WTW 071 Kelly Flagg - Beyond Tradition

All right, we've got a new guest on the show. It's an organization I've worked with before, Associated General Contractors, but this is the first time I'm meeting Kelly Flagg. So Kelly, please tell us a little bit more about what your role is, what you do, and then we'll, we'll dig in from there.

Sure. So I'm the executive director for Associated General Contractors of Maine, and we represent the commercial construction industry across the state— heavy highway, industrial construction, renewable energy, any— and I don't— I shouldn't say non-residential, but commercial residential construction as well. So my job is just to do whatever I can to keep the Maine construction industry healthy and safe.

You know, it's cool. It's a treat. First of all, it's a treat to have a neighbor on the show because those who don't know, I live in Brunswick, Maine. So Kelly lives just up the road from me here. And also, it's kind of interesting because there's an intersection. We do a lot of events for National Women— National Association of Women in Construction. Boy, it's early in the morning, huh? National Association of Women in Construction. Sorry, NAWIC.. And they are, you know, some of our favorite groups to work with. In fact, I just got back from working with a group in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They were a group there, terrific group. And it's really cool to see more women in leadership positions in what was traditionally considered male occupations, male trades. Tell me a little bit about how you got involved in that. What was your route into the construction industry? How'd you roll up your sleeves?

Yeah. It's sort of an accidental entry, if you will. It's so funny. Sometimes people say, I knew, I always knew I wanted to do this. And I, Did not. I, in a former life, my, my now ex-husband started a landscape construction company. And a couple of years in, we were growing really fast. And I had some business development, business management skills and found myself there for 10 years. And then when we parted ways, I decided to stay. And so, you know, moved into a larger, a smaller role in a larger organization.

I was just gonna ask you if you kept the company. Yeah, no, he kept the company.

You can, but I chose to go into an executive role in another local organization that did commercial construction. And it's one of those things where I didn't always know that's what I wanted to do, but I did fall in love with it almost immediately. Yeah, I think for me, that first time that I got to go behind the screen that says contractors only.

Yeah, right.

And see the guts of a construction project. The equipment, the people, I call it the magic that happens that you never see.

Right.

I instantly fell in love with it and the people. I really, I'm very passionate about the people in the construction industry and how we can support all the way from the frontline to the senior leadership.

And so, amen.

You know, at the end of the day, when this role at AGC came up, it was It was one of those things that was impossible for me not to pursue. I'm new in this executive director role. I've been here since July. But when I read the job description, it was literally everything I love to do, from connecting with the people to supporting an industry to growing leaders to workforce development. So it's one of those right place, right time situations.

Hey, sometimes things work out.

They do.

There you go. Well, a lot of the reason that you're with us today is because of your passion for, you know, for the people you serve. You know, I try not to use the word employees, except in a very technical sense, right? Sure. I feel as leaders, these are the people we serve and we owe them a great deal.

What are—

we'll get to the challenges in a few minutes. We always like to talk about challenges. But you know, you just talked about kind of falling into this, I guess, but I don't know. It sounds to me like there's a little more, at least once you got started, there was a little more of a, of a focused path there. How did you, how did you first see the opportunities that were there? How did you recognize them? And I'm asking particularly because that is something that comes up at NAWIC events, is they're trying to encourage more women to get involved at all levels of the construction industry. We should emphasize that.

I'm also involved with NAWIC, as you know. So I'm the executive director of AGC, but we partner with NAWIC on a lot of projects.. And I have become very close personal friends with a number of the main NAWIC folks. And I think when I look at construction, I think that there is the traditional image of what it means to work in construction, right? When we see those sort of old-time photos from the early 1900s, you don't see women in those photos, right?

Not very often. During World War II a little bit, right?

I always think of the classic ironworker photo where they're all eating their lunch right up up above the city. Um, and you just, you don't see women in those photos. And I think some of that had to do with, um, family makeup at that time, right? It was not uncommon for, for men to leave the home and, and make an income. And so that is one thing that when we really think about the time frame in which we're looking at change, 100 years is not really that long, you know, 50 years is not really that long. So, I think as we see family dynamics change, we also see the opportunity for women to participate in construction change. And, you know, for me, I never actually really thought, and this is a funny thing because people always ask me, you know, like, you're a successful woman in the construction industry. What do you think about this? I've never once in my life thought to myself, I am a woman who is choosing to be in a traditionally male environment. I've always just thought, I love this job. I love these people. And I'm just going to do what I do. And I think that sometimes when we talk with successful women in the industry, you'll see that as a pretty common thread where, you know, they found a passion for what they were doing, independent of what, you know, the history may have been.

