Level Up - A Leadership Podcast: Recent Episodes
James Lee
Level Up is where mission driven leaders get learning content, resources, and insights that help them to improve their Head and the Heart leadership skills in order to create powerful professional relationships.
Kim Kaupe is a self-described "accidental entrepreneur" who has built a crystal clear personal brand as someone who helps other leaders to thrive. Her opening statement on her website boldly reads, "I help leaders become public-facing powerhouses.*" The asterisk states "I've done it & I want you to join me."
Kim is also an educator, a podcaster, speaker, LinkedIn instructor and formidable business leader. I had the great privilege of working with Kim at the 2024 Think Tank event we hosted in San Antonio, where she delivered an impactful session on storytelling through LinkedIn.
In our episode, Kim and I talked about all things related to building and growing your personal brand. A few of the topics in our episode:
- What is a brand and why invest in your personal brand?
- Leaving breadcrumbs and being explicit about "What's Next?"
- Her K.N.O.W. framework for telling your story
- Using bread-crumb trails in introductions
- The value of creating content on LinkedIn
Kim also walked me through some tips and advice for how to start with baby steps, copy people’s homework, and find someone to hold your hand toward new goals. For me, the next frontier in personal brand is my nervous trepidation of getting started with LinkedIn Live. Kim offers great advice and encouragement on how to get started.
You can connect with Kim in several ways, and I’ve linked a few of them below.
Live on LinkedIn every Wednesday at 1:00 pm est: getcoffeewithkim.com [calendar invitation]
Her website: kimkaupe.com
All social media channels: @kimkaupe
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimkaupe/
Elaina Davis is the Chief Community Officer in her new role (at the time of this recording) at a senior living consulting firm, primarily serving the Richmond, VA market.
In this special episode of Level Up Leadership Podcast, I had the opportunity to get into the coach's seat with Elaina in the learner's seat.
We reflected on Elaina's learning journey of where and how she learned the skills to equip her to lead others today. More simply, how we do acquire the skills to make the transition from an individual performer into a leader of others who perform?
Few organizations have formal or informal coaching structures to teach, mentor, and grow people beyond a "supervisory" or "task completion" de facto management relationship.
In this episode, Elaina and I dug into areas such as:
- Evaluating one's own strengths
- Having the right environment that is conducive to your learning and development
- An insight that our weaknesses are actually our strengths overdone
- The concept of aligning strengths to job responsibilities and outsourcing or delegating those responsibilities we're not well suited to execute
- The value of focusing on strengths more than we focus on our weaknesses
We delved into many universal themes of self-growth and strengths and weaknesses, and we hope that you take your own nuggets of wisdom away from our conversation together.
"No founder has it all." Christie Stukenholtz, the co-founder and CEO Senior Care Finder, is mindful of how critical it is for any organization - but especially an entrepreneurial endeavor - to assemble an All Star caliber team.
From her extensive experiences in a professional HR Consulting company to talent management, market research and now the co-founder of a growing business in aging services, Christie has had a lot of different looks at forming high-performing teams.
Christie shared so many insightful perspectives, approaches, and mindset in how she works to put together great teams. From "hiring the empty seat" to "creating an environment where people will stick around when times get hard" and "finding a team where you find belonging" we covered a lot together.
Connect with Christie in any way you'd like to engage with her or Senior Care Finder.
Website: www.SeniorCareFinder.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FindTheBestSeniorCare
LinkedIn (business): https://www.linkedin.com/company/senior-care-finder/
LinkedIn (personal): https://www.linkedin.com/in/cstukenholtz/
Instagram: @seniorcarefinder
Twitter: @SrCareFinder
Michael Emery's career spans a wide range of healthcare roles starting from ICU nursing, to advanced nurse practice, senior operations roles, and now serves as the Executive Vice President of Senior Living for Curana Health. He is also one of my most memorable classmates from the University of Texas' Executive MBA program at the McCombs School of Business.
On our episode, we spoke about what it is like to learn and lead in healthcare organizations. The conversation delved into what organizations like Curana Health actually do (concierge healthcare), the interrelated work of healthcare and senior living, the GUIDE Model by CMS, what Value Based Care means, why we chose to continue our education at McCombs (an MBA vs. MHA), the role of mentorship in growing leaders, and so much more.
Michael Emery's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-emery/
Curana Health: https://curanahealth.com/
James Lee's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seniorlivingguy/
Bella Groves: https://www.bellagroves.com/
Join the Think Tank: https://www.bearwiseconsulting.com/thinktank
What are the building blocks of consistency? How disciplined are you at...discipline?
Leaders have the double-duty of being disciplined and creating discipline in their organizations. I looked to Chris Heinz from Westport One in this conversation to discuss consistency and discipline in some key areas of leadership.
