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It's not you... but sometimes it is podcast
Greeting, friends, and welcome to this episode of It's Not You, but sometimes it is where real c suite leaders have very real talk with me about all the crazy stuff they've faced, and this conversation is no exception. I had the honor of talking with Rhonda Levine, the CEO of Ziosk. Really cool, interesting company, and her path there was very interesting as well. Rhonda and I were able to reflect on the differences of leading when we began leading teams couple decades ago. And today, just different expectations, different resources, and discussed her personal journey through leading in a bunch of different settings in restaurant, hospitality, food, to becoming a CEO in a company that was mostly a tech company.
Speaker 1:So very interesting journey. Rhonda has such an incredible wealth of knowledge and wisdom because of a long career of self reflection. And our discussion is really fun about the changing times and how she's had to make some pivots and handle some very sensitive situations. I know you'll enjoy our conversation. Welcome friends to It's Not You, But Sometimes It Is, the podcast where I get to talk with very successful executives in the c suite about all the crazy stuff they've faced, all the people problems and friction, and the wisdom and knowledge that they've gained from these experiences.
Speaker 1:And I'm so honored today to have Rhonda Levine here. Welcome, Rhonda.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Happy to be here.
Speaker 1:And, Rhonda, you are the CEO and board member at Ziosk in the Dallas Fort Worth area. So excited to learn more about the problems your company solves. So can you give us a little bit of a just overview of Ziosk, but also what was your trajectory to end up in your role right now? Well,
Speaker 2:I think I'm happy to answer the first question. The next one, I I don't know if it was a straight line, so it might get a little zigzaggy on the way. I'll make I'll I'll start with the, really, the vision for what we're what we aim for, and that's really to create technology that connects people, simplifies operations, and inspires really the hospitality experience of tomorrow. And I know that sounds like kind of, oh, well, that sounds pretty simplistic and maybe even lofty at the same time that we we believe that we are a strategic partner in in in to our restaurant customers, and that's where the industry that we're in today. And we have a SaaS hospitality platform that supports operations at the restaurants.
Speaker 2:And we have a lens on the guest experience as well because we have screens directly in front of the guest. And, really, the genesis of Ziosk was to solve a really major pain point. I know it's hard to imagine, but about ten years ago, there was no way to pay at the table except with a cash or a credit card. And so Ziosk actually pioneered what what was then pay at the table. We call it pay on demand because the guest gets to choose when they're ready to leave.
Speaker 2:It was a big pain point for, diners when they were ready to leave for babysitters or movies to to leave the restaurant. And our founder was a restaurateur, and he knew that. So it's always good to start with solving a problem and solving with the problem that the guest had and and making that guest leave with such a better experience at the end versus I had a great meal, a great conversation, but then I couldn't find my server. And so that's where it started. And then it evolved over time of how can we, use this as a way to help simplify operations, not only just for, the wait staff, make it easier for them, improve the guest experience, get survey, loyalty, and all those sorts of things that the restaurant's looking to as they define the experience.
Speaker 1:Cool. Cool. Okay. So your career has been at least at many points involved in restaurant food stuff. Right?
Speaker 1:Production or Mhmm. Mhmm. Hospitality. So did you always think, I'm gonna be a CEO someday, or how yeah. What was your path to to end up in your role now?
Speaker 2:Well, I wish I could have said that, Megan. You know what I find when I talk to young women today? They have no problem setting a very, very high goal. I I actually started my career on the financial side. So I'm a CPA, believe it or not.
Speaker 2:I went worked in the accounting firms. I had controller jobs, tax jobs, treasury jobs, analyst jobs. I did thinking that my goal was to be a CFO. That was kind of my path. When I just got out of school, I'm gonna I'm gonna work that my way there.
