Our special guest on this week’s episode of the Vibrant Leadership Podcast is Steve Karski, the Owner and CEO of Karski Learning Solutions. He has spent over 30 years in both insurance and financial services businesses, leading teams of up to 50 and working with small insurance agencies before becoming a corporate Training Director.
“How many times do you need to repeat a message to your team before they really get it, before they really understand?” Steve asks.
Steve shares great stories of successful leadership, as well as:
-
His four components of leadership
-
Connecting your goals to your mission
-
Why you HAVE to keep asking questions
-
Critical skills to motivate your team and support a strong company culture
-
Anticipating the upcoming challenges of returning to the workplace
-
And more
Mentioned in this episode:
-
614-338-5232
Transcript
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership Podcast with leadership speaker and consultant, Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome everybody to the Vibrant Leadership Podcast. My name is Nicole Greer. And I’ll be your host today and I am so excited to be joined by Steve Karski. Steve Karski is the owner and CEO of Karski Learning Solutions. He started it in 2018. And he has spent over 30 years in insurance and financial services business working with small insurance agencies to the training director position inside of a large corporation. He’s led teams of people from three to 50 for over two decades. And I am absolutely delighted to have Steve Karski on the podcast today to share with us his ideas about leadership. So welcome to the podcast, Steve.
Steve Karski: Thank you so much, Nicole, it is great to be here.
Nicole: Yeah, I just absolutely delighted you’re here with me today. I want to start out with my very first question. I ask everybody on the show, what’s your definition of leadership? Talk to us about that.
Steve: Yes, yes. Well, leadership for me is someone who takes control and gets things done through their people. All right, let me give you give you kind of my four components of what I think are really important for leaders. And one is to have a vision and a mission that inspires people to take some action. And I’ll cover some more detail on that in just a second. The second thing is challenge every process. I know when I was a leader, at times, it was great to be in that comfort zone and, and everything is going well. And you just want to stay in that comfort zone where everything’s going well. And if you don’t challenge the process on a regular basis, you’re gonna find things falling apart. So you’ve got to constantly challenge that process.
Another thing that the third part of that is delegate effectively. You’ve got to get your folks involved in doing more than what they’re doing right now. And through delegation, you can do that. And then the last component for me is you’ve got to commit to your team. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this before. But I’ve had leaders before that didn’t, didn’t give recognition to their team. Didn’t really believe, or maybe they had other things that were more important than dealing with their team. And sometimes it was doing projects for their supervisor or for their leader, and not spending the time on developing their team like they should have.
So those are kind of the four components that I always talk about when it comes to leadership. And I’ve learned many lessons from my mistakes, as I know many of us have when it comes to leadership. But one of the things that I find really helpful for me is that first component that I mentioned, vision and mission. And if you take a look at many companies, large companies all tend to have a mission statement. And oftentimes, those are dusty, and nobody ever looks at them. And they don’t get much traction from them.
I mean, why do they put a mission statement together to begin with? It’s to try to inspire people to higher levels of performance, you know, and so, when I’m talking to a group about their team, and their vision and their mission, I start asking questions about, you know, do you have annual goals? And everybody’s got annual goals? And are your annual goals connected to your company mission statement? And most times they are, you know, and then I asked this follow up question, the things your team is doing right now back at their office, or back at your location. Are those things those activities are doing today connected to their annual goals?
And typically, the answer is yes. But do your teammates know how those daily tasks connect to your company mission or your vision for that company? And so many times there is such a disconnect, because we just keep building widgets every day, right? We don’t see the bigger picture. And so, you know, one of the things I remember that old story from John F. Kennedy, and when JFK was president of the United States, he was walking through NASA. And he’s getting introduced to a lot of people and talking to a lot of people.
And he sees this gentleman who is sweeping the floor at NASA. And he goes over introduce himself and is talking to him and says, so what do you do here? And he said, I’m sending a man to the moon. And he stepped back. He said, What do you mean, you’re sending a man to the moon, you here with a broom, in your hand. He said I’m keeping this place so clean, and so safe. Those folks in that room, they can do their job, so we can make sure we send a man to the moon. Now, do you think those flight floors are clean? Safe?
Nicole: Absolutely. Spotless.
Steve: Absolutely. He understood. His part was important to the mission just like the engineers in the other room. And so many times we have a mission and vision and our companies that don’t connect to our folks and they don’t really see how everything you’re doing. If it wasn’t important, it wasn’t connected to the mission. We shouldn’t be doing it. And it adds value to the customer to the end user and and certainly to society in many cases.
