Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
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Building psychological safety, career and power skills and much more on today's episode.
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Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life? Need to. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois.
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Dr. Katie Ervin is a CEO of catalyst development and the author of you might be an asshole, but it might not be your fault. Her work is rooted in a research on workplace motivation and employee satisfaction. Through her research and 22 years of human resources and operations. She created a framework called the catalysts workplace model and a leadership development program called leaders, both of which we will learn more of today, Katie, welcome to unban. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
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All right. So tradition here. So go right into your origin story. And so let's hear about you. Yeah, I and it's so funny. I love this question. Because it catalyst development, we talked about it once leadership journey. And my origin story really is a journey.
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I started out my undergrad is sociology and psychology. And I went straight into my master's program where I thought I was gonna go into Student Affairs. And about the end of the first semester, I did what I think most people don't do. And I actually changed my major in my master's program.
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Which not normal, but I switched over to human resources development, it was actually pretty aligned with Student Affairs because it was really counseling based. But it took me into human resources. So I spent 14 years in corporate HR, just really doing everything from taking care of people, benefits, all of those kind of in the weeds type stuff. And then I found that I didn't love human resources. I just, I didn't care if someone didn't shave or you know, we had a policy at one place I worked where you couldn't have any any facial hair under your lip. So you could have a mustache, but you couldn't have a goatee. And people would run to my office and be like so and so has a goatee, I don't, I don't care. Are they a good worker, I don't care.
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So I moved out of HR full time and moved over to higher ed administration, which I loved higher ed administration, I worked on military campuses. So I got to take care of the men and women in uniform and the civilians that support them. And it was just a really cool 12 years of really just teaching HR, teaching organizational development, but
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also doing administrative type higher ed work. And then the universe gave me a giant gift in July of 2022. The university I was working for, offered everyone a buyout to not come back to work in July. And
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I was like, Well, you know what, you've been looking for a sign to start your own company. And I mean, you gotta take it. So I started catalyst development last July. Awesome. Just over one year. Yeah, we just big time celebrated our birthday last month. And and it was, it was awesome to because I have two women that work for me and and being able to, you know, survive for a year and pay salaries and do everything that you have to do as a business owner. It's a massive adjustment. Yeah, you've already made a vast a large number of businesses. Yeah.
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So I have a question that I've been dying to ask you. And it's what advice would you give to someone who fears they are seen as an asshole boss, but they're not sure why. How can they just even uncover that root? Cause? Yeah, well, and I think the first thing with that and and I love my book title, you might be an asshole. People just panic when they see it at first, and then they're like, oh, I want to give that to like 20 people.
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But you know what, it's really not your fault.
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I would say there's probably about 3% of people that it is their faults. But we all make mistakes. We all take missteps in our career. There's times that, you know, we could have done better. And so the first step is really just understanding that, you know, we're not perfect and that's okay. And you know what, there's times that you might be an asshole.
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So
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yeah, as far as getting to the root cause for that. Is there like, what system do you have? It's for uncovering it. Yeah, well, and really,
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it's what's really important is to have strong people around you how
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have an advisory group that will be honest with you. I have an advisory group and one of my closest friends and my husband. So I have two people that are kind of co chairs of my advisory group. But really creating relationships with them where people will be really honest with you, is so important. And I think that's the biggest problem with a lot of people in their career is there's no one that's really honest with them, that will say, Hey, you did not handle that well, or you could have done that better? Or can I give you some advice? And so surround yourself with people that will be open, I would rather have my husband as we're getting ready to walk out the door, say, Who?
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Are you going to be comfortable in that all night? As opposed to me walking out the door and then catching a glimpse of myself in a mirror and being like, why didn't he tell me that? You know, or, you know, if I'm in a business environment, and I take a misstep, I would rather have a client say, You know what, that didn't go the way we wanted it to go, then for them not to continue to do business with us. So
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I always tell our clients and my friends, like, just tell me when I take a misstep, I'll fix it. Right. And it gives you that opportunity to fix it to make it right, rather than leaving it there. Yeah, so yeah, absolutely. We, when I was the HR director for a hotel, and when someone would come and complain, I would thank them profusely. Because it's true. If we don't know we can't fix it. So encourage the behavior, get the team to actually start start showing up with it. Yeah. Awesome.
