Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland
Welcome to the Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland. Where we’re all about creating confident, successful, and focused leaders who manage with purpose and impact. I’m Cyndi Wentland, the founder of Intentionaleaders. And I’m passionate about learning, teaching, and coaching on all things leadership related. My purpose is to equip leaders like you with the tools, resources, and support to accomplish your goals. To learn when you want, how you want. So, if you’re an aspiring leader, first-time manager, experienced executive, or you just want to make a bigger impact in your role as an individual contributor—this podcast is for you. Because each week we’ll focus on relevant, applicable, and easy to implement skills and practices—to create focus and a deliberate path to employee engagement and business results. I know that leadership has its challenges but learning to lead shouldn’t be one of them.
Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland
Leading through Vision, Communication & Consensus with Jim Matheson, CEO NRECA
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What happens when you sit down with a seasoned leader and let the conversation flow? I found out in a recent chat with Jim Matheson, CEO of NRECA (National Rural Electric Cooperative Association), where he generously shares his insights from years at the helm, and what primarily drives his leadership strategy. This episode is teeming with revelations, particularly around the power of communication in leadership - a refreshing and much-needed perspective amidst the often polarized rhetoric of today's world.
He shares the challenges and opportunities that lie within the industry, and how balancing the immediate problems with a clear vision for the future can lead to meaningful conversations, smart decisions, and ultimately, a more secure future. Adding a whole new layer to the dialogue, Jim emphasized the importance of vulnerability and leveraging the intellectual capabilities of your team - priceless leadership nuggets for us all to consider.
When it comes to building a mission-driven culture and fostering employee engagement, Jim's approach is focused. Packed with practical wisdom on managing the dynamics of hybrid work and the invaluable lessons he's learned from influential leaders, including his parents, this conversation is a testament to the power of open mindedness and relentless learning. As we explore the concept of leadership mindsets, it became evident how vital it is to surround yourself with strong individuals, not shy away from asking questions, and consciously strive to learn from their experiences. This episode is more than just a conversation, it's an opportunity to learn from a leader who's making a difference, in an intentional way.
Find Jim here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-matheson-660132105/
Be the Best Leader You Know
Perform with Power, Lead with Impact, Inspire Growth
To sharpen your skills and increase your confidence, check out the Confident Leader Course: https://www.intentionaleaders.com/confident-leader
Hello and welcome to the Intentional Leaders Podcast. We are on Episode 121. This is a Lessons Learned Interview with Jim Matheson, who is the CEO of NRECA, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Welcome to Intentional Leaders. This podcast is not just for leaders, rather for anyone who wants to make an impact on the world, professionally or personally. My passion and purpose is to provide tips, tools and resources that I've learned throughout my career working with large and small organizations, profit and non, and also as an entrepreneur. I've had the joy to teach thousands of individuals who, like you, are trying to navigate this crazy and complex world. So here's to doing that successfully and intentionally. Thanks so much, jim, for being here today.
Speaker 2:Happy to be here, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I cornered you at a recent CEO orientation because I have known of you for so long, working with NRECA for years. So I've heard you, I've seen you and of course it was happy hour saying hey, jim, wouldn't it be great if you could be on the podcast? And what were you going to say?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm always happy to participate. It's fun about the electric co-opter community and all the people who work with us. It's a very collegial atmosphere and we like to support each other. And I know you've been involved with the electric co-ops for a while and I'm happy to be on this podcast.
Speaker 1:Oh well, thank you for doing it. I felt like that was a little unfair, but you went along with it, so I'm thrilled. So my podcast is all focused on leadership lessons and when I look at the leadership opportunities you've had over the years, they've been very extensive, so I'm excited to hear your lessons learned. But you started in the energy industry and then served as a congressman representing Utah for 14 years, and I am so curious about that time in your career, knowing that politics is so challenging. What were two or three leadership skills that really helped you be most successful?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that leadership can be described in a lot of ways and their attributes and their strategies, and then their skills. And specifically your question about skills, I think that my top three skills for success are communication, communication and communication. I think that that's not limited to Congress. I think that's in a lot of positions. There's so much information coming up these days in so many forms, and being able to break through the noise and communicating clear, concise and compelling ways, I think that's a big part of leadership. I think if you're going to set the tone, if you're going to inspire people to perform effective, communication is just central to making that happen, and so I think that's the most important skill of all. There are a lot of other. As I said, leadership has many qualities to it, but I think communication would be at the top of the list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you think about communication in a political environment? Because I think you're right. I mean it transcends all different leadership opportunities. But in politics there is a lot of differences. There can be a lot of divisiveness and thinking about like because you said clear, concise and compelling how do you think about communication and making it compelling to someone who has a completely different point of view or political ideologies that maybe you have?
