Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jes DeShields. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Jes, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.
Since founding Crescent Leadership, I’ve stayed committed to ensuring our Vision—To restore the distinctive nature of leadership—guides us in every decision. One of the fundamental ways we diverge from the industry standard is by embracing a fuller definition of high performance. We define success more broadly than just improving the bottom line. Our driving motivation is to ethically and sustainably create value for all our stakeholders. This means that we don’t accept consulting contracts for the sole purpose of making money. Instead, we prioritize projects and clients where we know leaders are willing to first look to themselves because they earnestly desire to lead well and build dynamic, enduring organizations. Through the extensive research I recently published in my book, 9 Leader Touchstones, we know this is the secret ingredient to unleash every team member’s potential, regardless of an organization’s size, scope, or industry.
As a small, relatively new business, this is a risky approach. Balanced with the need to build a safety net, a new company must invest in growth and expansion to establish a solid foundation and fuel progress. Turning business away when we know our work will have minimal or unsustainable results has challenged us. At the same time, it has allowed us to carve out a niche in an overcrowded space of insatiable business consultants. We’ve focused our energy and efforts on a more intimate group of clients who play the long game. And they continue to invite us to play the game with them.
In the early days of Crescent Leadership, a group of organizational leaders found themselves uniquely positioned to buy the company where they’d collectively invested nearly 60 years of their lives. I was honored to work with them and their team through the ownership transition. Our work started with developing a succession plan and a shared leadership model to carry them into the future. It has grown to include partnering with them on intentional culture-building and developing their multi-year Evolving Strategy™. These established leaders invested significant time to work on themselves through our Leader-First® Leadership (LFL) program. They also understand the importance of well-planned succession and know it starts with sharing knowledge and leadership throughout the organization. We’re in the process of cascading LFL to their next layer of leaders. A significant step for these leaders is letting go of the work they’ve expertly led for decades. Early on, these leaders recognized that the power of the organization’s brand comes from their team members’ collective, unique talents. They continue to patiently and consistently create a healthy organizational culture so that when they extend opportunities, team members feel safe and confident to courageously embrace the moments they will experience their most significant growth.
This story highlights our unwavering commitment to stay true to our ultimate Vision. We firmly believe that success is not solely measured by financial achievements but also by the positive, lasting impact we create. By diverging from the industry-held standard of “high performance,” we are building an integrity-based business aligned with our values and, in the process, making a tangible difference in the world around us.
Jes, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, can you take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
For the past 25 years, I’ve studied, evaluated, and applied models of leadership, organizational behavior, and systems change across multiple sectors. From Fortune 250 and privately-owned companies to local, national, and global nonprofits to entire communities, my work has ranged from preparing leaders to successfully run their organizations to improving the trajectory of organizations in crisis and those poised for growth to executing system-wide responses to existential threats, such as competition, and most recently, the pandemic.
I founded Crescent Leadership, a business consulting and executive coaching firm based on Leader-First® strategies, my distinct methodology for organizational change. Leader-First® strategies challenge leaders and teams of leaders first to examine how their action or inaction reinforces conditions for enduring growth and vitality or stagnation and decline. Our consulting approach focuses on the long game, applying the appropriate infusion of innovation with endurance-based strategies and conscientious culture mapping.
Before launching Crescent Leadership, I led the Leadership Consulting team for one of the world’s largest, well-known nonprofit brands. At the time, my team and I served as thought partners and consultants to CEOs across the 50 states, their senior team members, and their Boards, where they navigated dynamic and frenetic operational environments daily. I earned my Ph.D. in Management- Leadership and Organizational Change in 2014 and teach at Cornell in Executive Leadership, Women’s Leadership, Change Leadership, and Nonprofit Management Certificate programs. I’m also a Guest Lecturer at The Brooks School of Public Policy.
Since launching CL, the thing I’m most proud of is our team. My collaborators and advisors never hesitate to give me tough feedback and never hold back on the love. Ours is the kind of team euphoria so few teams ever find. I’m so honored to journey with them on our quest to restore the distinctive nature of leadership.
What advice do you have for managing a team and maintaining high morale?
The surest way to extinguish the passion of a motivated and highly competent employee is to signal to them that their expertise and knowledge have no value to you as a leader. I learned this from experience with ineffective leaders but also from the very best leaders who guided me along my journey. There are essential behaviors that leaders need to cultivate to build trust and morale–empathy, inclusivity, and gratitude. All three create positive outcomes for the leader as a human being. But taken together, they yield the most precipitous, pervasive impact on team members’ individual and collective success.
At the heart of empathetic leadership is active listening and open communication. When team members need you, give your team members undivided attention, maintain eye contact, and seek to genuinely understand their viewpoints and unique contributions. These actions foster cultures of trust and belonging. You deepen both culture dimensions by creating a safe space where team members feel heard and valued.
Inclusive leaders recognize and appreciate the unique value, perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences each team member contributes to the organization. When you encourage team members to bring their authentic selves to work, you strengthen psychological safety and engagement. When team members feel respected, they will more likely contribute unique perspectives. Inclusivity is not just a profitable thing to do. It represents a core principle of social responsibility. As an inclusive leader, when you commit to fairness, equity, and equal opportunities, you contribute to building a more equitable society and addressing systemic inequalities.
Grateful leaders are positive catalysts. When you demonstrate gratitude, you increase connection and loyalty with your team members. Acts of gratitude are powerful tools that inspire your team members and connect them to the organization’s greater purpose.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I had to unlearn that being resilient meant overcoming adversity at the expense of everything else in my life.
In 2021, 47 million people left their jobs. Anthony Klotz called it “the great resignation,” and the phrase became commonplace. I was one of the 47 million. But to me, leaving my job felt less like a resignation and more like an awakening. The pandemic changed me, as I know it changed many people. I watched people I love get sick and die. I spent long days at home, trying to figure out how to teach common core math to my then 7-year-old daughter, Madi while juggling the constant pull of a position where I was overworked and undervalued.
I balanced those difficult moments with as many good ones as possible, including when I married my husband at a sunrise wedding on top of a mountain in June 2020. This culmination of good and bad experiences was the metaphorical shot in the arm I needed to awaken me. It made me realize how much meaningful time I had lost throughout my career doing work that didn’t help me ultimately fulfill my purpose. Unfortunately, I sometimes worked at the expense of my relationships, health, and happiness. I decided to stop waiting and start living. I know my story is one of millions like it.
While doing the research for my book, because of my own experiences and because of the experiences of the leaders I support, I knew resilience would emerge as an essential Leader Touchstone. The ability to overcome adversity is the standard definition of resilience. However, when developing the definition for our leadership model, I couldn’t get past the period at the end of the sentence. I kept remembering how many times I’d overcome adversity in my life and how utterly exhausted I felt by it all, simply because I’m the kind of person who can handle a great deal of stress. While overcoming adversity is necessary, it shouldn’t come at the expense of your health and well-being or worse. The dictionary definition of resilience is a slippery slope. It leaves us open to overcoming adversity, no matter the personal cost. So, I had to unlearn resilience through that simplified lens. Now, our team guides leaders to build resilience through the systematic renewal of the body’s four energy wellsprings—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. And we embody the essence of redefined resilience ourselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://crescent-leadership.com/ and https://www.9-leader-touchstones.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drjesdeshields/ and https://www.instagram.com/crescentleaders
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crescentleadershipllc
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesdeshields/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/crescent-leadership/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@crescentleadership325