IAM1402 – Author Helps Leaders Achieve Success as Individuals and in Teams

Wendy Ryan, MHROD, is the CEO of Kadabra. With over 25 years of combined experience in human resources, organizational development, non-profit leadership, and executive coaching Wendy has partnered with hundreds of individuals and organizations throughout the U.S. helping front-line through C-suite leaders and board members achieve success as individuals and in teams.

Wendy is the author of the award-winning bestseller, Learn Lead Lift: How to Think, Act, and Inspire Your Way to Greatness, and has been featured in Forbes, Yahoo News!, Business Digest, Authority Magazine, CEO Magazine, and Thrive Global. Wendy is also an active mentor, strategic advisor, and angel investor in early-stage, BIPOC, LGBTQ++, and women-led companies and an advocate for expanding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the investor and business ecosystem.

Website: www.wearekadabra.com

www.wearekadabra.com/learn-lead-lift-download

Facebook: wearekadabra

linkedin: wendyryankadabra

Instagram: we_are_kadabra

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00:26 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEO's without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place, Gresham. Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Wendy Ryan of Cadabra. Wendy, it's great to have you on the show.

01:02 – Wendy Ryan

It's great to be here, Gresham, thanks for having me.

01:04 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, super excited to have you on and talk about all the awesome things that you're doing. And of course, before we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Wendy so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Wendy Ryan, MHROD, is the CEO of Kadabra. With over 25 years of combined experience in human resources, organizational development, nonprofit leadership, and executive coaching, Wendy has partnered with hundreds of individuals and organizations throughout the United States, helping frontline, through c suite leaders and board members, achieve success as individuals and in teams.

Wendy is the author of the award-winning bestseller Learn, lead, Lift, how to Think, act, and Inspire Your Way to Greatness, and has been featured in Forbes, and Yahoo. News, Business Digest, Authority magazine, CEO magazine, thrive Global, and now I AM CEO podcast, too. So Wendy is also an active mentor, strategic advisor, and angel investor in early-stage BIPOC, LGD, BTQ, and women X-led community companies and an advocate for expanding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in the investor and business ecosystems. Wendy, excited to have you on the show. Even more excited about the work that you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:15 – Wendy Ryan

I'm ready.

02:16 – Gresham Harkless

Let's make it happen then. So, to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched a little bit when I read your bio. I wanted to rewind the clock and take us through a little bit more of what I like to call all your CEO stories.

02:26 – Wendy Ryan

Yeah. Yes. Well, I started out my career in HR because I thought, ooh, I like people. I like business, so, of course, that's the place to go. And loved HR. Had a great career, and lots of learning there, but I always felt like it was a little bit in the box for me. So back in 2000, which is a while ago now, I ventured out into leadership development, executive coaching, and some organizational development, and I was pretty much thrown into the deep end of the pool. I had an amazing mentor who just really believed in me and said, oh, you've got all the skills. You just need it. You just need to get in and do it.

Went back after a couple of years, got my master's degree in HR and OD, and that was the time. And I think this happens to a lot of us where I said, oh, this is what this I've been doing is actually called. And, oh, this is the model, and kind of got all the vocabulary right. And then it was just a takeoff and learn time. And then in about 2014, I really felt like I had reached the top of my learning curve with the firm I was with. Loved my mentor, and loved what we were doing, but I was ready to kick the tires and do some experimentation.

So the time was right for me to go out and start my own firm. So 2014 was our soft launch. We became an LLC officially in 2016, and haven't looked back. And here we are today. It's 2022, and we are, as everyone has been, on a journey the past couple of years through the pandemic, et cetera. But we're really happy to be here. And I feel like the work that we do is more meaningful now than it has ever been, and I'm more excited to be doing it than I ever have been.

04:23 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you sharing that. So, you know, the entire journey that you had, and it's so funny that you said that word journey. That's exactly what I was thinking of through everything that you talked about with your journey, but also just everything that we've been going through. And I imagine, especially for the type of work that you do, that in itself, for organizations has probably been a journey, too.

