The Change Agent's Playbook: Melissa Pepper on Transformational Leadership, Stakeholder Buy-In, and Making Change Stick

In this episode of Activating Greatness, Alec McChesney sits down with Melissa Pepper, founder of Lead(h)er and former Chief Strategy Officer at Russell Construction, to explore what it really means to be a transformational change leader. Melissa breaks down her methodology for leading organizational change — from listening sessions and stakeholder buy-in to action teams, KPIs, and the three-part framework from Switch by Chip and Dan Heath that every leader needs to understand. She shares why the 20% who resist change aren't worth your energy, how to make change stick once the excitement fades, and what it means to build something that has never existed before. She also shares the story behind Leader, a mentorship organization she founded to fuel career and community engagement for women in the workforce. If you are navigating organizational transformation, building culture through change, or trying to lead teams through uncertainty, this episode delivers practical, story-driven insight from one of the Midwest's most passionate change agents.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Activating Greatness, the show where we dig into what it really takes to lead with purpose, inspire performance, and create lasting impact. As always, I'm your host, Alec McChesney. And every episode, we sit down with leaders, thinkers, and change makers who are unlocking potential in themselves, their teams, and their organizations. Here we talk about the real stuff: leadership that drives culture, strategy that creates momentum, and the mindset that turns good intentions into game-changing results. Because greatness, it isn't a title, it's a choice. It's something you activate every single day. So thank you. Thank you for listening, for showing up, and for being part of a community of leaders who refuse to settle for good enough. Now let's dive in and meet today's incredible guest. There's a certain kind of leader who walks into a room and immediately starts asking the question that nobody else is asking. Not how do we protect what we have, not how do we keep the wheels on, but how do we evolve? How do we change? How do we drive this organization forward? And how do we do that in a manner that everybody is happy with? And that is today's guest in one sentence. Melissa Bever is the founder of Leader, an organization built to fuel career and community engagement for women in the workforce. Before that, she spent years as a transformational force inside some of the Midwest's most respected organizations, including Russell Corporation, where she served as the VP of People and Culture, built leadership development programs from the ground up. She has held senior roles spanning HR, marketing, and operations across multiple industries. And the thread that runs through every single one of them is the same. Melissa shows up where change is wanted, where change is needed, and she is excited to be able to build it. I see Melissa smiling right now just by hearing the word change. And I'm so excited because that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about transformational change. We're going to talk about what it takes to lead it, why organizations do get change wrong, and how to build things that maybe we it existed before, but we want to create the next evolution of it. We're not throwing things out, but we're taking what has been built and we're turning it into the next stage or the next evolution. Melissa, welcome to Activating Greatness. Thank you so much for spending some time. I am so excited about this episode because in our prep call, you were just absolutely giddy talking about change management. And I was on a call this morning, and the entire topic was change management within the world of AI and how do we kind of keep things under wraps and not have our teams be in turmoil. So thank you again for spending some time with us. I'd love to stop talking now. Let you kind of introduce yourself to the rest of the group here at the Activating Greatness Podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Oh, well, thank you for having me. And yes, change does make me smile. Actually, my first coffee talk of the day, we talked about uh change and the kind of disruption that was going on in my friend's business. And so certainly uh it must be a topic on everybody's mind. So I'm excited to spend a little bit of time uh with you sharing that. Um and I guess I'll say too, you know, you you shared my my resume so eloquently. I I don't know if we'll it'll come up today, but I'm currently um on a career break. And so this is sort of my plug before we get into change that change is good personally too, not just professionally or in our businesses. So I'm taking, um, I was the um most recently the chief strategy officer at Russell, which is a large commercial construction and development company here in Iowa. And I realized that I needed to take a career pause. And so that's why I'm in my kitchen. That's why this background isn't uber professional. Um, because I'm taking some time for me to really recalibrate and determine what my next step is.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

I love it. Change is on the mind uh in every conversation that we have at Veloci Advisory Group, whether it's on the coaching side or culture side or leadership development, you can boil so much of it down to are people willing to change? How do individuals handle change? And how does the organization structure change around the individuals? But I do want to just right out of the gate, you're calling it out that you're in the kitchen. I love it. Uh, I'm in I'm in the guest bedroom makeshift office here. So we're we're both in our homes here in Nebraska and Iowa. But that ability to have personal change at the individual level is also something that we're gonna talk about because you're somebody who thrives on change. And you said in our prep call something along the lines of if you want to keep the wheels on the wagon, and the wagon's already been built, it's painted, and it does the job, that Melissa's not the person. And I was floored by the level of self-awareness that you have in that moment of, okay, where where am I strongest? But also, where do I want to be? How do I protect my piece? How do I protect the work that I want to do? And so I just want to start there at the individual level. Where does that level of self-awareness, where does that passion for change come from? And was there a moment in your career maybe where you were like, hey, this is transformational change, this is what I want to be, this is what I want to do, and and this is what I want to bring to companies?

