As seen in Fast Company, Business Insider, and BuiltIn, Dr. Laurie Cure, Ph.D., a leading voice in executive coaching, serves as the CEO of Innovative Connections. With a focus on consulting in strategic planning, organizational development, talent management, and leadership, Dr. Cure’s expertise in change management and culture evolution empowers her clients to achieve organizational success by enabling them to discover and release their human potential.
Over her 30-year career, Dr. Cure has dedicated herself to realizing strategic visions, collaborating with executives and senior leaders to drive organizational outcomes, and conducting research on pivotal industry issues. She is the author of “Leading without Fear,” a book that addresses workplace fear, and has contributed to numerous publications on leadership, coaching, team development, and emotions. Dr. Cure has also served as a Meta-coach for the Daniel Goleman Emotional Intelligence program and as faculty at various universities across the country
Company: Innovative Connections
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company
Dr. Laurie Cure: As I mentioned above, we are an organizational effectiveness consulting firm that partners with companies in various industries (healthcare, manufacturing, construction, service businesses, government and municipalities, etc.) to transform how they do business through people. If organizations are struggling to achieve business results, having difficulty recruiting or retaining talent, or finding their team dynamics less than desirable, we can find solutions that help. We often see issues of accountability and conflict management as areas where leaders struggle the most, and our interventions can assist.
I think we are unique in our ability to establish relationships that move leaders forward and achieve their desired results. The organizations we partner with have used other consulting firms, and they tell us that we have the ability to move the needle when no one else has been able to find a way. We do this through solid collaboration and trust with leaders in the organization and by developing people and leadership strategies that align with the organizational culture instead of operating against it.
Our mission is to “Give Voice and Action to an Emerging Future.” Our world is changing rapidly, and the level of complexity that leaders operate in is unprecedented. Leadership, in general, is getting more and more challenging. The one “right” way of doing things no longer exists. There is no golden solution that works across the board. We establish intimate, trusting relationships that allow us to co-create the best solution for a specific organization and challenge. This allows a potential future to be born.
Can you share a time when your business faced a significant challenge? How did you navigate through it?
Dr. Laurie Cure: Just one? I think any successful business faces many challenges, and we must recognize and embrace them as learning opportunities and catalysts for growth. One challenge has been the need to evolve my own leadership as the business grows and changes. This challenge is one I am conscious of right now as we are in a growth trajectory that demands we capitalize on a new business model that I put in place about two years ago. The decisions are hard, particularly as they impact people, but they position a business for a sustainable future.
My leadership evolution has also required me to strengthen my ability to trust and delegate, which means ensuring my team members and talent have the right skills to be successful. Our clients also have changing needs and pain points, so we are constantly challenged to ensure we are positioned to support them through these times.
To that point, COVID represented a significant challenge at the beginning. Much of our work at that time was healthcare, and they had their plates full just trying to maintain patient care. We focused on what we do best but shifted a bit to emphasize what was needed in the market. Emergency planning, resilience training, and the development of teams that could operate in crisis became more significant areas of focus in our work — this time also presented us with an opportunity to expand our market into new industries, which we had desired for many years.
A wonderful mentor and client of ours has a phrase: “Look for the pull and know when to push.” The growth of our business has provided challenges and opportunities to do both. When we can successfully pull when presented with an opportunity and push when it’s needed, we tend to be pretty successful.
How has a failure or apparent failure set you up for later success?
Dr. Laurie Cure: Luckily, this happens all the time when you can embrace and learn from failures and mistakes. It is often that failures set you up for success. They stretch you into the next phase of your own growth. As leaders, we must realize that risk is always accompanied by varying degrees of “failure.” If you cannot establish a mindset that views failure as a pathway to success, you will remain stuck and stifled.
I have a good (and bad) habit of always saying yes and then figuring it out. I feel like there are always possibilities and choices to make something work. 99% of the time, this plays out well for me, but there are times when it causes “micro-failures” that require adjusting the plan. There are also times when it lends to increased anxiety before a solution presents itself.
