Transcript: Interview With Tom Epperson

In our latest podcast episode, Maureen talks with Dr. Tom Epperson, president of InnerWill Leadership Institute, a Center for Innovation Partner, discusses Values Based Leadership and how to give and receive feedback in a way that's effectively honest. Listen to the full podcast here.

Maureen:
Welcome to Leading Forward the Virginia Society of CPAs podcast, where we focus on innovation leadership and the CPA profession. I'm your host, Maureen Dingus. And I invite thought leaders for sure, casual conversations on topics and trends important to the success of the CPA profession. This episode is part of our series on how the via CPA members are managing and even thriving during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks for listening. And I wish you all could help. All right. Hello everyone. Today on leading forward, we are spending some time with Tom, that person. He is the president of inner wheel leadership and Tom, if you've been to any of our programs or our leaders, our leader summit, or some of our other leadership programs, you may recognize him, but he and his team are going to be with us for our CPA LEADx. It's a new program that we have for emerging professionals who want to dive into their leadership skills. So, Tom, thank you for joining us today.

Tom:
Oh, I'm super excited to be with you.

Maureen:
Great, great. Tom, before we dive into the, kind of the content I'd love to hear about your leadership journey, how did you get to being a certified business coach, someone with a doctorate in leadership? Where, where did you start and how did you get there?

Tom:
So it's for me, it's started back in high school in eighth grade. And by the time I got into eighth grade, I was getting in fights every day. Typically where I was the one who was on the losing end of said fight. And so I decided that I was tired of getting hit and was trying to come up with a way to avoid fights. And one of the things that I found that I was good at was tutoring other kids. And so I started going to their houses and tutoring them so I could avoid the bus and I can avoid the bullies and I could avoid the people who wanted to punch me in the face cause I have that kind of face. And so I started tutoring people and found that I was pretty good at it.

Tom:
And so then as I got went through high school, I was a percussionist and a drummer. And when I got into college my side hustle to make money was teaching kids how to play drums. And so I started teaching kids how to play drums. And then I became a percussion instructor and really was doing a ton of teaching. After I graduated college, I was unemployed and was looking around for something that I could do and I wasn't really qualified for anything cause I was English major not to knock English majors. They're all wonderful people, but you know, it's not exactly like you're going to walk out and make six figures with English degree. And so anyway, I found a a job in HR and I'm like, well, I'll do that. So I know how to teach people.

Tom:
I've been a progression instructor, you know, I've been a tutor, you know, HR seems like the kind of place where you get to teach people. So let me go do that. So that kind of dropped me into sort of the field of HR. And I have really been in the people business ever since. And so early on in my career, what really got me into leadership itself was I always thought of myself as this laid back surfer dude, like I thought I was easy going and I thought I was, didn't have a care in the world. And I thought I was such a joy to work with because I was so easy going. And when I started getting feedback on me as a human being and me as a coworker I would not a joy to work with. Other people really let me know that I was the furthest thing.

Tom:
You could be from a laid back surfer dude. I was more like a shark than a surfer. And so that sort of cold water doused on all of my hopes and dreams and who I thought I was and kinda my own identity was really sort of the first moment that I realized that, you know what, there's something more to learn here. And I don't understand myself as well as I thought I did. And my self awareness is low and I need to figure this out. And so part of that journey of working on myself and that journey of getting more feedback and that journey, I'm trying to figure out who I wanted to be really led me to self development, which ultimately led me to people which led me to leadership because the leaders has to go first, they've got to work on themselves, I've gotta be self-aware they've got to get, get and give feedback.

Tom:
They, they have to really model the way for others and sort of that initial feedback I got and then me working on myself and starting that journey was really what led me to leadership. And I had a few sort of pivots along the way. Ultimately got a master's and human resource development. And then probably 10 years later got into a doctoral program of leadership because within our organization we had decided that as part of our philanthropy and part of our mission of igniting human potential, that we were going to be the experts in leadership and we were going to go and give that away to other people. And so my boss at the time looked at me and said, all right, someone's gotta be an expert in leadership. That's you. And so basically he told me to, yeah, tad, it that's exactly what happened tag you're it. And so I, I ended up in this doctoral program getting my doctorate in leadership and then here I am today running in their will and teaching people how to be better versions of themselves.