Nicole: Yeah, I agree. I love your story. That’s a great one. Yeah. So So how does a leader connect those dots though? Like, how did that? How do you think that janitor knew that he was sending a man to the moon? I mean, somebody must have been in their coaching, talking counseling, what do you think?
Steve: Absolutely. I think that is the the biggest, I know, one of the challenges I’ve had is, you go and try to inspire your team. And I get inspired by missions and visions that are a bigger purpose than what I’m doing on a daily basis. And sometimes, I know, I’ve fallen into this trap, I share with my team, here’s what our vision and our mission is going to be, or I work with our team on what our vision should be. And then once you do that, you wipe your hands, you say, Oh, I shared it with them, they should know it, they should believe it. It’s got to be consistently brought about over and over. And we got to celebrate those big wins. Because, you know, let’s say for example, that we are, well, I’ll give you a good example.
Nicole: I’d love that.
Steve: A woman was in a workshop, she had a, she she said, you know, we don’t do anything exciting in our office or in our building. All we do is we make bolts, and I can’t really connect the mission to what we do. And I said, Well, what are the bolts for? And she said, Well, they go into nuclear power plants. And I said, Well, do you think it’s important that those bolts are right?
Do you think part of what the mission might be is we didn’t have a catastrophe, people got electric and they got power. And there, they got better lives? Because the bolts you made, have an impact on keeping those nuclear power plants safe? And how do you keep reminding people that so if you have an anecdote, or examples, of here’s a customer that had this situation, and look at how our product really helped their lives, or save them time, save them money, gave them some some better form of living, whatever that product happens to do?
Nicole: Yeah, so what I just heard Steve Karski say is that we have to be very good at connecting the mission with the daily j-o-b description that everybody has in place, right? So not just making widgets or bolts to your point about your story, but we are providing safety, energy, the lights are on, you know, it’s connecting the dots all the way through the process so that people understand the value of the work that they do. And here’s what I know, if people feel valued, they usually work harder. You know, that’s the thing. Okay. Very good. So I love your definition of leadership. I think it’s fantastic. Why don’t you just dive into the other three points real quick? Because I think they deserve a little attention.
Steve: Yep. So challenging. Every process that we do, you know, again, I think one of the things that leaders need to do, and I’ve seen some effective leaders that I’ve worked for do it really well. And that is asking questions of their team in a routine basis and asking them over and over again. So many times, we come into a role. And we say to somebody on our team, for example, why are we doing this? And their response is, well, that’s what we’ve always done. That’s how we’ve always done it.
Nicole: Oh and that is the worst.
Steve: It’s what always worked. And that is absolutely the worst, absolutely the worst. I remember an example of a, a woman who took over a team in a large company. And it was a situation where one of her teammates, every Monday morning, had to do a report. And it took three hours to pull all this data together and send this report to these vice presidents and directors in this large company.
Nicole: I know where this is going.
Steve: So she’s talking to the woman about, well, can we delegate some of your activities and maybe spread it out among the team? So you don’t have three hours that you’re stuck doing this every Monday? And she said, No, it’s so much more efficient for me. I’m the only one that knows where it is, etc. And I’ve done it for eight years. So I know exactly what I need to pull.
Nicole: Ok, don’t miss that everybody. Eight years. Three hour report on Monday.
Steve: And so then she continues on to say, you know, it goes to these important people, they need it by noon on Monday. And she said, Well, how do they use the report? I don’t know. But they need it by noon on Monday, and I make sure that it goes to them because I don’t want to get yelled at for not getting it done on time.
Nicole: She probably spent so much time and attention.
Steve: And I’m sure she was outstanding in that role.
Nicole: Absolutely.
Steve: So this this leader contacted some of those vice presidents and directors and and shot them notes and reached out to them and said so tell me more about do you need all parts of this. Is there some of this we can cut down. I’ve got a woman that’s spending three hours a day on a Monday on this, can we minimize this somewhere? There’s some of this material that you don’t need. How do you use this? Can we get it from, you know, just general questions. And she got notes back saying, well we don’t use that report anymore.
Nicole: How long, Steve?
Steve: I don’t know how long it was, but for more than a couple of years. They had, at one point, it was a critical report that people needed. But nobody ever said, please stop sending us this report. I don’t need to see it anymore. And so many times, we don’t ask a question to our folks of why are we doing it? And why are we doing it this way? And what if, how else do you think we could do it? And let’s brainstorm especially when they’re things that are consuming lots of energy, lots of time and lots of work? Are there things that we can do a little bit better? So it is one of those situations that we often fall into that track? That’s kind of the model, I’ve used to think about challenging the process and just asking questions around everything we do. Yeah, as mundane as they might be.
