S2E48: Kristen Hadeed, Permission to Screw Up

This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman. Welcome back, listeners, to the No Ego Podcast. I just love when I get someone to come on my podcast as a guest who I have only known through social media, but have followed and admired over the last year. And Kristen Hadeed, today's Yes. And today's guest is one of those folks. She is the founder of Student Maid, and it's a cleaning organization, but a unique one at that. I'll let her tell you about her company, but she's not just a successful founder. She, through her founding of this company, has come across some incredible truths about how to build workplaces that are trusting and safe and beyond ego and accountable and deliver big results. The whole enchilada. And so I'm going to pick her brain today on how do we do that? How do we create these teams and workplaces that deliver great results? So, Kristen, great to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Thank you. So happy to be here.

It is exciting. So let's do a few of the things. We'll get it out of the way in the beginning. It's such a great story. We could do a whole podcast on that. But you founded a company called Student Made and Tell us what, what's the company and how did you just decide to jump into this very challenging business?

Well, we are a cleaning company. We employ primarily students and we clean toilets. And if someone were to tell me 12 years ago when I started the company that this would be my destiny, I would have cried hysterically and begged for any other story because this was not in the, in the plan. I went to school for finance and I thought that I would work on Wall Street. And as a college student, I was very broke. And long story short, I fell in love with a pair of jeans that I couldn't afford. And so my solution was to put an ad on Craigslist to buy— to clean someone's house just to buy these jeans. And a woman hired me and it was— I had no idea what I was doing. She had a 4,000-square-foot house. You know, I've grown up doing chores and things in my own home, but not used to professionally cleaning a 4,000-square-foot house. And so it didn't end very well, but she did pay me. And I bought the jeans and I thought that was it. And she was a very nice woman who I think saw some potential in me. And she asked if I could come every week. It helped me out because I could make the money. And then she taught me how to clean. So it was, it was a win-win. And that's how it all started. She told her friends about me and the word spread. And then right before my senior year, I got a contract to clean empty college apartments and like 800 apartments. Wow. 21 days to do the work. And I hired a bunch of students to help. And I had no clue what I was doing, you know, no leadership experience. 45 of my 60 employees quit 3 days into the contract.

Oh my gosh.

Bad day. And that, that, that was the most defining moment. I mean, really, I think in my life, because it, it totally changed the trajectory of my life, because I learned, you know, number one, I'm not a good leader, and I want to learn how to be one. And so I became obsessed with, with that. Then I also was really fascinated with how do you make a company like this work? You know, when you're asking people to do work that isn't glamorous, it's not fun, how do you make this work? And I ended up turning down a job in finance after that. And here we are 12 years later.

Unbelievable. You know, one of the things as I'm getting to know people, I like to ask them like, what's the craziest thing you've said yes to? And the theme is, is they usually have to think about it. And they're like, the craziest thing I said yes to was And it always led to some big why. And so I don't know if we should all say crazier yeses or, or what that means, but there's always this connection to agreeing to clean 800 apartments in a month. Yeah. And where that leads us, you know, um, our stretch roles, I guess. So you continue to lead this wonderful, successful company that, um, you know, you're all the metrics HR would measure. Your turnover is far lower than the industry, and your results are better. And, you know, you have, you have people who are really committed, and you've created something very sticky, um, to keep people, you know, passing up finance jobs like you did to be in a pretty, um, unglamorous organization and industry. What, what have you stumbled upon as secrets to your success?

