Episode 62: Interview with Aaron Reynolds: Turning Culture into a Competitive Advantage | 12MinuteLeadership

Leadership development isn't a distraction from performance—it's one of the biggest drivers of it. What if investing in your people is actually one of the greatest competitive advantages your organization can have?

In this episode, I sit down with Aaron Reynolds, Managing Partner of KPFF's Los Angeles and Orange County structural practices, to discuss how intentional leadership transformed both culture and business results. 

You'll learn:

• Why leadership development creates a competitive advantage
• How servant leadership and continuous improvement reinforce one another
• Why relationship intelligence should be taught to everyone—not just senior leaders
• The measurable impact of coaching, engagement surveys, and People Operations
• How investing in culture improves retention and client experience
• Why leadership isn't something you're born with—it's something you develop
• Practical advice for leading change without losing people along the way

If you're leading a technical or results-driven team, this episode will challenge how you think about culture, leadership, and long-term success. Listen now, and if you enjoy the episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with another leader.

Transcript

Welcome And Why Culture Matters

Elise 0:08

Hi everyone, Elise here. Welcome back to the podcast. Today I have a special guest joining me, somebody I've had the privilege of working with for many years. My guest today is Aaron Reynolds of KPFF Consulting Engineers. He leads the Los Angeles and Orange County structural practices, employing over 200 people. And while engineering is known for its technical excellence, one thing that I've always been impressed with about Aaron is his realization early on in his leadership role that it's not about technical excellence alone. And he's made a very deliberate effort to invest in the people, to invest in leadership development, to invest in the culture. Over the years, I've been able to serve as his executive coach and partner with him on different leadership initiatives for his office to include core strengths training, which I've mentioned in previous podcast episodes, and basically building stronger relationships across teams. So, what stands out to me is many of the things his office is known for today weren't common practice at the time. He helped pioneer leadership development efforts, invested heavily in training at all levels, and hired the first people operations professional within the company. He also challenged traditional thinking about who could be developed into senior leadership roles. And the result has been a culture that has become a model for others to follow and demonstrates that even in highly technical environments, investing in people isn't distraction over performance. It's often a catalyst for it. So today we're going to talk about leadership, culture, coaching, and what it takes to intentionally build an organization where people and performance thrive together. So, Aaron, welcome to the podcast.

Aaron 1:58

Thanks for having me, Elise. That's a very nice introduction.

Elise 2:02

Awesome.

Aaron 2:03

Looking forward to talking to you today.

Elise 2:04

Me too.

Servant Leadership And Continuous Improvement

Elise 2:06

So we're going to start with the why. Engineering firms are often known for technical excellence, as I mentioned before. But what made you decide that leadership development and people development deserved just as much attention?

Aaron 2:20

I think over time, um, you know, how I worked and sort of get coming to understand what was wired in my own leadership beliefs and style was a clear understanding that servant leadership and continuous improvement were sort of the two things that were most important to me. And so when you look at it through that lens, you want to develop people to reach their potential, right? To reach their ultimate potential. And that's one of the forms of servant leadership is I need to help the people who are working for KPFF to reach their potential. And we do that through making small continuous improvements all the time. And so those two fundamental beliefs is what led me to kind of steer more and more into people development. On top of that, it's really a huge competitive advantage that I see for a technical engineering firm to not just focus on technical excellence, but to really focus on leadership development and developing people and culture to go and support people being able to do their best.

Elise 3:22

Absolutely. And I've noticed that about KPFF is its competitive edge, is its culture and its focus on people. So some of the initiatives you've introduced weren't common within KPFF at the time. What gave you the confidence to try something new?