Nicole: Yeah, and one of one of the skills that you have in your own personal toolbox, and that you help other people put in their toolbox is is coaching. And that is asking these powerful questions. Examining, you know, the present. Seeing how things are tied together systemically. So asking powerful questions, I think it’s a huge skill set that leaders need. Absolutely.
Steve: You are absolutely right there. The next one I mentioned was delegating. And delegating effectively is absolutely huge. It is one of those situations where, especially newer supervisors, I’ve talked to are afraid to delegate. It’s going to take away my power, it’s going to, they won’t do it as well, as I do it, I’m still going to have to redo you know, you’ve heard the excuses, I’m sure.
But how do your people grow without giving them more responsibility, giving them different things to do, giving them an opportunity. Plus, it gives you time to free up, ultimately, it’s sort of that situation, as a parent, sometimes you have, you want to ask your child to cut the grass or do you know, you’ll do a better, better job. But you know, if you can get your child to cut it, you’re so much better off long term, because you got to cut it every week or every couple of weeks, where, if you’re doing it yourself, you’re going to be taking that and consuming that half hour or an hour a week, when they could be building those skills.
So I think it is delegation is one of those critical components that it does take a lot of time does take a lot of effort and something you have to continue to work on. But it’s great way to grow your team. Some people are afraid of losing their people as well, when it comes to I don’t want to give them any more skills, because then they’ll go work for somebody else or find another job. And I guess the old response is, well, would you rather have them untrained and working for you? Or do you want to have them trained and potentially leaving, you know, because if they’re not competent, not trained, and working for you, they’re probably going to not be as effective as they could be if you gave them some, some additional skills by delegation.
Nicole: Yeah. 100%. And the thing is, is how are you going to scale the company if you don’t scale the people? I mean, it just goes together, right? So absolute genius, okay, give us the last one.
Steve: The last one was committing to your team. So committing your team, is that component of you got to be their cheerleader, you got to make sure that they get recognized when they’re doing good stuff, you got to make sure that the folks above you, it’s not all about you. You know, I’m sure many of us have had this experience, but I’ve had leaders in my past where they took all the credit for the good stuff. And they didn’t take any of the blame for the bad stuff.
They blame their team for the bad stuff. You know, and and as teammates they know about that your teammates know, when you’re not giving them the credit or when you’re giving them the blame because they hear it from other people, you know, and so it is one of those components that committed to them. It’s all about making sure you, you’re giving them recognition. But the other part of it is, are you spending time with them? Are you developing them?
Are you concerned about their personal dilemma? You’re concerned about their goals? Are you only showing up in January or I should say in December to say, Well, you didn’t hit this goal this year, you didn’t do that this year. And trying to give them feedback once a year just is not that effective. So feedback is a key component of that committing to your team.
Nicole: Yeah. 100% 100%. So I love your four pieces of leadership. So just just to recap, name the four so everybody’s got it in their mind. We got to tell people things over and over so they can get it.
Steve: No problem. So it’s VCDC.
Nicole: Okay
Steve: Vision. All right, challenge the process, delegate and commit to you team.
Nicole: I love it, VCDC. I love stuff like that. Okay. All right. That’s awesome. All right. So we’ve kind of dabbled in this a little bit already. But when you think about the successful leaders that you’ve worked with, what do they have in terms of of a skill set? And then maybe even we can like flip it to the other side, the leaders that you’ve come in, you’ve worked with you’ve coached, and you’re like, Oh, this is the skill set they’re missing. So tell us the skill sets of leaders and what makes people successful and not successful?
Steve: Sure. I think one of the key components for leadership and the leaders I’ve worked with that have been effective is their communication skill. It is not just sending emails, it’s not just stating facts to people, it is being an effective communicator, listening closely asking effective questions, as you mentioned, but they really have a great way of inspiring people with their words and their actions.
And so that communication component is really critical. I have also worked with leaders who have not been face to face with folks. And today, it’s a little challenging, because the COVID 19 situation where a lot of people are working at home, but still in zoom, you can still connect face to face. So having that face to face connection makes a huge difference on that communication skill. One of my leaders that I worked with, she’s a really good leader, and she was new to the team.