Well, I think Yeah. I know, actually. I had no choice but to figure out the environment piece, right? Because I knew the work wasn't going to keep people. I knew the pay— couldn't afford to pay people what they deserved to be paid to do this kind of work. So there had to be something else. I had to learn a lot about what is that environment that keeps people? What are the ingredients of it? That was my focus. More so than increasing revenue, it was how do I build a culture that makes That makes this the best part-time job anyone's ever had? I think what I've learned is that people really want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, but also you want to be a part of an organization that you feel is really investing in you and in your potential. In my company, because we employ a lot of students, many of them are high school students and college students, they're used to being treated like a number at any other job. There's a million students lined up for your job if you don't want it. So I think for me along the way, I was learning a lot as a leader and I wanted to provide the same opportunity for the people on my team. And so what I would do is I would maybe read a book or go to a networking event for the first time and learn about that. And then I would say, hey, if anyone wants to come and learn about what I just experienced, I'll get pizza and I'll tell you all about it. And everyone would show up. So it taught me that people really wanted to learn and grow. And so now, We say that at Student Maid, we build leaders. We just so happen to clean toilets while we're doing that. Really, what our whole company is about is leadership development. When students come in during their training, they're taking classes where they're learning things like how to build meaningful relationships and how to confront people in a productive way and how to find their strengths and how to, after Student Maid, really learn to know what kind of organization is a good fit for you, what kind isn't, and all the stuff that we don't have to do. But we do because it's really important to their chances of success in their lives. I think it just means a lot to know that we're investing in them knowing that they're going to move on because, actually, our business model is such that we require they move on. We want to give them the skills they need to succeed and then launch them into the world to really make their mark on it. What's interesting is when people apply for a job, their first question is usually, is this the place where you learn how to be a leader? And we'll say, well, yeah, but do you know you have to mop? You know, it's like the cleaning is like not even on the radar. So it's— it shows me that environment is, is what matters most. You know, it's not the work that we do. It's not even the pay. It's, it's how people feel. And I think everyone wants to feel invested in.

And, and that they're better off for having known you. You know, it just brings vibrantly to mind So many of the people who teach Buddhism that I've listened to, and they talk about, it's like doing the dishes is so much more than doing the dishes, or, you know, sweeping the floor is so much more than sweeping the floor. And I love that you happen to be in a cleaning business, but what your real business is, is just, you know, developing the— and for me, it's beyond development what you're talking about. It's evolving people. Mm-hmm. Because development means I can be more skilled to kind of, you know, get what I want in the worlds, but evolving is that I'm really a different person having known you. And so you're really kind of in the people evolution business. I love it. I love it. Besides running a business though, what I'm so excited about is that you run a business like I do, but you're also out taking what you've created. It's not just theory. It's not just philosophy. Like you've created an incredible culture, an incredible culture in a tough business, and you're teaching other people how to do that as well. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So I think the goal when you have a business is to make sure that if something happens to you, the business will still go on. I essentially worked myself out of a job. I looked around. I'm like, what am I supposed to do here? I have this amazing team and they're all very clear on their roles. Then I had a moment where I didn't know what my role was. At that point, I was doing a lot of speaking on campus at the University of Florida, which is my company's headquartered in Gainesville. So I was speaking a lot on campus and different classes, entrepreneurship classes, leadership classes. I really loved it because it was just another way of evolving people, as you say, taking what we were doing in Student Made, teaching it in the classroom. That led me to eventually working with an agency in the college market where I would travel all over the country and work with different campuses. That was actually really hard for me because I felt very guilty. I felt like I was leaving my team and the company. And really, it just took a big sit-down with the team and they were like, go, this is what you're called to do. They always joke that I'm an educator trapped in a cleaning company because really teaching is what I love. So I started doing that. And then, and I didn't think that there was anything special about the, you know, student-made the business. Like, I, at this point, I'm just speaking to students. I haven't really had any other jobs anywhere else. And so this is my first real job. So I don't, I don't recognize at this point that our culture is unique. I'm not speaking about business. I'm just speaking about leadership and the things we teach our students. My first time ever speaking in front of a corporate audience, it kind of happened by chance. I was invited, and my friend who invited me didn't want to scare me, so he didn't tell me I was the speaker. I show up to this conference, and he says, oh, you're speaking. It was a corporate audience. It was my first time ever being in a room like that. I was so intimidated. I just remember thinking, what do I have to share? That was the day that I realized something at Studymade was special and unique in a business sense because the things I was talking about in our culture and what we do, I mean, I guess I realized that there are things that maybe not every company does. That was kind of when I started doing the speaking and the consulting on the corporate side and have been doing it ever since. A lot of it is, what are the ingredients that go into an environment where people feel like they really want to come to work and they feel safe and trusted and they can be who they are? I do a lot of work in the area of the next generation of leaders because I think, in my company, I see where the gaps are. I see now what we've got to do as organizations to bring future leaders up and become the leaders that we all know that they can be.

What are some of those recommendations or topics that you highlight as far as what can we do best to Unleash this incredible talent of this next generation of leaders? Like, what do they need from us? What, what evolving do they need from us?

Well, research tells us that millennials— now, many disagree on the actual birth years of millennials, but it's somewhere in 1982-ish to 2002-ish— research says that millennials have the highest suicide rate out of any generation and the highest rate of depression out of any generation. Oh my

gosh, that's so sad.

