Lead the People

Hema Crockett is a military spouse, entrepreneur, and recovering HR executive, who worked in the private sector as well as for the DOJ and State Department for 18 years before becoming an entrepreneur. She is the co-founder of Gig Talent, a modern talent collective connecting best in class HR consultants and leadership coaches with forward-thinking organizations. Hema has been published in Forbes and Thrive Global, among other publications and her first book, Designing Exceptional Organizational Cultures, was released in February and was Amazons #1 new HR release. She lives in San Diego with her husband. Top 3 Takeaways Culture is a team sport—Enlist your employees’ help to define the culture since they’re definitely going to be the ones who will reinforce it every day. Performance is purposeful—Traditional definitions of high performance tend to focus on results, but it’s time to include upholding values in that definition, as well. You always have an audience—Your team is watching how you think, make decisions, and behave and they make their own interpretations as a result. From the Source “The way I define culture is really looking at it based at this intersection of values, actions, and behaviors.“ “A lot of times people think—especially in small companies—that whatever the founder or co-founders values are, those are the values of the company. And the truth is that may be where it starts. Absolutely. And then as the company starts to grow, and more people come in, and we start to really see that culture that is created—again whether it's intentional or not—there's always a culture that's created. It's time to revisit what those values look like.“ “It's not the executive team sitting in a room behind closed doors coming up with words that they want to represent the organization. It's actually a much more collaborative event or process.” “In any organization that I was part of when I was still an in-house HR executive, we used values as one of our performance management methods.” “With open PTO policies or these unlimited PTO policies where the time is available, as a leader, what are you telling your employees about that time? Are you really allowing them to unplug and are you as well setting the tone? Are you unplugging during that time?“ “I think the culture influences leadership development and expectations of them, but also leaders influence the culture.” “Leaders have the ability to completely derail the culture. If they're not self-aware, if they're not embodying those values, if they're doing one thing and saying another, then what is the message that's actually being conveyed?“ “Subcultures are always going to exist whether a leader is intentional about creating one or not. So with that said, the leader actually does need to get a little bit intentional.” “If you really want a high performing organization—if you really want to be an employer of choice, —the best way to do that is to make sure that what you are doing is anchored in those values. And then you can keep building from there.” Connect with Hema LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hemacrockett Website: http://www.gogigtalent.com Book: Designing Exceptional Organizational Cultures: How to Develop Companies where Employees Thrive New Book: The Everyday Leader: 14 Marine Corps Traits to Unlock Your Leadership DNA Links “Over/Under” game segment source: https://blog.smarp.com/the-importance-of-company-values

William Rawe is a prior service Marine with over 20 years of experience in human resources and leadership development. He works as an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University teaching strategic management. He is currently working on his PhD in organizational psychology to further his passion for helping people thrive in the workplace. During his down time, he likes to spend time with his 11-year old son.Top 3 TakeawaysLeaders lead—When you get the right leaders on the bus and develop them to reach their full potential, the organization’s objectives manifest naturally.Practice what they teach—Training and development won’t stick if you’re not practicing and applying the lessons every day.Don’t fear the right friction—Constructive confrontation requires troubleshooting business issues down to the personal cause of the problem while framing the discomfort as a learning and growth opportunity.From the Source“That is where the real shift happened in me: that I need to focus on leaders and leadership development, because if we can get the right leaders in place, then it's going to benefit the entire organization. And it just goes out to all the stakeholders, customers, vendors, everybody. It makes total sense.““Everything was in place. You did your best and it failed. The customer said, ‘No, thanks. I'm done. I’m going with somebody else.’ So the constructive confrontation means we have to figure out what went wrong and that goes down to the personal level. So if I'm on the team, I'm like, ‘Okay, what did I do that caused us to fail?’”“I've been a firm believer that there should be a certain level of tension in every meeting. But you need to develop that trust and safety first, right before you can have that.”Connect with WilliamWebsite: https://www.williamcrawe.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamcraweLocals: https://learnleadtransform.locals.comReferences“Back to School”https://www.gcu.edu/sites/default/files/media/documents/academics/catalog/2021-22/Academic-Catalog-June-2021.pdfhttps://blog.cheapism.com/weird-college-classes/