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Yeah. I would say, and you said the the words, you know, coaching just now. And I would say that self-awareness, you know, shameless plug for coaching. Yes, knowing knowing where you thrive and where you sort of run up against uh, you know, real or imagined walls uh in your work place, coaching is a really good way to start to see where those are. And so I've been fortunate throughout my career to have a coach. And she and I worked really hard on self-awareness, you know, on a bad day when I'm saying, ah, it was just a bad day. Well, what made it bad? Or what, you know, where where are you feeling sort of um disappointed or frustrated, losing energy? And I was finding that I would be frustrated or disappointed or losing energy when I didn't feel like I had agency. And and so, or when I noticed that my team didn't have agency, or was I not giving them that that ability to make those decisions or run far and fast and fail, um, heaven forbid, fail. And and so, and I say that cheekily, so I think that that that self-awareness for me has come from really trying to trying to be aware of when I'm frustrated and when those those occurrences are. And it's typically when I I'm not able to sort of uh to to run to run free, if you will, and not and not sort of independently or as a bull in a china shop. I I love to collaborate, I love working with teams. Um and so I I think that that um ability and to empower and to be empowered is is very important to me as a leader. Um, I would say, where have I noticed that? I have been fortunate in my last three roles have all been the first, the first person to do it. Um, and that's a theme in in my career. I I think it's so it's not necessarily like sort of a light bulb moment, but this pause has caused me to reflect about, you know, where was I happiest in my career and where were there, you know, areas where I was like, gosh, I don't want to do that again. Um, and when I'm having a lot of fun at work and when I'm able to make a really big impact, it's when I get to sort of form something from scratch. So being the first director of marketing at a law firm, the first president of a small, you know, shared services company, and then the first chief strategy officer um at Russell. Those are all really fun times in my career because we were exploring what could be. Um, and then once things are really moving along and smoothly, I I tend to be like, all right, my work here is done. Somebody else can can keep can keep it moving.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Oh, I I need to put self-awareness on a on a billboard and have it in every every city in in the world because it is a recurring theme of the leaders that we have on this podcast, that the more self-aware you are, the more effective you are as an individual, the more your team is able to open up to you and you're able to open up to the team. And it really is this compounding effect of when am I at my best work? And when am I at my worst? And in some regards, that could be the type of role that you're in, but it could also be the type of work you're doing within the role. It could be the time of day. You know, I joke, we're recording this on May 20th. Last week might have been the best work week I've had in my 31 years of living. And we had great podcasts, we had great sales calls, we had good internal meetings. And at the end of the week, maybe three years ago, four years ago, I just would have been like, damn, I've got to how how come I can't do that every week? And now it's like, okay, I'm gonna sit down, I'm gonna look at that calendar and look at the meetings that we had, look at the structure and say, what made this week different? And and just try to dissect it a little bit for myself. And, you know, I'm not giving myself a shameless uh plug here on self-awareness, but it has transformed how I think about good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks. And I think the early reception from my team is that I have been way more open in the in the conversation about when I know I'm having a bad week or I'm feeling that that pressure or the stress inside uh that maybe I'm putting on myself, but it's easier to communicate it now because I have I've become more self-aware within that process.

SPEAKER_02 10:24

Yeah, that's so good. I I use an app, How I Feel. And I I think I think I'm saying it right, but and I'm here I am looking. Um, yeah, how we feel, how we feel. Um, and so it prompts you a couple times a day. I guess it could prompt you more than that, sort of how do you feel? Just truly. Oh, I love this. Am I depleted? Am I calm? Am I ecstatic? Am I you know whatever it is? And then you can kind of put a little note, and it is sort of a check-in to see, you know, kind of your energy zappers and your energy givers throughout the day. Um, which I think is also helps you build your emotional intelligence, sort of instead of just being sad, mad, happy, it really kind of teaches you the full spectrum of emotions that we might feel and how our circumstances or the rhythms of our days um are some of you know, really, really you have to really kind of like it's it's the self-awareness, but it's also like how do I feel? Yeah. Um really listening to your body, which is which is something I'm uh trying harder at.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

