“Leadership is about authenticity, vulnerability, and building strong connections."
In this episode, Craig Anderson talks with Dr. Debra Chromy, President and CEO of Trellis Company, about her evolution as a leader and the lessons she’s learned over her career. Debra shares her journey from early leadership roles to becoming a CEO, emphasizing the importance of being your authentic self and leading with vulnerability. She discusses how showing up as your true self fosters trust within teams, why curiosity is essential in leadership, and how making tough decisions for the organization, even at personal cost, defines strong leadership. Debra also reflects on the challenges of leading through change, the power of strategic planning, and how surrounding yourself with the right team can help drive success.
After You Listen:
- Connect with Dr. Debra Chromy on LinkedIn
- Check out Trellis Company
- Connect with Craig on LinkedIn
- Subscribe to Craig’s "The Evolving Leader" newsletter
Key Takeaways:
- Lead with authenticity to build trust and drive results
- Use vulnerability as a leadership tool to foster collaboration
- Surround yourself with the right people to enable success
Things to listen for:
(00:00) Intro
(01:00) The importance of authenticity in leadership
(03:15) How vulnerability builds trust within teams
(06:30) The role of curiosity in addressing leadership challenges
(09:00) Making tough decisions for the organization’s future
(12:45) The impact of strategic planning on organizational success
(15:30) Debra’s leadership lessons from past experiences
(18:00) Creating a culture of transparency and feedback within teams
(20:45) The leadership advice Debra would give her younger self
Episode Transcript
This has been generated by AI and optimized by a human.
[00:00:00] Craig P. Anderson: I was at a conference walking into the hotel with my boss as he turned to me and said, Craig, I wanna talk to you about something that you did six months ago. Welcome to Executive Evolution. I have over 25 years of leadership experience in corporate America. I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and I created this podcast so that you won't have to, I was fairly young working for a boss that I didn't know very well, and I said jokingly.
[00:00:29] Craig P. Anderson: As we were waiting for the person we were meeting with to come into his own office, I said, oh, hey, I can read this upside down. It was pretty stupid, but I was pretty young and I was pretty stupid. I didn't even think anything of it, but apparently my boss did, but he also didn't say anything to me about it, and he waited six months to bring it up.
[00:00:49] Craig P. Anderson: And during my interview with Dr. Debra Chromy president and CEO at Trellis Company, it kind of kicked in a thought for me as she talked about the idea of let it go. I wish my boss had let that go before holding onto it for six months and bringing it back up to me. But we all try and grow into our jobs.
[00:01:05] Craig P. Anderson: And while that's not exactly the let it Go that Debra has in mind, in your view, it's really a great opportunity for you to jump in and learn more. So let's jump in and hear the story of Debra's executive evolution. Debra, welcome to Executive Evolution. I'm so glad you could be on the podcast today.
[00:01:20] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Thanks for inviting me to be here, Craig. I'm looking forward to it.
[00:01:22] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be great. I know we had some side conversations when we last saw each other in person about some of your leadership thoughts, and I'm really glad to have you on to share those thoughts with all of the listeners.
[00:01:32] Craig P. Anderson: So we always start out, Debra, with the lightning round, which is never really a lightning round, but we're gonna try. Okay. Are you ready to jump in?
[00:01:40] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Okay. Yes, I am. All right,
[00:01:41] Craig P. Anderson: here we go. Question number one.
[00:01:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Wow.
[00:01:44] Craig P. Anderson: What is the best leadership book you have ever read?
[00:01:47] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So my favorite leadership book actually goes back in time to one.
[00:01:51] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: You may remember the name of, uh, it's called Start With Why by Simon Sinek. Mm-hmm. And having always worked in nonprofit organizations, this is, you know, finding your why or your organization's why, and that purpose for why you're there, I think has always resonated with me very strongly. And I think it's something that I've carried all the way forward.
[00:02:14] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: To today in, in terms of my leadership style.
[00:02:17] Craig P. Anderson: I love it. Yeah. It's such an interesting book. It comes up quite a lot on here. A lot of people really call back to that book. Yeah. And I was thinking earlier today about a scenario I was in where it was like, it wasn't really clear what the why was. It wasn't my business.
[00:02:30] Craig P. Anderson: It was someone else was running it. And it's so hard when the why is not clear because you have no frame and no context for all the decisions you make every day.
