How Kindness and Love Build High-Performing Teams

Teskey is VP of Marketing at Andersen. Before that she spent nearly 17 years at Hallmark, with stops at U.S. Bank and Deluxe, and an early detour that took her to Australia with one 90-day contract and a plan to stay. She stayed four years. Across all of it she has been running the same quiet experiment: whether you can build genuinely high-performing teams on trust rather than fear.

She is exact about the difference between being kind and being nice. Nice waves at the new neighbor from the driveway; kindness invites them in. Nice avoids the hard conversation to keep the peace; kindness has the hard conversation, because people deserve to know what is holding them back. Nice is on the surface. Kindness is in the heart, and it is the harder of the two.

She also uses a word most leaders avoid at work. Borrowing from Chris Lowney’s Heroic Leadership, she says the fourth principle is love, leading with love rather than fear, given in abundance and without expecting it back. An equation of do X, get Y atrophies. Abundance compounds, because people carry it to their own teams.

The evidence she offers is not a framework. It is a cyberattack that took a Hallmark business offline for 28 business days with no website, no email, and no phone, and a leader who moved into a glass conference room so her team would see her every morning. They did not lose a customer. It is also a breakfast she still has once a quarter with a marketing leadership team she left roughly a decade ago.

Mark and Heather talk about brand under strain, why the long game beats the quick fix, what it costs a leader to show emotion at the executive table, the discipline of deciding and then not tunneling back, and the 45 minutes of silence she keeps every morning on the drive to Bayport.

• 00:07 Cold Open
• 01:07 Introduction to Heather Teskey
• 01:47 Heather Teskey's Marketing Journey
• 07:02 Balancing Customer Focus and Revenue
• 11:58 The Power of Kindness in Leadership
• 16:57 Building Trust and High-Performing Teams
• 22:06 Brand Integrity During Crisis
• 28:14 Navigating Crisis with Transparency
• 34:30 Grounding Through Personal Values
• 38:26 The Role of Curiosity in Leadership
• 42:39 Authenticity in Leadership
• 49:34 Value-Driven Leadership in Action

Heather Teskey (00:07)
So when I was at Hallmark, we had probably like, I hope it's only once in my life that I have to go through. So we had a software as a service, And you can imagine what the Hallmark brand stands for. And we had a cyber attack. And we had to shut down our portion of the business for 28 business days.

And when I say shut down, I'm telling you, I had no website.

I had no phone. I had a fax machine. I had no email. And I had my cell phone. I mean, I'm talking about shutdown. Like we cut off the entire

thing. So you can imagine I'm calling customers and I'm like, do you have a fax machine? Like look at your business card. Do you see at the bottom of the business card? Cause I'd love to send you something.

And so you can imagine we had also about $70 million worth of gift cards that people wanted to redeem and they couldn't get to it.

Mark Benson (01:07)
Hi, I'm Mark Benson and this is Pressure Rising, where we get curious about the conditions and the capabilities that turn pressure into performance. Heather Teskey's led marketing at Hallmark, US Bank, Deluxe, and now Andersen Something that Heather is known for, if you've ever worked with her or for her, is kindness. And she's very careful to point out the distinction between kindness and being merely nice, which are two very different things that affect the performance of a team.

Heather also ran a team through this harrowing twenty eight day stretch that you just heard about without losing a customer. I've been wanting to ask her about how those two things connect. I hope you enjoy the conversation.

Heather Teskey (02:09)
you

Mark Benson (02:09)
Teskey, it's so good to have you here today. I've been really looking forward to this conversation. So thanks for joining me.

Heather Teskey (02:15)
Happy to

Mark Benson (02:17)
Heather, know your, you know, the history in your career, you've been leading marketing at companies like Hallmark and US Bank and Deluxe and now most recently with Andersen. And I just wonder, you know, what is it about your experience across all of those organizations that has taught you?

compared to somebody who's maybe stayed in just one industry or one company over time.

Heather Teskey (02:48)
Yeah, you know, Mark, I might walk you back to like the start of the career and how it got going

Mark Benson (02:54)
Yes.

Heather Teskey (02:54)
and then how these different industries just played into. But I graduated with a marketing degree from Colorado State and really started my world in the advertising industry. And so I was with a company called the

Lacek Group. There were about 50 of us at that time. Mark Lacek had just started it and we were working on loyalty programs.

And so I was sort of grounded in loyalty and understanding customers in different ways that we can motivate and inspire them for different behaviors. At that point, I had a wonderful moment. I'm walking by the head of business development's office and she said, Hey, Heather, I'm looking to open an office in Australia. Do you want to come? And I said, sure, I'd love to. And so she and I about six months later moved down to Australia, just the two of us.

And we had one 90 day contract and our goal was to stay. And so we did and we became their agency of record for the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. And I really felt like that early in my career, that was like my mini MBA, that we were starting a small business in Australia in a completely different culture, you know, in the biggest bank that was in Australia and what could we do? And in the four years we were there, we grew to about 20 people. We had an office in Sydney, we had an office in Auckland.

