Building and leading a high-performing executive team is crucial for any CEO or business leader striving to create a thriving organization. But what does it take to attract top talent, foster collaboration, and ensure long-term success? In this series, we will explore how CEOs and business leaders strategically assemble and lead dream teams that drive innovation, growth, and excellence. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Kelly Stone.
As President of Global Clients Americas at Securitas, Kelly Stone brings over 16 years of expertise in security leadership, client experience, and strategic account management. Since 2019, Kelly has driven excellence across global and national accounts, leveraging his extensive background as North Central and Rocky Mountain Regional President. Based in Chicago, he leads with a focus on innovation, operational efficiency, and delivering tailored security solutions for multinational clients. Kelly’s proven track record makes him a pivotal leader in the security services industry.
***
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I started with Securitas in 1998 as a recruiter in the Chicago market. At the time, I was waiting to get my teaching license and joined as a summer job. By the end of the season, I had been promoted twice into HR roles, as luck was with me, and positions opened at just the right time. In the HR world, I did get to experience client interactions and was deeply passionate about finding ways to ensure the client had a successful journey. Thus, I switched to operations and quickly became an area vice president in Northern California. After two years of challenging times and transforming the team and culture, we created an exceptional structure enabling our people to truly embrace the client’s needs truly. In 2004, I was promoted to regional president and held various regional president roles until 2020, when I moved into my current position as President for Global Clients Americas.
None of us can achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person that you are grateful for, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Two people that I’ll be forever grateful for are Jim McNulty and Kevin Maloney. Kevin just retired after 45 years, and Jim is still advising Securitas on key labor and industry items. I was set to leave the company as my position was eliminated. I had secured employment outside of Securitas when Kevin and Jim (at the time, I wasn’t sure they knew who I was, as they both held high-level roles) met with me and persuaded me to stay with the company, even without an actual position or formal offer. I took the leap of faith, and it was the best decision of my life, as Securitas has been my family for the last 26 years. Most of that time, I learned quite a lot from both Jim and Kevin and today, much of how I behave is me trying to emulate them.
You are a successful leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Building diverse, talented teams is a trait that I’ve always taken great pride in. I’m obsessed with looking for the next amazing leader, someone who might change the world for my team and Securitas. On numerous occasions, I’ve hired Vice Presidents from outside the company with no industry or connected experience and fresh mindsets and unique perspectives, watched them flourish, and inspired those around them to be better leaders.
Humility is a crucial trait for all leaders. I often remind myself to walk in others’ shoes. Someone once told me, “Everyone is fighting their own great battle.” That has stuck with me for many years.
The third would be effective communication. It’s easier to accomplish anything meaningful in life by communicating effectively. It’s not easy, and certainly not something that most people are born with or are inherently good at. It takes work and focus, but mostly an innate desire to connect with people with the intent to create a mutual win for both parties. I’m not perfect, but I strive to communicate better every day.
Ok, fantastic. Let’s now turn to the crux of our interview. What are the top three qualities or traits you look for when hiring for your executive team?
Adaptability is key. The landscape constantly changes, and one day’s priority might be outside tomorrow’s vision. Clients’ needs change rapidly, and to succeed in today’s business environment, you must anticipate and pivot quickly when necessary.
Resilience is another critical trait for hiring for our executive team. Security is a relentless business with many evolving challenges that require mental toughness, which many need to prepare to handle. It’s the “get knocked down and get right back up” mentality that most successful leaders have in common.
Critical thinking, or focusing on the big picture, is a top trait necessary to be an executive with our team. In a 24/7 business, it’s easy to get pulled into the weeds and consumed with the day-to-day. It’s imperative to see the holistic nature of what we’re trying to accomplish or what a client’s true intentions are.
How do you foster collaboration among executives with different strengths and leadership styles?
It’s vital to create a team-outcome culture where we only win if the team wins, and individual successes are celebrated only when they help the team reach its goals or objectives. It can also be highly effective to spend time together in casual settings where the “virtual whiteboard” is open for all desired topics, and informal discussions can lead to collaborative outcomes.
What’s your approach when executives challenge your decisions or bring differing points of view? How do you create space for healthy disagreement?
It takes work. If you hire talented, diverse leaders, they can often have strong opinions or be very persuasive in conveying their thoughts. You must create a culture of hearing all perspectives and, with an open mind, collectively navigating to the best approach. Disagreements that become unproductive need to be quickly calmed to ensure that the spirit of intent is still the driving force behind the decision-making process.
How do you encourage innovation and risk-taking among your leadership team?
The driver for innovation and risk-taking is ensuring that the team knows they can fail and recover. Team members should feel like they have a big sandbox to play in. If someone fears the worst when an outcome isn’t desirable, based on a risk they take or an innovative idea they tried, people will rarely strive for something great. As the team lead, it’s important to highlight risks you’ve taken and had a level of failure and then share lessons learned or how they inspired you to take even greater risks or push the innovation envelope even further. All of this comes with trust which takes time to build.
What processes or systems do you have in place to ensure continuous learning for your executives?
This is an area where we could improve. We’re using data at a much greater level to analyze where we can learn or find opportunities for improvement, but it still needs to be more widespread. In the last few years, we’ve enacted surveys, town halls, and spotlight training topics picked by team members, but we’re still scratching the surface for using processes or systems to drive continuous learning.
How important is diversity within your executive team, and how do you ensure a variety of perspectives?
Diversity is essential in building good teams. You must have diversity in experience, background, career goals, and thought processes. If you have a team where everyone has a similar voice, it prohibits the ability to drive real change or strive for true change. When we hire for all positions now, we post all roles and ensure that multiple people are involved in all aspects of the interviewing process. We no longer tap people on the shoulder for promotions or hand-select “the next person up.” We push to have internal and external finalists and ensure that all leadership positions are posted on various platforms.
What are “5 Things You Need To Build and Lead High-Performing Executive Teams”?
I’ve covered at least five for this question but will highlight that it starts with hiring and ensuring that all the best people have a chance for executive roles. It would help if you then cultivated an open culture of free thought to inspire creativity and innovation. It is lastly, finding processes and systems to drive continuous learning and a desire for team members to share best practices or failures ideas that didn’t work. That is where you’ve created a very healthy environment where everyone is pushing towards giving clients the best experience possible.
Can you share a challenging moment when your executive team faced adversity? How did you overcome it together?
Covid was a challenging time for all of us, and the team was strained in unprecedented ways. At times, focus, positive energy, and a client-at-the-center mentality seemed secondary, as many of us were more internally focused on how to keep the business running or, rightfully so, dealing with personal challenges. A huge thanks to Microsoft for creating and Securitas for implementing Teams, as that truly changed the way we do business. It instantly transformed the interactions both internally and with clients. I don’t want to make the “overcome moment” about a system, but it was the nexus for uniting our team to push forward and get back to a client-centric world.
How do you celebrate successes and milestones with your executive team to sustain morale and camaraderie?
We need to do more; we certainly don’t do enough celebrating successes and when reaching key milestones. Once a year, we do workshops with our teams to celebrate individual achievements and highlight those team members in front of their peers, but more is needed. Our executives acknowledge successes and will congratulate one another now, but not in a formal way. We now have great platforms to shout out regarding excellent work and achievements; our leaders must use them. We all could be better in this area.
