Episode 31: Building Unshakable and Intentional Leaders with Janet Kendal White

It seems like lately I'm saying be intentional, not accidental a lot lately. Be intentional, not accidental about your learning. Be intentional, not accidental about how you're using AI. Be intentional, not accidental about your values. And putting them on a wall does not make it so.

If you're looking to make sure that your leadership is not the same thing as a paint mixer, I've got the author of Unshakeable Leadership Today here with me, Janet Kendall White. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks for having me, Kristen.

This has been a long time coming. I've wanted to have you on the podcast for a while, and we had to wait until your book was out. And so I have it with me. I'm holding it up if anybody can't see me on video. But, I mean, I loved it. Unshakable leadership.

Thank you.

So, before we talk about the book, I want to talk a little bit about your business, because you founded Berkshire group over 30 years ago, which. Congratulations on your longevity and your growth. I'd like you to take me back to the beginning when you started. So what was the core problem that you really wanted to solve? And how has that mission evolved over time?

Awesome. Thanks. So I had been in corporate America, and at a what I would consider a really young age, just out of college, I was working for Fortune 100 companies, two or three of them, before I started my business. And I'll tell just a quick story about my first experience. My vice president, director, vice president, and executive vice president all got let go in the same day.

Oh.

And I found myself reporting to a skip level from the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. Wow. And I was 21 years old and the person they chose to promote six months later, her first words to me when she got promoted were, I'm 21. Right. Haven't had a whole huge amount of experience, but in six months, I had a boatload of experience.

Absolutely.

And she said to me, you'll either do it my way or I'll ruin you, quote, unquote.

Oh, my goodness.

That was my first leader that I would consider like a direct boss that. And then, you know, I worked for another Fortune 100 company, and I just got increasingly frustrated with the lack of effective ethical leadership.

Yeah.

And I kind of kept watching for I'll give myself at some point. I said, I'm going to give myself six months. Now I'm in my 20s, right. I'll give myself six months. And then if something doesn't change, I'll go do it on my own.

Okay.

So kind of a Michael Gerber entrepreneurial seizure moment. I had no clue what I'll do it on my own meant. I had no clue what I was actually gonna go do on my own. That I would make a difference and create all these ethical, effective leaders in the world. Wow. But that was the difference I wanted to make. I kept seeing people getting promoted who might have been. In some cases, they were good at their jobs. They were a good engineer, they were a good salesperson. They were a good IT person. They would get promoted and be a horrible leader because they weren't given any tools to be a better leader. And I just felt like I can provide the tools. I can do something here to cause people that could be good leaders become good leaders.

Yes. That's one of the struggles that I see often, especially on the HR side of things. You know, someone's really good at their job. Let's promote them to a manager without any of those skills. That's right. I love. I love working with you. I love bringing you into some of our clients because you help them find the tools that really make them shine as management and shine as leaders. So I didn't. I had no idea it was. Because you didn't. You didn't have that example when you were. When you were early on in your career. So you just. You just created it.

Correct.

Congratulations.

Like, I had no good leaders. Wow. In my career before I started my business. None. My mother was my best role model.

Wow.

Yeah.

So let's take a moment now, dive into the premise of your book. What made you write it right now? Because I know you've written other books. You've written other workbooks, but this one, I feel like, is just. It's a primer for anybody who is new to leadership or saying, I just want to get better at being a better leader or having better leaders in my team. So tell me, what made you do it right now?

It's been a process. So the right now just happened to be your referral for me to work with the right person, you know, the right organization and the right person. So that was part of it, because I started, I wanted to do it prior, take all those workbooks that are proprietary training material that we have and somehow put them in a form. And I thought it would be easy, put it in a format. Writing any book, I don't care who you are or what it is, is not easy.

It's torture.