I know. I see it in Student Made. It's these young people that have so much potential but don't have the confidence. They lack the confidence to problem solve. I think that's due to a lot of things. I think technology has kind of eroded our independent thinking. When we have a question, we just Google it instead of thinking about it ourselves. A lot of people maybe had over-involved parents who loved their kids but did a lot of the hard things for them. And so now, you know, there's this feeling of I'm not capable. I also think that many young people grew up building their relationships from behind a cell phone or a computer. And so we don't really have those deep, meaningful human connections. And so we feel lonely. And then I think another element of it is this need to be perfect. And, you know, it's all about getting the perfect grade and getting into the perfect college and getting the perfect internship. And it's, it's, it's how do we— how will our world look like if future leaders are, you know, act this way and have these feelings? And so one thing I teach is that we have to teach people how to build real, authentic human relationships. And I think at work, we've sort of made it so we can't, you know, can't cross the line. And I'm all about keeping it professional, but I think we have to recognize that people walk into work with all the things they've experienced in their lives, everything that's weighing on them, and they can't simply just leave all that at the door and go in and do their job and then pick it back up when they, when they leave again. What if we could create a place where people could really talk about who they are, where they come from, what they've experienced, that would give us more context as to why they behave the way they do, you know, might lead to more empathy, and, and to be able to talk about things that are weighing on us so that it doesn't affect our work? Because once we Put it on the table, it's kind of like, okay, now we can focus on the work that we actually have to do. So we do a lot of training around that and how to be authentic. I think another element of that is communication, being authentic in communication, feedback. It's not something we're taught in the classroom. We are great at our jobs, we get promoted, now we're leading a team of people, and now we have to guide these people, but we don't really know how to do that. And sometimes our words can hurt, sometimes they aren't helpful. So it's like, how do you learn how to give feedback in a way that's really meaningful, it builds trust, and also helps the person grow. So there's just a lot of things. But I think authenticity is a huge, huge word that I focus on— authentic in our communication and our relationships and just creating a place where people don't feel like they have to fit, where people feel like they just— they belong. You know, they can be who they are and belong.

You know what I love about what you've created is you talk about authenticity, but you also really highlight the accountability that one has to bring. If they're going to bring their authentic self, it needs to be without harm to others. And, and this is just my own weird theory of what's happened in the workplace is that it's like we had no boundaries and people brought all kinds of inappropriate, unthought-out, unevolved, like kind of, you know, their whole self to work. And the leaders would jump in and fix it and coddle and try and bend reality. And then it was passive-aggressive, like silence to violence. They went, okay, this is too messy. We're enabling all of this. No one bring anything to work. Right. Um, that separated. And, and to me it's like, we've got our next level of evolution as leaders and employees is we've got to be able to bring all the authentic, um, parts of ourselves to the workplace. But we also have to have accountability that it doesn't come with drama, like that you're accountable for who you are and what you need. And you can come with all your diversity, but also you have to be willing to manage your own presence in the world. And I think as leaders, um, with the generations coming up is to really help people understand how to be valued, have space for authenticity, but that they bring a set of responsibilities to the table with that, that you're developing feedback. And, and I think a lot of complacent or maybe lazy or unskilled leaders cannot operate in that messy, messy, messy world. And so I do a lot of just teaching people life's messy. You can live happy, but it comes through personal accountability. Yeah.

And one, one idea or thing that I do that is building off what you said, because it is. It's like, okay, you have to be held accountable for who you are. It doesn't— you can't just hear, this is what happened to me, and I'm going to use this as an excuse for the way that I behave. You know, something we do with all of our team members is called a workshop on limiting beliefs. And we go back and we think about what are the beliefs that were instilled in us from a young age that hold us back, and where do they come from, and how do they impact us today? What do they cost us today? So, for example, one of mine is that I have a need to be liked. And it comes from being made fun of my whole childhood because I had bright red curly hair. I didn't look like anybody else. I had headgear. I mean, it was just— I had everything. No boys liked me. I wasn't invited to things with sleepovers and things that all the other girls were being invited to. And so, I have this need to be liked. Well, in leadership, that's It can be a really bad thing because I make choices not based on maybe what's best for the business, but based on how people will feel. I want everyone to like me, and I want to feel accepted and loved. I share that with my team, but I can't use that as a crutch. My responsibility is to work through that limiting belief, and then my team's responsibility is to hold me accountable to that. When I'm making decisions, to challenge me. Are you making this choice because it's the best choice, or is it because you want people to like you? We teach— I think our past is really important, and we have to understand how we got to where we are in order to meet people where they are. But then we have to really hold people accountable to evolving so that together we can become a team and work towards these common goals that we have.

