Belonging, Achievement, and Relationships: The Real Work Of Leading with Kyle Cronk (USA)

Leadership gets easier when you stop trying to be the hero and start building the village. We sit down with Kyle Cronk, president and CEO of a YMCA and an executive and life coach, to unpack a simple but radical truth: leadership is about people. Kyle shares how he moved from answer‑giver to convener, and why co‑creating guiding principles with his team outperforms any top‑down manifesto.

You’ll hear how those principles evolved to include equity as the organisation committed to being anti‑racist and multicultural. Kyle explains his BAR framework—belonging, achievement and relationships—and brings it to life with stories, from the first bubbles in a baby swim class to the measurable lift in staff engagement and member retention. We dive into practical systems: empowering 30 managers to lead through shared values, monthly leadership cadences that keep teams aligned, and a senior focus on long‑range strategy so communities without big facilities still get a true YMCA experience. Buildings may draw people in, but people and culture make them stay.

Kyle Cronk also breaks down why the best managers are coaches, echoing research like Google’s Project Oxygen. Coaching looks forward, aligns personal goals with organisational aims and treats life and work as one system. That’s how leaders avoid micromanagement, make better decisions faster and keep talent growing. The conversation closes with a clear takeaway: when people feel they belong, believe they can achieve and trust their relationships, almost nothing is off the table.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a colleague who leads others and leave a quick review so more listeners can find these conversations. Your support helps us raise the BAR for every team.

Music, lyrics, guitar and singing by Dr Ariel Rosita King

Teach me to live one day at a time
with courage love and a sense of pride.
Giving me the ability to love and accept myself
so I can go and give it to someone else.
Teach me to live one day at a time.....

Transcript

Meet Kyle Kronk And Mission

Dr Ariel R King 0:46

Episode of The Business of Life with Dr. King. Today we have a very special guest, Mr. Kyle Kronk. Welcome, sir.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

Well, thank you for having me. That's fantastic to be here. I'm excited to have a little conversation with you.

Dr Ariel R King 0:59

Wonderful. So would you please introduce yourself to our audience and then today's topic?

SPEAKER_00 1:04

Sure. My name is Kyle Kronk. I do a whole bunch of different things. Probably the most important thing is that I am the father of three beautiful boys that are like teenage to 21 years old, almost 21 years old. And I'm also the father of Juice, my golden retriever dog. And I love my dog. I mountain bike with my dog all the time. And then the other things that I do in life is I am uh president and CEO of a YMCA in the United States. That's the that's short for the Young Men's Christian Association, which is a global human services nonprofit organization that really builds people up and helps people reach their fullest potential. And I'm also an executive and business and life coach as well.

Dr Ariel R King 1:52

My goodness, you're a busy gentleman.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Very busy, very busy, but also very, very blessed and excited to be here.

Dr Ariel R King 2:01

Thank you. It's really wonderful to have you with us. So let's talk about leadership. What is your definition of leadership?

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Oh, that's good. That's a good one. At the end of the day, leadership is really about people. And it's it's helping people do something that they can't do by themselves. And I think early on in people's leadership career, when they get into leadership positions, they think like, you know, I gotta have all the answers. People are looking at me, which, you know, definitely people look at you as a leader, especially if you have a title that that gives you some leadership credibility. But really, leadership is about people, it's about helping people figure out collectively how they can do something that they can't do on their own.

Defining Leadership As People Work

SPEAKER_00 2:45

And when you bring people in, and then the other kind of part of leadership is that the more diverse that leadership is, that's not like the one single leader, usually the better outcomes that you get. That's been true in my case that you know, if I bring people that aren't like Kyle Kronk to the table, we're gonna get a much better whether it's a product, solution to a problem, whether we're gonna, you know, do something that we didn't even think that we could do. So so it really is so leadership back to what I said is is really about people and and getting a whole bunch of people to do something that they can't do by themselves.

