all these questions. And it helps you build your judgment. For me, my business acumen has developed, has accelerated, like earlier in my career, because of, I used to ask a lot of questions. Because by asking questions, if the answer, the answer to my question is, well, that's a bad idea because of XYZ. Like, okay, I just learned something. And I would have, if I hadn't asked the question, I wouldn't have learned that answer. Maybe it would have taken me two more years to realize why that wouldn't have worked. Whereas I get the answer immediately. Just

accelerate your answer. So your learning is mainly sourced and asking great questions

and continually asking questions. And reading. So I'm constantly reading. And when I'm out at dinner, you know, and I'm meeting a surgeon, I will ask them all kinds of questions. So I'm not there to, I'll tell them about our products if they, whatever questions they ask me, but I'm trying to solve their problems or understand their world. And so yes, it's rooted in asking questions and just being curious. Having a curious mindset. So I never sort of looked at my job as just inside these four little walls of the job description. I would always get involved in other projects or different teams. I get invited to, I remember one of my bosses said, why are you going to a photo shoot? You're in finance. Like the team marketing team invited me. And if I'm going to go to the photo shoot, I'm not just going to sit there. I'm going to ask questions. I'm going to be inquisitive. And so it's just being part of who I am.

And so do you feel ever like your learning is aimed at something or do you ever sort of unleash it and say, no, I'm going to yank myself outside even of the industry and go, you know, study something else to see if it inspires what we're doing here at work to inform the work that we're doing here at Stryker? Well,

definitely when I joined Stryker, I felt the company was high performing, had really good values, had this strength based approach, but I felt it was very internally focused. It didn't have as much of an external view because most of the employees had grown from within, had had good success. So I absolutely tapped into my network of outside people. One example is Larry Kulp who ran down at her for a long time. He's currently running GE. I reached out to Larry because I decided I wanted to get onto offense on acquisitions to start using our very conservative balance sheet to buy companies. And we've purchased roughly 60 companies over the last 10 years. And prior to that, Stryker was not so inquisitive. But I reached out to Larry, spent time with him, had him come talk to our leadership team, and explained when he was at Dan and her how he did his acquisitions, how he did his integrations. So bringing an outside view inside the company is definitely something that I've pushed. And even with my own team, having some sit on outside boards, having them join a hospital board, having them join outside groups of sort of within the industry, and sometimes even locally, let's say in the Bay Area, join a group of leaders in the Bay Area or in Kalamazoo, and learn from other industries. We should get best practice from anywhere. I'm always ready to do anything for the company to make it better. And I'll take ideas from anybody from anywhere that could work inside our company. And so that has definitely, you know, it's spread throughout the company now. This notion of let's make sure we're also looking outside. Not necessarily just to copy people, but to see what are they doing that could be applicable to Stryker to get inspiration from outside the organization.