There’s Always Something You Can Do: Interview with Management Consultant Liz Kislik

I recently went one on one with Liz Kislik. Liz is an author, management consultant, and contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Liz: When I graduated college, I really wanted to work. Because I thought that was where the action was. And it was. I signed on at a privately held marketing agency, where I had worked a couple of summers during college,  and I had some very significant responsibilities there early, because I was willing to do work that other people weren't willing to do. Later, when the owner of that firm died, and there wasn't a succession plan, new ownership came in, and I disagreed with the direction they were going in. And it seemed like a good time to leave. Because I was well known and well regarded in the industry, other consultants subcontracted work to me right away. So I was consulting already within the first week of leaving my job, and I just kept going. 

That was more than 30 years ago. And over time, the work evolved into every kind of team development, conflict management, leadership development, and business strategy you can imagine. 

Many of the challenges I faced came from trying to have a full life while  running my business at the same time. It was hard to do that and be a good spouse and a good parent, a good daughter and a good community member all at once. But these things are complementary; I learned more about leadership, teamwork, and communication from my children and watching them grow than any course I've ever taken. 

Adam: In your experience, what are the keys to building a winning organizational culture?

Liz: If you’re a leader responsible for culture—and every leader is responsible for culture—your own self-awareness and curiosity are crucial if you’re going to support the development of a supportive, healthy culture.

If you're not curious about other people and how things affect them, it's very hard to provide support, empathy, compassion, group growth, and fairness for the people who work for you. 

Leaders need self-awareness, because we're all usually our worst enemy. Knowing how you function will help you gear your communication to explain to your colleagues or team members how best to show up for you, support what you're doing and what you expect from them, and also, to keep you on your toes and help you watch for any aspects of your behavior that are actually not supportive to your goals or values.

Say for example, you come into a new organization as an executive. It's not helpful to say, “The way they do stuff here in this new place is really stupid,” and just tell people to change. Because you don't know why it is the way it is. It's that way for a reason. It might not look like a good reason to you. But it was a good reason at the time it happened. It was the best they could come up with at the time. And just forcing change without understanding the terrain will create significant collateral damage. It may backfire completely and is certainly not likely to get you the results you want.

Curiosity is often one of the best ways to position hard things in contrast to what can feel like a frontal assault. When you express your own curiosity by saying something like, “I’m wondering how the team developed that process,” part of what it says is, “I'm willing to learn about you.” It doesn’t feel like “I’ve decided to force you to change whether you're willing or not.” If you ask questions about what frustrates you, you will learn not only about the thing that you feel is stupid, but also about the whole rest of the organization. Then when you move to make changes, you can integrate your changes into the other aspects of the organization and its structures. And that integration will make your change more robust.

It's really important to be aware of your own feelings. If you know you are frustrated and impatient, you can actually discuss that. You can say, “I feel frustrated that we can't seem to accomplish the things we said we wanted to do. And I wonder if it's because of…” and you name the various things that are going on. And “I wonder how we could approach this.” And by sharing your frustration, you may actually be able to enroll other people in being interested in the changes you want to make, rather than just feeling harassed by the fact that you want them to change.

Adam: What is your best advice on building leading and managing teams in a remote setting?

Liz: People live and work differently in their own homes from the way they live and work in the office. Take those into account as a given. Then you can look conceptually, thoughtfully, and ask, “What are the aspects of office life that are worth replicating? And what are the practices or habits we could build that would replicate those outcomes or some of the same feeling?” There have been many interviews with executives who talk about the loss of innovation and creativity, because we don't run into each other in the hall or we don't have water cooler time. That can be true. But as anybody who has family or other loved ones who live far away, and who has good times with them on the phone or on FaceTime knows, you can still have a party together. So try not to be stymied by the restrictions, and instead think, what are the opportunities of this?

Returning to the theme of curiosity, asking your team members what's going to work for them, is often one of the most useful things you can do. Just showing that you care about their opinions is valuable and validating.

Say you want to have more idea sessions. Research shows that brainstorming without structure is actually not as effective as we think it is, because the people who volunteer the first ideas create anchoring concepts. And everyone then attaches to those concepts, instead of generating the number or quality of ideas that you can with other practices. The current research shows that asking people to generate ideas independently and then sharing those ideas when they're together is a more effective form of brainstorming.

