The Relational Leadership Style In Today’s Virtual Work Environment With Cheri Mason
Discover how leadership styles are evolving in the era of remote work. Join Tom Dardick and Cheri Mason as they discuss the transformative power of relational leadership in a virtual work environment. In this episode, Cheri shares her journey of leading a large organization through the transition to remote work during the pandemic. Emphasizing the significance of a relational leadership style, Cheri emphasizes how connecting with employees on a personal level fosters trust and engagement. She highlights the crucial role of vulnerability and genuine relationships in both professional success and personal fulfillment. From practical tips on maintaining team cohesion through virtual interactions to the broader impact of empathetic leadership, Cheri provides valuable insights for leaders navigating today's dynamic workplace. Whether you're a seasoned executive or aspiring manager, this episode offers actionable strategies to build resilient, connected teams in a virtual world.
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The Relational Leadership Style In Today’s Virtual Work Environment With Cheri Mason
It’s my great pleasure to welcome Cheri Mason to the program. Cheri was the first woman Chairman of the Board of the Veterans Appeals at the VA, and had run a department of 1,200 people successfully and her experience there with us. Her book is Dare to Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart. She shares a lot of her wisdom through hard fought experience. It’s my great pleasure to welcome Chri Mason to the show.
Relational Leadership Style
You find a relational style is going to help people with their leadership style as opposed to one where it’s a little bit more what command and control or transactional like, “Do this thing because I said so or do this thing because the customer needs this or whatever it might be.” It’s more the context of an overall relationship. Is that what I’m getting from your overall approach there, Cheri?
You nailed it, Tom. That’s one of the things that we’re seeing, especially since COVID. It’s since the pandemic. We were already on this track then the pandemic exacerbated it. It helped us understand that life is about living and work is a part of life but not the dominant piece. What’s been happening is employees have redefined personal and professional success. In doing so, what they are looking for in their organizations and even customers are looking for this, is organizations and leaders that engage with the employees, care about the employees and know what’s going on in their lives.
Those leaders are human beings too. It’s all about being human. That’s who we are. Many leaders are struggling with this because they want to go back to the way things were before COVID or pandemic. What they don’t realize is we were already changing. I was a leader who led from prior to the pandemic and through the pandemic. What I saw with people was when I could engage and I knew something about them. I don’t need to know their whole personal lives but they also don’t need to pretend like they don’t have one. Knowing something about them.
In fact, one of my employees and I heard this through various mediums during the pandemic, was the people said, “I feel like my colleagues finally see me as a person.” We’re in a virtual world but they finally felt seen and heard because they were focused. They could see their life happening around them. Whether they had critters in the passing behind them or people or just life because we connected more because we didn’t have those in-office interactions. We learned to do that more.
What I learned as a leader is when I shared something about my life or challenges. People were like, “I’ve got that too.” One of the things that leaders need to understand is showing your humanity to your employees will make you more successful and motivate your employees quicker than directing them to do something because you said so. Customers are the same way. Often, customers are looking for organizations that want to meet their employees well, but also are engaged in taking care of people and the environment. What else does that organization do and what do they stand for?
Leaders need to understand that showing your humanity to your employees will actually make you more successful and motivate your employees quicker than directing them to do something because you said so.
Virtual Environment
You touched on a couple of things that I find very interesting there, Cheri. One is the nature of the virtual environment. We have hybrid and remote work. There’s lots of advantages of that are obvious. There’s some disadvantages in the in the sense that we don’t get that physical proximity. Let’s face facts, there isn’t a substitute for being in the same space as another person as well as this can work and it can do things. It’s not the same. We are giving something up but we are gaining something.
You gave a good example of, you see somebody’s cat jump up in their lap and you ask, “What’s the name of your cat?” Now you know something you didn’t before. That’s a good example of an advantage. I also do hear from people in business of the disadvantages where they feel like, “Where is everybody? What are they doing? I don’t know anything.” It’s like this black hole of work that’s happening. Leaders can look into it and say, “I don’t know what anybody’s doing or what they’re up to.” They almost feel like they have to intrude to find out the answer because you have to interrupt somebody to check on them. What do you think in terms of that dynamic, both for better and worse?