So I wanted to put it in a format that leaders could pick up and use. People that were coaching leaders could use and consultants could use. So I wanted it to be something like that. I started to go down that path during COVID but I was also president of nabo, the Nabo chapter, and it just was bad timing. So this became the perfect time. Part of it. It became the perfect time because of the people that I was working with really encouraged me to talk about, why is it different now? Why do we have to really up our game as leaders now? Because we do. The uncertainty in the world has caused us to have to really not sit back on our laurels. You're a good leader of two organizations, right? You never sit on your laurels.

No.

You're always reading, you're always listening to podcasts. We have to become better as leaders, and so that's why.

Yeah, well. And you talk a lot about organizational development, professional development, getting people to learn how to lead, other people, getting to lead themselves, which I love. You're talking about culture starts with you. I feel like you are so gracious in the book. There are moments that I was reading it that I just. I wanted to put comma, dummy a couple times because it's so simple and succinct and direct. So thank you for making it very easy to understand.

You know me well enough to know that's me.

It is. It is. And anyone who has the pleasure to work with you, what is so wonderful is you're really able to cut through the noise of whether someone's dealing with. There's an emotional issue. There's issues around, you know, feeling their own capabilities. So I like to talk to you, too, about, you know, you've got a lot of different frameworks for change, for growth for a small business owner. Listening when they're like, well, that's. It feels like a lot. What's the single most important element of organizational development that you think they should start to focus on?

I think you have to separate out the individual and their development. So some of the people that I work with, they need to develop themselves a bit. And I mean, we all do. So that sounded really ridiculous. We all need to develop ourselves.

We do.

But really, someone who hasn't had any development. You and I are different. We've had a lot of development for people who haven't had that. All kinds of assessments where they can really take a look at themselves, what their communication style is, how their emotional intelligence, how comfortable they are with different approaches to people and emotional issues and situations. But in terms of the organization, it starts with values. First of all, knowing your own values and making sure that if you're a small business, your values are going to come through one way or the other, making sure that those are clear and you're authentic with yourself and other people, what those values are and how they're going to permeate the organization. And it seems like lately I'm saying be intentional, not accidental, a lot lately. Be intentional, not accidental about your learning. Be intentional, not accidental about how you're using AI. Be intentional, not accidental about your values. And putting them on a wall does not make it so.

No, we talk about being crappy wall art. We don't do crappy wall art.

Yeah.

We have to live it.

Yeah. So I think taking every opportunity as a business owner, as a CEO, regardless of whether you're a solopreneur or you're growing and have a larger business, is every opportunity you can take to get nuggets about yourself and how that's going to translate into leading other people. And then what are your personal values? How do those translate to your organization?

I love that. And what's interesting to me, and I feel you, you experience this a lot, is someone will bring you into their organization. They'll say, I need you to help me with, with Bob or with Jill or with. They always have. It's the. It's the middle level. It's always someone else. And at the end of the day, what I love about that, you can slide this book across the table and be like, you know, you might want to read this.

Just try this just in case, you.

Know, you need the development. Because I feel that there are a lot of individuals that are sitting in that leadership seat, sitting in that ownership seat, and they think that they've. I've got it all figured out. Go fix my people. And I think right now, if you're listening to this and as in the podcast, and you're thinking like, well, I've got this person that needs help, and I have this person that needs help. I would encourage you to reach out to Janet, but then I'd also encourage them to just think about, you know, are there things that I could be doing better and is some of the issues that I have because I'm not leading, I'm not leading myself. Well.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

So, you know, you've worked as a fractional executive for years. You're one of my mentors. I absolutely adore you. I've got some questions around. You know, you've helped people, you know, prepare for sale, implement processes, procedures. But as you've worked with small business owners, what are those Two or three key systems that you would tell them they need to implement today to build a long term transferable value in their company.

Start with values. Yes, start with values. And make sure that all of your other systems and values aren't really a system, but they are.

They inform everything.

They inform everything. And make sure that any of your HR systems that you have, first of all, that you have some. And that your HR systems, your accounting systems, your IT systems, people don't think about the fact that in IT there's a way that they do things. In hr, there's a way that they.

