An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Turn Conflict into Trust; The conversations you’re avoiding or handling poorly will be the reason people leave as the speed of scale increases. Learn how to turn avoidance into engagement and your leadership team will be exponentially more resilient.
Startups usually start with a small cohort of close colleagues. But what happens when you add a bunch of new people into this close cohort? How do you maintain the company culture? In addition, what is needed to successfully scale a business to increase market share or to increase offerings? How can a small startup grow successfully to a midsize and then large company? To address these questions, we are talking to successful business leaders who can share stories and insights from their experiences about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”. As a part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Adrian Koehler.
Adrian Koehler is a leadership engagement expert who gets real to get real results. He is the founder and managing partner at the executive coaching firm, Take New Ground where he coaches executives and entrepreneurs in the art and science of leadership for themselves, their teams, and clients to create new, unprecedented results and experience fulfillment in their work.
Thank you for joining us in this interview series. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’?
My natural passions and inclination toward taking initiative have lead me into four distinct careers and across the globe. I have a background in philanthropy, ministry, activism, and medicine, and all of those shaped me into the leadership coach I am today. I have always been drawn to get involved in times of crisis and chaos where I know my commitment to a worthy future and desire to help people connect will be a massive value add. Prior to my work as an executive coach, I was the founding executive director of The Cornerstone Project, a grant-giving foundation that supports positive life transformation and spiritual reconciliation for the incarcerated and those with criminal histories. Before moving to Los Angeles in 2005, I worked as a pediatric intensive care specialist at Children’s Memorial Hospital in Chicago and also served as a pastor and community organizer at Mosaic LA and founded Serve LA, Mosaic’s community dedicated to holistic development for the marginalized and vulnerable in Los Angeles.
You’ve had a remarkable career journey. Can you highlight a key decision in your career that helped you get to where you are today?
Moving from being the best independent player or best player on an unimpressive team to being a key player on a team of rockstars. A key decision was to partner with a mentor of mine. We are both world class at our unique approaches and make each other better on a daily basis.
What’s the most impactful initiative you’ve led that you’re particularly proud of?
After working for years in the streets of Los Angles as a leadership mobilizer, a funder asked me to start an organization that would make an intense splash. I started The Cornerstone Project, a grant-giving foundation that supports positive life transformation and spiritual reconciliation for the incarcerated and those with criminal histories. I built a team of experts and established a program where we did 3-day leadership intensives with murderers in prison. We then trained them to be the trainers of their fellow in-mates. Thousands of inmates are still going through this program, living with rigorous honesty, serving others and finally generating the life they want for themselves and their community.
Sometimes our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a mistake you’ve made and the lesson you took away from it?
One mistake I made was not seeing the difference early enough between being Hight End Performer and being a High Performing Leader. Being great is not enough. Focusing on making others great and getting results through them.
How has mentorship played a role in your career, whether receiving mentorship or offering it to others?
Mentorship has been everything in my career. I’ve followed leaders more than opportunities throughout my entire career.
Developing your leadership style takes time and practice. Who do you model your leadership style after? What are some key character traits you try to emulate?
I model my leadership style after those leaders who are hyper-committed to results while generating creating an environment of motivation and respect. A leader like President Dwight Eisenhower has always been an icon I model. Serious man, taking on world-wide challenges while taking the time to build camaraderie and warmth with those under his charge. Love leaders who take the mission seriously and others intentionally; not themselves.
Thank you for sharing that with us. Let’s talk about scaling a business from a small startup to a midsize and then large company. Based on your experience, can you share with our readers the “5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business”? Please give a story or example for each.
The top 5 things founders and entrepreneurs can and should be doing in order to scale up in 2023 are:
- Spend to Scale; If you’re not investing in leadership development for your team, you’re starving your most vital resource.
- Turn Conflict into Trust; The conversations you’re avoiding or handling poorly will be the reason people leave as the speed of scale increases. Learn how to turn avoidance into engagement and your leadership team will be exponentially more resilient.
- Respect Reality; not all of your employees want to scale as you do, some are all in, some are resistors, and a majority are fence sitters. They are waiting for you to recognize the sacrifice needed. Do it.
- Sometimes scaling up is scaling out: Some of your key leaders who were effective at stage 2 aren’t right for stage 3. Not everybody who got your here can get you there. So thank them and release them.
- A Look in the Mirror: You are your greatest asset. Before you attempt to scale it’s important to get real and increase your personal and leadership capacity. The areas for us to exponentially move forward are invisible to us, so get feedback from a trusted colleague or coach about what you need to be able to remain at the helm of a moving and growing business.
Can you share a few of the mistakes that companies make when they try to scale a business? What would you suggest to address those errors?
The first mistake companies often make when trying to scale a business is going too fast too soon. It is very tempting to try to keep up with peers or sprinting to a sale. Part of our work with founders is helping them slow down, focus on quality, and build for resilience. If you don’t slow down and look at what your challenges are now, you will assume they are still the old ones you were fighting before and not what you need to address now. The second is ignoring the feedback. Founders want to grow in a silo where their ideas are always right. They need to pay attention to what feedback they are receiving from the market and their team; beyond paying attention, seek feedback. Be a pro at owning current reality.
Scaling includes bringing new people into the organization. How can a company preserve its company culture and ethos when new people are brought in?
A company can preserve its company culture by being clear about what their culture is at the start. A company can’t invite somebody into a culture if they don’t know what it is. Invite the new voices to add to the order and clarity that’s already established, not add their history to the unexplained chaos.
Many times, a key aspect of scaling your business is scaling your team’s knowledge and internal procedures. What tools or techniques have helped your teams be successful at scaling internally?
Testing the communication within your organization is key to being successful at this. A company needs to be on top of how your teams are both listening and talking to each other in order to get results. Siloing and politics will always handicap brilliant people.
What software or tools do you recommend to help onboard new hires?
I recommend the Harrison Assessment to help onboard new hires. It’s not a personality assessment, instead it’s a work-enjoyment assessment. Most processes show you if they are eligible for the position. This assessment reveals the “black box” of hiring…how ELIGIBLE they are for the position, revealing their attitude about themselves, others and the work. It’s a tool to understand culture, how people relate to each other and whether new hires will feel they are filling a missing piece for the team.
Because of your role, you are a person of significant influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most people, what would that be? You never know what your ideas can trigger.
I’d say become people focused. Companies don’t exist without human beings and we need to see the human being in all its complexities for us to thrive.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can follow us by listening to our podcast, The Naked Leadership Podcast and check out our Youtube channel, Fearless Leadership with Adrian Koehler.
This was truly meaningful! Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise!
Adrian Koehler Of Take New Ground On 5 Things You Need To Know To Successfully Scale Your Business was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