[00:02:39] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Exactly. And it's
[00:02:39] Craig P. Anderson: frustrating for everybody.
[00:02:40] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Exactly. Exactly. It goes back to sort of that decision matrix where you start the beginning. Is it within mission?
[00:02:46] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Does it fulfill our why? If not, it goes out. I don't care how much money it's gonna make, I don't care. Anything else, it has to fit in a why.
[00:02:53] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And, and that's the work I do with a lot of my clients is just we have to get really clear up front about what it is we're building over the next few years and why we're doing it.
[00:03:03] Craig P. Anderson: Because that's like the North star, and that's the energy, right? That's what drives you forward is knowing, yeah, oh, we have this thing we're trying to do. And a lot of people don't think that's important. They just wanna know what the numbers are. And I, I struggle with that,
[00:03:15] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: but yeah, I think that's problematic as well.
[00:03:17] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. Okay. Question number two. Who is your leadership crush?
[00:03:22] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So I'm gonna tell you that my leadership crush probably changes from time to time. Just like when you were young and you had a crush, right? Yeah. It wasn't always the same person. I heard a podcast. Do you listen to the Daily, the New York Times podcast?
[00:03:40] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: The Daily?
[00:03:41] Craig P. Anderson: Not that one, no.
[00:03:42] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Oh, it was a great one. It was an interview with. Whitney, I'm gonna say Wolfe Herd. Okay. She was the CEO and founder of Tinder, and then the CEO and founder of Bumble. Now, I'm not familiar with dating apps. I don't use them. I don't swipe left or right, but what I found really fascinating about her, and that's why she's my crush of the moment, is she left Bumble.
[00:04:09] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: On her own. They had another CEO come in and that CEO decided to step down and the board called her to come back in again. And on this podcast she talks about the mistakes she made, may things that she would like to do differently, how she would approach it today. Um, that it's not all about getting the most users on your platform.
[00:04:30] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And I love that because she was honest and frank and authentic about what she was trying to do. And it wasn't about. The most dollars. Yes, she wants to be profitable, sure, but it was more about the delivery. It goes back to the why. Why do we exist? What are we trying to do? And I think that really resonated with me.
[00:04:48] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I was fascinated by I, I don't know that much about her, but I have to say that resonated with me. So she's my crush of the moment. Can I say that?
[00:04:57] Craig P. Anderson: That's fine. Yeah, no, and I agree, right? It shifts over time and I think sometimes it's by what we're struggling with as a leader too, right? If we're not really, if we're reaching out and trying to find those people, our crushes are gonna shift around as we try and find new people.
[00:05:10] Craig P. Anderson: And it's so interesting that she says that. It's so, so interesting to get a do over. At a company too, right? To say, all right, what can I do different? That's still gonna drive value, but in a different way. Because how you define that value becomes such a driver of how you make decisions. And now she has a chance to go and say, all right, now I've reconsidered this is how we're gonna drive value.
[00:05:29] Craig P. Anderson: And for them, right? It's probably like, like you said, users or something. Well, what if it's actually more meaningful experiences? And if we can get people to value us on that. What does that change
[00:05:38] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: exactly? And the conversation was around, what is success? Success is, you don't need me anymore. Right? It is to make a connection.
[00:05:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And so she's thinking about, so what other value can they provide? So thinking, I think she created a friend zone where you can find friends, people to go surfing with or skiing with, et cetera. So she's really thinking outside the box around how does she reimagine this company that she created a number of years ago that was really about.
[00:06:04] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Putting women in the driver's seat of being able to control the dating scene online. Yeah. So I just, I applaud her for thinking differently, thinking outside the box and then saying, you know what, that's not really what we should be doing. This is what we should be doing. And so, and getting a do-over it's, that's pretty, yeah.
[00:06:23] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And I'm excited as we kinda get more into your leadership story 'cause you've kind of come into existing companies twice and had to kind of build that reimagined piece. Correct. So I'm, I'm really excited when we get to that point, but I won't jump the gun I promise myself. Okay. Alright. So question number three in the lightning round, in 10 words or less, how do you define leadership?
[00:06:41] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I'm gonna go, I'm gonna do it in two words. Authenticity and vulnerability.
