An Interview with Krista Skidmore, CEO and Founder of FlashPoint Leadership
-A member conversation with Shannon Minifie
This fall, I had the chance to catch up with Krista Skidmore, who I remember meeting when I was a newbie at the ISA-ALP back in 2017. Krista’s the CEO and Founder of FlashPoint Leadership, and she talked to me about her firm’s origins and evolution, and the pressing challenges and opportunities facing her team—and the leaders they serve—right now.
SM: Krista, for those of us who don’t know your story and about your firm, what would you share about FlashPoint?
KS: I’d say that my entrepreneurial spirit emerged early in life – I was typically nurturing a side hustle to fund my interests, whether that was attending concerts or participating in sports camps. I thought that elementary education was for me, but after an eye-opening internship I pivoted to business management and psychology, and it was during five formative years in a regional consulting firm that I started to dream about what I could start up myself, and I really started laying the groundwork for what would become FlashPoint Leadership.
SM: Amazing. And so, what is FlashPoint?
KS: FlashPoint was founded to create meaningful connections and impactful leadership, and we do that by focusing on the development of leaders and teams. We’ve really centered on the idea of fostering belonging and enabling leaders to step into their full potential.
There are three core values that drive FlashPoint’s mission: Invest in relationships (this is all about collaboration and mutual partnership with our clients; we never want to be “the expert with the briefcase”); Empathy and inclusion at the core; and we want to be consequential—and so we’re always honing our craft. I love the word craft because it’s all about artistry and attention to detail.”
SM: a maker word managers, and designers—all working collaboratively to help effect consequential impact with our clients.
KS: Yes, exactly. So, I started the firm in 2002, and we’re now 50 talented individuals, including coaches, facilitators, projectSM: What kinds of challenges are you seeing among your clients at the moment? Among leaders, in particular?
KS: Well, one of the biggest things leading up to the election has been polarization, discord, and that’s imparting overall health and well-being.
SM: We partnered with The Harris Poll last year to do some research on workplace challenges and the place of curiosity, and those were their findings, too. Fear, disconnection, discord, and disagreement were major themes. And business leaders cited managing increased fragility and divisive politics as some of their biggest challenges.
There was this one particularly devastating statistic, that 70% of business leaders say that people don’t understand the value in listening to people they disagree with.
KS: Wow. And see I’m worried that the chasm just keeps widening… and then how do you show up as a leader in that space? How do you foster and enable inclusion?
SM: Yes, and how do you even try to ensure work moves forward? When you really stop and think about all the implications of trying to move work forward without the capacity to listen to each other. Team members misinterpreting each other’s intentions, conflict arising over almost anything, stalled progress, hours of time lost to infighting, important feedback ignored because people are too focused on defending their own perspectives.
KS: Yes, and these are difficult conversations and without the skills to lead yourself and other through that, there is a possibility that the gap between people grows wider and deeper. We are focused on doing our part to narrow this gap through our leadership development work.
SM: So that we don’t end on a dour note: what are you working on right now that you’re most excited about?
KS: This is a hard question. Often as the CEO I find myself in the challenge zone, rather than the excitement zone. But I’d say I’m excited about a few things we’ve been working on:
We’ve just completed a brand refresh. We haven’t done much at the brand level to innovate—most of our innovation has been at the product level. But we have a new messaging and website now to better articulate FlashPoint’s growth and position in the marketplace, to tell the story of who we are now and demonstrate our credibility—the website is a medium for doing that.
We’ve also been working on various ways to optimize for scale, so we’ve made some tech stack investments—we’re trying to multiply, not add. We’ve just gone live on complete redo of everything from our CRM (Hubspot – our Head of Marketing, Lauren, is truly a guru and has set up our interface in a cool way) to SmartSheets (project management) to the financial side. We’re putting in place scalable technology solutions to help us with the places where we’re currently bogged down administratively.
We had a great team retreat where we did the process mapping including ways AI can best serve our mission. It also revealed where there are still gaps between functions and where we need more enterprise knowledge held.
SM: Speaking of that: are you thinking about succession planning yet (and how you’ll make your exit)? Or is that still years away?
KS: It does feel that those decisions may still be years away. I have time, but I also want to be prepared. I’m taking meetings with potential strategic buyers or partners now that will help me understand how to execute the best strategies to boost our multiple and get the greatest financial outcome—and that’s of course balanced against the investments I need to make in the team on the journey along the way. I don’t want to wait until I’m ready and wanting to exit; that’s why I’m taking meetings now and just loosely exploring what might be possible and how best to be prepared when the time comes.
SM: How long have you been a member of the ISA-The of Learning Providers (ISA-ALP)?
KS: I joined the ISA-ALP community in 2016 when FlashPoint acquired an existing member company. SM: Wow, so awhile. What’s been the value for you in sticking around?
KS: You know, the ISA-ALP has been for me a crucial touchstone in an ever-evolving industry landscape. So much has changed in the last eight years, and the ISA-ALP has felt like a standard by which we can gain perspective and recognize moments in time. I’ve valued the ability to foster relationships here, and resources like the financial benchmarking and compensation studies have been really helpful.
Finally, I’d say that each firm can really choose their own adventure and interact with the association in ways that are most meaningful to them, and that’s something that I think will continue to help keep the ISA-ALP relevant in future years.
