The Standard Is the Standard: Kayt Leonard on Killing "Good Enough" Without Burning Out Your Team

In this episode of Activating Greatness, Alec McChesney sits down with Kayt Leonard, Director of Global Healthcare and Life Sciences Marketing at SAS, to explore what separates high achievers from high performers — and what it takes to build a team culture where people refuse to settle for good enough. Kayt breaks down the growing divide in today's workforce between those chasing growth and those going through the motions, why coaching has become an HR term people fear instead of a tool people seek, and how leaders must learn their people as humans — not just employees — before they can push them to their next level. She shares her framework for leading through constant change, protecting her team's focus, and resetting organizational standards in a world where expectations have been inverted. If you are building high-performing teams, navigating generational gaps in the workplace, or trying to create a coaching culture that actually sticks, this is the episode for you.

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 Muchesny. And each 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. Today's guest is Kate Leonard, Director of Global Healthcare and Life Sciences Marketing at SaaS, where she leads the messaging, positioning, and strategy behind how SaaS shows up across pharma, healthcare, and public health organizations around the world. Kate brings a unique perspective shaped by experience across startups, large global organizations, and leadership roles in patient recruitment and in commercialization. She is known for pushing teams to move faster, to think bigger, and operate at a higher standard. At the core of her leadership philosophy is a strong belief in coaching, direct feedback, and building people who are willing to push beyond good enough. And that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about what it really takes to build high-performing teams, how to give and receive tough feedback, why coaching should be constant, and how leaders can close the gap between stagnation and true performance. Now, Kate, I have had a couple of podcasts in my last few companies that I've worked at. And you have been on the list for a guest on a couple of those over the last year and a half. And I feel like I have finally done my due diligence and landed Kate Leonard as a guest on the podcast. So thank you so much for taking time out of your day to share your story and your expertise with us. Before I start running, I think it's time for me to stop talking as much. And I'd love to give you a chance to maybe further introduce yourself and really, you know, why you're excited to talk about this topic as well for the Activating Greatness audience.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Well, Alec, if you ask any questions that are too tough, I'm going to run away and never say yes to podcasts again ever. But no, thanks so much for having me on. I'm glad we were able to find the time to make it work. I think that the work that you guys are doing within the leadership space is so important and it's so needed across the the entire healthcare and life sciences industries in particular. One of the things that I've been really focused on is just figuring out, you know, how do we take all of the advancements and innovations that we're trying to lead from a technological perspective, a human perspective, a society perspective, and actually make those tangible within the teams that are trying to push that work. And it's a big thing to consider, right? So it's uh work that I'm super passionate about. I love, you know, taking these big business ideas and making sure that we're actually putting them through our teams in a human way to drive impact for the end users or the patients or the members or the consumers. So I'm excited to chat through kind of what that looks like, how we get there, and maybe some of my uh years of yelling across a soccer field turning into leading teams, uh, maybe is helpful, maybe not. We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 3:31

Oh, I I love it. And I think it is gonna be helpful, especially as we talk about feedback in today's environment. And I was going through your LinkedIn uh ahead of our conversation. I always love uh, you know, when a LinkedIn bio is clearly written by the person who the bio is about and yours kind of breaks down, the two things that you're focused on, how to improve the time in the triathlon on the swimming, and then also how AI is integrated across the board. And I certainly am gonna ask a few bad podcast questions about the AI and the technology and how we handle that in today's workforce. But I think one of the things that you and I talked about on our prep call, and one of the things that we even kind of hit on maybe right as we were getting ready to record is this divide in the workforce today, or a potential divide in in those within the workforce between people who are maybe stagnant and checking boxes, and people who are actively chasing growth and impact. And I think that this is a really interesting line of questioning. I also think it's one where a lot of people walk on their tippy toes when they have this conversation, and you try to kind of, hey, I don't want to go too far and start talking about the work-life balance or this go get it mentality. And one of the themes of the show is activating greatness, certainly. But the other one is that hey, good enough is is neither, and we need to strive for what's next and what's excellent while having and addressing the conversation about burnout. And so I'm curious, this is not a bad podcast question, but it's a tough one and it's right out of the gate. What are you seeing between this divide in the workforce? And what do you see as a separator between the two? Or how do we bridge teams so that way we're all working forward in one direction to really become the best versions of ourselves and the best versions of our organizations?

