Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise
but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success.
Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick,
your host. And today, my special guest is Stephanie Adams. Stephanie is founder and Chief
Empowerment Officer of WNY People Development. She's also a facilitator, a keynote speaker,
an educator, a former elected official, an adjunct university instructor, and entrepreneur. She has
over 20 years of experience leading in training in corporate, nonprofit, and government settings.
She also holds an MED in multicultural education, and her professional affiliations include
the Society for Human Resource Management, the Lower Cape Fear HR Association, and she's a
certified Forte communication coach. Welcome to the show, Stephanie.
Thank you so much, Sheila. I'm excited to be here.
I'm ready to cheer, cheer, cheer.
Let's do it. Let's go.
Let's go. So let's talk about that turning point because your trajectory is truly impressive
that led you to start WNY People Development.
So I have a very eclectic background. I started thinking I was going to be a teacher my entire
life. Elementary school teacher, that was the path. Got to college in about six weeks
prior to graduating. My supervising teacher oversaw one of my classes and she said,
yeah, you're not going to be great at this. I don't think you should be a teacher.
And it rocked my world. 22-year-old me had my whole life planned out, and here I am trying
to figure out like, oh my gosh, you're saying I'm not good at this. This isn't where I'm supposed
to be. And it turns out that was the greatest piece of feedback anyone ever gave me. And it
really started me in the reflection process very early on. I took all my graduation money. I flew
to Florida, not too far from you. And I sat by a pool with a margarita and I went, what am I
going to do with my life? And it started me thinking about what am I good at? And that was
really where WNY started way back there. What am I good at? How do I lean into the strengths that I
bring? And what do I bring that supports others? How do I feel joyful? Where do I feel fulfilled?
And so I followed a path. I worked in education, not in the elementary class, but worked in career
and technical education and was recruited out of Philadelphia public high schools to work for
Johns Hopkins University as an educational consultant, which brought me to North Carolina.
It was great because I had the opportunity to provide coaching and training for administrators
and schools to help develop teams of educators to better support students. So I stayed close
to education. When I got married, moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, my husband and I
decided that we wanted to start a family. And with my previous job with Hopkins, I traveled a lot.
And as we know, you want to start a family, you got to kind of be there for that to happen.
So I moved into the community college system and worked in student services and customized
training. That was when the light bulb went off. I was providing training for other companies,
but I was like, this is what I'm good at. I'm good at helping people succeed and find their
strengths. And I want to do this in a different capacity. That led me into the corporate training
space. And I stayed there for about four years. Right around that time, I decided that I wanted
to run for public office. And in my head, I could run for public office and I could win a seat on
our school board, work full time, be a mom, be a wife, have a life. I was wrong. I got into public
office. It took way more time than I anticipated. And so I decided to make the move out of my
corporate training manager role at that time to focus on the political piece. But during that time,
I said, you know what? I've always wanted to have my own training company. I have my own style.
I've been really focused on frontline leaders and all of the roles that I've had soft skills or power
skills, if you want to call them that. And I started, I used the opportunity of being home
outside of the politics, political side to write content and do my research, write my own content.
And I took about five, six months. I launched my company on February 29th, 2020. Not a great time
to launch an in-person training company when two weeks later, the entire world shut down.
So, but the reason I moved into that was I really felt like work needs to change and how we treat
each other, how we work to retain our people. And the secret sauce is the leaders. If we don't have
good leaders, that's how we lose our most valuable employees. So leaders, a lot of times get dumped
into positions and no one's ever taught them how to be a leader. They may have been really great
at turning that widget or creating these spreadsheets, but when you're in charge of people,
that's a totally different set of skills. So I really felt like my calling was to help others
develop their leadership competencies and do it in a way that's fun. I've worked in education long
enough to know, even as adults, we like to have a good time and science tells us we retain more
when we are having a good time, when we are laughing. So that was why I was like, I'm going
to do training and development my way. And here I am. I just celebrated my fourth anniversary as a
business owner and we've got clients across the country and the company's just grown and I'm
having the time of my life, helping others be their best selves. I love it. So for those who know you
best, you're known as cheerleader Steph. I want to learn more about that nickname. Well, since I've
got a pom-pom here by the desk because I keep them close always, I am a 15 year cheerleader and a five
year cheerleading coach. So started in middle school, cheered up through high school, college,
even got a couple of years of pro under my belt. After my body got too old to flip, cheer, jump,
and all those things, I moved into coaching at the high school level and then coaching at the
college level. And you learn a lot about leadership when you are responsible for 2017 to 21 year old
young ladies that you need to have worked together to work towards a championship trophy.