Maureen:
So I guess when you got that gift of feedback, it was a lot better than getting punched in the face, like middle school,

Tom:
You know, I'm not sure.

Maureen:
Oh, is that harsh? Right?

Tom:
Yeah. Cause yeah, you know, you can, I can take a punch, like a, that was one of the guests of getting beat up alive school. You know, but you get hit by really real feedback and that just cuts you to the core. But like looking back with such an such an amazing gift that I was given and that, you know, we all, we're all surrounded by feedback all the time. We just don't notice it. And so to get it that directly was unusual and awesome and has been so helpful to me and both working. Oh yeah.

Maureen:
Yeah. So I do want you to talk to us a little bit about the value based leadership and you've really intrigued me though with this, this, this feedback discussion in this gift of feedback. So I'm guessing that is kind of baked into value based leadership. Is that right?

Tom:
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

Maureen:
Can you just give us before, before maybe we dive into that and just a kind of a overview of what is value based leadership. We hear so many different kind of buzz words about leadership, but this one is, is really intriguing. So what's it all about?

Tom:
So, so the like at a super high level values based leadership is all about living, working and leading in alignment with your core values, right? And our core values are our sort of our deepest held beliefs that are literally baked into us as we grow up and they shape our actions, they shape our behaviors, they shape our emotions, they shape our relationships, they shape our effectiveness. And so part one of values based leadership is really acting in alignment with those core values. Part two of values based leadership is really helping ignite the extraordinary potential of other people. Like literally lighting them up by helping them do the same thing. Because ultimately when we act in alignment with our closest deepest held values, we're happier, we perform better. We tend to be less emotionally hijacked. We tend to just be more well adjusted. People trust us more.

Tom:
Our relationships are tighter and there's a ton of science that backs this up. And so as leaders, can we help people, number one, figure out who they are and what they value and what's most important to them. And then number two, act in alignment. And sometimes they find they're in the wrong job. Sometimes they find they're in the wrong organization. Sometimes they find they're surrounded by the wrong people. And as leaders, we can do a lot to really help lift people up and help them feel like they have potential and help them feel like if they can figure out that best version of themselves and act like that person they're going to be so much more effective than so much happier in the long run.

Maureen:
Yeah. Yeah. So is this a, is this more of a personal philosophy or is this an org? Can it be an organizational philosophy?

Tom:
Yeah, so there's really a couple of different ways that buys based leadership can be activated. It can definitely be activated at the personal level. It can also be activated at an organizational level when it becomes about using a set of values to align a culture of an organization with that organization's vision and mission kind of where it wants to go and why it exists with its strategy. So what's the game plan for activating that vision and mission. If you align a culture around a set of values, you also need the leadership horsepower to really drive those values and model those values and use those values to make decisions. So it's very leadership oriented. And then ultimately you need to have processes, things like hiring and firing and promotions, and even how people work together that aligns with those, those cultural values that you create that allow you to activate a strategy and ultimately achieve a vision and mission.

Tom:
So the organizational level, it helps create alignment. Another body of work that we do is, is we'll work with a lot of family businesses, which sometimes requires us to work with the families. And so you can use values based leadership within families, where it's about helping a family come together and align around why they are a family and what their shared values are and what kind of impact they want to have on one another, what they want their legacy to be. And so it's kind of a powerful framework that can work at any of those three levels,

Maureen:
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So when people are starting to learn about values based leadership or trying to live it, are there particular areas that are tougher for folks?

Tom:
Well, the the biggest, there's a couple of big challenges that I see in, in our work. So there's really five practices that make up values based leadership, and we call them practices because they're kind of all, you're always working on them. Cause we believe that leadership is a choice, not a title. So it's the choices that you make. And so you choose to put these five practices into action. The first one is building awareness. So really being able to see yourself clearly in the mirror, both what's awesome about you as well as your gaps. And that is really hard for people, you know, for them to like me look in the mirror and discover they're not exactly who they thought they were or to discover that they have weaknesses that surprised them, that they're really upset about, or even to look in the mirror and accept the fact that they're awesome.

