Kelly Beattie is the President at FirstStar Consulting Group and an expert in Train-the-Trainer programs for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Kelly started FirstStar to help individuals and organizations develop their staff and build their leadership teams – Emotional Intelligence is a critical element in how she teaches and trains. With nearly three decades of experience training top teams and executives on Emotional Intelligence, she has become a renowned leader in the area of leadership development.

As a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion expert, Kelly’s approach to culture-building and change focuses on the importance of communicating complex topics and having difficult conversations in the workplace. She provides teams and executives with the tools they need to feel emotionally comfortable dealing with some of the most contentious social topics today. As a teacher, her focus on the importance of communication, empathetic leadership, and emotional growth give business leaders relevant insights into managing people better.

In this episode, Dean Newlund and Kelly Beattie discuss:

• Getting people into challenging conversations in a climate of fear
• Receiving feedback that’s difficult to hear  
• Accountability or blame, responsibility or fault
• Navigating through difficult conversations

Key Takeaways:

• Make it okay for people to speak truthfully and authentically. When you hear people out, don’t outright say that they’re wrong. Hear the feedback and hold it, accept it. 
• If somebody is telling you something difficult, regard it as something that’s not a personal attack on you but something about a situation that happened. 
• Money is a temporary solution to a problem; organizations must look into the culture of people. People need to feel like the organization cares about them for them to be loyal to it. 
• Holding people accountable doesn’t mean getting them to blame for something but instead getting people to take responsibility for their actions and be clear about how others can best support them in doing the role they got. 
• Don’t be judgemental; lean into the conversation. Your goal shouldn’t be to change someone’s mind or attack someone’s view but to understand the process and motivation behind how they came up with what they believe in. See it as something interesting, something fascinating and curious. 

 “The strongest of the leaders develops a team around them where everybody has ownership.” — Kelly Beattie.

See Dean’s TedTalk “Why Business Needs Intuition” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEq9IYvgV7I

 Connect with Kelly Beattie: 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rkbeattie

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellybeattie1ststar/

Connect with Dean:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgqRK8GC8jBIFYPmECUCMkw

Website: https://www.mfileadership.com/

The Mission Statement E-Newsletter: https://www.mfileadership.com/blog/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deannewlund/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/deannewlund

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MissionFacilitators/

Email: dean.newlund@mfileadership.com

Phone: 1-800-926-7370