When there's cattiness going on on the team, when somebody likes somebody else's boyfriend,
when someone is failing their chemistry class and their parents are going to cut off their bank
statements, the drama and the things that come with getting people to focus on a single mission
of we're working together. I learned everything about leadership from cheerleading and that's
what led me into the next phase of my career, which I think we're going to talk about a little
bit later, but we'll get there. The short and long of cheerleader Steph, I am an eternal optimist. My
glass is always half full, not toxic positivity. I'm a realist, but I really, truly see the good
in everything. And I truly believe that we all need someone to support us, cheer for us and tell
us that we're doing our best and how we can support each other. So I really have kind of,
I'm always at my own cheerleader, but I'm also kind of a cheerleader for the world.
Well, I love how you've incorporated it into your brand and I'm going to go ahead and read this next
line that made me want to just jump through the computer as I was learning more about you. And
here it goes. Two, four, six, eight. Want to make your workforce really great. Bring in the power of
cheer. That's the secret. Cheer leadership provides actionable strategies to help individuals
become more innovative and empathetic leaders. So can you share your core themes or your strategy
behind cheer leadership? Sure. So cheerleading provides highly applicable professional lessons
for leaders across industries. And I've grouped them into five themes. What I believe the workforce
of tomorrow needs when it comes to leadership. And I've seen this in my own leadership. I've seen
this in the clients that I work with and for and partner with through my company. Leaders need to
connect, care, challenge, celebrate and inspire their work teams. And I use the analogy of a
basket toss. And if you're a non-cheerleader out there, I'll explain what that is. A basket
toss is a group of four people and a fit person jumps into the center and they throw them up in
the air. You've probably seen it at a basketball game. And when that person hits the air, they
execute a back tuck or a toe touch or some cool skill at the top. That is what work teams are.
As a coach, I would never at the first practice expect to put five of my cheerleaders together
that have never met each other, that don't know each other's skillset, that don't trust each other
to execute a basket toss on day one. But we do this with work teams all the time. We find our
high performers and we pull the person from sales. We pull customer service. We pull IT. We pull
somebody from HR. We say, here's the project. Deadline's Friday. Go. You can't expect a team
of people to come together and work and be successful without connecting first, which is
why the first theme of cheerleadership is connect. As a leader, you have to connect with your people.
You have to understand their motivators, their communication styles, what are their triggers.
But then you also have to facilitate that connection amongst your team. And every time you
lose someone, if they're laid off or if they quit, you bring someone new, you've got to reconnect
again because the dynamics are going to shift. So in cheerleadership, I give very practical strategies
and activities that help leaders that maybe don't know, maybe they're not the best at connecting,
how to help them build relationships. And I like to use the term, I like to help leaders build
relationships before building stunts because cheerleading is literally the only sport where
you have to build on top of each other to achieve wow moments. It's the same thing with our work
teams. If we want our work teams to succeed and create wow moments, we need each other. We have to
lean on each other. And that all starts with the relationships that we're able to build and the
trust that we connect with each other. So we start with connect, we move on to care. You have to care
about what your employees want. And specifically now, my focus, I really am into studying the
multi-generational workforce. And when you look at millennial gen Z workforce in particular, which
baby boomers are retiring out, we're a couple of years away from the last baby boomer turning 65.
