How to Lead Through Disruption with Kim Bohr

Disruption is everywhere—from AI and restructuring to personal challenges leaders can’t ignore. In this episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I’m joined by Kim Bohr, President and COO of Spark Effect, to explore how leadership teams can lead through disruption without breaking trust.

We dive into Spark Effect’s research on organizational trust, the real impact of AI on fear and alignment, and the leadership behaviors that build—or erode—trust when change hits. If you want to turn disruption into a competitive advantage instead of a liability, this conversation is for you.

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Transcript

Kim Bohr 0:02

What we found in the research was that AI is by far the most disruptive, but it's not the biggest breaker of trust, and that was really fascinating to us. And so what we were realizing as we started to unpack the data was that the biggest trust destroyers were really behind. the yes poor system or AI technology implementations absolutely is there, but it was really about the intentionality around it and the communication, or lack thereof, and bringing people along in the process was really what was breaking it down.

Mike Goldman 0:42

You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.

Mike 1:14

Kim Bohr is the president and chief operating officer at Spark Effect, where she leads the firm in helping executive teams navigate disruption without fracturing trust. With over 25 years of cross-functional leadership experience, Kim advises leaders on aligning strategy with human centered practices. That drive performance. Her approach centers around spark effect trust elasticity, a well-researched framework designed to evaluate and fortify trust during periods of change, whether it be AI integration, leadership turnover, or restructuring. Really excited to dive into disruption and trust and some of the things we're all probably going through now. So Kim, welcome to the show.

Kim Bohr 2:02

Thanks, Mike. I'm excited to be here with you.

The Importance of Alignment and Communication

Mike 2:04

Same here. Well, Kim, you know the first question that always comes is from all of your experience, what do you believe is the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?

Kim Bohr 2:17

I think it's when there's true alignment and communication that is so critical and in the work I do and what we've done through Spark Effect, that is always the biggest breakdown.

Mike 2:31

Yeah. Interesting, and when I. I just started working with a brand new client two days ago and one of the things I hear when I work with a new client, and when I say client, it's a senior leadership team is almost always one of the first problem is, you know, we don't have enough alignment. You know, we need more alignment so that word comes up over and over again. And very often it starts with a level of trust in, in, in what the direction is and the strategy moving forward, which aligns very well

Kim Bohr 3:02

Very much so.

Mike 3:03

be diving into.

Kim Bohr 3:04

Yeah. And that's a big piece of it, right? The communication alignment really becomes these, these underlying components of that overarching topic of trust. And it's seems simple and it seems squishy, and what we'll talk about is it's really not, is, it's got a lot more depth to it than people give it.

Mike 3:21

Yeah, and by the way, it's easy. It's easy to spend a day or two together as a team and come up with plans for the year and the quarter, and where do we wanna be three years from now. All things that I do with my clients, but it, what they don't get very often is the easy part is doing that and leaving the meeting, holding hands, singing kumbaya. We're all aligned. And what they actually understand later is that's not the hard part. The hard part is every day after that is staying aligned.

Kim Bohr 3:52

consistency, right? That part that feels, when you hit the, when you, especially when you come across some of the, resistance if you will, in its various forms.

Mike 4:01

So we're gonna dive into disruption. As painful as that sounds. We're gonna dive into disruption and what are obviously there, we could probably list out 37 types of disruption, but what are you seeing right now with the, when you are out there working with your clients and speaking, what are the most common types of disruption leaders are seeing these days?

Kim Bohr 4:26

I think it's really, I think it's several things. There's the personal disruptions that I think we cannot ignore, which are the things like childcare and elder care challenges and you know, things that force when return to work policies come into play and it's. It's really what do we do in these situations, you know, health concerns. the other side that we've seen a tremendous amount too is, our, the outplacement side of our business is, you know, unfortunately quite busy right now. In that way, there's a lot of layoffs happening, a lot of, reduction in force because of some of the challenges. So that disruption is around, you know, leadership, turnover, realignment in those strategy and goals. Some of that is at, you know, the company level and some of it's at the personal level and they're, we can't separate'em. And so those are really in our face right now in every organization that we're working with.