And so I started to get to apply my practice across different industries. Maybe it was the hotel industry, maybe it was the banking industry, maybe it was the frequent flyer, the airline industry. And so when I came back to the Twin Cities and spent some time at Campbell Muthoon working with H &R Block, I started to just see how marketing applied and it really came down to understanding the customer and what were their needs and then how could we influence them in different ways.

And so after having that, and I would like recommend to any marketer that's thinking about their career that like that advertising agency background gives you such an understanding of a variety of clients. But I had decided I sort of wanted to move over to what I called the client side. And I started with Hallmark and I spent the bulk of my career at Hallmark. So they had a B2B organization that was in Minneapolis and Hallmark at that time was trying to figure out how to add value to their e-cards.

So they were seeing this e-card happening and they wanted to add a gifting value. And there was this company in Minneapolis called the Gift Certificate Center that did just that. They had this award that you could redeem for the gift certificate or gift card of your choice. And so Hallmark actually acquired that company. And so I had this opportunity to be with Hallmark. But I was still on this lens of like what makes marketing really work. And that's understanding the target audience and who you're really going after.

And so I think I was building my principles of marketing from a direct, from above the line, below the line. But in that same time, I was really building myself as a leader. And I'll give you like a little secret of mine. Like I love marketing, but I really love leadership. And I just use marketing as my platform to get to go build and lead high performing teams. So if I understood all the marketing, but I was really about leadership, I could then go apply that whether I went to us bank.

in the financial services to Deluxe, which was doing all this payment processing. And then now I'm at Andersen. So now I'm in this manufacturing industry of making windows and doors, but I found every one of those added to my expertise, but every one of the leadership principles that I had just would be applicable in each of those areas.

Mark Benson (06:34)
Well, You know, speaking of like marketing and focusing on the customer and doing that, there's lots of tensions, I know, that have to be balanced between things and focusing on the customer. mean, sometimes that requires a long view of like doing the right thing that can develop over time. And sometimes there's short-term things. as a marketing leader,

How

have you balanced the tension between really, you know, a function that's accountable for revenue, like driving revenue growth and those commercial responsibilities and balancing that with the tension of being creative and doing things that matter for the customer, even if it's not delivering immediate near-term value, but it's the right thing to do over the long-term? Like, how do you, how have you balanced those tensions?

Heather Teskey (07:31)
You know, I would tell you in my B2B marketing, which is where I spent most of my time at Hallmark and now at Andersen, it's really hard because guess what? I'm usually selling to one buyer who's then selling to another buyer. And so I could have a 12 to 18 month sales cycle in that. But if you really go to the core, if your customers trust you and they believe that you have the right product and service and you're going to do what's right for them, they'll stay with you.

And so I always go back to like, if you're living in this customer centric organization and you really believe that they're really at the center of the table, then doing what's right for them will only help you in the long game rather than the short game. think sometimes in consumer marketing, it can be much more of that short game because you get such quick reaction to, send an email out, did they buy that or not? But in the B2B, it's really about relationship. And I've

probably leaned more towards that because who I am is about relationship building. And so how did those come together? But it can be difficult at the executive table because there's a lot of questions. There's only a bucket of dollars and we all have to decide how we're going to spend that. And here I'm asking you to trust me, spend a dollar with me because I really think this is important, but I might not be able to tell you right away what the ROI is on that. And so that takes time. takes looking at some long

range tools like a brand equity study to understand where are your customers, you know, in your brand. It looks at short-term things like I look at my website and how many quotes did I do and how many did I deliver to that. So I think you have a mix of tools, but at the essence of it all, you have to say you care about that customer and you want to do what's right for them. And then you start, you know, taking the different tactics that you have to deliver to that.

Mark Benson (09:26)
makes sense. Heather, I've heard you talk a lot about the topic of kindness and I'd love to hear more on that. I know there's there there can be an assumption that you know you can either be kind or you can be high performing but not both. But what have you learned about the relationship between genuine kindness as a leader with a team?

and then doing that in a way that actually delivers performance that you want to see. But tell me more about kindness and what that's meant to you as a leader.

Heather Teskey (10:04)
Yeah. Mark, if you don't mind, I might share sort of the inspiration, how kindness sort of came to my core and

Mark Benson (10:10)
Yeah.

Heather Teskey (10:11)
who I am. And then we could sort of ladder it up to what that came to be. I was doing some vision work for myself early on in my life of like, gosh, what do I want to be known for? And unfortunately, the vision work came out of just a sad moment in my life of losing my mom at an early age. And I can remember my brother and my dad and I.

sitting down and trying to decide what that tombstone would say. And we came up with this idea that we thought the most poetic way to describe her was our strength and our guide. And it made me pause and I thought, gosh, if my family was sitting down and they were trying to think, how do I encapsulate my mom or my wife on this? What would that be? And I thought, if I could have that moment, I would want them to say that her kindness

mattered. That literally the way she touched everybody in the world mattered, that she made this difference. So if I was thinking about that end and thinking, gosh, that's where I want to get to. Well, then all of sudden you start looking throughout what you're doing and how do you deliver that. And I delivered in my personal life and my professional life. I think it's important that like to me, kindness and nice are not the same thing. So Mark and I are both from Minnesota. We always hear about the Minnesota nice.