Dr Ariel R King 3:22

I I love that. So I guess also rather than a single person somehow having people do a certain task, that it almost sounds like it's more like one person gathers various people of various abilities and and people that are have a variety, a variety, and with that variety, you're able to perform a particular task. I mean, is that something like that?

SPEAKER_00 3:52

Yeah, 100%. And I think the lead the the skill of a leader is really about listening, it's about convening, it's about and and it is bringing people together. And the listening part is it can't just be about the thing, the goal, the company, the other. It's it's not outside of the people that you're gathering because they have to have some skin in the game. Like, what's in it for me? Like, what do I get out of this? I mean, there's there's it's not just a one-sided equation, it's it's got to be a both end sort of deal.

Dr Ariel R King 4:29

I I really like that. So tell me more about your leadership style and more importantly, how has it developed? I guess um, maybe in your 20s, your 30s, and now we are now.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Yeah, I mean, I definitely was grew up under leadership that thought like the lead the leader, whoever was termed the leader, was the one that had all the answers and the one that did all the things, and you know, they were all knowing and ever present and all of those sorts of things. And over time, what I so if you were to say, like, what's my leadership philosophy? It's really grounded in in a couple concepts. The first concept is that you need to have leadership guiding principles, and those principles get create get co-created with the people that you're leading with, and that co-creation process creates belonging in a way that that if you didn't do it, it isn't there and and belong to to the team, to each other. You know, there's there's some accountability across that that gets developed. And it's funny because I I've been a

Diversity At The Table Improves Outcomes

SPEAKER_00 5:42

president of two different YMCAs. So the first time I was the president of a Y, we had leadership guiding principles that I created and brought to the team. And in the second, and that went well, but it didn't go as well as it's going now. So, what I learned between those two stents was if I come in, I don't have to have the exact leadership guiding principles already developed. What I need is a process to co-create them together. And once we do that, we get these leadership guiding principles that everybody is already owns. Everybody's already bought in. I don't need to persuade anybody, I don't need to convince anybody, I don't need to micromanage anybody. What I can do now is have conversations about you know, what decision did you make and what leadership guiding principle did it align with? And if you're on that dance floor, we're good.

Dr Ariel R King 6:39

Wow, that's amazing. Can I ask you what is the process actually to develop that those core values of leadership together with whatever team or with other group you're working with?

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Yeah, I mean, it's a so when we we've done it a whole bunch of different ways, but really it it starts with like so everybody I've done it a couple different ways. So I have it's gonna be hard to explain, but there's this thing I've done this before myself in other in other places, so go ahead and explain.

Dr Ariel R King 7:08

I'm sure you can.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Yeah, I'll I'll try. So what one of my favorite way to do it is when we have there's I have this these cards that have photos on them, and it's called the big picture deck. So there's 52 cards, and there are all kinds of different scenes on all these cards, and we have people. So then I say, you know, when you pick three cards in a time in your life where really excellent leadership was present, and so pick a card that represents that, and then they talk about that card, and we get the and so like I have a 30-person full-time manager, so those are the people that created the thing. So then all those values you know, people talk about their cards. We we're, you know, we're in a big room, we've got dry erase boards, we've got smelly markers, we're doing the thing, right? So everybody gets all the values up, and then we sort of prioritize those down to a list, and then in that process of listening to people talk about their card and what leadership value, what leadership value came up for them. Then at some point we narrow that down. In our case, we got it down to about six, I think. Six or seven. We've we've added one. So I've been the president and CEO of this particular YMCA for 10 years. We did that exercise when I first got here. We had seven, and then about three years later, we did it again and added one and and combined one with another one. So ours are you know, people, equity, fun, responsibility, and accountability and continuous learning, which talks about feedback and stuff like that.

