The Leadership Formula Every CEO Should Know

Strong leadership drives growth by creating clarity, alignment, and accountability. It helps businesses make better decisions, improve performance, and scale sustainably.

In this episode, I speak with Kathy Eastwood, CEO and creator of the E3 Leadership Code. Drawing on more than 30 years of leadership experience across global companies and high-growth businesses, Kathy shares practical strategies for building clarity, alignment, and trust to create sustainable high performance without burnout. She is also the author of *The E3 Leadership Code: A Human Approach to High Performance*.

https://www.eequalswhy.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyeastwood/

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
02:25 Navigating Leadership Challenges
05:06 Understanding E3 Leadership Code
09:10 The Importance of Clarity in Leadership
13:03 Engagement: Connecting with Employees
16:12 Execution: The Key to Success
20:57 Overcoming Obstacles in Execution
23:43 Balancing Logic and Emotion in Leadership
29:35 The Evolving Skill Set of Modern Leaders
32:15 Kathy's Journey to Leadership Expertise
36:29 The Importance of Leadership Training
41:11 Practical Wisdom for Aspiring Leaders

Transcript

Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:00

First and foremost, um, leaders need to express the end vision. Where are you going? Why are you going? What's going to be different once you get there? We need to have clarity on what we're doing, why we're doing it. Only 21% of employees are typically engaged in their work. So that means 79% are not actively engaged, right? Or not fully productive. People get bored, right? And a lot of leaders are successful because they are visionaries, right? And when you're a visionary, you have a tough time going into the details and having that operational rigor. But if you don't have that balance, if you don't have that operational rigor, then you start to come up with different ideas and you never deliver on something. People struggle with prioritization, they struggle with saying no. Um, they get caught up in the, you know, we tend to get down in the weeds very quickly. And we, I call it the spin, right? You're just spinning, you're like, oh my God, I have to get this done. And we need to really be able to step back and reposition ourselves and say, Hi there.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. In this episode, I had a discussion with Kathy Eastwood. Kathy is a CEO and creator of Human First E3 Leadership Code. She is a leadership strategist with over 30 years of experience. She has served as a chief of staff, chief people officer, and a chief operating officer at EY, HB, startups, and many private equity-backed companies. Kathy has led large-scale transformation, rebuilt trust, and broken down silos. Her E3 framework, Express, Engage, and Execute, focuses on emotional intelligence for sustainable high performers without a burnout. She's also an author of an upcoming book, The E3 Leadership Code. She shows clarity, alignment, and a trust drives results. And this was a very interesting discussion, and I hope you enjoyed this discussion as much as I did. And if you're finding a value out of this discussion, don't forget to share, subscribe, and send us your feedback. Your feedback is very important to us. Allow us to focus on the right discussions to help you grow and scale your business. Thank you again for your time. Please welcome Kathy Eastwood.

Navigating Leadership Challenges

SPEAKER_00 2:25

Hi guys, welcome to Business Leadership Podcast. Today our guest is Kathy Eastwood. Kathy, you've been helping business leaders for a long time. You know, you've been helping them, you've been, you know, helping helping them to get the strategy or sort of a lot of different items in a business. So I'm looking forward to learning from you, looking forward to a discussion. Thank you so much for time today.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

So welcome. So you know, you've been talking to a lot of business leaders, Kathy. So when you talk to business leaders, you're trying to help them. What in what are some of the key challenges? What do you see that the most business leaders are up against when they're trying to build their companies, trying to grow their companies and teams?

SPEAKER_01 3:00

I think the the hardest thing is you're under so much pressure to deliver results, right? I mean, that's why we're we're in business, right? Is to deliver the results. But we need to make sure that we're taking care of the people. So the biggest challenge most leaders tell me they they run into is how do I balance the two things, right? I want to take care of my people, but I need to deliver results, and I have all of the stress coming through, and I need to remember to do the basics. And that, believe it or not, is that time is what keeps them, you know, running to do a lot of new other things, and they forget to do the basics.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