Tom:
Right? Some people really struggle to, to realize that they've got these great strengths. The, the second practice is all about potential. So it's understanding kind of why you walk this earth and what your purpose is, and being really clear on the impact you want to have on other people. It'd be really clear about that best version of yourself that you're reaching towards. And sometimes people are really afraid to commit to a purpose, you know, cause it's a really big question. Why do you walk this earth? How do you want to spend your day? And that, that can feel overwhelming. So the third practice advice, basically leadership's all about developing relationships. So it's really about us as individuals adapting our approach to be more effective with other people in order to build trust. And it's about sort of willingly doing that because when you develop relationships, it helps you be more influential, helps you connect to it helps you to make a positive difference in people's lives.

Tom:
And the challenge about that is, is people really struggled. When they have to try and find a way to connect with someone, who's very, unlike them, they have a different style that different values, maybe they don't like the person, they maybe don't trust or respect the person. And yet as leaders, if we want to make any change in our organization or in our personal lives, it always starts with us. And that really makes people crazy cause they want other people to change first. But no, we gotta go first. Yeah. The fourth practice of values based leadership is all about taking action. So it's about running towards the fire versus away from it. It's about having courage. It's about acting on your values, even when there's a cost when it's hard to do to do so and other people tell you not to and the challenge there is really, it's scary sometimes.

Tom:
Like if I said to you, you gotta, you gotta give your boss the toughest feedback she's ever had in your life, in her life. You know, and you're going to think twice about whether you do that or not, but that's, what's required. If you say the development's important to you or you say that integrity is important to you and the final practice values based leadership is all about practicing reflection. So it's really taking pausing to think about our actions to ask, did we act in align with our values? Do we act in line with our purpose or our potential that we have the impact we want it to on other people, what lessons can our actions teach us? And the hard part about that is, you know, it's tough to slow down. It's tough to take a moment and be reflective. It's tough to take a moment and try and meditate on ourselves. Because we're also busy. The tiering of the urgent just drives us from place to place to place. And we sometimes will feel selfish just taking a moment to reflect and that's really what's required. Yeah.

Maureen:
So basically it's all hard.

Tom:
Yeah. Leadership's not for the faint of heart. Many people call it a soft scale. Like, you know what, the soft skills are accounting.

Maureen:
Yeah. This is, this is tough stuff. You know, that, that even just starting from the beginning and you know, looking in the mirror that's, that's scary.

Tom:
Yeah. Yeah. But it's, so it is so rewarding. It's so rewarding when you kind of accept who you are and kind of relieve some of that pressure. It's so rewarding to make some progress and get better. Like I often will talk about it as being authentic with skill. So it's about being who you are, but with skill, like you can be an honest person and honesty might look like you are so honest that you're brutally honest and you literally set people on fire cause you're so aggressive or you can be effectively honest and communicate with a lot of love and compassion and yet being really clear which is so much more effective than just setting people on fire.

Maureen:
I love that being effectively honest, you know, I've heard the, you know, the phrase, you know, what is it honesty without kindness is cruelty, but you know, I, I think, you know, even just phrase it in being effectively honest, it, that just makes so much sense.

Tom:
Yeah. It's like as leaders, you know, we're, we're literally trying to influence behavior and influence the actions. And if we can't be honest with someone and give them tough feedback, for example, then their behavior is not going to change. And if their behavior doesn't change and we haven't done our jobs as leaders influencing and so trying to find ways that we can adapt our approach to be effective is sort of the key to a lot of this. It's really about building our capacity to adapt about making really conscious choices that make us more effective and values based. Leadership gives us the tools to be able to do that.

Maureen:
So I guess I'm wondering how do you, how do you get that mirror to work? What are the, you know, you had mentioned feedback, people giving you feedback how do you set yourself up to, for people to be effectively honest to you?

