Lessons From a CEO’s Notebook

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In a thick, well-loved, black sketchbook, Kirsten Benefiel keeps the lessons she’s learned over her career as an executive. Benefiel’s resume includes stops at Accenture, Newmont Mining, ViaWest and HSS, where she recently served as CEO. On this episode of the Voices of Experience podcast, Benefiel cracks open her notebook and shares her advice for stepping off the corporate ladder, communicating and selling a vision, navigating an unfamiliar industry, and the importance of the word “and” in leadership.

Show Notes

Kirsten Benefiel is a seasoned C-suite executive and former CEO of HSS, a company that specializes in providing security in high-risk environments, such as aviation, health care and government. She is a founding member of Colorado Inclusive Economy, an adjunct faculty member in the Daniels College of Business’ Executive MBA program and a member of the Daniels Executive Advisory Board. Benefiel earned a bachelor’s degree in public relations and communications from the University of Denver in 1996 and an MBA from the Daniels College of Business in 2014

Table of Contents

1:14 Using PR in a non-PR career
3:02 Selling your ideas to your employees
5:24 Becoming CEO in an unfamiliar industry
9:05 It’s lonely at the top
11:14 The future of manned security
12:26 Creating equity through Colorado Inclusive Economy
14:49 Stepping off the corporate ladder
17:05 The power of “and”
18:09 The entrepreneurial mindset—and what people forget about it
23:08 Inside Kirsten’s notebook
26:13 “You can choose your own career”
27:40 Show notes and credits

In this episode:

• ColoradoBiz Magazine: Kirsten Benefiel’s historic role in the security industry
• Colorado Inclusive Economy
• Full Circle Expeditions
• HSS
• “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande

Related articles and information:

• Denver Business Journal: Most Admired CEO Kirsten Benefiel takes on ‘cultural inertia’ at traditionally male-led companies
• Denver Business Journal: Outstanding women in business: Kirsten Benefiel
• Kirsten Benefiel on LinkedIn

Pages from Kirsten’s notebook:

Transcript

Lorne Fultonberg:
This month on the Voices of Experience podcast:

Kirsten Benefiel (clip from interview):
I think we have been conditioned over time that everything is black or white or either/or

Lorne Fultonberg:
The importance of the word “and”

Kirsten Benefiel (clip from interview):
You can do both, and sometimes you have to make hard choices between the two. But you don’t have to do it at the expense of one group of people or the other.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Collaboration has always been Kirsten Benefiel’s style, whether it was at her first sales and customer care job out of college or during her time in the C-suite. Maybe that’s why she has a remarkable ability to find success in a variety of industries, regardless of how much—or how little—experience she has in the field.

On this episode, we talk about what it’s like to walk into an unfamiliar industry as CEO, how to cope with loneliness at the top of the org chart and how to sell yourself, your vision and your ideas in an area where you may not be the expert.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Kirsten, how are you today?

Kirsten Benefiel:
I’m great, thank you.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Thank you so much for joining us. We’re really happy that you’re here. You are a multi-time alum of the University of Denver, the Daniels College of Business. You originally went to school here for communications and public relations?

Kirsten Benefiel:
I did, yeah. For my undergrad.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Tell us how you got started and how you were able to find success working in an industry that was not what you got your bachelor’s degree in?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Well, my first job out of college was with Andersen Consulting, now Accenture. And I think the great thing about Accenture is, it’s a large business consulting company, and they have different focus areas, strategy, process, technology, change management. Public relations and communication really aligned well with the concept of in business, how do you communicate and work through change? As a first-year associate at Andersen, we would be implementing a new software system, and we had to train. And so we were implementing a sales software to a sales force, to a group of sales individuals. And if you know anything about sales individuals, they’re individuals, the last thing they want is a sales system to track their sales. And so, it was a bit of a PR campaign to really get the sales teams on board with using a software system and leveraging my communication skills to really understand how to connect heads and hearts with what we were trying to do and get people to adopt the change and use the system.

And through that, I really learned a benefit of active listening, of engagement, I did a ton of sales ride alongs to understand what they did and why it may be important to them, just like you would, I think in any good role you would really seek to understand. And so, I was able to do that and then leverage my background to turn it into what we needed to do to accomplish our objective.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Yeah. And I guess when you’re in the C-suite or just a leader in general, you do need to sell yourself, your vision, your values to your employees, right?