AI and Trust: A Deep Dive

Mike 5:24

I wanna key on one example, and I think you alluded to part of it when you talk about outplacement, because this is, this does impact outplacement to a degree, but it's a bigger impact than that and the disruption I wanna. Dive into, just as an example for the moment, is AI and that disruption and how trust factors into that. Let me be more specific about what I'm seeing and I'd love to get, frankly get your coaching and how somebody like me should be dealing with my clients on this is, you know, there are what, whatever. Side of the fence. You are, whatever you think about AI, whether it's the second coming and some amazing thing, or whether it's death to society and Terminator and Skynet, wherever you are. there, I don't think anyone would argue that there is some incredible things. Happening today with AI that allow, leaders and companies and individuals to be, you know, more, more efficient at what they're doing to some degree more effective. the value is there and the challenge that, that a lot of my leaders and leadership teams are having is when implementing. These AI tools or more likely, you know, AI is not typically something that gets implemented from the top down, like an ERP system. It's a little bit more grassroots. So, so rather than me saying when implementing, when encouraging teams to begin using AI tools, and there are even some firms out there, there's a consulting firm recently that I heard, you know, if you are not a, what they call AI native, which means you are ready and able to use AI from day one. They're not hiring you. And you know, that is terrifying. A whole lot of people that say, wait a minute, you know, I get you wanna implement AI but I know that's code for, we're gonna use AI instead of employees like Amazon using robots instead of people. So all this means is, you know, I may lose my job because of this one day. So how do you deal with that fear, and how could we use. Trust and better leadership to manage that kind of disruption.

Kim Bohr 7:41

Well, let me take, let me answer your question in a couple of ways. So one is when we set out, we had this curiosity because AI was. In our face for all of us. It was coming at us, even in our organization, around how do we start to think about it for how we do our business? And we got really curious because we were hearing these, you know, these anecdotal comments from clients around trust and AI, right? The two were just kind of floating out there. What it prompted us to do was. Do this research around the state of organizational trust with this idea of disruption in AI originally as a leading factor. And then what we started to think about as we structured the survey was that, no, it's more than that. That's a component of it, but it's all these other things. What we found in the research was that AI is by far the most disruptive, but it's not the biggest breaker of trust, and that was really fascinating to us. And so what we were realizing as we started to unpack the data was that the biggest trust destroyers were really behind. You know, the yes poor system or AI technology implementations absolutely is there, but it was really about the intentionality around it and the communication, or lack thereof, and bringing people along in the process was really what was breaking it down. And so with AI being as. All, you know, at the complete ends of the spectrum for all of us around whether organizations are very intentional and organized in it, or if it's a wild west that's, there's underlying components really make the difference around how people are feeling about it, how they're using it, whether they feel like their jobs are being taken. And so what we know that if we can be more. precise in how we think about why we're bringing this in and how we're communicating and how it fits into the bigger strategy and how people align. There's a better opportunity for that trust to be, you know, to be maintained or to be built versus if it's just a wild west.'cause what I know from our experience, and I'm sure the teams you're working with, is if people don't have to do it, they're not. Going to necessarily dive in, you're gonna have that spectrum of people who are all in, and then the people who are like, yeah, okay, I'm just gonna fly under the radar here because there's not really clear why I need to do this.

Mike 11:19

Yeah. I love what you said about intentionality and communication and you know, I was reading through the, the read, the Trust and Turbulence, 2025 State of Organizational Trust and reading through that. One thing that I think gets to the intentionality and the communication, that was really interesting and I loved it because it's, it's a way to sell An idea that I know is important in organizations around getting clear on strategy is, and I wrote this down so I'm gonna read it, that 93% of high trust respondents say their organization has a clear strategy.

Kim Bohr 11:57

Yes.

Mike 11:57

only 40% of Low Trust respondents say their organization had a clear strategy, but 93% of high trust. So I don't think organizations leadership teams normally equate, like, if they don't have a clear strategy, they certainly know that's gonna impact their business results. But I don't know that leaders and I never have really equated, hey, if we have a clear business strategy that's communicated. Our people are gonna trust us more. So unpack that a little bit because I think that's fascinating.