Yeah, I think that's uh you know, you there's no balance out of this. You know, you you gotta tackle all these items, and then the financial side comes in and then the market changes. There's so many different items business leaders gotta tackle, and you know, and uh that's where there's a lot of uh blind spots, you know. You cannot be, you know, you you focus on one item and then you leave something else out. And this is where uh business leaders, I I I personally believe they need help, like somebody like you, to to make sure that you're not leaving any blind spots. If you if you leave those blind spots, it's you're gonna suffer the later one. You're gonna spend so much time correcting that instead of dealing with the upfront, those challenges.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Yeah, absolutely. Because most people know what good looks like, but as you say, it's the blind spots that gets them or they get too busy, they forget the basics, they drift from what they know and what they intend to do, and they end up not doing the right things, which hurt them later on, right? If you're not taking care of your people, all of a sudden they're like, I'm out of here. And so now you have retention issues, now you have productivity issues, and then that is going to affect your productivity later on. So often just coaching leaders is reminding them of the basics of what they need to do.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

What interesting. So let's talk about uh you know, I saw your website. We were, you know, you were talking about the book, uh was recently gonna release uh soon. So we'll talk about that in a detail. But I want to understand what is E3 leadership about?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

So throughout

Understanding E3 Leadership Code

SPEAKER_01 5:06

my career, I was always looking at success, you know, trying to drive results for the business. And change was a big thing I was always involved in. Now I've been involved in some very successful change initiatives and some not so good ones. And when I looked at when I left corporate and stopped to think for a minute, two metrics really caught my attention. One, only 21% of employees are typically engaged in their work. So that means 79% are not actively engaged, right? Or not fully productive. So that that's a flag for me. Number two is a small number of individuals, teams, or organizations accomplish their goals. So now you can say less than 30% actually achieve their goals. So if you look at these two metrics, there's something wrong. And you can see, okay, people aren't engaged, we're not meeting our goals. So I stopped to think about what are people doing when they do successfully drive the change? And it comes down to some basics that are repeatable. If you follow these steps, this system of leadership, you have more likelihood of achieving the results. And that's when I formulate the E3 leadership code with those basic steps to help leaders have more success in driving results.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

That is that is interesting, very interesting take on it. But but that is definitely the goal. If you look at the company, you know, only 20% of people or 30% of people help you achieve those goals. The rest of people are still there, you need them, but they're not contributing, you know, because they're not connected in a workforce. They're not engaged, they're not moving you forward, right? So it's a small group, but people help usually help you achieve your goals, whatever you're trying to do in a business. So you want to talk about what are those steps are, you know, a couple high-level steps, you know, what are what are those steps that will fill up the gap and especially engage people in a workforce?

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Sure. So the E3 leadership code is express plus engage plus execute, powered by emotional qualities. So first and foremost, and leaders need to express the end vision. Where are you going? Why are you going? What's going to be different once you get there? We need to have clarity on what we're doing, why we're doing it. So that's first the vision. Second, you need to engage your people the way they want to be engaged. So if we don't have buy-in and connection from our people, if we only have that 21% engaged, we're losing out on productivity. We're losing out on innovation. So we need to make sure we're figuring out how to engage all of our stakeholders in the process. Now, some leaders are great visionaries. You get really excited by the vision they put out there. Some are great about rallying the troops and getting them excited. But the third leg of the stool is the execute. We have to make sure that we create the rhythm to come back and continuously execute to meet our goals. Right. It's not we can't have a different idea every day. We can't have a different strategy every week. The execution helps us ensure we know what are we delivering, how are we delivering it, what are the milestones. And then more importantly, making sure that we're removing obstacles as leaders, making sure we're having the difficult conversations, holding people accountable. So that's the three legs of the stool: express plus engage plus execute. And the seat of that tool stool that keeps it all together is the emotional qualities. And this is where the human thirst comes into play here. You know, we have to deliver results, but if we don't have our people on board, we're not going to be successful. So that last piece is making sure that leaders are showing up authentically. They're able to inspire their people, they're using curiosity and courage to drive things forward, empowering and enabling their teams. So that's the E3 leadership code.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Well, there's a lot, a lot of you mentioned that in that such a

The Importance of Clarity in Leadership

SPEAKER_00 9:10

great point. So you mentioned so many things. But I want to unpack two of those, but I think that in what I find I think I want it one understand a little bit better. So let's talk about first of all clarity. You mentioned what is that clarity come from? Is that from business leaders' clarity, or is it a clarity as a team or as a company clarity? What are we looking for? Where does the clarity come from and how do you communicate clarity to the team?