[00:06:45] Craig P. Anderson: Okay. Yeah. And for you, how does that drive leadership to the organization when you can have that authenticity and lead and vulnerability?
[00:06:54] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: It has to do with my communication, both with my board, with my team, and when I say team, the entire organization here and with our partners that we work with, it's about showing up as your authentic self.
[00:07:07] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And being vulnerable and saying, I don't know. That's a great question. Yeah, I don't know what's gonna, so think about the time we're in right now. I do a town hall with my team, 'cause many of them are remote once a month. And for 20 or 30 minutes I give updates and the other 20 or 30 minutes they can ask me anything.
[00:07:25] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yeah, anything. Nothing is off limits unless I am limited by a confidentiality agreement or something like that. Sure. I won't call them whatever. I know. So in this sort of time where, you know, there's an executive order signed every day or multiple every day, the questions come, are they closing a department of education?
[00:07:45] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: What does that mean for us? What, you know, what do our jobs look like going forward? And sometimes I have to say, I don't know the answer to it, but here's what I'm doing. To make sure we're prepared for whatever comes. Here's what we're doing as an organization. We are looking at mitigation strategies. So if this happens, if we're looking at multiple scenarios, right, and with each scenario, what are the mitigation strategies associated with that, we're trying to think.
[00:08:10] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: About what are the likely things that could impact our business, right? I'm not saying there isn't something out there we haven't thought of that's gonna come along, but now we've built the framework, we've built the model, so we can plug that in and say, okay, if that happens,
[00:08:24] Craig P. Anderson: yes. You know,
[00:08:24] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: what's the impact and how do we mitigate that?
[00:08:27] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And so I think I've given confidence to my team by saying. I don't know what's gonna happen. I don't know if the Department of Education is actually gonna shut, shut down. I don't know what that means for our world. I don't know if that means you have a job in six or nine months. Honestly, I don't know.
[00:08:43] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: But what I do know is here are all the things we're doing to ensure that our organization continues to move forward and deliver on our mission.
[00:08:52] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And one of the things that I take away from that, that I think is so important, and I have this a lot of times, as people are moving up into higher and higher leadership roles, what you're doing is you're spending a lot of time living in the future.
[00:09:03] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yes.
[00:09:03] Craig P. Anderson: Which is so important for leaders, and sometimes we want to get sucked into the present day-to-day stuff. And that's really hard then to have the time to worry about and think through different scenarios that you might have to plan for.
[00:09:16] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Correct? Yeah. Years ago, a boss of mine shared a scenario, or I shouldn't scenario a story that has really resonated with me and I'd love to tell it.
[00:09:25] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: It's, they interviewed Mario Andretti one time. Mm-hmm. He's going around the race course for. For your younger listeners, um, he is a race car driver. Formula one, I think, but he is go, you would know that in Indy, Indianapolis, right? So going around the race car and they asked him, so you're coming around, you're going 100, 150, 200, whatever.
[00:09:45] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: They're going really fast and all you see in front of you is smoke and fire. What do you do? Yeah. And he said, you pick your line and you drive through. 'cause you can't out negotiate what you or out navigate what you can't see.
[00:10:00] Craig P. Anderson: Right. And I
[00:10:01] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: take that back. We can't out negotiate or out navigate what we can't see.
[00:10:06] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: We have to take the information that we have present with us today and use that to make the best decisions possible based on what we know. 'cause you're never gonna have perfect information. Right. So you just gotta go for it.
[00:10:18] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah, you've got to, you've just, and you know, the other piece that I kind of think of when we talk about this, it's a Jeff Bezos story where he talks about people congratulate him, oh, great quarter.
[00:10:26] Craig P. Anderson: And he is like, well, you know, I didn't do the quarter. That's the work we did two years ago, teeing everything up. So when this quarter came, we were able to execute and go, and it's all abuse. So much of it. And, and I think it's hard, especially when you're in an era where things whipsaw really quickly and things are moving and things are changing and you feel drawn.
[00:10:44] Craig P. Anderson: But you've gotta do the work and make the time to think about the future because that's where your company's going.
[00:10:50] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: That's right, that's right. I think the other thing is if you don't make a decision or you don't make a plan and move forward, then you've basically made a decision. And that is to sit on the sidelines and let it happen to you.