Aaron 3:37

I'd say it's less about like gaining confidence and more about just getting sick and tired of mediocracy and the fear of and and having a fear of failing. Right. So uh about five years into the job, I had my beliefs and sort of what I thought was important to be successful. But, you know, like you mentioned in your introduction, some of those things kind of went a bit against the grain at KPFF at the time. And so it took not really, you know, you're gonna hear this thing about achieving potential, like not really being seizing the opportunities in front of us, not achieving our potential, just sort of wallowing in not we're not failing, we're not doing poorly, but we're just not not really excelling. And so that was a big motivation to me to, you know, make some of these changes that I truly believed would be a difference maker, you know, for KPFF.

Where Leadership Beliefs Come From

Elise 4:34

And this is kind of a side question based on kind of your response to that. I was curious, did your view on leadership come from what you actually experienced? Like, where did your view on servant leadership come from? Where did your leadership philosophy about how you wanted to develop people's potential evolve? Where was kind of the origin of that for you?

Aaron 4:55

Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of that stuff comes from your family, like just growing up, seeing that, you know, how my my mother treated people, particularly my grandfather treated people uh with a lot of respect, people who, you know, these days we aren't all that nice to, and how those things matter and they can come back to really uh be significant. My grandfather used to go to the bank and he's and he waited in the line, and there was always a big line, and he was very patient, and a lot of people would complain. And that bank teller who knew this man who was my grandfather, turned out to be my mother-in-law, you know, 20 years later. So she remembered, you know, Mr. D'Angelo, who came in, and he was patient, he was always happy, and he also knew how to pronounce her last name correctly, which wasn't Pace, it was Pa-che. Uh so I think you learned some of that stuff of like, what's just the right way to treat people? And then like kind of how that translates into a leadership style. I think it'd just be it's just who you are, right? So, you know, who you are, you can't hide who you are and your leadership. You can't be somebody else as a leader, and I'm gonna be somebody else when I'm not doing, you know, my leadership things. So those things I just believed in, and there's it's kind of unavoidable for it to translate into your leadership style.

Elise 6:14

Yeah, I think you're hitting on this idea of authenticity that you're not one person in your role and another person as a person behind the scenes. That those are one and the same, that leadership truly flows out of who you are as a person. So yeah.

Aaron 6:28

And you don't have to make it more complicated than that, like searching for your leadership style. It's it's really just I don't know, maybe highlighting and taking advantage of just who you naturally are.

Retention, Trust, And Psychological Safety

Elise 6:41

Mm-hmm. And this is also another side question is did you find that your style of leadership and kind of the result of that, how has that impacted retention, especially during rough times economically or during COVID, during these other times when maybe companies were having a hard time holding on to talent? Did you find that that way of um your style of leadership and investing in the people side of your organization had a positive impact on that?

Aaron 7:13

Yeah, I think that style of leadership, the servant leadership, kind of clear clarity about continuous improvement. It's not that anybody's doing anything badly, it's that we always want to get better. Um, and the transparency that goes with that leads to, you know, what's commonly called as like psychological safety, right? The people feel safe working at KPFF, they feel safe uh, you know, sharing their ideas, um, you know, pushing back if they think, you know, can't meet the deadline or something like that. They're not just following orders. So I think that was really helpful to us. It certainly showed up during COVID, where I think our our engagement survey results just went through the roof because there was a lot of transparency, openness, flexibility, really listened to our staff and what they were, what they wanted during that difficult time. So yeah, it's definitely paid off in terms of retention. Uh, I think it's it's helped in particular with kind of mid-range career and senior career retention uh because of the amount of transparency we have. They really understand what the organization's all about, they kid and they believe in it. But the younger people sometimes they're still trying to figure out like, do they want a career in engineering? So retention there not isn't always just about your culture. It's really about like what they're personally looking for. But I'd say overall it's been very helpful.

Elise 8:35

What would you say to somebody who says, you know, people just need to do their job? Like I don't need to be doing all this fluff for them. Uh what would you say to a leader who says they just need to do their job?