You’re exactly right. Changing the dynamic of being virtual versus being in person is definitely a change. One of my friends said when we were in person, there’s like a thousand interactions that are happening when you’re talking with someone that you can read body language and see things that you don’t get as well in the virtual environment. That is a challenge that we have to learn and adapt to.
There are ways to do that in the remote world. There’s also value in in person. In some situations, in-person is needed. It depends on the work. it depends on the environment that the organization wants to have. I don’t think it needs to have people in the office to the point of having people in the office. There has to be a purpose and a plan for that. That’s where leaders struggle. I’ve heard the same thing from leaders, “I want everybody here so I can see what they’re doing.”
I ran a 1,200 person organization. If I thought I could see what 1,200 people were doing in the office. I was delusional. How am I going to see what they’re doing in the office versus what they’re doing at home? One of the things that I did make a commitment to doing when we were in person is I started walking around. This was novel from my organization. When I first started doing it, people were very nervous. You could hear the computer keys flying. Bosses on the floor.
A couple of people came up to me and said, “You’re checking on us. You’re checking to make sure you're doing my work. You’re checking in.” I said, “No, I’m not checking on. I’m checking in with you. I scheduled this time to be present, to be around, and to engage with you so I can learn something about you and you can ask me questions.” They got used to that, so I have a good question. It’s like, “When are you doing it again? When are you coming?”
We had five floors. I would say, “I’ll be down next week or when I get back from this trip.” They looked forward to it. They did bring me suggestions with solutions and talked to me about different things. I learned. Did I know all 1,200? No, but I knew a lot about a little or a little about a lot. When we transitioned to pandemic operations, I started hearing almost immediately, “Leadership doesn’t care.” They’re all home with their feet kicked up.”
I realized that I had to figure out a way to continue this, but I had to learn because life had completely turned upside down for everybody. We were teaching kids at home and taking care of people in our lives. There was a lot more that we were engaging in and our world was completely different. We had teams where I worked. If somebody was green, the presumption was that they were available, but they might not be.
It could be an accident and they made the same mistake with me. They would contact me and I wouldn’t be there. They’d be like, “Where is she?” What I did is I started telling my team, I said, “I’m going to do these check-ins like I used to do, walk the floors and I’ll send you an email first. I’m going to say, are you available? If you’re not, it’s okay. I want to know how you’re doing.” I did those and I again scheduled time. It was a little bit more involved because we were on the computer and it’s not just a quick chat.
I kept them for 5 or 10 minutes. One of my employees said, “We should do something like a coffee or a town hall to small groups.” I said, “That’s a great idea.” I started carving out office hours, coffee time and giving town halls, but we didn’t talk about work unless the employees brought it up. We talked about the challenges that they were having and what life was like for them.
The first time it happened, I had about like 600 or 700 people online. They’re like, “I can’t believe that we’re on here and we’re not talking about work.” I started seeing the numbers climb because more people were joining because they wanted to know what was going on. That continued. We periodically did that. I would bring in guest speakers to talk about different things going on and in pandemic operations.
It allowed us to connect. I was always on and we had the chat open and people could ask questions. We usually try to do it over lunchtime or right around lunchtime so people have the time. They could record it. It’s a different practice in how you approach things. Is there a black hole if I don’t know if my people are working or not? There can be, but that’s where the relationships come in. If you are engaging with your people and you build that trust. You’re going to know your people are working. Our numbers went through the roof.
If you are engaging with your people and you build that trust, you're going to know your people are working.
Trust and engagement scores increased. Our results doubled. We brought in new technology. We hired more people. We changed regulations. We did half of that during pandemic operations. That’s not something you normally see, but the difference is my viewpoint and I encouraged my leadership team to follow that viewpoint because I thought it was important and it seemed to work.
Trust And Engagement
How did you measure that trust and engagement? What were the ways that you did that?
I was in the Federal government. We had the surveys, the annual surveys. We did it primarily through that. I also did it because I always had an inter-gauge. If people are engaging, contacting me and talking to me, then I know that my trust scores are good. That I’m in good shape. If I’m not hearing something or things are quiet and I hear more things from rumor-ville than I knew. We need to do something.
