1941 – Unleashing the Power of Self-Awareness in Leadership with Vistage’s Kirsten Yurich

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

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1:05With us right now, Kirsten Urick. Kirsten, you are an executive mentor and you're a Vistage Chair. Kirsten, your website is kirstenurrick.com. Kirsten, it's great to have you. Thank you, Josh. I'm so happy to be here. You have a long and storied career, too, as a former CEO. But tell us a bit about the work that you do, who you serve. Sure. So I'm going to answer that with a question, which is how I do my work, Josh. I'm going to guess, Josh, you have not always worked for yourself. Is that true? Oh, it's been a while. It's been a while. But I remember the days. Okay. So tell me, I'm guessing you once had a boss that did some things that maybe you weren't awesomely pleased with that maybe you felt held back the team or weren't working towards the goals.

1:52Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Looking back now, you know, with again, 20 years now as being a CEO, I mean, we're all doing the best we can with what we know at the time, but who of a. Yeah. So you had those bosses. Well, I'm that person that tells that boss those things. Because as the employee, you don't get that chance, right? They kind of control that power dynamic. They're controlling your livelihood. And you really don't get the opportunity to tell them, hey, that really wasn't great. Or you know, what would be really better is this. And so I'm that, you know, miniature person on their shoulder, telling them what they don't want to hear or helping them see what they don't want to see so that they can become the leader or the parent or the spouse, the person that they always knew that they could become.

2:43Yeah. So I'm mindful now of our leaders who are listening to this. We don't want to be like Josh's old boss. You know, we want to. The boss you left, right? I think, you know, we all want to be, at least I hope we all want to be self-aware. You know, we all want to be mindful. Certainly we want to know when we're being, you know, just, you know, we're, we're creating a drag on our organization, you know, and again, we're all human, but what are some ways that I think that we can maybe start to get more honest information about how we're performing? That's a great question. I think when we think about leadership, we see the ribbon cutting and the speeches and all of the big accolades that come with leadership.

3:35And when you get down to the nitty gritty, when I speak with leaders day in and day out, it is those mundane little interactions that happen on a daily basis that leaders have to get right and that leaders have to do and not kind of let the pace of or pride get in the way of those interactions. Leaders have such an opportunity to create and use the energy in their organizations. They make the climate, they create the weather. And as I've heard from others, the weather trickles down the mountain, right? So if they come in because they had a rough morning at home and they bring that with them, that's going to trickle down through the organization, right and so it is their self-discipline and their self-awareness about what that means when they walk in the door and you know shows on right as a leader and coming into the organization and if they don't realize that no one's giving them the feedback of like you know when you walk in the office it goes from a calm atmosphere to a crazy atmosphere right that disrupted everybody's morning.

4:43And that's not really what they want as a leader. So that, you know, their impact and their intentions are misaligned, but they're not getting the feedback that they need. And so they need somebody that's objectively there to kind of tell them that, or to help them in their own organization, solicit that feedback. How do I create the environment to make it safe for the people around me to tell me those things. Yeah, I, well, and I wonder too, if I think there are leaders that are making a good faith effort to try to uncover that, but maybe the culture just does not support that level of feedback.

5:23So I'm thinking of maybe some ways that we can try to get at that objective data or somehow encourage that information. And I'm just thinking of like, you know, maybe where an employee may not feel comfortable in sharing that feedback for, you know, fear of offending or upsetting something. And so they just kind of keep it quiet into themselves. And whereas as the leader, I'm like, no, no, no, no, I really do need to know. So I don't know, just, you know, thinking of mechanics of like, you know, again, how we can survey our organizations or our teams, you know, again, maybe we create some anonymity, anonymity to it?

6:04Have you seen this executed? Well, you know, again, just kind of talking about no, no, no, I want organization from the organization. I want info from the organization about, you know, what I'm doing okay as a leader and what I'm not doing okay. And that's another thing too. I'll just speak. I don't, I think the negative information, I think certainly can sometimes be hard to get to, but I think the positive, like the very honest, positive feedback sometimes might be a little awkward too. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. Sure, absolutely. There's some great feedback around, how do you take a compliment?

6:42And sometimes leaders are the worst at taking compliments. And so then they're really awkward at giving compliments. And we need to be generous with our accolades to the people around us so that it becomes part of that culture. And we also have to be good at taking them, right? So if we're always sort of this false humility piece, that's going to rub off on others too. And so I've practiced with leaders just saying, thank you. I'm working on that. Or thank you. That was difficult for me to do. Just saying thank you. Because somebody taking the moment to step into that awkwardness of giving you positive feedback, that was a gift.