SPEAKER_01 9:29

It's a great question. At all of those levels, quite honestly, you mean right? Like you need to have clarity first of what the vision is and being able to translate that for the company, for the teams, for the individuals. So often we will come out and say, okay, our we have a new strategy. We're gonna go into a new market, we're going to bring a new product to market, whatever it might be, but that may not translate to everyone in the organization. So that clarity is making sure that we're putting it in words or context that everyone can understand. And then making sure that that clarity is understood. So often we'll put out there, here's our vision, here's our strategy, and we'll ask, do you understand? And everyone shakes their head because they don't want to seem dumb. But clarity requires confirmation by folks across the organization to make sure they actually understand it, can repeat it back to you, and can tie their work to that vision, you know, because if you don't have that alignment, then there's so much risk that things are going to go off track.

SPEAKER_00 10:45

What interesting. So I understand clarity from a top down. The company has to clear all that's what you mentioned is very, very important. If you can talk about how important is for employee on a third level down, a fourth level down, how important is for them to find a clarity on their own goals for to align that with the company clarity, whatever the company vision is. You know, I see a lot of companies, definitely there's a there's a clarity at the top, but I think the missing piece sometimes I find is uh the the people that are clear, how can they use that vision and clarity that company provides, and they can fit in their their goals in, and so they can achieve their goals in that clarity what company provides.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

Oh, you're spot on because you ask anybody at that first level, often you know, down at the ground, what's the vision of the company or the goals they can't articulate it typically, and then they can't explain what they do to help make that happen. That's where leadership really comes into play at every level, right? So the we as managers have to be able to translate that higher level strategy into the next level down, all the way down to the individual. And an individual has a responsibility to be able to understand how what they do ties into the bigger strategy. You know, there's a story about asking a janitor who is working at NASA, right, what his job is. And, you know, his job was to, you know, obviously he's cleaning the building, but he was the helping get a man on the moon. And he was able to take his responsibilities and tie it into the bigger strategy. That's what you want to do is make sure that every single person in an organization believes in it, is bought in, and is excited to engage and do their role.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

Yeah, such a great point. But uh to your second point, uh, Kathy, you mentioned engagement. If you get that job right on a clarity, if you do a good job at that, engagement must be more easier to deal with because you just provided that vision. You know, people want to be engaged in that the first uh uh piece where we've just gone through.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yes, absolutely. And it's interesting when I when you look at the E3 leadership

Engagement: Connecting with Employees

SPEAKER_01 13:03

code and the way I set it up, it's a Venn diagram because no one element stands on its own. They were all interrelated, right? So you need to have that expressed vision that's really clear so that you can get the engagement and the buy-in. Uh, but you can't get that buy-in without making sure you're relating it to the individuals and helping them feel connected, right? So I'm often coaching people that the strategy to make more money for the business is not what's going to motivate most people, right? You have to find a way to translate that into their language. And this is where I think about you know, how do you communicate? How do you get messages across? And we often use the golden rule. I'll treat others and communicate with others the way that I want to be treated, right? But really, as leaders, we have to communicate and treat our people the way they want to be treated. And so I call that the platinum rule. You have to step it up a level to make sure that you're really communicating with people and getting them excited, making sure they want to give their role, because we need everyone to be giving at least 100%, right? So, what's gonna encourage them to do that?