The management by walking around, one of the books I’m reading now is How to be like Walt. Walt Disney was an original one like that where he was happiest when he was out in the shop with people. No matter how big his operation got when he was building Disneyland and so forth. He was out there building trains and all kinds of stuff. People felt like they knew him. Not everybody in the organization knew him personally, but they all felt like they did.
What they felt was his love and commitment to them to changing the world, to a greater mission. How do you connect that relational style to that driven bigger picture orientation, the visionary element of leadership, let’s call it, to that relational element of leadership? How do you put those two things together, would you say, Cheri?
That’s one of the most challenging and that is as you said with Walt Disney and I can think of a couple of other leaders like that who it was their drive and their passion where they could connect with people and that connected them to the mission in what you were doing. That’s the key. One of the things I did in my world was I talked about what we were doing and the impact that the employees had on the clients we served.
I was able to get the data and show the data. When I had to go to Congress and testify, I bragged about the employees. I’m like, “Here’s the data. Here’s what the employees are doing.” When I went out to speak at different conferences, people would give me feedback about how the organization was doing. I would bring that back and share that like you’re making this impact. That’s one of the ways. The other thing is I did a lot of acknowledgements and rewarding and celebrating.
One of the things I launched was what I called the Kilroy Award. Kilroy was here. My Kilroy was a little eagle and he had dared take a cell on his chest, his little plastic eagle. I put him in a little box. What would happen is, if somebody went above and beyond, then when we were in person. They got Kilroy here on their door. Kilroy would be on their desk then I would send out an email to everybody.
All of a sudden, selfies started showing up on Facebook with Kilroy. I knew I was on to something. When we went on a pandemic, it was a little different operational. I could still do the Kilroy was here and send them like a little note, but we weren’t in person. We couldn’t deliver, so we would deliver a picture or something like that. We would still acknowledge the work. What happened is, colleagues started putting people in and it became quickly, can I recommend? I’m like, “Absolutely.” Can I celebrate this? That’s one of the ways you encourage that. You support each other and engage and encourage each other. That’s how you bring the mission together.
I love that, catching people doing things right. That’s wonderful and that's an acknowledgment. Isn’t it funny how a little thing makes such a big difference? A little acknowledgement
People always say to me, “Do you thank your people for doing their job?” I’m like, “Every day.” They’re like, “It’s their job.” I said, “Yes, but it’s a hard job. I know I did it. I’m going to thank them.” It’s because it tells them that I know what they’re doing. Especially as a leader, if you can say, “You did a good job with X, Y, and Z,” and you know what that is. They’re like, “The boss doesn’t know what I’m doing.” That makes a difference.
As I said, when you have a lot of employees, it doesn’t matter whether you have 10 or 1,200 or more. When you have things where you can acknowledge that, it’s a big deal. What we did, we did impersonal celebrations like when the organization exceeded the goal. We had a celebration with that. We had celebrations for time and service. We had celebrations for writing the word. We had celebrations for everything.
We continued those virtually. It was a little harder to connect with everything but we let people know when it was going to happen and what it was about. We did have town halls where we did talk about business issues and we did training and all those things. At the same time, we still had the time where there was a little bit of fun.
Dare To Relate
Before we started, Cheri, you mentioned your book. Do you want to talk a little bit about that and what people might get out of that?
The name of the book is Dare to Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart. What it’s about is my journey. I overcame some challenges as a young lady growing up in Appalachia and being raised by a widowed mother. Going forward, I met and married an Air Force officer and became a military spouse, more challenges. Frying pan fires things.
Dare To Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart
I learned some lessons along the way. What I didn’t realize is I was learning lessons of leadership, but different lessons of leadership. The importance and the impact that people and relationships can have. The rest of the book talks about what those lessons are and how I implemented them and talking with different leaders, how they brought and learned different lessons from their leadership styles very similar to mine. Talking about why relating with your employees and your people. Your most important assets and resources of your organization are the key.