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So this question is going to be framed as though I don't think there are benefits to investing in your team. But obviously, there are benefits. I just want to hear from you. What do you see as those benefits based on everything that you're doing with clients? Yeah, well, and it really goes back to the workplace model that I created, which is the catalyst workplace model. So throughout my career, I always was really interested in why people showed up at work, you know, there's, obviously we show for the paycheck, yes. But why do people come back all the time? And how do we make people happier? And so my doctoral research on motivation, that the cool part of the cool part about a
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doctoral research is that you research everything, every motivation, model, everything. And so that's where I really landed on the catalysts, workplace model and self determination theory, because it's a continuum. You're not all motivated or not. It's how do we what tasks are we doing? And so from that, I found that the more we invest in our people, the more we train them, the more we support them, the more we give them the tools and resource resources they need. They're going to be happier, more loyal, and interns, our profits go up.
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So I'll have a lot of people prospective clients that say, we don't have it in our budget to do professional development this year. Okay. Um, what's your turnover rates? Well, I mean, it's really low. It's only 10%. Okay, cool. How long does it take you to fill a position? Wow, it's such a tight market, you know, it's taken us six to eight months to get a real good person in. And so I'll do a quick formula for them and say, Okay, do you know that is costing you and tangible and intangible costs? About $280,000 a year for your turnover rate of only 10%. You know, give us a small portion of that will grow your people, they're more likely to say they're going to be happier, and they're going to work harder for you.
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It's amazing once you throw a price tag on it, people's eyes open. Oh, personal development.
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So what with your book?
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What have you heard from your readers? Just kind of like, yeah, reflection. You know, the funny thing about writing a book is, first you kind of go through this, like, should I be writing a book? Do I have what it takes to write a book and so there's kind of that fear. And then one of the first steps once the book is done is you give it to trusted individuals to say, Please give me feedback. And you hold your breath, because you think, Oh, no.
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Is it good? Is it worth it? Are people going to find value in it? And so it's, it's really scary to put it out into the universe and the initial feedback was overwhelmingly positive. I mean, I have one client who I adore and and he's so kind and he said, you know, Katie, my only concern I have one concern and I'm like, oh, okay, and he said, I don't know if you should say asshole.
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And then I had another advanced reader come back and he said, you know, Katie, my only
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concern, I'm really disappointed. You didn't say asshole enough? And I'm like,
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okay, great. So I can put asshole in the book about another 80 times, that's fine.
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But other than that, the feedback because at the end of each chapter two, we have something called be the catalyst. And so it's those reflection questions for people to actually do the work. And we've created a toolkit kind of a companion guide, because we're big believers that catalyst, it's not why you should be a leader, but how, and so you've really got to work on those skills. And so we want people as we're reading the book, to then reflect on their own skills and how they grew their skills and how they become stronger. And that with the accompanying workbook, is that, does everyone get access to that? Read it, like, right away? Or is it through your site? Yeah, it's on our website. And it's an additional, it's only $4, we wanted it very accessible. But yeah, it's something that people can buy, or they can just do their own journaling, if they don't want, you know, our pretty little guide. Yeah, just bringing it up. Because I did think it was helpful to have that to go along with it and just have everything kind of set for you with a you know, a little sections that write all your answers and stuff. It was useful. So for whatever my opinions were.
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But, uh, so Okay, let's go back to some of the topics that we want to cover. You mentioned, when you were the hotel HR leader, you were praising people as they were coming in, right to sharing some news. How can you kind of what are some other ways that you can build that culture of feedback within your organization so that any blind spots and stuff start surfacing faster? Yeah, we do so much work with our clients on this, because it's really, we got to create that growth mindset, we've got to create that environment where feedback is celebrated. So early in my career, you know, you'd give people their performance reviews, and I'm not a big fan of Likert scales, because you have a one to five. And people, if you don't get a five, then people feel like they failed. And what a lot of people don't understand is a three is average on most, and that's okay. Like, we need employees that come in, show up, do their job and go home. And so those fives are those overachievers or whatever, however, your scale is set, those should be reserved for the most the over the top. And so for someone to be a five across the board, I would ask you why you're not promoting that person? Why are you not giving them more growth opportunities? Why are you not putting them in a position that challenges them? So I think first step is we've got to create that culture of it's okay to be average. And then how do we help people grow? How do we give them stretch opportunities? How do we provide them feedback?