Aaron 8:47

Yeah, I think it's it's I guess there's two things. I mean, one, I just don't think it's the right thing to do, right? You you got to do the right thing, and the right thing is to treat people with respect. Period. That's it. Uh the second thing is we don't have that luxury today. It's very difficult to find qualified people. And so you just can't be that lazy fair with, hey, they just do what I tell them to do because they're gonna go find another job. They don't have to look through the phone book and mail a bunch of letters, you know, like they needed to do 30 years ago. They can literally just walk back to their desk if they're upset and angry and fill out an application to anywhere else. So I think I don't do the things we do out of the fear of our employees looking elsewhere. Um, I do what we do because I think it's the right thing for us to do. But even if you don't think it's the right thing to do and you're frustrated by that, just from the competitive side of trying to retain top talent, I think you have to change that perspective.

Elise 9:47

I love that. Okay.

Hiring People Ops To Serve Staff

Elise 9:49

So you were one of the first leaders within KPFF to hire a people operations professional. What need were you trying to address and what impact has that decision had?

Aaron 9:59

Yeah. So you know the uh a bit about this story, which is I kind of stumbled into this role by accident. We had a young woman who was working for us, who was getting her MBA, who wanted to take on an HR role. What I was starting to see is that we needed to provide better service to our employees that matched what we were trying to do for our clients. And so once again, it went back to servant leadership in terms of what's the right thing to do. I want to provide service to our employees the same that we provide service to our clients. And we weren't really able to do that without somebody taking care of the people ops HR side. The needs of our employees, just in terms of like paternity and maternity leave, started to get really complicated. So that all fell to me. And it's it was really difficult to do everything I needed to do and then to start to take on more of these complex HR issues. And so uh, you know, sadly, this started with trying to help her find a job with one of our, you know, really good clients because this person's outstanding. I know they're gonna do a great job. Um, and what evolved over time was kind of scratching my head and like, well, maybe we need this service at KPFF. And it's been one of the best things that we've done. She's done an outstanding job of you know demonstrating the value of that role and kind of changing the culture, not just within my business unit, but kind of the perception that all the business units in KPFF have of people, operations, persons, people. And I think our service to our employees is another strategic advantage. You're not gonna muddle around on your own trying to figure out how to do some of the things that you need to do on the benefit side of things. Our interviewing process is much more thoughtful. We do a much better job of evaluating uniformly, you know, our talent, our coaching program is executed with consistency now. I mean, even offboarding, when somebody decides to leave KPFF, we understand what truly has motivated them to leave because we have our People Ops team talk to that person when they exit.

Elise 12:12

That's great.

Training Everyone In Relationship Skills

Elise 12:13

So one thing that stands out about your office is that leadership development isn't reserved for senior leaders. Why was it important to expose everyone from principles to interns to concepts like core strengths and relationship intelligence?

Aaron 12:26

Right. So if you think relationship intelligence is important for your senior leaders, then why wouldn't be it be important for everybody else? Right. Because it's about working together. So we need to work better with our clients and we also need to work more effectively, you know, in-house. And so I saw the relationship intelligence training as once again a competitive advantage for us versus our, you know, engineering counterparts in Los Angeles and Orange County. We have outstanding competition. They are technically very, very good engineers. And many of our engineers that work here have friends that work at our competitors. So they know that, right? That's a baseline. And so where can we make things different? And that kind of fits within KPFF's DNA. KPFF is a more service-oriented firm. So I don't think I'm doing anything that's outside of KPFF's DNA. It's kind of just leaning into it and amplifying it. So by training our entire staff, to me, now we have an army of people who really get relationship intelligence, can demonstrate that with their clients that they're just better to work with, also makes it much easier to work internally and collaborate because everybody's on that same, you know, playing field. And sometimes I'll talk to like a managing partner who wants to start, you know, 360 reviews or something like that, or leadership training. And it's it's kind of funny when it's it's just directed at like a band of managers. It doesn't include the rest of the staff, and it also often doesn't include that person either, that leader of the firm. So yeah, so I think everybody to really do it right, you got to do it with everybody.