And that is what I love about the culture that you build and that you talk to other people about building, because I hear lots of speakers— I'm out on the circuit all the time— and I hear about them speaking about culture and all the things leaders need to do for people so that they feel safe, and for people so that they feel engaged. And all the heavy lifting is done on the leader's behalf. And I just say, you're recreating what some of these kids have experienced in their, in their homes where their parents paved the way for them. It's like, leaders, stop trying to bend reality to make the world safe for your people and teach them ways in which their safety can be portable, how they can know themselves.

Yeah.

And know, um, some of their hotspots and utilize their team to hold them accountable, utilize their own insight to move through the world differently and more skillfully. And you combine both of those, you combine empowerment and engagement with accountability. And I just preach and teach a lot that engagement, all the things we do to make it a great workplace without accountability breeds entitlement.

Yeah.

And after people have worked for Student Made, they definitely are not leaving entitled. They are leaving, they're leaving having worked. They came, they worked hard, they got a lot. Um, you know, they're even, they're even. The, the contract is done. You worked hard, you developed, you know, we gave you a lot of development, and, and now you're free to wander the world successfully. And it's just such a clean arrangement. I really, I really have admired what you've done.

Yeah, you know, I think, uh, thank you. And I, I think it took me a long time to realize that this kind of culture isn't for everyone. I was trying to— I want so many people to be impacted by it, of course. There are many people over the years who I felt like, oh, you have so much potential. Why are we seeing the results that we're seeing if you could just focus on this? But I realized you can only give so much. The other piece of the puzzle is the person has to really want it and they have to be willing to do the work. We have a philosophy. We call it the line. It's a line of tape on the floor in our office, and we bring— whenever we bring someone new onto the team, we bring them to this line, and we stand with them, and we say, this line represents our relationship, and we both have to stand here, metaphorically speaking, every day for this to work. And for us to stand at the line, it means we're going to give you all the tools. We're going to invest in you. We're going to push you, challenge you, give you feedback to help you grow, build a relationship with you, all these things. But you have to be receptive to the relationship. You have to do something with the feedback. You have to be willing to give us feedback. You have to be willing to get back up when you fall down and push through when it's hard. And if you're not at the line, it doesn't work. And if we're not at the line, it doesn't work. And so we very much, you know, we're attracting people who really have a desire to grow, but if they don't prove that to us, it doesn't work.

You know, that's just such a fantastic symbol metaphor because I talk to people about, you know, work with the willing. And the danger zone is when I'm working harder at your success than you are. And I can really only work with the willing. And the way you do that in your company, as you just described with the line, it builds this language that we come correct immediately. We're like, I'm standing at the line, are you?

Yeah.

And it's like, dang, that's a day of reckoning. That's such powerful imagery. Um, that's just, that's great listeners. Um, it's just a great way to portray that to your people as far as we both have this joint responsibility. And so many times in engagement, people want to give the leaders a list of what the leaders could do so that we feel better about work. And when I talk about engagement, I'm like, what can the, what can the organization do? But what can you do? Or what are you willing to do to make it different? And the line's a fantastic, fantastic onboarding tool. Love it. It's something you can reference back to often.

Definitely.

Often. Other key things that, like that, that you're teaching either on onboarding or on an ongoing basis? I gotta get you Reality-Based Rules of the Workplace. It's a book all about as an individual contributor, how I can add value but boost my own happiness at work. It would be a cool book. We use a lot for new employees. I'll send you a copy.