And I do want to clarify that kindness to me, let's give an example, you have the new neighbor that moves in. The Minnesota nice here will wave to the new neighbor and welcome them, but you'll never take them into your home. Kindness is you invite them into your home and you actually sit down and get to know them. You nice is as you're on the highway and you see the car next to you and you smile, but you're not going to slow down to let them move in. But kindness says, hey, I'll let them move in.

So I think there's this real difference to me, nice is on the surface and kindness is in the heart. And when you really are going from the heart and that's what you're giving. And so I looked at who I wanted to be and then I look at the platforms I have and leadership was one of them. And I just realized that inherent in me was this idea of being kind and leadership. And I hadn't heard a lot about that.

And I think there's so many examples we have where it's about being that hard nose, you know, I'm going to get the job done. And that just wasn't who I was. And I wasn't going to be able to be this authentic leader without, you know, looking at who I am and how I do that. And so it comes to life in this idea that you're building a high performing team and it's all on a foundation of trust and respect.

And there's this great book that I just read that just actually added another layer of this to me. It's by Chris Lowney. It's called Heroic Leadership. it talks about he was actually a Jesuit priest. Okay. And he decided to leave that and he headed off to Wall Street and worked for JP Morgan as an investment banker. But he felt that Loyola in the Jesuit movement had taught him these principles.

of heroic leadership that he was going to go apply on Wall Street. And he said there were really four principles to it. There was first that you had to have self-awareness, you know, know thyself. There was a second that you needed to have ingenuity, which he described as like living with one foot raised. Like there are things that go awry, times you need to innovate and you just always have this one foot raised and you're ready to pivot and manage to that.

The third was what he called heroism, which was that you had this vision, like this amazing vision that everybody was trying to aspire to deliver to. And then the fourth, he said, was love. That you were leading with love rather than fear. And when I think about kindness, I just go right to the heart and I think about love. And when you lead with love, what can that do to a group? And what I loved about that, saying love too many times, but

What I loved about that is I have never in my work world used the word love. We use empathy, kindness, use all these, but we don't call it love. And it really is. And it's about taking that fear away. And I think that's what the platform of kindness does, is it creates a community that can trust each other, respect each other. They want what's best for each other. And then as you set that, that vision of where you're trying to go, they all want to

accomplish that together. And that feels like a very different team than a team that is being guided by fear or uncertainty or a lack of respect or a lack of trust. So that's where I think kindness-based leadership is established. But I have to say it is a long game, not a short game, because if you're going to build a really strong platform of trust and respect, it takes time.

they look to your actions and they look to your words and they need to see it over and over and over again to know that it's real. And so I think the struggle for radical kindness is that it just, takes a longer time and it takes this commitment that people are watching saying, does she really mean it? And you have to continue to exhibit that. So it makes you like lift up the bar of what you're doing.

But what I've found is when I lift the bar and I'm like, this is the culture we work in. This is how I treat people. This is how I expect others to be treated. That those that aren't doing that, it doesn't feel very good. And it actually changes their behavior because it doesn't feel good to beat up somebody that isn't playing the same game that you are.

Mark Benson (16:01)
I love that other It's true. I don't know that like in the workplace. I've Used or heard, you know love being used enough, but it's such a central human thing and to to actually feel loved by other people around you or by your leader like is a Game-changing thing. I mean, that's I Love that. How does that show up?

Heather Teskey (16:27)
And I'll tell you, I think

there's another really important part of that love is that it's given in abundance, so it's not a constricted. But I look at it and often it can't be an equation. Like it needs to be something that you are trying to give in abundance because if it's an equation, the do X get Y only atrophies over time. And often the love I'm sharing to my team, they might not be able to share back to me, but now I'm an example that they can take that love and share it to their teams.

So I see it as something that like rolls in what we give to others. You can't look to have that directly back, but you think, gosh, I'm creating this culture that everybody can then go give that.

Mark Benson (17:10)
Nice. Heather, how have you seen this affect teams? if, know, in your experience going from maybe when you first start leading a team or you're in a new organization and you start putting this in practice, I mean, I guess two questions. Like one is what does it look like day to day or week to week in order like examples of like where that shows up? And then also what have you seen? You you said it was a long game. I believe that, but what is that?

what then happens to the teams over the long term when radical kindness really becomes not just something that you espouse as a leader, but it becomes cultural.

Heather Teskey (17:46)
Yeah. So it's interesting. So I told you, I spent, you know, almost 17 years at Hallmark. I still get together once a quarter and have breakfast with my old marketing leadership team. So that's

Mark Benson (17:58)
Mm.

Heather Teskey (17:59)
what a long game feels like. It's been 10 years or maybe eight years since we've been together and we still meet up for breakfast and we're all at different companies. None of us are there anymore. So that's what it feels like. It feels like you have a relationship. Like if you look at the Gallup survey for employee engagement,

The number one question that tells you if people are going to stay is, have a best friend at work. And I used to think that was such a silly question. I'm like, who has a best friend at work? But you literally do. And that's what keeps you together because you like each other and you you don't want to let each other down and you're there to support each other. And so to me, what I've seen is that you have this commitment and this loyalty. And there's another facet of this, Mark, that I think is important.