And I had a team at the time of 10 people. And as we were talking, and one of our sessions, she gave me some feedback on my work. And she had been there maybe six months or so. And I asked her, would you mind if I gave you some feedback? And she said, I’d appreciate that.
Nicole: I love that. I love that. You did this great technique called permission. Can I give you some feedback? And I’m gonna say yes. Which now the doors open, instead of you just going, let me tell you how you’re doing. Right. So don’t miss that is a serious coaching technique called permission. So go ahead.
Steve: That’s and that and that permission was asked, because I didn’t know her. Well, she had been, like I said, about six months or a little less, I and so when I was done, I asked her if she’d like to get some feedback from me, and I just had one piece of feedback for her and it was, you know that my team is around the corner, it’s down the hall and around the corner, you know where they are.
But they haven’t seen your face, since you’ve been here, they get emails from you, they know that they’re communicated with you from email. Now, her role before was that of someone who dealt only with people virtually. So she did a lot of emails, she was very comfortable in that approach. And, you know, and, to her credit, she said, Well, you know, I know your team is busy, I just don’t want to interrupt them and, and bother them while they’re at their desk, and so on. And I told her, I definitely appreciate it. But I said, you know, it gets a little slower on a Friday afternoon, why don’t just walk out and see what people are doing for the weekend.
And it was like a light switch turned on. I mean, my team was in love with this, you know, love this leader, after about two weeks, because she really got to know them personally. And so that little component of knowing them personally, knowing them by name, knowing a little bit about their family, knowing a little bit about them, really made them feel so much more connected to her. And therefore when she asked or had a request, they were much more willing to to be enthusiastic about pursuing that or doing that. So it was, it was a really good learning for me, and how a small little thing like communication can be such a huge thing for a team.
Nicole: Absolutely. So you know, what came to my mind when you’re telling me that story, which I love the story is that that’s an old management theory that was in one minute manager that was manage by walking around, you know, so you know, and I love what you were saying she had this mental model that I will be bothering people at their desk, were just like, get up, be visible, go down the hallway.
And, you know, if there’s an extrovert or two, they’re gonna be like, hey, Susan, or whatever her name was, you know, and it it creates this thing called camaraderie, which is communication, which is culture. Yeah, I just I adore that. That’s wonderful. Well, I’m wondering if you’re thinking about some other important skills that leaders need to have. And please tell us some more stories, because I love them.
Steve: Sure. You know, one of the one of the components today that is so critical, is EQ or emotional intelligence.
Nicole: 100%.
Steve: It is, it is, especially when you’ve got to deal with folks virtually, and you got to make connections in different ways. So I think emotional intelligence is a key component. But the other part of it is, we’ve got five generations in the workforce. We’ve got a very diverse workforce, and you’ve got to connect with people in the way they like to be connected and in the way that they can connect to you. So listening carefully, asking effective questions. Don’t take things personally. Listen and hearing people out, those are all kind of part of that emotional intelligence component. But when you know yourself, and you can be open to understanding other people, you can, you can go a long way, you know, Stephen Covey’s book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective.
Nicole: Classic.
Steve: Leaders. Is a phenomenal book and you know, that, you know, listen to understand before you’re understood, is, is still as powerful as ever. If you really understand the other person, they will, you’ll be able to communicate much better with them, and they can understand you so much more.
Nicole: Yeah. And listen, everybody who’s listening right now, Steve Karski, is positioned in the marketplace to be an EQ expert and leader. So we’re going to hear more from him on EQ. So I absolutely adore that. Okay, so, it you know, if you think about leadership, Steve, a lot of people like, you know, you’re a born leader, or, you know, you’ve got some kind of certain attributes that make you a great leader. What do you think, makes a leader struggle? Like, what are the things that like, make a stumbling block for leaders? What do you what do you see with the people that you coach, and you’re like, oh, tweak this, fix this? What are the things we need to be aware of? Bring our awareness level up right now.
Steve: Yeah, I think one of the things that people don’t recognize, and I know I didn’t early in my career is leadership is something. And the skills for leadership is something you’ve always got to be built in. You’ve always always got to develop. And I guess what I’m saying is, people don’t learn leadership in college, they get concepts of leadership, they get concepts of leadership from books, they get concepts of leadership from other people.