SPEAKER_00 14:21

Yeah, it and that kind of varies from uh and a generation to generation. You know, I had to hire a lot of young people coming out of university and a technology company at a workforce. But if you look at 20 years ago, 30 years ago, people are engaged, but we didn't grow up with the technology, we learned technology, and it's kids come coming out of a school, they grew up with the technology. You know, for them, technology is a comfort, right? So, so how you communicate your messages and they don't need a long, long message. They look they're looking for a very, very short message because they get it very, very quickly. So at to your point, that how you want to communicate based on who's who's in your audience, who you're trying to communicate, you gotta customize that that that message.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Absolutely, and it's interesting because you know, because they know technology. I I've hired a number of younger people, they're better at technology than I am, right? And I have to remember that I have to absorb that because they want to feel valued, right? They're like, hey, I know all this. What but you have to think about what's going to motivate them and really change the idea is like, okay, well, here's what I can teach you experience and how to communicate. Because those are things that may not be something that you you do well yet, but I want to learn your technology. You help me with that, and I'll help you here, and we'll help each other grow. That's the younger generation wants to hear.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Yeah, yeah. That becomes more collaboration than simply, you know, instructional. Very interesting. When I get to the last one, execution. This is where we all fail. You know, this is where you get the biggest ball get dropped. You know, I it that's a tricky part, I think, is a lot of hard work goes into execution. Where do you see some of the challenges, people on that state and execution site, Kathy? And where you see some of the, you know, I'll admit that business leaders, when you see that somebody has that, you know that's gonna, it's gonna be successful.

SPEAKER_01 16:06

It's, I mean, you said it, execution, people get bored, right? And a lot of leaders

Execution: The Key to Success

SPEAKER_01 16:12

are successful because they are visionaries, right? And when you're a visionary, you have a tough time going into the details and having that operational rigor. But if you don't have that balance, if you don't have that operational rigor, then you you start to come up with different ideas and you never deliver on something. And so the best leaders and how I coach them is making sure that you capture what that vision is, putting together objectives and key results, you know, or KPIs, something that is tangible that you can tie back to, and then putting the structures in place and the governance to keep looking at the metrics. You know, if we had leading it indicators or lagging indicators, making sure that we've set up time to actually go back and look at them. So as a chief of staff, this was something that I was doing all the time for my leaders, is because every one of my CEOs was like, oh, really, Kathy, we need to go look at this detail. Well, yes, we do. We need to make sure that we look at it. People want to know someone's looking at it, people want to know that there's someone to help them if it's going off track, and making sure that if the priorities have changed, we need to be able to communicate that so people can adjust their work. So it's really putting the structures and the rhythm in place, not to micromanage, and I'm not a micro, you know, but to make sure you keep coming back and you're putting the resources on the right things at the right time with the right people so that you can execute quickly and you can get stuff done.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

So that's a very interesting point, what you mentioned. So, so what I'm hearing at uh Kathy is not only business leader or in a leadership team needs to be able to either you know communicate how do I measure this is a vision, this is how we can measure. You're saying enable their you know, uh to uh layers down leadership as well, whether it's director level or CTO levels, for them to self-assess how out of alignment they are with the way with the strategy, and they can uh you know move themselves back to the strategy. So some sort of tools to you know self-assess and gap analysis for them instead of you know leaders coming down all the time simply saying, Listen, okay, this is where we want it to be, this is where we are, and this is the gaps we need to fill. So people can do themselves, you know. I think that's probably such such a great way of uh analyzing the gap.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah, I mean, it should be all the layers are on board, right? It should cascade down and cascade up, right? When done well, if you you know, organizations I've worked with where we put OKRs in place, it isn't just a tops down exercise, right? You actually bring in the first levels to define their goals of how they can impact the top levels, and that cascading goes up and down in the process. And they're they're they're telling you before you even know at the C-suite, wait a minute, we're off track here. We have a problem, we need to go do this, or I need help. And that's the big thing to me. Like getting people to really feel comfortable to raise the flag, ask for help, and figure out where we need to remove the obstacles because that stops companies all the time. Because people like, I don't have the resources, or I can't do this, I don't know how to do it, or I'm afraid to ask. And if you don't have that comfort level, then people are just gonna do the bare minimum or just stop engaging.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

And does that tie into that you mentioned the 30% people achieve the goals in the company? Does that tie into that as well? Does that help to improve that, that, that, that goal ratio if you can if you can improve this?

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Yeah, absolutely. Because it's making sure that you know the visions is constantly staying there and people are going back to the vision at all times, but everyone's on board and then you're executing it. So you can see quickly if you've got the dashboards in place where you're not meeting the goals. And then if you put the working structure in place of what do I do if I'm off target? You know, how do I get help? How do I get resources? And having those kind of processes in place are extremely powerful, and you'll see that in high performing cultures.