Elise 14:10

So what has been client feedback about what it's like to work with your office, to work with your teams? Because I imagine the same skill set that they're learning internally is translating into a really cohesive team and also people that, you know, clients that like working with KPFF. So what is what's been some of the things that clients have said about what it's like to work with your offices?

Aaron 14:37

Yeah. So I've got a you know a fresh story from that. We were just in Nashville meeting with a client to just talk about what KPFF has to offer kind of across the country. And they're working, you know, with our team in Los Angeles on a project that's in Northern California. And this person noted that the level of service they're getting from our people in terms of their responsiveness, their willingness to go out to the site, and just kind of the ease of working with our team was just something that they saw. And and I told them in this meeting, probably one of the best compliments I've ever received is from a general contractor that we did a we've done a number of different projects with. And some of those projects you design builds, so they're so we're working directly for them. And they would say, every time we get a new project with you, we really want the team that we just had. And we can't have the team that we just had. And you give us a new team, and we're amazed that the new team is just as good as the team as we had. Like, how are you able to have such depth at KPFF? And I think that's in part because of how we train everybody to have this skill set and good hiring practices and the rest of it.

Elise 15:45

There's that consistency with your culture.

Executive Coaching And Walking The Talk

Elise 15:49

That's great. Uh, so we're gonna talk about coaching a little bit now. So you've invested in executive coaching for yourself over many years. What initially made you decide coaching was worth the investment and how has it influenced the way you lead today?

Aaron 16:02

Yeah. So I just like to try things. So I don't really let my ego get in the way. I think for some people, having an executive coach is almost a sign of weakness. And one of the ways that I sell executive coaching to our leadership team is um I have a I I don't remember what the context was, but I have a presentation and it's like the slide is blacked out, except this guy's face. I'm like, who is this guy? And nobody knows who this guy is. And I kind of take the rest of the black off the image, and you see this guy standing next to Tom Brady and the quarterback of the, you know, the Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and I'm like, that's Tom Brady's quarterback coach. If Tom Brady has a coach to help him be a better quarterback, like, why wouldn't we be able to use an outside coach to help us be better, you know, at the job that we do? And so I also believe you have to, you have to walk the talk. So I have an executive coach. That person is you, been extremely helpful in um helping me navigate the different issues that we've had that that you have, you know, you face as a business. And I think one of the things that's been particularly helpful is we we meet consistently. So it's not just when there's a problem. We're kind of meeting consistently, which gives you like a deeper knowledge of KPFF and sort of what my job is and the ups and downs of things. And so, yeah, I've personally seen the value of it and I've seen the impact that it's had on the people who really want to engage in it. The one thing I don't do though is I definitely don't force people to go into executive coaching if they just don't feel like maybe now's not the right time. Maybe they're a person that's just a little bit more oriented towards I want the executive coach when I've got a problem to solve, but otherwise, you know, I'm fine. And then I have other people who, you know, really like like it, like like executive coaching, like like I do, where it's more of an ongoing long-term engagement.

Elise 17:59

Yes. And I think you and I learned like one way to put it is the hard way of not mandating coaching, because 10 years ago, when, you know, you and I were doing coaching together, and then we were extending it to more of the executive team, the principals, you know, at that time we just thought, well, of course everybody needs coaching. And some people engaged, some people didn't. And from that lesson, I really learned how important it is for people to self-select and make their own choice about coaching and whether it's the right thing, the right timing, et cetera. So yeah, I like that you made the point just that don't mandate coaching. Let it be something that you offer as an opportunity, but that people ultimately choose.

Aaron 18:43

Yes. And I think it's also not something that like you're outsourcing. So all of the partners, even partners that have an outside executive coach are still meeting with me on a monthly basis. Uh, because you just can't outsource that that relationship and that engagement and really knowing what's going on in that person's world.