SPEAKER_01 5:39

Yeah, you know, it's a tough, it's a tough question. And I think I'm probably gonna get some flack for this answer, but um I love it. You know, I I grew up in a family that was dedicated to working hard. Um, very, like, very humble family, military family, marine family in particular. And uh the idea of not giving it 110% on anything that you do was like never, never allowed. If you didn't do it right and do it the best way possible the first time, you were redoing whatever it is over and over again. So we were the family that, you know, we'd stay late after practice to keep kicking balls into the soccer goal. Or uh, you know, if if our parents saw that we were, you know, doing the one mile test at school and we weren't going as fast as they thought we were, like we were coming home and we were running later, right? So it was just this kind of this mindset from you know the very beginning of anything that you're gonna do, if it is worthwhile enough to put your energy and attention to, put all of your energy and attention to. And that doesn't mean have an 80-hour work week, it doesn't mean sacrifice your friends and your family. It means when your body is in that present space of working, when you are within those work hours, within when you're with your team, when you're working on a project, you are giving all of yourself to that thing within that time space. And I think that today there's been so much focus on the work-life balance conversation that this like grind culture or hustle culture or like work really hard to achieve hard things and do hard things. Um, it almost that's kind of turned into cancel culture. Like people don't want to hear that you worked really hard and got to this next level and you you did X, Y, Z, and you grew. Um, and some people think of that as well, you're just an overachiever, or or you're just a try hard. Or maybe you were given an opportunity to work in an organization to make an impact and you take that seriously and you want to drive that impact. And I think we're seeing less and less of people who are aggressively chasing those accomplishments, and more and more folks saying, Well, I'll get to it when I get there, or I can only control what I can control, which I think is a miss. I think that we're we have so many tools at hand to innovate and to accelerate in every single industry that folks work in, but we're throttling not by the technology, we're throttling by people's willingness to like really dive in and try hard.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Whew. If you're wrong, then I don't want to be right in this, right? Like if there's if there's flack that comes from that, I love the way you broke it down. We've had a couple of other guests talk about this in in different ways. One of the ones is our CEO here at Velocity Advisory Group, Dave Feckman, who often talks about, is this my best work? And asking that question when you are doing a thing, is this my best work? You need to honestly be able to answer that. And when he said it on the podcast, we we posted a little clip of it. I actually had people that were reaching out and saying, I love it. And then I had other people reaching out saying, Man, that's that's a gateway to burnout. And that's a gateway to and I'm like, is asking the question, is this my best work really the gateway to to burnout? I I don't see it. And I love the way that you explained it, whether it's on the soccer field, the triathlon, if it's running, if it is at work, if it's worth the time to do it, why not do it to the best of the ability that we have? And some days that ability might be 70%, right? Like if I want to go take a boxing class later today, I might not have the same that I have on Sunday, but I'm still gonna give it the best that I have in this moment. And I love the contrast to what that looks like at work. We often associate that with 80-hour work weeks. And I've been vulnerable on this podcast at times talking about how I am really, really good at my job for three weeks. And then historically, I burn out for a week and then I will do the same thing. And something that I've been really working on is that consistency and understanding what that actually looks like for me so that way I'm not just a high achiever, but I'm a high performer on a consistent basis day in and day out, and that looks different for each person. So I'm gonna ask a follow-up question to this. How do you, as a as a leader inside an organization, how do you coach people to this? Because you're gonna have someone like me who has the tendency to go too far. And really what makes me better is finding out what pockets I need to be going 110% in and then when to turn off the engine. And then you might have somebody else who is, hey, they need that push to even get to 110%. So how do you look at this? Excuse me, how do you look at this from a leader's perspective, from a team's perspective, and be able to get to that result across the board?

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, I love that question because I think it also taps into these kind of like leadership philosophies that everybody wants to bucket themselves into. As a leader, you don't you don't get to show up and say, This is my leadership style, everyone on my team adapt to me, right? Like the best leaders don't have a leadership style that they stay like stick to through and through. The best leaders learn their people and lead the people the way that those people need to be led. And usually what that looks like is also understanding who you have, who's on your team, what their strengths are, and understanding what engine, to your point, like what engine do they have before you burn it out. So you've got folks that are maybe on a Corolla, right? There it takes them a little bit longer to get zero to 60. They've got, you know, the consistency, they're gonna last forever, but you have to manage that in one way. You've got other folks that are Ferrari that can go out like crazy, but they're not the daily drivers, right? Like they're not doing that high accomplished, high achieving work every single day. So, how are you learning your people as humans, not just as employees, not just as you know, staff members with a title, but how are you learning your employees as humans to understand where you can push them and understand like where are they sandbagging? Where are they not given their best? The thing about work is that there's life around it. So if you've got folks who are, you know, dealing with family thing, X, Y, and Z, I'm not gonna push them in a certain season because they've got bigger things than work they have to deal with. But if you also have somebody who you know is, you know, working towards the next level, I'm not going to, you know, block my words when I give them feedback about how to get to that next level or how to show up with the best version of their work. Um, I think the hardest part though is, you know, understanding is that person being fully transparent and vulnerable with you when they're telling you what their capabilities are? And are you believing them when you see the capabilities in action? And then from there, I think you can kind of baseline what each person needs and how you show up as a leader.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