Speaker 2:Well, I find that often, particularly in the world of politics, the rhetoric is way too simplistic, way too polarized, in a way where it's all members of one party think this and all the members of the other party think that, and it frames all the issues in these really simplistic two-dimensional contexts. Yeah, and most things in life just aren't that simple. And so what I find in terms of effective communication and you don't have a lot of time to do this, by the way, usually in politics is, first of all, if you're talking about a particular issue, lead with a values statement that everyone should be able to agree on, the power they feel about the issue, to bring people into more of a listening mode, something oh, this is a real, simple example. Like, if you're talking about education policy, I think you can say something that, look, education is so important because we all want our kids to have the best chance to succeed, and you lead in by saying, okay, that's the value that we all share. Now let's talk about what we can do to help make that happen. And, whether people agree or disagree, you're already level, setting the conversation in a way where I think we can all start from a point of consensus.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, when it comes to discussing an issue again, you often don't have a lot of time, but you need to be matter of fact, you need to describe what you're suggesting and what the potential impact would be. I find this is really lacking in politics today. I find the political dialogue in this country to be superficial, to be limited and, quite frankly, not at all informative. It's very difficult I find today if there is an issue being discussed in the public policy arena, to get good information about it. Going on the various cable channels listen to people talk about it, I think, is often a real waste of time. They're just trying to be provocative to perhaps generate more campaign donations. The person who's being interviewed or the networks are being provocative to keep people from changing the channel. But if it comes time to really talk about an issue, trying to be very matter of fact and straightforward, I think, is how you can be an effective communicator.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I love that and I see it too, and I think that's what we see and we witness around politics is the social media view of it. I was using this as an example today and I was just teaching a class on being collaborative and, as you said, having a common goal is a very collaborative approach. It's putting out there what are we all trying to do and then we can kind of go back and forth on the ways to get to that goal. But it gives us a platform of trust and it doesn't trigger all that defensiveness. But when you see politics in the social media, it is very you said it's simplistic and confrontational. It's designed to evoke a certain emotion where we triggered the defensiveness when you see behind the scenes and, as you said, you get limited time to do that.
Speaker 1:In addition to clarifying values and putting values first, what would be your second strategy around communication that you think is most helpful? Because that's a great tip for anybody Lead with values. Lead with something compelling that people care about. What would be something else that you would do?
Speaker 2:I think once you establish a common value set and define what the issue is, then you need to try to find if you can engineer the time to be able to communicate this walk through the issue. Look, here are the three or four different things you can think about doing. These are the strengths and weaknesses of each. This is what the effect would be. This is why I think this combination of actions would be helpful, because, again, when we talk about political issues, we describe the simplistic, one-size-fits-all solutions, which are never really appropriate. It's usually a combination of things that aren't going to solve the problem 100%, but they're going to move the ball down the field in a way to make progress, and I think if you frame it that way, we can make progress in this issue. It may not solve everything, but here's how you go about doing it. I think that's the way to be effective.
Speaker 2:But in the social media world that you've mentioned, often you get a very limited amount of time to do that and that's all the more challenging. I've used this phrase a lot. There's not a lot of passion in moderation and if you're trying to take a reasonable approach to something and not be out there on these ideological extremes, which are too much of our political dialogue, and when you look at issues through the lens of pure ideology, generally it's not very practical in terms of the real world. Yeah, that's the challenge. So I'm not saying I'm always effective at this, but that's the approach I try to take when I'd be in politics is try to have a very substantive, reasonable but compelling discussion about an issue, to try to frame it in a way where people say, ok, setting aside all the crazy rhetoric, here's a good way to look at this issue and if you have the time, I think you can be effective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ok. So I'm curious when you think about, like, what was the best part of being a congressman and what was the worst part of it, just for you personally or professionally, what do you see as the best and worst part of it?