I call it the secret ingredient to leadership because it is. Often, leaders will focus on every other resource they have, but that one. Dare to Relate has a plane on the front with people standing on top of the plane. It’s an homage to building the plane while you’re flying it. Also, if you look closely, you might see a little Air Force star under one of the wings signaling my Air Force wife time. It is to encourage either, current leaders who are trying to figure out how we do this now or aspiring leaders or mid-level leaders.
I’ve started speaking from the book regularly. I’ve spoken on college campuses and with leadership groups. The underlying key here is relating that the relationship that you form with the people of your organization can transform the organization and make a huge difference and can lead to successful outcomes. People don’t realize that it’s like we talked about acknowledgement. That acknowledgement and those simple relationships make people feel like you care like you’re real and you’re human. You live life like them. That helps them face the challenges of life.
What Gets In The Way
What gets in the way? What stops leaders from being relational?
Many times, leaders are so focused when they get promoted into leadership jobs that they have to drive for results. It’s what everybody talks about, “I have to improve the results. I have to do this.” They want to show that their leadership can produce these results and do these great things and they can. They don’t realize that the way of doing that is relational.
I literally walked out the door of my organization as a senior executive and I walked back in an hour later as the chief executive. People looked at me like I had two heads. I’ve been in this organization for many years. They knew who I was but I was going to be different. I was going to be like all the other ones who are all about results. When I said, “We’re going to talk about communication, how we talk to each other, how we relate to each other and building up the confidence and the morale of the organization. They were like, “Yes, right. Sure.”
You had to earn trust.
You have to earn credibility. You have to earn trust and it doesn’t matter. You can have been in the organization for years, but you still have to earn the trust. What gets in the way is leaders come in and they have this belief or maybe sometimes they have a requirement put on by others or they feel like they do, that they have to produce these results or outcomes. All leaders do.
When I got the call asking me to take my position, one of the things I said back to the President of the United States was, “I’m going to lead the way I lead now. Results will happen but it’s going to take a minute.” The response I got was, “That’s why we’re talking to you.” That’s the difference in knowing that somebody has your back above you. Whether it’s your stakeholders or your customers.
You have all that. Leaders feel like they have something to prove and you do. Think about how you want to prove that and what the impact you want to be or you want to have. People asked me about my legacy and I said, “I work in the Federal government. Legacy is a passing thing.” The legacy I did leave was the impact I made on the people who worked for me. I’ve been out now for a few years and I have people that regularly reach out to me. I consult with people.
I had someone reach out and said, “Do you remember while you were chairman, you were dealing with your mom having difficulties who was elderly. What organization did you use?” I told her. She remembered that was something because I didn’t hide it. Occasionally, I said, “I’m not going to be at this meeting or I can’t do it because I have to take care of my mom.”
That’s part of showing vulnerabilities that you’re a real person, too. You’re walking through life just like what else is.
They knew I was a mom. They knew I was a wife. They knew that I was a daughter. I didn’t hide that. I didn’t also showcase it and talk about it all the time. If something came up, they knew that both my boys, one graduated from college and one graduated from high school. They knew I was out. I tried to keep that line on Facebook because that’s tricky. You have to make sure you have that. People in the organization talk. They always talk. They’re going to know stuff but that’s why they talk to each other and they’ll talk to you if you’re listening.
For some reason I’m getting vibes of Ted Lasso’s leadership style. Did you watch that show?
I did. Maybe we have a little bit in common. Although, I didn’t watch it. I watched it after my time as a leader.
It was all process, especially in the first season. They were blumox that he didn’t care about winning and losing. It’s like, it’s all winning and losing. Why don’t you care? That’s not the process. The wins happen when we have a winning organization.
That’s what I ran into. I had a union at work, and the relationships weren’t fantastic. You had to build those relationships but they were the same way. They were like, “Let’s watch and see. Let’s see what happens.” I had to go testify to Congress. I also had customers who had huge expectations. When we started delivering results while all these other things were happening. One of those organizations that did surveys and studied called me and said, “It’s fascinating because normally, insurance companies don’t get great feedback when they deny cases, but you are denying cases and you’re still getting good feedback from your customers.”
I said, “Hopefully, that’s because we’re explaining why and we’re telling them what they need to do to turn that around.” The other part of that was, the employees felt connected to the work. Occasionally, we had situations where employees would be talking to customers for different types of things. We had to make sure that the employees understood that impact was significant to their customer.