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I tell people stories all the time. There's there, there was someone in my life that came to me after 20 years in government service position. And she said to me, this is the first time in 20 years, I did not get exceptional across the board. And I what I should have done is been more kind to her, but I'm too close to her. And I said maybe this the first time someone was honest with you, like
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my talent, I should have read. But it's true. Like this might have been the first time where someone said, I want to give you the gift of honesty. And I want to help you grow and get better. But too often, leaders are afraid of hurting people's feelings. And so what they'll do is they will just be nice. And we actually have a program stop being nice and be kind, because it's not very nice to tell someone they're been doing a good job when they're really not. And so they go home and think oh, I'm just knocking it out of the park. Yeah. And then other people are like, gosh, Katie is a real idiot, like, has no one ever told her? She's an idiot? No, a lot of times no one has, right. I like something that I've I've seen uncertainty members and I've tried to foster is believing that feedback is a gift. Yeah. And because it's, it's how you grow. And once you once you start believing it for yourself that receiving the feedback is and it makes it much easier to also give feedback, because you know how that makes you feel, you know, as long as that's positive. And it really is a gift in it. It doesn't mean it's easy to hear all the time. And so there'll be times where, and we do we love the Crucial Conversations model. So we train that quite a bit. So you know, how do you have that really difficult conversation? And it starts with having those deep relationships and trust and psychological safety. So how do we create an environment where those difficult conversations are celebrated, and supported and really, at the end, we can even say like, oh, that didn't feel good. I appreciate
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it, can we come back tomorrow after I've like, digested it? And let's talk about next steps. How much do you find that a lot of those hard conversations need to happen because there aren't, there isn't clear guidance around the position and the, you know, the KPIs or requirements for that position. Well, and that's such an important step in and so part of the catalyst workplace model is, you know, the first step is belonging. So we all need to feel like we can show up and be our true, authentic self. But step two is competency. And that is, you know, are we training and supporting our people? But also, do we have the policies and procedures in place for them to be successful? Do they have a clear understanding of what their job is? So often, you know, people come in, and we're like, here, you go here, do this HR paperwork, do this, and then we send them off. And there's no real foundation of the house, like onboarding for me should be, at the minimum 90 days, if not six months. So how do we really set people up for success? How can they understand their job? Do they understand their peers jobs? Do they understand the organization and how everyone works together? Because we accidentally step on each other step over each other when we don't understand how the organization works? Right? Yeah, I think it puts a lot more importance on onboarding someone as they're coming in, which is interesting. I've worked with a lot of sass companies, and they, you might not have a ton of emphasis on onboarding right away for your new clients. But when you realize that you're the sticking rate of those clients, right, when they have actual adoption, because they know how to use it tool, it's like, now you're making more money long term, because they're actually using it. But it's the same with your team, if you just flip that, you know, that's an area. To me, it's the foundation, which is the foundation of the relationship, it's the foundation of the house. I mean, if people don't know what you stand for, they don't understand the organization, if they can't, if they can't just jump in and go into me, I always tell people, common sense isn't common. And so if we don't set those rules up front, we set our people up to fail, because they don't know what's expected out of them. And they can't do they can't do what they need to do. So I even in the first week or two will sit down with my employees and go over their performance review. Here's what you're going to be rated on, here's how you're going to grow. That's how we're going to help you, you know, move up in your career. And if we don't do that, we just leave people out there to fend for themselves. And that's not fair to them. Yeah, I definitely saw that as well, just showing new team members that review criteria, even though it's not time for a review, hey, we're still gonna look at it. And so now you see what you're actually being graded on. It's like, well, now that you actually perform, because they know what the test is. Yeah, it's amazing. So I want to go into more about you. But this is just a personal question. Your book follows a character named Mike. And I'm curious, are there any real life experiences that informed? Yeah, the creation of the character and some of the things? Yes, I guess. That's funny, every story in the book is 100%. True. And, you know, it's some mistakes I've made, there are some mistakes that other leaders have made. And so I use a literary coach going through and my literary coach hasn't really worked in the business world, she's more creative. And she would read my chapters, and she would be like, Katie, there's no way that that happened. Like when they go to HR, and I'm like, sometimes HR, you know, I love my HR professionals in the world, but sometimes they're not the strongest either. And so, yeah, every story of that is 100%. True.