No, I think particularly that's, that's certainly the experience I've gotten from Nayouck. And, you know, this isn't to, isn't to diminish, the issues that are still out there. These— there are a lot of things that we still have to reconcile. But having said that, I've seen for every difference that people want to bring up, I see 100 similarities. Whether it's between gender, whether it's between race, whether it's between generations. It's really interesting when someone will say, "Well, it's way different for fill in the blank," right? I think generationally, we see a lot of those challenges now. And then, when you really sit down and talk with people, you know, just face to face on a human level, pretty much the same needs and desires and challenges and opportunities, right? I mean, and I think it's important to focus on those.

Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about generations when I teach leadership. I think that's one of the things that we have to talk about, and that's not unique to construction necessarily. I think there are other industries that maybe have spent more time thinking about how to attract the newer generations into their workforce. Or, you know, what are those generational pathways? I think construction maybe was a little bit slower to pick up some of that. And I also think the nature of construction makes it a little bit more challenging to attract the newer generations who are more— over the last 3 years, we know that there's been a lot of opportunity to work remotely, to have flexible schedules, to have a different kind of work-life balance. And I think that is a real challenge when we're talking about construction. It exists in manufacturing, as well. I always call it anywhere that you have to show up at a place at a time. Yeah. It is harder to attract the new generation because—

and stick till the job is done, which is often the case, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And that's not always a bad thing, right? So this is the other thing I always want to be real careful when we're talking about generations. It's not right or wrong. It's just different.

It's different. Yeah.

Yeah. And when we look at the average age of construction, Most of those individuals have grown up in their career in an environment where you found a job, you found a company, and you worked really hard. And you might get a review once a year, sometimes longer than that in construction, because frankly, we haven't always been the best at being on top of those types of problems.

And you're busy. Right? And you're busy.

And you know what? If the job gets done, you know the job got done well, right?

So why would you talk about it? Right.

It's very tangible. And so, It was just a different environment, right? If you look at— and I'm going to say before the last 10 to 15 years, because I think there's a lot of companies, even in Maine, we have some of our member companies are doing amazing at this transition and growth. But the desires of the incoming generation is different. The, the, they, the need for balance within, within a week or a month is significantly different. The willingness to work 40 hours for 40 years in the hopes that you'll be able to play golf someday is just not the way the mindset is anymore. And so I think we, as an, as an industry, need to think about how can we, how can we provide a little bit more flexibility? And yes, there are jobs that need to get done and schedules that need to get met. But how do we figure out a way to be a little bit more flexible with people so that— I always call it so that we're running a marathon, not a sprint. You know, we're not burning out our teams, that we're, we're really building teams that can last for the long term, where people have, you know, the work itself is tremendously rewarding. There's zero question about that. When you can stand back and say, "I built that," right? That is rewarding in and of itself. But how do we create a balance that also allows people to have physical health and mental health alongside that for their career?

No, you know, you're opening up a bunch of cans of worms. We could probably do 3 hours.

I love to do that.

I love that. Yeah, because it's a cool intersection too. And when Alex told me that, you know, your focus is on leadership, you know, it obviously, I thought this is going to be an interesting conversation. So yeah, this idea, and it's interesting because we try to approach it on both sides. You know, we work with our aspiring leaders tracks, our rising leaders tracks. We often, well, I have to qualify that. First of all, a lot of times I'm blessed to be preaching to the choir. These are usually people that are really hardworking people and kind of beat the stereotypes, you know. But still, it's interesting that, you know, you remarked on the changes that are happening in construction, particularly in the spirit of full disclosure, I was raised to be a contractor, actually. It didn't take— I've been in and out of it for, you know, different points in my life. But first of all, you hit on amazing things. It is such a rewarding— well, series of, myriad of occupations. Yeah, that's what people need to understand. I hate that the trades have been vilified for so long, but putting the trades aside for a second, the trades are amazingly rewarding. I mean, how many— like you said, you work with your hands and you produce something that you can be proud of. The creativity, the problem-solving, the technology that's involved today. People might not understand that even on the front lines, you have to be savvy with a lot of technology these days. And then the other opportunities, like I said, people that can, that want to remote work, want to work remotely, there's tons of opportunities for them in engineering, in admin, even I know a lot of project managers that are more or less working remotely now, although I try to encourage them to put the boots on and get out there once in a while.

