Listen to the full interview:
1. What’s inspired you to do the work you’re doing today? Why are you so passionate about leadership?
“It’s this notion I have been haunted and hunted by to get this out in the world. You cannot turn it off. Anyone who has been haunted or hunted by an idea cannot make it go away. It finds you in every corner. You can switch jobs, move cities, and change industries. I’ve done all those things by the way—check, check, check—but it was still haunting and hunting me in every environment I showed up in.
People would say, ‘Kristi, you are a unicorn.’
For my last role, I was in C-suite. It was the first day and my brand spanking new executive assistant, who I’d never met, walked in and said, ‘Well, damn, you must be a unicorn.’
‘Well, I am. But why do you say that?’
She replied with, ‘We’ve been looking for you forever. We didn’t think they were going to hire anybody.’
I have been met with that energy probably no less than seven or eight times in my career, and I’m not that old. I’m about to be 44. For my 40th birthday, my husband threw me a huge unicorn birthday party. You would’ve thought we were having a party for preschoolers, but we had a blast: balloons, unicorns, glitter, sparkle. Finally, I said this is it. And you know what? Unicorn makes a pretty damn good acronym (unique, nimble nurturing, inspirational, compassionate, optimistic, resilient, and noble). All of these things are how I’ve modified my leadership style, and they have led to great success for those who’ve been on my teams and for the businesses in which I’ve had the opportunity to work and play in. So, that’s how unicorn leader was born.”
2. You pointed out the four elements that are important to unicorn leadership (courage, confidence, empathy, and purpose). What impact have the elements of unicorn leadership had on your career?
“Courage is like a verb. Brene Brown says, ‘Keep encouraging.’ I think that’s attributed to her, and she’s a huge role model of mine. Courage is scary. When you go around saying, ‘I’m a unicorn,’ and you’re a grown woman, that’s scary, right? People legitimately don’t take you seriously in the beginning, but people have thought a lot of things were crazy in the beginning. Courage is just continuing and being willing to do the right thing in as many circumstances as humanly possible. We don’t always get it right, but we try to, and when we don’t, we apologize and do better. That’s courage.
The other one is empathy. The biggest thing for me is helping people understand that empathy and execution coexist. I think that’s the most frustrating thing for me as a leader and somebody who’s been at the tippy top executive level of a $30-billion bank and at a $5-billion credit union. I’ve led wealth teams, call centers, retail branches in the hundreds, and I found empathy and execution need to coexist. I think they’re meant to go together. That is not a popular opinion, at least in the financial services world that I come from. A lot of times, people mistake empathy for just being really friendly or bubbly, but it’s not any of those things.
Empathy is saying, ‘Hey, I see you. I recognize that struggle. I empathize with it. And how can I help?’ Then you move into the stage of unparalleled execution. I know because I’ve led it at many different organizations. What’s been really fascinating is when you strip empathy out of business, bad things happen. Employee engagement falls—that’s expensive. Customer satisfaction plummets—that’s expensive. The redirect and reframe I constantly have for executive teams when I’m in doing strategy work and consulting is that your number one customer is your internal employee experience. While everybody says that, very few live that. That’s just the facts, and I’m here to change it.”
3. For people who are prioritizing and strengthening their leadership, which element should they lean on? Where should they start?
“The first place I would ask somebody to start is self-compassion. The self-compassionate piece is: what are you really feeling? Why are you feeling that way? We don’t often take the time to really investigate how and why we’re feeling the way we’re feeling. We absorb energy and feelings from other people. We absorb feedback from other people. I would start there. Then I tell people to think about who they know of who is in the gap of where they are and where they would like to be. A square squad is what I call my little group of four or five people, my truth–tellers. I will call them up when I need the bluntest advice. I will say, ‘Hey, this is where I’m at. This is where I want to be.’
I can give a perfect example. As a wealth advisor, I knew I was really good at it. I knew I enjoyed it, but I knew what I really loved more than numbers and finance—because I was meh about that part—was the excitement when people met their goals and their motivation to keep stretching with some other pot of money they didn’t think they were going to be able to accomplish. I realized I wanted to move into leadership. Naturally, everybody told me: ‘But you’re a wealth advisor. You’ve only ever been in control of yourself. What makes you think you can lead a team?’
And I thought, well, this is not my truth telling squad. I had to find a new squad because the people I was surrounded with wanted me to do things as status quo.
That’s when strategic leaders who had far more wisdom and experience than me said I needed to start stretching myself with assignments, that I needed to start volunteering and speak at events for my organization. They encouraged me to start volunteering and get groups together to host round tables, masterminds, and panels. I had to show myself in that light of being a leader amongst the advisors in my field. They told me it would open up other doors and I’ll be darned if they weren’t 100 % correct.