Some key discussion points gave us opportunities to discuss:
- The building blocks of discipline
- Where does passion really come from?
- Tying discipline to your motivations not your outcomes
- Creating processes and automation that help with consistency
- Not letting "great" stand in the way of "good enough" (FOMO)
I believe that in a lot of cases "lack of discipline" is actually a misalignment between a person's true motivations and their work. It is nearly impossible to have discipline in the long run about things that don't deeply connect to your WHY.
Thanks for listening!
Erin Thompson shares her leadership experiences, anecdotes and lessons learned about psychological safety in the work place. Erin and I share a lot of similar experiences, and we dug into some examples of environments where safety was not the top priority. We examined potential causes or reasons this is so prevalent in an industry that touts care, warmth and empathy - at least toward its customers.
We also explored practical tips and approaches to create psychological safety and trust within teams.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Level Up Leadership Podcast with James Lee and guest Erin Thompson. Please also check out Erin's podcast "Aspire for More with Erin".
Nathan Jones is a former college football coach turned senior living advocate. Nathan was introduced to the world of senior living just out of college, and from the moment he first stepped foot into a senior living community, he was hooked. Since that day, Nathan's mission has been to change the negative perception surrounding aging & senior living through sharing authentic stories of older adults. He does much of this work through his company, Dash Media.
In a prep conversation together for a different episode topic, I learned that Nathan hadn't been returning my text because he was in the hospital. It led to an important conversation together about the nature of work, self-imposed hustle, and the need for purposeful pauses - especially as an entrepreneur in a passion-fueled industry like senior living.
The pressures of keeping up with and responding to everyone, talking about how we're feeling, taking breaks, being a good leader... these and so many more factors of running a business can easily become a compounding snowball of depleting mental well-being.
For content creators like Nathan and me, it is also challenging to experience impactful moments without our brains shifting in the moment to how this will translate to a good story. Ironically, this pulls us out of the moment and fully experiencing it.
This was an important conversation about entrepreneurship, content, mental health, and everything in between.
Season 3 of the Level Up Leadership Podcast kicks off with a rather provocative episode: “Do People in Aging Services Perpetuate Ageism?” [YouTube vide of episode.]
It’s a long title, but I thought it deserved the full weight of the question.
I was SO fortunate to interview Ashton Applewhite. In my readings and study on this topic, I couldn’t find a more compelling and articulate activist than she.
Ashton’s Ted Talk, “Let’s End Ageism” is a masterful storytelling experience that gives audience an opportunity to examine “a prejudice that pits us against our future selves.”
I read her book, “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism” while on vacation. I’m grateful I had a moment in time without normal distractions to become engrossed in this book. Our episode delves into some really intriguing questions and possible self-examination for those of us in aging services. I hope you enjoy and will reflect on this conversation.
"Don't just think positive thoughts. Feel positive feelings." This is just one of many golden nuggets of wisdom I gained from my conversation with Dana Garnett, a conflict management strategist and professional mediator. Dana is an insightful conflict expert who helps businesses and teams clear the deepest rifts to working in harmony fast. Founder of The Mindful Strategy she applies her vast business and life lessons learned to help improve business and social dynamics.
In this episode, we explore what causes conflict to exist - both in individuals and on teams. She shares her insights on the elements of a successful team and how conflict arises when one or more of those elements is not in sync with the others.
How does taking someone else's position actually help you? What's the harm in leaders ending conflict with "let's agree to disagree"? Can leaders actually get better at managing conflict or is it something you troubleshoot when it comes up?
Let's dig in. Your conflict management strategist is dialed in.
Jack York is a successful leader who self-describes as a "mediocre CEO". A co-founder of the senior living technology company, iN2L, Jack is the prototypical Head + Heart leader that we talk about. In this episode, Jack shares some of his own story, insights into how to lead a startup business, and what's next for him. The episode spans topics like:
- Launching a technology product into a wary senior living industry
- The tough early years of leading an organization
- Where he would focus between Product, Sales or Team when launching a business
- How cancer affected his perspective on life
- Preparing your personal finances and expectations of profitability
- His upcoming road show and reality TV show focused on storytelling
Thanks to Jack for joining me for this conversation and for his great advice to our starting organization, Bella Groves.
Executive Directors lead the day to day work within a senior living community. In my opinion, this is a cornerstone role for any leader in our industry. Whether it is a career-long role or a pivotal experience along your career journey, the E.D. is the heart and soul of our profession.
In this episode, I share some practical tips on how to prepare for and find the right Executive Director role. Despite better intentions, most companies merely set up E.D.'s to babysit the business - giving these leaders what amounts to daily checklists, weekly meetings, monthly quotas, quarterly assessments, and annual performance reviews.