SPEAKER_00 20:39

Very interesting. So, what are some of the obstacles, what are some of the challenges come where people go off track, Kathy?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

People struggle with prioritization, they struggle with saying no, they get caught up in the you know, we tend to get down

Overcoming Obstacles in Execution

SPEAKER_01 20:57

in the weeds very quickly. And we I call it the spin, right? You're just spinning, you're like, oh my god, I have to get this done. And we need to really be able to step back and reposition ourselves and say, wait a minute, is this important? And it's hard to say no. But if someone comes to you and says, This is really urgent, I need you to do this, if we have an empowered people to be able to ask the question, what does it relate to? Why do we need to do this? How is it going to help the vision of what we're trying to do? Then people are just they automatically jump in and then they're frustrated because we're working on 10 other things that really aren't serving the greater good.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

What interesting that goes back to the clarity that we were talking about early on. It ties into that. So, and the last part you mentioned, the emotional piece. So, how does that tie it comes up, you know, as a layer on all of these three uh three items?

SPEAKER_01 21:56

So people don't respond. To logic. As much as logic is important, we need the numbers, we need the processes, we need the systems. I'm all in on that. But what really moves people is emotion, right? The difference between someone giving 10% or 90% comes from their heart. Do they believe in what they're doing? Do they want to do it? And as a leader, you have a choice. You can absolutely use fear as one of the emotions, but it's very short term. It doesn't have a long-lasting impact. When you have empathy, when you show up authentically, when you have clarity and courage to have the difficult conversations, people then are much more proactive and want to help. Right. They're looking for opportunities to improve things. And that's where the emotions come in. And we have to remember we're all humans. Right. You could have the best processes in place, but if I have a bad day, if I've just gotten news that you know someone got ill, I'm not going to show up the best I can. And so if you don't have a good team surrounding you, then that person either steps out and isn't available, and then no one else picks it up. And so you want to start to build that trust that you have connection to really be able to drive the results forward.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Yeah, that's uh, you know, especially in a company's where it's the engineering company or manufacturing or technology company where you know logic is everybody's background. You know, we we go to computer science or engineering degrees, we are taught logic, not emotions,

Balancing Logic and Emotion in Leadership

SPEAKER_00 23:43

right? So so we think with the logic as well, right? Ongoing basis. So having the logic and in, you know, when you're trying to bring emotion does not sometimes make sense to us. You know, we understand logic very well, we understand how to connect with the logic to it, and sometimes goals we you know, it's so driven by numbers as well, you know, because the numbers are also logic because it fits very well with the logic, and that's where the emotional piece sometimes is very hard to get a handle on. And I think your point is you know, very well explained, said that you you know you need that layer in order to uh move people forward.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

You do it leadership is about balance. Now I'm a doer, so I am the I'm very similar. Like I logic is my first default. I want to get things done. I was a CPA, so I am all about the numbers. That's my natural tendency is to go get stuff done. And the logic makes sense to me. But what I've learned is not everyone is like me. And so I would try to use that logic, right? Like, this is logical. We need to just go do it, get on with it. And people like, and I could see them sitting there and not engaging, and I'm like, oh wow. And so having the balance and learning that, okay, I need to connect to the hearts of others to bring them with me on this journey. And because we need different types of people, right? Folks that have stronger hearts, that are that's their more natural tendency, tend to be the ones that are more creative, right? The ones that are logical are very good at getting operations done. But a team needs that balance across the board. So, as leaders, we need to learn how to communicate with everyone and have that balance as well so that we can truly drive long-lasting results.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

Did that create a challenge recently? What we've just gone through. A lot of people are working in a decentralized environment when you know it's easy to manage emotional site when when your people in the same office, you can communicate with them, get in the same room, you can talk. But these days we all work in a decentralized environment where one team is in a you know one continent, another team is in a different part of the world, a different part of the country. You, you know, you and I talking through that, you know, in a Zoom call. So it's the same kind of environment. We've been talking through the digital channels. Does that create that challenge a little bit you know more difficult to deal with that that you know that in one environment?