Kirsten Benefiel:
100%, every day. I think, first, any good leader has to have a vision. And so in order for people to follow you, they need to understand where you’re going and why where you’re going is appropriate for your company and for them personally. And so being able to communicate is key. And sometimes you have to be able to decipher that message and into seven or eight different ways to connect heads and hearts with what you’re saying and why they want to listen. And so, I think being able to understand that from the perspective of your employees, from your customers, from your board is incredibly important. And so the message, the tone has to shift, and you have to be able to be agile enough and flexible enough to be able to do that.

Lorne Fultonberg:

What’s the key to developing that technique in the first place, to be able to know yourself enough to convey that?

Kirsten Benefiel:

Oh, that’s a good question. I would say there’s two components to that. One is, understanding your own leadership style, so to knowing yourself. And so, I know that I am my best authentic self when I am driven by my values, I’m working in alignment with what I believe to be true and I can be collaborative about it. I really enjoy working with people and hearing their ideas, not because I’m not sure of where I think I need to go on my own, but I always like to understand the different perspectives and ways and add to and build to what we’re doing. And so I think my leadership style, that collaboration, I think also helps from a communication perspective. And I think the other thing that’s important, is really just to be able to listen and walk in the shoes of your employees or your customers from an experienced perspective to understand what you’re doing and how it ties to them, I think is incredibly important.

Lorne Fultonberg:
You took over as Chief Operating Officer at HSS in 2018, and this is a company that does security in health care, aviation, government services, right?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Correct.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Had you ever worked in that sphere?

Kirsten Benefiel:
No.

Lorne Fultonberg:
You are CEO of a company in a sphere that you have not worked in before. How do you walk into that room and get the respect to be a CEO, to build that trust?

Kirsten Benefiel:
I see this as two different answers. One, you could have the industry respect or you could have the experience respect. And I feel like, while I wasn’t an expert in physical security in hospitals or in airports and government buildings, I did know how to build teams, I did know how to understand what customers needed, what employees needed, and how to create a strategy that we could execute on. And I think that was what was incredibly important for that time. We had a host of experts within our company and I was able to continue to build upon what they already had, with the skills I was bringing in from the outside. And I think those that were customers and employees that were willing to engage and listen, were able to quickly see that I was there to help and build value. And I think that made it a much easier approach.

Lorne Fultonberg:
That sounds good to me. Did you have any trouble selling yourself to anybody within the company of, “Oh, this lady, she doesn’t know anything about security, she’s never worked here before.”?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Oh yeah, for sure. And I was only the fourth CEO of the company. The first one had been there for an incredibly long time, I think 30 years, 10 years, 5 years. And so I was only the fourth, so this wasn’t a company that was used to a lot of change in particular. And here I am, had only been with the company a little over a year and being moved into that CEO position. But I think what did help, was that my year as COO, I spent in the field trying to really understand what my employees did, why they did it, how they needed help and build programs. And so I wasn’t an unknown commodity. They knew I was there to help. And so, I think that really made a difference. But that’s not to be said, I didn’t have critiques, criticizers, people, especially when I would go to industry roundtables and they would look at me and smirk and like, “Why are you here?” But that’s, I think to be expected in any industry or any change. It’s a little bit of human nature.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Did you get some of those looks also as a female CEO in this industry?

Kirsten Benefiel:
I think there are some amazing women leaders in security that have started to build their own companies or work with a partner in building their own companies. But HSS was one of the largest security companies after some of the biggest players. And so, I would go to industry events and be the only female CEO in the room. And that was different, but I tried not to focus on the fact that I was there to be different, I tried to focus on the fact of, “What could I bring to the industry and how could I work in partnership?” And so immediately, I just tried to network and work with other CEOs, share leads, discuss best practices. And I think that surprised people, that I was willing to be so open. I think the security industry as a whole can sometimes be a little bit more closed off.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Not ironically.

Kirsten Benefiel:
Not ironically. And so I just really tried to show that I was there to help build on what they were already building.

Lorne Fultonberg:
We have a question to play for you from one of our MBA students here at Daniels, who wanted to know a little bit more about your CEO experience.

Kirsten Benefiel:
Absolutely.

Katie Richmond:
My question for Kirsten is, was your experience at the CEO level what you thought it was going to be? What trade-offs did you have to make?

Lorne Fultonberg:
And that’s Katie Richmond, an MBA student.

