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How did you get started?

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So I got started as an army officer.

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I was an army officer and a registered dietitian.

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And I loved the combination of those two things.

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I loved helping people, especially soldiers, you know, working on their own health

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and well-being and being in that environment.

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And at one point, I was teaching army cooks about nutrition.

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OK. And I was like, you know what?

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Teaching is what I want to do.

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I want to be supporting people with just the foundations of how they do their work,

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how they do it in a way that promotes well-being.

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And so my path started moving toward adult education.

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And I focused a lot on leadership studies because as an army officer, it's something

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that I didn't get a lot of training in before I joined the army.

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I had leadership responsibility right away.

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And I'll be the first to admit, I like wouldn't say I did it that well.

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You know, I learned a lot by trial and error, probably unfortunately for some

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of the people on my teams.

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But I just became very passionate about, well, how do we actually teach people

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and get people ready to be in leadership instead of just throwing them into positions

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and, you know, seeing what they learn along the way?

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So when I left the army, I went into leadership development and management.

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That's amazing.

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And first, let me say thank you for your service.

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I appreciate it.

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I talk to people about it a lot because my husband is an army veteran.

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And the cool thing about it is it's a choice now when it wasn't a choice back then.

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And I promise you, I have the utmost respect as I get chills even talking about it

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because people now choose to do something for the world and our country.

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And I think that that's an amazing choice for some of us that don't choose to do it.

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I support you.

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I stand in back of you and I stand on the side of you.

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And again, thank you so much for your service.

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I appreciate it.

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You're welcome.

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What leadership lessons from the army have been valuable in your role?

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I think the most important thing I learned was letting people know that you want to lead them,

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like letting people know that you're happy to be in the role that you want to partner

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with them and build relationships with them, that it's not a hierarchical approach.

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Like I'm the boss, you go do the thing.

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I remember I started at one of my jobs.

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I was asked to manage our dietetic technician group.

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And the first day I walked into their office after I had taken over that role,

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one of the women said to me, well, how did you get stuck with us?

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And I was just like, I didn't get, I volunteered.

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Like I put my hand up when they said they needed someone to, you know, take over this responsibility.

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I don't get stuck with you.

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And, you know, I think as leaders, it's really important that we look at our jobs as the leadership piece is the most important honor of being promoted.

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It's not just something that comes with the territory of the promotion.

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It's something that has a lot of opportunity, has great responsibility.

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And that the more we partner with people and the more we create relationships in our leadership, the stronger we're going to be.

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Yes. Do you feel like the dynamics have changed as time has passed as what a leader is to be and what it looks like?

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Absolutely. I think the dynamics have been shifting.

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I always say we're like that we're a bit of a tipping point right now where we have to move from command and control and hierarchy to really leading with our own personal impact

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and figuring out why, like how we create more positive impact as leaders so that people are inspired and motivated to do their best and to show up for the team and the goals versus the sort of because I said so,

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directive approach. I think the younger generation has done an excellent job leading the way in terms of saying, like, I'm just not going to stay.

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Like, I will go and find something that's a better fit. And then as leaders, that's our responsibility to create the environment that they want to stay in.

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Yes. Is there an imbalance between leading with passion and emotion versus leading with demand? I say that because it's so sometimes that demand is needed, you know, for different areas.

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So do you find that there's some imbalance or do you find balance in that?

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I think the way to actually find the balance is to make sure we're just building trust because yes, as leaders, we do have to be directive of it. We have to make decisions, right? Being indecisive or being wishy washy or changing our mind as we get new.

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I think that's not going to be a great attribute as a leader. So we have to be able to make decisions, direct the work, ideally in a way that we're partnering with people.

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But sometimes it's just not an option, right? Sometimes we have to just be the ones to make that decision. But the more we've had positive impact, built relationships, then we have stronger trust.

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So I think it's more about finding the relationship between those two styles versus saying, you know, we've got to just completely move from one or the other.

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Yes, yes. Makes all the sense in the world. And I, as I continue to have many guests that are entrepreneurs and leaders, what I'm finding is consistent is relationships and communication and trust.

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And so I, I realized that across the board, if you have those three things, you have a steady business, steady employees. And, and I think that you can find success in that and value in that.

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So thank you for sharing that with me. And I know it could possibly be clear, but I would not be the co-host of Vision Pros Live without asking you to tell me about your vision.

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Yeah, I mean, I have a vision where people have a great experience in their work. I have like where people feel excited to go to work, where our work is a part of what makes us feel whole and well, and where we feel like we have capacity to grow both personally and professionally.

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And I have a vision where just our work environments truly are like supportive, connected, great places to be.

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Yes. And it's, it's one thing as I continue to have these conversations is I think I've said it multiple times, we are usually at work, awake more than we are at home.

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So it, it's really important to enjoy where you are mostly awake, because I don't know how many people realize how that affects when you return home for that four or five hours.

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If you have a family, if you have a spouse, and how if you're not happy at work, oh my goodness, aren't they in for an evening of, I would say, upsetness, you know, everything that may have occurred at work pours onto the family.

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So it's definitely important to enjoy where you work. I totally agree with that. And how do you tailor strategies to different organizational needs?

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Yeah, so I work really closely, usually with leaders and organizations to understand what they need. I, I generally people need some combination of individual support, senior team support, and some type of facilitation to get conversations

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flowing, you know, and so I really love working with teams in that initial phase of just kind of rethinking how we work together, how we talk with each other, how we structure our time together, because we spend so much time, like you said, at work.

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And we spend so much of that time in meetings. So how are we making the best use of people's time, using our time in a way that we get the most out of people? So the way I generally start to just, you know, we start kind of figuring out what is that right approach to shifting culture.

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We're kind of looking at like, do we need to start with some individual leadership support to get everybody kind of the skills they need? Do we need to have a great team conversation to really get a good feel for what's going on here? You know, it's, I love a good facilitation

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where you just get into, you know, what's working? What's getting in the way? How do we want to bridge those gaps? What's our vision for how our team's working together? And how are we going to get there?

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You know, oftentimes teams don't really have those conversations on their own because we get into a habit, you know, we get in a habit of how we spend our time together, what we talk about, how we structure our agendas.

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So a little bit of just, you know, different influence can really open up some real conversation.

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What tips do you have for leaders? Give me two tips.

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Okay. My first tip is to spend time getting to know people, you know, genuinely care about people, not just what they're contributing, not just what's on their plate, although that's really important too.

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But know what's going on for people, not in, you know, we're not trying to cross boundaries or, you know, share, be oversharers, but it's important to build those relationships and see the people on your teams as kind of below some of that surface level.

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Absolutely.

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That we generally have.

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The other tip and something I'm always encouraging leaders to do is just to ask more questions. You know, as leaders, we're trained to have answers, we're trained to give advice and to be the ones who know.

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But I think we really need to spend less time knowing and more time curious and empower other people to have answers and input and to be the experts.

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Thank you for being here today.

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I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.

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This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention.

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Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.