Yes, it is a it is a learning process. It is not a I can do it one time and it's fixed. It is something that you have to to be intentional about. Um, but it's also the the best way to avoid the roller coaster. And 2026, just like so many other years, if you pay attention to the news for five minutes, you could go up and down on the roller coaster right then and there, and then you get back and you have your personal life and your work life and all of these things. And it becomes really difficult to manage our the day-to-day responsibilities of that whirlwind of what we're living in. And then you add in change on top of that and the rate of change, the pace of change, even if you removed AI from the conversation, the world is changing faster than it ever has before. Now you add that back into the mix, and it is inevitable that more and more individuals are are suffering from I'm gonna call it poor change management inside organizations, but just, hey, we're gonna add this priority, we're gonna add this priority. I'm gonna ask my first bad podcast question of the day, and I'm gonna put myself in the shoes of an organization that, you know, maybe I just met with a couple hours ago where we're talking about change, and they know they want it, but they have been successful. They they've done the work for 30 years. The the business isn't broken, but they aren't reaching the level that one, they think they could be, and two, maybe the private equity or the board or whoever it might be is expecting them to grow to. I'm curious, just what is your methodology behind change? Where do you start? How do you bring people with you? Are you looking at this? Do you have a playbook that you're like, okay, I need to go step by step by step? Or it's certainly not linear. There's probably roller coasters. So I just want to ask like a really vague, unfair, bad podcast question 15 minutes into this. What is your methodology on change? And how do you get the teams that you've been joining to buy in and say, yes, that is, we need to build this or we need to try this, and we're we're gonna support you in however ways we can.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Yeah, I think what we're doing right now, having a conversation over, you know, a glass of water, a cup of coffee, is really where it starts for me. I don't have, you know, I I am a uh my favorite class in my grad school was the strategic management of change. I think that that class rocked. Absolutely loved it. And I learned a lot of cool change models within that. And I think those have influenced how I um approach change. But I would say it really starts with a lot of conversations internally, whether you have four people in your company or 4,000. Um, I think it's really important that you try to understand as many kind of viewpoints as possible before start start starting to tinker, which I think is like my word of the month. I feel like I've said tinker a little too many times. So you can you can uh you know edit that out post. But what what what I what I have done successfully, and I'll give my most recent um role as an example, is really came in with not a lot of none, no industry background. None, nothing, new nothing. And so, really, before you can sort of come in and be um blazing a trail, you you of course need to build trust. Maybe that's not obvious to some, but I'm sure the the listeners on this podcast understand that.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:02

Um, and so what what I did is I met with probably a third of the the workplace. I mean, those first 90 days and really that first year were so many listening sessions and then really copious notes. I remember my my boss asking me, what are you going to do with all this information? Um, and then really, you know, you could throw it into AI now and it could probably help you with some themes, but I did it the old-fashioned way back back when I was doing this because there wasn't AI. And so, or at least it wasn't where it is today. And so I really try to understand, okay, what's going well? What do you love? What would you be mad if we changed? What would just just not because I won't change it, but just like, where where are we gonna run into some roadblocks? Um, what what advice do you have for me? What do you think other people in your department think need to be changed? You know, that's always a tricky, good, good question because people might not want to put themselves out there. But if you say, well, what do you think, what do you think the others in your department are worried about? Um, they will tell you what they're worried about, but they'll say that it's there, you know, Wanda. Wanda is really worried about changing our, you know, changing our pay pay app system. Um, so so really understanding where kind of the lay of the land, creating themes. And then I did like a red, yellow, green, like these within my domains, right? So I just HR, marketing, and business development in my role as the strategy officer. And so what is going fantastic? Like, don't touch it, like it's going great or even better than great. Yeah. So really kind of starting to create guardrails of like, hey, we don't have to change everything. It becomes really tempting to try to tweak a little something here and a little something here. And so really having clarity about, okay, well, first of all, why are we changing? What KPIs are blinking red at us that we must change in order to um move the business forward, whether that's revenue or profitability or customer satisfaction or what have you, retention, and you know, internal issues that you might have, turnover. Um, and so what are you trying to solve for? And then once you're kind of looking at your themes, what's gonna be that lever, right? What's gonna be the lever that actually throws that boulder high up into the air and gets it, gets it out of that? Because I think sometimes we're like, well, let's press the easy button where I hate the word like low-hanging fruit. Well, is the low-hanging fruit actually going to make an impact or is it just gonna feel good? Um, so so what we did and what was successful is then we took all those themes, we presented it back to leadership, and then we sort of created this, okay. Well, what do we want to do? Now, what does Melissa want to do? What do we want to do? What can we learn from all this feedback? Which for us, we were trying to understand some recruitment, retention, employee, um, you know, uh engagement, things like that. That was one kind of area that we were looking at. And um, and then we when we launched our strategic plan, we used all of that information. And then we said, hey, on this date, we're gonna do a signing day. And anybody in the organization can sign up for one of the pillars so you can be a part of, you know, the the um building some uh be a part of something bigger. You can be a part of Lead with Excellence. And the result was phenomenal. We were able to achieve all of the KPIs that we set out in this plan, which we happen to call one Russell, the five pillars, the KPIs, we all worked together. And so people were bought in because it was their ideas from the start. Now you have to be careful with that because not all good, not all ideas are good ideas. Um, and and so we did have to sort of manage through that, right? Um, but but I would say that really getting the team members involved from the get-go, from that early feedback, so that they weren't like, well, Melissa met with me six months ago, nothing ever happened. She didn't do anything with my feedback, right? We hate when when leaders, we fear that, right? And so when, and so really being able to say, well, here's all this feedback we received, and then helping them see how to be a part of that solution was very impactful for us.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

I kind of forgot that I was hosting a podcast here, and I thought that I might have been on a TED talk. Like I'm just taking notes, like ready to learn and and implement. One, I love the the what do we want to change? And Melissa might be the change agent, and she is going out and doing these interviews, but changes the company level. And so getting that involvement, getting stakeholder buy-in across the board, absolutely essential. But I kind of want to just make sure. So you so you went through that process, you then have a strategy, you then have the pillars, the action plans, and the KPIs. When this was communicated to the team, was all of that communicated? Was it, hey, we took all of the feedback, here's the strategy. And then were you kind of showing the KPIs even and the end results that we were trying to create from the change? This is the goal. This is the standard of excellence that we're trying to get to. Was all of that part of the communication plan for the team?