Tom:
Yeah, it's a great it's a great question. Cause cause as most, most human beings, especially most Americans, you know, we're not terribly great at giving and getting feedback. We either don't get it enough. We're not honest enough or we don't give it enough or give people permission enough. And so I find in many, many, many, many different organizations, they're just terrible. And so to be really, if you want to get good feedback, you know, first of all, it's about your mindset. So it's seeing feedback as a gift, seeing it as something that's important even seeing it as data. Cause that's all feedback is data that we can use to achieve our goals. That's it. And that sort of lets us let it. It's not personal. It's not mean it's not awful, but it's data. And so how do we go get data?

Tom:
You know? So sometimes it's just literally telling people, Hey, here's what I'm working on. I want to be a better leader. Let's say I want to be a better listener. I want to be a better dad, you know, and then giving people permission to share with you their advice for how you can be a better dad or a better influence or a better leader. And people love giving advice. Now the other piece is to ask for it really often. Like you gotta do it again and again and again and again. And then when you get it, this is most important when you get it just listening and not denying, not deflecting. And just even if you disagree, like take it in and leave the other person feeling hurt and then thank them and then be quiet, you know? Cause we so often want to explain why or tell people why they're wrong. And, and once you do that, they're never going to give you a feedback again, unless they're a very special person

Maureen:
Like your spouse.

Tom:
Exactly. And I don't know about you, but you know, for me, my family is incredibly important and I am on this earth to do three things, to be a great, to add, be a great husband and leading develop people. And so I had to ask my kids like, Hey guys, what can I be? How can I do better than that? Or ask my wife, like how can I be better as a spouse? And then be okay with what they tell me, like when my kids were young, they were like, well, you, you just need to play video games with us and you know, buy me that bike that I wanted, you know, and that's a data point and sometimes you ignore data, right? And so, yeah, we're not buying that bike, but sometimes they'll say things like, I just want you to spend more time with, or you know, I, I want you to, you know, take a trip with me or I want you to be nicer to me, you know, or I want you to understand what I'm trying to tell you, you know, cause sometimes they'll give you gifts and I don't want my kids in therapy 20 years from now talking about how terrible I was.

Tom:
That would be awful. I want them to like me.

Maureen:
I have to admit that sometimes my husband and I will joke and say, you say that for therapy, but some of the things just seem too overwhelming. And we literally say, I guess that's going to be talked about therapy someday.

Tom:
Yeah. I hear ya. Like we all win parent of the year sometimes.

Maureen:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So so Tom, when you are, we're I, you know, I'm just trying to think through where people are in their leadership journey, that they can start to make sense of this as this early career type thing that you can jump into or can you teach, teach an old dog new tricks and where do they work?

Tom:
So Jim Cruz's, who's on my board, you know, he wrote leadership challenge along with his partner, Barry Posner. And he would always ask us, so, so when do when do professional baseball players start learning how to be baseball players? Well, when they're four years old and they're playing T-ball and when do we start teaching leaders? Typically when they're in their second job and they're struggling, you know? And so when it comes to leadership earlier is always better because you think about whether it's somebody in their first job, like a young accountant or whether it's someone who's a middle manager or a director there's, there's no too early, a time to start better. It's better to start earlier. But then the flip side is, you know, that, that whole idea that you can't teach old dogs, new tricks. That's just not true because as human beings, we evolve throughout our entire lives and we are always learning and our brains are always kind of making new connections.

Tom:
And so you could be a partner, you could be a CEO, you could be a CFO, you could be a really senior role and decide, choose that you want to be more effective as a leader and you can start, right? Because if, if again, we wanted to make change in an organization, it starts with us, right? We have to go first or otherwise our folks will not, they can, the audio has always have to match the video, right? If people hear you saying one thing and doing another, they will not follow you. But if they both hear your words and those words match your actions, then they're going to see that model and be more likely to follow it and trust you for sir.

Maureen:
Yeah. And they're learning right along with you. Oh yeah. When you mentioned the young accountants, when sometimes when I've been in some leadership programs with our younger members who are just starting out, maybe they have, you know, five years, seven years and you know that sometimes they talk about what could I, what, what influence do I really have in this farm? What, you know, maybe I'm learning these leadership skills, but you know, there's a stack of people above me and I don't really know where I can apply this. You know, what, what do you say to that? I mean, I always try to think about, well, what is your sphere of influence that you do have and start with that, but how, how should they think about that?