I would love that. Yeah, another thing we do is we really have a huge focus on empowerment. And really, I think this has to do a lot with failure. So I, I have a very high failure tolerance. I believe that If we keep people in bubble wrap and we protect them from making mistakes, we rob them of the opportunity to grow, to learn that they're capable, to begin to trust their strengths. Part of this is because one of the first ever disasters in my company— so I had an intern, oh my goodness, Lizzie, from the UK, and I put her in charge of payroll. She was 19 years old. The first time she submitted payroll, she overpaid people by $40,000. That was all the money I had in my account. Oh my gosh. I showed her how to use the system, and then that was it. She did her first payroll. So we got the money back. I think because that was the first big screw-up in my company, I learned that— what happened to her is she learned a lot from that, ended up doing payroll for the rest of the year, never made another mistake on it, and then actually went off and got a job working at a payroll company where she now leads a team of 120 people. She's like 27 years old. I learned from that that when you let people— you trust people with enormous responsibilities probably before they're ready for them. Yes, that means sometimes they will fail. Then you give them the chance to learn from it, figure it out, fix it, which is what she did in that situation. And then you trust them with that thing again. You can really impact people. And it's hard, you know, in my business it's hard because for many this is their first job, right? And all they want to do is make you proud and they don't want to let you down. And, and sometimes it's just simple things. Like, I had one person say, I I left my cleaning partner at the last job. Should I turn around and go pick her up? It's like, well, yes. What do you mean, should you turn around and go pick her up? Why are you asking me this? But it's just they need the validation. We have a deal where we say we ask instead of tell. When someone has a problem or a challenge or something, we don't give them the solution. We don't give them advice. We say, give me 2 ideas, or, give me 2 potential solutions. Unless one of those is going to have a really bad impact, we may give them our feedback on that one. ask them to go to the drawing board to pick another solution. But we let them make the choice. We say, which one do you think? We talk it through with them, but we don't decide because if we decide, we own the results to that. If it's successful, it's our success. Yeah. We work really hard and it's really tough because you're really pushing people, but we also do an exercise in our training where they have to really think about their relationship with failure. It's fascinating because you see people who, eh, the failure is no big deal, but then you have another one who anytime she got a C, She had to write 300 times on a piece of paper, I will not get another C. So, you take someone like that, and now she's in the workplace, and, you know, do you think she's afraid to mess up on the job? So, it's just interesting to understand how the past and our relationship with failure growing up totally impacts how we show up at work. And then it's how do you begin to undo that and really teach people that they're capable?

I get so excited. You are so innovative. You're putting into practice, like, some of the things that came out in our research, and We ask high accountables, people that measured high in accountability, how they got that way. And one, they were challenged, right? Nobody went easy on them. Yep. And 2, they experienced accountability, which means no one rescued them. They were let to fail and they were, you know, asked, what are your solutions? How are you going to, you know, fix this? And the, the leaders that really grew their people were the ones that, unless something was like lethal, then ask them to go back to the drawing board, as you say. But, um, but you're living on a daily basis this, this relationship where we have to let people— we don't want to set them up for failure, but we have to let them experience their own natural consequences in the world because that's the best information, um, that you can get is how that worked in reality. And a lot of times we rescue or coddle people and we deny them that information. But I love that you said I have— that you have a high tolerance or threshold for You in fact even wrote a book.

I did.

That highlighted all of your leadership mistakes, which I loved the book. I just thought it was amazing. And not many— that's total no-ego leadership, because most leaders, when you ask them, you know, what's one mistake you've made in your leadership, they have a hard time coming up with it top of mind. And I'm like, so far I'm here because, you know, I lucked out. I'm not sure how I got to be successful, but I can tell you all the reasons I shouldn't be here. Because here's what I've screwed up. And I love you. Tell us about your book. Is it Permission to Fail? I can't remember.

Permission to Screw Up.

Yep.

Permission to Screw Up. Yeah. So I've always wanted to write a book, but I never took it really seriously. And funny enough, the conference I was telling you about that my friend invited me to was also a conference where my publisher was in the audience and asked me to write a book after I gave That talk. So just kind of happened, you know, not— was not intentional by any means. He came up to me and said, you want to write a book? And I was so excited. But then I didn't— I didn't go about it the traditional way, so I didn't have a proposal. I didn't, you know, and it was in many ways so lucky, but on the other hand, I didn't have any clarity. I didn't know what I wanted to write about. And I began writing about success, and the book felt empty. You know, it was all the things I did right, all the things the company does well, and it just felt empty. I went to dinner with a good friend, Simon Sinek. I'm sure you know Simon's work, Start with Why.

Absolutely.