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Oh my goodness, yes. And so we did have action team leaders. So for each pillar, there was an action team leader that wasn't me. So there was uh an action team leader and then an operations buddy. And so we were getting operations input, but then we were also getting the subject matter out. So if it was an HR-led pillar, then there would still be an operations buddy. And so we would create the KPIs together, and then of course, leadership would say, Yeah, those KPIs sound good. And this was a very in, I will say this was a very internal plan based on what the we were just um completing a couple acquisitions. And so the one Russell plan, it was for that season of the company's life, was what was needed in order to really help all of our teams across our new offices feel connected um to the mission and the processes and the way that we serve clients and all of that. So that was that intention of that plan was very internal workings versus uh the most recent strategic plan I was a part of was much more externally facing kind of how we go to market, who do we serve, a very different brand of strategic plan, I would say. So I've been a part of both. Um, I think that the internal plan, having that input from team members was extremely important because we were impacting the way that they experience the work. Um and so, yes, we absolutely communicated it. And we, I mean, if you're over communicate or you feel that you're overcommunicating it, you're probably doing it just right. It's that seven times rule. That people need to hear it seven times for it to stick. Um, that was certainly the case for us. And I would say my my final note about change management, and this was this is probably in a lot of change books, so I didn't come up with this, is there are going to be people who still hate it.

unknown 22:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

You are, and that is okay. There is going to be, I don't remember if it's 10% or 20%. Somebody will correct me in your comments, but but there will be a the laggards that will not accept your change. And guess what? Don't waste your energy on them. You have to you have to work with the rest and get them excited because there's just going to be people who it's not for them. And that's that's okay as leaders. We can't spend all of our time on the 20% because that 80% needs us and need and is excited about the change. So let's harness that.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

I so so much good here. I'm gonna work backwards on that last piece. I appreciate you calling that out. And I think a lot of leaders need to give themselves permission to be able to draw that line. You know, we talk about one of the things that we do is an emerging leaders program, and there are a lot of companies that will look at and it's like, hey, you know, so and so is a rock star. We don't need to worry about them, they're a rock star. This person over here is struggling. Let's try to invest in them and make them to the 50% marker. And it's like the rock star that is the emerging leader, let's make sure they're the ones being invested in, right? Like we're we're calling it that emerging leaders program for a reason, is we want to invest in them. And and I think that's hard. There's the you know, the save everybody, the the we can fix and solve and and change everybody. And I think a lot of leaders struggle with that, um, is is kind of a recurring theme that I hear. Uh, so I I love that you you called that out. The other, the other one that I want to call out, I had uh Jackie Fisher, who is the vice president of people and culture at Judo Construction Company, her episode aired uh maybe it's May 20th, maybe it aired on the the the last Thursday or this Monday, May 18th. Go listen to it. It's a great episode if you're listening to this one. But she called herself the chief repeating officer. And she was like, we repeat, we repeat, we repeat, we repeat over and over and over again. Because if you're in a big room and there's communication going out, 50% of those people are dialed in. The other 50 are on Slack, they're on Teams, their kid is calling, their wife is texting, all of the above. And so you have to be able to do that and do it effectively. So I love the call out to that. And then I have a question, which is you set all of this up, it's amazing, everybody's on board, we're all high-fiving, and now we still have to do it. And it's three months later, and it's six months later, and it's 12 months later. And aside from change being scary and intimidating, which we'll talk about in a second, the the second biggest hurdle we see is that change doesn't stick. The holding people accountable, holding people capable, uh, having dashboards and KPIs that we're now re-meeting with, and we're saying, hey, everybody, like this is not just uh a thing that we did at the all hands off-site meeting. This is a part of the company moving forward, and it's now integrated into the work. So just from your perspective, any advice on how to help make change stick and how to build that into the plan and the strategy and all of the other amazing pieces of this puzzle, the action team, the action team leaders, and and the pillars all together.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, definitely need dedicated people. It can't be an ad hoc thing. It can't be somebody's job that they do after they do their job. I think that was something that was very smart about the role that they created for me at Russell was that I got to focus on it all day. Um, I mean, I had other areas of the business that I um was influencing, but really what brought me a lot of joy and and and where I think I added the most value was probably in that sort of, okay, we set the strategy and that was a big team sport. Um, and now it's time to keep those, you know, kind of keep the initiative kind of management, sort of the PMO. If you're a really big company, you have a project management office. If you're really small, it's you. It's you listening to this podcast. Um, and so I I find that part of the work to be pretty fun, getting those things going, um, ensuring that there's process, you know, sort of processes in place for how we're reporting out or what the dashboards look like, all of that. All of that's pretty fun. Um, but you have to have somebody, you kind of have to say, you, you are the the this is the person. This is this is my ownership. You know, you live and breathe. And one of the other things that um I come back to all the time. I don't think a month goes by where I don't recommend Chip and Dan Heath Switch, How to Change and Change is hard. I mean, you got it. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:06

And upstream by Dan Heath is unbelievable. Yeah, I just read a book.