SPEAKER_01 26:04

It definitely creates a challenge. And as a leader, it means you have to be more deliberate about it because it's easy to just say, oh, it's technology, you know, turn the camera off. I'm not even here. But as a leader, it's knowing yourself and then being able to be vulnerable, share it with your team, and taking the time. And it's hard. I mean, I've worked remotely for 26 years now. I have I've led teams all over the globe. And so I know the tendency, and I gotta tell you, when COVID happened, it was one of the best things for me personally. Before that, it was all about my cuck. Like I didn't, I never saw anyone. I was talking to my team in Australia and in India and Bulgaria, you know, just listening audio. So once we got video and it made it a little bit better, but I would take the time and ask people, tell me more about yourself. What are your personal goals? How do you like to work? Here's how I like to work, right? So I often had to go first and say, you know, I am an I'm a nurturing driver, right? I tell people right off the bat when they meet me, I want to get stuff done. I'm gonna push you very hard, but it's because I care. And so if I if you feel like I'm being bossy or demanding, it's because I care and you can come back. But I have to be deliberate in that conversation to help them learn about me and how I respond so that we're not seeing it when I walk down the hallway because we don't have that advantage. So it's just a different way to do it. And, you know, having the tools to learn about yourself to be able to share it is a lot of what I do actually. So I will coach leaders to create their leadership profile. I call it the E3 leadership profile, which says, what's your leadership style? What are your values? How do you like to work? You know, do you prefer email? Do you prefer Slack? You know, how do you get up in the morning? Things like that to help them understand themselves. And then that creates the dialogue with their teams because they can ask them those questions as well and have a conversation back and forth. You know, it's fascinating when you have someone, you ask someone like, How do you like to communicate? And they say, Never text me. And you're like, What? Like, what do you mean? They're like, Text is for my kids only, and it just creates a whole different conversation suddenly. Yeah. And then you can work better with them. So you have to be, I'm gonna use the word again, deliberate about it, so that you're vulnerable and you build those relationships.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Yeah, and I'm probably one of those that don't text me. I've I fall in the category. Emails fine, calls fine, just don't text me. So let's talk about you know, where we are in a marketplace, you know, with lots lots going on financially, you know, now worldwise, there's so many different things than business leaders definitely trying to grow companies. In this day and age, are we expecting leaders to have a different skill set? If you look at 10 years back or 15 years back, are we is a market expecting or workforce expecting business leaders to have a different skill set than they had a few years back?

SPEAKER_01 29:23

Yes, I I think you know technology and knowledge is becoming a commodity, right? You can get that anywhere. I've heard you say this before,

The Evolving Skill Set of Modern Leaders

SPEAKER_01 29:35

right? But what's really going to be different and set leaders apart is being able to communicate with folks, being able to help them engage because the basic tasks, you know, are going to be automated. They already, a lot of them have been, and they will continue to be replaced. We need critical thinking now. We need people to really think about what are we doing, why are we doing it? And we're gonna have to be able to motivate people in a very different way. And when you think about the amount of change that's happening from a technology space, from a business space, you know, how everything is changing, we need leaders that can stop and think about how are we going to make this happen? And what are we going to do differently? And that really becomes this human approach to being able to provide profitability for business, quite honestly.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

Yeah, and no AIO, no technology can replace that skill set. You can't have that. You know, you need to build. If you look at 10, 15 years ago, Kathy, to your to your point, what you mentioned, the the challenge was not having the right information, not having enough information, not having that right knowledge to do the work. But these days, that's not the challenge. We have too much information, too much knowledge. It's uh I think the challenge is even having that much information, how do you stay focused on a goals? And you know, how do you know control that noise around you, how to stay focused and how do you keep moving? I think it's a different challenge than simply just access to the right information, which used to be many years ago.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Very true. Yeah, and I I often I mean we're in a knowledge space, right? Where we in manufacturing, you would go in and figure out how do you get information, you know, or get the product from point A to point B, right? Going through, and you would optimize that entire chain, that supply chain. But we don't think about that from a knowledge work space, right? That knowledge has to get from one place to another, and we have to make sure those pipes are clean, that they're well communicated, and we're not letting things leak out all over the place.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah. Very interesting. So let's talk about your journey, Kathy. So, how do you get so good at this leadership? How do you got involved? And if you can share uh your journey, your experience.