So baby boomers are starting to leave the workplace. Millennials are dominating the
workplace numbers wise. Gen Z is coming in in droves and they're changing how we work. And so
our leaders have to care about what they care about. Command and control top-down leadership is over.
You have to care about what your people care about. So understanding their motivators outside of the
office, understanding that people want to know that you care about their mental health. They want
to be comfortable to be vulnerable to talk about their mental health in that space and to know that
their leader respects that, supports that, and we'll talk them through it. So caring about people
beyond the PNL, because people are not numbers. People are not dollars. People are people that
have life experiences. That is much as we want to say, work is work and home is home. They're not.
They're fully intertwined. And especially after COVID, right? We were all sitting like this on
Zoom watching cats walk in the background, children throwing up in labs. I mean, messy houses. Like we
saw all those things. Work and home are intertwined. So we have to care about that. The third is
challenge. Every leader's job is to help push their people beyond what they even think they're capable
of. And a lot of times we lack confidence in ourselves. We don't believe that we have the
abilities or the skills to achieve something great. A leader's job is to help us get there,
challenge us to push past our limits, give us the support and the resources to get there,
then believe in that person that you can be and do what you think was not possible. Celebrate.
I'm a cheerleader. We celebrate. That is like at the core of everything. I write a story in the book
that when I was a team leader, I had a team of four and they had to clock in and out every day.
So every two weeks I was cleaning up time cards and it was so frustrating as a leader. I'm like,
you're adults. You got to clock in, you got to clock out. Like this isn't difficult.
So the first time one of my team members clocked in and out consistently for two weeks and I didn't
have to make any updates, I put a gold star on his cubicle on Friday. Monday morning, everybody comes
in and they're all like, what, how did he get that? What, can I get one of those? Why did he get a
gold star? And I said, because I didn't have to correct any time cards. From then on, I was doing
a lot more stars to celebrate consistent clocking in than I was saying, hey, I had to correct your
time card again. We love to celebrate. We love a trophy. And so I give a lot of strategies on how
to do that because it doesn't have to be complicated. One thing I do like to mention about celebrate
though, within cheer leadership, everybody wants to be celebrated differently. Not everyone wants
to be on a stage and given public recognition, some people that's their nightmare. So finding out how
people want to be shown gratitude. Do you want a gift card from Starbucks or are you not a coffee
drinker? Do you want a timeout? You want to sit down with the CEO and have a conversation? Let's do
that. Finding out how people want to be celebrated is important. The last theme of cheer leadership
is inspire. Every great leader I've ever had has inspired me to want to be my best self,
has inspired me to want to take steps forward, has inspired me to take chances and take risks.
And that's what good leaders need to find in themselves. And I believe that you inspire by
setting the example. If you work hard, your people are going to work hard right along with you. If
you're vulnerable, they're going to know it's okay to be vulnerable. If you ask for help,
they're going to ask for help. So inspiring your teams to be successful and knowing that
you're on their team to help them achieve that greatness, that success, that promotion they're
working towards. So cheer leadership, connect, care, challenge, celebrate and inspire.
Absolutely love it. So when we talk leaders, are we talking C level suite? Are we talking
front line? Who do you serve? I think cheer leadership is across, it really any leader
could benefit from learning about it and sort of checking themselves on it. However, it really
is geared towards first time frontline leaders. It just happens too often that we promote people
into leadership roles because they were really great at the job and they were not prepared to
lead people. And that's hard because people are complicated, people are messy. So you need to have
some skillsets and you need to have empathy and emotional intelligence. And those are things that
take time to develop in each person. So cheer leadership really is meant to provide a toolkit
for those new leaders to go, okay, I've got seven people on my team and I don't know anything about
any of them. Well, we're going to try an activity called wall to wall and it's laid out for them.
And it tells them how to step through it, questions to ask. I'm trying to make it easier
for leaders to become the best version of themselves because when they're the best version of themselves,
that's when their teams have positive impact and feel good and feel valued, feel like they belong.