That's easy to do on Zoom. You assign people thinking time, and you can give them choices about having their video on or off. You can encourage them to have music playing in their space, or share their music with others; you can have joking time. You can have people do “show and tell” with different objects. As idea starters, these are all options that actually take advantage of the remote spaces. 

Adam: How can leaders most effectively attract, attract, engage and retain top talent?

Liz: You attract and retain top talent by creating a great environment in which top talent likes to work. It starts with the nature of the work. What does the top talent like to do? And do they get to do it? And does it stay interesting? And can they grow in it and see their own progress? If those things are present, many other things that might seem inconvenient or less pleasant often fade into the background quite a bit. If the work itself is fantastic, people will tolerate less than perfect conditions otherwise. That being said, in this day and age, it’s crucial to have a lot of respect for individual human needs and preferences. Ignoring them will be a losing strategy when other organizations are willing to attend to them.  If you can also show your team members that they belong in your environment, that you're glad they're there and that you value them for who they are and what they bring to the party, then you’ll keep the good talent you've attracted through the nature of the work.

Adam: What do you believe, are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Liz: It's important to be able to assess situations and data from the real world and make judgments about it and explain your judgments. So from a skills perspective, you could call that decision making, communication, or problem solving. But it all comes down to your understanding what's going on, being willing to take a stand about it, and then making sure that everybody else actually understands what you were talking about, and what their place in it is. With that kind of clarity, everybody else then knows what's expected of them and how to react. If you can be clear about where an organization initiative or individual needs to go, what they need to accomplish, and can help them see how to get it done, you're pretty far down the path.  To take your skills to the next level, it’s helpful to know what the next level is—what are the skills you want to learn, whose skills can you emulate, and can you find opportunities to demonstrate those skills? Curiosity comes into play here again, and the willingness to practice.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Liz: Surround yourself with people who amplify your strengths and supplement your skills and tendencies where you are weak. It is very hard to accomplish significant things alone. Having the right people around you who care about what you care about and support your efforts productively is a boon.

Know what the truth is. And share it in ways that people understand it, see their place in it, and know what's expected of them. People will know when you are not on the level. And no one wants to work for that person.

You're not helpless. There is always something you can do to improve the situation you find yourself in. There are always ways to make the situation better. Think about them, evaluate them, and then choose for which of those alternatives you're willing to accept the responsibilities or burdens as well as the potential upside. But know that there's always something you can do even if it's removing yourself from the situation. 

Adam: What are your best tips on the topic of communications?

Liz: Communications are as much as about the messages people are trying to get through to you as it is about anything you're putting out. So make sure you know what people want you to hear. Make sure you are receiving communications as well as projecting them. 

Know your intention or what your plan is, before you get started communicating anything. Whenever there’s a need for formal communication that involves large numbers of people and you're going to be held to your word, preparation is key. Because things are going to happen all the time that surprise you. So at least know what your plans and goals are. Know what's in it for the other person; if you communicate without compassion or empathy, people are just less interested in hearing it--they want to know their place in your plan. So know that you have to start from where they are – not from where you are. Even if you have an answer to something that will improve conditions for them tremendously, they may not be able to see it from your vantage point. You have to go to where they are. People don't hear things the way you mean them, they hear them from their perspective, and through their own experiences, so there's no one form of communication that's going to work for everyone. You need to communicate the same messages multiple times through multiple channels to have a chance of getting through.

Adam: What do you believe is the future of work? What are the most important trends that leaders should understand and why?

Liz: Work is going to change because technology changes and market demand changes. But people are always going to be people. The specific things they do will be modified by the tools they use. They won't stop having human impulses just because technology changes. So stay curious about the people involved, and what they will care about. Even 20 years from now that should be a guiding principle in figuring out how work will need to be structured.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Liz: The best advice boils down to: Know who people are, so you can treat them according to who and how they are.

Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?

Liz: There's always something you can do, and there are always more possibilities than you can see. So it helps to have good trusted colleagues, who will help point out when there are facts you've missed, where you're in error, where there are opportunities you didn't notice. Don't try to do everything by yourself.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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