SPEAKER_01 31:53

Sure. It's been an interesting journey, I'll be honest. So I started my career as a CPA or a chartered accountant. So I worked at Ernst and Young doing audits back years ago, through over 30 years ago. And I really got a chance to look at different businesses, understand what their processes that were, because what I needed to do is make sure that we

Kathy's Journey to Leadership Expertise

SPEAKER_01 32:15

could sign off in their financial statements to make sure everything was accurate. So being an accountant, I went into private accounting at that point, started doing reporting, and I'm like, oh yeah, no, this is not me. And so I realized that I liked challenges, I liked change. I ended up working for a software company implementing their software package. And that was interesting to me, right? Trying to help companies. It was a project management software company, and I worked there for a bit, and then I started doing pre-sales in it. So that got me into the whole technology world. And I ended up working in nearly every function of a software company. So from the sales organization, I went into RD, and that's where I eventually became the chief of staff or a 3,000-person organization. And we were looking to optimize the go-to-market strategy. So doing that quite a bit was over in support, and then eventually left and said, okay, what do I want to do when I grow up? And I realized that I loved driving change. I loved partnering with executives who wanted to drive change, but knew that people were key to their success. So I became a chief people officer within a private equity firm. And then eventually left there and loved what I was doing, but wanted to do it with more leaders. And that's when I started my own business, E equals Y. And for the last six years, I've been partnering with executives looking to drive that change and helping them put together the the programs to help them drive success.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

What are you trusting? Thank you. What are you trusting, uh, Vicar? So, how did you uh what inspired you to write a book?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

I always so oh that's a that's a great question. It's been on my mind for so many years, right? It's it's been like I have to write this book, I have to write this book. It was to really get the knowledge and the experience and the stories that I had, because you know, as you heard, I was across different industries and different roles, and I wanted to share that and inspire people because the number 55% of managers have never received training. And that scares me, right? Because here we have leaders that are really responsible for driving the strategy of a company and getting things done, and more than half haven't received proper training. And so we learn it through osmosis. And a lot of books talk about the what and why about leadership, but don't talk about the how. And so I wanted to bring forth, you know, practical advice and tools on how to be a better leader. And so when you have that common language, when you have a framework, you can then pass that knowledge on to your teams and to your peers rather than it just being, why do you do that? I don't know. My boss did it. Right. So we need more logic around why we need to how we show up as leaders.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Yeah, when you focus on a how you do it, and you also, you know, can easily measure that as well. Because the how is part of the measuring, right? So when you're gonna measure it and you know how to do it, it's easy to easy to influence people, easy to train people on that as well. Because now you have a built-a system, how do you do things?

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 35:41

Very interesting. So people who are watching or listening, uh, you know, definitely you know, there's too busy growing business. You know, there's always a blind spot. We need a people like you. So, how do you help out with the business? Do you work on a on a on a present level level? How do you how do you uh engage with the businesses that they need or do they need do do people come to you? Do they need that, do they know that they need help?

SPEAKER_01 36:04

That's a great question. I mean, a lot of the people I really want to help don't know they have the problem, which is part of the problem.

unknown 36:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

But it is typically self-aware leaders that understand that leadership is requires support, it requires coaching, it requires someone to help you see the blind spots and see hold you accountable. But also leaders

The Importance of Leadership Training

SPEAKER_01 36:29

that understand they tend to get pulled out to manage up and out or fight the fires. And so they need help to make sure that what they're doing is cascading down through the organization. So when I'm partnering with executives, it's helping. So I'll typically come in at whether it's a C-suite level or a functional leader that knows they have change, they want to drive. And I'll come in and partner with them to help them individually show up as their best self, but also to drive teaming among their leaders, right? So making sure there's trust within their leadership team, making sure they have teaming agreements on how they can work best together, having that common language of what leadership is, and then eventually cascading that through their organization. So, you know, it becomes the culture of a leadership culture that everyone's showing up and everyone is following the E3 leadership code and using it.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

Yeah, and and if uh, you know, business people are watching us, listening to our podcast, that you know, most businesses understand it's uh it's a flexion point and different uh different uh you know in a business growth, right? But if I'm at a five, 10 million business, I have a different challenge to deal with. When I get to 1520, it's a different challenge to deal with. And these are these challenges come in a leadership form, it comes in a team form, many different forms. The skill it requires to solve this the challenge of the first place, it's not gonna be the same skill set is gonna solve with this next problem or problem after or the problem after. You're gonna need different skill set, you're gonna need to evolve your leadership role as well. I think this is where the expert like you come in. We can all fall and get up and make mistakes and learn from it and go forward. But how you know the time it's gonna take to do that, or somebody like you on a side simply say, Listen, you know, I'm trying to get there. Can you help me get there much faster? And and that's so I don't have to go through all the torture that I'm gonna go through by myself that I'm making those mistakes, right?