[00:11:01] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So that is an example of what I would call poor leadership as opposed to strong leadership. So, and you've gotta be willing to take risks, right. Challenge it. Step out there, do something bold. I always say, if you haven't made a mistake, then you're not stretching yourself enough.
[00:11:16] Craig P. Anderson: Oh, yeah. Well, and, and the other part of that, and we're just going deep, this is why it's always in a terrible lightning round, but the other part, right, is the reason you can do that or what allows you to actually live in that future and kind of make those plans is when you surround yourself with a good team.
[00:11:31] Craig P. Anderson: And building that really crucial leadership team. Yeah. And the next layer of leaders down, yes. That can actually take care of that day-to-day stuff. That frees, you know, the further up, the higher up you are in the organization, the more time you're thinking both forward and laterally about the organization.
[00:11:46] Craig P. Anderson: And the less time you actually have to think down deep about the day-to-day. Right. Exactly. Somebody was scoffing to me and said, well, yeah, it's the lower level people who have all the data. It's like, yeah, that's by design because the leaders are actually trying to see where things are going. Exactly.
[00:12:00] Craig P. Anderson: That's what they have to do and that's why they don't live in the day to day
[00:12:04] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: E. Exactly. So, yes. Yes.
[00:12:05] Craig P. Anderson: Well, having just talked about the future, let's reverse gears and let's talk about the past,
[00:12:11] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Debra. Wow. How far are we going back here, Craig? As
[00:12:14] Craig P. Anderson: far as you want what? To whatever you consider to be your first real leadership role.
[00:12:20] Craig P. Anderson: What was it?
[00:12:22] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: You start off being a supervisor, a manager of people, et cetera, all of that, but I'm gonna focus on one where I really had to make a tough call. So I was working for a. For-profit organization and they were doing some work in the employee benefit space, specifically. We called it college care.
[00:12:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: It was providing employers and their employees with information on how to apply for college counseling, financing, advice, all of that. So we implemented this. We had some major Fortune 500 companies on it, but what turned out, we hired former high school guidance counselors to do this work. I. And the only way the numbers worked is if the advising session was 30 minutes or less.
[00:13:12] Craig P. Anderson: Yep.
[00:13:13] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Can you see where this is going?
[00:13:14] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah.
[00:13:15] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Our advisors couldn't stop talking and they gave out their phone numbers and people would call back. So anyways, as time goes on, about a year in, the numbers just are not working. The financing side is fine. We've built an app we like, but. The people side of it was just killing us.
[00:13:34] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So I made a decision and I went to the leadership and said, we have to kill this program and here's why. And when I did it, I also knew and I was running it, that meant I wasn't gonna have a job.
[00:13:50] Craig P. Anderson: Ah, yeah. So
[00:13:51] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: this is why I, I identified as my first big leadership role because I had to make that decision about what was best for the organization as opposed to what was best for me.
[00:14:01] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Mm-hmm. And so as part of that process, I did all the analysis, brought everything forward, and they agreed. And we did slowly shut that line of business down. Yeah. And they gave me a promotion.
[00:14:13] Craig P. Anderson: Oh, nice.
[00:14:14] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Okay. And so what I learned from that is doing the right thing. It's not about it. It can't be about you and it can't be about you personally.
[00:14:24] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: It's gotta be about what's best for the organization and what the leaders at the time saw in me. Was this ability to get above myself and to really think about what's best for the organization and how we move forward. Yeah. And so that's why I pick that particular incident. Sure. Is probably my first big leadership.
[00:14:43] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And, and as you think about that, you know what were, you know, there's probably a lot you've thought about. Okay. Well that was the challenge was they couldn't get off the phone and they were good. Right. They were just burning through time. 'cause I'm sure they were very helpful people, but as you think back to that.
[00:14:58] Craig P. Anderson: What do you think you could have done differently as a leader of that earlier on if you had seen that coming to maybe try and move that in a different direction?
[00:15:07] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yeah. I think this was way before we had many of the things that we have now. Yeah. Online help videos, like Right. All the things I think. I think it was a product before its time.
[00:15:17] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I think technology has solved the problem that we didn't have available to us back then, because it didn't matter how many times I said to the counselors. It doesn't work. And they were like, but I had to talk to Johnny and Susie and their parents for two hours. Like we had to walk through all these things.