They.

That they do things in accounting that there's a way that they do things. All of those systems have to align with the values.

Yeah.

And be prepared to hire and fire based on those values.

Yeah.

And if you're not, I mean, a lot of people that we've worked with and I've worked with over the years, if you're not willing, if you say integrity is a value and you discover that a performer that might have some good metrics has lacked integrity in something they've done and you're not willing to fire them, then integrity is not really one of your values. And people can see very quickly if the values that are in your strategic plan on your wall or you're espousing are not matching your actions. So the tongue in your shoe has to match the tongue in your mouth.

Yes. Oh, I love that. That's a great sound bite.

Yeah, I learned it from someone else, so I can't, you know, that's okay. I'm sharing it with you. It's mine now, but it wasn't mine to begin with. And I think that looking at your handbook, if you are trying to build a culture in an organization of trust, and your handbook is worded and all very punitive, it can be legal and still be one that is worded and built on trust.

Yes.

Where policies are built more on trust versus the opposite.

Yes. So values pulling your policies and procedures together. For me, it seems once your values are, they're clarified, they're quantified, everything else kind of just falls into place and you can make decisions so much easier.

So much easier.

Systems make sense. I mean, how are we doing sales? Are we doing them by our core values? How are we delivering our service? How are we maintaining our financial. It's just, it all goes back to values and consistency.

It does. It really does. And if you're willing to really look at, like when we help people with their values, you have to be willing to look at it from a behavioral standpoint.

Yeah.

What does actual integrity mean? What does. If quality is a value, what does that mean? Where's the line? Is it Excellence to the 100th degree? What does that actually mean? Because the people that work for you need to know when I behave, is it matching these values or is it not? And the only way they're going to know that is if you go through.

Example after example after example and truly define it. I feel like we talk about how people need to hear something 10 times before it actually sinks in. I think especially as it relates to values. It's something that you have to constantly be talking about in, in every meeting. What are we doing by our core values? How did, how did this person exhibit this? I mean, if teamwork is a core value, what does teamwork look like? Yes.

What does it look like?

Teamwork can mean so many different things.

Yeah. And I, I have to share this little snippet of a story. So an organization that we worked with that really was a high performing, amazing culture organization had integrity as one of their values. They had defined it very clearly. And an employee. Best of intentions. This is going to sound like a ridiculous example. Best of intentions. Clean out. The fridge is being cleaned out on Friday. If you have anything in there that you want, take it. Anything that's left is going to be thrown out or given away or whatever. The person took an unopened bottle of mayonnaise. They took it a little bit before the end of the day. The person whose mayonnaise it was came back to get it at the end of the day. Before the fridge got cleaned out. The person who took it didn't want something that was brand new to go to waste. However he stole it, it wasn't his.

Yeah.

He was given three opportunities to tell the truth and fess up. Yeah. And he chose not to.

Oh, yeah. So what do you do? Good performer. Yeah. Good performer.

What do you do?

Yeah. If integrity is really your value, those are the hardly.

So, CEO, Chrissy, what would you do?

I mean, we would have a problem if you, if you can't be honest. And I know what's going on. And integrity is our value. We've got it.

He was let go.

Yeah. And it's.

And that's a zero tolerance, but also with empathy, giving the person the time and the opportunity to actually tell the truth. Had he told the truth the first two times, he would never have been let go.

Yes. Especially when you say, like we say this at home sometimes to our 13 year old, Caleb. We already know the answer to this question.

So it'd be really good if you answered it right. Yes.

Because we want to keep you. We do keep him. He's fine. But like the vou. But it's so true about the values and like, what is your. What is your core and how do you stay consistent? Because if you don't manage by your core values, if you don't lead by them, if you don't keep or exit people based on them, what message are you sending to everyone else? Because if you don't do that, even though you're like, well, it's just mayonnaise, it sets the tone for everything else. It's not just mayonnaise.