Speaker 2:There are a number of things that are the best part. You're involved in all of the issues of the day. You're kind of at the center where a lot of this is being discussed. That's fascinating. You're around a bunch of really interesting people in both parties. They're not all these crazy screaming people you see on the cable shows. There's actually a bunch of really interesting, bright people that you get to know.
Speaker 2:But most importantly, at the end of the day you get to serve these constituents back home in meaningful ways, and it's not always the headline issues, but it's the person who's not getting their veterans checked, delivered, and you solve that problem. You really do connect with people in a way that's really satisfying because you think you're helping them out in their day to day lives. That's the best part of the job. The worst part of the job is a lot of people complain it's a constant fundraising and campaigning. But I would say what's also the worst part of the job is coming back to the discussion we've had about communications.
Speaker 2:All these issues get framed in these simplistic, all are done approach. Oh yeah, it's never going to solve the problem. The problems are that simple. We already have solved them. So there is a certain for me frustration that there's just a lot of rhetoric out there that's really not productive and not really being put out there in the context of truly solving problems and achieving progress. Which is sort of my approach to politics is. I think politics is all about solving problems and achieving progress. I get frustrated when we go down a different path than that.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. It's interesting because you said what the best part of it was was solving problems and maybe the smaller issues where you can make a difference by being available and taking action, and then that, blown up in a bigger way, is actually the frustration as well. It's like that Now we're oversimplifying things and it's harder to see progress or feel progress. It's interesting because I get to work with a lot of leaders every day and when you're far removed from kind of the action I would say within an organization or company, where you don't feel like your actions are having an effect, that's very isolating and I'm sure in politics kind of the same thing you see this issue and you feel less able to resolve it when that's what you want to do at your core.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I want to do it for. Sadly, I think a lot of people in politics have different motivations. There are more about being on the cable channels a lot, getting lots of followers on the social media and raising a lot of money for their campaign, but that's not why you should be in politics. You should be in politics as you're trying to make this country a better place. And that sounds old school. I'm okay with being old school. On that.
Speaker 1:Well then, I'm old school too, because I like the sound of that a lot better than being an influencer. Even before you were in the political arena, you have been serving in the energy industry for many years. Where did that passion come from? And when you think about being passionate about energy and that whole space, what do you think is the biggest challenge in that you're facing right now?
Speaker 2:Well, I wish I could tell you there was this origin story about. I was passionate from day one about energy. I found it interesting. But when I graduated from business school, I heard about this company that was in the Inc Magazine 100 Fastest Growing Companies in America for two years in a row and it was based in my home city, utah, and I said, well, that sounds like an interesting, dynamic company. They happen to be in the energy business. And so that was my first job out of business school and that's how I got involved in the energy business.
Speaker 2:And what I found once I got in the energy business was that, you know, it's a business that at one level a lot of things had been the same for decades, but at another level, everything was changing. Technology was changing, the uses of energy were changing. It became a very dynamic sector, if you will, and you know, when we say the word energy industry, there's a lot of different aspects of energy. There's oil, there's gas, there's electricity. To me, what made it interesting was how new opportunities were taken in industry that maybe historically wasn't known for being the most nimble or innovative, and there was an opportunity where being nimble or being innovative really created interesting opportunities, and that's something I found in the energy sector that's been really rewarding for me to be involved in and continues to make it really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, it kind of gets back to your theme of progress and problem solving Progress. How do we continue to progress in something that may be perceived as less than nimble or less agile than some other industries and really having an effect on that? As you think about that, what do you see as the biggest consistent energy challenge right now and how many cooperatives are involved in the association right now?
Speaker 2:The National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, of which I'm the CEO. We have 900 members across the country, electric cooperatives. They're in 48 states and we serve 42 million consumers electricity. So that's about one in eight Americans. But rural is in our name. We serve 56% of all the land mass of America, so we serve the most expensive, hardest to serve areas in America. That's where electric cooperatives are, I think, the interesting challenge. There are a number of challenges, of course, when you ask what's the big challenge for the energy sector, but I'll offer a couple of thoughts that are more in the current realm. One is I think the war between Russia and Ukraine has really created a greater awareness about the importance of energy security in all forms of energy.