Dr Ariel R King 8:54

Right. I love that. I love that. So, what

Evolving A Leadership Philosophy

Dr Ariel R King 8:57

I also what I hear you saying is that you don't just do it once, but with some of the same team, you go back and you look again to see whether or not those values are still working. I call them values, but those guiding principles are still working.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yeah. And is it take is it taking, you know, because the world changes, right? So are we still doing what we need to do? And and it, you know, in our case, we we talked about being an anti-racist multicultural organization and getting on a pathway to start learning as an organization about what that means. And as we were doing that, we realized that equity was not part of our leadership guiding principles, and then that's why that came up. And so now it is part of our leadership guiding principles, and that's how we lead.

Dr Ariel R King 9:49

I love that. So I mean besides anti-racism, I shouldn't say besides, but is it also discrimination? Because discrimination, of course, can take all kinds of forms and all kinds of it, it can look in many ways.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

So, like to include rather than anti-dent discrimination, equity, inclusion, belonging, like all of that is wrapped up into the equity leadership guiding principle.

Dr Ariel R King 10:13

Thank you. That's good to know. We have an international audience, so many of our audience don't know about these types of things, which sometimes really work well for organizations. So that that's really good.

SPEAKER_00 10:24

And and so from those leadership guiding principles, then we develop so if that's the framework or the foundation of our leadership philosophy, then we talk about you know, creating a climate of cooperation, and then we talk about raising the bar, and bar stands for belonging, achievement, relationships. There was this huge study that happened across the United States with YMCAs, where they looked at, pardon me, where they looked at what are the nine drivers of well-being? Or they came up with nine drivers of well-being or nine characteristics. And there was a whole bunch of different things of those nine, but the the three that came out to be the most important were whether or not you feel like you belong, whether or not you think you can achieve your goals, whatever those goals are, they could be health goals, it could be business goals, it could be life goals, and whether or not you have connected and strong relationships. And that so when we measure that in our staff, in our members, it when I'm coaching people, we talk, we're all over the belonging achievement relationship map. I mean, I probably use that more than anything to determine where people how people want to create the life that they want to create.

Dr Ariel R King 11:47

That's so that's so amazing to me. So belonging, being a part of something that's bigger than yourself.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yep.

Dr Ariel R King 11:55

Is that what that is? Can you can you explain the B-A-R? And I mean, I know the words, but what's behind those words?

SPEAKER_00 12:01

Yeah.

Co‑Creating Guiding Principles

SPEAKER_00 12:02

So on the belonging, not only is it belonging to something that's bigger than yourself, but it's belonging in a way that allows you to show up as who you are. When you think about coming to work, and if you have to pretend that you're somebody that you're not, or you you can't be your full authentic self, like that that's the type of belonging that we're talking about. Not othering, but hey, I respect you, you have agency, I care about your opinion, I want to hear your lived experience, I believe you. You know, all of those things kind of roll up into belonging. On the achievement side, one of the things that that we learned in the why, I don't know. Do you know much about the YMCA?

Dr Ariel R King 12:50

Yeah, as a child and even as a teenager, I used it, and sometimes even as an adult, and it's it's all over the world, believe it or not. So there are times that I would use it in other parts of the world.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yeah, for sure. So one of the things that this is a really simple example of achievement. So you might be familiar that there's mommy and me swim classes. So baby's born three or four months old.

Dr Ariel R King 13:15

I I did that.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Yeah. So they come to the pool, and one of the first things that we do for a baby is we try to get them to get their get comfortable in the water. And one of those ways is to put your face in the water, and you blow bubbles. Well, the second that somebody blows a bubble successfully or puts their face in the water, the whole pool explodes into cheering and laughing and you know, applause, and oh my gosh, you did this thing, this very scary thing for this very young person. And and you think about that from an achievement lens, like that's like one of this human's first accomplishments, and we go nuts about it. And so that's a very small example, but if you apply that across all things that you do in life, that so from a leadership perspective, I want my team to achieve their goals for the why, but I want them to achieve the goals that they have. Like that's as important as the goals that they that we have as an organization, because that's gonna make them want to stay working with the why. Like that's a that's a thing. And then and then lastly, on the on the relationship side, you really have to enjoy the people that you work with, or at least be in connection to them so that you value them as people. Because, you know, when when people get together, when people people, I say, it gets messy, right? So you gotta be able to have conversations with people and respect the relationship enough that I'm not gonna throw that relationship away when somebody inevitably does something that somehow, you know, makes me mad or does something that they shouldn't have done, or you know, whatever the case may be. But I gotta value that relationship. I have to have that connection. So that's that's raising the bar. So I go around, I'm talking all the time about leadership, is about people. Leadership is uh, you know, we want to raise the bar, we want to help people feel like they belong, that they can achieve their goals, that they have meaningful relationships in their life. Like that's leadership. And if you're doing if you're doing things that generate that kind of outcome, then I don't I don't ever need to micromanage anybody.

