208: Tap Into A Peer Advisory Board with Krista Crawford

18
Apr

Krista Crawford, who is a pre-academic, a PhD, an MBA and an SBHR, the chair of two Vistage executive peer groups in the Baltimore, Maryland region. She’s an HR consultant and an adjunct instructor at Virginia Tech and Champlain College. We discuss the concept of being a “pre-academic,” her Executive Presence Framework, and a shortcut to achieve PRES. Krista also shares an ethical decision-making framework for CEOs and her new initiative to mentor emerging leaders.

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Tap Into A Peer Advisory Board with Krista Crawford

Our guest is Krista Crawford, who is a pre-academic, a PhD, an MBA and an SBHR, the chair of two Vistage executive peer groups in the Baltimore, Maryland region. She’s an HR consultant and an adjunct instructor at Virginia Tech and Champlain College. Crystal, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Well, you’re a unique guest and I’m very excited too. We don’t have too many people who have expertise in people. Sometimes they call it human capital, sometimes they call it human resources, but it doesn’t matter. So let’s start at the beginning and you are running two Vistage peer groups in Baltimore. And I was wondering why would someone with your expertise want to run leadership peer groups?

Steve, that’s a great question. I think the first response is I Learn so much from these CEOs. I am a continuous work in progress. I am a lifelong learner But I bring something to the table as well having worked in HR been at the c-suite and then for over 15 years Taught at the graduate level. I have a lot of content and experience that I can occasionally add to the conversation. I’ve got things in my back pocket. But my job really is just to keep the meeting going with these peer advisory groups, to keep the conversation engaged, to have the group members challenge one another. That’s really what I do.

Yeah, sometimes it’s difficult. It can be much harder sometimes to listen than to speak, especially when you have a lot of knowledge already that you could share. I remember when I was a Vistage chair, that one of the sayings was that, don’t just do something, stand there. And that meant obviously that, you know, you don’t have to talk all the time, just listen to that person and just try to understand what they are going through and how you can help them.

Allow the room to be quiet at times. Sometimes letting that silence, letting it settle, people have to think and they then might say something they wouldn’t have if you had moved on. So that’s a big lesson to learn, listening.

Yes, yes, that’s the other thing that I think we were saying all the time was that let silence do the heavy lifting.

That’s correct. Let silence do the heavy lifting. And that is hard, particularly for we who like to talk with our hands. If I sit on my hands, I find I can be a little better.

So, so you are, you said that you were a pracademic and I had to ask Chat GPT what that even meant. So what’s a pre-academic anyway?

Yeah, so it’s someone who is a practitioner, but also has studied the academic literature, as opposed to a pure academician or a pure practitioner. So I’m a blend of both.

Yeah, that’s a great combination. This is a podcast of frameworks, and actually it really helps if someone is a pre-academic, because then they can bring the intellectual part of the framework as well as having tested it in real life. You have a really great framework about executive presence. Maybe it’s called the executive presence framework. It actually consists of four acts. Can you share with the listeners what these acts are and why this framework is even important?

Yeah, I love this framework. Two researchers, just Halpern and Lubar, I always like to give credit where credit is due, came up with this four-act process. I often have people ask me, you know, how can I present myself better? So we call it executive presence. And we’re going to use four letters, the very first four letters of presence, P-R-E-S. So Act I, the P, is be present. And that’s not just physically present. That’s being your authentic self that’s listening.

Turn your phone off. Don’t look at your watch. Let people know that you value them, and they’ll respect you back. You’ll start to grow that trust, which is really important. Act two, PR, we’re on R, reaching out. So, network. The more people you know, you’ve been to an event and someone walks in the room and everyone comes forward. Grow your network, but again, be authentic about it. Reaching out to others, reach out with empathy.

Let people know that you value them, and they'll respect you back. Click To Tweet

Again, listen. And again, be authentic. People can identify when you’re being someone other than yourself. So E out of the PRES, Act 3, expressiveness. So, I’m going to give you a little bit of a story. Expressiveness. That expressiveness has to deal with storytelling is a big part. You can tell when someone is telling a story and it’s authentic, they show it all over their body. It’s in their eyes, it’s in their smile, and you know you have a room when they are actually sitting on the edge of their seats. That’s what you want. You want people listening for that next word. You want people when they see you, they go.