7:21And if you push that gift away, they're not going to give it to you again. And maybe they won't give it to somebody else. And what is that ripple effect in your culture? So that's, it's important for you to give it and to accept it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it is, not to get too distracted on here, but it is really interesting, you know, how we do respond to gratitude. And, you know, sometimes, you know, again, we don't want to feel like we're being, you know, braggy or whatever. So, you know, we do, we sometimes we're just dismissive of it. And then that's not fair, I think, to the person who issued that.

7:59And again, to your point, it's what does that teach or what does that instill in your organization? I would love to be an organization. I think we, speaking for myself, I feel like we do a pretty good job. Like the thanks are pretty, Fulgent, is that the right word? They're quite common. And I'm very grateful for that. but there's a little bit more gratitude there. So here's how to take it up a notch. You know, saying thank you is good. And I think it's a great first step. How specific can you be, right? How actionable can you be? Can you, can you take that thank you and turn it into something that's very specific for that person so that they know exactly what you recognize and are acknowledging because it goes back to how observant were you?

8:46How much did you pay attention to what that person did or said or what they brought to the table in that moment, what they overcame to do that thing for you. So how specific and personal can you get in your praise and in your gratitude and actionable? So pulling out the things that are repeatable, right? People repeat things that get reinforced or rewarded. So we need to be thanking and giving gratitude on the things that we wanna see more of, not paying attention to things that we wanna see less of. Leaders end up spending what, 80 % of their time with 20 % of the problem makers when we need to be spending more of our time, you know, catching people doing what's right and then, you know, accelerating those results.

9:27I'm certain because of your relationship with Vistage that you'll have a point of view on this. You know, the sentiment that sometimes, you know, again, as leaders, it can be a little bit lonely in that we don't have necessarily anyone within the organization that there just may be some worries or concerns that there may not be a very good outlet within our organizations to share that for fear of, well, if I share it with this person, that might then trickle to this person and then down and then throughout the organization. So therefore it's better to not even bring this up. And so we need peers.

10:06We need an outlet as leaders, don't we? Yeah. As a former CEO, that is the reason I sought out Vistage, right? Loneliness and the ability to have a community of people that I could talk to honestly and without judgment, without agenda, and they couldn't fire me. They have no ownership or agenda related to my business except me personally becoming better. And so that's why I sought it out as a CEO and why I moved to the other side of the table, because creating that space for other leaders became a mission for me personally. And, you know, coming off of one of those sessions yesterday, people left there fulfilled, refreshed, rejuvenated, you know, knowing that I may have come in with some things on my head and my heart, but boy, I'm glad I'm not you today.

10:55And I'm glad I could give you something today, right? To another CEO on the table who walked in with something even more challenging, right? There's power in the peers. And that community is going to rise all of the leaders and all of the companies. And then what is it doing for our collective community? If leaders are coming together and getting better, their companies are getting better. And then that means all of the people that work in those companies are working in a better place and going home a happier person. That means their homes are better. That means our communities are better. That means our children are better.

11:32That's mission work. Yeah. Kirsten, is all of your work through Vistage or do you coach and consult separately or is that all kind of within? Yeah. Yep. Some is through Vistage. Some is privately coaching leadership development. Yep. Tell me more about that. Yeah. Well, I coach privately with CEOs all across the country, actually, and locally. And I work with companies to develop leadership development programs to help leaders at multiple levels and improve the performance of their people and those kinds of things. Yeah. Yeah. And for someone who's heard of Vistage, maybe they've talked to people that are part of it.

12:08Do you mind just kind of giving an overview of what Vistage is and who it's a great organization for? It's a great organization for a leader who knows that they want to be better, is willing to be in a room with other leaders and be open to that opportunity, doesn't want to be the smartest person in the room. Somebody who might go to a gym for physical improvement and wants to go to an executive gym for their executive skills. And all Vistage groups are different. Some are just up here, right at the head. So my hands are around my head for the people just listening. and some go the whole way down, right?

12:49And work on the whole person because as you probably know, you don't leave your personal life at home when you show up at work and you don't leave work at work when you show up at home. And so we have to consider the whole person. Yeah, and how is it structured? I mean, just very kind of mechanically. Oh, sure, and that's in both. This is how it looks. So executives joined Vistage, the company, which is an executive mentoring organization that's 45 countries, 45 ,000 members, big, 60 years old, right? So they kind of have the secret sauce. They know what they're doing. They've been around and they join Vistage as a member.