Nice would feel like, I'm gonna have this commitment and loyalty, but I'm not willing to have the hard conversation. And I'll tell you, early on in my career, I probably struggled. I was probably a pleaser. I was like, oh, I don't want to have that hard conversation. But actually, kindness is having the hard conversation because you have the best interest of the other person to help them grow. And guess what? For them to grow, they need to be aware if there's somebody, something that's really holding them back.

But if you don't have that trust and respect as a foundation, they don't know how to take that. And so that's where you have to sort of set that foundation to say, okay, now I can go give you that truth because I really want you to excel and I want you to get to be better. But if I don't give you this truth and I'm holding you back. And so I think sometimes we get confused with like kindness won't do the hard thing. Kindness does the hard thing. It's just, they spend a lot of time. They have a lot of empathy.

They're really thoughtful about those words. They make sure that they can, you know, say it in a way that someone can really take that forward. And so I think that becomes really important. But the way that you can feel it is all of sudden the team is moving and they're willing to take ideas from each other. They have comfort that they could fail. They could try something, it could fail, and they know that you've got their back and that we're going to learn from that and move forward. And I think

If you have that kind of culture, all of sudden it breeds this creativity and innovation. And if you put that customer again at the center and say, gosh, but we're all about caring for this and they take all that energy and put it towards the customer, then you start seeing that really pay off.

Mark Benson (20:28)
How does it affect, Heather, the actual product in terms of communication to the customer, whether that's a consumer or it's a business or whatnot? mean, obviously different brands have different brand voices, so I wanna just confuse things too much, but where it shows up in how the team actually does their creative work or how that shows up, does that radical kindness that's happening inside the team in your experience?

Does that actually show up in certain ways, even if they're not overt in actually messages to external customers? is it just an internal leadership thing about?

Heather Teskey (21:06)
Yeah.

That's such a good question. You know, I think about like this week, we had a council that was visiting us that we created of our customers. And, and I will just tell you Andersen, probably why this is such a good fit for me is the culture of Andersen is what I believe in. Like this kindness that is so real here. So anyway, we brought in a dozen customers. We spent a couple days with them.

And the genuine connection and care for these customers, they might've walked in like, hmm, I'm not quite sure. They walked out just so energized and became what you call like the raving fans. You know what I mean? They're like, we want to go win with you. And it really came because every touch point we thought about and we just sat with them and listened, like, tell us what you're thinking. And then we really brought to life who we are as a company.

which is a family owned, 120 some year old business, that they could see that genuine nature was real. And I think they're gonna go back to their business and say, I want to be loyal to Andersen because I know that they care and that they're there and that they were listening to me. So I do think as we connect with our customers in those relationship building, if you have that kindness as a backdrop, it's really there.

When I think about my marketing, like now I'm thinking I'm creating a commercial or my direct mail piece. I don't know if I've thought of kindness coming in to that. It's probably more about what does the brand stand for. So like at Andersen, we stand for quality and trust. So kindness probably surfaces because that comes with that. But at that point, you're more looking at what does that brand stand for? How do you articulate that? And what does that look like?

Mark Benson (23:01)
It makes sense. So Heather, just talking about brand for a minute. So brand under strain. So when an organization's under significant pressure or strain, sometimes the brand story can start to drift or there can be things that have to do some quick fix thing to correct maybe a misperception in the market or something like that. But you know, how...

How, a marketing leader, how do you protect brand coherence and keeping that long-term view that you talked about when the organization or maybe economic forces are itself putting the brand under significant pressure? How have you balanced that to maintain that long-term coherence?

Heather Teskey (23:54)
So when I was at Hallmark, we had probably like, I hope it's only once in my life that I have to go through. So we had a software as a service, okay. And you can imagine what the Hallmark brand stands for. And we had a cyber attack. And we had to shut down our portion of the business for 28 business days.

Mark Benson (24:17)
Oof.

Heather Teskey (24:18)
And when I say shut down, I'm telling you, I had no website.

I had no phone. I had a fax machine. I had no email. And I had my cell phone. I mean, I'm talking about shutdown. Like we cut off the entire

Mark Benson (24:35)
Wow.

Heather Teskey (24:37)
thing. So you can imagine I'm calling customers and I'm like, do you have a fax machine? Like look at your business card. Do you see at the bottom of the business card? Cause I'd love to send you something.

And so you can imagine we had also about $70 million worth of gift cards that people wanted to redeem and they couldn't get to it. So, and I had major customers. I had top 10 brands that were working with us. So let me tell you what we did. Like this was one of my, like I would say one of my defining sort of moments in leadership. I can remember I was actually at the Minnesota State Fair when the call came in that the cyber attack had happened.

and that they were in our system. And Hallmark was just very conservative and said, just shut it all down. Like, we don't want to take that risk. And so I came into the office that Monday and I actually closed my office door and I didn't open it again. And I moved into this conference room that when you walked in the door, was an all glass conference room. And I made that my office because my intent was that every day when the employees walked in, they would see me. And then every morning I ran a meeting.

with all the salespeople to talk about, okay, what did we know that morning? And then every afternoon I had that same meeting. So that we just had this continuous communication. They knew we were there and we were continually telling them, and I will tell you, Mark, we thought we would be up by the end of the day, by the end of the week, and it was 28 business days later. And we didn't lose a customer because what we did through all of that is we just were as transparent as we could be with the customer.

