The Talent Forge: Shaping Workforce Behaviors with Jay Johnson

Stop Playing Corporate Telephone: Turn Top-Down Plans into Daily Behaviors with Kim Crowder

• Jay Johnson • Season 1 • Episode 65

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Strategy dies in the “telephone game.” We sat down with leadership expert Kim Crowder to unpack how to turn top‑down plans into daily behaviors people can actually do, coach, and scale. The core idea is deceptively simple: bring voices in early, tie the why to real work, and build trust before you need it.

Kim walks us through a client story where leaders invited team input at the start, mapped the change across people, process, and communications, and defined what success looks like in the day-to-day. That clarity allowed internal leaders—not outside consultants—to teach the approach to 100+ peers and sustain the gains for three years with a 150% ROI. We dig into the 90‑day reality check that aligns the C‑suite, surfaces unspoken assumptions, and gathers frontline data so feedback fuels business outcomes instead of blame.

If you’re tired of rollouts that stall, this conversation offers a practical blueprint to make strategy teachable, measurable, and owned by leaders closest to the work. Listen, share it with your team, and tell us: what behavior will you change first? And if this helped, follow the show, leave a quick review, and pass it to a leader who needs it.

Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com

Jay Johnson:

Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors. I am really excited because today my guest is Kim Crowder. I want to say welcome to the show, Kim.

Kim Crowder:

Hi, thanks. Uh thanks, Jay. Good to meet you.

Jay Johnson:

Good to meet you as well. So I've been looking forward to this conversation. We were mutually introduced by a colleague and a past talentforge guest, uh Hank Wethington. And uh he had some incredible things to say about you. So I'm very excited about this. And uh, Kim, why don't we get to know you a little bit better? Can you tell us, yeah, how did you get into this talent development space? How'd you get into behavior change? What drives you?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, Hank's let me just first start off saying by Hank is a really great person, and I've I've had the pleasure of uh connecting with him. When you asked me how I got into it, it's it I think my story is interesting. But uh my my stories start in corporate America, uh, where I myself was an executive and a leader, and then also started to I I feel like I sort of it I fell upon this work in the way that I swear, Kim, every we we've had so many conversations.

Jay Johnson:

It's like I'm here by accident, and I fell in love with it. Yeah, no, that's amazing.

Kim Crowder:

I uh I was doing work in that position, and people started talking about the work that we were doing, basically. And in that, I took that, it took you know, conversations into conferences, and then I started getting work. I mean, that really is the short and the long of it uh to a degree, but also I saw the impact of strong leadership versus poor leadership, and that really was the biggest piece, the impact that poor leadership had on myself, um, even down to medical impact. And then also being able to walk into an organization with a team of um folks who had never really done the work that I was expected to bring forward, and taking them and upskilling and reskilling them. So that's why I one of the things I'm most passionate about is when we talk about executive leadership, when we work with our clients, when we're talking about that senior at that senior leadership level, is what I find in things like strategic planning, for instance, or change management, is that oftentimes the work itself, the the technical pieces are in place, right? We know where we want to go, we know what we want to do, but rarely, if ever, is there a conversation about the impact internally? What does that mean? Is our team ready to move this forward? How have we actively developed our team internally, especially our leaders, to be able to flourish in this new environment that we're trying to create? And so that really is where I saw that gap and decided after my own experiences, especially behind the veil, right? That C-suite is like behind the veil. You see how decisions are made, you see how policy is moved forward, understanding that and wanting to make sure that other workplaces were making sure they understood how to have wins and how to eradicate as much deletion from like loss, right? To have as little loss as possible.

Jay Johnson:

So this is there's so much to unpack here. I have so many questions for you. So uh I'm gonna go back to the good and bad leadership in just a minute, but I think I want to start with as you're talking about, and I you're so right, right? Like the C-suite meets behind the scenes, they bring in an executive strategic planning consultant, they come up with the plan, and then they immediately try to roll the plan out to the organization. And I'm gonna I'm gonna admit, I've done this myself, and I'm a much smaller organization.

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, right?

Jay Johnson:

So uh okay, so let's talk about that process, getting the team ready, making sure that they're prepared. What does that look like? How do we, how do we, if if we're in an organization and we've gotten a strategic plan handed down to us, what should we be thinking about?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah. And when you say we, who is we?