Most of the employees easily understood that but understanding that it was okay to take the time and talk. We weren’t timing their phone calls. It’s okay. Take the time and talk to the customers because sometimes the customers could be having challenges. If that was happening, you wanted to make sure that you got the right people on the phone to help that person.
Some sectors struggle with this. I’m thinking of the health sector where it feels like the doctor has X number or even the nurse practitioner. Whoever it might be. They have X number of minutes and that’s all they’ve got. They come in, deliver it and go. It takes the personal touch out of it like it used to be. It doesn’t seem like that improves things. What do you think of that?
You’re right. One of the things I do because I moved down here to North Carolina and I had to find new doctors. One of the things I look at is reviews and what people are saying. It was interesting, it took about five months to get my first appointment. When I went in, the first thing they told me was, “He’s going to ask you everything in the sun. It’s a 45-minute.” I’m like, “Okay.” I knew that. I had done my research because that’s what you want. You want somebody who’s listening and paying attention. If you don’t take the whole 45 minutes. That’s okay.
Testifying Congress
I’ve got to ask you because it’s sticking out in my mind when you said you had testified in Congress. That sounds like such a scary thing because no matter what you’re talking about, one half of your audience is going to be hating and trying to tear you apart. The other part is going to try to prop you up and it almost doesn’t even matter, it seems. That’s the impression you get from outside. I’m curious about your experience as to how that went.
One of the things I worked on in my job was building those relationships with Congress. I testified at least five times, including my confirmation hearing. I’d have to check. It could have been seven. I don’t remember. Both Senate and House. It depended on who it was. It was the House or Senate. It also depended on who was there. Most of the time I will say that because I worked on those relationships. They pretty much accepted me as credible.
Because I worked on those relationships, they pretty much accepted me as credible.
They might question something and I would say, “I’ll get back to you.” That meant that I was getting back to them. Occasionally, you can get the push a little bit. That primarily occurred more in my confirmation hearing than it did and maybe one hearing after that but I was confirmed by the full Senate unanimously. We must have done something right. Building those relationships was important.
One of the things I did was I continually kept senators and congressmen engaged and informed. We would have quarterly meetings. That’s another thing. It’s a relationship that you’re building. You can see on the wall behind me, the big picture in the middle right over my head, is the Senate congressional record. That congressional record was read into record by Senator Tester, who was the opposing party of the party that I was appointed under.
It was the end of my term, my five years. He read into the record all the achievements that I had made during my time as the first woman chief executive because he wanted to make sure it was captured for history then he signed it and gave me a copy. That tells you a little bit about relationships. It can be very political. It doesn’t have to be. A lot of times it depends on what the subject matter is, but it also depends on how you relate to them and their staff. I still have Senate staff from both sides and house staff who call me and ask questions. I take their call.
It sounds like you’re a walking example of what it is that you’re preaching as far as building relationships. What I get from that, Cheri, is it’s not just the idea of people who work for you. It’s across all your constituencies. It’s being engaged in the people in your life, it sounds like to me.
It is. It starts with your personal life. Many leaders are challenged with this because they’re so focused on life and work that you can do that at the expense of your family life. We all get into that. I certainly was not immune to that. I had challenges with that. Even during COVID, it was more challenging because I was available all the time. I had to learn to put those boundaries in place and say, “No, we’re not. Here’s where my day starts. Here’s where my day ends.” Having that mindset. Again, it’s something that I learned over time. I discovered this more or realized it more when I was writing the book. I knew it but when you’re writing a book, it’s different. You discover things.
Writing is thinking.
Yes, it is. My husband and I would always talk to each other like, “How did we get to be who we are? How did we figure this out?” It was writing the book that I realized, “That’s where that happened. That’s where I learned this.” It was like puzzle pieces. It was a jigsaw puzzle. I often say, “I forged my own path,” and I had to because as a military spouse, there wasn’t any other path. I had to make my own. I wanted a career and that was no-no at the time I became a military spouse.