We would tell them what we knew. You know, we would obviously have that humility. We would ask for the grace, but we would communicate all the way through. And so at the end of it, they knew that we were there and that we weren't trying to blame somebody else or do something else, but that we would follow it all the way through. And so I think that really came to life of like, how does a brand show up when the crisis happens? And I think sometimes brands show up by sort of

shutting things off, wanting to blame others, wanting to go silent. And what I found is we had to really be out there and manage that with each and every one of them. And as we got back online, we shored everything up, we kept those customers and then we could continue to get new customers where we could have ruined the brand in that moment. So to me, that's how brands do it. You have to understand what you're known for, but then you have to live those values in when you're falling and when you're not. Andersen.

high, high quality, but we do make mistakes. And guess what Andersen's known for? Is that we make it right. So when we do fall down, something happens with the window, it's broken or it didn't come exactly as designed. Our customers know they can call us and we'll go make it right. And that then builds that brand that probably does more for my brand than all the advertising I do. Because it's that application that now you had that experience, you go tell your friend.

and that builds the brand value.

Mark Benson (27:45)
That's an incredible story. cannot believe that that's a long time to have the website down, email.

Heather Teskey (27:53)
It's 40 days, but yeah.

Mark Benson (27:56)
is rough. mean, that easily could destroy business

Heather Teskey (28:00)
It could have been the end.

Mark Benson (28:01)
with that. So that's incredible. Heather, have you had situations, I mean, whether it that one or others where you had other leaders that you're working with in the company that maybe had a different perspective?

I

mean, you talked about transparency, communication. There's probably a lot of people who would look at that and say, yes, of course that makes sense. But then like doing it, like putting yourself in that glass conference room, having the meetings, doing that, like that, you got to follow through on that. But I know that sometimes when brands are under significant crisis, that there could be, there could be other voices that say, Heather, just make this go away, do this, like don't, and

Heather Teskey (28:40)
Yeah.

Mark Benson (28:40)
force you to do maybe near term, near sighted things.

to like cover up the problem. Like for instance, in that situation, a hallmark maybe like don't tell people the whole truth because it's embarrassing. anyway, whether it there or other places, have you found that there's been tension with other like stakeholders? And if so, like how have you managed through that when not everybody has the same view on what to do?

Heather Teskey (29:05)
Mark, it's really hard and I've had other parts of my career where I wasn't in a culture that probably valued what I did. And so I felt alone and isolated. And I can remember like I'd have leaders come to me and they'd say, you're just too nice, Heather. You just need to toughen up. And that was because that was their leadership style and what had worked for them and probably culturally was sort of where the company was. So there's sometimes that that culture just doesn't work out. But even in that,

I would continue to sort of focus on what was in my circle of influence. So I would think about who are the people that I can lead in the way that I do and manage that. And then I would be honest with like, you know, this is where we are as much as I could be. But I think I felt convicted that I really believed in my authentic leadership and I was never going to be good at anybody else's. And so I had to hold on to my own.

So it can be hard. You know, I think about when COVID was happening and just all the uncertainty we had there and the short-sighted choices we all had to make, because we had no idea what business was going to take off, when this was going to end. And so I felt like in that time I had to make a lot of short-term choices, you know, and what I did in that is I just kept being available and empathetic and sort of sharing with my team what was happening.

And as we went through those different changes, you know, if it was layoffs or whatever we were doing, just trying to be really authentic to it. And Mark, I'll be honest, sometimes that shows an emotion. Like I, you know, in some of those moments I can become tearful. And that's not that I'm weak. It's just that I care that much. And so I think that's really important because there we're all humans and we're going through a lot of things. And I think when you see a leader that can show.

the emotion, that that's a positive. Where, I'll be honest, as a female trying to get into leadership, I don't think that was something that was seen as a positive. That was your weakness that showed maybe you can't get to that higher level, Heather, because emotion doesn't belong at that table. And I am very balanced at it, but my emotions are real. And I think having that vulnerability, the other part of it, I'll tell you, is that I just believe in granting grace.

And there are moments that people don't get to be their best selves. And that's not their intention. It's just everything that's weighing on them. And so I think a lot about like, how do I grant grace for somebody that's going through that and try to understand where they're coming from? And then also let that be a moment and not the story forever. So how do I let go? And maybe later we could try it in a different way. I'll tell you when we were going through some of the

challenges this year in Minnesota that were happening. I had a leadership moment that I was not my best self. So I had come in with my leadership team and there had been an incident and I had just learned of it, but I didn't know if my team was aware of all that was going on. And I walked into the meeting and I just chose not to talk about it. And I just moved on. I was like, let's talk about the town hall and what we're doing here and what we're doing there.

but there was this elephant in the room and I didn't address it. And I didn't feel great about that. And thankfully, through the trust I have, one of my teammates called me and was like, I'm really upset. Like there are some major things going on and to not address it, like that just doesn't seem right. And I thought, you're absolutely right. But I was so, I didn't know what to say. And I think sometimes as leaders, this is where we fall down.

