Stefanie Krievins blog - Stefanie Krievins & Co. Challenge. Change. Grow.

What Successful Leaders Do in Challenging Times with Mike Sipple Jr.

CEO Mike Sipple shares how every mid-level leader is an inspiration, including you! It might not feel that way sometimes.

Good leaders have visions that they guide their teams toward. Great leaders create plans to make that vision a reality. Inspirational leaders know that great learning still happens when the plan doesn’t go according to plan.

Critical Decision Making Skills Every Manager Needs with Aimee Kandrac

In this episode of the Hot Mess Hotline, CEO Aimee Kandrac re-lives every SAAS leader’s worst nightmare: a complete website outage and data loss; and the critical decision making skills every manager needs.

Great Adversity is a Great Business Opportunity

In this episode of the Hot Mess Hotline, CEO Kevin Berkopes talks about identifying when adversity is a business opportunity. Kevin’s company uses an innovative teaching model to make tutoring available for all children. He shares what it takes to challenge the status quo and take the heat that comes with it.

A CEO Answers the Question: How Do You Build Staff Resilience?

In this episode of the Hot Mess Hotline, Angela White tells us the story of how she led herself and her team through navigating work after the sudden death of a key team member on her team. At that moment, Angela had lost her friend and coworker, Kris, and was faced with a sudden change in her business.

Take Control of Your Career by Taking Control of What You’re Learning

In this episode, you’ll hear about Darren’s fast-tracked journey to becoming the President and CEO of the SESCO Group where he transformed a humble company and into a nationwide presence with high integrity.

He has learned that passion only goes so far and at times it can be detrimental. He has learned the pitfalls of leadership and share them here so you can avoid them too.

The Business Strategy Questions the Pandemic is Forcing Leaders to Answer

You’re not alone if 2020 caused you to look into the mirror as a leader to really evaluate why your business is successful. Listen in for even better questions to move forward into 2021 and beyond.

Why Fast Business Growth Didn’t Stop in 2020 but was Redefined Instead

While last year is over and gone, there are many powerful lessons that can came from it. Even when we go through tough experiences, we can choose to take some of the good. That is exactly what the...

Your Team’s Business Resilience Will Make or Break Their Success

Only a year like 2020 could bring this kind of stress and decision fatigue for your team. It’s been a year of hard decision making. And it’s been a time of focus, re-calibration, and immense opportunity.

Too many teams and team members have tried to power through, vs. power up with resilience. Get ready for future years to require a new kind of business resilience.

Grow Your Business Resilience as a Mid-Level Leader

There is no “new normal” or “next normal” coming. If you’re waiting for this, you’ll be waiting at least 2 years. You, your team, and your business won’t last that long.

Instead we need to be doing “what works right now.” You need a mindset, tools, and actions that allow you to stretch, adapt, be creative and open minded, and continue to thrive despite the difficulties around you.

Resilience in Business Needs to be Your Superpower

The near future remains more uncertain than ever and chances are you and your team will be tried in new ways. Remember that last time you drove through dense fog where you barely see past your headlights? You slowed down, you get kept moving, you stayed alert, but gripped the wheel pretty tight.

Resilience is the mindset that will keep you progressing through the fog: to trust your headlights and the road, to keep moving, and to find the path as you travel it.

How this President and Founder used her strategic plan to change everything

If you’ve ever asked yourself, “so why is strategic planning important to a small company?” Sam Julka has your answer.

As the President and Founder of DORIS Research, Sam’s own strategic plan called for specific service areas with a focus on 1-on-1, in-person, in-depth interviews and research to work with clients on their employee culture within the context of their physical space.

How a network of trusted advisors helped this CEO pivot to a new strategic plan

As the song goes, “I get by with a little help from my friends,” and it’s never been as accurate as this year, when our strategic planning has gone out the window. Why is strategic planning...

How 1 Powerful Question Changed an Entire IT Team

In the process of solving your hot mess, sometimes you create 10 new hot messes. But sometimes, you solve them all by employing great team communication strategies, incremental change, and a can-do attitude. Along the way asking: “What CAN we do to make this work?”

How This IT Team Couldn’t Change Their Culture and Communication Until They Changed Where They Sat

Mike Loggins and I discuss how to improve communication within a team on this episode of the Hot Mess Hotline. When it came to team communication strategies, Mike had some ridiculous ambiguity on his hands.

How a Nonprofit CEO Learned to Overcome Change Management Challenges and Experience Opportunity during the Pandemic

Coming into 2020, when you thought of how to overcome change management challenges, you didn’t have the fallout of a global pandemic on your radar. If you’re Jim Morris, CEO of the Greater Indy Habitat for Humanity, you’re also facing the recent merger with another nonprofit. And this is after a nearly 8-year competitive struggle with the board and staff of an organization that you lead.

Complex Conflict This CEO Found Himself In for 8 Years

Typically when I talk with a client about how to manage conflict, it’s within an organization. On this episode of the Hot Mess Hotline, Jim Morris, the CEO of Greater Indy Habitat for Humanity, describes a complex conflict with a similar organization. Jim’s experience isn’t unique to those in the nonprofit sector, as he found himself navigating multiple internal and external groups who had a say in the problem. He spent 8 years in this hot mess of being consistently in conflict with another local organization, where the only differentiator was the counties they served. .

What is Change Management Training?

Change, and change management training, can be challenging. It can be rewarding. And it can be FUN! If you think change is hard, you’re doing it wrong. And you’re probably doing change management training wrong, too.

This post explains what is change management training, and what’s the number one secret that every mid-level leader knows about change. If you think that sounds much better than what’s currently happening with your team when you try to introduce change, this article is for you.

Don’t Cut Your Professional Development Budget

I know it can be tempting, or even seem reasonable, to make cuts in professional development following a tough year. You’ll be tasked with cutting costs, and you may not even be sure how much to budget for professional development! But this line item is not the place to cut in the short term if you want to be successful in the long run.

How to Build Trust in a Virtual Team

As a leader, it’s not up to you to keep everyone happy and motivated all the time. But it IS up to you to lead the way on creating a culture where employees motivate each other, where healthy conflict is encouraged, and where social and emotional connections are built even without physical proximity. Recently I joined Steve Johnson, Culture Disruptor and Account Executive with Motivosity, to discuss how to build trust in a virtual team.

How To Improve Communication

You already know how important team communication (and your team communication strategies) are to success. In this article, you’ll learn how to improve communication with some specific and easy tools to use.

Stefanie thinks communication is the BIGGEST factor for success! When you talk about how to improve change management, making sure that you know how to improve communication for team collaboration is absolutely critical.

An executive coaching client success story

How executive coaching impacted one leader and inspired him to change his priorities and team for success.

How to Build Trust

When I start working with a team, the issues that I hear most often are centered around how to build trust and problems rooted in communication issues. That’s why these two topics are so important...

What’s Holding Gen X Back In The Workplace

Gen X is often called the sandwich generation, and while that phrase is certainly true on the home front, it’s applicable to the workplace as well. My fellow Gen Xers are sandwiched between Baby...