Speaker 2:And, you know, things don't always go according to plan. And so I was on that journey, and, I was at Coca Cola at the time in as a in a financial role. And and I had an opportunity with some of the leadership that said, you know, have you ever thought about running a business division and, you know, stepping out of the function and moving into more general management and sales marketing? And and, I hadn't, actually. And I will you know, in all honesty, was a bit nervous about that because you get pretty secure in what you know and what you can deliver.
Speaker 2:And so I ended up moving into a general management role and running a a division, and then I took on more responsibility over time and started becoming more of a general general manager, roles and leading different divisions. Now instead of having one function that I managed in, in the organization, I was managing all five, you know, functions. And so realized, and most certainly the financial was a big foundation. Now I had a lot of levers I could move to influence the outcome. And so wasn't that fun?
Speaker 2:And one day I got to talk about branding, and other days I get to talk about logistic issues. And then other day, I get to talk about how we're gonna make our numbers and and help restaurants, improve. And so I loved the ability to take all the pieces of the puzzle and bring them together, not only for our customers, but also for the business. And so that's really where it started. And that move, I will tell you in the back of my mind, I said yes even though I felt like I was jumping into the deep end.
Speaker 2:In the back of my mind, I actually convinced myself, well, I can always go back and get back on, you know, the CFO track, but won't I be more valuable if I've actually run a business Mhmm. Than just, you know, coaching, if you will, from the sideline. And so, of course, after you in there, you never really look back, and that's something I think I've learned over time. You keep going forward. And so it and, again, I was, at Coca Cola restaurant, food service division, so customers on the retail side, food service side, hospitality side, and stayed there for a large part of my career.
Speaker 2:So that is familiar to me. Technology was not. And so, you know, I moved on into other roles and ran a global private brand company, and, worked for, actually helping some small early stage companies on the food manufacturing side. And and then the founder of Ziosk was someone I had met in my journey, and we crossed paths again right before COVID and started talking about Ziosk. And and he said, oh, you you need to come to Ziosk.
Speaker 2:I I need a CEO, and I need someone to help me run this. And I said, well, you know, I'm not a technology per again, here I am. I haven't grown up yet and figured out, but sometimes you just say yes and then do it. And and I've said yes so many times in my career, and yet technology was something know, I mean, not like I I'm not like everybody else. I can do the basics, but, you know, going inside and understanding how everything connects is a very different game.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And so that was that was kind of the beginning of you know, I'm I'm a learner, and so I wanna learn something new. And I had a lot of opportunities to go do what I had done before just with a different brand or different company, and it wasn't as interesting to me anymore. So I don't know what that says about me, Maggie. You'll have to tell me that looking for a change was Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, your story, there's there's dynamics that mirror, I think, a lot of people ascend into these very senior leadership roles and c suite roles. First of all, a lot of us never really thought we would end up where we are, and we were kinda tapped on the shoulder because someone saw potential in us. And that's that's you know, we gotta listen to those opportunities and think, I can learn, and I I need to trust if they think I can do it. Why not give it a try?
Speaker 1:Right? I always Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And and I you know, Meg, I will tell you, I interact with young women a lot and some and some community outreach that we do and and even just with the young women in this organization. The confidence that they have at such a young age is is so impressive. Mhmm. The knowledge of what they have that I I didn't have at that age Yeah. You know, in my in that point in my career.
Speaker 2:But what I did have is exactly what you said is I had people around me who said, you need to give this a try. And what I had to do is I had to commit to doing that. And so I answered yes to the call. And I will tell you there's probably very few roles that I went into in my career even from the beginning that I didn't feel like I was being thrown into the deep end, and I learned to swim every time. And and so you get confidence.
Speaker 2:And so it's so amazing to talk to young women today that, you know, for the most part have a higher level of that, but are still, you know, just and women in general, sometimes we're afraid to ask for what we want. We want we want someone to, you know, see that and and everything, but sometimes you do have to ask for what you want, and it's okay to do that. It's okay to say, I think I'm ready for this or I'm interested in this. Will you give me an opportunity? Opportunity?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Nice. Nice. And we just we're living in a very different world now than when you and I were emerging in our careers. There's we had a lot less information.
