EP 17 Leading with Humanity in a Polarized, Fast-Changing World with Dr. Kim Stepanski | Deep Work Out Loud
Julie Harris Oliver: Welcome to Deep Work Out Loud, the thinking that fuels our life, our work, and our leadership. I'm Julie Harris Oliver. This is the podcast where I sit with another professional coach and we do some work around a single concept, a piece of inspiration, something that we've been thinking about, something that we're working on.
If we're really lucky while we're talking about it, we might demonstrate what coaching might look and feel like for a couple minutes, but we'll see how this goes. It's all an experiment, but any luck you'll leave with something that you can apply and use in your work or your life, or ideally both. Today I am here with Dr.
Kim Stepanski. Kim is an executive coach and organizational psychologist who works with leaders navigating complexity change and the human realities of leadership with a PhD in industrial organizational psychology and a career spanning Fortune 500 companies.
Startups and global nonprofits. She brings a rare blend of depth, perspective, and humanity to her work with senior leaders across roles at Pfizer, the Bill and Melinda Gates [00:01:00] Foundation and Rally Bio. Kim has worked closely with executives during periods of significant transition supporting leadership development, CEO succession, cultural transformation, and organizational growth.
Kim's coaching creates space for reflection and perspective taking, helping leaders see beyond their own filters, stay grounded in volatile environments, and lead in ways that are both effective and deeply human. Kim is a member of the Forbes Coaches Council, where she writes on leadership transformation and executive development.
She believes leadership today is less about having the right answers and more about cultivating clarity, connection, and judgment for ourselves and for the people we [00:02:00] lead. Hi, Kim.
Thanks so much for doing this.
Kim Stepanski: You're welcome. I am really excited to be here. I've had a deep respect for you since we, we met I think like a year or so ago and I'm very grateful to, to be here today. So thank you for having me.
Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, that is very kind and likewise. First, why don't you tell us what brought you to coaching?
Kim Stepanski: That's a good question and it's one that I think about and the answer seems to evolve pretty regularly. But I think looking back at my career the last, 20 or so years, coaching's always been a bit of a through line in the work that I do. And over the last couple of years, I've just decided to make it the center.
And I spent 25 years in organizations and global roles and different systems. no matter what the role what the job, the thing that I kept coming back to was I really enjoyed working directly with leaders, helping them think, make sense. Figure out how to work through pressure, decide how to show up when things get [00:03:00] hard.
And that's really the impetus behind deciding to do coaching on my own. It, at some point I left the organization, organizations that I was working in because I was looking for, a place to be able to make sense of what I wanted to focus on. So a little bit, remove myself, from the constant push of and pace of being inside an organization, all of the things that you need to do with being a member of an organization and really focus on the things that I love and what feels most meaningful to me. And that's, having real conversations with leaders. It's focusing on purpose, judgment, credibility. And so coaching lets me bring all of the experience that I've had to bear, in a way that's deeply personal and I hope, genuinely impactful.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, it's like the work underneath the work.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. Yeah. And particularly important in, in our era right now, I think where. There's [00:04:00] so many challenges and so much going on, and the pace is changing so greatly. It really, it becomes very helpful, I think for all leaders.
Julie Harris Oliver: I would I would double down on that and say it's actually vital.
So important right now. But what did you want us to dig into today?
Kim Stepanski: I'd love to explore what it actually feels to lead right now.
Especially based on what I'm hearing in my coaching and the leaders that I work with every day, find that leadership is not about having the right answer or the right training. It's about how do you build the capacity to see clearly beyond the filters that we bring to the table. While staying human and grounded in a world that moves fast and is feeling increasingly polarized. So I am, I'm really interested and wanna explore the pressures that leaders are carrying, the pace of change, the challenge of leading people that have very different perspectives, [00:05:00] and looking at how reflection, connection, and community can support more thoughtful, and humane leadership. So really just exploring what it means to be a leader right now. And how do you make meaning out of that?
Julie Harris Oliver: I love this and I think it's so important and I think there is a bit of a dearth of people thinking about this right now. I had a coaching session just. Before we started this and in the middle of this is a senior leader in the middle of everything that she's trying to work on, she said, and I went down that social media rabbit hole this weekend.