Kirsten Benefiel:
Great. Thank you, Katie. Parts of it were like I thought it would be, and parts of it weren’t. I had a friend who was a CEO when I was a COO, and sometimes he would say things, and I think the implication was, “Well, you wouldn’t understand.” And I was just a little bit like, “Well, what wouldn’t I understand?” And then I think when I became CEO, I realized everyone says, “It’s incredibly lonely,” and it is incredibly lonely. For someone who is an incredibly collaborative person, there are times and places where you can’t share information or things, and that group of people you want to bring together, you can’t really have those conversations with them. And I think that hit me harder than I was expecting. I’m pretty good at compartmentalizing, in terms of saying, “Okay, in this meeting, in this place, this is how I need to show up and what we need to do.”

But there were times when I just really wanted to sit down and talk to somebody and just say, “Man, what are we going to do about this?” Or, “Can you believe this happened today?” And I couldn’t do that really. And so I had an executive coach who I really leaned on, she had been a CHRO in a prior life, and so when I needed to really just process out loud my thinking, it was nice to have that person there. And so I think for me, even though being collaborative is part of my leadership style, it doesn’t situationally always work. And so you have to be able to shift your style.

Lorne Fultonberg:
That’s interesting. I never really thought about it that way, but they do say, “It’s lonely at the top.”

Kirsten Benefiel:
Not for the reasons I thought it would be.

Lorne Fultonberg:
I know you’re not at HSS anymore, but I did want to ask you about the future of manned security, if I could. You told ColoradoBiz Magazine that. It’s becoming very commoditized and manned security is not the future of security, so what is?

Kirsten Benefiel:
I think it’s the integration of those pieces. There’s manned or physical or security guards, as the industry will call them, are officers as we called them. I think there’s officers, there’s technology, so we had digital components. You see that so much coming into play right now with cameras and badges, AI is huge, predictive analytics around, just what potential security events and what to look out for. And so, I think it’s not that it’s an either or, it’s and, and I think the industry had always said, this was I think historically people were the only answer. And I think what you’ll see in the future is that it’s more of and, and there will be a compliment of security officers with technology that maybe you haven’t seen before.

Lorne Fultonberg:
I want to talk to you a little bit about Colorado Inclusive Economy, which according to your website, helps organizations revamp their recruiting and hiring practices, transform their culture to embrace inclusivity, and invest in education and workforce development. This was August 2020 when you got involved in this?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Yep.

Lorne Fultonberg:
I feel like we can’t have a conversation about business without mentioning the year 2020. What was 2020 like for you and how did it push you into this endeavor?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Let’s see. 2020 obviously was COVID. And so it was very interesting being a first time CEO, being announced practically, two months before COVID started. And so the business strategy and plan I had going in as CEO, obviously had to shift as COVID materialized. But one thing I was passionate about regardless, especially in the industry I was in, was diversity, equity, and inclusion. And so especially as a female leader coming into the space, and just looking around and thinking about where was the growth opportunity for our employees? You want your employees to feel like they’re represented at the company that they’re working in. And sometimes I would look around at our customers, who we were serving and our security officers didn’t always represent that same group of people. And I felt like there was a lot of opportunity for more training and better career pathing for our security team.

And one of the big pieces I focused on first was equity, and making sure that our leaders at the management levels were consistent, or more equitable in terms of pay. That can be when you’re in a contract or a services businesses, they can sometimes dictate your rates. And if you’re not watching, you can create disparity, not on purpose, just through normal business practices. And so we took a big step back to really take a look at, where were we and where do we need to be from an equity perspective.

Lorne Fultonberg:
That leads me into a second student question that we had for you from Kailee Caranta, who’s an MBA student here. And she wanted to know a little bit about organizational culture and how you balance that with operational excellence.

Kailee Caranta:
Hi, Kirsten. One thing you say in your bio, is that you focus on building customer driven solutions, delivering operational excellence and developing strong organizational cultures. My question for you is, how do you drive a balance across these sometimes conflicting goals and knowing which to prioritize and when? Thank you.

Kirsten Benefiel:
So these weren’t the softball questions, I take it.

Lorne Fultonberg:
Hey, these are our students. You know what they’re capable of.

Kirsten Benefiel:
I know. It’s such a great question and thank you for asking. I’ll reflect back on something that someone once told me to think about, two things in particular. One was, an abundance versus a scarcity mindset, and the other was the word and. And I’ve really tried to employ both of those ideas as I build teams and work on companies. And I think for me growing up, and I think maybe just generationally, I think you chose a job, you stepped onto the corporate ladder and you just went up the ladder. And so, there was a very much a scarcity mindset. There’s only one promotion to this position or two promotions. And so that elicited behavior, that maybe after a few years in the work world, it was anxiety inducing and it wasn’t actually aligned with my values of how I really saw the world. And I realized that you could move the ladder, you could move it to another place you wanted to go, you could step off the ladder and you could make lateral moves.