04:43 – Wendy Ryan

For sure. For sure. And I've always said my clients are and have been my best teachers, and I think that that remains equally true today as it's always been. You know, when I started writing my book in 2018, I was about 75% of the way through it, and then I actually stopped for about six months. This is when George Floyd was murdered. I put the book down. It took about six months, and I said, I'm just going to immerse myself in what do I not know that I need to learn more about.

And then I'm going to come back to the book and read it and really discern, do I need to throw it out and start over? Does all this stuff I've been talking about leadership still make sense to me, or can this work? And fortunately, I felt like it was still on the right path. But it's certainly taking that time out and learning, I think, really enriched the book in a way that was very important, and it continues to be really important today. So.

05:47 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate you sharing that. And I think, you know, for so many people in so many different ways, you know, with George Floyd, this so impactful, and it's manifested itself in so many different ways on top of the pandemic and everything that was happening there, where it was kind of like that, the great pause, so to speak, that people sometimes cause it, where it made us look at things differently or reevaluate or even just have the space and introspective moment to really see if what we were doing is in alignment. And even if it was like, how can we do it even more to make more of a bigger impact in the world?

06:19 – Wendy Ryan

Yeah, for sure.

06:23 – Gresham Harkless

Well, perfect. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know we touched a little bit upon, like, how you work with and serve your clients. Could you take us through a little bit more about that, your book, and all the awesome things you're doing to make that impact?

06:33 – Wendy Ryan

Yeah. Well, at Kadabra, you know, if I could put what we do in a nutshell, it's really about catalyzing growth and for leaders, whether they're emerging leaders, managing people for the first time all the way through C suite and board level, because there are some universal tenets about leadership that really never change, no matter what your role or title is. However, the game certainly evolves as you go along, and we really do that through unique learning experiences. Learning can be you read a book, you listen to a podcast, attend a group learning session, or maybe you're participating in one-on-one coaching.

There are a lot of different ways that people can learn and develop. And really, the cornerstone of what we do around is the learn lead lift framework. And that's what I wrote about in my book. The learn lead lift framework is really looking at what great leadership means what it needs to be now and going into the future, and how is different from how we led for most of history, frankly, especially in the 20th century. We were very command and control. You know, we were very. There's one ideal leader type, and all of us need to be as much like that type of person as we can, and then we're gonna be successful.

And learned lift really flips that notion on its head and says, you know, actually, leadership is about how you think. And mindsets like identity matters are a really big deal. People first is an important mindset. Skill sets, what you know or know how to do, are like your handheld tools. And for so much of leadership development, historically, we've really just focused on skills, right? We've focused on just getting better at emotional intelligence, just getting better at holding people accountable, and you'll be a better leader.

Well, that's only part of the story. And I think the third part of the story is really behaviors. It's how you show up to others. So in the learn lead lift framework, we talk about Fida, which is focus, integrity, decisiveness, authenticity, and humility. And those are the five things that when you go out and you interview people on the street and you say, what makes a great leader? Tell me about someone that you interacted with who is a great leader for you. Nine times out of ten, you will hear one or more of those five themes in Fida come across.

09:06 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce? This could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But is it that ability? And I would even say, to me, it seems like a sign of excellence to be able to take that framework and to be able to translate it so that people can implement it easily. Do you think that's part of your secret sauce?

09:28 – Wendy Ryan

I do. I'm a big believer, that we can have very sophisticated, high-level, abstract conceptual thinking, but at the end of the day, what are we going to do with that? And I think every leader I know is busy. Everybody has a lot going on in their life, and so for me, it's not very satisfying. And for my team, for us to just be living in the world of ideas, ultimately, what we get satisfaction out of is how are we going to translate that into something really useful and something that you don't need to have an MBA or a PhD to understand or be a high-level engineer to understand how to do that thing. I mean, everything we do should apply.