SPEAKER_02 27:12

Yes, yes, yes, yes. He's just so fantastic. So Switch, How to Change When Change is Hard is like one of the books that I come back to every couple years. Um, and it talks about kind of three three things that we need in order to accomplish change. Um on a on a personal level is kind of what this book is about, but I think it applies um to profess to professional life. So the first is the is the data, the the the brain. So imagine an elephant with a rider on it walking through the jungle. So do you have it, Alec? You got it? Elephant, I'm there in the jungle.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

So in change, the rider, the rider on this, who's bigger? The rider or the elephant?

SPEAKER_00 27:57

The elephant.

SPEAKER_02 27:58

Very good job. So the rider is the data, the logic, the we need to change because revenue is good. You know, that you know that that's the that's the the that's the rider, that's the brain. So it's the the elephant is the heart, the emotions, the the the why, the the the the heart strings about why, you know, we donate at a make a wish, Gala, because we feel something, right? Um, but the the one that people forget, so they they can they know, okay, I gotta appeal to the emotions, I gotta appeal to the brain, but the one that they forget that I love is shape the path. The elephant, if you put little food along the path for the elephant, he's gonna stay on the path. But if you let the path get overgrown, he's gonna run off into the woods. And this is not my this is not Melissa. This is the Heath brothers who are this is not Melissa's idea. I'm just trying to sell this book for them. Um, and um so what we need to remember as leaders is the heart is bigger. We we focus too much a lot of times on the dashboards and the KDIs and the stats, and those are all important things. Absolutely. We must we must pay attention to our numbers. Know your numbers. I said it to my team all the time. Know your numbers. Um, but we also need to remember to shape the path. So if change management is going to work in your organization today, you can have the best darn strategy known to man. But if you don't make it easy for your people to make those changes by changing the processes, eliminating the friction, whatever it is, they're making change. They're not gonna change, they're gonna run into the jungle. So we need to create the right pathways, the right processes to make it easy to change.

SPEAKER_00 29:51

I mean, we're recording this. It's 1034. That's probably gonna be on LinkedIn by 12:30. Um, I'm I'm pulling that snippet out. I think we'll send a note to to Chip and Dan about maybe some residuals or referral um for Switch. Uh, I love upstream. It's it's one of my favorite books by them. And then uh I just finished uh uh Made to Stick, which is all about communication. And it's a it's a much shorter read. It's also a really good audiobook. Um, but they uh it's it's it's uh it's gold for me. Like this one, I I probably pick up similar to you with with Switch. It's like, oh, I just didn't even go gonna go to that one chapter to remind myself that one thought process. So I love that. We'll include the links to those books in the in the show notes. Um, and I think it hit on one of the final questions I was gonna ask before we talk a little bit about lead her and some some final takeaways was just where do we go wrong? And I love this this shape the path uh conversation is, and that's why I asked about the KPIs earlier. When I was at uh a life insurance conference earlier this year in Nashville in March, I read I led a round table event on change management. And we had some senior directors, you had managers, and then you had individual contributors, and they all had different perspectives. But the theme when it worked, when change worked, was when they all saw what the end result was supposed to be. And it's while it's not exactly the same as putting the the food out for the elephant on the path, we're showing where the path is headed. And when they all got it wrong, even the directors and below, anybody that was talking about change getting it wrong, it was we didn't really know why we were changing. It was we're changing to change and we need to do this because the competitor is doing this or this. And they never felt like there was a connection to what the change was going to create. And somebody, I can't give anybody credit for this because I don't know who said it, um, because it was a bunch of people, but I had asked a question about well, how do you how do you sell the the the reason to change? And they kind of corrected me and I loved it. They said, uh, don't look at it as selling. You need to connect the person uh to the end vision of the change and the connection to the change, the connection to the mission, even if they disagree with it, they will at least be connected to the reason behind it, and it's going to increase the likelihood that they, you know, get on board at some point. And I I remember just being like, well, that's it. That's the session, folks. Uh that's the that's the piece of the puzzle right there. But I think it it it really lends itself to this kind of idea of the shape, the path, show the path, show the yellow brick road that leads to the I don't know, Emerald City. Yeah, thank you. I I I saw Wicked One, didn't see Wicked Two. So I need to I need to catch up on that. All right. I wanna I want to just change gears a little bit and talk about leader. Uh for those that are at home, it's gonna be lead and then in parentheses, H and then ER. We'll tag Melissa and the page on that. But you founded this around this belief that people do their best work when they're connected to their careers and their communities. And I love that defining definition. That's you know, you said it similarly in our our prep call, but you looked around and within your community, you saw that there was something that didn't exist and needed to. So can you just give us some background? Tell us a little bit more about leader, what gap were you filling, who did you build it for? And what is it, what does it look like and and where is it going in 2026, 2027, and beyond?