Kim Bohr 12:29

Yeah. So one of the things that we found as just some tremendous results that came outta this survey was that. trust actually can be measured and it can be measured as, and it should be included as part of a business strategy. What we found was that as that number you just shared, it absolutely impacts retention, revenue, and reputation. And we have the stats to show it. And so what we were finding was that. Organizations when there's disruption. The reality is we're all in micro disruptions, right? Like, like we talked about, all of a sudden something happens where our kids, you know, the shifting of childcare or whatever that case may be. So micro disruptions are happening all the time. Most organizations are just preparing for the mitigating risk against the larger disruptions. And what we found was that for those that considered themselves to be within high trust organizations, they felt like. There was real, there was more transparency and communication around why we're making changes and what things are happening versus those low trust organizations. I mean, that's really important to have your, your leaders and your employees directly, the individual contributors being able to say, I can tell the difference because of how my organization. Communicates with me, sets me up for success. So some of the things that we found in part of that high trust were things like, understanding the different trade-offs, right? Like, why did we, why are we making these trade-offs as an organization? looking at the perceived misalignment, right? So, or excuse me, the, the alignment. So like, why is this working in my organization? Why does this matter to what I'm doing? opportunities to voice concern. Being able to say, I don't see this as a fit, and not having fear of retribution. So those are really critical elements that I think what tends to happen is we have this understanding of how trust is important. What we are missing in many organizations and leaders is that the actions we're taking on just this day-to-day basis actually aren't supporting that, that knowledge of trust being important and we're taking it for granted and we're kind of. Hurting ourselves by these actions that we're just not paying attention to.

Mike 14:38

So I wanna get back and dive into some of the actions, but there's something I want to cover first. I Love having measures for quote unquote softer things. And I hate that term. It, the softer stuff is really the harder stuff. So I

Kim Bohr 14:53

it certainly is.

Mike 14:53

term, but I love having me, you know, there's this cliche we all know, you know, you can't manage what you don't measure. And it's a cliche because it's mostly true. So you've got this trust performance index. And when I hear something like that, I salivate, like, oh, we could measure something like that. and you just kind of mentioned that, tell me more about the trust performance index. how actually is that measured?

Kim Bohr 15:21

Yeah, so what we were able to do is we based it off of five key domains of which then statements associated with each domain are built underneath. And so the five domains I can share are, it's strategic clarity, psychological safety. relational continuity and cultural belonging. The feeling of technology and system trust so that how things are being implemented are, you know, are, we're being considered in that. And then the final one is really the fairness, change and impact perception. So those five are things that we kind of, we know to be true. but we were able to actually. Use those and the statements beneath it to actually then figure out that this could be measured and not just measured. It could be replicated and built into organization's way of doing business, just like you measure other KPIs in your business. And what was surprising to us is that. This hasn't been looked at in the same way so broadly before, and it feels like it's a low hanging fruit for companies to do that can actually increase that revenue and retention and reputation without a whole lot of, you know, dollars invested. It's really just about thinking about how we look at it differently and making those connecting points.

Mike 16:42

So you've got the five dimensions and what I'm imagining, and tell me if I'm picturing this right, you've got these five dimensions and below each one I guess there's a certain number of best practice statements or questions. And the organization is answering those. And from there you're coming up with your trust performance index.

Kim Bohr 17:01

Yeah, so individuals would answer them inside the organization, all, you know, all the way all throughout the organization, regardless of your role. And you would answer things like, like organization organizational leaders follow through on their commitments they make, and then they would answer, you know, that on the range they would say, you know, new technologies are introduced with employee success in mind. So there's several of those statements that they use. That they're answering. And what we were finding is we then have, you know, it really created what we call these elasticity scores. So you could see the sense of what, how far can an organization kind of bend without breaking? And we were able to find what, you know, that low trust organizations versus high trust organizations had quite a big difference in those that scoring. What was also very interesting in the study we did was. What we had to get the baseline around disruption. We asked people what, you know, kind of a select all that applied between the personal and professional disruptions that we listed. 71% of people had a disruption in the last two years. What was interesting is that became, there became a control group of people who felt like they hadn't had, they did not identify with those things as disruptive, and so that became an interesting component that then started to tell us about how companies should be thinking about mitigating risk versus leaning in

Mike 18:25

You also did some work, and you alluded to it a few minutes ago in, you know, that there's a real ROI of building this trust. This isn't just soft squishy. Wouldn't it be nice if you and your people had a, you know, a trusting relationship. Talk a little bit about what that ROI is.