Elise 19:05

Absolutely. Yeah, that you can't rely just on external coaches, that there has to be some mechanisms within the organization where those regular check-ins are happening. That's good. Okay.

Measuring Culture With Surveys And Data

Elise 19:16

So let's talk a little bit about the results. What changes have you seen in your people, culture, and business performance as a result of the different investments you've made? So whether it's been core strengths training, whether it's been leadership development, whether it's been executive coaching, can you think of some tangible results that have come from those investments?

Aaron 19:38

Yeah. So I'm a big believer in data and having something measurable rather than just saying, hey, we're doing these things and it's great. Why is it great? Because I said it's great. And so I think that the tangible measures of the culture show up in a few different ways. One is that we do an annual engagement survey. So we do this confidential survey of our staff to allow them to give feedback on a number of different things about our culture and how we do our work, how the how the reporting center is led. And then we follow that up with interviews or discussions with or workshops is a better word, workshops with different cohorts within the organization. So we'll have a cohort of design engineers and a cohort of project engineers, you know, kind of each level of the organization, because a survey is a valuable tool, but on its own, you can kind of misinterpret some of the information. So the discussion with the survey has been really helpful. And our results on the survey are outstanding. The cohort discussion workshops reinforce, you know, many of the things that we're doing. It also gives us an opportunity to go and pivot. We've had a lot of success with recruiting, especially when we get in competitive situations with a recruit. Uh, we have a lot of success with senior level recruits, making sure that we're one, we're a good fit and we're getting the people who really care about the culture. We've had really good retention, particularly of mid-range and senior leaders, because like I said, young engineers are still figuring out do I even want to be an engineer anymore, or they've moved somewhere else, or they just want to, you know, I've only been one place, so I want to see what another place has to offer. Oftentimes they come back to us. And we get feedback from exit interviews. So if somebody does leave, usually those people are pretty candid about, you know, what worked for them and what didn't. And we very rarely would get a comment about the culture being off. So those are a bunch of different indicators that I think um show that the culture's working. And I think within KPFF's overall organization, you know, the LA Orange County business unit is sort of known for having a really deep bench of leadership talent. And I think that's that's the years of work on that.

Elise 21:51

Yeah, I love how measurable the results have been from the investments and that and that you track those things.

Can Technical People Learn People Skills?

Elise 21:58

So as far as your leadership evolution. What's something you believe about leadership today that you didn't believe earlier in your career?

Aaron 22:06

Yeah, I think that leadership is a skill or an aptitude that can be developed over time. So I think when you when you start at a company and you see the people that are in these leadership positions, you're like, wow, this person's just special, right? They, they're just really good at what they do and they seem to say the right things at the right time. Um, and what I've learned is, well, those people started as a leader at some point, and it probably didn't go all that smoothly, maybe right in the beginning, as they were kind of figuring things out. And it was the same for me. Like I felt like when I became the managing partner of this office, you know, I had a few years of trying to figure things out and how do I lead in a way that's authentic for me and is right for the times and is right for the organization. And so that that took a little bit of time. So I would say, you know, you're gonna there's nothing wrong with coming into something feeling like you're not completely qualified for it and that you're gonna grow as a leader from the bumps and bruises of the things that you do. And I think you can help accelerate yourself through that process by, you know, learning from good leaders and getting, you know, executive coaching from people like yourself.

Elise 23:17

So there could be people that really feel that in the highly technical fields that those people just can't be people people. And in your experience, you know, working in a highly technical field where you have invested in leadership development, where you have invested in people-oriented training and relationship intelligence, how would you answer that? Do you think everybody can learn those skills? And if there's caveats to that, what are they?