SPEAKER_02 33:48

Yeah, thanks. This is this is one of the my favorite topics, and we're celebrating 10 years this year. So uh pretty, pretty proud of the work that Leader is doing. And um, so we match women with mentors um to help fuel their career and community engagement. And it really started from I was uh uh not not dissimilar to where I'm at today in this kind of career pause, but 10 years ago, I made a career pivot. So I'm all about these P words pivot, pause. So in in 2015, I made a career pivot from um a nonprofit role. I worked in blood banking and I in a kind of like an account management type of role, and I pivoted to being the director of marketing at uh a law firm. And it was a pretty big change.

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:39

And I thought to myself, after you know, getting the offer and sort of celebrating, I thought, well, gosh, how did that happen? Like, how did we go from law banking to law firm, marketer? And it really came down to a couple things. Um, it was my community involvement and it was mentors. I was not the most qualified for the job. In fact, the managing partner lovingly told me a couple of years in, like, hey, you actually weren't the most qualified for the job, but you were really well connected and we liked that about you. And so the lesson here is um, you know, get involved in your community because it's the right thing to do. Yes. We should be involved in our communities. That's why you should do it, but also because it really does open you up to meeting people in your community that you would not meet in the four walls of whatever building you might work in or outside of. And so I thought, gosh, how can I help more women do what I did or you know, a version of what I did in terms of just a career pivot or to achieve the goals that they set for themselves. More women on boards, more women in leadership roles, more women doing the things that light them up. And so this light them up is kind of the theme. And if you go to our website, it's all like fire and ignited. Our mentors are called match, you know, matched. And so we're we're all about fire, fire starters. And so, all this is to say, I really just started talking to people in the community. I researched and started talking to people in the community, and there wasn't an organization that was doing something like this. A lot of the professional development for women at that time was very conference-based, very one-to-many. And there's a place for that. We we need to come together as women and learn and and grow and connect, and that's important. And I think that then we can apply some of those learnings and more of that one-on-one setting to be able to say, hey, listen, Alec, I'm struggling. My team members are, you know, sad. And I don't know how to help them. Yeah. You know, whatever it is. I'm giving a silly example. But I think that mentor, I think mentorship really does help women see themselves. And it, you know, like it can kind of be a mirror. Um, it can, it can really help build confidence. And so, so I started it because people were like, Yeah, yeah, that doesn't exist. You should you should try this. And so started the process and and got a board together and got our 501c3 and all and all those kind of logistical things. And and um Royal Neighbors of America, which is a large fraternal life insurance um company here based in in the Quad Cities, they give out this Nation of Neighbors Award grant, um, which um they give it out to 10 people nationwide who are impacting the lives of women and girls in their communities. And they took a chance on me because I hadn't really done anything like thing yet, but they liked my idea. And so they were really the seed money from a from a nonprofit standpoint and really showed belief in me and the idea that mentorship matters. And so from that $10,000, um, other funders took notice. We were able to raise um private donations, corporate donations, other large community grants. And so the rest is history. Uh, 10 years in, we've matched 1,400 women with mentors and are really um, I think kind of one of one of the leading voices for kind of women professional development in our community. Um, where will we go from here? I, you know, I am so proud of the the work that's being done because it doesn't one of the cool things about being a founder. Um during COVID, I was running Total Solutions and I had a COVID kindergartner and I was completely overwhelmed. And I I resigned from all the boards that I sat on, including the one that I founded.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 38:40

I have to come I have to get my kid to learn how to read, and I gotta keep this business alive.

SPEAKER_01 38:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

And I and I said no to everything else, like so many of us, right? That just needed to stay alive physically, physically, literally, yes, kind of spiritually, mentally, spiritually, all of the above. Yes. And so I um I I stopped serving as a board member in for the organization um in 2021, and it's thriving. So a lesson to you all, if there's founders listening, that it's okay to let go a little bit. It really is. I know. I mean, I'm just talking about a little, little, little nonprofit in my in my corner of the universe, but it is okay to let go a little bit and it will thrive. And I'm actually having coffee with the executive director tomorrow. We, of course, stay in touch. I still mentor someone, she's delightful. I attend all the events, it's fab fabulous, but they don't they don't need me in the day today.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