Leadership Behaviors that Build Trust

Kim Bohr 18:43

Yeah. So just in this study alone, we were able to quantify, and you started to talk a bit about it too, when you thought, talked about the clear strategy, right? We found that. I, the, those who responded that felt they were a part of this high trust organization found things like, the financial performance, the higher confidence in the company's financial performance. High trust, organizations had 97% in that response. Low trust responders were at 46%. I mean, we're talking about some pretty big gaps, you know, when it came to looking at industry reputation. High trust was at 97% and we had low trust at 49%. And the same kind of pattern was true with retention. So you think about in highly competitive times when we're trying to think about how do we, you know, secure and invest in the best talent. So much of it can be done in just how we, just some of these best practices of how we think about rolling out tech disruptive technology like ai. It's not that we can't, we aren't going to do it, but it is about how do we bring people along to understand where they fit and how it's going to help benefit them in the organization.

Mike 19:55

So let's dive into some of the actions, some of the best practices and I wanna talk about two different things. I'm gonna start with the positive and then we're gonna go to the negative. The positive is, you know, whe when disruption hits, whether it's someone's personal disruption or whether it's organizational disruption, whether it's. COVD or its tariffs or it's AI or whatever it is. What, when those types of disruptions hit, what specific leader behaviors will most reliability reliably build trust? And then I wanna talk about which one's erode trust, but let's talk about what builds trust.

Kim Bohr 20:38

Yeah, so let's talk. Let me answer that on kind of two levels. So the, one of the things that we knew just from the kind of higher level ends of the research were things like the open and honest communication and transparency around like, what we know, what we don't know, when we're gonna let you know next. The, you know, fair treatment and empathy towards employees, voicing concerns as we mentioned before, and really just this visible alignment between what we said we wanna do and where we're going. More specifically, there's a lot of things leaders can do to build trust on a, any given day for their, you know, for their teams. You know, the simple things of understanding what's going on and why somebody might now suddenly be showing up late when they nev weren't showing up late. You know, historically to things like really trying to figure out what is, you know, how are we doing on a week to week basis? How do I take what's happening from the, you know, the executive level and translate it into what it means from our team? So I don't sound like I'm just parroting the corporate speak because that is a clear, you know, trust buster right there. So there's a lot of, mm-hmm. You know, we called them, the frontline or local level leader, wherever that is in the hierarchy of an organization. And why that's so important is because that's where trust breaks the most. And so having the, those types of, of activities for leaders to do is really important, you know, on any given day.

Mike 22:08

I have found, and I want you to weigh in on this, one of the things that. I find most leaders either don't do or don't do well is the regular, and I think it should be weekly, but at least a regular one-on-one meeting with each of their direct reports. And when I say don't do or don't do well, obviously don't do as some of'em just say, I have no time for that. We have team meetings, you know, when they need me, they'll, you know, they'll knock on my door or they'll call me, or we'll have a teams meeting, but I don't need a regular one-on-one. Others, their regular one-on-one is, let's get together for 30 minutes so I can just make sure you're doing all the things you said you were gonna do, and that's the extent of it. what, how does that factor in and do you believe that, that one-off, regular one-on-one is an important part of building trust and building a relationship?

Kim Bohr 23:01

Yeah, I think it's a critical piece and one of the things that we find, as I'm sure you do, is that there is not one. Way it is done consistently inside an organization. And I think that is very common for leaders to be like, oh, I just, of all the things I need to push, I'm going to push this particular thing. And that's a big mistake. You know, so much of the rapport building and understanding what's going on with somebody, even personally is happening in those types of settings. You know, really getting to understand. So that is. So critical. And I think the other mistake, as you were saying that leaders do is that they make it about an agenda of theirs, not the agenda of the individual whose one-on-one it really should be. And yeah, there's a balance of shaping to make sure we're talking about the right things, but sometimes our agenda maybe doesn't actually uncover what's really going on. And when that 30 minutes is up and we're like, okay, sorry to, you know, move on. We are that person may just continue to hold on to what maybe is the most important thing, and it could be something really critical to a project or to something that they're responsible for. And so not feeling that sense of you're, you don't, you know, there's a sense of you don't really care and if you don't care, well, why should I can start to happen very quickly And that really will absolutely erode trust really quick.

