Podcast: Kristen Hadeed on Leading in Exceptional Times

Longtime business leaders would do well to pay attention to Kristen Hadeed.

Even though Kristen is only in her early 30's, she consistently exhibits leadership traits that more seasoned leaders never learn.

Kristen is the founder of Student Maid, a cleaning company made up of college students. Obviously, her business has been greatly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In a story you will hear on this episode of the Everybody Matters Podcast, when her business was shut down two months ago, they made the decision to keep paying their people. With no revenue coming in, they couldn't afford to pay everyone the same rate as before and government assistance was a long way off.

"So what we did is we said, 'Here is what we have, and we're hoping we can all take care of one another,'" Kristen said, "'If we split this evenly, this is how much everyone would get and we're hoping if you need more, you'll speak up and if you can take less, you'll speak up.  And together we'll take care of one another.' And that's what happened and it happened every single pay period."

In this crisis, Kristen's Student Maid team came together, like a family would, to take care of each other.

Kristen recently shared her insight on handling this crisis in a webinar with Sara Hannah and Matt Whiat of Chapman & Co. Leadership Institute. We've edited that conversation for this episode of the Everybody Matters Podcast.