[00:15:35] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And I'm like, then maybe we need to put in an upcharge, like this is part of the employee benefit. We will charge you X more. Right? Yeah. For that time, they would not charge them.
[00:15:49] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah, that's rough. Wow.
[00:15:51] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: It, it was a, a difficult situation, but I think with technology Sure. A lot of the problems that we had back then could have been solved.
[00:15:59] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So I say it was a product before its time.
[00:16:01] Craig P. Anderson: Oh yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, as you think back through that experience, and I think about like your leadership definition as you kind of presented that to senior leadership, you know, what were some of your big takeaways from that early leadership role that have kind of carried with you over the years?
[00:16:17] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I think it goes back to. I think the big one is listening. Okay. Listening to the people on your team, understanding what it takes to deliver something. It had, I had, I had all that knowledge beforehand. We may not have even launched this business. Ah, right. I mean, yeah. When you go all the way back. Right. If you really wanted to, we might have, we might have still piloted it.
[00:16:39] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: To see what would happen, but we might have changed the pricing structure once we had set the pricing structure. It's hard to move it, you know? Right, yeah. Um, depending on how many people used, how many services, so there might have been a lot of different things, but I think it was really about listening and doing a lot more of the homework on the front end.
[00:16:58] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: This was my first time developing a new product and launching a new product, and they were like, here. NBA girl, go for it. You know? Yeah. So you got it. Uh, so yeah, and I do appreciate the fact that they were willing to give me that opportunity, right, to go play in my sandbox and deliver something. And they love the idea.
[00:17:17] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Again, today, I'm sure there are companies that do this today, and it works beautifully because they've been able to embrace technology.
[00:17:24] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. That's great. All right. Well so, and you have such a great story kind of over the last several years of your career, kind of going into a new, two new organizations and kind of doing things like we talked about, about setting vision and setting direction and doing that through tumultuous change.
[00:17:39] Craig P. Anderson: 'cause the industry you're in has just been through tumultuous change for 25 years probably. Uh, so it just kind of never ends. So. Talk to me about kind of your role today. So today you're at Trellis. Mm-hmm. What, what's going on in your current role? How have all these lessons you've learned over time shown up in your leadership style today?
[00:18:00] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I think it has. So one big example, and this is something I learned over time, was nobody can come into my office with a problem without a solution.
[00:18:10] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. Oh, nice. It can,
[00:18:12] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: it can be a bad solution. It could be here's,
[00:18:15] Craig P. Anderson: yeah,
[00:18:15] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: and then we talk about it and instead of just answering the question like, what do we do about this instead?
[00:18:22] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I ask questions of them and I help them to get to the place where they need to be. And I've also learned that. My way is not the only way to get there and there are many ways to get to the same. Yeah. End result. Nobody can come into my office without. I don't even care if you mix something up, but wanna come in with something and then we have a conversation, a discussion about that.
[00:18:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yeah. The other big one is let it go. Anybody who has seen Frozen Knows let it go. Um, one of my staff gave me this little Elsa. Oh nice. Thank you. That sits on my desk because I say all the time, let it go. It's like from the West Wing. What's next? Yeah, it's you come, you've made a mistake. You come into me and say, I made a mistake, Debra.
[00:19:07] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Here's what happened. Here are the implications, and we have conversation about what are we gonna do to make sure it doesn't happen again? How are we gonna resolve what's in front of us right now, et cetera. So I had this happen with a member of my team. That member went home on a Friday, came in on Monday, and we, we figured out a plan.
[00:19:25] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Everything came in on Monday with her resignation to give to me. And I said, wow, what is this about? She goes, we spent all weekend talk thinking about, and the mistake I made, you know, I really, I'm like, stop. We talked about it. Yeah. We created guideposts and ways to move forward. We have a plan so it doesn't happen again.
[00:19:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: You're a valuable employee of this organization. Let it go. Let it go.
[00:19:50] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah,
[00:19:50] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: just let it go and move forward. And I've had other people come in and say, I feel really bad about something I said last week. And I'm like, I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. And I really don't because I don't hold onto that stuff.
[00:20:02] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And not only am I that way with my employees, I'm that way with me. So I don't hold things because we hold it.