Mike 24:22

How do we help leaders who understand this logically, but say. My God, I have so many things to do. Every day, and I've got so many projects and priorities I'm accountable for, and KPIs that I'm accountable for, I could barely get through the day and just getting all my work done. And now you want me to take extra time and effort to be having one-on-ones with my people and building trust with my team and making sure, you know, they understand the strategy and all, you know, all things that. I don't think anybody, most leaders would understand there's logical things to do, but so many just say, that would be great if I had all the time in the world. I just don't have time for that soft, squishy stuff. how do we help them figure out how to do more of this, and maybe even why they should do more of this.

Leadership Behaviors that Erode Trust

Kim Bohr 25:24

I think, you know, I think in our least our US business culture, we're just, it feels like we're just constantly sprinting through whatever it is, and it doesn't feel like there's a lot of breaks. And I think that what you describe is a really common, you know, short term. Issue that so many leaders have and it's really about trying to help them shift to that longer term impact. Like what happens down the line, not just what's happening in front of us, because we all know that, you know, in that short, the what we sometimes, the decisions we make in the short term, like as simple as it sounds to cancel one-on-ones, but not, and not structure'em in a way that really gets to the heart of what's going on with this person in the business. Will absolutely eventually come back and bite us and thinking about this research. We really wanted it to be really uncover hard data and it did, but that leaders could see like that this is why you're kind of playing a long game and it's thinking about it from. You could do things today that immediately start to build that trust and then you start to think about the impact it can look at down the line and that you can measure it and you could say, Hey, how are we thinking about this and how is it working? So trying to say that, you know, this has a direct connection to those, you know, key KPIs that we're all tracking and trying to get people to realize that this little bit more of investment upfront starts to pay dividends down the line. But it does require. It requires us to deal with the, that internal pull we sometimes have when we're just in such a reactive mode.

Mike 27:04

what are some of the behaviors that leaders make a habit of? You know, what are those leadership behaviors that maybe. we're blind to, and we don't realize they're eroding trust, but they are eroding trust. what are some of those behaviors that really hurt? Trust rather than help trust.

Kim Bohr 27:28

Oh my goodness. So I think, you know, lack of transparency and clarity around, you know, what, why we're doing this versus just saying, Hey, we're just doing this. And it's like, it feels like it catches people off guard, you know, perceived misalignment. Like you said, we were on this track and now this feels very much like we're over here. Why? You know? So again, not bringing people along so that misalignment and not feeling like having people feel like their needs are being met. You know, and like you alluded to this, with this ai, you know, phenomenon we're in, you know, poor handling of why we're focused on it, you know, poor handling of systems and technology rollouts. So why, you know, why do I need to do this? Am I going to be training this thing to take my job? That's a, I mean, that's a common, you know, fight or flight sentiment people have. And so we need to recognize that we need to help them feel. help them feel that what they're doing is, you know, does have, purpose. That it, you know, that this is to help them and, you know, to build the trust. If we are in a situation where there is going to be elimination, then I think that transparency about what the trajectory is and why the pivot of the business has to happen also has to come forward. And I think, you know, I was working with an executive team. And the CEO in particular really had a very strong belief that he really couldn't let other members on the executive team know what was happening, especially if there needed to be some turnover until. It happened and he was communicating out to the ELT At the same time, the larger population knew a change was happening and he really struggled with changing that belief system because of course it immediately, it was, it eroded trust. The ELT team didn't have a heads up to know, well, what do we have to pivot and pick up, and are these the right pieces? And so that. That is a, was a really fast way to have that team amongst other things that were happening, but to have them just believe, like why do we, why are we here? What's our purpose? If you're not here to, and you don't see us as a trust, the trust partners to help, when these kind of big decisions have to be made.

Mike 29:42

Yeah, it's an interesting scenario in that, you know, as leaders we want our team members to trust us. And of course we believe we're trustworthy and they should trust us. But to your point, at the same time, there are, there's very often a whole lot of information that we don't trust our teams enough to communicate. and sometimes it may not even be about a disruption. You know, I have worked with leadership teams where, you know, private company and the CEO. Is, doesn't even share profitability numbers. Now, shell top line revenue numbers, but they don't share profitability numbers even with their senior leadership team, because the fear is if they know what our profitability is, number one, then they could figure out how much money I'm putting in my pocket as CEO and owner number two, if I tell them what's to stop that, getting out to our competition.

Kim Bohr 30:45

Yeah.