But unless they’re modeling someone who they’ve known, and they found, they are a leader, and they’re doing a great job as a leader, they don’t know really how to lead. And I’ll just tell you my first failure as a leader, when I was starting off, you know, one of the things that I thought, as a leader, and I’ll just say, as a supervisor, as a young manager, what I thought I was supposed to do was tell people what to do. That was what my role is that that’s management 101. You need to get things done through people. So you got to tell them what to do. So Nicole, do this. Jane, do this, Bobby do that. And I don’t know why they didn’t follow me, Nicole.
Nicole: Because you were so bossy, that’s why!
Steve: Exactly right. But I was the boss. Wasn’t I supposed to be bossy? It is, it is that situation where your perception of being efficient, is not effective at all. And again, that was just my learning from my perception. Fortunately, my leader was smart enough to have a little chat with me about personal communication skills and, and really leadership skills. And so it made a huge difference. And it was like a big light bulb went on. And I’ve had, I’m sure many of us have had that situation where we need this light bulb, from our leaders who have opened our eyes to different components of what we’re doing, because it’s that self awareness is very challenging when when you just trying to get a job done. Yeah. We don’t always recognize it when we’re doing it, because we’re busy.
Nicole: Yeah. And so I also kind of heard another thing inside of what you said is like you, you have good intentions, like, I have to tell them what to do. So we can get this done. I mean, like, like, your intentions are pure and everything. But like, there’s a degree of like, like humility, or something that we need to have while we’re bossing people around. So I heard that your leader helped you develop the character trait of like having a little bit of humility, maybe in your, your delivery of your instructions, or something is that right?
Steve: That’s absolutely right. And it really, you know, I’ve learned that the delivery piece of it is really a key component efficiency is very, very poor from the standpoint of personal communication skills, where effectiveness is all about making sure you’re focused on how is this person going to receive this information? And what’s the best way? You know, and I think that kind of goes to another thing that I’ve learned over time, is, how many times do you need to repeat a message to your team before they really get it before they really understand it. Not that they don’t hear it.
Nicole: I’m interested to hear what you’re gonna say.
Steve: So, you know, the number I’ve heard in many trains that I’ve attended, and I’ve done is seven times you got to repeat things, for people to really get it. And, you know, I relate that to folks and say, it depends on what the message is. So if I’m telling the team, look, folks, we used to do this process in step one, two, and three, starting tomorrow. We’re doing it in three, two, one. So don’t forget, we’re doing it three, two, one tomorrow. Not 1, 2, 3. Process is changing tomorrow morning, and tomorrow morning comes and what do they do 1,2,3. Now they heard me, but they didn’t get it. They didn’t understand it, they didn’t experience it. So that’s why they did it the old way. They didn’t even think about it. It was routine, it was the way they did things.
Now, on the other side of that, if I tell folks, Hey, folks, we’re gonna be leaving early on Friday, and we need to tell them that once. But if you tell him something about a process, you got to repeat it. Tell me what, you have to repeat it over and over again. And as leaders, so many times we think that communicating it once is enough. Now might be an email, it might be, you know, in a meeting, it might be voicemail, we’ve got to do it different ways, because people hear and learn in different ways. And so depending on how important the messages are, how, how big the changes, we’ve got to record it, or repeat that communicate that in, in a variety of ways. So I’ve heard seven, I don’t know if you heard different.
Nicole: That’s my number. No, that’s the number I’ve heard. In fact, when I went back to school, I’ve told my listeners before, I just got my undergrad done when I was 48. And then it kept going to school, and I got my masters. If I stopped reading and writing papers, I’ll never start again. But I had to, I had to read a book called The Adult Learner at Lenore Ryan University, and they said, you have to take this class called the adult learner before you can ever sign up.
And I was like, Okay, and so, in this class, they basically told me, you’re an adult learner. And so it’s, it’s so much harder to get your cognitive juices moving in a new way. Because you are in the habits that you’re talking about. I mean, like, we have immediate responses and opinions and judgments of things that just put a huge blockade up, unless we decide to have a growth mindset, you know, and we decide that, oh, I need to learn things I don’t know, at all. And so I think there’s a lot going on. And that’s why the seven has been researched, because that was what was in the book. So he know’s what he’s talking about people. Okay. All right. So that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Okay, so as you look out, okay, Happy New Year, I didn’t say Happy New Year.
Steve: Happy New Year to you.
Nicole: And I mean, I’m so happy 2020 is gone. I’m I’ve got a little ray of hope, in my mind that 2021 is the COVID clouds gonna lift hopefully, we’ll see what happens. But as you look into 2021, when you’re sitting down with leaders, because Steve does training, he does coaching. And he helps entrepreneurs to grow their organization, and he works inside corporations with leaders. What are you seeing are the biggest challenges for leaders? Like where does my awareness need to be lifted? What would I have to add my radar on in 2021? What do you think?