After 14 years in Corporate America, Mialei embarked on a journey to improve her physical health and do a lot less of what was expected of her and more of what she really enjoyed. Mialei has an interest in people and our ability to communicate beyond words. She has written a coaching program that transforms the workday of the new leader instead of leaving them without any training to navigate that transition from expert to leader. Most recently, Mialei has noticed that we expect leaders to know everything when we really need to ask them Ask More Questions.Top 3 TakeawaysLeadership is like a train. Your vision is the engine, your people are the cars, and your team leaders are the links between the cars.Be aware of the work your people are doing, but don’t do it for them. Otherwise, why did you hire them in the first place?Ask questions. Questions create conversations which is where learning and growth can happen.From the Source“I think it's degrading to say to somebody, I can do your job better than you can. It's not fair.““When I lay forth a vision, what I want to know is what's the difference between today and when we achieved that vision.”“If what I'm doing and what that vision does, doesn't bring job variety. My vision is flat.”“Am I promoting the right person? Has that person started to think differently? Because if they're not thinking differently, they're not thinking about systems. They're not thinking ahead of time. They're not looking at outcomes. Those are not the people you promote.“Connect with MialeiWebsite: www.mialeiiske.comYouTube Channel: linkFree Resource: 7 Unspoken Questions in the Transition to Leader"

Jennifer Beck is an entrepreneur with deep experience in the legal hemp and cannabis markets. Today, she is the CEO of Jihi, a line of self-care products that elevate performance and enhance balance from the inside out. An advocate for mental health and mind/body wellness, Jennifer believes in the power of authentic, joyful living to uncover our power, purpose and passion.Top 3 TakeawaysSelf-centered care isn’t selfish. You take care of you for me, and I’ll take care of me for you.High achievers prioritize holistic wellness. Our mental health, the way our bodies feel, and the quality of our sleep all show up in our leadership.Nike was right—Just Do It. Conditions won’t always be ideal, but sometimes you have to press forward anyway. With the benefit of hindsight, the adversity you perceived in the moment may turn out to be an advantage.From the Source“Self centered wellness is a mind body practice that advocates reorienting inward and providing the tools and support that you need to navigate that journey. So as leaders, we are bombarded with stress and information, and what we need is resilience and endurance.”“We need time in the game and we need the ability to clear our heads and listen to ourselves. You're constantly going to be. Feedback from the outside world, which you need to be able to digest and incorporate into a bigger, clearer, more resilient strategy.““We love the phrase self centered wellness because it's a little agitating when you first hear it. The idea of self-centeredness is not something that we value, especially in our culture, which is heavy on martyrdom, burnout, whoever puts the most out and pushes the furthest, cares the most, or gives the most to their business.”“Being self-centered and being centered within, it gives us the resilience, the endurance, the strength, and the clarity of mind to be great leaders and really give to our organizations.”“When we're constantly just living with feedback and we're responding to the people around us or we're reacting to yeses and nos, we're not navigating our path and as leaders that's, our job is to see further than the fog of war to have a vision that we're manifesting, that other people can't see.”“People have come to value their bodies. At the end of the day, after we were all locked inside, we are still living in our bodies. We still have to stay comfortable in our bodies. We have to manage our mental health. And we all realized how precious our bodies are.”Connect with JenniferWebsite: www.jihi.com

Sarah Smith-Barry is the founder and principal consultant at Freego Consulting.She is a business psychology practitioner both on LinkedIn and in real life, improving the workplace through the use of personality and cognitive tools along with tailored roadmaps for leadership and teams to succeed.As a disabled Army veteran herself, and key member of the veteran family of Military City, San Antonio, it is important to her that she spends any free time volunteering at Veteran Service organizations, like FourBlock, where she assists veterans in their transition from service to the civilian workforce.Top 3 TakeawaysStress begets strength—while uncomfortable in the moment, stress is an inherent part of hormesis, a process through which your body and character can heal stronger as a result of adversity.Think big... but not too big—focusing on a grandiose purpose or passion can lead to disappointment if you force the issue. Find your footing with something here and now and have faith that your bigger why will emerge in due time.Commitment is key—before you can direct another person to a better tomorrow, you have to ensure that they’re bought into your vision of what’s possible and ready to do what it will take to get there.From the Source“Early on in my career and kind of having to go through that [injury] and watch other people around me who are also in recovery going through that, it kind of gave me a hormetic effect on my character.““Find something in the world that you care about and pursue that, and that's going to give you the passion purpose that you're looking for in the interim while you're feeling out how to kind of navigate and learn to communicate in the civilian sector.”“if you have the ability to speak with who you might be leading in the future ask ‘What is it that you need from me?’, ‘What kind of support would you like to have but maybe don't?’ and see where you can provide it.““We're trying to put the human back in the workplace and really make it a human-centered design.““You have the ability as a coach or mentor or leader to be able to direct your people in the right direction, but if they don't buy into it, It's very unlikely that they're going to go that far.”Connect with SarahWebsite: www.freegoconsulting.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahsmithbarry/Twitter, Clubhouse, etc.: @sarahsmithbarryReferences“Celebs Who Served” sources:https://www.businessinsider.com/celebrities-who-were-in-the-military-2016-11https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/20-hollywood-stars-served-military-210528490.html