Tom:
Yeah, it's sort of, it's a really good point, you know, because, because the reality is they don't have a ton of influence. However, they have peers that they influence. They have clients that they influence, right? They have supervisors, they influence. And so by them working on themselves, they can be more effective with their peers. They can be more effective on teams. They can definitely be more effective with clients and they can be more effective in how they influence their boss. And they can of course do it at home. And so they've got influence, but it is within their sphere. So they might not move the entire firm, but they can certainly move the people who around them and, and make a positive impact on the people that they come in contact with because then one day they'll be partner and one day they'll be in the seat one day they'll run the firm or own their own firm and better to have practice all along the way and built a set of skills all along the way, then find yourself in the seat and say, Oh no, I do not have the leadership and influence skills that I made.

Tom:
I need to play catch up real fast, you know, better to have built that throughout a career then as, you know, pick it up at the end, although it can always be picked up

Maureen:
If you kind of on that opposite end, if you're, if you are a firm leader or you're a company leader, and you're looking at your maybe you're up and finding employees, your high potential employees, how do you get them interested in this type of developing the skill set maybe when maybe they are more technically oriented? Is it, you know, I, I think that for the long term, we need to get folks in tuned to this, but do you ever find needing to convince people or is it something that is more natural that they want to do?

Tom:
You know, it's funny, I've, I've done I've done work with beta alpha PSI over several years now. And, and, you know, you think about in college, you know, someone's thinking about a career in accounting the yes, they have to be technically accurate. Yes. They have to learn the skill set. Yes. They have to be good at things like math. But then they also have to be good at things like collaboration, working together with others, you know, managing their emotions, you know, showing up professionally, showing up in a certain way, right. Being able to understand client needs and all of those are our leadership skills. So I think as a, as a, as a partner or as a CEO choosing people who have those skill sets, even as they begin, their careers is really important. And then if you have sort of a group of folks who may or may not really be drawn to leadership they can always be drawn to self development, right?

Tom:
So it is important to develop our technical skills, right, like new, and you should expect people to learn and you should incent people to learn all of that matters. But helping to paint a vision for people about why the soft skills matter, why the leadership skills matter, why their influence skills matter and why it's going to help them be more effective for their careers. That's part of your role as the, is that senior leader is to help people understand and show them what it looks like. Right. Right. Cause we all know partners who, you know, they've done a great job building a book of business over the course of their careers and they're sort of master accountants. And they're great at sort of understanding really complicated changes in the tax code let's say, or what have you. But then they're not really effective at building teams and they're not really effective at building longterm relationships with their clients. And they're not really effective at, you know, bringing more a solutions mindset to potential projects. And, and so even at those senior most levels, it's a, it's a really valuable skill and really can help confirms, compete and succeed and win, especially as more and more of our functions get automated.

Maureen:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it is that humanness that is going to be the differentiator right now. Everyone's trying to integrate technology and get ahead on that. But you know, once that's all there, it really is. We'll need to be more human humans.

Tom:
Yeah. Once we have AI leaders, I'm going to be in deep trouble. So,

Maureen:
Well, you know what, I, I keep thinking back to what you said earlier, you know, the, the role to ignite human potential. I mean, what could be more exciting than that? Just having that is,

Tom:
That's a pretty good job I tell ya.

Maureen:
That is really, that's just, that's really inspiring just to think about that phrase that if you could do that ever.

Tom:
Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny and we work with every industry, for-profits nonprofits, state agencies, federal agencies, every different kind of, of for profit industry. You could imagine, you know, CPA firms and folks in finance and investment firms kind of being one segment. And one of the things that we've learned over the years after doing this for a long time is that every last one of us is in the people that, you know, it doesn't matter if you're you work for the drug enforcement agency or you work for an accounting firm or you work in tech or you work for a startup or you work in a big nonprofit, like a Goodwill or MCA, we all have the same people problems. Like we all have to deal with other human beings. We all have to influence, we have to work on ourselves. They're often lead people to change. We all have to negotiate sort of performance issues. We don't have to fire people from time to time and I'll have to hire people from time to time. We have to build sort of team cohesion. Like we all have the same challenges in front of us, whether you're a Navy seal or whether you're a young CPA, what matters though is do we choose to do something about it? Right,

Speaker 4:
Right. Yeah.