Dr Ariel R King 15:40

Oh, I love that. So you're saying that this is the our overall goal, and then you have 30 managers, but then the individual teams and individual places actually figure out how to make that happen. Is that right? 100.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yep.

Dr Ariel R King 15:53

And so that that also means that they set up their own, I won't say training, but their own type of interventions of uh empathy or of problem solving or of conflict resolution, for example. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah, 100%. And then we obviously we reinforce that. We we meet so on their individual teams, it depends on the operating unit, but you know, the individual teams meet, you know, throughout the week or month. And then once a month we gather as a as a larger leadership team. I have a smaller subset of senior staff that are executive directors that we meet weekly, but generally that that's about bigger things. It's not about the day-to-day operations because that's what they're doing through that lens of leadership guiding principle, raising the bar, climate of cooperation, you know, going so I don't I that's that's our leadership kind of philosophy.

Dr Ariel R King 16:51

That's

Equity, Inclusion And Updating Values

Dr Ariel R King 16:52

fantastic. That means that also with some of the senior, some of the senior executives and yourself, you actually can take a longer vision and a longer view of what you have, which means that you can spend a lot of time and energy on planning for future than actually just doing the day-to-day. Let's see how we can get through today or tomorrow. Right. Um, I think that makes a huge difference, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_00 17:13

Yeah, great point. And that's so then when you think about what does a president CEO do, you know, I'm I'm working with our board, I'm looking at the you know, looking at the future, where are we going to expand? How do we get a YMCA experience in in communities that you know are smaller or can't afford a YMCA? I mean, building a building these days in the United States is very, very expensive. So, how do we get programs out where it's not a huge population center, but still people need a YMCA experience? They like I believe that everybody deserves a Y experience because it's about, especially if it's our YMCA experience about raising the bar, because you're gonna feel like you belong, you're gonna, you know, reach your goals or you're gonna achieve the things that you want to achieve in life. And you're gonna have the this depth of relationships that are strong. And I think everybody should get that.

Dr Ariel R King 18:09

Absolutely. It makes you feel I think the connectedness makes you feel more human that life is actually worth it when you have this, when you have the belonging, you're able to achieve your goals, and then you have the relationships. And most likely, as you said, more important than many other factors that we usually look at, thinking that you know, well, how big is the pool? And you know, do you have a locker room and so on and so forth? And actually, most likely, those are the least important for people getting together, and the B AR is more important.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah, you you nailed it with that for sure. It's funny, we always say that the you know, the building, while the building is necessary, it's not primary. It's it's the people that are primary, and then the thing, the program, it could be basketball, it could be swim lessons, could be the locker room, could be the pool. Like those are all secondary things. Those are the things that get people in the door, and then once they're in the door, they stay because of the people.

Dr Ariel R King 19:09

That's true. It makes all the difference, doesn't it? It makes all the difference. You know, can you tell us more about? I know that you also do leadership and you do, I would I wouldn't say mentoring, but kind of coaching and leadership. Could you tell us

Raising The BAR Framework

Dr Ariel R King 19:22

more about that? Yeah, this other part of your life.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah, well, and the it's really the you know, the this other part of my life really merged from my experience in the Y. So I've been with the Y. I started working for the YMCA at a summer camp when I was 15 years old, and now I'm 57 or 50, I don't even know how old I'm 56 or 57, one of those two numbers.

