Accountability, Acumen and Aspiration: The 3 A's of Leadership Growth

Kerry Wekelo is a Human Resources and Operations Managing Director of a New York-based consultancy firm specializing in business process engineering and technology implementations for financial institutions.

With over twenty years of work experience with top organizations in the field of consultancy, management, finance, technology and research for Fortune 1000 firms, she is also a prolific writer, a yoga practitioner, and a mindfulness advocate.

Kerry Wekelo is an #EverydayLeader.

We recently spoke over the phone. Following is a summary of our discussion.

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What are you passionate about and what are you doing to deliver on this passion?

I am very passionate about our people at Actualize Consulting. So much so over the last seven years I have developed different programs and really created a culture that people want to be a part of and our partners actually ask me to now offer that. We’re a financial services consulting company, so they’ve asked me to offer that as a new service offering. I published a book in October 2017 called Culture Infusion. I'm so passionate about it, I'm going to continue sharing it with our clients.

Talk about how you lead and how you use your passion to align people?

From a leadership perspective, you must be intentional. Not only do you have to be aware of your people and what they need but you also have to be aware of yourself, personally. When I'm looking at leadership, I'm looking at it from an internal perspective as well as an external perspective.

• I'm really detail oriented and so I get super frustrated when people aren’t that detailed oriented. Just that personal awareness of where I might not be my best self.
• Then from an external perspective, I really believe that a lot of people think one size fits all. Really looking at each person on an individual basis I think is really important.

How did you develop the discernment and intuition to distinguish the internal and the external factors you mentioned?

I started this personal journey inwards. I have a 500 hour yoga certification. I'm very type A. And, clearly, I haven’t changed that personality trait. But what I realized is I had always been avid in exercise and working out but it was always running versus anything a little bit slower. I didn’t take time to stretch.

What yoga taught me was you need to take that time to slow down. From a muscle perspective, you have to have balance. You can run, you can lift weights but you also need to take time to stretch and relax. I started to slow down a little bit. And that’s where all my answers came to problems that I was having not... only personally but in business.

Then I started developing the programs that are now a part of Culture Infusion. It was only when I took time to be quiet. Me running around wasn’t getting me very far.

Is there anything else in your background that not necessarily related to leadership but may have had an outside impact on the way that you lead?

I grew up playing sports and also my family has a business and so I grew up in that business as well. I feel business is just part of me. I remember going to business meetings with my mom when I was five. I grew up hearing my mom negotiate deals on the phone and from that learned what was and was not effective. I learned how I wanted to treat people... with respect.

Also, I just have been one of those people that is always glass half full. I was born like that and I have just now really honed in on how to share that with people and how to really lead from an inspirational perspective versus pushing people.

If you push, it doesn’t really get you very far. But if you listen and you’re focused on what you want to do, what you’re working towards, what interests people, and what they aspire to be, then they’re much more willing to do a good job for you.

What about your philosophy on building the team? If you’re building a team what do you search for, how do you make selections and how do you manage and maintain performance?

I looking for their technical expertise because we are a financial services consulting firm. Clearly, they have to know the business. We also probe to get to know your work ethic, how do you communicate, and how do you handle challenging situations.

We’re very big on behavioral type interviews and asking hard questions and scenarios and then giving examples of how they handled it, because that’s really how you get answers and how you can, in an interviewing processes get to know somebody is you really have them give you examples of what they, how they handle situations.

Performance management is really near and dear to my heart because I've been with Actualize for 13 years now and always been in charge of our performance and goal setting process. I always change things when people complain or they’re not engaged or it’s just not flowing. What we did a few years ago that’s working really well is we streamline the process, it’s super simple.

We set goals at the beginning of the year and then we check in midyear and at the end of the year. They're incentivized for doing this work. We aligned our corporate goal to people's performance. We have them set up around people, projects and profitability and then under people it's accountability, acumen, and aspiration.

• Accountability ... Not only are they accountability for their career but we’re also accountable for giving them the tools and giving them the opportunities to get to where they want to be in their career.
• Acumen … From an acumen perspective that’s on them how are you building your skills in the industry. Then from an aspiration perspective what do you want to be.
• Aspiration … We have people who want to get promoted and we have people who really happy in their current position. Understanding that whole aspiration piece and us both taking accountability makes a huge difference for sure.