Jay Johnson:

We as the employees, the managers, the teams, the talent development crew, the HR team, etc. So I'm kind of thinking about it in terms of, you know, a majority of our listeners are probably, they've probably been handed that strategic plan before. They've probably gotten something that said, hey, disseminate this out to your, you know, out to your group, your team, your division, et cetera. What should we be thinking about when that occurs?

Kim Crowder:

You know, it's a that's a that's a double-edged sword, and I'll tell you why I say it that way. Uh, because most initiatives are basically marching orders, right? Um we've decided this is where we want to go. Here you go. Like, okay, now carry that out. And I believe that in that, what let me just say this one of the the most amazing clients that we've ever had is a longtime client. They're actually uh Jay in Michigan, where you are. Um and we started working with them about three years ago. And what was so impactful to that group, in my opinion, is that they had decided as a leadership team to bring in their team members early in conversations about strategic change. Smart. And not only did they do that, so we worked with them in that way. They started at the the initial evolution of this is what we want to happen to move forward, and they added their team members' voices in that conversation, which was amazing, right? But they also didn't hide behind this is what we want you to do, and that's it. There was a two-way communication. My background is actually uh uh largely in part to calm work, PR work, having done internal communications. And so I understand the power of a two-way conversation. Jay, you and I are having that right now. But if I just sat here and spoke the whole time, they go, What is going on here? Right? Like she came on, she just talked the whole time, but there was no conversation because your listeners expect a conversation. Right. And so what I find is when that is happening in the at the inception of a plan of change management, whatever that is, what you find is that your team members are bought into whatever the outcomes are early. And then one of the other things that I saw that was so powerful with this group is that as we move through the process, as we built what they were looking for strategically, we also looked at it in their people, processes, and comms. So people, processes, and communications. We always focus on not just, hey, here's what it is, but looking at the actual workflows. What is that going to look like in their day-to-day in order to be successful? What do they need? And then the biggest win for me is they were able to take that and teach that out to 100 plus leaders across the organization at 150% return on investment, just from this small group saying, We're heading this up, where you know, we are taking this forward. And so when you talk about what we should be thinking about, a few of the things that I think about is do I really understand what's been handed down to me?

unknown:

Yeah.

Kim Crowder:

I mean, I think that that's a major question. Right. Um, I remember working in an organization and the way that it was like numbered parts of the strategic plan. And it was like 26.1.4 point. What? I can't remember any of that. Like, I don't, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know where whether I'm coming or going. And it was sort of this major, major plan that really had no clear outcomes as to where to go. It was, here's what we're going to do, but it didn't tie into the why. And the more that leaders can connect with their team members and tell them why something is in place and what the goals are and how it benefits the team members as well as their external audiences, that's where the power is. And so when we watch this group be able to communicate that and also teach that in the work. So they weren't using a bunch of fancy words. They were saying, here's the work and here's what it looks like in your day-to-day work with their leaders. That is where we saw actual change and movement forward. They won a national award because of that work. And over three years, when we come back, when we come back to them, we did some work um later on, three years, it was still in place. And so when you talk about those long-term impacts, it can outlast a strategic plan, even. You know, sometimes strategic plans are two to four years, and it can outlast that if it is in it is implemented into the day-to-day processes of what they're supposed to do, but also that they feel the that your leadership feels responsible and is able to teach that to others.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, it's it seems to me that you gave them essentially a behavioral blueprint for how the people will act towards what the actual strategic initiative was. And uh, I gotta share so we have this in common. My background was in communications before I went into psychology and before I started studying neuroscience. So I actually have a degree in uh uh public relations, communications, interpersonal communication as well. So we have that in common, and I do find it to be one of the most important things. But I really love what you said about getting that buy-in. And I think that that's a missing piece because in any kind of, you know, the psychology of change management, if the change is forced upon us, we tend to react to it in a very negative way. If we feel like we have ownership, or if we feel like we have a stake in it, or if we feel like we're able to essentially affect the change or have some kind of voice in the actual change, and we're the leaders of the change, that makes it completely different. So you're doing this at scale, obviously. And you had said that once you had developed essentially, you know, the blueprint, you'd gotten some of the buy-in, and then you were able to teach it out to the hundred leaders. What did that process look like? How were you able to take it, you know, from that group that maybe started the process of creating the conditions for whatever the strategy is, and then the dissemination, because I think that that's where oftentimes, and this could be a strategic plan, this could be a rollout of a new technology, this could be the integration of a new training program, whatever those are, it's the dissemination and the communication that often falls flat, or is when it's cascaded, it creates the conditions of almost the telephone game. How have you been able to manage that as you've as you've worked with some of these larger organizations?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, my team and I in that initial relationship build with those leaders, the dissemination does actually does not happen with us. And the reason why I think that is so important is because we're not in the day-to-day. You know, it's it's interesting when organizations bring in consultants and expect the consultants to be the face of the project. I feel that is dangerous because you don't build the natural trust that needs to happen in order to move those things forward, right? The real power comes when, yes, you can have it, have advisors. Um, you can certainly have a roadmap. I think the powerful piece is making sure that internally you're building the, I call it like an infrastructure. When we think about the frameworks that we have in place, our courageous crowd frameworks, a lot of that is about trust, it is about communication, it is about leadership awareness. And so having that infrastructure in place and allowing your leadership to actually move that forward is where the power is. You talk about the telephone game, I use that often. Um, and the way that that we see this when we talk about cascading it throughout is if the our to us, the win is when the leadership can teach it. So if the leadership can't teach it, and one of the things that you heard me say was in the work, right? They're not teaching concepts, they're teaching actual, here's what it looks like in the work. Here's what a win looks like in the work, here's the expectation, here's what may happen in between, where they can communicate that over and over and over. That's where the power is. The power isn't us coming in and saying, and by the way, you're of course we do the, you know, we do learning and development around this. Of course, we're talking to team members across the board, but at the end of the day, we do walk away. And so we want to, we want to make sure that the foundation is strong enough that when we do walk away, you know, sometimes you pop in and out. But for the most part, that day-to-day, if that doesn't exist, those that real trust um and that guidance from your leadership, what does it matter? And so we're sort of working our way out of a job because our goal is to better the leadership team and their ability to communicate instead of creating an environment where they they need us over and over and over. And so when I talk about this client that had three-year integration and change, it wasn't because we we held their hand the whole time. It was because they were able to take what they learned and cascade that out to 100 plus other leaders and sell, no, now those leaders have that information. And then you check back in at those post pulse points and make sure that it is data-driven, that you know, you're hitting your milestones, but also that the actual work itself is moving forward in the ways that were expected. Or, you know, if you're having those, you know, something that's snag, then you go, okay, well, tell us more about that. And then listening to their team members who have to carry it out to say, okay, here's the challenge, and then reshaping being able to pivot throughout.

Jay Johnson:

Love that, Kim. So, do you mind if I probe into that process just a little bit to kind of get a little insights? So, what does that look like when you're working with elevating and upscaling that leadership team? Is that a series of trainings? Is that integrated, uh, you know, design thinking, innovation, collaboration, brainstorming? Is it more of, hey, we're gonna help you put together narratives or scripts? What does that process look like to ensure that the team is kind of speaking the same language and carrying the why in the messaging?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, we we have a uh what we call a 90-day reality, reality check and reset. And that's where we start with leadership in this uh, you know, what you talked about having this process of really building what the goals are, what do we want the wins to be? So it's getting clear together as a baseline. And we do that over 90 days. Um, and the reason why we call it a reality check is because oftentimes there is this unspoken language that's happening behind the scenes, and we find that leaders may not know that they're doing it. So one of the we have this um what we call the top five reasons clients call us. And one of those are that leaders are communicating strategic priorities differently. And they don't realize that they're they're communicating that differently because they are not talking to each other about how they're communicating those priorities, right? When you get in that C-suite room, you're often not saying, Here's what I'm telling my team, here's what I'm saying. That's just not what you're talking about. You're talking about the bottom line, you're talking about um, you know, whether or not that's a 30,000-foot view.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah.

Kim Crowder:

That's right. And so the what we do is get people in a room and ask them questions that they wouldn't think to ask each other. Let's have that real conversation behind closed doors. Tell us, you know, what you want to happen, but also tell us the shortcomings of the snags you may hit. And then we make sure we always do an assessment that is across the organization. That's a big one because you and I both know that your i at least I believe that your frontline can usually break down where the issue is going to go wrong way before that happens in the C-suite.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and actually they usually have a better finger on the pulse.

Kim Crowder:

So uh because they're in the day-to-day.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and a majority of the work that I do is actually with managers. So I go straight to the management function. I see them as that sort of gateway in between that frontline employee, that that customer facing or client facing, or whomever it is, and the senior leadership. And I often feel like they're between that rock and a hard place because sometimes they're getting the message from the top, and the person that's below them is like, that's not how it is. So right.