Which is correct. Yes.

And those are the conversations when that person has to exit, then we can all go cry later that this was horrible and we had to do it, but we did the right thing for the organization. Doesn't mean we don't feel awful about the situation, but we have to be able to separate it.

Unfortunately, usually people come back and I've unfortunately had to be at the end of that conversation, and I don't know that I've ever had anybody that hasn't come back to me. One person, it took two and a half years, but they came back on LinkedIn and said, I really need to thank you.

Wow.

And I didn't do it like it was the organization making a statement and them not abiding by that statement. But yeah. It's interesting how sometimes leaders don't understand that when you don't deal with a dysfunctional behavior or a behavior that doesn't match your values, you are saying to the entire organization where that whether that's two people or it's 2,000 people, you're saying that behavior is okay.

Yes.

It's acceptable.

Yes. And then that just breeds within your organization. And when you wonder, why do I have these issues? Why do we have issues with culture? Why do we have issues with performance? Because you've allowed it to be there.

Right. And you have just made a big, bold statement that says this behavior is acceptable.

Yes. So I'd like to change, like, pivot from topic. You know, you're a business owner who's also a consultant that works with other businesses. But I'd like to talk to you about, like the small business owner side of yourself. I mean, how do you balance the working on your business, working on the strategy, the growth, having time to write amazing books with working in your business, Because I know that you. And this is what I love about you, you are in the trenches and you are able to help get those leaders to do the things that they need to do. So you are fundamental to your growth. So how do you balance on versus in the business?

It's funny because that topic, I don't know if it's because of what's going on in the world. That topic has come up a lot over the past month or two.

Yeah, it is.

And I think my answer is honestly, sometimes I don't very well.

Okay.

I mean, just being very honest.

I appreciate your honesty.

Honestly, I don't always. However, I think I am way better today than I was 30 years ago where business was growing. We were pushing, you know, to a million dollars in the business when I had, you know, a bigger team of people. And I was probably out of whack more then, so. But I think there are seasons and I also. The biggest thing that I learned over the course of time through all of my learning via books, mentors, podcasts, etc. Was that it's really more about harmony than balance.

Yeah.

And it's about being intentional. And if your spokesman, you know, I don't know if you go, go by the seven Fs. Yes. Okay. So if your spokes are going to be out of whack, that you're making the decision that they're going to be out of whack and the people around you that are your loved ones that are going to be impacted by one spoke for lack of a better way to put it, or one area getting more attention. There are going to be times as business owners that we have to devote more time to our business. But our family, our loved ones, our friends can be told that and be told that in a way where they understand it and know that you're making a conscious decision to have it be temporary and to not have it sustained there for a prolonged period of time. So for me, physically, I know when I am not in harmony and my thing is nature. Okay. I've got to get out in nature. So I know that I've got to get back grounded, I've got to get aligned. And that could be that my lack of balance or lack of harmony is that I'm not putting enough time into the business or I'm not putting enough time in an area because I'm not motivated. So what do I need to do to re engage myself in it? But I think it's about harmony. It's about conscious choices. It's about prioritization at any given time. It's also about being Creative.

Yeah.

So I've gotten very, very creative. I got very creative when my daughter was younger, and I would take her and my spouse, if I had to travel to Texas, I'd have them come in. I'd spend an extra day. I'd have them come in. I've got to go to Toronto. You know, my daughter's young enough, and we went through a period of homeschooling and stuff.

Saved.

We bought a camper so that I could have an office in a camper and travel and park at a client's, and she could be locked in a camper doing work while I'm doing meetings. You get creative. You do, and you make it work. And I think that, you know, kind of the balance and the harmony goes along with the. Janet, do you think you can have it all?

Yeah.

You can?

Yes.

Not necessarily at the same time.

Agree. Oh, I love. I. I love our conversation. I just feel like so many good nuggets of wisdom that I'm getting from you. So another thing. In shifting of time, you have dedicated a significant amount of time to organizations that support women. You were past president of nabo, national association of Women Business Owners.