[00:20:10] Craig P. Anderson: Right. The
[00:20:10] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: person we think is thinking about us now has totally forgotten about it. Yes. Whether it's your board or your, like, you just have to let it go. And that's my other big one. And I think the last one I'll focus on goes back to this issue of authenticity and showing up as your real person.
[00:20:26] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: You know who you are inside, sharing stories, mistakes about you, your life. I think it was my husband who actually made me mush together personal and. Professional life. 'cause I didn't used to be like that. Yeah. But he made me mush it together. And when you, when you do that and you show up one day and you realize you got dressed in the dark and you have one blue sock and one black sock on, you know, you just, just make a joke about Well, well, so I think it's showing that you're human, that you're a human being, that you have faults as just like anybody else.
[00:20:58] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And that we're all showing up and doing the best that we can. And I'm gonna go back to note, let it go one for a second. 'cause the other thing is. And I talk about this with my staff, you don't know what's going on in individual people's lives. So when they show up at work and they're not in a good mood, it may not be about you.
[00:21:19] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: In fact, it probably isn't about you. It's about something they're dealing with in their own. So give people space, give people grace to show up and to get to the good place and help them instead of reacting to their potential negativity, say something positive. Move, help move them forward, help move them into a positive place.
[00:21:39] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So those are all things that I practice on a regular basis. Yeah. But again, I think they all come back to authenticity and vulnerability.
[00:21:47] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. And I think something about what you said there, it was funny, I was just coaching somebody about this today, about a problem they were having with someone on their team and you know, they were just leaping to conclusions.
[00:21:58] Craig P. Anderson: And I said, you know, curiosity. Is so crucial in leadership because you, you can't assume, like you said, you don't have a very answer. Yeah. Right. You don't know the absolute perfect way to do everything. No, and we also don't know the absolute thing about what's going on with our team. So, hey, when mistakes happen, hey, let's, let's address the fact of the mistake.
[00:22:18] Craig P. Anderson: What else was going on? Yeah. You know, be that I ripped somebody a new one in a staff meeting, or be that I messed up a project or whatever. What was going on for you today? Then we can kind of get into it. 'cause was it just one, one time thing? Yeah. Or is it something else we could help them with? Or is it a skill we need to help them develop or something like that?
[00:22:35] Craig P. Anderson: There's so much we can get in, but sometimes I think we as leaders at some point, you know, who are more experienced, think, well, we've seen it all. I know it all. And you know. I'm just gonna say, this is what the problem, you know, boom, I know what this is. I'm gonna fix this this way. And it doesn't work like that.
[00:22:51] Craig P. Anderson: We don't actually know. We have to be curious. We have to ask. And that works for both weird scenarios we run into in business as well as all our people issues. Yeah. If we just think it's all the same, we're doing a disservice to ourselves and to them. I think
[00:23:04] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: that's agreed. And I'm always saying to my team, you're all on the front lines.
[00:23:08] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I'm over here, so you've gotta tell me the stories. You have to be honest with me. You have to share with me and be vulnerable with me so that I can help figure out how we move forward. Yeah. But I'm only as good as the entire organization and every person who's stepping up and doing their job every day.
[00:23:28] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I can't lead us to a good place if people are not working together collaboratively, moving the organization forward.
[00:23:36] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. Since I have you on, and I'm curious, and I've mentioned this, you know, you had, you had a job, you took a, took a CEO role and you had a lot of success with that CEO role with that organization, and then you moved on to Trellis and have had a lot of success with this as the CEO of this organization.
[00:23:51] Craig P. Anderson: So as you think back to kind of those two transition points and kind of coming in new, building a team, setting a direction, setting a vision. What are your kind of takeaways from, you know, for anyone else who might be kind of looking at that in the face, I'm going to an new organization, I'm in the top job, or I'm going to lead a whole new division of a company.
[00:24:09] Craig P. Anderson: Mm-hmm. What were kind of the two or three things that made that trans, those transitions successful for you?
[00:24:16] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yeah, and I'll go back to listening, coming into an organization and sitting down and listening. Um, listening to people throughout the organization, understanding, and they wanna tell war stories of what happened before you got there.
[00:24:30] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Let them let them. Yeah. Um, and it helps build in the context of, of the story as to how you wanna move the organization forward. But let them talk, let them share. Ask them questions. They wanna be helpful, they wanna see you succeed obviously. Right. So just sort of being there. The second thing is standing up for them.