I remember Steve. He tells the best stories. And I was actually able to do something from that story. And then finally, the S in press, act four. The authors call it self-knowing, maybe self-awareness is a little more user-friendly. But again, we go back to that authenticity. Know who you are. You don’t have to be an expert at everything. Know what your weaknesses are, own those, and find people around you that can offset or supplement what you can’t do or what you don’t know. Really important in self-awareness is knowing your value system.

If you try to be somebody you’re not, if you try to do things that are outside of your value frame, people will know, and you’re not going to have that presence. It’s not going to show. So four acts for you to grow that executive presence. The final thing I want to share with that is find someone you trust. Maybe it’s your significant other, maybe it’s a best friend, maybe it’s a cohort. Tell them your life story in about 10 minutes and then ask them to tell you that story back. What we find is there will be pieces that bubble up that can help define where you are and why. I’ll give you a quick example.

If you try to be somebody you're not, if you try to do things that are outside of your value frame, people will know, and you're not going to have that presence. Click To Tweet

Let’s say you’ve got someone who’s in financial services and they’re not really happy with their job right now and they’re feeling low. And they tell their story to their significant other. Maybe what the significant other is gonna hear, you know, I heard you talk about when you were a child, money was tight and you moved around a lot. I think you’re in banking because you like stability and security. So let’s work with that. So do storytelling. Sometimes you can find out more about yourself when someone else tells you the story back.

Wow. Well, there’s a lot there that you shared. So I’ll try to, let me ask a couple of questions just for my deeper understanding.  So I really like this framework, the PRES framework. So be present, reach out, expressiveness, express yourself perhaps, and knowingness or, sorry, awareness, self-awareness. So it sounds very simple, but it’s one of those things that is not very easy to achieve. Because it sounds like it’s not just being an executive, it’s just being present, being a great leader or having a good presence as a leader. It’s basically having a well-adjusted personality and charisma perhaps as well. Is there a shortcut to achieving PRES?

The shortcut is practice, practice and have a group of people that are going to give you feedback. Have a trusted group of people around you that will let you know when you’re growing, they’ll let you know when maybe you’re stagnant, and they might even let you know when you’ve slid back a little ways. So you have to have that trusted group of people.

Yeah, I mean now that you mentioned actually all four of these acts could be practiced in a peer group, in a peer advisory group, because be present. I mean, as a leader, it’s very easy to fall into the habit of speaking more than listening, but when you have a room full of leaders, it’s not going to work, right? So you have to be present for others so that they can be present for you. Reach out, obviously, that is the whole act of reaching out and telling stories. If there are a lot of leaders, they’re going to be telling stories and it’s a great way to learn how to do that. And know thyself or self-awareness. I mean, surely these people, do they give feedback to each other in a peer group like that? Is there like an honest exchange that these leaders would not get in their own companies?

Absolutely, it’s all about feedback. We like to use the phrase, in VISTAGE we have a phrase called being carefrontational. So we’re caring and we’re still confronting with the intent always to help that member. In a peer advisory group, I’ll just use VISTAGE as an example, there are lots of peer advisory groups out there. In VISTAGE what’s a little different is that we have people from different industries at the table. We don’t have any duplicate industries.

So you don’t have to worry about someone stealing your competitive advantage. You can be vulnerable and you can be honest. What we find is regardless of the size of the company or what industry, and the situations, the challenges, and opportunities are all pretty much the same. People are dealing with finding and keeping the best talent. They’re trying to keep that supply chain going.

They’re trying to improve their marketing and sales skills. They’re trying to grow their people. The challenges are the same. It’s how you go about it. So if you’ve got a group of people that will tell you what they’ve experienced, their successes, and also tell you what not to do. Here’s what I did wrong. And if I could do it again, this is what I would do. But the key is, it’s one thing to have a give and get exchange, the key is holding each other accountable.

Who is going to follow up with you and make sure that you did what you said you’re going to do? And so that’s the other part that we do. We end the day with here are the next steps, who’s going to hold you accountable, when are you going to report back? Sometimes people are successful, sometimes they have to do another try at it, but that’s the key to successful peer advisory groups. Trust, feedback, and dialogue back and forth.