I I mean, I wanna I wanna highlight everything that you just said, put it on a billboard and and double and triple down on it, Kate. I think the the thing that excites me about where you went with that is too many people would associate your first answer about hard work and we that's what we do, and they would not think that you have the opinions that you just had in the second answer. And being able to blend those together, the whole human being, knowing that when Alec has a one-year-old at home, I'm different now than when I didn't have a one-year-old at home, and I'll be different again in five years. And what I can give changes. And I talk all the time about my favorite hour of work most weeks is on Saturday morning when mom goes back to bed and Maxine goes to bed uh in the morning for that morning nap. I have an hour where like I am in a flow state and I lock in for a little while and I love it. That's not always going to be the case, but right now it is. And when you're when you're a leader and you can adapt to that and and accept that and love it and help me fuel it, I'm ready to run through a brick wall. And the other thing that I need to highlight and double-click on is the leadership style. We talk about leadership style all the time, and you kind of flip that on its head where the leadership style needs to be about the people and the humans that you have on your team. And one of the things that we always talk about is the golden rule of treat others how you want to be treated is absolute hogwash within business and within leadership. You need to treat them how they want to be treated, and you need to coach them how they want to be coached and really build upon that. So I'm gonna I'm gonna pause. So much good there. I've got a follow-up question, but I want to give you a chance if there's anything that you want to add after I ran my mouth for a couple of minutes after that answer uh that you want to add on top of that, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

Well, the only thing that I'll add on that is, you know, I think we have to, it has to be top of mind from a leadership perspective, but you also have to understand like the culture in which you work and make sure that that's allowed. So you can't be a strong leader in a place that is going to hamstring, you know, the way that you engage with your employees. I'm super lucky. I've had wildly tough coaches at some organizations, I've had really hands-off coaches at other organizations. Now, you know, working at SaaS, it's we've been around for 50 years and our CEO still consistently says it's all about the people. Uh, the culture is world class. And the reason for that is it's not because, you know, you get all of the perks and benefits of Disneyland. It's because we trust our people and we trust our leaders to be able to push in certain directions. So I think that that's the other aspect of it, right? Is you can't just be a good leader by yourself. You have to be a good leader, uh, you know, enabled by the institution or the company or the space that you're in. Because at the end of the day, if the culture that's coming down from your CEO or the, you know, the SVPs or whomever it might be is different from what you're trying to push within your team, you're never gonna win.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, it's uh, you know, one of my favorite sayings on the B2B marketing side is life is too short to work for a CEO who doesn't get marketing. And it's it's very similar here, where if the culture, the it's all about the people and that culture is culture's gonna beat strategy if you have the right culture, right? If you don't have that leadership from the top down, then it puts you in a really difficult place to succeed, especially as a leader that's trying to enact change. And you you said something there about the coaching that I have to, I've got to bring up because coaching is at the core of everything that velocity does. It's at the core of everything that I am. I think about every coach that I've ever had, you know, playing through college soccer, playing basketball, baseball. Even now, today, the toughest coaches I have are the ones that I can remember just grilling me and yelling and getting after me, and me being like, I love you. Uh, I am I am literally obsessed with this coaching that I am getting as a high school senior. And then now what we see is that coaching is viewed as a negative element in half of the business world, which blows my brain in in every way, because you have all of these leaders that we interview on this podcast, and we have all of the leaders that we work with, and and we've had all the industries, construction, insurance, the NFL talk about coaching, mentoring, coaching, mentoring. And yet it is still viewed as a a negative piece of the puzzle. So the question that I have for you is why is that the case? Why do organizations and and people at the individual level get this wrong that coaching should be a positive and it should be an investment, whereas we're still looking at it as a a harbinger or a negative impact on growth?