Mike 30:46

and that's just, and, but, and yet that same founder, CEO, expects the team to trust him or her.

Kim Bohr 30:54

Right. Yeah. And it doesn't, it, I think part of that too starts to shift around what kind of business are we trying to have. Right. You know, and when we think about founder, you know, type of led businesses that are private businesses that are maybe more of the, you know, the, not trying to grow, not trying to, you know, to just more lifestyle businesses. I think that there's a lot of conflict there, you know, inside those teams and what we're trying to accomplish and why we're going in the direction we're going. And so I think really trying to be the, I think that's a, an unfortunate common mistake that happens that really then starts to, just yeah, completely erode trust and. It really just starts to then impact the whole nature of the business and the mission the business is trying to accomplish.

Mike 31:41

And if you do this right, you talk also in, in the study about something you call the disruption dividend,

Kim Bohr 31:48

Yes.

Navigating AI Disruption in the Workplace

Mike 31:49

what you know, and the idea that if you do this right, you know, a disruption could wind up being a very positive thing. unpack that a little

Kim Bohr 31:57

Yeah, so what was really interesting to us is because we had that control group, we were able to look at you know, organizations that responded. It didn't have to be, by the way, the response didn't have to be perfect. It was in good faith. That you try to, you know, do the right things like that. Were on those trust builder lists, and what we found was that there was a growth of 12% above the baseline from organizations that had no disruption at all. So what that told us was you should really, you know, perhaps mitigating risk isn't, it's, there's more nuance to that and the fact that being, the disruption is going to happen. It's happening all the time and there's things like you described that are out of our control. So trying to really think about how we're gonna respond authentically in these ways that the data is showing actually should encourage companies to lean in to the disruption and not be so fearful of it versus trying to completely mitigate it.'cause it, there's absolutely trust building that can happen.

Mike 33:02

So let's let to help. dive into some more specific actions that, that folks could take here, so when they're done listening, they can go, all right, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go the do these two or three things to build trust. Let's, and again, I'm gonna use AI as an example because it's coming up so often with all of my clients every day. and I'm gonna take kind of an extreme situation. So one of the industries that's getting hit really hard by AI is the marketing industry, whether it's folks that used to do the, you know, the copywriting and the copy editing, and now AI is taking some of that work away, whether it is, you know, we used to do search engine optimization and now that's not as important as people are using the LLMs and getting recommendations. From there, you know, AI driven analysis. I mean, there's so many things impacting that industry and let's make it real and that, you know, you've gotta, you're a leader of a company and you are really. Driving hard to make sure the organization embraces AI. Part of it is, you know, for survival of the company, because if you're doing things the way it was done five years ago, you're not gonna survive any anymore. And the reality of it is not just the. the, you know, all the positives that we want to communicate. The reality of it is while yes, it's gonna allow us to add more value to our clients, which is better for everyone, yes, it's gonna allow us to grow as a company, which ultimately provides more security for all of us. You know, brutal honesty is there are some people in the company today that may not be needed three months from now. So, and that's a real situation. And marketing may be an extreme version, but that's going on at law firms, marketing firms, it's going on everywhere. As a leader, how should we be thinking about that and what are. What are two or three very specific actions that we can take to, you know, build trust and help us move through that disruption without having, you know, fear take over the organization.