It's January 28th today, by the way. It's been pretty volatile. And to carry that heaviness and also feel like you can't necessarily talk about it at work, but something needs to be done. 'cause everybody's in this swirl and. How do you go.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, I think that's, I think it's a real strain for leaders right now. 'cause I do think leadership, to begin with a [00:06:00] leadership is a lonely place, right? There are very few places where you don't have to show up and perform where you're not expected to do something and or have a point of, or have an answer.
And I think now it's particularly difficult for folks who. Are navigating what are very complex business
You've got things like AI coming in and trying to figure out where that fits in the world. Then you've got this external volatility going on in a geopolitical environment. and so as a leader, you're trying to manage that within yourself and find your way through that and what your point of view is and what's important to you. Meaning, purpose, humanity. And you are trying to understand all of the leaders on your team, all of the people on your team and where they're coming from, and how do you be cognizant of the different spaces that they're in, whether it's different levels of knowledge, different points of view. Becomes really difficult.
And when you layer on top the notion [00:07:00] of. Increasing use of algorithms, how we get our information Aperture people have gets smaller and smaller so it becomes. Really difficult to step up and think about the world beyond yourself because you are constantly fed things that aligned with your point of view.
And as a leader that makes it difficult, right? Because you're coming in, you've got your own point of view, you're getting your own echo chamber feedback, and each of the people on your team is getting that as well. And, I have this author who's a, who's one of my favorite authors he did this speech years ago now called, this is Water.
His name's David Foster Wallace,
The essence of it is. The real thing you learn and the real importance as you grow and you start to think about how do you think and how you show up in the world. It's a recognition that we all experience the world from our own lens, right? So I see the world through my eyes.
I hear the world through my ears. I experience things as they happen to me.
And the real value [00:08:00] is understanding different perspectives and really understanding, How someone else brings things to the table and what they experience the same event in. And I think that's what leaders need to be able to do and a capability that they need to build more as they work with folks on their team.
Julie Harris Oliver: And I, I think there may be a real temptation when you're in that spot to, I'm just gonna com compartmentalize it and not touch it with a 10 foot pole. 'cause I'm not equipped to deal with whatever's going on underneath the surface. So how do people begin? I.
Kim Stepanski: That's a really good question. I think the, I think the first step is really getting comfortable on not knowing, I don't think anyone has the answers now, and I think it's grounding in the fact that your perspective isn't everyone else's perspective and taking a stand to taking the time to really recognize what other perspectives might be. I think it is looking for, connection, looking for [00:09:00] relationships, meeting people on a very human level and who they are as people and individuals, more than just what they're bringing to the table and what the work is that they're doing. I'm part of what I'm curious too about is, are you seeing the same things in the coaching that you do?
Do you see this and what do you, do you talk about this with your clients?
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, it's a good question. I see it coming up a lot and. As I said, there's a lot of fear around what am I supposed to do about it? What am I supposed to say? What, how am I am, I don't know either. What? And I think there's taking something from my my I worked for a while in diversity, equity, and inclusion.
So taking a piece outta that playbook there is so much value in just acknowledging, boy, does today feel heavy? Or, you may be. People may be carrying more right now. There's a lot happening in the world. How's everybody doing?
Kim Stepanski: Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: How are you doing? What kind of, what would support look like right now?
Is there a way that we need to interact with each other today? You know what, I [00:10:00] interviewed once Emily Best, who is the CEO of Seed and Spark, and she is so brilliant and one of the things that she does with her team is they do a quick check-in as they come onto a meeting 'cause they're all remote and they say, are you feeling.
Green, yellow or red and green is ready to go red. Yellow is, I'm feeling a bit tender or sensitive today. And red is, boy am I struggling. And just giving that indication helps inform the rest of the team maybe how to approach that person that day or how to interact with care while still moving the work forward, knowing what people's capacities are that day.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, I think that's a great practice. And certainly one that's really good at grounding people before a conversation starts. And check-ins can take all sorts of different frames, right? So it can be, how are you doing today? What do you need to do or say to be complete [00:11:00] before we start today? To just silly little. Share something that happened with you the weekend. So they can be anything that helps you connect a human level before you actually start the work, which I think is really important.
Julie Harris Oliver: There was another the people who run Cafe Gratitude. Which is this cafe in LA that is so LA because you like, you order by saying like all the dishes are named in affirmation. So the dish I really there is the, I am humble. So when you order, you say, I am humble. And then when they bring you your dish, they say you are humble.