Marcel Schwantes is the founder of Leadership from the Core and an international speaker, leadership coach, and a columnist who attracts over 1.5 million readers monthly to his thought-leadership contributions. Top 3 Takeaways With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility—Marcel found himself in a toxic work environment, and it landed him in the hospital. When he later worked for a people-first leader, his experience and his results improved dramatically. Be a people-first leader for your people.Stay Humble—seasoned leaders may find it tempting to believe they have all the answers. It’s important that you take off the mask and make yourself vulnerable enough to continue learning and growing.Safety First—when leaders give their people freedom, autonomy, and psychological safety—while preserving accountability—everybody can do their best work and the results begin to take care of themselves. From the Source “This isn't just pie in the sky stuff. There are people out there that are actually aspiring to lead this way. And it leads to results because that elevated my game.” “In journaling, you bring up emotions to the surface, and we cannot fix problems unless we know ‘How will you feel about what's going on?’ in order to do something about it.” “You want to break the barriers that cause you to want to discover more about yourself, that keep you from wanting to discover more about yourself.” “The higher you go up the chain, the less likely you want to break through the barriers that are holding you back.“ “I have lots of clients that are senior leaders and executives that—once they understand that they have to remove the mask and that they have to get vulnerable—that's when the real work happens.“ “A lot of people are promoted into leadership roles without having the capacity or the competency to lead humans well.” Connect with Marcel Website: https://www.marcelschwantes.com/ Podcast: Love in Action Twitter: https://twitter.com/marcelschwantes References 10 of the Most Inspiring Leaders of All Time https://www.inspiringleadershipnow.com/most-inspiring-leaders-redefine-leadership/

Kimberly Spencer is an award-winning high performance, trauma-informed coach and trainer, Amazon best-selling co-author, international motivational speaker, and the founder of CrownYourself.com. She helps visionary leaders transform their self-limiting stories, build their empire, stand out fearlessly, and make the income and the impact they deserve.Top 3 TakeawaysPick up the pace—early career leaders often delay when making decisions. This can hold you back. Of course you’ll experience self-doubt—we all do—but as a leader, all eyes are on you to be decisive when it counts.Expand your perspective—experienced leaders need to look at situations and their own capabilities from a broader vantage point in order to break through a performance plateau.Don’t confuse busy-ness with business. If you want to move beyond frenetic activity toward delivering results that matter, you have to be clear about your purpose. You must do the uncomfortable things that you know you ought to in order to maximize your impact.From the Source“A lot of times we're told it's ‘new level, new devils’, and for me, I've never experienced that to be true. And honestly, in five years of coaching, I've never experienced that to be true with a client. Typically it's ‘same devil, new level’.““For early career leaders, the number one thing that stops them is self doubt. And the number one thing that doubt creates is delight. And so the swifter you can be at speeding up your decision-making, the faster you're going to move through that earlier period. Because when you delay on making a decision, it then allows for that insidious interloper of doubt to creep in.”“One of the things that I see as they start giving their power away to meetings—to endless meetings.”“So often we can unconsciously get into this pattern of blame. Blame the meetings, blame the project, blame the children, blame the husband, blame the partner blame—you know, 'oh, if my partner wasn't working me so hard' or, 'oh, if my, if I didn't have so many clients'—blame the clients. When you look at 'where are you blaming?' that's where you'll see that you are giving away your power of conscious choice and you are defaulting to blame, which doesn't actually put you in a position to change anything. So if you want to enact change, then you have to look examine it as to where you're placing blame and then move forward from there.““Blame really stacks up. So examining and curtailing it as quickly as possible so that you don't—five years from now, ten years from now—turn around and say what happened to my life? ““Our brains are wired to survive. They're not necessarily wired to thrive unless we actively, consciously program them to.”Connect with KimberlyCrownYourself.comYouTubeFacebookLinkedIn