Steve: You know, I think that we had a big challenge in 2020, transitioning from face to face to virtual.
Nicole: 100%.
Steve: I think in 2021, it’s going to go in the other direction, oh, we’re going to have the same challenge, we’re gonna have the challenge of people are used to working in their pajamas. Now we’ve got to dress up now we’ve got to come in late now are not coming late, we got to come in on time. But it’s not a two minute commute to the computer, it’s a 30 minute or a 45 minute commute to work.
And so I think those expectations will will have to shift back. I think people just like we talked about with repeating things seven times, I think people are going to be in that habit or that routine of how’s my day done. I think people will sit in front of their computers in their desks at the office and not talk to each other, even though maybe it’ll take a little while for leaders to get them going again. So I think one of the components is how do you coach your team into getting back into collaborating into let’s have some meetings and let’s do some brainstorming. Let’s not be sitting at our desks in front of our computers all day if we’re brought back into the office.
So that’s what I see is the the opportunity for 2021 some people will will do it instantly, because that’s what they thrive on. They love and they hate being at home right now. There’s other people that are so loving being at home, so loving, not seeing people day to day. Those are the folks you’ve got to bring back out of their cubicles and bring them into a more collaborative workforce. So that’s, that’s what I see as 2021’s challenge.
Nicole: Yeah, and what I also heard and that was like, really your definition of leadership again, right. So like, you know, we’re gonna have to probably cast a vision of, here’s what it’s gonna look like when we come back. And here’s why we need to come back. In fact, I have a client right now where they were sent home over the summer, and then as soon as they were able to come back and be in the office.
They got so much pushback. Well, we’re doing great from home, you know, so there there’s really some strategy around that. And I think probably maybe even a new normal, like, what if it’s some kind of hybrid of what we’ve been doing. I mean, we do need to get people in the room, because it’s all about, you know, getting the good vibes, and really getting the information and the gene inside of each other and building on ideas and brainstorming and those kinds of things. I mean, you got to do that live and in person. I mean, that’s what, that’s what I believe. But we could still have days where you could work from home, you know, so I think, I think I think it’s going to be a hybrid moving in into the future.
So I think that’ll be an interesting thing for us to think about as leaders and coaches. So tell me a little bit more about what it is you do and how people can find out about you. You have a huge history, as I understand in insurance. So if we have anybody out there that is managing insurance agencies, or running a team of people that are responsible for that, Steve, tell us a little bit about your history with that. So we understand your expertise in that area.
Steve: Sure, sure. So I started off in insurance, like a lot of folks in insurance, I was selling insurance and spent about seven years in an independent agency selling. So I got to learn right from the ground level. At the same time, I started leading team teams in the agency, so I was doing some leadership roles in the agency. Then I went on to become a sales manager for a large insurance company, and did that for about five years before moving and transitioning into their, their training department.
And so I was doing sales training for that organization, and leading teams of sales trainers for about 10 years. And so I had done that for about 10 years prior to starting my own training role, and training position. So the training that I do is, as you mentioned already, Nicole, things like leadership and team building, I do still do some insurance, licensing training from time to time, work with some vendors on that, and also do some individual coaching and some team coaching. So it’s a variety of things.
And it’s really fun to have, one of the things that I found is having that opportunity to do what you really excel at and really enjoy doing is what being your own business person is all about. And I wish I discovered that five years sooner. So it’s one of those things that I think a lot of people have had that situation where, you know, I hope I hope to start my own business, I hope that hope, but when you’re in a corporate world, it’s really hard to break away. And had I thought about it and started taking some action in the evenings, five years prior, I think I’d be a little further ahead, and even enjoying what I do more.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. Okay, so tell us the URL, how do we find you on the web, and also your phone number? And we’ll go we’ll go from there.
Steve: All right. The URL is pretty simple. It is www.stevekarski.com. And that’s S T E V E K A R S K I.com. And the phone number is area code 614-338-5232.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. So Steve Karski. Thank you so much for coming on the Vibrant Leadership Podcast and sharing with me your definition for leadership, and all these great stories that illustrate how you can be a more effective and vibrant leader. It’s been an absolute delight to have you on the show and I look forward to having you back in the future.
Steve: Thank you so much, Nicole, it has been such a pleasure for me. I really appreciate it.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com, and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDtalk.