Oh, I love it. I just a quick plug. One of my other favorite books, uh, for founders is called Founder Brand. Uh it is it's by Dave Gerhart, and it is about separating the founder brand versus the company brand. Oh, interesting. That's funny. It's a it's it's really it's more so on the marketing and the brand and the external viewpoint. But if if the only reason the organization gets any love is because there's a founder involved, the the lifeline of that organization becomes much shorter. And so it's a really interesting read. I do want to just say, so we've had on the construction side, uh, we're on a run right now with Juno uh on May 21st, Gil Bain, Maggie Reed. We've got Krista Robinson uh at the Whites Company on the life sciences side, um, Julie Blastingham at Univo IRB, Jeannie Hecht at Lexitas Pharma Services, and then Tony Burkhard at uh at Pfizer Center one. And there's always been a little bit of this thread of women in leadership as well. And certainly within those two industries, women in construction and women in the life sciences, that are uh, you know, historically predominantly male focused industries, all of them have said and doubled and tripled and quadrupled down on mentors and mentors and mentors and mentors. And some of that is organizations at the highest level need to invest in their people and invest in coaching and invest in mentors, but also finding programs like leader and diving in and there being more access to that. Um, you know, we had Carolina Alarco on from Latinos in Bio, which now has almost 1800 members in it and it's it's only seven years old. And they started it because they realized, hey, there's actually a handful of Latinos within the bio space, and we don't even know each other. And we wish we had these mentors. And it's just so great that the momentum behind this, that somebody heard your your mission and your vision and invested in it. It sounds like the the continuation of that is um is going to be great in in 2026, 2027, and beyond. So I just wanted to one, kudos and thank you for doing that. But two, like this is not an asilo. It is uh it's so essential. And every great leader that we have interviewed, um, no matter who they are, has talked about the importance of mentors. But I think really specifically the women leaders that we've interviewed highlight the mentorship playing a bigger role for them um every step of the way, which is pretty incredible to see too.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

That's so great. Yep, mentors still have them. Just because I started a mentorship organization doesn't mean I graduated out.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Yes, yeah. We we have more than ever. Yeah, we had uh we had Callan Mond, who you know played a couple of years in the NFL and was great at Texas AM and now does his art thing. And we were talking about mentorship within the NFL. And he's like, people who think that Nick Sabin and Bill Belichick and Tom Brady don't have mentors, like you're crazy. Those are the ones, like they've got five or six that they're calling and learning from. The higher you get, arguably, the more important that mentorship actually is because you have those blind spots and and you're just put in a in a different perspective. Melissa, this has been unbelievable. We're at the 43 minute mark, and I have like my whole notebook over here is just filled with notes and themes, but I can't let you go without going through the rapid fire questions and some positive gossip. So are you ready to are you ready to go through the rapid fire leadership questions?

SPEAKER_02 43:25

So ready.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

All right, we get 30 seconds each. You get bonus points. Uh, this the point system is flawed. Uh, I created it and I change it every episode. So I'll let you know how you do.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Um I'm really competitive. So I all right.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

So that's good to know. 30 seconds or less for each question. Question number one What is one leadership habit that you rely on every day?

SPEAKER_02 43:52

I started doing a people list instead of a to do list. So, I mean, you still have your task, sure, but the people People list is who needs connection, who needs appreciation, who needs a little extra love this uh today or this week. And uh it's a great habit. I encourage everyone to try it.

SPEAKER_00 44:09

13 bonus points right out of the gate because one, one, I love it. I need to implement that. And two, no one has ever answered that. Uh, we're you know, we're 40 plus episodes in, and nobody has given us that answer. So huge bonus points for that one. 13 is actually the most bonus points I've ever given. Um, so we'll see. We'll see. Question number two What is the most underrated skill that a leader needs to succeed today?

SPEAKER_02 44:37

The ability to laugh at yourself. Ooh, I think we take, you know, I said this a lot. We I think this was a mantra at at Russell, take the work seriously, not yourself. And that's that we didn't come up with that, but I think it's really important. We gotta laugh at work and we gotta have some fun. And if we if it's too serious and we're just all about the kind of the grind, uh we want happy people. Happy people. Yeah, it uh yeah, that's my that's my that's my advice for leaders. Have a little fun.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Yeah, it uh it's another answer we haven't gotten before. So bonus points get given. Uh, the episode that that aired last Thursday, so that might have been May 15th, uh or may May 14th was with Jeannie Hack, who is the CEO at Lexitas Pharma Services, and she talked about the the one thing that they all really came to agree on. They're doing extremely important work in the optimology space, and they need to create uh a way for people to see better in the world, literally. And they all agreed we do serious work, but we don't take ourselves too seriously. So they all have code names and they've got little mascots for each other. And it, you know, it's just it's so refreshing to hear leaders at the highest level speak in that way, because I think uh a common misconception or a misunderstanding is oh, if you're if you're running the ship, if you're the if you're on the executive team, that you're not allowed to to to crack a joke or have fun or admit like, hey, I don't know this right now, and I I need to figure it out. So I love that answer. And question number three is gonna be on the flip side of it, which is what is something that great leaders should stop doing?

SPEAKER_02 46:24

Meetings or reduce reduce your meetings. I'm sure you've heard this one. Uh we probably meet too much in general, and we could probably give people back their time in a way that truly allows them to either refresh, do meaningful work, connect more organically with each other in sort of the the connections that happen at the proverbial water cooler, but we have no time to go to the water cooler because we're in meetings.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Yeah, I uh I love that. Believe it or not, no one's ever said that specifically. One of my favorite answers was Julie Blassingham saying no more emails. And I was like, I'm in. Like, let's just let's just get rid of emails. Uh, but it's it is a great answer. Uh, last one here. What is the best leadership advice that you have ever received?