Speaker 2:It had an immediate impact in Europe, obviously, with Russia cutting off natural gas to Europe. It had an impact on the United States, enhancing its capacity to shift liquefied natural gas and ship it to Europe. Impacts on the electric grid in Ukraine. I think a lot of people probably thought they valued the fact that energy is available all the time, but I think this Russia-Ukraine war has probably created greater awareness and a greater value that people place on the notion that having access to a reliable and reasonably affordable energy really does matter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we've been really really fortunate in the United States of America historically to have really low priced or well priced and reliable energy of all sources for decades. It's the sort of thing that it is easy to take for granted. Yes, we've had some spikes in gasoline prices, people have seen, and that's been hard on the consumer, no question about it. But in the grand scheme of things, compared to the rest of the world, we've had pretty stable, pretty affordable energy for a long, long time. All that's coming into play now.
Speaker 2:This concern about energy security, comes at the same time that we're also looking at shifting the way we use energy, the type of energy we have. The electric sector in particular, which my association is involved, is facing a lot of different opportunities based on technology development, on changes in markets, on changes in public policy and regulation. Sure, I know it's cliche to say this. These are both challenges and opportunities. Yeah, anytime things are changing, you have both right. Yeah, and I think that we are involved in much of a changing industry. And I think I said earlier, in general the energy sector used to be really stable. That sure was the case of the electric sector, I mean. For decades not much changed. And now we're in this period of rapid change in both, like I said, technology and markets and public policy. That's creating a lot of fascinating both challenges and opportunities.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you get to look through the CEO lens and you look to support all the CEOs of the many people you serve when you think about how you affect others' leadership through your leadership. What do you think is something very important that you do to help? Because, again, those leaders could be freaking out about all the change and they don't see it as an opportunity. They see it as oh my gosh, I have all these problems to solve, so how do you lead leaders to see those problems as opportunities?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I think it's a common experience for most anyone in a leadership position of an organization. It's often when something's not going well, when it's a problem. I guess you hear about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah that's true, so it's easy to get in the motor. You're saying, oh, I'm dealing with those problems all day and that is part of the job. I get it. But leadership also is, in my opinion, is the notion of stepping away from the day to day, running on the treadmill and looking downfield. Yeah, Looking ahead at the one, five, 10, 15 year horizon and saying let's articulate a strategy for how we're going to move ahead, take advantage of the opportunities that are there.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I run a large national association where the members are all running actual electric utilities and I'm not the one running electric utilities they are.
Speaker 2:But what we do collectively in the cooperative world is we try to share information and learn from each other. And that's one of the really important functions of NRECA. As a national association and to the extent that I can, encourage and facilitate meaningful communication and meaningful transfer of ideas. And it's not that we as the National Association go around telling our members what to do. It's more creating a platform where we can have information sharing in a way that allows members to make good decisions based on being better informed about what their options are. And we pride ourselves in the electric co-op world that we're not all the same, that every co-op has its own unique set of circumstances, be it its geography, the types of electric load that it serves, whatever it is. Everybody's different, and so we try at the front end here, what I try to do from a leadership perspective is make sure I acknowledge that difference of circumstances and acknowledge that, while there's common threads across it, it's up to each individual leader to make decisions for what's right for their co-op.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic and I did notice that when I was doing when you and I, when I cornered you at Happy Hour it was the CEO orientation and I was doing a pre-conference workshop and it was so interesting to hear. One of their very common objectives was I want dialogue, I want dialogue, I want input and I think creating that space where you said we share info, we learn from each other, we establish a vision for the future and then we problem solve to get there. That was very much a theme of all of them. What really struck me was the vulnerability that people were willing to embrace to get there, because it is hard to learn from each other or transfer ideas or make good decisions if we're not also going to be vulnerable about what are those individual differences that are holding us back. And I think you said something really important right, because if we're going to share ideas and transfer knowledge and learn, we have to also say what those differences are and what we're struggling with, and that's hard for some people to do.
Speaker 2:I think another aspect of leadership that's important is you want to be confident and you want to be a leader, but at the same time, leaders know that they can't know everything. Good leaders are not at all intimidated to hire really bright people to work with who may know more about a specific issue than the leader does. Surround yourself with smart people in terms of you hire, but also reach out and look for other sources of information as well. I think one important leadership quality is the willingness to learn. I know that's cliche to say that learning is a lifetime exercise. You never are going to know enough.