And I think, really looking at the world through an abundance lens, that there’s more than enough to go around, and just because I take a position doesn’t mean there’s less for you to have. When I think about organizational culture and building teams, I think you have to think from that abundance mind shift and have the team think from that perspective. And that doesn’t mean that it means, oh, there’s limitless dollars, go crazy. It means, there will be more, what is the thing that we need to focus on right now? And if we’re successful, more will come. And then the other thing I would say when we talk about operational excellence, employees and culture, it’s that it’s an and, and so you can build a great employee culture and have an amazing customer experience.

I think we have been conditioned over time that everything is black or white or either or, and you can do both, and sometimes you have to make hard choices between the two. But you don’t have to do it at the expense of one group of people or the other. And I think it’s just a mindset shift. And I don’t believe generationally, that was something that was drilled into me, I think it was the opposite. And so I know, as I look across my group of cohort of leaders that I’ve been just honored to just have as friends and work with and learn from, I think it’s a shift I’ve watched all of us make.

Lorne Fultonberg:
You also teach future leaders, current leaders here at Daniels in the EMBA program. You’re an Adjunct there. And I think I read the class that you specialize in is called, The Entrepreneurial Mindset?

Kirsten Benefiel:
It is. For the enterprise.

Lorne Fultonberg:
For the enterprise. What is that mindset? Is it what you just described?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Pretty much. I think people think startups are where it’s at. I was teaching, joint teaching with another professor and a student said, “Well, what if I don’t want to be an entrepreneur, is that okay?” And very honestly, just very meaningfully, the world doesn’t seem to want to talk about anything besides entrepreneurship, and starting your own company and doing your own thing. And so really the intent behind this class was, within a bigger company, call it Fortune, I don’t know, mid-size and up, you can still be innovative, you can still be entrepreneurial.

It might look different, but you can still contribute in a way that helps shape the outcome of where the company is going. And there’s tools that you can bring to do and achieve just that.

Lorne Fultonberg:
What is the aspect of that mindset that you feel like most entrepreneurs are missing or that they most often forget?

Kirsten Benefiel:
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several really amazing entrepreneurs, and I don’t know if it’s that they forget. A good friend of mine has this expression, “There’s explorers, settlers, and townspeople.” And I love it, because there’s a group of people that will go out and find new paths, blaze new trails, explorers. And I love that analogy, one, because I worked at Newmont Mining and I thought our exploration team was super cool, and I totally got it right away. And then there’s people that are settlers, the exploration maybe has been achieved and they’re really good at scaling and growing and creating community. And then there’s townspeople, people who like to do the job. And when he said that, it clicked for me, because he said that around the same time, a good friend I met in the Executive MBA program, we were talking about what we were going to do when we graduate, which I think, you come to this program to learn, but you also are thinking about, “How is this going to impact my career?”

And so there was a lot of just discussions around what we wanted to do with our lives and our careers. And this friend looked at me and we were talking and he was like, “Well, you would not be great at as an entrepreneur.” Because I was talking about maybe joining this really early startup. And he was like, “No.” And I was taken aback and I was like, “I’m sorry, you’ve known me for a hot minute, eight months of my entire life.” And then I thought, “Hey, feedback is a gift, so tell me more.” Which was very mature of me.

And he explained, he was like, “I see you as the person who brings order to chaos.” He’s like, “Entrepreneurship can be very chaotic.” He’s like, “You are great at creating community, at building scale, at growing and doing things.” And then he started to explain maybe why I wouldn’t like the entrepreneur life and why maybe being the quote unquote, “The settler,” was really where my strengths and what I had really built in my prior 20 years of work experience at that point. And he said it in such a kind and thoughtful way to say, “I’ve seen you do all these great things and what you would really do well at is this.” And it was such a lovely moment, because not many people had taken the time to really think about who I was as a person and how that could apply to my next career. And then having that other friend give me that analogy and framework, it stuck to me because I think my values, my collaboration, what I really like to do as a leader, I think really lent itself incredibly well.

And so getting back to your question, around what do they forget or maybe are not good at, entrepreneurs, I think they’re so focused on blazing that path and creating that trail and creating that new product or that offering, that once they are super successful, sometimes some entrepreneurs have a harder time letting go of their grip and getting ready to really scale the business. Because that might mean the things that got them to be incredibly successful as an entrepreneur, that just single-minded vision, that, just throw it on your back and do it alone if you have to, when you’re trying to scale and grow a company, it doesn’t always work. And so great entrepreneurs are able to pivot, I think, and either acknowledge that that’s not where their best use of their skills are anymore, or they’re able to pivot and continue to grow the company. I’ve seen both. And I think knowing yourself, back to the first question you asked me, “How well do you know yourself and how has that really formed what you’ve done?” I think is incredibly important.