Whether you're running a gymnastics academy you have your own small business out of your house to you're running a Fortune 500 company, it should be useful across all of those domains. How can I make sure that I'm supporting women that I'm supporting? And then as that evolved, it was also people of color, LGBTQ founders, because those are the folks that have just as many or more great ideas but have real systemic barriers to access to capital. So how can I, with the modest amount of capacity I have, make a difference there?

And I will say that that has been both such a complimentary journey and such an enriching one. And to me, it all holds hands. But it all comes back to making decisions as a leader, whether you're leading as an investor, whether you're leading as a CEO, whether, again, you're leading in your family. It all comes back to what I call who I want to be in this role, and who am I in this role. And we want to ideally start every single day asking that question. That's, I think, my number one hack for leaders, if you will, is to be very clear and intentional about who you want to be and who you're being. Why do you want to do this? Who are you being as you're doing it?

11:39 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that hack. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So what would you consider to be what I like to call a CEO nugget? So this is a little bit more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:55 – Wendy Ryan

The conversations I'm having now with CEOs and clients, whether they're my favorites or not my favorites, they're all amazing. But I think the crux of many of those conversations and the advice that I've been giving a lot is what are you doing to orient people in your organization, in your team right now? And what I mean by Orient is not in the sense of onboarding new people. It's imagine that we're all scaling a mountain right now, right? With everything happening in the world and the personal challenges individuals are facing, it's easy to feel like we're on a hiking trail where someone has suddenly removed all the signs.

This can cause people to quickly lose sight of the progress we've made toward our company goals and team objectives. And so I feel like right now, there are a lot of things that I would like to see leaders be intentional about. But that's one thing, especially for CEO's. I think understanding that your job is to orient and reorient the team so that people can see, oh, we actually have made progress. Even though the world has been crazy and the news is bad, we actually have made progress toward our goals.

And here's what we have left to do, and here's what we're going to do. So I think a lot of our job has to be about, especially right now, providing those pockets of certainty, because people need that in order to feel a sense of safety and motivation. It's really hard to stay motivated if you feel like you're just on a treadmill and you're not going anywhere.

13:43 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. I love that. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quotes from unquote CEO's on this show. What does being a CEO mean to you, Wendy?

13:56 – Wendy Ryan

To me, it means the buck stops here. That anything that my team achieves, I give credit to my team. But anytime we trip up or we wish we did something better, we learn from that. But ultimately, it's my responsibility and I have a duty of care. I think that's also implicit for me in that buck stops here. So I have a duty to care about my people and my clients. And who are we being as a company? You know, who is Kadabra being in the world? How are we showing up to people and are we really congruent with our values? Nobody can do that but me. I have to see that as part and parcel of my responsibility as CEO.

14:41 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that definition. And of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you. Find out about your team, and all the awesome work you're doing, and of course, get a copy of your book.

14:57 – Wendy Ryan

Thank you. Yes. Learn, lead, lift. How to think, act, and inspire your way to greatness is the name of the book and it is available anywhere books are sold. I always like to put in a plug for my independent booksellers, so consider that as an option as well. We have a website, learnleadlift.com where you can actually get a sneak peek at the book you can read some testimonials and hear more about it. We also have a lot of free resources on our website, so you can actually go to We Are Cadabra.

That's with a k.com and you can download some free tools to start using right away. Try to learn to lead Lyft as a framework and see how can this work for you and your team. And I think we have a lot of exciting things coming, so encourage people to follow me on LinkedIn. I do post a monthly newsletter and I post weekly, you know, about both, what's happening in real-time as well as, you know, what are some things for leaders to be thinking about who really want to lead in a future-forward kind of way?

16:11 – Gresham Harkless

No, I love that and I appreciate it. We will definitely have the links and information in the show notes as well too, so that everybody can follow up with you. Appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:21 – Wendy Ryan

Thank you too.

16:22 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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