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People who know me for over 20 years will read the book and be like, Oh, I know this. I know this. I know that. And so.
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And a lot of them, it really wasn't their fault. Like I would go to them and say,
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you know, I don't think this was your best moment. And Can Can I share this with you? And can we talk about it. And so a lot of people who I kind of featured in the book, when they read it, they were like, a thank you for not using my name and be thank you for coming and talking to me about it. And I've grown from it. And then there's some stories in the book where, you know, what, people didn't want to grow, but at least I had the conversation with them and I, I cared about them enough to be honest with them. If they if they weren't ready to change, then that's on them. Right? Well, now that gets to serve as a lesson for other leaders who can replace that same issue.
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I do very much like that. Your literary coach felt like it was too fictitious.
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No, I love people when they are just new into the corporate world or, you know, I would always when I had my military students, they would say, you know, Katie, what's the biggest difference between military in the corporate world and I'm like, You
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You know, in the corporate world, there are a lot, you have to deal with the F word a lot, and everyone would chuckle and I'd say there's a lot of feelings, there's a lot of feelings. There's, you know, the the things that military does really well is training and training at different intervals throughout your career. And so if people aren't familiar with kind of the military training cycle, the corporate world should really adapt and adopt to that, because it's, you train people really well. And then they go out and use the skills and then you bring them back in and train some more. And then, you know, and that's, that's so important. And I think that's the challenge that we have in the corporate world as we don't all have that culture of professional development. And so it's a lot of times as you progress through your career, you're lucky to get anything. Right. Yeah, what I loved about being in the military was that you're you get the training, then you go do the job specific to that training. But as you're in your next job, you're learning the next job. And then you're learning the next job. And so by the time we get to your next training, you've acquired all this knowledge of different roles that you get to not take into the next. And so you start building up just like, I mean, going through, like the course for majors, just for everyone listening, like, you know, this, but you can get a master's degree from it, just because of how much knowledge you're actually accumulating, doing all this? And so yeah, I think it's a great program. Yeah.
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And a reminder that I need to go finish some of my coursework for, for that.
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So what types of resistance Have you encountered, just for you, like your leadership development program? Um, you know, for me, sometimes people just aren't ready, you know, they're just not ready for that leadership development, it may not be the right season of life, it may be that they've got some work to do personally. And the biggest thing, when we are working with clients, whether it be individuals, or teams or whole organizations, you got to have that growth mindset, you got to be willing to do the work, you got to be willing to kind of pull back the curtain a little bit. And the biggest mistake that organizations make, is they will survey their employees for what they need. And then they, and then they're like, oh, gosh, their survey results were horrible. And then they just kind of put it in a file, and they never respond. It's better for you not to survey your people, than to survey them now, you know, and then you don't do it. And so what we find working with clients, and even coaching clients, there'll be times where they're just not ready or willing to do the work. And you know what, you can pay me and I'll meet you once a month and wait, you're lovely. But I mean, what's the point if you're not gonna do it? So I think the biggest resistance is, sometimes people just aren't ready to do the hard work to be to be a leader in leadership is so simple, but also so challenging at the same time.
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Yeah, there's so many variables that have to be
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taken into consideration. And you got to be humble, you know, you got to be one of the first steps with my individual coaching clients. And our the people that go through our leaders Institute, is for them to do a personal branding. So they get feedback from other people, like, how do you see me? Because I know how I think I want people to see me. But is that how I'm coming across? And no, not? Not often? Yeah, peer reviews. Yeah, gut wrenching? Yeah.