One of the other mistakes I find occurs more frequently than I would like is not acting on an idea soon enough. When you put an idea out there, it’s out—the genie is out of the bottle, so to speak. If you do not act, someone else will. So often, we have great ideas, and suddenly, someone rises up and moves them forward. Acting on a good idea as quickly as it makes sense is essential.
Finally, if I am being completely transparent, the “failures” or mistakes that keep me up at night are no different than those of all leaders. When you have to make a decision that impacts people in a perceived negative way, it can be gut-wrenching. Yet, often, these decisions position the business for the next leap. Often, these decisions also position individual people to move into a better space (although it usually does not feel like it at the time).
I had an experience not long ago when I was delivering a proposal to a large corporation whose culture was highly competitive, somewhat arrogant, and very serious. They were in the business of manufacturing highly specialized products and believed that working with them was a privilege. Yet, our preliminary analysis based on their high turnover painted a different picture. When we delivered our results, the room felt like ice and daggers. My sense of failure in meeting their needs and expectations was high, yet I knew we were giving them the proper recommendations to position them to be more effective. I also knew that our findings were cutting right through the very heart of the company and the leadership’s personal identity. After a lot of crucial and difficult discussions, the executive team decided to proceed with our recommendations, and their results have been tremendous. I suppose the lesson is the importance of holding onto your own knowing. Even if they had not proceeded with us, at some point, they would have needed to come to terms with our findings and make the necessary changes. I suppose that is the success- ensuring a business can be better in whatever way is needed.
How do you build a resilient team? What qualities do you look for in your team members?
Dr. Laurie Cure: We teach and believe that resilience is critical to effective leadership and team members. Much of our work is in professions that experience high levels of burnout or compassion fatigue, and our job is to help give them skills to support a more resilient way of being. We also know that resilience is not just an individual issue or problem. Team and organizational dynamics are critical in either increasing or decreasing burnout.
At the individual level, if people can build skills in emotional intelligence (EI), the research shows that resilience also increases. There is a strong negative correlation between emotional intelligence and burnout, meaning that if you have higher levels of EI and resilience, you will experience lower levels of burnout. To that point, our team builds resilience by encouraging team members to build self-awareness and self-care practices (like maintaining social support). We encourage flexibility in our work environment and also seek to maintain high levels of challenge, which, contrary to thinking, is actually critical to achieving resilience.
At the team level, we encourage teams to ensure healthy conflict and communication. When we either have pent-up issues or throw everything out, it impacts the resilience of team members. Building trust and psychological safety on a team is foundational.
Organizationally, there must be practices as well. Organizational cultures and structures need to demonstrate a commitment to people’s wellness. This goes beyond just work-life balance. Things like scheduling, involvement in decision-making, project assignments, training opportunities, and how we demonstrate value and recognition are all aspects of the organizational culture that can help or hinder reliance.
How do you maintain your personal resilience during tough times?
Dr. Laurie Cure: The biggest resilience strategy I have is to maintain a growth mindset. There is a quote, and I’m not going to get it quite right, but it says something to the effect of “the ones with the resilience to repair themselves move to a higher order of organization.” I personally hold a belief that fatigue is often a call to reorganize and grow into a higher or deeper level of consciousness. We build robustness in new ways and begin to find alternative methods for managing the complexity in our lives. While there is research about how to maintain resilience, I think there are strategies that work better for some than others.
For me, resilience comes from my support networks. This includes co-workers, family, and friends. I tend to be a little more extroverted, so having a large dinner party is exhilarating and fills my bucket when I am exhausted. And yet, sometimes, I need downtime to work in the garden or be outside alone. Some people have a love it and loathe it list, and when they need to build capacity, they intentionally do more on their “love it” list and avoid the “loathe it” activities.
I think we can do this at work as well. I love to research, build strategy, write, and lead large groups. I am not as fond of my CEO duties around monthly reporting and budgeting. I intentionally build my resources so I can do more of what I love and less of what I don’t. I know those tasks need to be completed, but maybe not by me, or perhaps I can do them differently so I can maintain energy around them. It’s different for everyone, but being self-aware in this way is important to maintain your own resilience.