We don't know what to say. So we just don't say anything at all, rather than being vulnerable and saying, I really don't know what to do. So the next morning I pulled the whole team back together and I said, Hey, I just, I want to apologize. Like, I'm really sorry. I don't think I led very well yesterday. You know, there is a lot going on. We're all emotionally going through a lot with what was happening. And I felt like I didn't talk about it and I should have. So let's have that conversation right now. And let me tell you what,

Andersen is doing and you know what's happened here and what I'm aware of but I said I just want to make sure that we're having this dialogue because it's hard to lead through all this and then my conviction was don't do what I just did like go to your teams and have this dialogue and I'm telling you it just all of a sudden you could feel like that suppression like come off people that we could actually talk about what was going on and realize that it was really hard.

and how do we get through it? I think this grace, you know, I'm trying to live it every day, but I'm not perfect, but granting grace to yourself and then to others and understanding that we just don't all get to be our perfect best selves at all times and having space for that. But then it's that, how do I, but continue every day to drive towards this? And can people see that? And even when they see me fall down,

They see me pick myself back up and I try again. And I think that becomes really important as just an example to others.

Mark Benson (34:30)
That's

a great example. Heather, how do you stay grounded personally? Like when everything is swirling and you get demands of all the multiple facets of your life, how do you stay grounded personally?

Heather Teskey (34:45)
Yeah. Yeah.

So for me, Mark, and everybody has their own journey, my faith is my grounding. So that is definitely just knowing that I have this higher purpose. And, you know, as I started, like, what do I want to be known for? And how do I deliver on that? But Mark, I make some intentional moments. So I live in on the southwest side of Minneapolis. I work like I look out at Wisconsin every day.

So I've got quite a drive. I'm over in Stillwater or Bayport, Minnesota. So it ends up being a 45 minute drive on the way there and probably an hour on the way home. And I have committed that in the morning for 45 minutes, it's all in silence. There's no radio, there's no calls. I just have time to really ground myself and do whatever that is in meditation and prayer to just really be ready for my day.

And then I love it. So I walk in, Mark, and I get off to my floor and always before I get there, there's two employees that arrive and they are some employees that give our tours on our manufacturing floor. And so my first moment in the morning is saying hello to them and checking on their day and just enjoying this little time with a couple of team members, you know, and then I get into my day and I'll tell you, I have a couple of values that I live by that have a pro and a con to them.

But I really believe one of my values is to be present. And so that means that I commit myself to not multitask. So if I'm in a meeting, I'm not trying to do my text and I'm not trying to do my email. I'm trying to be fully present in that meeting. And if I'm meeting with somebody to be fully present, the downside of that is like my email is a hot mess because I don't spend that time that a lot of people do. But I think it's about being respectful and truly intentional.

And if you are, if everybody was fully present, I bet those meetings would take half the time that they do because

Mark Benson (36:46)
Hmm.

Heather Teskey (36:46)
you're trying to come into that. So that's really important to me. Another thing that's really important to me is to be curious. And that means listening probably more than talking and really wanting to know what people are doing, the why behind it, and then thinking about how can I add value to that.

And so I think that helps set this like stage of, gosh, we're here to seek to understand rather than to be understood. And then at the end of the day, as I come to close, I sort of reflect on really three things and then I have a moment. And those three things are around what our family sort of focuses on, which is how did we perform in having a positive attitude? Did we give our full effort?

and then were we respectful to ourselves and to those around us. So I do a quick little like, was my attitude today? How was my effort? And then how was my respect? And then the last thing I just like to do is end on a positive, which is what's that gratitude moment? Like what is one thing that I was just really thankful for today? And then I'll tell you, Mark, when I get home, the phone goes away and now I'm present with my family and I make the most of the time that I have with them.

And then the next day we start all over again. So that has been important to me in just getting to be where I need to be. And I think that intentional quiet time helps me get grounded no matter what kind of day I'm coming into. The easy ones are the really hard ones. I have that time to just breathe, reflect, and get ready for

Mark Benson (38:26)
Well,

that's inspiring. I'm going to borrow some of those ideas on the commute home. that's, yeah, very inspiring. Heather, I was going to ask you about curiosity. You brought it up already.

Heather Teskey (38:39)
Yeah.

Mark Benson (38:39)
But what is the role of curiosity when it comes to radical kindness, you know, and creating an environment of that to especially when pressure is on?

You know, because if you're sitting down with a friend, you're having coffee, you've got lots of time and you're both like very present and just, you know, maybe it's easier to be curious because you want to care about the other person. But when you've got a million things going on and time pressures and you're going from one meeting to the next and there's a wide variety of maybe fires or emergencies going on and you want to have this culture of radical kindness.

What is the role of curiosity in that?