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So what are what are some of the most common kind of leadership skill gaps that you've seen? That really contributes to someone being perceived as that asshole boss? Yeah, well, I think, you know, a lot of it is humility. A lot of it, I see. And it's, you know, being willing to not be the smartest person in the room, you know, old school is, the boss is the smartest person, right? We're the decision makers, you know, we, we, we've done our time, we've done the work. And so we're the ones. And I've always been a person that I will surround myself with people that are smarter than me,
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makes my job easier. And people that fill my gas. So the two ladies that work for me, I mean, they are phenomenal. And they are they really have the skills that I lack. They're both younger than me. And so they bring a whole different mindset, a whole different kind of view on the world. So we can't be afraid to
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surround ourselves with people that are different, and making sure that we're getting all different viewpoints. And I think so often, we surround ourselves with people that make us comfortable or that we enjoy being around or that won't challenge us. And we can't grow, we can't get better. And quite frankly, we're never going to know our guests. If people are always just smiling and nodding to us, right.
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Yeah, agree entirely. Yeah. As I smile, I know. I know. The beauty is my two ladies. They will just
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flat out, tell me now they won't tell me in public, they are amazing. But they're not afraid to pull me aside and be like, cool. You really miss the mark there. And my daughter was home a little while over the summer. She's 19. And she came to a team meeting with me. And she said, you know, Mom, if someone didn't know, I wouldn't know who's running that company. And that's such a gift that we have an environment where they speak up, and they're not afraid. And they will challenge the process and and provide feedback. Right? Yeah. Amazing. Yeah.
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Let's go into some best practices. What would you recommend for leaders to adopt right away to improve team satisfaction?
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Yeah, first is checking your psychological safety, we do a lot with that. And the, if you don't know the difference between trust and psychological safety, it's a quick Google or YouTube or however you want to wherever you get your facts and tips and tricks. But trust is, so it would be you know, Chris, you and I work together, I trust you, you trust me. But psychological safety is really the whole team, I trust my team. And they trust me, no matter what our role is, no matter where our position is, we can speak up, we can share information, there's no fear of being intimidated, or no dumb questions. And more importantly, there's no in crowd and out crowd, I've worked at places where, you know, if you weren't a cool kid, you weren't invited. And so for an organization, before you can do anything else, you got to have that psychological safety, people have to feel like they can be their authentic, true self. And then from there, you got to get to know your people. You've got to know how they tick, why they check what, what they need, what their goals are in life, because then you can help them grow and give them opportunities. But if you don't have that safety, and you don't know your people, nothing else matters.
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I want to talk caps now. So for those listening this the career in power scales, and I'll let you define them describe but why are these important for leaders at all different levels? Yeah, so we call them career and power skills. I grew up around the military. So I love a good acronym.
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But you know, their soft skills, their leadership skills, we all call them something different. We call them career and power skills. So we call them caps, and they're not mine. They are the Department of Labor Society of Human Resource Management. All different types of organizations say these are the critical skills that we need to be successful in our career journey. And so what I did was I took these skills, and then I put them in umbrellas. So we have lead, who are you as a leader, and it's really about humility and authenticity. And so we, we have a set of skills under that we have engage, which is communication skills and relationship building and, and how we communicate with each other. We have acceptance, which is about psychological safety and how we work together, how we be culturally brave. And when we talk about acceptance, it's about the whole being, it's it's not just di, which is critically important, but it's introverts and extroverts. It's generations, it's all of them.
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We have develop, which is really how we work together. So it's breaking down silos, working together as teams, effectiveness and efficiency. So under those is really how we set goals, how do we keep ourselves accountable, and then resilience, what happens when, what happens when it doesn't work, because that's going to happen. And so we have six to seven skills under each one of those titles. And that's really what we train and how we train. And the cool part is we do it at all levels of career. So we do it for 77,000 student athletes to the NAIA all the way up to executives, so the skills don't change the conversations around the skills change. So 18 year olds, we need to talk about emotional intelligence. Same with an executive, we just talk about it differently.
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Right. So you can get the same effect. Right, which is awesome.