SPEAKER_01 38:28

Absolutely. And also someone that's not in the business on a day-to-day basis, right? That waking up every morning, okay, how do we help you to change, right? And bring it to the next level. Because if you try to rely on people sometimes within your organization, they're getting pulled into, you know, whatever prior priority is at top of mind at that moment.

SPEAKER_00 38:52

Yeah. And bringing different perspective to your point, right? So sometimes I'm just looking at from an operational standpoint. I'm not looking from something outside. So when when you work with the people, you bring a different perspective. And and sometimes having those different perspectives will solve a lot of problems you're trying to solve. Absolutely. Very interesting. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you, Kathy?

SPEAKER_01 39:13

People can find me at KathyEastwood.com. That's probably the easiest way to find me, or on LinkedIn, Kathy Eastwood, as well. And I'm often on LinkedIn sharing videos and helping guide people through their activities, or they can just reach out to me. I'm happy to help them work through a problem and do some discovery.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

I'm gonna include a link to all of that below this video. I'll encourage people to click a button and reach out to you. Uh, when the book's gonna be released. We're looking forward to it, looking forward to uh learning from you. What when is it gonna be released?

SPEAKER_01 39:47

So I finally have a copy in my hand, so it's close. There it's actually available on the website right now for pre-orders, but it will be ready for shipping in on June 15th.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Will you go to Amazon and all those uh channels as well, or is it gonna stay on your website?

SPEAKER_01 40:02

It's gonna stay on my website for all of June, and then it'll be on Amazon after that in July.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

Got it, got it. Looking forward to got a copy of it, looking forward to learning from it. Great, thank you. Any word of wisdom you want to leave for business owner watching us? Uh, you know, they're trying to scale. There's so many, you know, different items to balance sometime. You know, leadership is you know, take states, but when you're trying to grow a company, you focus more on the numbers, you're trying to grow, and then you know, then the management comes in, team training. Um, there's so many moving parts in a business. Any word, if somebody wants to start, you know, simply say, Listen, I want to start working in a better culture, I want to start working better leadership team, where can they start from or any other word of wisdom you want to leave for them?

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Yeah, I think the the most important thing to remember is leadership is not complex, but it is hard. And so every leader should have their playbook of what they know works and what their intentions are so that they can go back to it during stress. So whether it's the express vision of where you're going, when you get into the weeds, pull yourself up and remind yourself of what that vision is. When you are not getting everyone engaged,

Practical Wisdom for Aspiring Leaders

SPEAKER_01 41:11

remember why you do this and how. So having that space of knowing what great looks like gives you that opportunity to come back, remind yourself of your intentions so that you can show up better for your teams and deliver those results.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Very interesting. Yeah, definitely, you know, having the vision right in front of you when you do, you know, on a daily basis dealing with it. And you know, I I heard somebody who posts uh you know the vision on our walls all over the office that that's another way of looking at it. So, but I think uh having that in front of you, you know what you're chasing, it solves a lot of problems and help to stay focused on on a daily basis. Absolutely. Good stuff. Great discussion, Kathy. Thank you so much for time. And uh, we'll talk after your book release. And uh, look forward to our next discussion if you ever talk again.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Sounds good. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

Thanks, Kathy. If you enjoy this discussion, I'm I recommend to check one of these discussions on the top. Um, also don't forget to go back to that channel homepage. There's a playlist created just for you, whether you're looking for business discussion, technology discussion, or process discussion for business growth, all those categories are there, and I'm sure you will find something that you enjoy from those categories as well. So don't forget to send us your feedback, subscribe to this channel for any upcoming videos. Your feedback is very important to us, allow us to focus on the right discussion to deliver value for you on a weekly basis. So enjoy until next time. Thank you for your time.