Right. So important. It's so important. But I will say it's interesting that you hit on those. One of the things I loved about construction, you know, when I was at that intersection of my life where I had the choice to sort of go back to what I was, you know, trained educationally to do, or whether I wanted to stay in the construction environment. I really took a step back and thought, you know, in construction I get to be in a different place every day. Yeah, yes, there are things that require me to be in an office, but then there's also the opportunity to be on different job sites and meet different people and impact, you know, different job sites on a daily basis. It is not a boring job, no matter what choice you make. There's always— and you have quite a bit of control over it, right? I love— I think as a project manager, you, you look at, you know, what projects are you interested in, what skills, what types of projects, what's your passion, you know, from small, relatively straightforward projects to larger, really complex things. There's just so many opportunities for different things that all are part of the construction industry. And you started to hit on that, We talk about labor. Yes, we need labor. We need people to build things, but we also need people to run payroll and we need people to manage projects. And, you know, there's so many different opportunities there.

Yeah, yeah. Every, every aspect of health and human services, you know, compliance regulations and all. Yeah. But the other thing you hit on, I think this is a very important thing. A lot of industries have this in common with you. But it's really, I think, magnified in construction industries. The idea that you have to embrace leadership at all levels because people on the front lines have to make decisions sometimes on the spot. Sometimes there are things literally hanging in space that need to be decided upon and need to be acted on right there in the moment. And you can't always go running for the supervisor when the crane is swinging your way. You know, and—

You have I identified my, if I were to have one pet topic that I talk about, this is a keynote that I give a lot, is how we can affect change by training our front-level supervisors, frontline supervisors. I mean, the foremen who are physically doing the work beside the employees, who are the ones that see the day-in and day-out aspects of a project. They're also the ones that are faced with the important decision-making, right? In the moment, the critical, like, you have 5 seconds to decide what you're going to do about this kind of situation. And historically, I don't think we've given those individuals the same kind of leadership training that we might give a project manager or company executive team. But I want to say it was probably about 10 years ago that I was, I was on a project and we were having some, some safety issues and we were having some production issues. We were having some retention issues. And it just struck me. I said, "Let me, let me go to the site. Let me go to the site and train them." Yeah, I think I went every other week for a year and just talked about the smallest leadership topics, the most very basic decision-making skills. And, you know, it did affect change. And so now I talk about that a lot because, you know, if we, if we want to change what's happening, we have to change it at that level. And I still love training, training and working with and talking to that specific level of supervision in construction.

Oh, and people enjoy it too, right? And I mean, right down to the front— I just— one of the stops in Iowa was an amazing company called West Union Trenching. And the whole purpose of that, that particular stop was that they wanted their frontline employees to embrace leadership, right? And for all the reasons you just talked about, and one of the big ones was safety. Like you said, you know, you have to make decisions, and the person next to you, their safety, their health, sometimes their lives depend on it. Part of the theme— I'd be interested in your response to this— part of what I've been preaching, well, for a long time, but particularly lately preaching hard, is that you are a leader whether you think you are or not. And we reduce it to 3 concepts that appear on just about everything we put out there. What is a leader? You know, what's a genuine leader? Genuine leader is somebody who has the ability to attract willing followers, for one thing. But also, a leader is someone who inspires others, who empowers others, and who guides others. And you don't need a rank or a title or position of authority to do that. I mean, some of our best leaders are right on the front lines, and they don't want to be in management.

They don't even know, right? They're just doing what they do.

They don't even know they do it. Exactly. Some of the best examples, some of the best stories I've ever heard in leadership come right from the front lines, right, where people do that.

And we miss something, right? When we— what happens with those people specifically, right? They have no title. They're a leader. They're inspiring people. They're doing good work. And a lot of times what happens is they end up moving to that frontline leader position because of who they are, right?

Sometimes sadly, right? Right.

And without even necessarily wanting or knowing it. And I always say there's a, there's a transition right there. When you go to being that very frontline supervisor, there's a transition where you go from being the person who builds the thing or who does whatever it is that you're doing.

Yeah.

The person responsible for other people doing.

Exactly. Exactly.

And, and I think we so often miss teaching people that that's a whole different job. That's a whole different responsibility.