Heather Teskey (39:23)
It's really important and let me tell you, I think that curiosity in building the foundation of trust and respect allows curiosity to expedite later. So if you're building the foundation and you've had enough curiosity about people to know them as individuals and that you care and you have this empathy, later your curiosity can go faster because they already know you care. So now you know that as you come together and you're asking the questions and things like that, you're looking to try to solve something.

And I feel like you actually speed up a little bit, but I think curiosity is key in part is because people just want you to, for them to know that you care about their opinion and what they're doing. But with that, Mark, I think you have this curiosity, you have the conversation. We have lots of debates across a team. There's also something that is really important in that is that decisioning. So, you you could think.

kindness could get to like, we're gonna just have a kumbaya and everybody has to be happy. It's having the curiosity, getting all those players at the table, hearing that, but then creating that decide and having the confidence in that decision that after decide we go to act and we don't go back to like,

Mark Benson (40:41)
you

Heather Teskey (40:41)
do we really think that decision? And so I think as strong leaders, there's moments that we have to call the play.

that we have to decide and help people understand what that decision is and that we're gonna move forward with that. And that becomes really important because people are looking for that. And if they feel like they've been heard, even if you decide to go a different way than what they were hoping, but they've been heard and they can understand your why to the decide, then everybody can get on board and you take away all of the effort that really is not worth anything as everybody questions the decide.

Mark Benson (41:17)
Yeah, that can be such a waste of time to go back and re-litigate past decisions like that instead of carrying.

Heather Teskey (41:25)
We used to call

it like tunneling under, know, tunneling back. And you're just like, you can't do that. The, the decide is there. And then we move forward. And I think my team, do a really nice job of that. Like we sort of know. And, and sometimes I think maybe it's important to be able to say, Hey, right now as a leader, I'm thinking out loud compared to as a leader, I'm telling you, this is what we're doing. I had a leader that did a really good job. He was the CEO and he would say, so everybody knows I'm just thinking out loud.

There is no, you know, don't go act on what I'm saying. But when it wasn't that and he was telling you, he would say, this is the decision and you move forward, which just created clarity for all of us that like, oh, okay. You know, but it also created a culture that when he was thinking out loud, you watched how he was doing that and realized you could do the same. And what does that come together?

Mark Benson (42:18)
setting the tone of what's expected. Yeah, I love that. Heather, if you could go back and talk to the younger version of yourself in the middle of your career, what would you want her to understand about what great leadership actually looks like?

Heather Teskey (42:39)
I think the main thing I would say is that you need to be your authentic self. And I think it took me a while to get comfortable with that. I was a female trying to come into, you know, from a leadership level, really a male world. And I feel like there were times I thought I needed to emulate other people in order to do that. And it was when I got just truly comfortable with who I am and confidence in that, and then I could build.

this better authentic self. Like, Heather, this is like your little superpower over here. Make sure you leverage that. And guess what, Heather, you're not very good at this. So either go find others that are great at that, or you need to go build out that skill. But I wish I had had more confidence and that I wasn't insecure. And I think probably everybody goes through that, but I just feel like that is an area that I see.

girls and women going through just this insecurity like, my gosh, what if they find out that I'm really not what they think I am? And I wish earlier I found that confidence and then built that. The other thing that I have realized through my career is that the culture matters. And I will tell you the two key places that I saw that was at Hallmark and now at Andersen. And when the culture aligns with who you are,

and what you believe in, I find it much easier to thrive. So at Hallmark, now, granted, both of these are family-owned businesses, so maybe there's something in common there. But at Hallmark, when I was there, it was the grandsons of the founder that were the co-CEOs. And the values of Hallmark were the family values. So they could clearly see when we were out of line of the values, because it was their own values. And they'd say, we don't do that.

I remember I had two moments at Hallmark that just really set with me of like how you run a value-driven company. The first one is we had this direct mail. So imagine you get your mail and you take all the greeting cards and you put them together. And we worked with a bank that was working with people that hadn't paid their bill. Okay. So we were testing this idea that what if we sent you a greeting card? Said, Hey, I know you're really challenged right now.

but just give us a call and we'll help you. Okay? Compared to what you'd usually get of the letters or the calls about, you know, that you're back in pay. And it performed amazing, Mark. Like people opened the letter, they called, you know, and on. So we were like, let's build that out. There was so much more we could do with this. And it was a really profitable business. And I remember going and we were having the conversation about building this out, this bad debt business that we were going to get into.

And I just loved it. Dave Hall at that time said to us, he's like, I am a brand, not a bank. And it doesn't matter how much money that's gonna make for me. That's not what we do. And so they had these like five B's of places they didn't play like bets and butts and babes and blah, blah, blah. They added a six B, which was bad debt. But I loved it because that's what a brand does. They're like, that's not who I am.

And then the second example I have, and this was the other brother, Don, we had this little company up in Duluth where these ladies would handwrite greeting cards. So like, you know, might be your birthday card from one of your agents and they would handwrite that card. Well, of course, over time, we figured out how to automate that and how to make handwriting with a machine look just like the handwriting of a person. And so we were gonna step that down.

because we didn't need all these individuals handwriting for us. So the plan was we were going to go up and we were going to lay off half of them. And then in about three or four months, we were going to lay off the other half. We're literally about to go up. And Don says, but what are you going to say to the other half when they ask, what about my job? We're like, we're just going to say right now, we need to reduce this. And

Mark Benson (46:53)
Mm-hmm.