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Yeah, I think, man, what a what a fun topic um in a lot of different ways. I get a little fired up about this. Uh, I think there's two aspects of it. I think that one, coaching has become an HR term, and people get scared of it. They they they just get scared of the word that it is without even understanding what it is. So that's one part of it. I think the other part of it is um, I don't know, Alec, you've probably seen like all the memes or the gifts of uh, you know, you grew up with participation trophies and it's showing, or you never had to uh run suicides on a Sunday morning, right? There's there's this other aspect where people think the word coaching is synonymous with like competitiveness or you know, the sports thing, and it it's not just limited to that. Um, but I think between like the HR scariness of what the term coaching has turned into, plus some people's fears around like, wait a second, I'm not I'm not a sports person. What does this coaching even mean for me? But in reality, whether we call it coaching, whether we call it feedback, tough whatever it is, it's this for me, it's this premise that you believe in your people so much that you want to see the best out of them, but you also want them to believe in themselves enough that they're gonna deliver the best out of them. Um, there was this coach, I can't even remember the name or the team, uh, this year during the women's ACC conference. Yes, Maryland, Maryland, yeah, she's screaming, I believe in you so much, you have to believe in yourself. And at the press conference, the the players like, yeah, she wants the best out of me, and I want the best too. That shouldn't be just limited to sports, right? Like that should be in the workplace and that should be accepted in the workplace. And I do think that the people who are going to achieve the most are the ones who understand that tough bosses or tough feedback or tough coaching, it's very rarely about you know being particular or being subjective. Most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, it's that that leader sees so much potential in you and they want to see that belief in yourself at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

I I love the I love the example. I don't know her name, but if you watch that clip of the Maryland coach out of context, you would think that she was the most mad you have ever been in the history of the world. And then when you get to lip read and you get to hear it, it's it's quite literally, this is your moment. You either want it or you don't. I can't believe I can't do all of this for you. And then the player goes off and and one stepped up in the fourth quarter and then was like, that was amazing for me, right? Like that that's the the buy-in that you need. I do agree that the the HR lens, a lot of times we talk about coaching and people can associate it with like a pip, right? Like, oh, I'm I've got issues. Whereas historically, when you think about it in the on the sports field, the more coaching you get, I you typically are gonna say, that means the coach believes in you and is investing in you. And when the coach goes quiet, you're probably gonna be riding the bench for the next couple of weeks when the coach stops talking to you. And I think there's just that flip that needs to happen. But I also think it's a little bit of this generational play in general about feedback. And we've had numerous conversations. I was at a construction event a couple of weeks back, and there were a lot of people raising their hands to say, Hey, how do we give feedback to the the younger millennials and certainly to Gen Z? Because they aren't interested in the feedback. They think it's criticism versus it being, you know, for the betterment of the industry or for themselves, certainly. And I always joke they needed to go up through journalism and get yelled at every day nonstop. Certainly growing up, Marines would have done the same thing, sports would have done the same thing. But how do we how do you learn to receive feedback? You did it as part of your upgrading upbringing, it sounds like, but how as leaders can we instill that in individuals? And I guess even a bigger question is can you teach that? Can you coach the ability to receive feedback in your opinion, Kate?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Yeah. I mean, I think that I think that kind of leaders and companies have we've gotten ourselves into this art into our own predicament in some ways, right? Like a lot of the generational gaps that we're seeing. If you think back six years ago, right? COVID hit, market went crazy. There was this hiring boom. All the companies were hiring too many people with wild packages, crazy benefits, they're competing like crazy. And you had these folks that were fresh out of college with not a ton of experience, but they were being bet on by these companies with massive packages, massive benefits, massive equity statements. Um, and and they kind of had the ability to say, Well, if I don't like it here, I'm gonna leave because I've got three other offers and I can go make some money, you know, other places. Yeah. So it kind of took the power out of the employer to say, these are the standards and expectations we have for you. And it flipped it around. And all of a sudden, these fresh new employees were now able to say, No, these are my expectations. You're gonna pay me and you're gonna give me benefits, and you're gonna give me the lifestyle that I want. And I'm also going to dictate to you what that looks like. And you're not allowed to email me after certain times, and you're not allowed to give me feedback. So I think there's just this massive shift, um, especially against you know, the baby boomer generation that came in, they put their head down, they did their stuff, good, bad, or ugly. It's it's a complete 180. So I think that companies have to stop allowing that. Like we have to hold a standard and we have to discipline against that standard, we have to promote against that standard, uh, and kind of get teams back to the fact of this is your job. You are being paid to deliver something, you're not being paid to uh, you know, tell us what we can and can't do within reason. But you work here if you want the free possibility and the um kind of the niceties of every aspect of your life in your own terms, in your own way, go start your own company. You have the ability to do that. But in the workplace right now, where there's teams or people are relying on you, I think companies have to kind of reset the standard and say, you know, if this is what accomplishment looks like, if this is what achievement looks like, that's what we promote against and that's what we amplify. We're not promoting just because of years of experience. We're not promoting because it's a political play. We're not promoting because someone complained about it. We're promoting based off of outcomes and delivery and watching someone grow to the next level.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