We were having dinner and I said, how do you know if you're writing the right book? He said, the right book is the hardest to write. I thought about that, and this book was not hard to write, so I threw it away. Then I began writing about millennials. Same thing. It felt empty. I felt like everything I wrote about applied to all human beings. I don't like how we put generations into these boxes. So I threw that away. And then I was just gonna give up. And I told my publisher, none of this is working. And he said, what do you wanna write about? What do you wish that you had when you started? And I started to really think about that question. And I remember I went to the bookstore all the time, and I still do. I love to read. And I would read all these stories, and I found so many mentors in these books that really helped me. But somewhere along the way, I started to feel very alone because I was really messing up in my company and I felt like everyone else had it all together. Yeah, they would share the early mistakes, but then it would fast forward to now the company's grown and here we are and everything's great. I was in the middle still screwing up and big screw-ups, bad ones. So I decided to write about all that. It was a really hard book to write because some of the things that I wrote about were actually happening as I was writing them. I think what we do with vulnerability sometimes is we feel safe talking about things that happened years ago because we've grown from that. Yes. But when it's currently happening, I mean, I had someone who'd been with me for over 8 years put in her resignation. One of our locations failed and I had to sell it. All this was happening and I had to tell all these people they didn't have their jobs anymore. It was just really hard and I didn't want to write about it, but I thought, no, I need to because somebody else is going through something like this and this is going to help them. It felt very vulnerable to publish because it's like, It's literally like 300 pages of my most embarrassing failures, but it was very freeing. Also, I realized how many people have these things happening and they don't talk about it because the response we got, oh my goodness, people emailing in with all these things that they've experienced that they didn't feel comfortable talking about or admitting. It's just really sad to me. We are so alone, but we don't have to be. We could just talk about this stuff more and it would be so much better. For everyone. Well,

I think all of us pursue knowledge and we pursue like, you know, what's the best way to lead and what's the best way— we pursue these ideals. But what I tell people is, I screw this— I wrote books on this stuff and I screw it up, but only daily. You will screw this up, but only daily. We all have this human condition where there will always be a gap between what we know and how we execute, or what we, you know, what blindside we had, or You know, some decisions work, some don't. And if we can get conversational about those, we can free everybody up to try new things, be innovative. Um, but I remember when I was in college, I would measure myself against other people and I always felt, um, I came up short. Yeah. And I was a first-generation college student and I waitressed my whole way through. And I probably wasn't that prepared for, as a high school student to go to college. And I was just really working my tail off. And somebody said to me, Sai, you compare your insides, how you feel and what you know about yourself to other people's outsides. And she really introduced me to some women who are willing to talk just real smack about life, not as victims, but just life's messy.

Right.

And I remember how freeing that was to, as you said, we just don't have to be alone in this. And especially I think as women leaders and founders, I think we hold ourselves to some standard That is just crazy because if someone sees a chink in our armor, we might not be deserving to have what we have. And, you know, I think part of that is our evolution as female founders to just step up and say, you know what, part of my benefit in founding my own business and taking a risk and, and being here is that I get to screw up because I'm the one paying for my mistakes. So. I think, as Brené Brown says, if you aren't in the arena getting your ass kicked, you have really no right to be dishing out the feedback.

Yes, I love it. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think when we think about leadership, it's like, okay, I have to be strong, right? I'm leading people, so I need to make people feel safe and like I know the path and I have all the answers. And what's ironic about that is when we act strong, we act like we know all the answers, People don't trust us because, you know, there's got to be more to the story. There's not one person on the planet that's born knowing every answer and knowing the path forward. So when people don't let us into that doubt and they don't feel comfortable saying, hey, I'm not sure of the best way to proceed, we don't trust them. So it's sometimes I think admitting that you don't have the answer, admitting weakness, admitting that you're in over your head is what people need to trust you. I just, I just left my leadership team offsite. We have a couple of offsites a year because our leadership team is all remote. And I started the offsite with, I have no clue what we're doing. Like, where is our company going? And I just dumped all these, you know, thoughts in my mind. And I'm sure for them, they're like, whoa, this isn't how we expected the retreat to start. But sometimes even leaders get stuck and they need help. And so I left the room. I said, I need you guys to take everything that I just said And I need you to tell me what the next step is, and I'll see you tomorrow. And they— I mean, they did it, you know? And it's just like, we all need that, and we need to feel safe doing that because sometimes it's just overwhelming and you got to let people in.

Yeah. Well, and I think the vulnerability of, you know, being clear about what is acceptable to you, but opening up to saying, I can't foresee the future, help build this, let's build this together, is Is so important. And those times in my life when leaders have basically said, you know, we're, we're not in the best position right now and the chips are down, and it left so much space for us to rally as team members and really to deliver on something memorable and cool.

