Tish Squillaro 0:00

Hi everyone, my name is Tish Galero, and welcome to Candor with Tish. Today we have an excellent leader who's going to talk about how he's built teams for his businesses and also how he uses advisors to also grow out the team. Today we have Akram Callis, and he's going to give us a little background about himself. The first thing he told me is we're going to call him AK.

Akram Khalis 0:20

Thank you, Tish.

Tish Squillaro 0:21

Just give us a little quick background on where you are today and how you got there.

Akram Khalis 0:25

Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for inviting me to the podcast, and it's a pleasure. Full name is Akram Kallas. People call me AK. Started as an engineer, my background, so pretty unique background. I have an engineering of software, mechanical, and electrical. And I was able to bridge the gap from ideation into product. I found myself doing that over time, and the ability to do that and commercialize it creates businesses and took it a step further. So I went from an engineering background to the CTO office to being a CTO and then led business as a CEO. When you reach a CEO level, of course, now you're responsible for the entire stack of the business, which is more than just the technical aspect of it. And being able to understand exactly how you deliver value, but also create that economic exchange between the value and the business. And I think that's where I'm tired.

Tish Squillaro 1:13

Well, I'm excited to talk to you because you know, building out leadership teams is one of the first goals every CEO has. And it's the hardest, right? I mean, I've worked with organizations for the last 26 years, and it's always the toughest question they ask is how do I know how to build the right team for me? And I say for me because you need to build the team that's going to work well with you and then work well with each other. So now, when you were building out one of the hardest teams you had to put together, what were some of the obstacles that you had to overcome to actually form that team you knew you needed?

Akram Khalis 1:47

That's a great question. I think one of the few things, the hardest thing was communication. And communication needs to be between the teams rather than escalations to the leader. The hardest thing I had to do is stop the escalation path to me as the as the bottleneck. When you build leaders along the organization, random times or often, you'll find out that they escalate much quicker than they need to communicate. And trying to get them to an ideation of, okay, you need to talk to each other first before you can escalate this problem further. And you get to find out that the problem gets to resolve itself shortly after they talk to each other versus an escalation.

Tish Squillaro 2:23

Which is so true. Communication at that level, you hire really smart, talented, seasoned executives. And then they have to sit around the table and be able to solve problems that maybe they are one-sided thinking about. Because right, that leadership team is going to be someone that goes from a function leader to the business leader. And that's always the hardest transition. Communication is key. How did you get them to not escalate to you? Like, what were you able to do? Because what I've recognized when coaching teams, they're nervous and they always want someone else to make that decision. So they can blame them to be wrong, or someone doesn't want to escalate because they're afraid it will get them in trouble. How did you overcome that with the team?

Akram Khalis 3:08

That's a fantastic question. And if anybody worked for me or worked with me, they know that to never come to me with a problem. They have to come to me with a problem and three solutions, and most likely you did have to pick one. Because normally leaders would, to your point, would try to de-risk the obstacles and just come to you as a leader as as for escalation with the problem. And expectation is I have to come up with the solution and help you through that. And to your point, Tish, we hire executives and leaders that are very smart. They are capable of doing that. And normally, as a leader, you need to give them that opportunity to fail. And they need to know that they're comfortable with failing, and there's no consequences because they are putting themselves into a position of thinking and now they have to make certain decisions, no different than I would do. But they have, as long as they have the business in mind and they understand that they need to do this for the business, usually the outcome is very positive.

Tish Squillaro 4:00

No, and it's not easy because when you give them the freedom to not have fear, right? And I call that fear. You don't want a culture of fear where people are afraid to raise something not working, right? So it sounds like you embody them to feel comfortable. What about right people, right seats? You know, one of the things I always focus on when I look at a team is do we have the right bodies around the table? And sometimes it's not even the person's fault that they're not the right fit anymore. Companies grow fast. And many times people don't scale that quickly as a business does. So when you've got that ability to let people fail, how do you know when it's the person in the seat that's the problem? Right? Because then sometimes the failing is more often. And then everyone else looks around and says, well, that person's not carrying their own weight. I've got to do it for them. Either has that ever happened to you where you had to make that decision, or what would be something that you would recognize if you're starting to see that you're not getting that freedom culture that you're instilling in the team?

Akram Khalis 5:02

You kind of give the answer. It's the ability to watch them fail over and over. And more recently is if they fail twice, three times of the same subject, it's okay to fail on multiple examples or scenarios. But as a leader, you're looked at differently if you failed during the same example more than once. Because we're supposed to be learning from these examples and you're supposed to be going through the scenarios and understand if I am going to take this decision, did I play out all the risks and did I actually make the right decision? The expectation is not to do it more than once. If you do it the second time, there are probably another variable, but you can't do it over and over. And I think that's the indication of okay, maybe I have the right wrong person in that seat because the mistake keeps happening.