Speaker 1:And almost all of my mentors were men. There there wasn't as many I didn't have a lot of examples to look to that of people who looked like me. Right? I'm I don't have a tech background, but I can run a tech company that I never would have thought that like that.
Speaker 2:Right? Oh, yeah. That's well, that's true. I I would say that I've had a a couple of women that were mentors, but like you said, my journey was the same. Almost every leadership team that I was on probably in the first decade of my career, I was the only woman in the room.
Speaker 2:And, you know, and, again, I I don't look through the lens of it's them versus us. I really don't. We're just people. I do need to be aware that there's style differences, communication differences, and things like that, access differences. You know?
Speaker 2:There are places that I wasn't able to access that men could, and conversations occurred and things like that. So I had to kinda get my head around that. But at the end of the day, and I tell everybody this, it's really about the individual. And what do you wanna bring? Do are you, you know, you're willing to put the work in?
Speaker 2:Are you willing to learn? Are you willing to be open to other styles, of communication and working across the lines. And I think anything's possible. And so for the first two years I was here, I would tell you I was always almost apologizing for running a technology company. I'm not apologizing for it anymore.
Speaker 2:I think I've earned it. I've actually had to sit in the CTO seat a couple of times when I was here as we were making changes and and look at things through a very different lens and learn at a level that you know, I was very proud. I was interviewing a CTO candidate about a few months ago, and he said, I don't think I've ever talked to a CEO that has an under at the level you do of the technology. And I felt really good about that because Zach was an engineer. So I said, well, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think I talk I talk I know enough probably to be dangerous, but I actually believe that it's been hugely valuable to me as an individual and as a leader to be able to have that as part of my experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And, Rhonda, you know, it it's interesting that sometimes when we're thinking, who am I gonna hire into this executive role? We think I need someone with a lot of technical expertise. There is absolutely no evidence that shows that someone who's got a the highest level of of industry knowledge or technical expertise will be a good leader at all. Definitely not a good executive.
Speaker 1:Right? No evidence to show that. There's a lot of research to show that the people who make the best high performance leaders of a company are those with high emotional intelligence, like that self management, social management, being able to stay really curious, not have a lot of ego, learn quickly, acknowledge your mistakes, acknowledge your deficits, and step forward anyway, and be resilient. Right? Those are all soft skills or EQ.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. And I am guessing that that is a lot of the reason you were getting tapped on the shoulder is they saw that skill in you.
Speaker 2:I I think about that a lot, Matt, because I've thought about, you know, when I was in school and and, you know, I have an undergraduate degree, graduate degree. I've done postgraduate work, and and just immersing in ongoing learning. You there's never there was never really a curriculum around that, around leadership. Right? Right.
Speaker 2:Leadership and what you're talking about. I mean, you know, you people read books on emotional intelligence, maybe go to seminars about that. But, you know, it's one of the things I talk about to my team here all the time because I believe, and I have always believed this, you can lead from any seat you sit in. Yep. You don't have to have the title.
Speaker 2:You don't have to have the people responsibility. And what does leadership really look like? And I'm really trying to get people to embrace, you know, don't wait. Don't wait for you to be tapped, to be the person because the way you get tapped is by leading before. And I really believe that that had a lot to do with, like you said, the curiosity.
Speaker 2:Let me go ride with the I used to go out with the salespeople on sales calls when I was in finance at Coke because I wanted to understand about the business. I wanted to hear what the customers were saying. You know? And all those things were gonna make me better in my role. And while I did that, I started then to morph the way people saw me, right, and the way people believed, wow.
Speaker 2:You know? Who would have thought? Because back in, you know, back in the day, I'm I'm telling like my parents, back in the day, the functions were very solid. There were solid lines. You were a finance person.