The key to successful peer advisory groups was trust, feedback, and dialogue back and forth. Click To Tweet

Yeah, love it. I’m just thinking that you are probably a much better VISTA chair than I ever was.

Well, that’s very kind of you, but I find it hard to believe.

No, no. One of the challenges that I had, actually, with this accountability is that I would keep a meticulous list of what everyone committed to do. So we process these issues. People went away, OK, I’m going to carry out this action. I’m going to fix this problem. And then I came back the next month with my list and I asked them, you know, did you do it? And most of them didn’t follow up. Is it easy to get CEOs to be accountable?

You know, I think the key is, and I’m learning this as well, like I said, I’m a work in progress, getting the members to hold each other accountable. And so my job is not just to have the person who has the issue, but to make sure that their partners are following up with them. I think that’s even more accountability pressure. And so sometimes we’ll create accountability pods, maybe two or three people will hold each other accountable. Are we successful every time? No, but I guarantee you are more successful than if they didn’t have a peer advisory group.

And they learn more options, they meet more people, they create a bigger network, and it’s a it’s a safety net. We don’t just talk about business, we also talk about personal issues because I don’t know about you, but a few decades ago, they would say keep personal life and business life separate. Well, we all know you can’t do that. One impacts and infects the other. And so we also talk about things that are impacting our home life and help each other deal with those issues as well, because we can be more effective at our jobs if we’re more effective at our homes.

Yeah, those can be the most powerful sometimes because those are the ones that are really the most difficult to discuss with people who are not in a very close circle of confidence with you. As soon as there is a business owner, sometimes it can be very lonely and you feel like you cannot trust anyone. Maybe your people, your employees, they depend on you, so there’s only certain things that you can share. And then your peers, maybe your competitors. So again, showing weakness could backfire. So it can be a very isolated feeling and it’s great when you can create that, the peer group where people trust each other.

Yeah, they’re there to learn and to grow, but they’re also there to give. And, you know, sometimes you think, I look at my members and they’re the happiest when they’ve helped someone solve an issue or provided a resource. It gives you this sense of pride that we’re a team, we’re a group and we’re helping each other.

Yeah, sometimes they say that giving a gift is even more fun than getting a gift, right?

Exactly. And sometimes it reminds you like, oh yeah, I do know how to do that, I need to go back to doing that again. We all have these successes, and then sometimes we put them on the shelf and we need to bring them back out again. And Sharpener, you know, our skill sets, invested you, we have hosts each month, and they do a host presentation. So they get to practice presenting in front of a group of CEOs. And at the end, they get feedback. Here’s what you did well, here’s what you could do better. So every step of the way in our meetings is to help people grow and for them to help others grow. So that’s why I love what I do. I absolutely love it.

I remember when I was beginning my journey to become a Vistage chair and I went to the Vistage training and they told us the first day that Vistage is a feedback rich organization. So I said, okay, what does that even mean? And then at the end of the fifth day, Friday afternoon, then they gave us some feedback and it was, some of it was great, but some of this was constructive and it actually hurt. And so, okay, so this was managing expectations. We are feedback rich. It’s essentially getting approval to give that feedback in advance, which I thought was very smart.

Let’s switch gears here a little bit and let’s talk about decision-making and especially ethical decision-making. Because we as leaders run companies and sometimes there are business interests, there are personal feelings, there are personal relationships and people see things from different perspectives. It can get really murky as to what the ethical decision is in a certain situation. What do you recommend or how do you advise your CEOs to make ethical decisions? Does a Vistage group or a peer group, an exigent peer group, help with that?

Sure. So an ethical decision-making framework in anyone that you look at, it starts with, you need to know what the organizational values are. You may need to know what your personal values are. So start there. If they are not in alignment, then you might want to look for a different company along the way. You need to make sure you work for an organization that your values are aligned. So let’s assume that’s okay.

You need to know what the organizational values are. You may need to know what your personal values are. If they are not in alignment, then you might want to look for a different company along the way. Click To Tweet

Then you also have to look at what types of rules and regulations your organization has. What’s written down? What are your codes of conduct? Do you have one? What are the prescriptive and descriptive rules that your employees use? And as a leader, you need to be modeling those at all times. So start there. Let’s assume that all of that’s in alignment. Then you have to look at, when I’m making an ethical decision, you have to look at the relationships.