Speaker 2:It's important to learn and leverage the capacity that's out there. There's so much out there if you're willing to open yourself up to it and learn from others, and so I think that's again that may apply to any type of leadership in any industry sector. I will say not that I'm here to continually talk about the cooperative model, but I do think that the cooperative business model really encourages that level of collaborative dialogue across this electric cooperative sector. I've seen it, I felt it, I've experienced it, and I think it's one of the things that really helps us succeed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's fantastic and I know you said it's cliche to be a lifelong learner. I've been doing a lot of work in the past couple of years about brain science and neuroscience and some of the research suggests that the farther up people go in terms of leadership level, that actually they become more closed minded and more fixed around their ideas because they are put in a position where they're supposed to be confident, they're supposed to be right, they're supposed to appear positive, and so that actually works against people saying I'm open to learning and new ideas. So that research is alarming to me because I work with senior executives and I don't always see the open mindedness that I would hope or the growth mindset that I would hope.
Speaker 2:I think people say they're supposed to do it but in practice yeah, I think there's something to that and I think a couple other factors that can contribute to that dynamic are you know, if people get in leadership positions, it's mean they've had success. Yes, they've had enough success maybe to say, well, I figured this out. But the other thing and you know it's kind of lonely at the top yeah, of course it is when you become a leader you don't necessarily have a group of peers at your ready to engage in a lot of dialogue. Yeah, now, everybody deals with that differently and you know, my approach has always been I don't care what the title is of people, I want to surround myself with smart people and I want to keep that dialogue going. Anyway, I'm not hung up on hierarchy and titles. And you know, hire smart people, surround yourself with them and engage with them, and that keeps you sharp and you're always going to learn.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love it. Yeah, and there is. There's a lot of reinforcement that you get to a leadership position because you've done certain things that create success, and what's, I think, challenging about that, though, is those same successful characteristics don't always work the higher up you go, because you're going to be exposed to different challenges and complexity.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I'm curious then, when it was the last time that you admitted you didn't know something, where you had to really say to someone I don't, I don't know, and I have to learn that or I have to get someone that knows that.
Speaker 2:Oh, probably today. Now listen, I think in the case of a rapidly changing industry, there are so many moving parts in the electric sector and I'm not an operating utility executive but I need to make sure that I understand where all these changes are going, how they affect the operations of our membership. And I'm always having to learn that because it's not my skill set, my background's in finance. I'm not an operation engineer, so just specific to the electric sector. I always have stuff I can learn.
Speaker 1:I went to a learning conference just recently and I went and I thought I've been in this industry 30 years but there's got to be things I don't know. But then I was faced with going to all these sessions and my example was artificial intelligence and I'm like, oh my God, I don't know anything about it. But I also thought I don't want to learn that. Do I have to learn that? And I really had to press on my own brain like, okay, I don't know that and I actually do need to know it. So how do I get that? How do I admit that? How do I focus on something that is going to have an impact on my industry and the people that I serve as well? So those moments are small, as you said. Some of them happen every day like, oh my gosh, I need an answer to that and I don't know it. And some of them are really big.
Speaker 1:We face these areas where because, as you said, industries change, technology changes, complexity of the business changes as well. So thank you for sharing that. So now I want to transition from you being the CEO of the association to you being the leader of this association and thinking about the culture and our ACA and your employee group, your leadership group. The pandemic has forced a lot of changes in employee engagement and motivation and how people work. When you look at that, what do you see as some of your top priorities for your employees and what are challenges you're facing right now?
Speaker 2:Our priority is, first of all and this is maybe a good priority to have we are really aggressive about engaging third parties to do engagement surveys and see where we are as an organization synonymous data, and we have a really great set of engagement dynamics going on at this organization. We have for a long time, and with all the changes going on, the pandemic, the different work arrangements all that that caused some syndrome. Oh my gosh. We have this great culture under the way things used to be and a great engagement. Is this going to change it? And yeah, there are changes to day-to-day activities but, I'm pleased to say, the culture has maintained really well. And I think the key and it's what a lot of organizations aspire to is people want to work for a place where they feel like they believe in the mission. People are attracted to a mission-driven level of employment, a mission-driven organization to work with, and for us it really translates back to our membership.