I guess my final resilience strategy is listening to others. Sometimes, we need to tell people things they don’t want to hear, and other times, we need to hear things we don’t want to. Building resilience requires us to do both. The most important feedback I have received from others is the message that I initially resisted.
What strategies do you use to manage stress and maintain focus during a crisis?
Dr. Laurie Cure: That is a great question. Don’t judge me, but I often need to have a mini-breakdown during a crisis, and that clears my head for problem-solving and effectively moving into solution mode. Sometimes, it comes out as anger or frustration, and other times a few tears. It usually does not take me long, and then I am ready to lunge into the crisis. Overall, I need a little pause to think through things — it might be a 10-second pause or 10 minutes, but giving myself time to listen to my intuition, understand what’s happening, and develop a plan to move forward is needed.
I tend to be possibility-oriented, so most of the time, I get excited at the prospect of working through a crisis. Our work often helps leaders in this same way, so I think my strengths align in this area of management. I also prefer to collaborate with others. While I always have my own thoughts and perspectives, I generally tend to lean on bringing others together to establish the best plan.
How do you communicate with your team during a crisis?
Dr. Laurie Cure: Transparency. People need to know the truth to appropriately manage their emotional reactions and the tangible next steps they need to take. We often withhold difficult information out of the belief we are protecting others, or we don’t want people to panic. One of the tenets of our work is a coaching mindset, which says we believe everyone is capable, resourceful, and whole. If we believe this is the case, we also believe that people can manage knowing information. Now, this is not to say that there are times when we need to carefully release information and be strategic about how we share and when. However, transparency is a way of building trust.
What advice would you give to other CEOs on building resilience in their organizations?
Dr. Laurie Cure: Don’t think it is only an individual problem. CEOs have the power to change the organizational context and influence resilience. While I always encourage CEOs to offer wellness and development that support employees and leaders, don’t underestimate greater strategies.
Create a culture of empowerment. When team members are involved in decision-making, feel valued, and are part of a community, they naturally build resilience. Make self-awareness an expectation so you can grow a team of individuals committed to themselves and the organization.
How do you prepare your business for potential future crises?
Dr. Laurie Cure: There are a couple of ways. I still do contingency planning to consider a variety of scenarios that may or are more likely to happen. I try to always adjust and course correct along the way so a “crisis” has less of an impact should it happen. I also attempt to build flexibility into our structures so we can be more agile. This learning has come from some of the challenges I described earlier.
Crisis in every business looks different. Part of our work, mainly during COVID, was to help businesses with emergency preparedness. That looks very different for a consulting firm like us than it does for a manufacturing line or a hospital. Every business should assess the potential threats or crises it is at risk of experiencing. While in our complex world, we cannot plan for everything, there are definitely some steps we can take to prepare for the most likely scenarios, or we can assume that crises in our industry have general themes or threads, and we can ensure we are ready for those possibilities.
One final step that is often overlooked is the assessment of action. We rarely stop and spend time conducting a “lessons learned” reflection. For any major decision, change, or crisis, it is important to pause and determine if the actions you took resulted in the outcome you desired. If not, what could or should you have done differently?
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about leadership in times of crisis?
Dr. Laurie Cure: Stay focused. Our work in emotional intelligence tells us that emotions inform our thinking, so I recommend listening but allowing the information in. Don’t get stuck in fear or anger. What is it telling you, and how do you allow it to inform you of your next steps? Too often, particularly in crisis, people stay stuck on an emotional roller coaster. Recognize the emotion, understand what it is telling you, and move forward as a result of it.
I mentioned earlier that I often need a “mini-breakdown” before I can proceed. For me, these are my emotions informing me. In that brief time (or sometimes not so brief), I can recognize where I am struggling and then know how to best move forward. Am I worried about myself or my team members? If that is the case, I can take action to help protect them. Am I worried about financial gains? That might take me down a different path.