So it's this
Kim Stepanski: yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: is lovely. It's also pretty corny, but it's a thing. But they wrote a book about leadership and how they prep their wait staff to be really connected and present and of service. And so every day before any shift starts, everyone spends 15 minutes with their manager getting off their chest what they came in with, so that they can set it aside so that they can [00:12:00] be present and be of service.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. And so it's being comfortable as a leader, letting that
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Kim Stepanski: and knowing that you don't have to answer, you don't have to fix. And letting them share that 'cause that helps you build the relationship, the community, the connectedness that will get you and your team through what are fairly challenging.
Times.
Julie Harris Oliver: And it's almost like the presence is enough.
Kim Stepanski: Times, yeah. Oftentimes it is. Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: So how else do you work with people when this is coming up?
Kim Stepanski: That's the thing that I'm still exploring. So I, like anyone else, am still thinking through what does all this mean for me, the work that I do. Most people present, like they come to me with. I'm transitioning into a new role. I have a new team and I've got all of these other things going on, or trying to find a way to balance the work that I do with, and the meaning that I derive from the work that I do with being present for my family and my children, and how do I do that and what does that [00:13:00] look like?
So pretty typical. Not easy problems, but ones that a lot of people face. and then as we're going through this, we, we really start to see that there's some underlying challenges and some underlying issues that they need to address. It's gonna help them be more present for the people that they lead. And so we start there. We start with how are they feeling about this? How are they working through, where are they at with this? What level of comfort do they have? What are they comfortable? Opening up with the teams that they serve how do their organizations support this or do they not? So I work with some folks who are dissuaded from really talking about what's going on in the world.
And so once you open that up, it becomes a bit of a challenge. So it, it really is understanding where they're coming from and what their perspective is and where they're at in the journey. And helping them work through that? We do. I use different tools and sometimes it's reflection tools that are present [00:14:00] grounding tools that can help people in the moment as they're going through. We do many, and I think Erin talked about this in the podcast you did with her. Little experiments. So what would that look like? How would you do that? Just try it out with one or two people and see how that goes for you. and so that seems to be the bite size approach that seems to work for people to, to explore how this shows up in their, in the work that they do. But the first step I think, is really helping them start to understand how they feel about it.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. And that, that can be so tricky and it is, it can be risky in a sense. If you do this really poorly, off the cuff, you can actually cause more harm than not when you're doing it.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. I would, so I think you can recover. I, you, think it, people tend to be pretty forgiving if you're, if they believe you have good intentions and you have a, you're a credible leader. I wouldn't let that dissuade me from doing something. I would definitely take a chance and [00:15:00] open the question be open for feedback that worked or it didn't work and then adjust right.
Julie Harris Oliver: So how do you work with people when it's, oh God, that feels so uncomfortable. I don't know where to begin. Oh. I have heard that from people like, oh God. And you can see them like, Ooh, you want me to do what?
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, we start with why is it uncomfortable? What is it that you're worried about? What what would it sound like if you approached this? How would that look? Is there a safe space you can try this in your world? What are the downsides of not doing it right? So if you don't connect with people, what does that look like for you and what does that look like for your team?
Julie Harris Oliver: What does it cost?
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, so it's it's exploring both of those both the what would it look like if you did do it, and how can you practice that, and then what happens if you don't, right.
Julie Harris Oliver: And then going back to when you were saying it's lonely at the top, and I would add it's lonely near the top. There's a several [00:16:00] layers of lonely as you get high in an organization. And I I know you and I were talking at one point that this is also a passion of yours, of helping to connect leaders with each other so that you have that kind of peer support.
Do you wanna talk about that a bit?
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, I'd love to, and, you know, some of this work was inspired by just some of the work we did at Hudson as we were going through training. Some of it is just a reflection that, we don't take the time off and to build enough community in the spaces that we're in. And so we, end up isolated.
So some of the work that I've been doing is and that I'm starting, is working with senior women executives on how do they build community and really understanding who they are and how they show up and what they're. Risks are, so we, we use, I use some, positive intelligence assessments and look at their saboteurs and where they are comfortable, where they're not comfortable.
And and then we work in a small group [00:17:00] to bring challenges forward and help them resolve challenges among each other. So they do, it does a couple of things. It helps teach them to be vulnerable. It gives them the opportunity to see different perspectives from people that are. In different roles, in different sectors, in different disciplines. and so it brings new ideas and new thoughts forward for them it helps them build very safe space to have difficult conversations with each other and that, find really meaningful and really grounding it around an actual challenge or problem that they're facing really, I think helps them give, it gives a kernel of, focus for them to really delve on that feels safe safer than talking about things in the abstract.
