Reach High: Stories of Leadership | Kedren Crosby

Kedren Crosby and her team at Work Wisdom are revolutionizing achievement. As the B Corporation’s founder and president, Kedren uses her extensive knowledge of emotional intelligence, positive organizational behavior, and positive psychology to help leaders live authentically and work effectively. “At Work Wisdom, we help individuals, teams, and companies grow in self-knowledge. And we do that in many ways—looking at the enneagram, learning about emotional intelligence, discussing conflict management. We believe as we grow in self-knowledge, it seeps into our awareness and allows us to try different behaviors, which give us better results,” she said.

Kedren started coaching because she saw the need for personal integration in the workplace. Some people have successful careers, but the gap between who they are and how they have to perform at work is so significant that they can’t live authentically purposeful lives. What began as one-on-one consulting has expanded to a firm with a core team and associates who bring their unique expertise to the Work Wisdom model.

There are many leaders in this world, but how does one know if they are a healthy leader? Take a look around, Kedren says. “We know there’s positive leadership happening when we can look all around that person and see flourishing—people are growing, stretching, and leaning in. If you look around a person, and people are wilting and not flowering, you might have a toxic leader.” In her own business, Kedren is encouraged by her team’s easy and enthusiastic collaboration and sees it as a sign that they are collectively thriving as a movement.

The Work Wisdom model of dealing with toxic leaders is to meet them at the place of their pain. “The core has to be compassion. Compassion means suffering with another person, which is one of our core values,” she explained. By creating a non-judgmental space to process mistakes, Kedren and the Work Wisdom team teach leaders to love themselves through their crises and become antifragile. “Antifragility is beyond resilience. Resilience is when the crisis comes, and eventually, you bounce back. Antifragile is when the crisis comes and knocks you off your feet, you bounce back, and it somehow strengthens you,” she adds.

Kedren advises aspiring leaders to look for role models who lead well, crediting her personal leadership development to watching the legacy of leaders like S. Dale High. “He leads well, and he is extremely humble. He’s always shining the light on other people, but he’s doing amazing work,” she said.

Her own leadership model is evident in the abundance of testimonials of people who Work Wisdom has positively impacted. “We might not be doing great, huge things. We might not be working at the United Nations, but to quote Mother Teresa, ‘We can do small things with great love.’ And the culmination of all those smaller interactions can change the world,” she added.

Kedren is helping industry leaders adopt mindsets, behaviors, and communication methods that lead to higher performance and more diverse, inclusive, and equitable organizations—revolutionizing achievement in a way that’s sustainable and helps everyone flourish.

Reach High is a series brought to you by High Foundation that introduces you to business and nonprofit leaders who are thoughtfully innovating with a spirit of servant leadership. Find out more about their mission to be a Bridge to Opportunity for the Lancaster community at highfoundation.org.