In carving and forging that path, what I discovered is there are people who will support and help you in the way. Oftentimes when I’m speaking, I get the question, did you have one mentor who particularly helped you? What I tell people is, I had a couple of mentors who helped me in different ways. I also learned from seeing leaders that particularly didn’t do it well for some of those. I was like, “How would I do this better?” It’s when you get the opportunity, let’s try it and see. That’s what happened.
The biggest thing is it is about your relationships with everybody in your life. I’m much more conscious of that these days. I always was at some point, but I wasn’t as good as it is. I will readily admit that and I’m very more assessing how I’m relating to waitresses, waiters, baristas and clerks. I always say, “Thank you. I appreciate you,” because it matters to them. Sometimes when you say things like that, people will stop and stare at you and go, “That made my day.”
You don’t realize that we have an impact on each other. Think of that when you’re a leader when you have these employees who are working for you. If you’re not acknowledging them, thanking them, and appreciating their work. They’re going to feel like everybody else who feels like they’ve been run over by the nearest person that came screaming through the grocery store aisle and threw everything, then hopped the door they went.
Curiosity And Discovery
One last question on this, Cheri, if I might. You’re pointing towards being engaged with other people. There’s a natural curiosity about other people that I get from you that serves you well. Is this something that you cultivated or do you think you just had it? If somebody feels like they could use more of it, do you feel like they could cultivate that sense of curiosity and discovery about the people around them?
You can. I will tell you because of my background, I lost my father to suicide when I was four. For a long time, I had a wall. I call it in the book, the cloak of invisibility. It was always on, in some way, shape or form. Even though my mom pushed me to reject it, I figured out a way to manage it. Even though you couldn’t tell that it was there but it was there.
What I learned as I came through life is when you hide yourself, you’re not getting the full experience. You aren’t engaging with people and they can tell. It was a couple of military spouses, probably my husband and a couple other people who said, “I can tell when you have the wall up and when you don’t.” I had to work on that when stepping into leadership roles because I wanted people to feel that I cared for them and I wanted them to relate.
As an employee, I had worked for leaders who didn’t feel that way, who just saw employees as pieces of the process and pieces of the machine. Your job is just to produce results. I didn’t want that to happen. As I started thinking about things and life happened and I started learning. There was one particular event that I talked about in the book that was probably the catalytic event. We were in Germany, and my husband was in the Air Force. There was a plane crash that resulted in the loss of lives of 35 people, including some civilians and a civilian VIP.
It was the investigation, the aftermath, but the demands of military life crashed in at that time. It made me stop. I was working in the group that was impacted directly by this. I watched the leadership. I watched the leadership get fired and how they handled it. It was very different from very different leaders. It showed me that a leader’s style can be dominant.
It can be so dominant that you can’t figure out how you exercise your judgment beyond separate from that. That taught me a lot. I didn’t realize the full impact of it until it came back and became a leader myself. I started realizing it. I was like, “Whoa.” I was different but I didn’t know why I was different. I realized that what I had learned from that incident was that it wasn’t about me anymore. It was about building those connections with other people and supporting them. I didn’t realize that I learned it until later. You can learn it.
Sometimes it’s at a very high price. The lessons can come at a very high price.
It can come at a high price. I was blessed that I already had the foundation for it. It was just the situation of realizing that I did have the secret ingredient to leadership. I just didn’t know that understanding the importance and impact of people and relationships with people in your life that I learned early in life from childhood to early spouse time is the driving force to make a difference in leadership.
If leaders come in with that viewpoint and that attitude, it’s going to make a difference to their team. There still has to be accountability and results. It’s not going to be all kumbaya, rainbows and unicorns. It’s just not but how you approach your people, how you react to things, and how you use your words. If you back your words up with your actions, all those things make a difference. The people of the organization are watching. If you are nervous, concerned and fighting out, they’re going to react the same way. If you’re like, “We tried it. We made a mistake. Let’s try something different. Let’s move on and do it this way.” They’re going to be like, “We can do that. That’s okay.”
It’s okay to try and not know everything. Maybe make a mistake, learn, reiterate and get better next time.
You can fail. It’s okay. A good friend of mine wrote a book also. He said he has the same attitude, but in his world, as a doctor it can be a little tricky. You have to have some extra precautions in place.