Tish Squillaro 5:45

Well, that's a great standout for a new CEO, founder. He or she's wondering, how do I know when I have the right people in the right seats? And I like your approach. You give people an opportunity, they're gonna make mistakes. So no one's perfect. And as you form the team, there are gonna be things that people intended to do right and didn't come out right, right? There's always those elements. But your rule is if you're seeing consistently the same failings in the same scenario, you started to realize that this is not gonna get better, right? We need to help that person either into a different role or find another place for them, which I like. Thank you for sharing that. Because I do think that's one of the top things in building out your team. They're gonna evolve with you as you evolve. And if your business is rapidly growing, and I'm gonna hit on one of your AI elements because you do foster in AI and building out for streaming facilities. Do you see AI stepping into how you're building leadership teams? Or do you still think it's more around the talent and the communication components? Because AI is everywhere. And I love that we have it as a tool, but I am questioning where it fits in in that human behavior. So as you're building out those teams and managing their excellence on what is the right behaviors, is AI a component for you that you utilize?

Akram Khalis 7:05

Absolutely. It's a tool, and the tool is being used to streamline process. You know, if if I remember back when we were doing some screenings, first you get a fax of a CV and then you go into the resume, and then you have to trace it based on the skill set. Well, AI can do a lot of that right now. You can scan through multiple resumes and multiple skill sets based on the needs that you your business have. So that's where I utilize AI, and I feel like that's where it is right now in building the skill sets. But once you get to selecting the leader, there's a human element that we have as humans. And that is not replaceable right now. You still need that connection, the ability to understand culture, what's the mission of this business, and the ability to communicate. So far, that's still going to be relying on humans because leaders are humans that are leading other humans.

Tish Squillaro 7:53

And I agree with that. I mean, I do think we are on a rapid race to see how AI complements and really helps businesses scale quicker, perhaps save money, but it's not replacing headcount, right? I mean, I don't think there is enough AI yet proven to actually replace lots of headcounts. Maybe some tactical roles can be combined and we use AI so things can be streamlined. But on that note, I'm glad that you see the human factor because I've always believed that as you build out your business, the hardest thing you'll need to do is come up with the culture that you want your teams to be embodied by. One of the things I've utilized, and I'm curious if you have another tool, but one of the things I utilize is the disk profile. I find that it's a behavioral tool that opens up awareness. And right now, human beings need awareness and how they communicate, how they impact one another. And so when I'm sitting with a CEO and their team, the first thing I'm doing is getting to know folks and showing them with a map, because data is still king, showing them with a map of where they all fit when they take one of these profiles and it creates a storyline like this is the strength of this bench. Here are the gaps of this bench. How do we now foster that through the growth of the business? And I can come up with tools and techniques to allow a team to actually grow from the unit of knowing who they are. Is there something that you've also been exposed to or utilized similar? Or maybe it is disk?

Akram Khalis 9:26

It's identical. It's the ability to watch for humans and being able to identify the gaps on each of the benches to your point and allow them to see that gap and how to can connect other team members into in from different organizations together. I think that's the tool that's available today that can allow us to make decisions as leaders and CEOs much, much quicker.

Tish Squillaro 9:47

And I find when a CEO or founders open to a little vulnerability, which is what I would call when you become self-aware, you have to own who you are. And that helps you start to think about how you impact other people and your team. And those things carry into how those leaders manage their teams. And so, yeah, I have found that when we give people the opportunity to have some self-awareness, they get a little squeamish because you know there is certain elements that we don't like to talk about when we find out how we do stuff. But it does become insightful, similar, I think, to how you're using AI with the talent evaluation. Because talent and data are things you can get through with AI from one describing what you need for the role, then matching it to who's someone's their background. And now the behavioral part, I feel like this component of having a behavioral profile, there's more than disk, that's the one I use, but there's strength fine, there's caliber, predictive index, you probably have come across all of them. But I do utilize them a lot with helping formulate what I call team chemistry. Have you ever heard the term team chemistry? Absolutely. Okay, good. Because it is really the way in which a group comes together. So when you're building out teams, what's the chemistry that you look for to help it, you know, be able to scale and grow the business? And what's the thing you look out for that's going to be the challenge for that team, for the business?

