Leadership Wow – A Founder’s Story

My favorite toy as a kid was a giant plastic bag filled with lots of people. A collection of 1-2-inch-tall toy people gathered from many different places – Little People, Lego people, dollhouse people, Playmobil people, barbie’s baby, Disney princesses the list goes on. I must’ve had 100 little figurines. Each of them had a name, a story behind how I acquired them, their personality, what they were good at the list goes on there too. I spent hours and hours playing with these people. Having them line up to go on a field trip, having them sit in an auditorium to watch shows, having them work together to build buildings. There all had professions: the baker, the firefighter, the dancer, the president. I made up stories about their lives, what they enjoyed doing and what motivated them.

I also grew up with lots of fish in my house, mainly because my parents had a fish business. Just like my collection of toy people, I spent hours observing the fish in my aquarium. Whenever you introduce a new fish into the aquarium, the tank dynamics change. You have to be very thoughtful about this. Sometimes there is a bully, sometimes a clear leader, sometimes all the fish team up against the bully. It is very interesting to watch.

It is no surprise that “when I grew up”, I ended up in HR:

A few months after graduating from college, I started my own moving and storage business. I had to hire people for the first time, and I thought it would be easy. Everyone wants a job, right? Wrong. I quickly learned that really great talent was hard to find and once you do, you want to hold on to them as tightly as you can. Just like the little people, I split my employees into two groups. One set of people were pure individual contributors, another set I put them into teams of three. I found out that the people arranged in teams outperformed the individual contributors, not by a little but a whole lot. This was when I first learned about the power of teams. 1+1 did not equal 2, 1+1 equals 3!

I spent the majority of my corporate life as an HR Business Partner, what I loved most about my job was observing people. Just like the aquarium, I observed people in meetings and how they interacted. How adding a new team member to a leadership team can change the dynamics instantly. Everyone is connected as you are all in one aquarium! I later learned this was systems-thinking.  The people, structures, and processes in organizations are what work together to make an organization “healthy” or “unhealthy”. In the case of an unhealthy aquarium, I’ve had success with either removing some fish or modifying the feeding routine and space (by adding more plants for safety). We can discuss more on how some of these solutions are very similar to fixing an unhealthy organization. I asked my dad before how he knew if a fish was sick, he said, “just by how it swims, you can tell”. After years of observing organizations and teams, I can confidently say I am able to do the same with teams.

With years of observing, hands-on learning and a passion for people, I founded Leadership Wow, an executive coaching and team effectiveness company to help unlock the power of you and your team. When you first enter my home, you will be greeted with a beautiful 20-gallon tank displaying a healthy ecosystem. Most of my guests upon entering say “wow”, and that is what I want to help create for you, your team and organization.