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Okay, I got one more big question for you. What is the importance of having a leadership philosophy? I love a leadership philosophy. It's one of the first things that we have leaders do. And we have leaders at all levels. So if you're so we break our leaders into early career emerging leaders and strategic senior leaders. And so early career it's really important for you to understand your values, understand who and what you want to be in your career. And then as we move up through our merging
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Leaders, you know, those are kind of those pivot points in our career. And so I encourage people to write a leadership philosophy, and then review it every year and share it with your teams, share it with your peers, share it with people around you, it gives you that roots of who you are as a leader. And it also gives you that reminder are you living who you say you want to be? Because so often, we either get stressed or tired or overwhelmed, or were put in a in a tight spot. And as long as we know, our guiding principles and our leadership philosophy, we can stay true to who we are.
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I had a
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short stint where I was stepping up to be battalion commander, as the company executive officer, and we weren't sure how long it was going to be. So it's planning for a year to two years. And so I did a command philosophy. And while it was great for sharing with my, you know, all of my soldiers and stuff, I think, almost more important was that it helped me It forced me to sit down and be very introspective and say, what do what do I need this unit to do to be successful? What's important to me? You know, as far as achieving that goal that was super valuable for an exercise? Yeah. Actually, I think I recorded a podcast episode on just going through that. So yeah.
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Yeah. So this has been a very insightful conversation. And I would like to get into our three semi rapid fire questions now. With the first being what book size zero? I'm already recommending that one.
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What do you recommend everyone should read? Well, I have to say first, anything, Patrick Lencioni writes, I love him. I think he's phenomenal. But the other book I love that I think is one I don't hear people talk a lot about is who says elephants can't dance. And it talks. I know, I've read it in my master's program. And it's about Lou Gerstner. I believe it's how you say it. And he is the guy that is instrumental in bringing IBM back from the brink. And so he actually
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didn't even when he was hired to run IBM, he didn't have really a lot of computer skills. He didn't really, that wasn't his his thing. And, and people said to him, like, how can you run a, you know, computer company and technology company, when you don't know anything about technology, and really his insights on management, leadership, any business, it's surround yourself by the people that know what they're doing, give them the autonomy and the support to do it, and then let them go. And so it's really about accountability and getting the right people in the right seats. And
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I, when I was in higher ed, it's funny, because faculty for for very legitimate reasons, really want the President to come from faculty. And there were several times that I would have faculty read this book, and say, Look, even if you have someone that comes up through the faculty ranks, if they don't have management, leadership skills, they're not going to be a strong leader, either. So you got to make sure that you have their strong leadership skills, no matter where they are. So if we promote from from within, but we don't have the leadership skills, you're setting yourself up for failure. So I love that book. I recommend it quite a bit. Awesome. I have never heard of it. So now after grab a copy.
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Next question, what is next for you professionally? Yeah, so a couple things. One is, we're getting ready to launch our second cohort of leaders, which is our year long Leadership Institute. It's here in Kansas City. And it's really, this is really not where we make a whole lot of money. But it's where we fill our hearts in where we really bring people together at all different career levels, socio economic backgrounds,
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underrepresented individuals, and we give everybody a seat to really spend a year building their leadership skills. So it's really where my heart is. That's why I started catalyst. So that's coming up starting in January. So we're filling that cohort now. And then the other fun thing that we're doing is my team and I are starting on my second book, so I'm having my ladies write it with me. And it's called STF. You stop saying that to yourself.
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And it is about imposter syndrome. It's about the things we tell ourselves to limit ourselves. It's the things that we allow other people to tell us to limit us. It's the little voices in our head that say you can't do something and so we're going to really tell the story and gives tips and tricks on how to stop limiting yourself limit limit teen yourself. Finally, where can people find you?
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The easiest place is you can go to our website with which is just Katie ervin.com Er
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Vi N. Or you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm very active on LinkedIn. I love getting to know and connecting with people. So I'm Dr. Katie Ervin on LinkedIn. Well, thank you very much for joining me today. This has been a great conversation and I am I'm looking forward to this one going out for us or getting people to buy this book get the workbook with it does make your life easier.
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Thanks for joining me. Thank you so much.
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