Right. And then, and then that's where the intersection is with management, right?

It really is.

What is it? I love what Grace Hopper— Admiral Grace Hopper said it. Quarter, 10 times a week. Management is about things. Leadership is about people.

It is.

Once you step into management, you've got to take care of both sides of that.

You got to take care of both sides. And there's also a whole nother element there where you're not only responsible for, for your own actions, but you're responsible for, like you said, leading and inspiring others. But you also are answering to leadership and And I think that's one of the hardest places in any, any industry to sit, right? Because you have competing— on any given day, you're going to have competing priorities. You're going to have the needs of your workers, the needs of your, your team, and then you're going to be answering to the needs of those above you. And I think that's also something that deserves attention and discussion, right? How do you walk that line?

And to keep your sanity. I mean, that's because that's the thing. And you know, the best leaders I've met that, you know, we would look— I would look at as being at the pinnacle of a particular organization or, you know, pinnacle of a country or whatever you want, might want to look at, are the people who recognize that they're always answering to someone else, right? Again, we're back to that idea of servant that— I can't really remember who wrote this. Maybe you do. There was somebody a few years ago I always throw things at the screen when I'm hearing these lectures because they say Lao Tzu said that 2,000 years ago. But it was good that this person brought it up into contemporary and said that leadership and followership— actually kind of coined the word followership— weren't fixed positions, but they were their roles that we play, right? And the best leaders are able to switch back and forth quite easily. Is that something you found in your life, your career? I mean, I used to be a bodyguard too, so I like to read people quick. I get the impression you're that type of leader. I mean, I'm hearing that in your voice. Yeah.

I am, absolutely. And when I took this role as the executive director for AGC, I distinctly remember having this conversation with, with both the board and the employees and saying, you know, my job is actually to bring you all together so that we can move forward. It's actually, it's not my job to, you know, stand at the front and say, "This is where we're going." It's, it's my job to to talk to the board and understand their needs, talk to our members and understand their needs, talk to the employees and the team and the staff and say, "How do we, how do we do what they need from us?" And then let people do what they do, right?

Right. I want to drill down into that a little more, because that's still one of the challenges that comes up at a lot of workshops, right? That there's still some— I don't want to say pervasive perception, but depends. I think culturally, it depends where I am. Here in the States, maybe not as much as some of the other places we've worked with. But there's still, in certain places, this idea that if you go and solicit input from the front lines, if you solicit, you know, from people at— I hate to use these words— but lower levels, right? That somehow that makes you less of a leader. And that makes you— it's a sign that you don't know what you're doing. Quite the opposite, no, Cha-Thay?

It's absolutely the opposite. It's absolutely— I think it shows strength of leadership to solicit that input. And one of the things I've always said to senior leaders is just because you solicit input doesn't mean that you have to take it all and put it into action.

Right, right, right.

All that does is open up conversation. And, and strong leaders are not afraid of conflict and are not afraid of conversation.

Hey, everything good comes out of the, out of some sort of conflict, right? You got to stir the pot a little bit. You do need to show appreciation, though, right? If you're—

absolutely—

if You're not using the ideas, you still want people to come to you. Yeah, no, I like where you're going with that. I like where you're going with that. But we do have to stir the pot a little bit. We do. We do.

Well, and this comes back to that generational conversation, right?

When we talk about—

and this is, this is one of those, how do we, how do we engage the generational differences? When we look at the workforce today, and this could be real at any given point in time with some slightly different generalizations. But if we look at the retiring generation, there's one thing— and again, we're talking generalizations, so not every individual.

Right, right. Right. It never applies to any particular individual, but the generalizations are useful.

But the generalization is that as you're nearing retirement, you have a tremendous amount of knowledge. You have a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge that you've gained and experiential knowledge you've gained throughout your career. Something happens, though, when we have an incoming generation like we do right now, who has this whole different set of technology skills and a whole different set of ideas, and they're excited. So there's— I think it's so important that we learn how to tie those generations together so that we're acknowledging and respecting and learning from the, the skills and knowledge of those who are going to be leaving our industry. But that we're also acknowledging that the incoming generation has this whole different set of skills and this incredible set of new ideas. But there's another piece there, right? We know from studies that the younger generations who have been born with social media as part of their life require a lot more positive feedback.

And yeah, well, we did it too.