About Spark Effect and Conclusion

Kim Bohr 35:29

I think that's such a real example so many organizations are facing now, and I think there's a few different items that would be, that are really important for consideration. So one is. Talking about where the company's going, really understanding the changes that need to be made, and then being able to communicate those in a way that talks about a path forward for those individuals that will be impacted. So maybe there is something internally, maybe there's something where there's opportunity for. Some kind of, you know, job conversion and maybe there's not, but if there is, it really is about thinking through that part of like, is there a way to have people either re-skill internally or take those kind of skills in a different part of the organization and you know, learn something new that isn't going to be the same kind of, aspect of where AI is touching it. When we, when organizations realize that's not. The or that's just not possible or they've done that to the extent that they can. Really being able to equip people with, a career transition and outplacement type of service is really critical because what we're seeing right now is, in that part of our business organizations, as they start to realize what you just described. People need time to figure out, they need to go through the grief process and they need to figure out what am I doing next and how do my skills need to transfer? And so working with somebody who's in a, as a career transition outplacement coach, they can actually help them figure out how do they start to reskill or how do aspects of what they have apply that is something that maybe is, not doable inside the organization, but needs to happen. And it's really tough for people to do on their own when they are. Suddenly, you know, hit with this kind of news. And the reason I bring it up like that is a, to do that well. And do you equip people with the services that come with that in, in such as what we do at Spark Effect? That is showing people fairness. It's bringing empathy into it. It's also showing people who aren't impacted that the organization is truly trying to do their best to get people. To so that they, their livelihoods aren't impacted negatively for very long and that they have a way to, to move forward. And unfortunately, not a lot of organizations think about it that way. They think about something that becomes, feels more like a check the box and is more just to be, kind of a lipstick on the pig for the people that are there. Like, look, we tried something, but it's not really something that is going to actually. Be substantive and what's needed. And so I think thinking about it from that perspective and then really trying to have people understand internally that, you know, again, why are we, you know, why are these decisions needing to be made for the, you know, for the purpose of the clients and the organization and that we recognize these are hard decisions when we have to impact individuals and here's what we're doing to make sure they are set up for success.

Mike 38:26

What? Talk about your company Spark Effect a little bit. Tell me more about. The type of clients you work with and the different ways you work with your clients.

Kim Bohr 38:35

So we have a range of services also in much of that kind of mid-market to smaller enterprise space. What we do is we have, executive coaching work we do that kind of comes in three different tiers. We have a readiness program that's very much around some of those. Kind of foundational communication, leading others, strategic thinking kind of work. We also do work with CEO evaluations, so we do work with CEOs and boards to help evaluate the CEO beyond just the KPIs, but it does bring into consideration, the unique competencies that are really important to that. That work as a CEO as well as some board advisory work to make sure there's alignment there. So we have a, we have that aspect of our business leadership development work is of course is also a very big piece. but this outplacement side is also very relevant. And so when organizations are in a situation, whether that's a larger reduction in force because of a strategy change. We've been, you know, working with organizations that have had funding pulled and that they just can't exist without it. And so they've had to shut their doors, those kind of situations. Or even when there's, executives or individuals that just aren't the right fit for the organization anymore, and they, and just as part of our talent strategy. It's to, you know, we wanna transition'em out in a really, respectful way so that they're still set up for success for wherever they need to go. So that's the other part, of our, of what we do. And, and they all kind of have, you know, kind of a big component of that talent lifecycle, if you will. so when we're working with organizations and individual. We're always, trying to, you know, to help them figure out where are they at in, in that piece and do they need some of these different components to help, you know, come from a talent perspective that shows people you're really thinking about them at all aspects of that journey they are on with you.

Mike 40:23

Yeah, and I would think that, trust performance index, using that to help guide where. Where you're doing well, where you're not doing well is probably an important part of that process.

Kim Bohr 40:33

It is, and we really try to work, we do work with organizations. Much of what's, you know, laid out in the research helps get companies started to where they can absolutely take this and replicate it and measure it, and we can come in and help them set that up and help them pull it through. But it's really, it's doable and it's. It's something that as an executive leadership team, they need to get aligned on first and make sure that they have their own strength and trust amongst each other, and then be able to start to bring that down inside the organization.

Mike 41:04

Kim, if somebody wants to find out more, about, you know, about the company, about spark Effect and they wanna find out more about it or access the research study where's the best place for them to go?

Kim Bohr 41:15

So let me give you a few options. So, we want, we did set up an opportunity for listeners to come to a landing page specifically for your podcast. So it's sparkeffect.com/BLT, so short for the better leadership team. So, BLT they'll be able to download the, the report as well as some guides that give them. A little bit more tangible ways of taking that data and bringing it into their organization and doing something with it. Of course, I'm also on LinkedIn, so Kim Bohr, I'll find me on LinkedIn. And then we also have a podcast called Courage to Advance, and so love to have listeners come over. It's a business focused podcast as well. love to have'em come over and check out the conversations we're doing there, and so I'll make sure you have those links as well.

Mike 41:57

Beautiful. We'll put all that in the show notes. Well, Ken, this is great. Love this conversation. I always say if you want a great company. You need a great leadership team, Kim. Thanks for helping us get there today.

Kim Bohr 42:09

Thanks for having me, Mike.