Akram Khalis 11:22

I think it comes down to a few elements. The one of them is trust. And trust is mutual, ability to identify that that particular leader have the trust capabilities that you can give them. And it comes down to the leadership style. So whether it's just providing them with information and letting them get it trusted with that information and lead with it, or even vice versa, when they come to you with information that they trust you with, that could be related to their challenges or related to their success or related to what they're actually looking for when it comes down to an execution of a project. And you want to be able to have that relationship of a trust to your leaders because that's going to trickle downstream and that's very important. In addition to that, the culture. And culture, there's obviously a say in a culture eats strategy for breakfast. I believe that's true. It is truly about the mission that you provide to your team members and your leaders that allows them to scale with you. And it's simple things about just asking people how they are feeling. And these are things that you don't actually do on a day-to-day basis. It's just normally, okay, it's a it's a conversation of project and it's a conversation of KPIs and delivery, but we forget there's a human behind that screen or there's a human behind that project that has feelings, that has the ability to communicate with you on a personal level to understand why they're performing at this level or a different level. And it comes down to that communication, allowing them to explain where they are in life, where they are in that cycle, and how are they delivering the information to their team members.

Tish Squillaro 12:49

Well, one, AK, I love your phrase, the culture eats strategy for breakfast, because I do think culture is defined, at least for me, how you communicate and you make decisions, right? So you just described it that way. How a team communicates openly, not openly, with fear, without fear, holding accountable, not holding accountable. All of that is the culture you're forming. And then how you make decisions. Who's making decisions? Is it one person? Is it consensus building? Is it about what people like, or is it what we need as a business? So when I look at culture, the the uh equation I've always followed is it's what you say from the communication, how you do it, and how you make decisions. And I love that you hit on trust because one of the things that I always focus on with teams is doing a little survey around how do they get along. And trust is always the number one challenge because it isn't the lack of trust that someone's out to get someone. So it's not that level of trust, right? We don't usually have teams where there's backstabbing, right? It's not that level of trust, but it's trust that you will be supported, right? I mean, many times around the table, you may still need to work through that answer everyone's looking for from you, right? Or your team is falling behind, so you need support from another team. So trust is being able to have those tough conversations, and the CEO, as you know, is the one that fosters whether or not there is trust. And do they trust the process? Do we have a process, right? Because that takes the emotions out. And so, yes, I mean, I agree with you. I do think those are two, again, great tips for people listening to us. Trust is the number one key in building out teams of accountability, right? Because you need to have it. And then how you build your culture, it does inform. It's not we add five more people and we have new culture. Culture is based on how we communicate and how we make decisions. And sometimes the CEO has trouble looking in the mirror. So, AK, when you look in the mirror, what is it that you would change about what you're doing to be even better?

Akram Khalis 14:57

I try to continue lead with example. That's my method. Is when my teammates and my leaders look at me and go, okay, if AK can do it, we can do it. And that's the only motivation I have is to continue show them that it can be done. And you lead with example, normally you end up with a great team behind you because they see it as it's not impossible. It can be done. And usually if a leader does it, everybody else try to follow that example.

Tish Squillaro 15:22

That's a great example. As long as we're not doing it for them, which is not what you said, but I want to just put that out there. We want to show I could do it, I get my hands dirty, I can get involved and have the tough conversations. I think that's one of the lead-by-example roles that's really important and gets lost a little bit, is because, you know, in that CEO role, you try to be the peacemaker or the person that everybody can come to safely and say anything they want. But sometimes you've got to be the CEO that's gonna show them this is hard. And let me show you that I find it hard, but I still do it. And it's that learning from example that I think really will help drive an effective team. You've been terrific. Thank you so much, AK. Honestly, everything we've never met, but every one of your answers is everything I believe in. And for those really following the tips you have and the way in which I engage with clients, it's so important to be able to communicate, right? You really want people to know expectation setting, how you're gonna do stuff. So if you had a tip, one last thing you'd want to give to that CEO, founder, someone getting ready to build that team, what's one tip you'd like to give them today?

Akram Khalis 16:36

I think it's go ahead and communicate with your teams. You'll be surprised and communicate at a human level. Get to know them even just a little bit. You'll be surprised as a leader and a founder that your team have a lot to say. They just don't have the opportunity to come to you and ask those questions and answer those questions, but they're looking for you to ask those questions.

Tish Squillaro 16:59

They are. Yes. No, I agree. And I do think that title, no matter who sits in it, is a scary title. That no matter what level at the organization, when a CEO says something, it's very different than when someone else says something. So there's this aura. And what I tell all my CEOs as they think about how they want to lead, remember what it's like to be a collaborator and a partner. If you treat the team as your business partners, you'll never have to have that stigma of that everything has to be perfect for you because they know that you can work through stuff together. And it is how you display your communication and you build the trust. And so I thank you very much. It's been great to meet you, and I hope people learn a lot from your leadership. You sound amazing. I actually want to get to know you after this podcast because I love your thoughts on how you build strong teams. So thank you, everybody. I hope this was educational and there's something that you got from it that you're going to go start doing right away today.

Akram Khalis 17:56

It's an absolute pleasure.