SPEAKER_02 47:18

When things feel hard, connect with your team. So I was in a stressful season at work, and one of my wonderful direct reports peeked his head into my office and said, you know, you can come out and sort of called me out because he saw me just sort of probably just like hunched over my computer, which wasn't gonna solve anything. And so I think that reminder to get out, you know, stressful day, get out to where the work is happening, to get out to where the people are, go visit a client. Um, get out of your office.

SPEAKER_00 47:53

Yeah. Oh, I that's so good. It is, I'm I am the same way. We try not to have meetings on Wednesdays, which is great. However, sometimes that can lead to me not talking to a soul. And I am a parrot and I like me, and I'm like, I'm trying to solve this problem, trying to solve it. And finally, I'm like, all right, where's Amanda? Where's Lauren? I need to call you and just like have a human conversation. And suddenly it's like, okay, I was building this ladder that I was climbing of stress. And it wasn't, you know, my fault, it wasn't on purpose, but sometimes you just get so locked into a moment that a little bit of connection um can can really make a big difference. You might be the first person, Melissa, to go through this and have four answers that nobody else has given. So I win. You win the House Cup, uh, which for our Harry Potter fans at home is a really big deal, uh, depending on depending on where you are at. The final question that I have for you, we've got a section that we're now referencing. We're calling it positive gossip. It is an ode to Tony Burkhard, who uh brought this uh philosophy about talking positive about people behind their back, which I love. And so I'm gonna give you an opportunity, Melissa. Who is a leader that you believe that we should interview next? Somebody who is doing really meaningful work and that the activating greatness audience could learn from.

SPEAKER_02 49:21

Oh, that's other. I know so many.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

I feel almost you can rattle them off.

SPEAKER_02 49:25

Rattle them off. So the one I would say is Todd Gipple, who's the CEO of QCR Holdings, uh, which is a holding company for famous banks throughout Iowa, um, including Quad City Bank and Trust here in my community. And Todd is a just intentional, brilliant leader. And I think uh your audience would love hearing Todd's leadership philosophy in his journey.

SPEAKER_00 49:52

Oh, I love it. And my favorite part of this is being able to take the little snippet of the video and send it to Todd and say, look at how nice Melissa talked about me. And then I get to guilt them in to being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 50:04

And oh gosh, he's gonna love that.

SPEAKER_00 50:08

Oh, and and as you go forward, if you're you know, two weeks later and you're thinking, hey, you know, there's some there's some folks within the leader community that you want to shine a light on to, please send them over. We'd be we'd love to have them as part of this podcast as well. You know, it's it's why we created it was these conversations. I feel uh two times smarter after 51 minutes just learning from you. And it's been the number one piece of feedback that we've gotten on the podcast and why we've continued to push it so aggressively is like each episode, there's a little nugget from a different perspective and how you broke down change management, the books that you recommended, just kind of the philosophy that you have is so applicable to what every company is going through. And you said it, you know, without really even highlighting it. You had joined the construction industry with no background on the construction world. And I think one of the great things about leadership is whether you are a Fortune 500 company and you have 40,000 people or you've got 15 people, and what no matter what industry you're in, so much of this applies across the board. And it needs to be tailored to your organization and your size, certainly. But it's not possible without leaders like you, Melissa. So, really, like, thank you for the work that you do in the community. I obviously have a uh very heartfelt connection to the Quad Cities. Um, that's where Megan and my wife's family is from and will be next week for my birthday. So it's uh I'm I'm all in on the work that you have done. Um, and I think that everybody listening to this is probably feeling much smarter today than they were uh even just yesterday. So thank you again. Any final thoughts on your end before I let you out of here or any final takeaway that you would want people to have from this conversation?

SPEAKER_02 52:03

No, I thank you for the time. It's definitely fun to talk about these things. And I think that we often get so into the work or the to-do list that we forget to kind of lift our head up and learn and connect. And so kudos to you for doing this podcast and to listeners who are taking that pause to say, I'm gonna sharpen my saw, I'm gonna be inspired, I'm gonna take this time for myself so that I can be energetic and help you know activate greatness for people because that's what it's all about. We want people to be great.

SPEAKER_00 52:39

I love it. I love the tie-in of activating greatness in your in your final send-off. That's uh that's a real that's a real PR pro right there. That's gonna end up on LinkedIn at some point. Uh, as always, everybody that is listening, we're somehow 40 episodes in. The goal is 80 episodes here in 2026. Every Monday, every Thursday, they continue to come out. We can only do that if you continue to listen, you continue to give feedback, you go connect with Melissa on LinkedIn, tell her that the Activating Greatness podcast is where you found her. And as always, leave a five-star review. It's working, but I got to prove that it works to our team day in and day out. So the more love that you share, the easier it is for us to continue this. And uh, we'll see you on the next episode of Activating Greatness.