[00:24:50] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And being supportive of them when, how am I gonna say this? When perhaps in the past, leadership has not done that for them.
[00:25:00] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah.
[00:25:00] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And so standing up and having their back really important. The other thing is evaluating the team that you have in place when you come in. Mm-hmm. And are they the right people in the right seats on the bus?
[00:25:14] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And do you need to make any changes? And I think sometimes. Moving quickly with the obvious ones builds you more credibility as being your leader, than taking your time and giving them a chance. But if you see something blatant, you gotta deal with it quickly, and all of a sudden you have immediate credibility because if you can see it, the entire organization,
[00:25:37] Craig P. Anderson: oh yeah.
[00:25:38] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And, you know, but nobody wants to throw anybody under the bus. Right? So those are probably, uh, the bigger things. See, I guess the other one is really board management and understanding your board and getting to know your board. I had before, with my previous CEO role, I had dinner with the board chair and my husband and I, and he and his wife a couple different times before I took the job.
[00:26:02] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So I got a sense of who. He was as a person, how he operated. And that helped me to better understand. And then I traveled to each one of my board members' location. Oh, wow. 'cause they were around the country. Um, met with them, met with their organization, got to know their, again, listening, listening to them, which helped me pull together a strategy for how we move forward.
[00:26:24] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: You know, that, that previous job, my first CEO role, I was hired in September. And in November I had to deliver a new strategic plan.
[00:26:34] Craig P. Anderson: Oh wow.
[00:26:35] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: For the organization, and truly, I'm gonna say this, the first real strategic plan that organization had
[00:26:43] Craig P. Anderson: had. Yeah.
[00:26:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: So it meant, wow, not only having conversations with board members, but having conversations with our member organizations and hearing what they thought needed to be done, developing a vision statement which didn't exist.
[00:27:00] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Revising the mission statement and actually developing a strategic plan with actionable items and having a reporting back process where you would report back on a regular basis to the membership on a quarterly, so it didn't just sit on a shelf, it was right you living, breathing document that drove our work and at the end of the year, it was easy then to evaluate me as a CEO.
[00:27:24] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Because you had this plan, did she do it or didn't she like. It. It just makes life so much easier. And I know it's a step, a lot of people skip or they do it and they put it on a shelf and then they go back to business as usual, and that's probably the biggest mistake, especially at that organization. It drove every single thing I.
[00:27:44] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: That we did and it was measurable and we were able to report back out on it. And in that situation, that was a turnaround organization. That was literally, I didn't know when I went there, if I was gonna be closing it down in a year or turning it around, and it's still going strong.
[00:28:01] Craig P. Anderson: It's so true. The whole planning process, people either do like these massive plans, like you said, and then throw 'em on the shelf.
[00:28:08] Craig P. Anderson: It's like this flurry of activities for three months and we forget about it or. They just don't have one. And every it's, and you know, and it doesn't drive like both vertically down through the organization or horizontally and people don't know how to make decisions 'cause there's no context that's, they don't know what's important 'cause we haven't created context.
[00:28:26] Craig P. Anderson: Having a business plan and a strategic plan, whatever you want to call it, is so crucial. And just to build it is a lot of power and people don't realize it. And like you said otherwise, organizations are just kind of reacting.
[00:28:38] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: And to your point down, the vertical people are showing up and doing their job and not understanding how what they do impacts your overall goal and where you wanna get to, which is super problematic for sure.
[00:28:50] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: But the other thing I would say is it doesn't need to be a tomb either. I kept it under 10 pages. Five to seven would be perfect, but it just does not need to be. It's gotta be something you can live that lives and breathes. So yeah,
[00:29:05] Craig P. Anderson: I actually work with to build one on one page with my clients, one page plan, and it's great.
[00:29:10] Craig P. Anderson: All right. So our closing question, Debra, all the time. Oh wow. Are we
[00:29:13] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: really done? That went by so fast.
[00:29:14] Craig P. Anderson: I know. It goes like that. It's funny. So here's the last question. Oh no, I'm scared. I'm gonna put you in a time machine. You can pick a DeLorean, you can pick the HG Wells time, however you like to travel through time when you do it.