Speaker 2:Again, we have this benefit of electric cooperatives are owned by the consumers they serve. There are no shareholders. They're all in it together. The consumers, with their electric cooperative service territory, vote on who their board is, so the governance is elected by the consumers. It's very much a community-focused, community-driven model, and while we may be one step removing that here as the National Association, we are also a cooperative owned by our members.
Speaker 2:Across the country. We are driven by our members, have a member resolutions process where they vote every year on giving direction to what we do as a National Association. So went a little deeper on this description to point out that employees who work at NRAC even though they may not all get to meet with all members across the country that often they all feel like they're part of this mission-driven component where these folks are out there in these communities, making those communities a better place, not just by keeping the lights on. By the way, every electric cooperative is a big part of their community. They're owned by the community, they're an economic development engine, we like to say they're in the quality of life, business, and so I find that that's key to our culture here at NRACA is that we believe in value the people who we work for, which is our members.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you bet, and that comes through and I get to do a lot of training with different groups in your organization and the passion that people feel and the service mentality is absolutely there and I think it's really fun. That's why I love working with your organization is because I'm a solopreneur but I'm very purpose-driven and when I find an organization that's purpose-driven as well, it gives me that energy like, oh, you care about what you're doing, so do I. And when we have something that is shared and common and it's meaningful, I get a lot of energy and motivation from that too. So I can feel that through your employees. So then, what would you say is like when you think about engagement and trying to maintain that culture and it is very purpose-driven. What is the biggest employee issue that you feel like you're facing right now?
Speaker 2:Oh, I think the list of issues are probably not unusual to us. I think across a lot of organizations, I think one is beyond that mission-driven component. People want to feel like they have opportunities to grow personally and professionally. So we've placed a lot of focus on professional development opportunities within our organization, lots of educational opportunities, trying to help people grow in their capacity. I think that's important and I think we're doing a good job of it, but that's something that I think is not unique to our organization.
Speaker 2:I think employees across the country are going to say they're always looking for opportunities to get better. Let's put this way that's the type of employee I want, and I think we have that here at NRECA. They really do want to continue to grow and get better at what they do and expand into new things they don't know how to do and I'm all for that. So that's one thing. That's an interesting dynamic going on here that's helpful for our employees. Everybody's trying to navigate the hybrid work dynamic. I think, particularly for managers, that a new way to manage people. That's a learning experience. And again, probably I don't think that's unique to our organization, but I think it's worked quite well for us so far because we have a hybrid policy here at NRECA.
Speaker 2:I will say, before the pandemic, though, we had a bunch of employees around the country that were remote. Already we have field representatives, and I think in some ways I'm confident we are better at engaging with them than we were before the pandemic. So, don't get me wrong, I wish the pandemic never happened, but we learned some things from that. We got better at using video technology, using a way to connect with people virtually. I have a group of field reps that I meet with every other Friday that I never talked to for years, and now I do meet with them every other Friday with a video call, and so I think that that level of engagement has been really helpful and been a good thing for our remote employees.
Speaker 1:So it's again one of those challenges that turned into an opportunity. It's both, but looking back on it and learning from it in that way, I think, is fantastic, that's great. One of the biggest challenges was one providing development and letting people know that you want them and they have an opportunity to learn and grow. And the second is still navigating through the challenges or through the transitions. I think and I think you're right From what I hear is it's the managers that are challenged to manage differently and adopt new practices and skills that they haven't had to use universally before, and I think some people are more or less comfortable with that, depending on their experience.
Speaker 1:And back in the day, when I first started managing people and this was decades ago I had remote people, so I think for me it was always kind of part and parcel of like, here's what I'm doing, so for me it would probably be more comfortable today to be able to do that as well. I want to ask you a bonus question, bonus question that I didn't ask you to think about, as you think about leaders who have influenced you, famous or not famous. Who is an admired leader that has helped you to become the leader you are?