But the courage of stepping outside of the people who I had always known, loved, and trusted and saying I’ve outgrown you and your limiting beliefs, and I believe there’s more out there for me, that’s a stretch.”
4. Those relationships stopped fitting into who you are and who you were becoming. How did you navigate this change and know you needed this shift to move forward?
“I’m not very good at goodbyes. I read a great book called Untamed by Glennon Doyle. In the book, she talks about not creating circles of friends but creating horseshoes. Always leave room for more to join. My little additive is leave one end open for others to fall off. I don’t say goodbye to other relationships. I simply expand and elevate. Those who want to expand and elevate alongside me… there is always room for more. I can’t wait to add you. You can sit at my table. I’m going to love everybody. But others who maybe aren’t down with that energy or aren’t sure that they see that vision or think you’re a fraud… that’s not really what you should be doing. I appreciate that you’re entitled to your opinion, but that energy is better served elsewhere.”
5. You’ve recently published a book, UNICORN Leader. Where can people get it, and what advice can you give to aspiring writers and authors?
“People have told me my whole life that I’m a unicorn. The other thing I’ve always heard is that I should write a book. Here’s the deal: the book is called UNICORN Leader. It’s available on Amazon, which I’m really excited about. It’s driving innovation and influence in the modern workplace. It’s a playbook. It’s not supposed to be some big book. I wanted somebody to be able to hop on a plane in New York and finish this thing by the time they land in LA, so that they could go to whatever meeting, interview, or conference with 10 actionable ideas they can implement.
Any book you might want to write is a testament of you against yourself because (as someone with ADHD), I am terrible at finishing something when I start. If it’s a long project, I’m in trouble. If it’s something I can knock out and get done, that’s one thing, but this book was quite the undertaking. What I did to help myself was bring in four guests of contributing authors. That is my secret sauce that I tell everybody who wants to be published, who wants to author a book and is not sure if they have the stickiness or the stamina to do the whole dang thing by themselves. Wrangling for other authors is sometimes a little like wrangling cats, but I have to say, I really lucked out. My other UNICORN Leader authors were amazing. They were super easy to work with. They each had a chapter or two.
For anybody who says they have a book in them, but they don’t know if it’s enough, one, you’re always enough. Two, if you’re not sure, bring in some peers. While everyone else is worried about making things more exclusive and figuring out how they can limit or refine or make things smaller, I’m over here going: How can we collaborate? How can more of us get involved? How can I create more opportunities for a hundred million other people? I thought if this book stresses me out, who are the four smartest people in my circle who I know would love to help? Those people are the ones I asked to be in this book.
That is my advice. Surround yourself with people who are way smarter than you and do the damn thing. Do it scared.”
6. When you think about your personal brand and your Brilliant Difference, how has that supported your career?
“I’m a truth-teller, good or bad. That is a cornerstone of my personal brand. Being a truth-teller has served me well more times than not. It’s also gotten in the way of some opportunities. But at the end of the day, the N in unicorn stands for noble and I will always lead with integrity, nobility, and truth-telling first. Environments that are not honest, environments that are based on performative actions of leaders or of culture, environments that are wrought with toxicity or narcissism or gaslighting are not environments where I should be. The truth–telling aspect and nature of me comes strongly here. I’m a leader of the people.
There is a quote—I can’t remember who said it—and it is: A boss has the title, a leader has the people. But you know what a unicorn leader has? A unicorn leader has the hearts, and not just the hearts of the employees. You know who else loves the unicorn leader? The employees’ family members and peers. As I’ve extracted myself from organizations, it’s interesting to see the communication that’s come back, not just from those leaders who I’m no longer in contact with, but even their family members who say, wow, things are different now.”
Interviewer
Finka Jerkovic
Career Advancement Coach and Founder of Finka Inc.
With 25+ years in leadership and sales and the financial services industry, she has witnessed the power of recognizing and celebrating people’s unique strengths and differences (a.k.a Brilliant Differences™) within a workplace. When everyone’s unique talents are appreciated and people work together using them, that’s when the real magic of career and business growth happens. Fast forward 10 years. Finka has established programs that help mid-career professionals and leaders grow in their careers by tapping into the full potential of their personal brand, so they can clearly define their strengths, value their differences, and perform at their best.
Interviewee
Kristi Straw
Founder of Lighthouse Leadership Consultants
She’s a strategist by mind, a rebel by heart, and a UNICORN by spirit. Known for blending compassion with audacity, Kristi doesn’t just walk the talk; she dances it, leading change with a flair that’s as bold and brazen as her leadership style. Hold onto your seats, because with Kristi at the helm, you’re in for a whirlwind journey of transformation, disruption, and outright leadership revolution!