Aaron 23:47

I think everybody can get better. Uh, but I've learned a term from you. There's people that were you just kind of you want to move the needle, they get a little bit better, but you're not necessarily transforming them. And then I think there are people who really blossom with, you know, more leadership training and more leadership exposure. And so I think you have to, you kind of have to assess that person, right? Where are they in their career? What are they naturally good at? Where what are things are more challenging for them? Um, but I think everybody can get a little bit better. And it is really hard to not do some work on this because our jobs are working with people. So it's at KPFF, there's very few people who are just completely behind the scenes and they're not interacting with clients or interacting, you know, in-house a lot. So you can't really have somebody that's just highly technical and not able to communicate well and not have you know some level of relationship intelligence. And that's another reason why we train everybody, right? For we train our accounting staff to our because our accounting staff sometimes interacts with the accounting staff at another office, and they certainly interact with all the principals and project managers and so forth and in-house.

Elise 25:07

So for leaders listening who work in highly technical or results-driven environments, what would you say to someone who believes focusing on people is secondary to focusing on performance?

Aaron 25:18

Yeah. I'm going to split those two because I think it's a little bit different situation. We have highly technical people. Sometimes those highly technical people are in the past, not so much now, have been skeptical of some of the, you know, peep more people-oriented training or the more relationship intelligence-oriented training. I think we've passed that where those people realize that even though I'm focusing on technical aspects of the job, whether it's in engineering or marketing or accounting, I'm still interacting with people. And it will go a lot better if I've if I'm improving my relationship intelligence skills. And so that hasn't really been an issue for us because relationship intelligence training and those expectations with communication and such are just like they're part of our culture now. I think on the results-driven people, which I interact with kind of outside of our business unit and have have a bit of that within our business unit as well. These are really, you know, these are really successful people who are not questioning the relationship intelligence importance. They're just more so trying to like put it in balance with other things. I think what those people realize is if if you undervalue the relationship intelligence aspect and you undervalue the people aspect, that you end up with a bunch of just doers that are following orders around you. And then it becomes really difficult for you to go and scale what it is that you're doing because now you've got to be highly connected with a bunch of doers who will not do anything without you telling them what to do. And so those people find that they're either their bandwidth gets tapped, you know, this is as much as they can do, or they just get really burnt out because they try to take on more and more, but they don't really have the the leadership behind them that's scaling. And so we don't, once again, I don't think that's an issue for kind of for us right now. I actually like our results-driven people to be a little bit of a counterbalance to make sure we're not going overboard with, you know, some of our people initiatives, but I definitely see that.

Elise 27:26

Good. So as we close, uh an interesting question I wanted to ask

Recognizing Non-Engineers And Scaling Leadership

Elise 27:30

you. So you advocated for non-engineering professionals to have a pathway to associate level leadership. Why was that important to you? And what did it teach you about recognizing talent?

Aaron 27:40

Yeah. I think I think it's a recognition that meaningful contribution comes from a number of different places and that engineers don't have all the answers and aren't the most qualified people for every single situation. And that that's a big change. I don't think this is unique to KPFF or engineering firms. I think from what I've heard, you see this in law offices, you see this in other professions where the the practice professional is the person who knows everything. And so as we've grown and scaled, once again, if we don't want to burn out the people who are leading the firm and have them spending their time doing things that really capable people with a different skill set could do really well for them, then we have to, we have to reward and recognize those people's contributions. And so we had people, you know, as you, as we've grown to 200 people, roles outside of engineering become more and more significant and more and more important. And so the only way you're going to retain those people is to recognize those contributions and not just like behind the scenes, hey, you're you're really awesome. I'd love to do more for you, but you know, we're kind of limited because we only do that for engineers. Like you got to really be able to, you have to really stick your neck out publicly and show this person's role is important to our success. They're doing an outstanding job, and they deserve to be recognized on par with the group of engineers that we have.

Elise 29:08

Great.

Aaron 29:09

And the thing about it is it's really hasn't been very disruptive within within our reporting center, within our group. I mean, people see the value of it and have been completely on board with the with the people who have not been engineers that we've we've named associates.