I'm just letting that sit for a minute. It's gonna be on LinkedIn as soon as it possibly can be. There is a level to this that is on the company, it's on the organizations and the leaders within it. But I love the standard language. The standard is the standard, and we have to reset that expectation. We have to demonstrate what right looks like within that standard, and then we have to live that on a consistent basis, and we're not wishy-washy on what that looks like because, oh, well, we love Alec or we love Kate, and so we're able to modify the standard for them, and it it we we change, and then you start to poke holes. Um, so much good there. I've got a weird follow-up question within that, and it kind of goes to your opener about AI, technology, T, like all of this stuff. It's nonstop change right now. It is hard to hold a standard when all of a sudden, you know, a truth social post changes the market, right? Like there are there are things on a Thursday that happen, and then on a Monday, I get an email from Gil Roth over at PBOA, and it's a different environment than it was three days ago. And there are requests and there are things, and we want you to use AI, but not use it that much, but use it here. And all of this change that is happening, if you don't have your head on a swivel, it does feel like this whirlwind. And so I'm curious when we talk about the standard, when we talk about the team and and each of them having their own humans, what's your approach right now as a leader with all of the change that's happening? Are you full transparency? Hey, this is where we're at right now, or just kind of walk us through as best you can. This is one of my bad podcast questions. I realize it's it's it's very vague, but I'm curious with everything that we're talking about, how does that actually play out when we are dealing with so much change today?

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Yeah, I think that um, you know, the more focus that your team has, the easier it is to discern what changes are distractions versus what changes you actually need to respond to. So I kind of view myself at this leadership layer of like the protective bubble of the team in some ways, of I need to be aware of all the changes that are happening. I need to be aware of kind of the swirl that's happening, but I only need to communicate the things that are going to actually be impacting my team because I don't need them distracted with anxieties or worries or even excitement about things that may or may not adjust 12, 24 hours later. So having the ability to know, you know, this is the direction we're going. Unless this change is going to tangibly impact that direction, we're not worrying about it. We're focused, we're keeping our heads down and we're doing the thing we need to do. But also understanding kind of, you know, when communication needs to happen, when assurety needs to be provided, uh, when protection needs to be there, and then also when you need to say, like, hey guys, I don't even know what's happening right now, but hold in there with me. Um, I think there's just like a lot of discernment. And ultimately that comes with experience and it comes with watching other leaders be able to do that well, and being able to go to a mentor or a coach that you have and say, all of this is chaotic. I need to be the rock for my team right now. How would you do it? And continue to get that guidance and that leadership, even as a leader, um, so that you can protect your team better.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

Yeah, I love the the protective bubble, right? Like there, there are too many times where we have our shiny four priorities, and then the shiny object flies by and everybody starts panicking about this one and that one and this one. If everything's a priority, nothing's a priority. And the moment we pull away, it is okay, we have these four. When this comes by, is it replacing one of those four? If it isn't, then the team might not even need to know about it right now. We we're focused on these four. This is what we're really good at. This is what is in front of us. And then if we do need to pull one in, it is hey, there were four. Now we're adding in a uh a different one. We're gonna remove one of these four and we're gonna figure out what that level is and how how we pull those levers. And I think you added it there. The the going to the mentor and coach, right? No matter how high we get up. In fact, the higher you get up, the more blind spots you have, the more gaps you have. And being able to go somebody, either internally or externally, that has that neutrality and objectivity, but has been in that seat before is in, you know, it's just so valuable to be able to bring that back. And you're trying to put the team in as good of a position as possible to succeed. And that ultimately, at the end of the day, is when we think about a coach, a general manager, a leader internally, that at the core is is really what they're responsible for. And it's a it's a great responsibility to be able to have, and it allows you to hold the team capable and accountable uh as part of the the goals that you have at the organizational level, too.