Maureen:
That's it, that's the big question. Right. You know, do you choose to do something about it? And I I guess that's when you, when you work with our group and I guess later October, you're going to have a, hopefully a healthy group of young CPAs to, to see if they're ready for this challenge.

Tom:
You know what my, my experience with young CPAs is they absolutely are. The, what what's, what's hard sometimes is, you know, cause I'm, you know, I've been in my career, gosh, 20, 20, definitely 20 plus years, you know? And, but it's hard for me sometimes remember what it's like to be 22 or 23 or 24. And it's hard for me not to sort of crush that enthusiasm with a big dose of reality or to just add a neglect or lack of self awareness make choices that, you know, help, you know, snuff people, candidates. Right. And so even me, I still have to work on myself every single day. Whether, whether I'm working, whether I'm at home or whether I'm working with sort of young professionals. And so I'm excited about it. It's going to be great. I think they're very much our future and, you know, we best be developing them and best be helping them become better people. Cause we'll absolutely see the benefit of that down the road.

Maureen:
Yeah. Yeah. I can't wait. I think it's going to just be so, so exciting to have, have you all been working on that program and I can't wait to hear how it goes, but before we wrap up, I have one last question for you. So what do you do for fun? What do you do to unplug from all of this leadership development and everything else?

Tom:
So I'm going to give you the long answer. That should be a short answer. So several years ago I was it was running at 90 miles an hour. You know, I was regularly working 55, 70 hour weeks, traveling all over, flying all over and everybody kept telling me, slow down, slow down, slow down. And of course I just ignored all that advice. And then I ran into a client and somehow we got on the topic of our schedules and pace and all this stuff. And I remember it clear as clear as a bell is that he looked right at me and said, you know, I was just like you about 10 years ago. And then I had a stroke and nearly died. And for whatever reason in that story, he began to tell me about how he had to make intentional choices to sort of change his professional life. And that, that saved his life. I had I sort of flash forward to what my future could look like, and I didn't want it to look like that. I didn't, I didn't want to have stroke. I didn't wanna, you know, have a heart attack in my fifties. I wanted to be around for my kids when they have kids. And when they're in therapy talking about me.

Tom:
And so that really began me trying to figure out how to manage my energy better and how to make better choices about my work life and travel and stuff. And, you know, pre COVID. I was still, you know, working 55 to 70 hours a week on the regular and still traveling all over and still like doing this really massive job. And yet I was making better choices about things like travel like not flying in at midnight and then flying out at two in the morning or things like making sure I don't pack in more than five meetings in a day. Even though I still fail like the other day, I had 10 in a row, which was not a good choice, but you gotta work on yourself. So some of the things that I do for fun are very much related to recharging my batteries and giving me the energy that I need to show up well for my family and show up well for my clients and show up well for my team.

Tom:
And so what that looks like for me is I have learned that being online and reading the news is not good for me. So try and get that watching TV doesn't give me any energy. But if I can build something like with my hands, like woodworking or, or working on projects, that gives me a ton of energy. But what I have found is what gives me the most energy is being out in the woods sweating and working on stuff typically using some kind of heavy equipment. And it's the craziest thing, but if I'm running a chainsaw, cutting down a tree in the middle of the woods, then that is the most energizing thing for me that I can do. I can't explain it. My wife doesn't understand it. It's the funniest thing, but it works. And so I have to carve out time, you know, once a month to like go out by myself and run equipment in the woods.

Tom:
You were saying that I thought I was wondering, is that all the time, like you said, being out in the woods, doing stuff with your hands, it's the Woodward. So it really is all the same time. Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, exactly. If I could build a table out in the woods, that's probably would be the maximum fund for me for table though.

Maureen:
Oh my gosh. Well, Tom, this has really been fun. I appreciate you taking some time to chat with us and talking us through value based leadership. It just sounds so so exciting that I'm definitely going to follow up more just for myself to learn some more on it. So thank you. And we'll see you soon.

Tom:
That's awesome. Thank you so much.