When we're having those conversations, we just need to make sure when people do a good job that we are telling them they do a good job. And I never have a problem with that, you know, but I hear a lot when we're in a room with a vast variety of ages, like, "I have to tell them they did a good job." I know it.

I know it. Yeah, but you know, it's funny—

Celebrate them, for God's sakes. Just say, "Great job!" We all need that.

We all need that. Everybody needs that.

It's high five. It doesn't have to be a big deal.

No, no, no. And again, you've opened a few cans of worms again. The one I was arguing with somebody not too long ago was running a big organization, and this whole idea of, you know, being cautious about soliciting from the front lines— well, I'm going to look like an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing, they're going to think I don't know what I'm doing— is what you said. I said, wait, you don't. I said, you actually have no idea what's going on on your front lines. It was perfect, like, undercover boss case. Um, and I'm not necessarily saying in that particular dynamic that this person needed to know every detail about what was going on the front lines. It's not what I'm saying. But certainly needed to show an interest there and certainly should appreciate that, like you just touched on, the experiential wisdom, the experiential knowledge that was there, the, you know, the cultural depth of cultural knowledge, especially if, especially when executives are transferring in from another company or another industry, you know, to respect that, respect the knowledge that's there. The generations, I got to tell you this quick story. There was one workshop I was doing, and just before lunch, One of the, one of the people came up to me and said, Jim, we got, we got to touch on this generational thing. And this is, you'll show it's a few years ago because her concern was millennials. She said, I, I don't understand the millennials. I don't understand what they want. I don't know how to, how to get them inspired, right? I said, well, listen, there's a young lady here who volunteered to represent all the millennials, okay? Her whole generation. She's going to do that.

There you go.

So after lunch, I said, you ask her the question. We'll start the conversation, right? Well, you couldn't have planned this any better. I mean, she stands up and starts telling the story about she can't motivate the next generation. Well, this young lady stands up and she says, "You know what? I'm having the same problem with the next generation coming." And I said, "There you go. Bingo." I said, "It's every generation goes through this." But it's not that hard a problem to solve if we're willing to be courageous and open the conversation up, right?

Keep those— You just have to ask. Yeah, yeah, right. What, what are we not doing? Or, or what are we not, um, I, I have this conversation a lot. I have a variety, um, even within my own very small staff, we have a variety of generations but also a variety of individuals. So take the generations right out of the mix altogether.

It's one of many variables, that's all.

Different people need different work environments. Different people want different work— different jobs require different work environments, right? So even within my own staff, I look at, okay, so if I've got somebody who needs to be particularly creative and they work best sitting in a coffee shop on their laptop, yeah, does it matter to me if they're sitting in my office? It really doesn't.

No, that's— you're talking about, you know, leveraging people's talents or whatnot. I think that's a real cool idea. The flip side of that is, and some— again, sometimes working with the rising leaders, we talk about this idea of humility and deference too, though, right? Because you touched on this earlier, and I think it's important that it doesn't mean because you're soliciting input and you're trying to understand people and you're trying to be as welcoming as you can, accommodating as you can, you're not going to have to bend to every wish, or you shouldn't have to bend to every wish and whim. It's part of the process, part of the negotiation, right? And I think on the other side too, and people are pretty— younger people, I found, are usually pretty accepting of it. They sometimes haven't been taught that or exposed to it. Not all of them grew up in the dojo like some of us did. But that idea of respecting the wisdom, the experience of the people that have been there a long time, right? And, and understanding that, hey, maybe, maybe those, maybe us old guys know what we're doing once in a while too, right?

Well, I think there's a limit-setting conversation that can happen. And this is something I talk to leaders about who are nervous about, you know, am I going to open up this whole mess if I start asking people for their opinions or asking them what work style they prefer or whether they want to be partially remote or on-site, right? Whatever it whatever that conversation is, I think it's okay to say, I want to talk to you about this. I may not be able to, within the confines of our job, accommodate everything you want. But I always like to say, I like— I want to say yes. That's how I always— like, let's have a conversation, and anything I can possibly say yes to, I will. There are going to be things I can't, right? There are going to be times where I need something from you. But any opportunity I have to be flexible, I will be.

And do you find that simply expressing that— because to me, what you're talking about is really that, that is the definition of compassion in leadership as far as I'm concerned, you know, that you're really showing interest, caring, empathy. Just the act of that goes a long way, doesn't it?

Yeah, I think it does. And again, it doesn't, it doesn't make you a softer leader.