Dr Ariel R King 19:45

And I have the same problem. You're good.

SPEAKER_00 19:48

And so I've been working for the Y a long time, and along the way, I have taught, you know, hundreds of leadership courses, and I I've coached and supervised and mentored, I don't even know how many people in the Y. Lots, lots of people, executive level, frontline staff members, camp, camp counselors. And so one day, some you know, people, you know, just because of my position, people asked me for you know advice or guidance or whatever. And so I started I started going down this path of coaching, and then uh kind of as a as an aside, Google, the company Google a long time ago, did a huge study to figure out if managers were equ were important or supervisors were important, and so they did this year-long study, and it's called Project Oxygen. You could people can look it up, and they came up with all these traits. Uh, so they've what they figured out is managers are important, and the best managers are coaching, and they talk about what coaching is all about and how it's guiding and getting people to again back to this achievement thing to achieve the goals that they want. And so I thought that was pretty interesting, and so we discovered that in our, pardon me. We discovered that in our why. So then, you know, we started training our people to to be, you know, from a management point of view, one of our things is about, you know, coaching as a manager. And so then I started working with executives to help them kind of create the cultures that they wanted. So I was I was working with an executive team and I worked with them individually, and then we worked with them together, and then that kind of led into this thing. Then I went and I happened to go get trained at John Maxwell as a do you know John Maxwell, he's a leadership, he's an officer.

Dr Ariel R King 21:46

Yes, I do. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

So he has a co he has a certification program. So I went through that. So now I I and then I've evolved where it's not just business consulting or coaching, it's or executive, it's it's life coaching because what I've just like my life, my life doesn't, it's not separated into the my job, my personal life. They they weave into each other and they overlap each other. And the you know, it's not the way that I am as a president of the Y is the way that I am a father. It's the way that I am, you know, my mountain bike thing. Like it it doesn't and it and it's it's a life that's created with intention and purpose so that that I can do all the things that I want to do. And I can, you know, continue to work in the way that I like to work.

Dr Ariel R King 22:41

Right. And and and achieve your own bar.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Exactly. And raise my own bar.

Dr Ariel R King 22:46

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Yeah. If I'm not raising my own bar, then I'm not a very good CEO or president or coach.

Dr Ariel R King 22:52

Well, yeah, because because you know they say put your own oxygen mask on first and then others.

Belonging Explained As Authentic Presence

Dr Ariel R King 22:57

So basically 100%.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

And people struggle with that so much. Especially high-performing, you know, leaders. Like they think they need to do it all, you know, it's and that's that's not the thing. Uh you know, coaching is really about is about the future, whereas like therapy is about the past.

Dr Ariel R King 23:16

And that's so true.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

And I am not, I'm not, I'm definitely not a therapist. I am a coach to help people create the life that they want.

Dr Ariel R King 23:25

I love that. Thank you so much. We only have literally a minute or two left. Is there something or a thought that you'd like to leave our listeners with that you think is very important for leadership?

SPEAKER_00 23:42

I'd come back to the idea that leadership is about people. And if you're taking care of your people, then there's almost nothing you can't achieve.

Dr Ariel R King 23:56

I really love that. I was looking at something where someone asked Steve Jobs a question when he was in his 30s or so, and I remember him saying something like, Well, you know, I've learned that I take a long-term look at uh a people rather than trying to jump in and fix things, that there's a long-term idea of people. And I really think that that's also a part of leadership, knowing that people are people and that we can learn and that we can grow and change, and that that's to be expected and to be honored.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

Oh, I love that. That's cool. Yeah, this was fun. You're right, it did go fast.

Dr Ariel R King 24:30

Thank you so much. So, for for our listeners, remember if I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, then when? That was by the great philosopher Hillel. And I've added if not me, then who? Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you to our wonderful guest, Sir Kyle Kronk. Thank you, sir.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

Oh, you're welcome. That was fun.