Yeah.

You know, to work with somebody who has all the answers and it's laid out, you're just a cog in the wheel. But for somebody to say, you know, here's what we're facing in the outside world and we're not sure how we're going to get this done. But I believe that together we could figure it out. It's like it can really rally people together. Absolutely. I love that vulnerable piece. I knew, and I'm confident that my listeners will love listening to you. You really apply so many of the things that they're wanting to in their own teams and organizations and, and lives. How can they connect further with you and really, you know, mine your information, maybe bring you into their organizations to talk? Where do they Where can they find you out in social media?

I'm really excited because we just launched a new website, and it's just my name, kristinhadid.com. And yes, you can find information about my book and speaking and all that kind of stuff, but also I have a blog where I'm writing one thought piece a week, so you could subscribe to that. And then I have another page called Resources, and it has all my favorite books that really shaped my philosophies on leadership and culture, all the assessments that I have my team and I take to learn more about who we are as leaders. And then we're actually working on creating some of our own tools that'll be up on the site soon. So that would be the website, kristenhadeed.com, is definitely the best place to start, and it links to all my social media as well.

Perfect. And I love following you on IG. I'm kind of an IG girl, so I would encourage my listeners to— I get a lot of inspiration and And good stuff from you. Anything else you want to add that we haven't yet talked about? We've got a few minutes left, not many, but I want to make sure that, that any inspiration you want to make sure you get in this podcast is there.

Yeah, well, I guess I can, I can end with the thing I'm currently stuck on. And I— it's a question we're asking ourselves at as a company. So we're trying to figure out the balance of compassion and being human in our approach, but also making sure that the needs of the business are taken care of. And so what I mean by that is, what do you do with someone whose heart is in the right place? They're trying, they're showing up every day, they're putting in the work, but the results just aren't there. But they're the first person at every team meeting early. love the company and what it stands for, and they're using the tools that you, that you're giving them, and they're really trying. It's just not working. And, uh, so we're, we're, we're trying to figure out this balance of, you know, the business has— it's a business. You can't just keep people here just to keep people here. But how do you, how do you go about accountability in a really compassionate way? And that's what we're currently figuring out.

I love it. I love it. You know, when people, um, aren't able to deliver what the business requires, Um, I encourage people to look at 3 areas. Do they have the skill set and abilities? Do they have the willingness? And is their approach a modern one? Um, and, you know, actually, the book I'm going to send you, we have a formula where you look at current performance, you look at future potential, and you look at their drama quotient. Um, and it's a tough one. What I believe is that with good information, people make good choices. Yeah. And so the compassionate thing is to not keep people where they aren't able to contribute at the level necessary. The compassionate thing is to help them facilitate the insight for them to find a place that's a better match for what they have to offer.

I so agree.

So sometimes compassion's moving people out, but for me, it's the timing of all of that. You know, different people have different learning curves. So we'll entertain the question with you. I love the How does— how do we maintain compassion while not, you know, putting our results at risk?

Look at that, I got some answers here.

Yeah, there's actually, you know, some, some ways to look at that. I think that's interesting. Compassion isn't about what you decide in the name of the business. It's usually about how you work with the person through the decision. So you're, you're asking a how and a what question combined. And if you separate those out, um, you know, there's the what and there's the how, and compassion is the how. And ultimately, decisions around the business results is the what. And a lot of times we want the what to be compassion, and that's when we're playing God in other people's lives.

Yes.

Um, we're protecting them for what they should be freed up to do. So good stuff. Well, I love so much of what you have to offer. I usually end with an assignment for my listeners. And listeners, my assignment is this: take that metaphor of the line that Kristin shared, and really, as you are struggling with people in your organization, um, visualize that line. Are you stepping up to the line and providing what you need? You go first. And then are you really, um, Calling them up to the line, calling them up to greatness to deliver their part. I think it's a great way to look at how to get relationships back on track. So that's something I want people to take away. Kristin, thank you so much for taking time, and I look forward to further conversations with you.

Me too. Thank you so much. And I'm gonna— when this is live, I'm going to just play the last little bit for my team, all the wisdom that you shared at the end there. So thank you. This will be great at our team meeting. Thank you.

Thank you. This is the No Ego Podcast, where we ditch the drama, end entitlement, and transform your world place. I'm Sy Wakeman.