Leadership lessons from California Pizza Kitchen with Shannon Kirk
Currently serving as the Chief People Officer at California Pizza Kitchen, Shannon is an experienced HR executive with over 20 years in the hospitality and tech industries. Known for driving change, fostering resiliency, and spearheading innovations through a people-centric approach, she has a proven track record of enhancing organizational culture and performance. In addition to her current role, she is also the Vice-President of the Kindness Fund at CPK, a 501(c)(3) peer-to-peer giving program supporting employees in need.
HOST
Matt Poepsel, PhD
Vice President & Godfather of Talent Optimization
GUEST
Shannon Kirk
Chief People Office
Top 3 Takeaways
- Get Ready. Resilience is about problem-solving and reaction to challenges. Leaders should build it by focusing on related competencies like communication, emotional intelligence and proactive problem-solving.
- Stack it Up. Effective accountability requires three layers: individual clarity about expectations, team accountability toward shared goals and leadership that addresses negative behaviors quickly.
- Seek Harmony. Balance stability and innovation by recognizing team members’ natural roles as innovators, implementers, or communicators and fostering awareness of these strengths.
From the Source
“Resilience at its simplest form is problem solving and also your reaction to challenges. So as an individual or an organization, what it does is it strengthens your approach and your perspective to problems.”
“Leaders have to model these behaviors, so they have to be transparent about the problems that we’re dealing with, involve others in the problem solving. So you’re teaching your organization how to become problem solvers.”
“You have to be aware of yourself as an organization. Look to make sure that you’re not self-inflicting your own problems and creating your own crises and expecting the answer to be employee resilience.”
“We have to define what vulnerability is not. It’s not weakness. Vulnerability, what that does is it brings a human into leadership. It makes leaders approachable, and that’s how you build trust.”
“You’re really so strong as yourself, but you’re stronger as a team… when you empower others around you, when you involve them in this, you get to such a stronger place.”
“Everybody’s voice matters. Everyone’s perspective matters. And so when you give people that sense of empowerment and they feel safe to express that… you’ve gotta model the behavior that you wanna see as a leader.”
“Who you are outside of work is just as important as who you are inside. And if you respect that as a leader, you get so much more.”
Connect with Shannon
Website: http://www.cpk.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannon-kirk-8464463
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