Megan Driscoll
Megan Driscoll

Megan Driscoll, Founder and CEO of EvolveMKD, discusses the importance of using “kind,” rather than “nice” leadership techniques to build a robust work culture, and integrating mental health advocacy into her core leadership strategy.

Here are excerpts from the full video interview:

What are currently your most significant leadership challenges?

I would say that my most significant leadership challenge has been pretty consistent the whole ten years of Evolve. It's evolved in the kind of challenge it's been, but it has really been managing employees, and figuring out what makes them happy and fulfilled.

I feel like my job as a small business owner is not only to provide people with a great career path, but the ability and opportunity to have a full life. I think “balance” sometimes sets up an unreal expectation with the way life goes these days. It's also understanding that we have a lot of different age groups at Evolve.

We have my mom, who's 76, all the way down to new graduates from college that are 22. They have very different priorities, and very different needs. As a leader, It's important to understand how to create a workplace that can make those people feel happy and fulfilled. Not that you love coming to work every day, but that most days they hopefully would enjoy it.

Your agency's credo is “Be Kind, Don't Suck.” What does kindness have to do with leadership and can kind leaders make the difficult decisions that leaders often have to make?

I think kindness is what allows you to make difficult decisions, because people sometimes get confused and think that kindness and being nice are synonyms, when they are not.

A great example is when we had to make the tough decision to let someone go. A lot of times that's not a nice thing to do, but if someone's really not working out, and it's not great for you or for them, the kind thing to do is to let them free to go find the right company. Not every company is for everyone, and that doesn't make the company or the person not wonderful.

Part of why I love that motto that I came up with is that keeping kindness at the forefront of every decision you make actually clarifies a lot of hard decisions pretty quickly.

No one's their best every single day. What I ask my team and what we talk about a lot is whatever your best is that day, how are you consistently bringing it?

Jacobs:

We work with various leaders and they sometimes have trouble giving feedback. They hold back a bit, because they're so worried about hurting feelings. So they're being nice, but they're not being kind because they're not giving people what they need to improve what the next version of work output or their behavior needs to be. So I remind people when giving feedback to be direct, honest, diplomatic and kind, but not to bring nice into it.

What do you see as the relationship between organizational culture and employee engagement?

From my experience, what I’ve seen is that if you have a strong culture, employees want to show up. They want to be engaged, to preserve, and to improve that culture. I think during Covid-19, we had some of our best financial years ever. Part of the reason we did is because we had such a strong culture.

Everyone was going into a virtual work environment every day for the first time in the company's history. That culture is what allowed us to preserve the fun, while maintaining direct communication with each other. Now that we have ‘Evolved’ into a hybrid workplace structure, that strong culture has allowed us to take those inefficiencies and learnings from the virtual world, and reapply the best of being in person.

How do you interview for cultural alignment at Evolve?

Our interview process has evolved over time because we have experience. We did make some bad hires as all companies do. I really think about an expression that one of my mentors told me, “Hire slow, fire fast.” That's something that we've implemented at Evolve.

We have a long interview process. We try to eliminate vagueness from all of our job postings and all of the roles that we're looking for. That way, every single person on my team is very clear going into every interview about what skills we need, what level this person is going to be, and what the day to day is going to look like.

So any question the candidate asks, they get the same consistent answers up and down the line. Then we have the person come back and meet with my wonderful Head Of People, Shannon Estreller. They start with her, and then they usually meet multiple different levels of people that they are going to work with.

They meet their eventual manager, and they meet with my mom, who's our office manager, and a former teacher. Teachers have seen a lot, and she has never been wrong about a single candidate. Then if they get through all of those people, it is my business, so I think it's really important that I sit with the person, regardless of level, and talk to them.

What we've learned is that unless all of those people on my side in the process are enthusiastic about that person, we don't hire them. So five or six could be enthusiastic, and if one isn’t, we don’t hire them. There have been a number of candidates who've gone through the process where everyone's been excited and even gotten through my mother, but I’ve said no.

My mom is actually the toughest interview, but when they've gotten to me and I've said no, it’s because we've learned that hiring is like when you meet someone you want to date. You want to have that intangible feeling of being so excited for people's first days. It's proven time and time again that the intangible is important. I think that is how you protect a culture.

You've been a public advocate for mental health. Why do you think it is so important for leaders to support mental health and speak openly about mental health challenges?

I think there's still so many things in our day-to-day lives around which there's so much shame. An important thing to do in combating shame is talking about things and putting them into light. Mental health is an area that I remember during interviewing.

Years ago, when I was interviewing for a position, I was senior at this point, so I could ask for things beyond money. I said ”As part of my package, I need you to know upfront that I go to therapy every Tuesday at 6:30pm, so I need to be able to leave at 5:45pm, and this is non-negotiable.”

I have also learned that exercise makes me a better leader. I told them “I need this time period two days a week where I'll leave to exercise. If I can get these two hours, great, and if not, this isn't the place for me. I think you have to have those conversations and set those boundaries.

You can't have it all your way and not anyone else's way. I learned setting boundaries and being open about what you need allows you to have a conversation, with your employer or in my case, with your employee about coming to an agreement that works for you both. If people aren't healthy, they’re not going to be great at their job.

How do you drive that that openness and that conversation specifically about mental health at EvolveMKD?

I'm very open about what I do. So everyone at the agency knows that I have a therapist and that I go to acupuncture.

I always joke around with people that it takes like a village to keep me mentally and physically helpful. I think most entrepreneurs will tell you that it absolutely does.

This is definitely the best and the hardest job you can have, so I think it’s critical to be open about it and also respect their needs. Someone recently came to me and told me their therapist had changed their hours, so she needed to be able to access the office a little bit earlier, and we worked it out. I want everyone to feel that they can show up, be their best, do their best, but also have a full life, and part of that is being mentally healthy.

We've discussed the importance of self-care for leaders. Is there anything else within self-care that you do as a leader?

I would say two things. One, I live and die by my calendar. I calendar every single exercise every single day and they don't move. Unless someone's dying, they stick. I think that's something that most leaders could do, and I think it's another thing that takes discipline when you put it on there to then do it and see it through.

The second thing, and this is something I've been working on more recently, is setting boundaries. When you're in the customer service business, it's easy to let boundaries fall by the wayside. I recommitted myself these last 18 months to setting boundaries with both my staff and clients. My boundaries are what I'm willing and unwilling to do. That also helps with having the time and the brain space for self-care.

How much leeway do your people have in establishing boundaries with their day to day clients?

They have all the leeway they want. I think we try not to answer emails late into the night. Yet at the same time, we also hire people who understand how the business works. Sometimes it's like nuts and then other times you have a valley.

So when you have a valley, don't waste energy like I did when I was young, getting anxious about why I wasn’t busy. Enjoy the valley, catch up on stuff, get ahead. I think with clients, especially when you're more junior, it's a little tougher, just because that takes more confidence and experience, and more time to develop. I would say myself and my senior team are really good at helping to set those boundaries. We jump in, and we also don't tolerate clients that are disrespectful, and I think that helps too.

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Ken Jacobs is the principal of Jacobs Consulting & Executive Coaching, which empowers PR and communications leaders and executives to breakthrough results via executive coaching, and helps communications agencies achieve their business development, profitability, and client service goals, via consulting and training. You can find him at www.jacobscomm.com, [email protected] @KensViews, or on LinkedIn. You can also subscribe to the Jacobs Consulting and Executive Coaching YouTube channel.