Susanna Katsman is a leadership development consultant and a coach. She has held a variety of leadership roles in healthcare and higher education settings. She holds an Ed.M. in Human Development and Psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Susanna is also certified as a Talent Optimization Consultant and a practitioner of The Predictive Index talent optimization platform.Top 3 TakeawaysWhile having a socialized mind may help you be a great team member, having a self-authoring mind is more critical than ever to be a great leader. A self-authoring mind can be developed with practice—doing so requires you to take calculated risks and design novel solutions in ambiguous situations.A great way to ensure that you’ve fully absorbed a lesson learned is to use the formula, “I used to think __________, and now I think __________.”From the Source“The socialized mind internalizes the behavioral norms and expectations of others, and it looks to others for direction, validation, and approval. People with a socialized mind tend to make excellent team members and do good work.““A self-authoring mind no longer looks to others for direction, validation, and approval. It is well aware of what others think and expect, of societal norms, and all of that is subordinated.““I would say that the greater the self-authoring capacity, the greater the degree to which one owns the role— not just in the workplace but also in life.”“Stretch goals can be very important because stretch goals—where falling short of target doesn't impact performance rating or compensation—make risk-taking safer, and risk-taking promotes development of self-authoring capacity.““Asking ‘What are you learning?’ makes people stop and reflect, and reflection is a key practice for development of greater mental complexity which goes along with development of self-authoring capacity.”Connect with SusannaLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susannakatsman/Click here to get Susanna’s free guide “3 Simple Steps to Greater Confidence in Yourself as a Leader!”

Andrea Wilson Woods is a writer who loves to tell stories, and a patient advocate who founded the nonprofit Blue Faery: The Adrienne Wilson Liver Cancer Association. Andrea is the CEO and co-founder of Cancer University, a for-profit, social-benefit, digital health company. With Cancer U, Andrea synergizes her talents of coaching, writing, teaching, and advocacy. Her best-selling and award-winning book, Better Off Bald: A Life in 147 Days, is a medical memoir about raising and losing her sister to liver cancer.Top 3 TakeawaysDuring challenging times, it’s all the more important to remember your why—your North Star—to keep you focused and moving forward.When you have to deliver bad news, be human about it—be truthful and direct but also empathetic.When you struggle to find strength within, draw it from those around you—you’ll have the chance to return the favor by giving back after you’ve had time and space to heal.From the Source“Coming to live with me was probably the best thing that could've happened to me at that time. Because even though I didn't want better for myself, I wanted better for [Adrienne]. And by being able to focus on her, I was able to get through all of those challenges.”“I can remember a time where I was working four jobs and all part-time, but it was a way that I could be on her schedule and be there for her, but they were four completely different jobs. So I was traveling all over Los Angeles. It felt like I was every single day. Um, but you know, she was my. In many ways. Adrienne was my North Star.““You will have to give bad news, so there is a way to give bad news and be kind, but also don't sugar coat it, don't just gloss over it.”Connect with AndreaWebsite: http://www.bluefaery.comWebsite: http://www.andreawilsonwoods.comWebsite: http://www.betteroffbald.comWebsite: http://www.cancer.university(Use coupon code LEADTHEPEOPLE for a free lifetime membership!)

Joanna Dodd Massey, Ph.D., MBA has more than 25 years of experience in the media industry at companies, such as Condé Nast, Lionsgate, CBS, Viacom, Discovery and Hasbro. She’s an experienced C-level communications executive and Board Director. Joanna has managed brand reputation, corporate turnaround, crisis communications, culture transformation, and multi-million-dollar P&Ls. She’s the author of two books, "Culture Shock: Surviving Five Generations In One Workplace" and "Communicating During a Crisis: Influencing Others When the Stakes are High"Top 3 TakeawaysOur brains are wired to detect threats in our environment—whether those threats are real or imagined.When your brain switches into threat mode, it begins to shut down executive functioning—the part of the brain responsible for rational decision making and strategic thinking.During times of change, you may get better results as a leader if you can understand what’s naturally happening inside the brains of those affected by the change—be empathetic and avoid making change more difficult by pushing your followers too hard or moving too quickly.From the Source“When we are in what's called an amygdala hijack which is basically when the amygdala is in charge, it is incumbent on the company, on the leader, on the manager, on the boss to dialogue with employees in a way that is going to get them out of the fear place where the amygdala is running the show and back into the rational mind so that they can look at it more rationally and not from fear and stress and upset.”“Human beings have a very predictable response to change, and what's even more predictable is the type of change that will trigger them.”“The one guarantee in life is change, and yet human beings are hardwired to resist change. We gravitate to that which is comfortable and familiar and similar to us, and we reject that which is different  and makes us uncomfortable.“Connect with JoannaWebsite: http://www.joannamassey.comBook: Culture Shock: Surviving Five Generations in One WorkplaceBook: Communicating During a Crisis: Influencing Others When the Stakes Are High