And for awareness sake, what is the size of your business?

We’re about 75 people.

It’s small, which does afford me the opportunity to work closer with people.

What would you recommend for other leaders who work for much larger organizations? What would you recommend they do to reap the same benefits that you’re getting?

Most people are doing performance evaluations and goal setting. Even if your company isn’t, you could still work with the three A’s… the accountability, the acumen and the aspiration.

You could have those conversations. In larger corporations clearly it’s a little harder but at least they know that they have an advocate.

A lot of times what I find is people just want to be heard and understood. Maybe you can't get them what they want but if you go to bat for them they’re going to be a lot more willing to be a good team member. You can anytime have the conversation about how you want to hone your skills from an acumen perspective and then what you aspire to be. Those are easy conversations to add into your goal setting and review process with your folks.

We already talked about metrics and performance. But what data do you use to know that you're leading effectively?

We're very big on surveys. Not just one survey at the end of the year. We survey throughout the year. It might be one to three questions. We’re constantly checking in. Say we hear some people aren’t happy about something, we’ll check in with a quick survey.

I know a lot of times when I talk to people about surveys, eyes start to roll. But that’s why I keep them really short.

The other thing we do is we always follow up with a summary of what we heard and what we’re going to do about it. If we decide not to make changes, we discuss why we decided not to make those changes. That open communication has been extremely effective.

Even from social events, we have a higher turnout because I'm asking like what day of the week, I mean this is so simple, but what day of the week or what time from what venue. I'll usually give people some options.

Let’s talk about your book. 

The book is Culture Infusion and it describes nine principles to create and maintain a thriving organizational culture. I'm really hoping to help other people improve their corporate culture by leading by a positive example, being able to motivate their employees.

Culture Infusion provides nine easy, actionable principles to help you develop a customized game plan to improve your corporate culture and catapult your team to success. You'll discover key tips and tricks such as the three A's (Accountability, Acumen, Aspiration) that will aid in goal setting and performance reviews, and the 3P Method (Pause to Pivot to a Positive) that will change how you view every challenge and lead you to communicate more effectively.

What do you think are the biggest mistakes that today's leaders are making and then how would you go about fixing it?

Not listening is what I see the most from a leadership and executives. Because you’re so focused on your agenda and what you want.

Taking a moment to slow down is how I would fix it. Spend an hour a week, talking and listening to your team. I know that you'll get a lot of good answers and good suggestions and recommendations because that’s how I've been successful. But I have only been successful more recently because I'm listening and I'm asking:

1. What do you want?
2. What's working?
3. What's not working?
4. How can we make it better?

Because we don’t have ... Nobody has … all the answers, right? We might think we do but we don’t.

What do you see as the greatest leadership or management challenges or opportunities over the next several years?

I really feel like technology and having more remote work and especially in consulting we’re seeing our clients, they’re wanting us to be less on site. I think more remote work is going to be challenging.

We're going to have to really make opportunities for that face to face interaction. I'm constantly advising our teams that, “I know [clients] don’t want you there but go anyways and take them out to lunch. You need to have face to face interactions because you’re going to be able to resolve much quicker.”

I really think technology is amazing. It saves us a lot of time but at the same time we need to be careful that we’re balancing the person and the technology. Also, I encourage people to stop texting, stop emailing and pick up the phone. A conversation on the phone is better than an email. I think that’s really important that we don’t lose sight of that.

Do you have any final words wisdom for everyday leaders like yourself?

Well the one that we didn’t talk about and it’s one of my principles is to prioritize your own personal wellbeing. I think as a leader taking that time for yourself, doing things that you enjoy only give you more capacity to be a good leader and to have good ideas at work.

How did you become so people centric?

I really feel like I was born with it, honestly. I'm very intuitive. It’s a gift. It’s just something that I ... I know what people need. I also grew up in consulting and so I was constantly asking questions and I'm always curious and I listen a lot. I listen a lot and a lot of people don’t listen.

Random people tell me what's going on with them. I was at the beach on a tour and the tour guide started telling me her story. My daughter said, "People always do that to you mom." Look, I don’t know. I just have this, please-talk-to-me and tell-me-your-life-story aura.

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About this Series

I’m on a quest to profile 100 #EverydayLeaders doing extraordinary things. If you are an everyday leader and you’d like to chat, please reach out directly or through The Leadership Growth Network.

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