Welcome to The Inspirational Leaders Series, a collection of short interviews with sharp, impactful leaders I know and respect—because the business world needs more refreshing people like them.
Meet Toria Frederick, CEO & Chief Strategist of Hatch Venture Group and Co-Founder and COO of The Step Stool Chef. With over 15 years experience in brand building, business transformation and new ventures with Fortune 50 companies, Toria has championed transformational change for some of consumers most loved brands. In 2016, she started The Step Stool Chef as a mother/son blog with her then 8 year old son, the impressive Julian Frederick, to empower kids to be leaders in the kitchen. In this interview, she shares what she’s learned about leadership from having a kid business partner and why adult leaders would benefit from thinking like kids.
What does leadership mean to you?
Leadership is about vision and decisions. Visions are bigger than you and that means bringing in people who are smarter than you that can help you bring that vision to life. It means listening to their advice. Your role is to be the facilitator, not the dictator, of that vision.
What has the experience of empowering kids to be leaders in the kitchen taught you about leadership?
Adults lead with fear, kids lead with curiosity. Adults avoid negative consequences. We fear failing and the unknown. To protect ourselves, we rely on our experience to make decisions. But, what we call experience is really fear masked as practicality. Kids don’t have that.
Kids aren’t jaded by experience. Julian has no problem sending out an email asking for what he wants.
The sky is the limit with kids. Kids say, “Why can’t we do this?”. They have limitless imagination and curiosity. We’ve learned how to leverage this approach and now The Step Stool Chef partners with corporations to conduct our “Think Like A Kid” leadership workshops to teach adults innovative and creative thinking skills inspired by the way kids think.
What’s a leadership tool, practice, or approach you recommend?
In “Thinking Fast and Slow”, Daniel Kahneman talks about system one and system two thinking. System one is automatic, low effort, intuitive, quick thinking like putting on clothes. System two thinking is complex computation, problem solving, reasoning, thinking that supports innovation. I believe we as leaders have over relied on system one more than system two. It’s the death of innovation.
In business, we like to do what’s worked already, repeat it, and then we wonder why it’s not working in the face of change. We don’t take the time to develop critical thinking, system two muscles in leaders. I work with leaders of all levels, and this is a case across the board.
One tool that can help leaders exercise system two thinking is reframing the problem that you are trying to solve. For example, it’s easy to ask yourself, “What’s the best way to throw mom a birthday party?” That kind of question triggers past, known experiences and ideas which limits your ideas to things in the context of a party. But if you reframe the problem and ask it in a different way, like, “How can we give mom the most amazing, memorable experience on her birthday?”, that opens up more possibilities like a vacation, a spa day or even skydiving. By being clear about the problem you are trying to solve or the experience you are trying to create, you can be a more profound problem solver. This is often easier said than done which is why we spend a lot of time in this area with our clients at my consulting firm, Hatch Venture Group.
What’s a kids game or toy that embodies the way you think about leadership?
Red Rover because you have to work as a team to win. Similarly, leadership is collaborative. You can’t win by yourself.
To read more about Toria’s lessons from building a business with a kidpreneur, check out her article, When Your Son is Your Business Partner: The 3 Greatest Leadership Lessons I Learned from a Kid