Is this someone that I’m close with? Is this someone that has a relationship with a significant customer or client that’s going to influence the way I make my decision? And should it influence the way I make my decision? Who will be impacted if I don’t take action? Employees, their families, your customers, the community at large. Ethical decision making requires you to look inside, look at your company, and look at your community. And so you ask me, does that come into play in peer advisory? Absolutely. If members are doing the right job, they’re asking those questions.

They’re asking, what’s the downstream effect of this decision and what’s the upstream effect of this decision and are you prepared to take action on this. It’s one thing to flesh out an ethical situation but if you don’t take action on it then you’re not going to look like a leader. You need to make sure you fix the system, the employee relationship, whatever it is that was the root cause. You’ve got a feedback method to make sure it doesn’t happen again. In a nutshell, that’s ethical decision-making and action in what, 60 seconds.

Right. Well, it’s easier said than done. It’s not easy to say that because it’s a complex framework, but I mean, ultimately it comes down to would your mother approve kind of thing, right?

Or if in the old-fashioned days when we had paper newspapers, would you want it on the front page of the newspaper and another good one, right? Would your grandmother like, is this something you would tell your grandmother you did?

Yes. Awesome. So Krista, we are coming close to the end of our recording here, but I’m really curious about what keeps you excited right now. What are you working on that most excites you?

What keeps me excited, I have a new group. You mentioned I have two groups. I have a CE group. I’m excited about growing that group and getting us even closer. But I’m also, I have a brand new group that I just launched. Actually, it launches in two days from now. And it’s an emerging leaders group. So it’s really a blend of taking more content and more structure than the chief executive group. And we’ll be meeting for two years every other month and discussing big leadership topics and taking actions on this. I’m excited about that. And I’m excited blending, you know, what I learned from others and bringing that forward and sharing that information in any way that I can. So I’m excited about that.

That’s awesome. You know, I remember when I was a Vistage chair, they recruited the CEOs, they started engaging with each other, and then they realized that it was a great space for them to safely discuss different issues, whether they’re business or personal. And then they realized that some people in their companies could benefit from that process as well. And then there was another group, the key executive groups, that their second in command could join. And then they had those issues as well. And that helped, obviously, the CEO, because if the second in command is more competent, gets more experience, more exposure, they can make better decisions, then the CEO has less to do, and then they can be more at the strategic level. So I remember this process, and now Vistage created the Emerging Leaders Program, which is one level below the key executives. So you have now three levels of the company being able to, I guess, pre-academics in that area as well.

Actually, you’re correct, but we actually added another layer. We have an advancing leaders that’s between the key and the emerging. Yeah, and so that doesn’t have a timeframe. It goes on, you can go on for years until they’re ready to move up. So the whole learning and development spectrum that we have is amazing.

Yeah, that’s very exciting. So so if the listeners would like to learn more about what it looks like to be in a CE chief executive group, especially if they live in Maryland, near Baltimore, that’s ideal. But there are Vistage groups all over. So, Krista, I’m sure you can introduce them to another chair if they’d like to learn more about this whole business leader peer group concept and your groups in particular, or if they’d like to connect with you and take your advice on an HR matter, where should they go?

They can reach me by email at krista.crawford@vistagechair.com or also in LinkedIn at Krista Crawford, PhD. And so if you do connect with me either by email or through LinkedIn, please say that you found me through this podcast so I can make sure that everyone gets acknowledged for them.

Well, thank you, Krista, for that. So listeners, don’t miss this opportunity to reach out to Krista. She is a great Vistage Chair, and she’s one of the best one in this region anyway. I don’t know everyone in the country. And check out her LinkedIn profile is the best way. So Krista Crawford, PhD. And please, if you enjoyed this conversation, then follow us on YouTube and on Apple Podcasts, give us a review and keep coming back because every week we have a great CEO or business leader come to the show. Krista, thanks for coming and sharing your experience and knowledge. I look forward to staying in touch. I look forward to staying in touch.

 

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