Kim Crowder:

Well, also they're getting that information from the top, and sometimes the C-suite doesn't quite understand what middle managers have to go through to get that to work.

Jay Johnson:

Yep.

Kim Crowder:

Right. To get that to happen. And so that's why feedback starting with an assessment is so important. Um, because now it's not an echo chamber, now it's a back and forth conversation, right? And it can happen in ways where the executive at the senior level and executive level feels safe because we take that for granted, right? We just assume because they have power that they feel safe in hearing that back. And so bringing that information forward during that 90-day reality check and reset allows us to have those conversations behind closed doors, um, allows them to hear their team members' voices, and then teaching them how to do that, you know, moving forward. But that's really where it starts. Hold, you know, having that 90-day reality check and reset, having that lab in place, building that together as a starting point, but using data that we get from throughout the organization instead of the data that only sits in that room.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah. It it seems to me it takes a it would take a lot of humility for that executive team to be able to kind of take a step back and say, no, I really want to hear what is happening. How have you helped? Because it that can be a big challenge, right? Like we we want to hear, and this is this is something that I've noticed where behavior doesn't always line up with communication. Yeah, I want to hear everything that's going on in the organization. The executive hears it, and then there's a reaction, or there's and I'm gonna call it a reaction, not a response. Um, and the reaction isn't something that uh instills more trust or instills, you know, more uh inspiration for people to share. It's almost like, okay, I I I put my head out there the last time, I said something, and then it got pushed back, or it didn't get uh evaluated, et cetera. How have you helped maybe navigate some of that um that willingness to maybe take a step back and say, hey, listen, uh, you know, you may hear some things that you're not gonna want to hear. You may hear some things that don't make sense to you. Just take it in. We're gonna have a conversation about it. What does that process look like? Because I think that that's really a key thing that a lot of people look at from a behavior change is when we hear something that we don't like about ourselves, about how we're performing or where we're at, we naturally, as human beings, create the conditions of resistance because of ego and self-worth and self-identity. How do you help break maybe some of that challenge when you experience it, especially at the executive level?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah. One of the biggest ways that we do that is laying the foundation up front so they have an expect expectation of what's coming.

Jay Johnson:

That makes sense. Yeah.

Kim Crowder:

Right? Uh, because the if I know what's coming, I know what could come, right? As part of that. And so really it is building that trust level with our team and that C-suite and that senior leadership team first so that they know that yes, we're gonna hear the feedback, but how we share that feedback, we make sure that we share that feedback in a way that is focused on the how do I say this, focused on the work itself, but not focused on being critical of the executive leadership, the team, or the organization itself. Does that make sense? And so the way that we build back that feedback doesn't look like they said this and they said that. We do have, you know, we certainly have data points and we share that information back, but we share the flip side of your team could be X, if and here's what they have said is necessary to get them there. Now that makes sense. And can I tie that to your bottom line? Can I tie that to your customer success? You know, we look for data points that that C-suite cares about, so that in hearing that, they go, Oh, okay, now I understand how this connects to the business.

Jay Johnson:

Well, and that connection piece, the connection between behaviors, between understanding of the culture and everything else, to the bottom line. I think that that map is not always well drawn. So the fact that you're doing that is is really impressive. One of the things I want to go back to, you had you had said kind of at the beginning, good leadership, bad leadership. And I would love to maybe explore that just a little bit from a you know, from a bad behavioral leadership. Let's let's talk about it from the behavior side of things, not as an individual or interpersonal. What would be some of the behaviors that you would see uh coming from a leader that you would say, hey, these are behaviors that we really need to correct or we really need to shape forward? What would some of those uh, let's say, unsavory behaviors look like?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, you know, we've seen this in conversations with CEOs. We we host a uh a monthly executive conversation where we bring uh C-suite members, so BP pluses or equivalent, into a conversation where we talk about specific areas of focus. And I think about one in particular um where they said, oh gosh, I have so many stories, but um, where they said, we ex we expect I expected my C-suite to know how to do X without conversation, without telling them. I just expected it and I was so surprised. And that to me is a major area of development and opportunity, is not having the expectation, especially now, while we're in the midst of so much change. We look at the federal government shutdown, for instance. Um, you know, we look at possible tariffs and just the economy itself, uh, you know, global relationships. There's so much right now.