Speaker 2:You were a salesperson. You were a marketing person. It was very, very defined. There wasn't a lot of this cross pollination that you see now. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And and I of course, that all changed a while back. But at that time, for someone in in Coca Cola to move from a defined function into a experience, you know, sales training, sales background was very uncommon. It was just uncommon. And so, I give a lot of credit to the people that I worked for that that took that risk on me.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And and that's social awareness that they're able right? Like, that's one of those EQ skills is where is there some nuggets of brilliance around me? How can I facilitate and cultivate their development and success in a role?
Speaker 1:And that that's incredibly hard. Like you said, I never got the curriculum on that. No one ever sat down and did skill building. And how do you really cultivate and sustain a high performing team? It's hard.
Speaker 2:It's it's very hard. It's the it is you know? And you always hear this, and I would hear CEOs say this when I went before I was the CEO of, you know, where do you spend your time? You know, what what do you what do you do all day? You know?
Speaker 2:What does your day look like? And they said it's all about the people. It's all about the people. Mhmm. The good ones do.
Speaker 2:Right? They understand that, and they spend a lot of time on that. And I've always thought I was people focused, you know, in the leadership roles that I've had. But it really is, Meg, because that is the biggest lever you have in any organization because it is powered by people. And, yes, we are a technology, company, and, you know, one of the things in the world that we're moving into with this whole thing of AI and artificial intelligence and which I really don't like anything artificial.
Speaker 2:Who likes artificial? You know, we call it actionable intelligent. Make it real. Make it personal, but it should all have a human element because it's humans behind all of this. And unless you're a big believer in, 2001 space odyssey with Hal running the show, was the computer taking over, you really need that human element every day.
Speaker 2:And so I would tell you a very large percent of my my time is fixed So how do I inspire the organization? How do I find those nuggets that you're talking about? How do I motivate people? How do I help them believe? How do I move barriers out of their way?
Speaker 2:And it because when we do that, then everybody thrives. And and it is it is not it is not trite to say that that it's true. And that's just been my experience.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious. Let's get into some of those more specific, even prickly situations, right, where you we all learn the hard way by hitting these people problems if we're gonna talk about the people dynamic, right, and or cultural friction, unnecessary drama, lack of accountability, just bad bosses that we discover within our span of control control in in our company. So can you give us an example of where you were really attuned to a people problem, right, that was complex, but but very difficult? What was it, and how did you overcome it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, it's it's hard to imagine there not being a lot of those because there are because people are people, you know, and there's a lot of dynamics. And I had a situation where I was on a leadership team. I wasn't the CEO. I was on a leadership team.
Speaker 2:So this was a peer, essentially, a peer on the leadership team who was extremely destructive. I can't think of a better word. And it and it just destructive across the organization. And yet, the leader at that time, who would have been my boss and his boss, was someone who was con averse to conflict. It wasn't his thing.
Speaker 2:He was a great guy, and everybody loved him and and everything, but it wasn't something he wanted to handle. He he he he he saw it, but he just wasn't prepared to take action on it. But in the meantime, things were happening in the organization that I wasn't comfortable with. And and then he crossed the line and that destructive behavior started extending to the people that worked for me. So because he was using his wielding his power in a way that was inappropriate and not professional.
Speaker 2:And and yet I knew that he had because of his role that he was gonna stand potentially, if you just said based on his contribution and my contribution, am I gonna stand up next to this one, or is he who's gonna win this battle? Because you have to pick your battles. Right? And you do have to pick your battles. But this one got to the point where I felt like, okay.
Speaker 2:So I I go and I'm I try to manage it every way I can. You try to pull all the tricks out of your bag of listening to them, you know, trying to, you know, just be respectful, try to help navigate, maybe even sometimes make excuses for them. And that's when you go, okay. There's something wrong with this picture. So I did.