Lorne Fultonberg:
I don’t know if those words of advice made it in here, but I heard that you have a notebook of lessons that you’ve learned from previous jobs and advice. That’s it on the table right here?

Kirsten Benefiel:
It’s on the table.

Lorne Fultonberg:
What is one of the pages that you read and reread most often in there?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Oh, that’s a good one. I have it open to one, but that was just because of what I was jotting down this morning.

Lorne Fultonberg:
And for those people who are listening and can’t see, this is a thick sketchbook with stickers on the back and lots of drawings and diagrams on the pages.

Kirsten Benefiel:
I have things in here around just mood and friendship and just ways to think about how to live in the moment more. I read a ton. I love it. For me, it’s incredibly relaxing. And I’m a very curious person, and so I really like how people think about things. And I love when somebody thinks differently than I do, or they put it to words so much more eloquently than I could ever say. And so, I like to jot down the way people think about things.

One of the pages I’ve been reading a lot lately is I read a book, and so I have three kids at home, I have older parents, and I’m in the middle of having some of those difficult conversations with my parents and my family around, “Well, what are we going to do as we all get older and how can I best support my mom through this time?” And so I read this book that I’ve been referring to all of my friends, it’s called Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.

It gives you this framework. And if you can’t tell, I’m a process dork. I worked at Accenture forever, so who doesn’t love a good framework? But it’s not a four box model. But it gives you a really cool framework to think about how to have hard conversations. And then when I really started thinking about it, these actually are conversations you could have with anyone. He just happened to frame it in terms of an aging parent. And so, I find myself referring to these page of questions like, “What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you’re willing to make and not willing to make? And what’s that course of action that best serves this understanding?” And so talking to my mom about getting older, “What are the trade-offs? What’s most important to you?”

And living alone was incredibly important to my mother. And so, “Okay, well then how do we make that happen? And what other trade-offs are you willing to give up on? Can you have groceries delivered? Can someone come to the house and clean? Yes, I know it won’t be to your standard, but you’re going to have to get over that.” And so, you can ask those questions in almost any conversation. And so sometimes when I feel myself getting really frustrated with somebody not really understanding like, “Why won’t they just do it this way?” I think this book helps center me around, how to remember that all of us as humans just want to write our own story, just want to be in charge of our narrative. And when you feel like you’re losing control of that narrative, there is a way to look at that situation.

Lorne Fultonberg:
As a voice of experience, Kirsten, what’s something you’d want to pass along to our listeners?

Kirsten Benefiel:
Maybe, I think the advice I’d like to leave everybody with is that, it goes back to that abundancy mindset and really just for people to show up, listen, really think about who they want to be and go after it. I spent way too many years of the first years of my career trying to do what was expected of me on a corporate ladder I wasn’t sure I needed to be on.

And when I was able to take a step back from that, and really think about what is it I wanted to do, I had so many great learning experiences and so many great mentors, and just so many interesting life experiences, that when I finally became a CEO, which is something I chose to be, I felt like I had such a great network of people to fall back on, to get help with and to bounce ideas off of. And so, I would just encourage people to remember that, you are enough and you can choose your own career and your own path, and it can go a number of different ways, and just continue to build that support group along the way.

Lorne Fultonberg:
That’s Kirsten Benefiel, a seasoned executive, the Former CEO of HSS, a two time DU alum and an adjunct professor here in our Executive MBA program. Kirsten, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this.

Kirsten Benefiel:
Thank you.

Lorne Fultonberg:
I did my best to describe Kirsten’s notebook of lessons and advice, but sometimes words just don’t cut it. Fortunately, you can take a peek inside on our show notes, where we have photos of a couple of Kirsten’s favorite pages. You can crack the cover at daniels.du.edu/voe-podcast.

The VOE podcast is an extension of Voices of Experience, the signature speaker series at the Daniels College of Business, sponsored by U.S. Bank.

Chloe Smith is our sound engineer, who is sadly graduating. Congrats, Chloe. Alumnus Joshua Metzel wrote our theme. I’m Lorne Fultonberg. And that’s a wrap on Season 2! We so appreciate you listening, and we’ll see you again in the fall.