For the aspiring leader who wants to make lasting change (or at least attempt it), I share my thoughts on the following concepts:
- Build your relationship management skills
- Choose your leader, not the company/job
- Signal your commitment
- Gain an understanding of financial statements and key data
There are two critical components of having high emotional intelligence: inward facing (self management) and outward facing (social management).
In this episode, I share three practical tips on how you can build your self-awareness and self-management skills.
- Grow Your Emotions Vocabulary
- Orient Yourself to Empathy as a Skill and Not a Feeling
- Create and Write Down Specific (S.M.A.R.T.) Goals Related to Building Emotional Intelligence
I also explore the difference between sympathy and empathy. This distinction is a beginning step to building your skills in empathy, which leads to better social (relationship) management skills.
Sean is a turnaround guru. In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times.
In this second part of our epic conversation together, Sean and I discuss:
- A therapy metaphor for adopting a turnaround mindset
- How to develop a coalition on your team to get ideas heard
- An argument for in-person work (vs. remote) to facilitate healthy friction on a team
We also dig into Sean's questions about the senior living industry at 25 min. 31 sec.
- How has senior living been disrupted in the last 15-20 years (pre-COVID)?
- Making senior living a service and not just a place.
- An idea for a senior services marketplace.
Summary of episodes 1 and 2 in one sentence: the best time to face disruption is as a healthy company when you have all the resources to address it.
Sean is a turnaround guru. In his wide ranging professional experiences in helping distressed companies to restructure and turnaround, he has observed lots of organizational patterns that may have contributed to tough times.
In the COVID era, just about every company experienced elements of turnaround. In this first segment of a two-part episode, Sean shares some of his insights and advice to leaders to draw lessons from our collective experiences during the pandemic, how to avoid pitfalls and ways to watch for warning signs within their own organizations that things may be headed south.
“Purpose transcends ego.” This was one of the many quotable quotes that came from the discussion between James and Anna Hall, the Chief Purpose Officer for Connected Living and the inventor of the Purpose Equation. In this episode, James delves into the topic of purpose and how it relates to greater leadership effectiveness.
Anna also shares some of her techniques by walking James through his own purpose equation. This is sure to be an episode that you bookmark for you to return to more than once. How do you define your purpose? Do you lead in a way that invites the people on your team to live within their purpose? Vulnerable insights ahead. Let’s dig in.
Why do people go to websites? It's probably not to see an advertisement of your company.
Advertisements are inherently disruptive. They are designed to interrupt what you are doing (i.e. watching TV) to pay attention to your company or brand. Content Marketing is a magnet that draws interested people to content that will actually help them. In other words, advertisements are the "hype" and content marketing is the "help".
Whether you are a solo-entrepreneur or a large company, you will NOT generate trust or demand without a solid content marketing strategy. A subset of content marketing, according to guest, Andy Crestodina, Co-Founder and CMO or Orbit Media, is thought leadership.
Thought leadership always makes strong assertions, and you can be certain that someone will disagree with you. Andy believes that thought leadership takes courage and that it isn't for everybody. But, if you feel comfortable enough to stand out on that branch - a little exposed - I hope this episode can help you to feel a little more strategic and confident. Your industry needs your voice. Make it count.
James reunites with managers from the first community where he was an Executive Director to recall and revisit what elements of their leadership culture made the team special. Does culture correlate to performance? How does an interview signal the culture of the leader and the team? How do you get an entire group of people to buy in to and contribute to a positive culture?
In this episode, we take a look behind the curtain to ask the central question about culture and its relevance in business - does culture impact performance?
Monte Pedersen enjoyed a 35-year career in hospitality management before deciding to form his own leadership and training firm focused on Strategy Execution Management. In this episode, James and Monte discuss some basic concepts of strategy formation, execution, and how it all ties to taking care of the people who make up your company.
Key takeaways offered in this episode will help leaders to examine their own company’s strategy execution and their role in creating a culture around accountability to one another. Get out your pen and notebook! This episode has a lot of nuggets of wisdom throughout.
I discuss the value of having a leadership model with serial entrepreneur Josh Crisp, the CEO and Founder of Solinity Senior Living, Solinity Marketing, and the co-creator of Bridge The Gap Senior Living Podcast (among many other ventures).
In this episode, I delve further into motivations for the podcast and also share the leadership model I developed to self-guide my professional growth in both emotional intelligence and business intelligence. It also became the foundation for how I led teams in senior living businesses and how I coach executives today.
The MBAR Model, which stands for Motivations, Behaviors, Activities, Results, is simple but has provided profound insights on the interrelated connection between our "why" and our goals.
This podcast is for mission driven leaders who want to level up their own abilities, skills, and mindset to create powerful relationships.
Host, James Lee, shares some of his guiding principles of life that inspired him to create a podcast to document his own learning journey and share it with other mission driven leaders who believe that self-improvement is the best way to serve the people you love.