Jay Johnson:

Technology shifts daily. That's right.

Kim Crowder:

AI. We're talking about AI now, what's the impact and the lack of succession, uh succession uh ability for you know boomers are leaving the work environment. Now, what's going to happen? So there's a lot of um things that are triggering, and we're not even talking about what's happening specifically in those work environments, right? We're not even talking about their specific challenges. And I say all that to say is that um when we talk about behaviors, it's the assumption that at any level that your leaders know what to do without explicitly hearing that um and without an explicit conversation about that. So that's one. The second one is not trusting your leaders. I think that is a major, major challenge. Um and we've seen, especially in times of crisis, in times of um rapid decision making, that it is easier maybe for a couple of people to make the decision. They feel like it's easier, right? We can just make it quickly. We can just make the decision. But maybe missing that they have tunnel vision, because we we we often work with organizations in times of crisis too, um, that they may have tunnel vision in that moment, that some leaders freeze in in the moment of change and challenge. So not understanding that your leaders have different ways of approaching change and of approaching high pressure environments. That's a second one. But the third one I would say is expecting that your team is just going to move just because you said it. Yeah, never happens, never happens, right? That the I that this idea of we told them they were gonna to do it, and so they're just going to do it without having that clarity piece that I talked about before. Why? The who, what, when, why, right? Like who, what, you know, like what are you asking us to do? Why are you asking us to do this? And making sure that there's not a silence gap between that. Because some it's what we're finding it on the executive side is that sometimes there can be a silence gap. And then your team awfulizes, we call it awfulizing, right? They have this idea about what's coming, and it's always worse than typically than what's actually coming. And so making sure that your highest level of leadership, they understand that you have to communicate forward all of the time, even if you don't have the answers. You have to communicate forward.

Jay Johnson:

So before we flip over to the the good side of things, I want to ask a question. You know, what is it that you think maybe drives that idea uh from leadership of, hey, if I say it, it's gonna happen? Do you think it's the question of, well, I'm in an authority position? Do you think it's a question of an overestimation of like their perspective of themselves as being a benevolent, you know, leader? Oh, if I say it, you know, my team knows me, they trust me, they're just gonna follow along. Uh where do you think that, where do you think that I don't want to call it hubris because I don't know that it is all the time, but what is it that creates that condition of we just sort of expect somebody's gonna follow, whether from a title or from, you know, uh even if we have a good relationship, even if we have a trusting relationship, I think that there's still some resistance to saying, why do you want me to do this? Or what is it? What creates that sort of cloudy vision from a leadership perspective? And it could be all of the above, but what's been your experience?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, uh there's a couple of things, is one that may work in the day-to-day. Right? That may work in the day-to-day when I'm asking um someone to do something and they just hop to it and do it, right? Where it stops working is when this is an organizational shift. So if you have a one-to-one relationship, sometimes people say, okay, well, that's you know, like I know that that's how they work, and I'm close enough to them that I trust that. But when you're talking about wanting to move that down through that the organization, then that becomes very different. It's like a disbursement of information. I don't necessarily think all the time that it is a um self-centered act. I think it's the easiest option for asking people to do things. The easiest option is I say it, you do it.

Jay Johnson:

Right.

Kim Crowder:

But we don't always it's not always that easy. Well, we don't always skill. We assume that the skill set exists in those top leaders when it doesn't always. We assume that the ability to communicate, that the ability to be a motivational leader, that the ability to communicate in ways that your teams will absorb. We assume that our senior leaders, our C-suite members have that. And they don't always, right? You don't always get to that position because you have that. But the the the way that you know it is different is because you hear about those leaders on on a regular basis. You think about um I think his name was Rob Nordstrom. Uh uh and even when you shop at Nordstrom, you'll hear his name about how powerful of a leader he was. I've worked with other organizations. Our team has worked with organ or other organizations who came from that Nordstrom environment and they are still talking about him. He he's no longer on this earth, but people are still talking about how he led because it was from such a relationship perspective. And because he built that before the change, before the crisis hits, then it's easier. Really, what it all those moments of rapid change, what we're looking at, that sort of um, you know, things shifting um in ways that maybe we didn't see coming, is what it does is it just tells the truth about your foundation, whether there's a crack in it, whether there's actual. And so when you ask me why leaders might have that, I think it's just the easier option. No matter what the background conversation is around that, the easier option is if I tell them they'll do it. Instead of do how do I develop that in not only myself, but the rest of my leadership so that they know how to do it. Without me always having to explicitly say it. What are the expectations? How do, you know, how do we move things forward? Is there clarity in that? Instead of I'm going to assume that everybody knows how to do it.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah. No, that's smart. And I like that because I think it it does create the conditions, right? Like the other thing that I think a leader benefits from is a team that challenges them and challenges them in a healthy way. It doesn't have to necessarily, you know, it doesn't have to be like the negative conflict or the subterfuge or anything else, but somebody that is going to say, tell me more about that, Kim. Let's see why, you know, help me understand where this is and what this looks like in your vision. Because you and I both know as communication scholars, communication is a system. It's the only system we have, but I mean it's it's a flawed system. If I say the word, hey, everybody, we're going to go out and plant a tree, whether you look at that and say, okay, well, is it an oak tree? Is it a uh, you know, is it is it a shag bark hickory tree? Is it a coniferous tree? Like what does that tree look like? There's a lot of interpretations. We think we're clear when we said tree, but there's a lot of room for error there. And if we're not actually challenging, testing, and having some of those conversations, I might be very, I might think you're well aligned and then all of a sudden find out that you're planting uh you're you're planting apple trees when I was looking at something different, right? So let's shift gears real quick. I'd I'd love to hear what are some of those signs of good, good leadership, some of those positive behaviors that we would be wanting to watch for that would say, hey, you know what? This leader's kind of on the right track. They're moving in the right direction, or these are the kind of behaviors that we want to foster or encourage or upskill. What would you look at in that regard?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, I think about immediately a leader that we've worked with who is at a $19.2 billion organization. So I say that number because I want to give you the expansion of how big that organization is. And in those organizations, you and I both know you have the people who are, you know, you have the organizational social structure, right? And then you have these pockets where the directors are almost the CEOs of their vertical, yeah. Right. And so in that, I'm specifically talking about it from that perspective and watching this director and a group of directors actually operate, is they were so absolutely respectfully honest with each other. And we sat in rooms where disagreements happened, but they were always respectful, and particularly the person who um was over that group was able to sit back and listen and take it in and actually thank them for that information. And um, then we watched them break off from that, and because of how they showed up, their directors were able to do that as well. So I watched them listen to their team members and hear that feedback and hear really challenging feedback sometimes, even from our end, and not take offense to it. They had a, you know, and said, uh, okay, I hadn't thought of it that way. So now it now they moved into solution driven instead of this is feedback that is personal, this feedback is here to hurt me, right? And instead, this feedback is here to help us grow. And now here's the next step. And actually, again, taking that feedback and turning it into an action plan is what's deeply powerful because they've heard back from their team members, um, providing that communication back and forth that's necessary in order to make an a work environment work, both for the leadership but also the team.

Jay Johnson:

I I love that you bring that up because I often see people talking about feedback, and usually it's in the direction of giving feedback. Right. I think there's an art to receiving feedback as well. One of the things that I and this goes back to your concept of two-way communication. I I, you know, feedback should be a two-way street where there's question, conversation, inquiry, exploration. But you know, one of the things that I like to tell people about feedback is you ought to always consider feedback as a gift. Now, every now and then we get a gift that we don't particularly love. It doesn't necessarily line up with what we wanted or anything else. But we still respectfully and gracefully say thank you. And we look at it and say, well, they were thinking about me, or there was there was an intentionality behind there. And maybe they missed the mark, but it's still the intentionality of learning, growth, et cetera. And that's really what we need to be thinking about from the feedback. So I love that you bring in that's a high-quality behavior of a leader, is somebody who's able to listen, sit back, accept feedback, not take it necessarily as interpersonal criticism, but as an opportunity to grow and move forward. So that's really powerful. Any other behaviors?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, I was so the feedback piece is extremely powerful, but also um in that organization, as we were moving forward, this specific change initiative, they had a committee that was focused on it. And that was really powerful because that committee was a group of team members who buy-in, going back to your concept. Not only buy-in, but the leader saying, I'm not the expert here. That is powerful, right? I'm not the expert here, my team is, and I'm okay with handing this over to the team. Of course, you know, they want to be kept in the loop, but they are okay with taking a step back and understanding their limits. And so that would be a second one is being okay with understanding your limits as a leader and letting your team members be experts in the process. So that's the second one. Um, the third one I would say is continuous improvement and just understanding nothing's ever going to be the be perfect the first time around and being okay that when you're talking about change, um, when you're talking about, you know, and that change, you and I, Jay, could happen in wanting to change um, you know, team optimization, right? Are we communicating in ways? Are we connecting in ways? Um, are we change about how we serve our customers, whatever that change is, but acknowledging as a leader that this is a continuous inside job, right? It never ends and we're always going to be looking at it. Now, sometimes you deprioritize some of it depending on you know what else you have, with the fact that this we're this is a forever thing, and something may happen that we'll need to continue completely pivot. So that flexibility, that ability to be flexible and that openness to continuous improvement is is extremely not only imperative, but it's powerful.