Heather Teskey (46:53)
he's like, no. He said that just.

That isn't fair to those individuals because you know the answer and you're not sharing it with them. He said, I would rather you keep all of them, even though that cost was going to be more. And then let's close it down together when we can tell them the real story of like, no, we're shutting this down. We figured out an automated way. Can you imagine like what one as a leader watching that he was willing to have the incremental expense because he knew it was the right thing to do for those people.

But Mark, when we shut that down, there was such a celebration of that whole team. They were doing potlucks and they were just getting this opportunity to celebrate, grieve and say goodbye as a community rather than just taking a few off at a time. And that stuck with me. Like that to me is what value driven businesses do. And it set the stage that their values and my values aligned. I then come to Andersen, which

again is this place that I know I'll finish my career here. Like the values of Andersen are so strong and we call them, it's the home. So, which is a great acronym. But our first value is humility. I've never in my life worked for a company or seen a company who had their first value be humility. But that's really, the ego doesn't work here. It is about being humble.

and taking responsibility and having that humility. Our second value is ownership. So we're a family-owned business, but we all think, what if it was our name on the window? What if it was Teskey on the window? How would I treat this business? And then the third one is meaningful connections. And so we think about that with our team members. We think about that with our customers. We think about that with the community and where we serve.

And how do we build up that community and with our partners or our vendors, all of that is we believe that meaningful connections matter. And then our last one, the E is expertise. And I always liked the bookend of that because with that humility, but we're going to tell you we're the number one. We have more innovation than anybody else in the industry and we will continue to do that and we will have that expertise. So I've just found when you find a place that aligns value wise with who you are.

I wish I had spent all my career at those two companies just because I knew I could thrive in that setting.

Mark Benson (49:34)
Wow,

I love that. Heather, I don't know what to say. I feel inspired by this conversation.

Heather Teskey (49:41)
Aww.

Mark Benson (49:43)
I mean, those two, the cultures that you're describing, I mean, first of all, the example at Hallmark of shutting down that division or that group and doing it in that way, I would imagine that speaking volumes to the people who are staying at Hallmark.

just as much as to the people who are leaving, that it really communicates something that is about much more than just that incremental additional cost for delaying the first round of the kind of reductions that way. I mean, sounds like that obviously made an impact on you, but I'm sure that it did on others as well. Did you see that? How did that resonate with people who are

at the company and not the people who were affected but everybody else who was involved.

Heather Teskey (50:35)
Yeah,

I think Mark, sometimes the hard thing about those is as leaders, we know that, that it's

Mark Benson (50:41)
Hmm.

Heather Teskey (50:42)
not always something you get to share with everybody else. But I think when you see it in all the other small things, you sort of come to expect that they're going to do it the right way. One of the things I was thinking about is as leaders, the change management curve. When

Leaders typically know things much in advance, right? We knew we were gonna need to shut that down and it was gonna be two parts and what we're doing. And we go through all the emotions of that change. Like we go through the, no, we love those people, we can't do that, oh, you know, and then you rationalize it and then you come to accept it and you move through that. What I am always really conscious of is when you go tell the next group, they're starting their change curve where you were a few months ago. And sometimes I,

forget that I need to have the patience for their change curve to happen. And it's just real. It's real emotion. It's real like process. It always goes to what does that mean to me? Like what's in it for me? Always comes to play in that. And so one thing I just want to make sure that leaders think about is as other people are going on those change curves, especially some of those really difficult ones when you're laying people off or you're having to make these hard choices is that

Many are behind you and just that reflection of where was I at the start of this? How did I get here? And then the patience and the grace for others to catch up.

Mark Benson (52:09)
Well said. Well, Heather, thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. I just have learned a ton from you. I would love to just continue on for hours talking about this, but thank you so much for joining me. It was a pleasure.

Heather Teskey (52:23)
Yeah,

well thank you Mark for including me. I'm really honored to get to share a little bit of this and hopefully it just inspires or people have like one or two ideas that they can walk away with that. But I think, can I just close with like it really matters and if you can commit to that kindness, to that love in your leadership, you're going to have a different outcome. And if it's something you don't do today,

I'd really explore it. And if it's something you do today, I would like get more passionate about it and more confident that even though you might not look like everybody else, you're truly making a difference for not only the people, like that's an easy, but actually for the business and how you're driving results for that. So I just hope people are inspired to think, gosh, I could do that or I'm doing it and I'm going to go double down.

Mark Benson (53:18)
All right, thank you Heather so much. all right.

Heather Teskey (53:20)
Yeah, thank you, Mark.

• Gallup’s Q12 — question 10 is “I have a best friend at work”
• The Lacek Group, the Minneapolis loyalty agency where Heather started her career
• Campbell Mithun, where she worked on H&R Block; it became Mithun in 2014 and was folded into McCann Minneapolis in 2016
• Andersen and its HOME values: humility, ownership, meaningful connections, expertise