The.

The chapter that we have in Northeast Ohio. You've done work with the Women's Endowment Fund. I mean, you talked a little bit about your story at the beginning, but, you know, how has this focus on empowering women in business shaped your own leadership philosophy and the way you run your company and just kind of just who you are? How's that happened?

So to get a little bit personal, my dad died when I was three, and I was the fourth of four.

Okay.

And my mom had four kids that she needed to raise. And at the time he passed away, she was not working. So I watched a woman pick herself up by her bootstraps, figure out how to go back to work, figure out how to feed four kids, clothe four kids, et cetera. And we never went for. We never wanted. Never. How do you say that?

Never wanted for anything.

Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't always new. Sometimes it was consignment shops, et cetera. So she was my first real leader role model. And I watched that from a very early age. I watched her maneuver the waters. I watched her become an executive assistant from not working. And she taught me, like we were raised, all four of us were raised to be able to sit and talk to a homeless person or be comfortable going to the White House and meeting with the president. That's kind of the way we were raised. And unfortunately, that leader that I Told you about that. Said, do it my way or I'll ruin you. She was a female. It was a woman. And so for the early part of my career, none of my clients were women. They were all men. Every board that I was working with, facilitating a board meeting or a strategic planning thing, or whatever, all men. And I was comfortable in that arena. Yes. You know, I was okay with it.

Absolutely.

And at some point, I just felt like I was hoping for an arena of women where it wasn't what I had seen in corporate America, where women were stepping on each other to get ahead. And so it surprised myself when I got involved in a women's organization, women's endowment fund, and then Nabo and I got involved in a couple of organizations where I didn't see that. I saw collaboration, not competition. I saw people raising people up in the female gender, you know, of women. And. And then I wanted to be a part of making that stronger, bigger, and better.

Yes.

And so I, you know, I grabbed onto that. I, you know, the other arena that is very important to me is veterans. So I volunteer with an organization that supports veterans. But the women and girls is definitely a hot button. And it happened because I didn't. I saw it from my mom, and then I didn't see it for a very long period of time, and then I wanted to be a part of growing it and making it a given that women are going to help women.

Janet, I love that you are. You're such an inspiration to me and just how we.

Ditto.

To continue to collaborate. And I love that it's collaboration, not competition. And for those of you that. That own a business that are women, if you're in Northeast Ohio, Nabo of Northeast Ohio is wonderful, but Nabo in general is a wonderful organization. I would encourage everyone to. To think about it. Absolutely. Consider being. Being a member. As we're wrapping up the podcast, we ask every guest this question. I'm super excited to ask this to you. What is the one thing that someone can do in their business that you would tell them to do to get 1% better today?

Wow.

Yeah, I know. You've got so many things that's.

I struggle. The first thing that came to mind, though, was to become a learning. Make it a lifelong journey to be a learning. I call it learning junkie.

Yes.

Learn about yourself. Like, to me, it's. Every time I do something, I'm looking at, how could I have been better in that situation? I'm going to leave here today and go, how could I have answered that better? How could I have been better? How could I have given more? How could I have added more value? And I think that as entrepreneurs, having that entrepreneurial mindset, you know, we have grit, we have persistence, but are we getting better every day? Are we getting better at our business metrics and understanding them and knowing them, are we getting better at how we deal with people? Are we getting better in the arenas that it takes to be a better business owner?

Janet, I love that. I love that question. What can I learn from this? So thank you for sharing it. Your book is called Unshakeable Leadership. I love it. You're going to autograph this for me in just a moment when we're done.

Okay.

But thank you for your time today.

Thank you.

You can get the book on Amazon, right?

Yes, you can Amazon, Barnes and Noble.

Barnes and Noble, wherever you get your books. So thank you so much for your time. This has been wonderful, and I am so excited to share everything with you.

Yay. Bye.