Jay Johnson:

That's you know, it's so I love what you bring up there because that growth mindset, that ability to kind of take a step back and say, number one, I don't know everything, but I've got a pretty amazing team here. Let's give them some space to shine, to pull out, you know, to pull out their their brilliance and to be able to put that into play. But then also being able to take that step back and say, I, you know, the fact that I don't know everything today doesn't mean that I shouldn't be learning more about it by tomorrow or being better tomorrow. So such a powerful lesson. I really love that, Kim. Kim, we're we're getting close to the end of our time here, but I did want to ask Courageous Crowd. I, you know, as I as I was exploring your uh as I was exploring your LinkedIn and everything else, yeah, there was a mention of the courageous crowd. Could you give us just a quick synopsis? What is the courageous crowd?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, the courageous crowd is the name of my organization and my it and my team. And what the courageous crowd is, is what we're talking about. It is those leaders who are courageous in the work that they do on a day-to-day, not because they feel courageous, but because they're doing the things that make them courageous as leaders. And a lot of them are doing the very things that we talked about. That, you know, the leaders that we work with embody all of these principles, not necessarily always at the same time, not necessarily immediately when we meet them, but they're up for the challenge. And that makes us courageous. Perfection is not courageous. And and also um we tend to, you know, when we talk about our clients internally, we talk about them as courageous crowders. Courageous crowd is a play on my last name. My last name is Crowder. So Crowd and then Crowders. Um, but it also embodies who I believe we are in the work that we're doing. This is challenging work. This is uh, you know, work where we ourselves have to be open to is there new peer-reviewed journals out, new research out that helps uh us reframe some of our frameworks that helps us to speak about this differently, where we can take feedback from our clients. And so all of that, all of this is what I consider sort of this um universe of courageousness and us defining it regularly, but also we have the principles in place internally that we are asking from our leaders, right? I don't, I can't ask our clients to be anything that I'm unwilling to be. Right. And so that's where courageous crowd comes from.

Jay Johnson:

I I love it. It caught my attention. One of my core values outside of mastery and independence is courage. And I try to show up with courage even when I don't have the answers or when I don't know, being willing to say I don't know, and jump into that. So it really resonated with me, Kim. Thank you. Kim, if our audience wanted to get in touch with you, how would they reach out to you?

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, one of those things that I mentioned was that we have these executive conversations virtually once a month. The way that you can get in touch with us, if you'd like to join that, just DM me on LinkedIn, Kim Crowder. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. You're welcome to follow for a little bit, take a step back and see if you want to join. Uh, but if you already know immediately that you want to be a part of those conversations, they're small, they're intimate, um, and leaders are really sharing and being open. DM me at uh, you know, LinkedIn. What is it, forward slash Kim Crowder?

Jay Johnson:

Forward slash Kim Crowder. Yep.

Kim Crowder:

Yeah, and and we're happy to bring you into that conversation.

Jay Johnson:

That's amazing. Well, I just want to say thank you because your insight on the behaviors of leadership and the way that you're approaching, you know, some of these organizational changes. I know that our audience is under constant change, just as you said, whether it's you know political, whether it's social, whether it's economical, or whether it's even technological, change is just happening so fast nowadays. And it's one of those things where it sounds to me like you're having a great impact with organizations and being able to leverage that understanding of change, that understanding of communication, the people, the processes, and being able to help them navigate that forward. So thank you for being here and sharing that with our audience today, Kim.

Kim Crowder:

Thanks for having me, Jay. It was a pleasure.

Jay Johnson:

Yeah, and thank you, audience, for tuning into this episode of the Talent Forge, where together we are shaping workforce behaviors.

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Jay Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements

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