[00:29:27] Craig P. Anderson: Yeah. Go back to you that young MBA, that young woman with an MBA with her big plans, what one piece of advice would you give her that would help her in some way help her be, you know, more successful or more calm with the job, or feel more confident? What's the one piece of advice you'd have for her?
[00:29:47] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I would say going back to that young woman, I would say bring your authentic, authentic self to work sooner.
[00:29:56] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Oh yeah. I keep behind a perception of who people thought I was and I lived that proudly, but I never showed up as the real me. And that came later and I blame credit my husband for helping me to break through that. But in the beginning I thought I had to be, I'll date myself a little bit, but. Women were not in leadership positions as much as they are today.
[00:30:23] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: It was tougher. Yeah. To move up in an organization and to advance as a woman, you, a woman, you had to work I think sometimes two or three times harder. And if a man said something in a room, I'm sorry, this is the truth, Craig. I lived us, you know, they accepted it if I said it. Oh, we have to think about that.
[00:30:42] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: You know? Or I would say it and then five minutes later a man would reiterate it and everybody go, that's a great idea. And I'm like, so how do you stand there and say, listen, that's exactly what I said. Weren't you listening to me? But
[00:30:54] Craig P. Anderson: yeah,
[00:30:54] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: so I would go back to, I wish I'd shown up as my authentic self, then bold braver earlier in my career.
[00:31:02] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: That's the thing that I wish, I would wish for every young woman or person today to be able to stand up and live by their values, be their true, authentic self, and show up every day as yourself, not as some image or perception of what people think you should be.
[00:31:18] Craig P. Anderson: That is so true because we think we have to be this person when we get this role, and it's just not where we wanna be.
[00:31:25] Craig P. Anderson: So sorry. All right. So Debra, if people loved what they heard today, they wanna learn more about you or the great work that you're doing at Trellis. How can people find you and follow you?
[00:31:38] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: I'm gonna say LinkedIn is the best way. My Twitter slash x account has been hacked, so do not go there. So I'm gonna say go to LinkedIn.
[00:31:48] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: That's where you will find my information and you'll see. And I'm pretty active and our organization's pretty active on LinkedIn sharing what we do. Great. We've been doing monthly webinars. On different topics related to affordability and higher education. So there's a great series of those out there to watch as well.
[00:32:07] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yeah.
[00:32:07] Craig P. Anderson: Awesome. Thanks so much Debra. Thanks for coming on and sharing the story of your executive evolution. It was great to hear and uh, it was great to catch up with you. Thank you so much. That was great.
[00:32:16] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Yeah, I enjoyed it as well. I still can't believe how fast it went by Craig, but thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:32:21] Craig P. Anderson: Absolutely. Bye-bye.
[00:32:23] Dr. Debra J. Chromy: Bye.
[00:32:25] Craig P. Anderson: Boy, I really enjoyed, as I always do the interview with Debra and as she noted, they always go super fast. Uh, but we really try and keep the podcast tight, so. Let's go into what I always like to do at these interviews and talk about the key takeaways, which are in the areas of competence, confidence, and calm, which are such crucial leadership characteristics in the area of competence.
[00:32:46] Craig P. Anderson: She talked about being your authentic self, and that's so important and it's really is a level of competence for you because you can't be operating at your best level when you're trying to be someone who you aren't. When you're trying to put on a facade of confidence, of security, of knowledge, whatever it is.
[00:33:03] Craig P. Anderson: When you're your authentic self, you really are not worried about anything but the job at hand. So it's such an important part of being competent in your role, in the area of confidence. I love what Debra said about, you don't have to have every answer. Matter of fact, you know, she talked about in challenging her teammates to come in and give her answers or helping them think through to get to the better answer.
[00:33:25] Craig P. Anderson: We are not the answer machines. As leaders in our organization, our job is to pull those answers out, but sometimes we lack the confidence to realize that and it can really hurt us. And then finally, in the area of calm, Debra talked about the importance to just let it go. We have to move on now. Certainly, I'm sure repeat problems need to be dealt with, but everybody makes mistakes and it's really important for us to just jump in.
[00:33:49] Craig P. Anderson: And let it go and move on to the next thing. So thanks again, Debra, for sharing your story today. As always, you can go from being an accidental leader to the greatest leader of all time. All it takes is developing your confidence, competence, and calm. See you next time on Executive Evolution.