unknown 30:36

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

Oh, okay. We are we're flying by. I just looked down. It's 1210 Central Time. Um, this has been such a fun conversation. I've got one more uh line of questioning, and then we'll get into some rapid fire and then some positive gossip at the end. I'm curious, you know, we talk about the refusing to settle for good enough, and you referenced kind of being that that leader and the team that is you're gonna win and you're gonna go back and you're gonna watch the tape. You might lose or you might fall short, you're gonna go back and watch the tape, and we're always going to improve. And a little bit of that is within the project level, and it's also just in the, hey, we're continuously learning. I need you to be, you know, on the forefront of the AI technologies or listening to the audiobooks or being a part of this journal or on LinkedIn, whatever it might be. How do you look for that at the end of at the individual level? And then how do you build it at the team level? So it's something that that resilience is really just a part of the culture for the team and for the organization as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Oh, that's a good question. Yeah, yeah. Resilience is just it's such a hard thing to wrap your head, you're wrap your head around sometimes because even Alec to your to your point earlier, right? You're three weeks consistent, one week you're like, I I've grinded for three weeks, I need a break, I'm burnt out, and then get back to it. So that also kind of goes into resilience. Like how much can you pile on? How much can you handle? How much can you fight through? And how much hope can you keep in yourself and your team and in the the structure, the strategy that you're working against? I think that it comes down in a lot of ways to communication. Um but it also comes down to kind of an innate willingness within each staff member of wanting to grow and wanting to reach their own next level. I think that when we we talk about, you know, getting better, we talk about like reviewing the tape, for instance. Every great athlete in the world reviews their tape. We we have how many videos of Kobe Bryant saying that he was watching the tape, trying again in the gym when no one else was. And then on the leadership side too, there's plenty of leaders. Uh, the the previous CEO of American Express, Ken Chenal, loved and lived by. Like, how are we doing debriefs? How are we making sure that everything gets better? We can celebrate the wins for a second, but then we're gonna focus on how do we do that better and do that again and stay on top of our game. Because when we when we focus too much on celebrating the wins and not learning and seeing Aries to grow, eventually someone's gonna get better than us. They're gonna be more prepared, they're gonna be more focused, they're gonna deliver more effectively. Some people would say, Well, that's not fair. You're putting a lot of pressure on people to always grow. I would say, Yes, yes, I am putting pressure on people to always grow, always grow. Because if you're not growing, what are you doing? Like if you're not growing in your role, are you just waiting it out? Are you just showing up? Are you going through the motions? What kind of life is that? What type of career is that? Again, if you're going to put your energy towards something, put your energy to do it to the best of your abilities. Um, I think the resilience angle of that though is leaders have to understand kind of where that resiliency gap is, and then also make sure that they're they're communicating the right level of encouragement, but also the right level of constructive feedback to make sure that their capacity to be resilient uh gets stronger and stronger.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Yeah, I mean, so much good there. I'm glad that we went down that that thought process and the the learning piece of this. I I I've always heard, you always hear you can learn more from the losses than the wins. And lately I've been kind of flipping it on its head where you you can learn just as much from from both of them. But the problem is is we usually don't look at the wins for learning. Hey, we won, we moved on. Well, why did we win? Did we only win this deal because there was a referral? Did we only win this because of one thing? And what would have happened if we didn't have that one thing? Does that deal or does that opportunity, is that project some somehow fall flat and we we we weren't going to win that? And a lot of times you can actually find the gaps in there. Whereas sometimes I think when you try to learn from the loss, it's so easy to just point the finger at one thing and it's like, well, that's always the case. Our price is always that way, or this is always that way. And it's like, well, we need to dig one layer deeper than that. You didn't lose because you just missed the shot. You lost because you didn't spend the two minutes beforehand setting up that playbook, right? Or that play. So um I love it. Um, okay, this has been this has been so much fun. I've only got you for like 10 more minutes, which means we need to get through the rapid fire and we need to get through the closing question, that that positive gossip. And we didn't even get to talk about all of the fun technology stuff. I think you know, we got to talk coaching. I think that just means that you have to come back. We're, I think you're episode 36 uh that we're that we're gonna be launching. Maybe you come back for episode 72 in in November when we line up and we can talk about that forward looking for 2027. But you've got to enter the ring. You get 30 seconds per question. If you go over 30 seconds, it's okay, but I will boo. Uh, and you get bonus points if you go under 30 seconds, and you get bonus points if no one's ever answered the same way before. The point system is all made up in my head, uh, and I'm making it up in real time. Are you prepared for the rapid fire round?

