Melissa LaRoe

I think I'm successful because I'm a people person. I make really solid relationships fairly quickly in organizations at all levels. I'm very genuine, and fun, and silly, and smart, and I think that comes through in how I message people. I am not terribly professionally buttoned up, if you will, and so I have so many people who love partnering with me because of who I am and how I am. My work ethic trails behind that a bit, just because I think if you don't have relationships, you're not gonna have success, and networking and all those sorts of things. But I do also think that I am a hard-ass worker. I left an organization because I was not challenged and I was a little bit bored, and I could have coasted and just been like, great, 8 to 5 every day, I'm out. But I can't. I have to be improving, I have to be learning, I have to get feedback, I have to make things better. I could do the same level of job, I could be a senior manager forever, as long as I'm doing new things, trying new things, making a difference where I am. It's impossible for me to do the minimum. I'm surrounded by smart people who are also alpha producers, and I think we all feed off of each other.

One thing that really resonated with me as an employee from someone was my manager saying, what do you want to be really good at? Where is your sweet spot, and what kinds of work do you want to do? Because I want to make sure that's part of your job. We can't all do our favorite parts of our job all day, every day, but we should be doing something that is our passion. Now, as a leader of people, I always try to make sure that people on my team, and even just people that I'm working with, are doing things that are meaningful to them, because I know if that's where their passion is, that's where their energy will be put, and it helps to balance out the yucky stuff we have to do. I think just bringing out the best in people is an important part of leading, and I also believe you hire people who are better than you. If you're, you always hire A players, whether you're a B or a C or an A, you hire people who are smarter than you, because you need to be learning constantly. I definitely am not a person that is threatened by smarter people, and I think there's just too much of that. There's so much ego in leadership, and maybe it's in different types of industries and organizations, but I do just think putting people first is something I try to emulate as a leader.

I think it must be so hard to be a young woman starting off today. I think you've got to lean into what you know, and use your confidence, and manufacture your confidence if you don't feel it until you feel it. I don't want to say fake it till you make it, because everybody says that, but there's something to be said about leaning into your power, and not letting your voice be trampled, refusing to be silenced or not considered. I think having, using your voice, making sure your opinions and ideas are not just heard, like, you don't just say the words, but are people listening? How do you navigate through the noise of other people? And I think some of that is built within you. You've got to be the person that has the ideas and the voice and the gumption. The grit. I think young women need a little bit of grit. I would also say, find a mentor, and build a relationship with a mentor who can guide you through the complexities of what the new worlds of professional environments are bringing toward women. Look for organizations that have women at the top, and women in leadership roles, because that's gonna be reflective of opportunity that you may have ahead of you. I think it's really important for me to see diversity, not just in people of color and age, even younger people in leadership positions, but also gender. There's so much you need to look for a balance in the people who lead an organization when you decide where to work, that I would scrutinize leadership teams of places you want to be.

I think the challenge and the opportunity right now is AI. It's both. There's much in the communication field where people say, oh, well, public relations is about to be outdated because it's factual writing that AI can do. I disagree. We would all disagree that you have to have that human factor analysis and interpretation in order to build an effective message, whether it's public relations or not. And I think internally, obviously, for employee messaging, you have to have the nuance of culture and tone, and there's a lot of things that really need to be factored in. You can tell when somebody spits something out at you that's been produced by AI. I think that's a challenge to overcome, like, how do we fight for our profession and demonstrate value? But I think it's also an opportunity. There are so many things I use AI for every single day, starting drafts, building lists, analyzing the survey from the town hall. There's so much that you can use it for that I think there's a lot of opportunity to make our productivity more effective by getting rid of some of the minutiae work, and being able to think more strategically. Our company actually pushes AI and has education programs and builds people's skills for AI use. There's a lot of ways to really build a chief of staff out of AI and have it help you get through your day. So I think there's a lot of opportunity to leverage it as a tool in my field, but I think there's also a bit of a battle to stay relevant.

Authenticity and transparency for me are really important. I am an over-sharer. As a leader, I trust my people, and I shoot straight, so I think those are really important in order to have trust with your team. You need to be transparent, and you need to be authentic. I don't sugarcoat things, I don't take things out of context. And I think as a communicator, really embracing the humanity of people, and how there's just so much more happening with an employee than what is their job. Humanism is one of our values here at this organization, and I do think that as a communicator, empathy is a huge beneficial trait to have because you need to put yourself into the different positions of everybody you're communicating to, with, for, and about. And if you can empathize with the position they're in, you're going to be like, oh, well, they don't really have this information yet. What would I need to know if I was in their shoes? So empathy, I think, is another big one, both for leaders and for just communicators. I think it's really important for people to have work-life boundaries, and so it is very important to me to be outside. I love to walk and hike. I have kayaks, I have camping buddies, and I think really taking advantage of the nature and natural surroundings here in Colorado is a super big part of what my nights and weekends entail.