Speaker 2:It's hard to limit it to one. I'm the beneficiary of having been exposed to a lot of different folks over the years that have taught me good lesson. You know I learned a lot, first of all, from my parents. My father always talked about something that I think I mentioned in this conversation. He said man, go out and hire smart people. You're never going to be the expert in everything. Surround yourself with smart people, and I remember that lesson from an early age.
Speaker 2:I remember my mother and my father quite frankly, both emphasizing the idea that when you're on this planet, you should work during your life to make it a better place. There should be some purpose to your life, and I think having a purpose matters, and I think that. So I started out sort of being raised by my parents in a way where I think they created some of those leadership skills that matter a lot. I think of my first job out of business school and my direct supervisor took someone who was I was new and didn't know much, and I probably in the moment didn't realize what a good job he did of facilitating my professional development and learning how to do my job better. He gave a lot of latitude and wasn't looking over my shoulder every minute. But on the other hand, I realized after the fact that, well, he gave me plenty of freedom. He also knew what I was doing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And kept an eye on it and was a good advisor. I think you develop more in your first working experience than any other, and that was a really positive one for me. I learned a lot about leadership from him in terms of how he handled that, in terms of empowering me to do my job but being there to support me, and, quite frankly, that's something I do now. I mean, I hire real smart people that are senior leaders in this organization and I am not looking over their shoulder. I hire professionals to do their job and there's an understanding and expectation. They are going to seize the moment and do their job and I'm there to support them and I'm there to engage and I'm there to be brought in any time they want me, but at the end of the day, it's up to them to make sure that their responsibilities are done well, and we have that understanding, that trust between us, and so that's an important lesson for me as a leader.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well, and you just said something important and at the very end of it, what you just framed up is trust. Yeah, absolutely. It is trust that that first manager had in you to give you the power and support you and provide a foundation of trust there. With empowerment comes lessons learned and mistakes, and I think when leaders allow us to make some of those mistakes and we learn from them, we come stronger from them, and I think that was some of the lessons of my first job, when I got out of business school, too, and took on my first team.
Speaker 1:I made a crapload of mistakes, but my manager allowed me to make them so I would learn from them, and not like sending me up to fail at all, but trusting me to go forward and have the opportunity to learn from those big lessons. And it sounds like you were given that same opportunity and that's pretty powerful. Absolutely Well. I want to thank you for your time, jim, today, for sharing your leadership journey with us and some really amazing, awesome lessons, any advice that you would give to young professionals today who are entering into the business world that you think are important, because you mentioned being purposeful, making a difference, hiring smart people, learning and growing. Anything else you'd add to that list?
Speaker 2:Well, I just think for young professionals first entering the working world, whatever business or whatever it's in, you did need to seek out and learn from others. And that can be challenging sometimes in this hybrid work environment, because when you first start out, you have all simple, sometimes elementary questions. You're asking how do I do this, how do I do that? That first, six, 12, 18 months? You're asking people all the time, and if you're not in the same physical location in an office, there are other ways to do it. But you have to work a little harder to ask those questions in the moment.
Speaker 2:But I'm a big believer when you're starting out, soak it all up, learn from others. You're going to be associated with a lot of strong people. Maybe you're going to encounter someone within your organization that is not a good manager. You can learn from that too. Oh for sure, you learn from being exposed to different styles, different approaches. So I think that would be my best advice to develop leadership skills is don't be afraid to ask questions. Yeah, pay attention, learn from others. Any information you can gather from other people you're working with. I think that's going to help you grow as a leader yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely Well, and that's really the purpose of this podcast too is to gather insights from people and to share and to ask those questions. So I guess I just want to step back and thank you for allowing me to corner you at happy hour and thank you for agreeing to the podcast and thank you for your leadership, because, even though this is our first opportunity to really interact in this way, your leadership shines through on your organization. I feel it in the employees, who are very purpose driven. I see it in the community and the cooperative environment and the people that I get to educate, and your effect is big. There's a huge ripple effect and I just want to thank you for that, because I know many people are grateful for your leadership and for the investment that you've made in them.
Speaker 2:Well, that's very nice, you just say, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1:Okay, did you hear in this podcast episode how Jim displayed four really amazing leadership mindsets? I did growth promotion, open and outward. If you haven't already, go back and check out the episode and interview with Ryan Godfreyson, because the mindsets that he talks about are ones that Jim displays. It is so cool, he's an inspiration.