Elise 29:26

So something you've done a lot of is suggested or pioneered new ways of doing certain things. And oftentimes it it's something that had never been done before. And so I think you're really good at methodically suggesting changes that don't shock people, but instead create a really clear process and integration that seems to be something that people are receptive

Making Change Without Losing People

Elise 29:54

to. And so I'm curious if you have just a couple closing tips for leaders that want to make change, but that change is against the grain of what's been done before. And they want to be able to make those positive changes to be fully embraced by the organization as a whole, but maybe aren't quite sure how to go about it because they anticipate resistance.

Aaron 30:14

Yeah. It's a that's a there are a lot of different aspects to that question. I think over the years, I've I've assessed whether something is like a rip off the band-aid. We got to get out in front of people and just take a stand for the change that needs to be made, make the case and manage the aftermath. And oftentimes, you know, the worst case scenario of that aftermath never comes to fruition, right? It's it's never really that bad. There's some, there's definitely some situations where you need to do that. And it shows when you do that, it really shows what you stand for. So I think you want to do those things where you need to really show the people in the organization this is what we stand for. I think there's other things where it's more of you put your toe in the water and you get everybody comfortable putting their ankle in the water and then the knee, and then they kind of get up to their belly button and before they go all the way in. And those, those are situations to me that are a little bit less about your identity and who you are at your core and trying to re really reinforce that. And those are more about, you know, you could do it this way or you could do it that way, and people haven't maybe noticed that, like in our case, our size is is necessitating a change in our processes or a change in a way that we're doing something. And so that's where I would tend to do more of the kind of the gradual getting somebody, you know, accustomed to the water. So I would say that to a leader is like, look at those situations. I think you got to act quickly when it's your identity. I think if it if it's something that's more about a process or a system, that you could take your time and be patient. And I think the other thing I do is there are people that you trust in the organization that you can tell them the whole story. Like this, this is what I'm gonna go in and do, this is what I'm concerned about. What are your thoughts on how to handle this, or who should I talk to? Like just get that counsel from them. Uh and then the ones that play out more over time. I think a mistake I made early was not telling kind of the key leaders of where the end game was. And then it's hard for them to be on board because they don't anticipate completely where it's going. And so once again, getting their counsel, explaining kind of where things are headed uh is really helpful.

Elise 32:29

When you have encountered resistance, sounds like you've been so thoughtful about things that maybe you haven't encountered as much as maybe somebody else would. But when you have encountered it, how have you found the most productive way to respond to it?

Aaron 32:45

Yeah. Most of the time I have to be me. So uh for you know, you and I, I'm not sure every listener is core strength, SDI, you know, knowledgeable, but a green person is what I am in SDI, and that's more process oriented. So I do come at things from I'm gonna make a really good case. And if I make a really good case that I can stand behind, then I feel like I can articulate that case to anybody, no matter how hard they push back. I'll acknowledge what they're pushing back on, but this is this is what we're doing, and here are the reasons why. That's that's how I've gone and approached that. There are times though, you do have to be more forceful or more persuasive. That's not natural to me, which is why I go back to like, do I really believe in this? And do I really have a case put together that makes sense that this is the right direction?

Elise 33:38

Good.

Closing Thanks And How To Go Deeper

Elise 33:39

So, Aaron, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. One of the reasons I wanted to have you is just to have a leader demonstrate how important it is to be intentional about culture. And you're such an example of that. And you're living in the positive results of that, those tangible positive results. So thanks so much for being here today. We loved the wisdom that you had to share.

Aaron 34:02

Thank you for having me. And since I have you here, I also wanted to thank you for everything you've done for me and KPFF.

Elise 34:10

I've I've loved every minute of it. Thanks for trusting me. Like what you heard on today's episode and want to go deeper? Subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. You can also pick up my book, Lead Anyone, on Amazon. Then go to my website to check out ways that we can support your leadership goals. From executive retreats to customized training and coaching, my team of experts will help you level up your leadership and accelerate your results. Go to www.eliseboggs.com for more info.