Speaker 2:I went to, I went to my my boss and and, you know, and he was a high level officer in the company. And he said, you know, and he didn't say I'm conflict averse. I don't wanna do this. I just knew that about him. So you talk about, you know, you have to have the emotional intelligence to understand what I knew what I was asking for, and I already knew what his response was, but this was air cover.
Speaker 2:Right? So I said, you know, this you know what this is about. You you you've seen these things. You know, this has to this has to change. I'm not asking you to fire this person, but, you know, I think you need to intercede because sometimes you do.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And he said, well, I I think that it would be better if you you found a way to handle it. And so, essentially, what he was doing was I think he's advocating leadership there, but we'll talk about that later. He's a real still a really good friend, we've talked about it. He said he was I was doing it as a developmental opportunity.
Speaker 2:Okay. Sure. That's what we were doing. That, you know, I found early on in life even when I before I was working, the way that you address bullies is you stand up to bullies and then bullies back down. And so I did and, made it clear to him that he had crossed the line, that he would not speak to me, wouldn't speak to anybody on my team that way.
Speaker 2:This was not the way we were gonna operate. And, you know, and I felt bad about it after. I feel like I'm a kindergarten teacher. I'm admonishing a child. But when you have a bully, sometimes that's what you gotta do.
Speaker 2:And I will tell you, it it emboldened me because I was professional about it. His behavior changed, and then ultimately, the right thing happened in the company relative to his finding his way out of the company, when it was appropriate. But, the behavior that he was exhibiting, went the other way, and, and it pulled back. He pulled back because he was a bully. He was just a bully.
Speaker 2:And here I was, I'm like, okay. Let's see. I'm I'm an adult. I'm in a professional, you know, Fortune 50 company, and I'm remembering lessons I learned in kindergarten of how you deal with a bully. Right?
Speaker 2:And, you know, what? Guess what? It still works. And so, you know, it was it was just a good learning. And I've never asked anybody to solve my problems for me, but I was trying to be appropriate.
Speaker 2:And I I found out, you know, that, again, I do think there's a little abdication there. He says no. That it was a great learning for me. And, you know, and a lot as things came on down the road, they become a lot tougher because a lot of times, it was people that worked directly for me. And now you have to have different conversations.
Speaker 2:And so it set me up to know, you know, ways to be able to navigate things that are very challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So, Rhonda, you know, I think a lot of us learn how we wanna lead by watching it not go well with other people. And and, like, you probably took from that experience, I'm not gonna abdicate leadership. And when I need to handle something, I'm gonna do that.
Speaker 1:Right? So what is a situation where you had a sticky complex problem in front of you and you realized in hindsight, oh, I did not handle that well? Like, wish I would have done it differently, and you learned a lesson the hard way yourself by realizing you needed to really overcome a mindset that you had or a gap. Can you give us an example of that?
Speaker 2:Sure. You know, I I will tell you, and this is probably part of the whole EI package. If it's not, it should be, is, you know, reflection. You know, reflections on the way that you respond to things. And, I've been a study a student of leadership for a really long time, probably read million leadership books.
Speaker 2:There's favorite authors and assessing your own yourself and being objective about it. And there was a company that I was working for, and there were some challenges with some of the board members. And that's really tough because I was in a role that was gonna allow me to move to the CEO seat that it I would need to have the support of the board and all the board members to do that. And I I at that time, you know, when I reflect back on it, I think you have your podcast. It's not you, but sometimes it is.
Speaker 2:It was one of those when I reflect back, I probably projected too much of what was going on on the other side, and it was probably more about the the emotion with which I was managing inside. Nobody saw it, but I was managing it inside, and it came out in the way I communicated. And you always think that you're you're masking that and people don't see it, but, you know, your real feelings are always there. And so I I could have done a better job of not taking it personally and and really listening and understanding where they were coming from. Because on reflection, when I think about it and most certainly now, and I've been in a lot of boardrooms and run a lot of board meetings, I can see where they were coming from better now than I could then.