13:30They have access to a platform of networks where they can connect with all Vistage members across the world. But locally, they have a group of 12 to 15 CEOs that they sit in the room with together. We get together once a month for a full day of activities. We have speakers and then we process the things that they're coming in with to accelerate their results. And then I meet with each of those leaders on a monthly basis for executive coaching. So those are sort of the three legs of the stool. Yeah. And so specifically in your personal consulting coaching work, what does that like, particular industries, particular types of organizations, size of organizations, types of leaders who would make kind of that ideal connection for you?

14:19Yeah, I've worked with individuals from my past industry, which is behavioral health and mental health industry. So I've worked with CEOs there, as well as developing leadership programs with there. But leadership is not industry specific. So that's not necessarily a barrier. I've worked with companies that are a couple million to 100 plus million. So there's no real sweet spot individuals that are looking to improve themselves, looking to improve their team. I've worked with entire teams, coaching on the entire leadership team to improve their health and effectiveness, as well as developing leadership programs where they can work on leaders at different levels and building their skills and competencies across the organization.

15:07And Kirsten, am I correct? You have a book too. I'm so sorry we didn't talk about that. Well, yeah. So from a previous life, it is more of a graduate level textbook in precision teaching. So anyone that's interested in how to measure behavior and define behavior and improve behavior through a particular frame of reference called precision teaching can check out the precision teaching book. Absolutely. Check it out. It's a greatness achieved publishing company. Yes. Excellent. Excellent. Well, so one last kind of question in terms of like trends in leadership and just like, you know, again, leaders who this is what you do.

15:53And, you know, from your perspective, what would you say are some of the big things we should probably be paying attention to in the year ahead? Well, we have five generations of people in the workforce, right? That's 25 plus permutations of relationships that we have to be handling. You could have a manager that's 30 and an employee who's 60. And you as the CEO or the big boss, you have to learn the needs and the challenges that come with all of those types of relationships. So I think that's one of the big trends is these multi-generations in the workforce and what it means for both your recruiting, your selection, your management training.

16:36The needs of employees are changing. Certainly this hybrid work and all of those things continue to be a challenge and those threads are coming through in our discussions. So I think that's one of the trends of leadership. And then one of the others that just came out yesterday in a conversation is, you know, the the old style command and control leadership, you know, that boat, you can't even see the tail of the boat anymore, right? It is completely gone. I don't think. Yeah. Good luck. Good luck. Clearly not a sailor. There's no tail to a boat. I don't know. Ballester. You know, so this value driven leadership that is out there, if a company is not established what their values are and the leader is not fully, you know, the leader doesn't embody them.

17:20If they're not a founder, if they're hired CEO, there's alignment issues with that. And these values don't trickle down and are not evidenced within all of your human practices. So you're hiring your selection, your performance evaluation, you know, the life cycle of an employee, your coaching practices, how are you equipping the manager, right? Gallup shows us that 70 % of the variance of performance of any one employee is related to the competency of your manager. 70 % of the variance. Every employee is related to the competency of a manager. So what are you doing to equip managers to lead today?

17:59And if you're not doing much, then you can't expect much. So I think those are some of those trends that leaders have to face today. Kirsten Urick, your website, kirstenurrick.com. To our friend that's listening, Kirsten, what would you recommend? They've listened to our conversation. maybe they were kind of searching for you. They found this podcast, listened to it, and now they're like, okay, what's the next step here? I'm curious. Well, they certainly can, I think, check out what it would look like for them to get feedback about their leadership. And that could come in a variety of ways, right?

18:37Talk to their leadership team. Is there a gap between how they think they're doing and what their leadership team thinks. Start by asking a couple questions, right? You don't go from listening to a podcast to calling somebody for services, right? That's a big ask. Nobody's going to do that, right? But start, if you're curious now, you're like, huh, am I the leader that's not aware? Am I the leader that's doing this? Great. Keep that nugget in your mind and just start to become more aware, more aware, ask questions. If you have a a buddy CEO in another company, what are they doing to solve these problems?

19:13Start asking questions. Maybe you can build a network of your own. Maybe you need to join a group. Maybe you need to get a coach. I don't know. But you need to do something if you're doing nothing. I appreciate that. Kirsten Urick, again, your website, kirstenurrick.com. That is K-I-R-S-T-E-N-Y-U-R-I-C-H. We've got the spelling to our friend that's listening to our podcast. Just click around, find the show notes. You'll get a direct link to Kirsten's website. Kirsten, it's been great having you. Thank you so much. Thanks, Josh. This was fun.

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