There you go.

Doesn't make you a less effective—

I hate that word anyway. No, that goes crazy.

Soft skills, right? In construction, I hear that a lot. It's something people are a little nervous about, like, am I going to lose control of my team if I do that? You don't need control of your team. You need people who want to do the work, who are going to show up and do the work and be happy.

You know what's ironic about that too? It's, it's so funny that, um, again, I grew up up around construction. I worked for my dad for a number of years. I worked in the shipyard down in Connecticut. Um, you know, everybody has this— well, I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people still have this perception, the rough and tumble, you know. Yeah, hard. And my experience has always been I found the most caring, passionate people. They really care about what they're doing. They care about each other, right? Yeah, we'll put their lives on the line for each other. You won't find a more caring group.

So a funny story that will bring all of those points together. Years ago, I was doing this training that I had talked to you about, first time I had trained frontline leaders. And it was a pretty rough environment. It was a very large project. There was a lot of stress. These were individuals that had never really had any sort of leadership training. To say the least, they were not really very welcoming of it. You know, why are you here? Why are you talking to us? Can't we go back to work now? At the beginning, this was sort of like, listen guys, give me 15 minutes. This is part of your job. But there was an individual who used to sit in the back of the room and scowl, right? He would sit with his arms crossed. He would scowl the whole time, wasn't particularly open to the conversation. And he proceeded to sit in that same manner in the back of the room and only speak up if it were to challenge me, probably for a solid year. So I moved on from that a couple, a couple years after that. I moved on from that position in that career. And I was walking through a craft show, Christmastime craft show. And there was a booth where they were doing precision metal cutting, like art really cool art things made from, uh, precision metalwork. And this gentleman ran over to me, like yelled to me across the room, ran over, gave me this great big hug, like, Kelly, do you remember me? That's Jack. And I remember looking at him and thinking, I don't know who this person is. And then all of a sudden it struck me. Yeah, this is the guy that sat in the back of the room with his arms crossed, with a scowl on his face, and didn't talk to me for a year. But when he saw me years later, like, he came up to share with me the impact that it had.

It was going in, wasn't it? I was so glad. I was so hoping that's where the story was going. Yeah, yeah.

Well, he shared with me some things that were happening in his own life at that time that I had been unaware of, right? He, he was homeless. He was living in his car and showing up to work every day and, um, not sleeping well and having some physical issues. And when you think about all of the things that somebody might be going through that has nothing to do with I think as leaders, we have to be aware of those things too. And, you know, it's not, it's not always a conversation we open up, but we were just talking yesterday about how mental health is such an important part of leadership in construction today. We've always talked about the technical side of safety, but really now more than ever, you know, being aware of people's mental, mental state and mental health is, is important than it ever has been.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, for a number of reasons. But no, that— what a beautiful story. That's, that's probably a good place to— we got to have you back.

It sounds like anytime—

sounds like we're singing in harmony. You and I have more work to do together.

We do, we do.

Yeah, no, this is a blessing to, to run into you. Um, yeah, it's just— I, I want to, I want to wrap things up just by— no, you know what, no, that's a good place to end But let's give— you always like to give the guest the final word. And you will come back and talk to us again?

I will come back and talk to you again.

I made a bunch of notes. And hopefully too, I should say too, I'm going to do a little self-promotion here. We've just launched the Sensei Leader Academy, something that I put on the back burner for way too long. So there'll be some online access. There's a corporate program for organizations that want an exclusive part of the Academy, just for your own people. And then we have an open forum in 3 different tracks: Rising Leaders, Effective Leaders, which is kind of the catch-all bucket, and Sensei in the C-Suite track. So that's going on now. And I'd love to have you come in and talk to those groups once we get some, some momentum going.

I would be happy to do that.

Happy to do that.

Obviously, I'm passionate about the topic. So anything I can do to support people growing in their leadership.

Well, likewise, you know, it's, it's, you know, one of our main missions is supporting leaders like you. It's— this is, this is the type of leadership we need. People that are paying attention and understand that people are the highest priority. That's, that's it. Without your people, you're nothing, right?

Yeah.

So with that, with that, let's give you the— Kelly, let's give you the last word.

Oh, the last word. Well, you really said what I was going to say, and I'll just— I'll say it again because you can never say it too many times. Leadership is, is not about a title. It is about people and it is about having compassion. It is about listening. And it is really about serving those that are, that are in your care.