Speaker 2:And it was almost like being too close to the situation. And what was interesting is that the CEO at the time was was I I was just in a different place in her head. She saw it, but she she which how she wanted me to respond to it just wasn't authentic for me. Mhmm. And so it was it just wasn't something I could get to on my own.
Speaker 2:And so I will tell you, ultimately, I moved on the other side of it, but I had to go through a lot of angst every time there was a board meeting and every time I had to interface with certain board members. And I did, I think there was two people in the room or three people in the room. It wasn't just it wasn't just the other side, and I own that. And it was a great learning and, but, you know, we all have our moments, and I had a few of those.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's funny how the very things that we're a little insecure about tend to be where we end up making a mistake doing some right? We we take something personally, and then we can look in hindsight and go, wasn't seeing that situation as as quickly as I could. And that is one of the most core skills in emotional intelligence is I'm aware that my my feelings are gonna impact the way I'm thinking about this. And so I'm not like, I can move past that.
Speaker 1:I can deescalate myself, try to keep a good head on my shoulders. Keeping a good head on your shoulders, like, think about the business value of that. Mhmm. But it's a skill that we had to learn.
Speaker 2:It it most certainly is. And and and, again, rightly or wrongly, for a long time, but I think it still exists, there's a perception that women are more emotional. And they're and and while men won't say that out loud anymore because, you know, they know they can't, which I actually think it's it's harder at least a long time ago that they would just say it so you knew where you stood, but, they would think it. And so, you know, that's just another dynamic you have to think about, you know, as well. And I'm not a highly emotional person that way, and it it there's this wasn't anything damaging to the business at all.
Speaker 2:I mean, we were you know, everything was was good, but the relationship wasn't what it should have been. But I actually engaged an outside coach, a leadership coach personally.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:To work with, and it was someone I had worked with before and I had brought in and used with leadership teams that I was having challenges with. He has, like, five PhDs. He's written by he's and he was just someone who's done a lot of, senior, leadership coaching and invited him to the board meeting, invited him to leadership meetings, and so to get to get feedback. Right? And I will tell you, they were there's no filter.
Speaker 2:And and I asked for it, and I wanted it, and it was really good. But one of the things he used to say to me a lot, and we're we're still friends. We have them for twenty plus years. He said, you need you you're looking at that through the Rhonda lens. He would say that to me a lot.
Speaker 2:Lot. Like, you have glasses on and they have lenses on them. Those lenses are all of your experiences and everything that you bring, but you're not looking at it through the lens of where this person's coming from. And now let's talk about where this person is coming from and the lens that they're looking at because either whether I was trying to get performance out of that person or whether I was you know, whatever I was interpreting that was happening, I was interpreting it through my own lens. And I think about that all the time.
Speaker 2:I'm like, have I? Am I am I so inside and insular around my experiences that it's driving me to have a perception or a belief that's not actually real? And so it it's really it was great coaching. It's something I remember all the time. I bring it up a lot and challenge my leaders to make sure that we're we're open enough to to realize when we're we're being very focused on things through our own lens.
Speaker 2:And sometimes we have to, but for the most part, understanding where everybody's coming from, particularly if you're having some challenges with that relationship.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Those those relationship challenges usually come from the fact that we are very different in our parrot the paradigm is the lens through which you see the world, and there 's a lot of misunderstanding there. And then we're interacting in ways that create these moments of friction and confusion and erode trust and affects the quality of the relationship. So absolutely. So, Rhonda, I wanna ask you, like, one last question, but it's a big one.
Speaker 1:Okay?
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:So you're talking a lot about your own journey with developing these skills and social emotional functioning, basically. Right? So when you look at the leadership team at Ziosk too, how like, what do you see? I'm sure you've been coaching them on this, developing them on this, giving them that curriculum you and I didn't get. Right?
Speaker 1:What do you see as what kind of either culture or behaviors, traits of the leadership team that you wanna see evolve to make sure that Ziosk is ready for that next level of growth and those future challenges?