There’s certain things that you don’t experiment with.
Again, learning that as a leader and how you approach that is important for your people. The thing is I don’t think leaders understand the impact or the magnitude of their impact on the lives of their employees and their families, because it’s more so than just work. The leaders are like, “I remember. I’ve been in the workforce forever starting in the ‘90s.” I was told as a young employee, “You get to live at home.”
Yes, but you’d still have to feel like you’re important and part of an impactful team and that you matter even at work. If you don’t feel that at work, then you bring that home with you. It may impact your home life and that’s what we’re seeing a little bit in our world. We talked at the beginning of the episode about the impact of the virtual world. That’s one of the impacts of the virtual world. Reaching through the camera and connecting with people and checking in with them is important. Sometimes you do need to check on them to make sure they’re okay.
One of the impacts of the virtual world is learning the value of reaching through the camera, connecting with people, and checking in with them.
It’s interesting, as you lay that out, Cheri, I’m thinking. In the past, when we’re in the world of work, there’s almost like separate professional and personal and never the twain shall meet. Now, we’re having these conversations. You’re talking to somebody. They’re in their house and dealing with whatever their real life is dealing with. You’re having a business meeting with them. It’s awfully hard to make those distinctions that used to be very obvious, where we could dictate, “That’s work time. It’s play time or this is personal time.” It is a new day and we’re figuring our way.
That’s what I said. As I said, when I stepped into my role as a chief executive, I did so as a wife, a mom and a daughter. It didn’t stop. Was I engaged with work? Yes. One day in particular, I remember I’m sitting in a senior level meeting and my phone is on silent but it’s buzzing. I looked down and my husband texted me, “Your mom fell.” I looked at the senior leader and I said, “I have to. I’m sorry.” He looked at me and said, “Okay.” I left the room. Work is work but life is more important.
Cheri, thank you so much for sharing your valuable life experience with the audience and with me. I very much enjoyed it. I very much feel fortunate to be able to learn from you and to be able to share these kinds of messages that are so valuable. Thank you.
I appreciate your time and this is wonderful. I appreciate these conversations you’re having because it helps everybody think about things and look at things differently. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time.
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Thank you, Cheri, for being with us. I appreciate all that you shared with us. I specifically like the fact that you shared. It’s all about being human and being curious and connected with other people, whether you have 2 people or 12 people or 1,200 people or even more. It’s the same dynamic at every level. Being able to show your own humanity and being a little bit vulnerable where it’s appropriate.
People know you and want to know that you’re a real person and you want to know them as a real person. Those relationships go a long way, whether they’ve direct reports or on the team or any constituency. A lot of wisdom with what you shared. Thank you so much. I very much appreciate you sharing.
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About Cheri Mason
The incredible journey of the Honorable Cheryl L. Mason (Cheri) began amidst the picturesque foothills of Appalachia in Portsmouth, Ohio. From a tender age, she learned an invaluable lesson that life presents us with opportunities to overcome obstacles and leave a lasting imprint on others. Known for her tenacious spirit, Cheri triumphed over discrimination and exclusion, defying all odds to become the first woman and military spouse Chairman of the Board of Veterans' Appeals at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
As Chairman she transformed a struggling organization into a high functioning organization by putting her people first and empowering them to implement innovation and deliver record breaking results to veterans and their families.
As a speaker and author, Cheri inspires and encourages people through her fierce perseverance and caring leadership style. Her story stands as a testament to the purpose, impact, and value one can make on others.
Check out her TEDX - https://youtu.be/XZkWGaiYs9A?si=9J-mAIYZUkRdW5V9
In her book, "Dare To Relate: Leading with a Fierce Heart," she unveils how her journey as a multiple suicide loss survivor and a military spouse uniquely empowered her to embrace her unconventional leadership.
Ms. Mason received her B.A. in Political Science and Psychology from Ohio Northern University and her J.D. from Creighton University School of Law. She is the spouse of a USAF veteran and the daughter of a WWII Navy veteran. She actively supports the veteran and military communities, speaking on subjects of leadership, transition, and suicide awareness and prevention.