Yeah, first time frontline leaders, but everybody can benefit from some shaking of pom poms with
cheer leadership. Do you bring them with you for in person? All the time. And when I do this in a
keynote, I always, the audience gets pom poms and there is music, there is movement and there is
nothing better than seeing, I will say more seasoned professional, maybe a little bit of gray
hair. They kind of look at you sideways when you hand them the pom pom and they're like, what's
happening here. And by the end of the keynote, they're the ones standing up and they're shaking
it over their head and they're dancing along with you and they're feeling the excitement and the
power and the joy that you get to be when you're a leader. I want to pump them. I will send one your
direction. So what is your next milestone? The book January 18th, 2023. I naively thought I was
going to write a book in three days. I got an Airbnb down in Charleston and I was like, knock
this. I'm going to take some quiet time. I'm going to write a book. It took me about a year, but
with a lot of support, I had a great book coach. I did a lot of editing, reviewing, reflecting,
but I finally finished the book a few months ago and I'm working with Amplify Publishing and we are
in the final process. So it's really exciting. I just got my cover art email to me yesterday,
our first draft of cover art, and it is like really becoming real now. So the expectation is
we'll probably release on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all other bookstores early October, November for
the book to be physically available, but it will be available for pre-release sales early fall.
And in the book, will you discuss these strategies or does it have a different perspective or point?
Cheerleadership is all about the five themes and it walks the reader through Connect, Care,
Challenge, Celebrate and Inspire, and it provides a roadmap of why do we need to do these things?
Why is connecting important on your team? And I use stories from my coaching and cheerleading
experience as well as my leadership experience, and that's what I'm going to be doing. So I'm
going to be talking about the cheerleading experience and that is sort of peppered in to talk
about the real life experience of what did that look like for me? One example of care is telling
leaders you have to take that extra step to let your people know that you care about what goes on
outside of their lives. I had a cheerleader that got an underage drinking ticket when I was coaching
and her parents lived four hours away. They weren't going to be able to come to court with her, so I
was one of those things that I'm her cheerleading coach. I didn't have to be sitting in that courtroom
with her, but I cared and I knew she was scared and nervous and that was why I was there for her.
That's what leaders need to do. Our people need to know that they can lean on us, work related or
unwork related, and recognizing that what matters to them needs to matter to us. So I share those
stories and I provide strategies within each of those themes to help leaders understand how they
can better connect, better care for their people, better challenge their people, better celebrate,
and inspire. So where can my audience learn more about you or connect with you?
So the website for my company is WNYPEOPLEDEVELOPMENT.COM and then you can also find
WNYPEOPLEDEVELOPMENT.COM on LinkedIn. My personal LinkedIn is Stephanie Z Adams and that's
me with an F. You can also find WNYPEOPLEDEVELOPMENT on Facebook and Instagram at WNYPEOPLEDEVELOPMENT.
So before I wrap this up, what advice would you give to inspire leaders today to take action?
Company is WNYPEOPLEDEVELOPMENT and that WNY stands for why not you? And I live this.
If you don't do it, somebody else is going to. So if you want to go after that promotion,
if you want to write that book, if you want to raise your hand in the meeting and challenge
somebody that always has the last word on everything, why not you do it? Just do it.
Get out of your head and take action in whatever it is that scares you most because big risks
bring big rewards. I will attest to it myself every time I haven't taken a risk. I moved to
North Carolina not knowing a single person. I met my husband six months later because I made that
choice. I ran for public office, was top vote getter and had a very rocky four years thanks to
COVID. But man, I learned a lot and got to meet some incredible people in that process. I'm writing
a book and I feel in my gut this is going to be the next big thing and I'm going to help change
work and make it better. Why not you? You've got to do it. Go after what scares you most,
what you aspire to be. Just do it.
Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks for having me on, Sheila. This has been great. I appreciate the opportunity.
I'm uplifted now. I want my pom poms. I'll send you one.
Thank you to all our listeners for tuning in for another episode of Milestone Moments in Business
and Leadership.