Speaker 2:Well, thanks for asking that. I I am very proud of my leadership team. I've hired everybody on the leadership team over since the time that I've joined the company, save for one that was already here. Everything everybody else is is the people I have brought on as we've evolved and changed. And we are on a journey together as leadership.
Speaker 2:There is not a meeting we have that is does not include leadership development training. Wow. I I we just did an off-site for planning, and, the basis of it was John Maxwell's five levels of leadership. And and the reason that was important was kind of tying on to some other things that we've been talking about on the journey. And it's amazing.
Speaker 2:I mean, I I think the world of the team, but a lot of them haven't had exposure to leadership training. And so, you know, I've been trying to bring to them, lots of different, methods and tools and ways of thinking about things that I have had in my journey, that have been meaningful, and I'm seeing that come back. And, and it's it's just it's amazing to watch. We're still coming together as a team. We've got people that have joined, so we haven't all been together for five years.
Speaker 2:And so I would say that we are on the journey together. And I would say that the team is very aware of, or has become aware of their own leadership opportunities and and aspirations, and we've done that together. I still have aspirations. None of us are perfect, and, and we're navigating that together. And so it's been it's been really fun to watch.
Speaker 2:But, again, I do not leave that out of the curriculum. We spend a lot of time talking about strategy and vision, business performance, you know, people, development, but we also also focus on, It is about us and how how can we do a better job of bringing what this team deserves, to the table. We've done three sixties for the first time this year. I had everybody do three sixties so they could help get real feedback. And, know, you we're doing a lot of things that allow the leaders to have that kind of of support, and I wanna be a leader that's helping facilitate that kind of development because that's your legacy.
Speaker 2:At the end of the day, you know you know, I I've left companies after long careers, and the people come up to you. They don't say, oh, gee. We hit the numbers out of the park five years ago. That's what I remember. That's not what people remember.
Speaker 2:People remember how they felt and and and and that and the experience, and I and I wanna leave that for them so they have something to bring to to the leaders that they are developing next. And so that's where my focus has been. And it's an amazing team. We're not there yet, but we're most certainly on the journey.
Speaker 1:Honestly, Rhonda, it's funny it's funny that you say we're not there yet. Any leader who thinks that they have arrived, I do not wanna work with them. I
Speaker 2:know. Right? I like, somebody looked at my son said something to me the other day. My I've grown sons, and they're on their own career paths, and I said something of they're like, well, mom, you've been doing this for so long. You know, what else do you know, what else could you guys trust me?
Speaker 2:And the thing is the world has changed. I mean, the world has so changed. You know, think about remote work. Leading a remote workforce is very different than seeing people in an office every day. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And so lots of skills, communication with the different generations and the different beliefs that exist. I will tell you, I think leadership is harder today than it's ever been. You know? There's so much information. There's so much change.
Speaker 2:It comes at people so fast that it's a challenge, and I and I and I'm up for it, and I know the team is too, and we're having a lot of fun. Every now and then, we get a little surprised, but, we're we're going, okay. So let's move on. So, I've learned a lot in the past, but that it that I can rely on some of that foundationally, of course. But I think leadership has to evolve, And I really believe that that that's really what my journey has been is being open to evolving my own leadership and not getting stuck.
Speaker 2:I've had leaders in the past that they did things the same way and then been doing it that way for twenty five years. They weren't changing it. Nothing changed. And they felt like, oh, you have to be disciplined. You have to be consistent, and you can't and they just they had that, and it was a rut.
Speaker 2:And it was like, you couldn't ever go outside of that, and I don't wanna be that kind of leader, and most certainly if it's toned up to what what the team needs.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Absolutely. Rhonda, that's really inspiring. Thank you so much for your authentic conversation, giving us a little lens into your journey, and thanks for your time sharing your wisdom with us today. It's been such a pleasure to have this conversation with you.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 2:It's great to meet you. Thanks, Meg.