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Um, I don't know, I'm scared now, but I think we can jump into it.

SPEAKER_00 36:33

That's right where I want you to be. That's right where I want you to be. We've had so much fun for 40 minutes. Uh, all right, question number one. What is one leadership habit that you rely on every day, no matter what?

SPEAKER_01 36:46

Uh, gratitude. I think gratitude lends into servant leadership. And the more gratefulness that you are, the more gratefulness that you have for, the more you show gratefulness uh for your team, the more they're gonna perform for you. And the more gratitude you have for being in your role means that you're not gonna take it for granted. Um, so gratitude for sure is something that I try to practice and meditate on every day.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

Oh, I love it. Uh, one of our partners uh at the firm here at Veloci, Bob Whitehole, talks about gratitude every day nonstop. And even just hearing him talk about it, you're able to like leach some of that gratitude off into yourself. And it is something that you can develop and a muscle that you can build on. Fantastic answer for number one. Question number two What is the most underrated skill that a leader needs in order to be successful today?

SPEAKER_01 37:38

Discipline. If you can't lead yourself, you can't lead others. So if if you aren't disciplined and organized in your own life and how you show up and how you show up for yourself and people that rely on you, there's no way that you can give the care and attention um to your team. So I think more leaders need to focus on discipline and being radically organized in how they approach discipline in their life.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Yes, yes. There's that you get 13 bonus points for that question and that answer. My consistency was my word of the year in in 2026. And the one of the biggest through lines through 36 now episodes of this podcast is truly been discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline. And whatever that looks like, the better you are at it, the the more successful you are going to be. Fantastic answer. Question number three. We're going to the flip side of underrated. We're going to go uh to to what is what is one thing that you believe great leaders should stop doing.

SPEAKER_01 38:40

Ooh, people are gonna question this one. Leaders should stop doing the 80 hour work thing. Um, saying that to myself, too, I'm a bit of a workaholic, but you don't you can't think creatively, you can't reflect if you're not actually unplugging. So every leader, you have to take a day per week to get off your phone, get off the laptop, get out of strategy thoughts and conversations, connect with the world, and you will see quickly how much better of a leader you can be by being more of a human. Um, so like work hard when you're in it, focus when you're there, be present when you're there. But the best leaders are taking a step back and actually, you know, reflecting, getting out of the grind, and then being able to come back uh in kind of a renewed, refresh way.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yeah. Uh haven't haven't had that specific answer. So you get bonus points for that one. I I love it. I think so much of this is also just developing self-awareness of when you're at your best within this. And you know, you said it, it's advice for yourself. It's advice that I I am like looking in the mirror right now as well as we hear it. And one of the things that I've really been trying to work on is when do I when do I do my best work? And and what what's the mindset that I'm in? And I've joked a couple of times this week. Uh this is Friday, May 15th. This has been probably the best week of work I've had in a decade. Like I've just been in a pocket, sunup to sundown. I forced myself to like take a walk midday and then I'll come back on for the 27 minutes in the afternoon or in the evening to just like really lock in on one project or one piece of the puzzle. And it's like, that needs to happen next week, too, right? And and you don't do that if then I spend six hours on the computer on Sunday. That it completely wastes the week that I had. So I love that answer. I appreciate it. And I'm gonna tell myself it uh again when we when we finish recording. So I appreciate it. The fourth and final rapid fire question: what's the best leadership advice that you've ever received?