And then, theoretically. walks away learning something. 'cause you learn something from the problems that you bring forward or the challenges you bring forward. And you learn something from the challenges others, bring forward. And you find that what we found so far is that the challenges aren't that different [00:18:00] depending on, they don't seem to matter.
It doesn't seem to matter whether you are, in pharma, in academia, whether you are an operations person or a strategy person, a lot of the challenges that you're facing are actually in fact, the same as a leader,
Is pretty humbling and pretty grounding, and it gives you a really nice sense of community.
Julie Harris Oliver: Because it's still people.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. People are people,
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. That's what you're dealing with. I can at, I can attest to the value of such a group. I, I wanna say it's 10 years now. I've been in a lean in circle. Remember when they had Lean in circles? I don't know if they, I don't even know if they still do them. I'm sure the website is still up, but it was the companion organization to the Lean in book, which I remember loving at the time.
But I know it has problems 'cause it didn't address the systems, right? It was just women try harder and I think women are already trying so hard. But, I will say for the first, I would say three years, we did a very specific curriculum around showing up and leading and managing and all the things.[00:19:00]
And over time they all just became very good friends. And now we have this incredibly safe space to talk about all things career and family and life and all the things. And this is incredibly supportive. Group of incredible women who now I've had the joy of seeing over 10 years of their careers, and it's made such a difference.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. And that's what I'm striving to create with this particular practice. And it's not limited just to work it, it can be bringing forward other challenges and the common is the integration of the two, right? Work, family, life. How does it all come together And, One of the things I do find is that depending on where you are in stage of life the challenges look a little bit different.
Both in
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Kim Stepanski: career and stage of.
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah. And just knowing you're not trying to figure this out on your own, especially being a woman with a career and a family, it's so hard. And I think the more you have community and support and know that you're not the only one, and everyone else has ideas too about how to get through the things, [00:20:00] it's really so helpful.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, and I think that the biggest challenge and the biggest obstacle to, to doing work like this is time, right?
It just, and the same with coaching in general. It just, it takes time. It takes you concentrated presence and connection and it's a hard thing to give up when you're so busy. You're feeling overwhelmed to begin with, but I think if you really take the, a few moments and a little bit of time to do this, it really helps lift you in so many other respects.
Julie Harris Oliver: Oh, for sure. And time is gonna pass anyway. So would you rather get to three years from now having done the work or having not done the work,
Kim Stepanski: Yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: Let.
Kim Stepanski: yeah. It's interesting. I do, one of the things about that I think is coming up more and more is, and I don't know if this is, an evolution from the practices like lean in or not, but a recognition that systems haven't changed and they're constraining and we make decisions in specific ways based on specific things within. The corporate world anyway. [00:21:00] and a lot of those are driven by profit, cost, productivity, time, and I think there's a real recognition that as senior leaders. Women do have an opportunity to shape what those look like going forward and what that should look like going forward. And how do we make a world that we wanna live in a world that is a little bit more catered to human life than it is to creating a profit.
Julie Harris Oliver: I think that is the question for our time.
Kim Stepanski: it is, it's a nice outgrowth, I think, of sort of the evolution of a lot of this work over the last, 20, 30 years. Right.
Julie Harris Oliver: What have I not asked you about this that I should have asked you about?
Kim Stepanski: Wow. That's a big question. I think the what have you not asked me about that you should have asked me about? I don't, I think we've talked about, so many topics. We've talked about the complexity in the work world now and the connection between the external world and the work life and how you show up as an [00:22:00] individual and how you be grounded and human. And that's the real, that's the real heart of it all right, is in this time where there's so much going on and so much polarization where you've got shifting structures and. Industries where you've got artificial intelligence coming in and reshaping the way we work and how we engage with work, and you've got multiple generations in the workforce. It's really how do you stay, how do you navigate the, that dynamic environment, the changing pace and. Really stay true to yourself grounded in human and the people and the purpose of why you lead. And so right now, I don't know that I have the answers, but the point is to explore and I think that's the biggest, I think that's the biggest takeaway for me is just creating space for leaders to slow down, reflect and [00:23:00] choose how they wanna lead, right? So how do they wanna lead in alignment with their values and alignment with their purpose and the people that they serve?