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Ooh, uh this one sticks with me because I it took me off guard when I got it. Um, stop trying to fit into the other leaders around you. Like be who you are as a leader. Learn, be better, have other coaches and mentors that are willing to call you out on your on your nonsense. But your team can see through it when you're not being authentic. Your team can see through it when you're not being yourself. And honestly, the emotional energy that people spend trying to mask and be someone else uh in a leadership role means they're taking energy away from being able to invest in their staff. So be confident enough in yourself to know that you were picked for this role, you were tapped for this role, be yourself in that role, but also have the self-awareness to have the people around you that can call you out and also make sure that you're not, you know, overstepping or doing things that you just you shouldn't be, or you're not, you know, looking at things from a full perspective. But don't try to just blend in with the other leaders that you see.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Yes, yeah. And you we talked a little bit earlier on about the leadership style, and we talk about there's a difference between the leadership style and leadership brand, right? And leadership brand is authentically who I am. If I come into a room and I am not loud and myself, people will say, I will get messages within minutes, being like, hey, is everything okay? Hey, is everything okay? It's like, yeah, it is, it is. But if I change for a meeting, it is noticeable and there are going to be people asking questions about it. And so there's difference that leadership style being able to reach people where they're at, but the leadership brand of being who you are and and what makes you tick and the background that has led you to be in the position that you are in today. Uh, not only did you survive, you thrived through the rapid fire questions. Um, those were those were four fantastic, fantastic answers. Before we get you out of here, we've got to do our final section, which is called Positive Gossip. And this is uh an ode to our friend Tony Burkhardt, who was uh on the episode or on the show a couple of weeks back from Pfizer Center one, who really brought this concept to life. We always ask somebody, you know, who is somebody that we should be interviewing next. And so now this is just the the the the theme is positive gossip, where you get to highlight someone who is doing great work, who is a great leader that you either admire, that you work with or have worked with, that the activating greatness audience should absolutely be able to listen from or listen to, and that we can get on the podcast cade. Who is it?

SPEAKER_01 43:17

Ooh, can I have two?

SPEAKER_00 43:20

Please, please, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 43:22

There's two that come to mind most immediately. Um, one, Roger Brown, he's at Mesoblast. And when we talk about resilience, this guy's been leading a team kind of dedicated to one specific project for who knows how many years at this point. Um, but the resilience of being able to keep folks engaged, focused on a mission, and and ultimately be delivering against that mission when it feels like every odd in the market is against them or against you know, kind of what they're working on. Um, would definitely say Roger Brown is one that I'm I would love to hear his story personally. And then uh Camilla Lanier over at the American Board of Pediatrics, um, she actually came from a an athletic advising background where she used to lead and coach students that were student athletes, um, and now coaches and uh recruits folks over to the American Board of Pediatrics, which I think as parents we all uh appreciate in the Board of Pediatrics and what they're doing. Um, but that's a space too that you know, regulations are constantly changing, policies are changing, expectations are changing. Um, I'd love to hear kind of, you know, how she leads with a steady hand when there's so much outside of her control that is always shifting.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

Oh, I love it. Those are two fantastic recommendations. And my fave, one of my favorite parts of the show is being able to cut the snippets up and then send it to them and say, look at what Kate said. She's so nice. And now you have to be on the podcast. I can kind of guilt them into it. Um, and so they're listening to this right now, hopefully, because this has been an unbelievable 47 minutes of recording. And Kate, I knew that you would be a fantastic leader for the audience to learn from. I learned so much as part of this conversation. Thank you again for taking time out of your day to share with us. Is there anything you want to leave the people with? You know, we covered a lot today. Is there one final thought or one final takeaway that you want to leave everyone with about the topics that we discussed?

SPEAKER_01 45:26

I am so team Alec.

SPEAKER_00 45:28

So oh man.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

I just thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. I love being able to have conversations with you. And if anybody's able to learn something or take something away, then that's just a cherry on top.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

I love it. You are too kind. I will Venmo you for that comment uh later on. Everybody that's listening, go connect with Kate. Connect with her on LinkedIn. Uh, if you are a triathlon individual, let her know how she can uh improve the the swim time. Is this correct, Kate? That's what we're trying to focus on.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

That's a bad swimmer. I'm so bad at it. I need help.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Listen, there's three things. You got to be bad at one of them in that context, I think. It's so impressive that that you're even uh even doing those in in general. So go connect with Kate. Let her know that you listened to the episode, what you liked about it, leave it a five-star review. Make sure that you're signing up for downloads and and that you're getting the notifications somehow, somehow. I think Kate's episode 36. As you're listening to this, we're on pace for over 80 in 2026. Episodes come out every Monday, every Thursday, featuring incredible leaders like Kate and others across the industry. The only way it's possible is because of incredible guests like you, Kate, and because of the audience, where we continue to hear great feedback about the show and about the learnings, but I still have to prove that it works. So your comments, your feedback, and those five star reviews always do help. Kate, one last time, thank you so much. Uh, really appreciate you taking the time out of your day and everybody listening. Thank you so much. We'll see you on the next episode of Activating Greatness.