And I think that's, that's the essence of it, whether it's through. Challenges that you have in the industry that you're in through you balance your life in the outside world? How do you take the time to reflect and be indulgent and really focus on making yourself a better leader?
Because that does matter. It matters to the people that you lead. It matters to the way you do the work, the quality of the work that shows up. and so I don't know that there's anything specific actually.
Julie Harris Oliver: It sounds like the important part is making the decision to become a really conscious leader and then doing that work of how are you going to be, and how are you going to show up?
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. And being deliberate about
Julie Harris Oliver: And being really intentional because all, almost the work almost doesn't matter. Like I'm thinking right now of a company that has been [00:24:00] in merger transition Without Stop, I wanna say for about 10 years. Every two years there's another overlord or another management team or another CEO so it's constant reorganizing, re just constant, and then when that's the work and is so hard and uncertain and crazy making all the time, what's the part that matters? It's the people and how are you gonna guide them through that, even when the work itself may make no sense or be difficult or be,
Kim Stepanski: yeah. No, I worked for an organization, that a CEO, that war is a badge of honor that we did massive leadership change every 18 months that the organization was reinventing itself every 18 months. And
Julie Harris Oliver: do you do anything else?
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. That's a question, right? Is what, how do you get the actual work of the organization
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah.
Kim Stepanski: that becomes the work, and what I find is leaders are really good at that. Like they can do [00:25:00] the thing whatever the thing is, right? If it's building a new organizational structure, if it's finding, doing the research that they do, it's bringing their expertise to the table. It's finding better logistics and methodology.
It's applying a new computer system. It's putting in SAP, whatever the thing
Julie Harris Oliver: You can do the thing.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, it, but it really is the leadership, the connection. And how do you. How do you show up and stay connected to people along the way in a way that is compelling and engaging? 'Cause that's what will matter in the long run.
And
It's, I think Maya Angelou who said it's not. What you say, it's how you make people feel
Matters. And I think that's so true in leadership and these are moments where that becomes particularly important and really thinking about that matters the most. 'cause the leaders that are most successful are the ones that can do that.
Julie Harris Oliver: Sure, do you wanna have [00:26:00] people who actually wanna work for you and put their heart in it and actually make it efficient and profitable and. Not be tortured along the way.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. And are you making this a world where people wanna live?
Whether that's making sure they've got balance in the life that they lead or not. Um. And it's, the age old question. Do you live to work or work to live? And how do you as a leader feel about that? How do you fit into that in a way that business success, right?
Because that's important, but also serves the people that you work with.
Julie Harris Oliver: And also that new generation is coming and I don't think it's as big of a question for them.
Kim Stepanski: yeah.
Julie Harris Oliver: I think they're on the side of work to live.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah, is a different way of looking at the world and probably healthier one in the long run.
Julie Harris Oliver: I'm curious, what do you do to hold onto your center and stay grounded?
Kim Stepanski: I this is gonna sound silly, I hang out with my dog. I have a little chocolate Labrador who is happy about every single thing he does. And is always very grounding. He always is happy to play. He always wants to go [00:27:00] for a walk, and so we spend a good bit of time outside and in nature, just quiet.
Which is I find refreshing and renewing
Julie Harris Oliver: Yeah, I don't think it's silly. I think that's, I think that's real. A little bundle of joy.
Kim Stepanski: yeah, e every day, all the time, which is nice. I'm jealous of that.
Julie Harris Oliver: How can people find you?
Kim Stepanski: I, people can find me either on LinkedIn with Kim Stepanski or through my website, which is Crescentiacoaching.com. And always happy to connect.
Julie Harris Oliver: Thank you so much for doing this, Kim.
Kim Stepanski: Yeah. Thank you Julie for having me. This is fun.
Julie Harris Oliver: This has been deep work out loud. I'm Julie Harris Oliver, I'd like to thank Kim Stepanski for joining the podcast. If any of this resonates with you, please subscribe, leave review at all the podcast places. And if you'd like to work with me, you can find me at julieharrisoliver.com. And let me leave you with this invitation.
What might it look like for you to spend some time thinking about how you wanna lead? And spending some time doing that work. [00:28:00] And where can you find some support to do that work? Try some things, report back. Thanks for listening. See you next time.