Kristen Ziman

Kristen Ziman Speaking Topics

• PREVENTING THE UNTHINKABLE

  Organizations suffer when they fail to confront the risks that come with uncertainty of the unknown crisis that looms.

  With 27 years as a police officer and the chief who lead her department through a mass shooting, a member of an International Mass Violence Advisory Team, and called upon by the Department of Justice to investigate crisis, I have come to learn that the key to confronting the certain uncertainty of a crisis is through preparedness.

  I will teach you to equip your organization for the ever-looming uncertainty by supporting your team to craft the skillset needed to adapt through a crisis and the mindset to embrace (not brace for) the incoming change. I will transform your organization into a team of first responders who can expertly navigate through any challenge that arises in business and in life.

  When people feel helpless, they’re scared. You can override that feeling of helplessness and fear by empowering people with knowledge and action steps. That’s what this talk is all about: empowering people into action so you don’t find yourself in this horrific tragedy like I did.

• OPTIMIZE WITH OPTIMISM

  Day in and day out, when police officers respond to 911 calls, they’re not responding to people at their best; they’re responding to violence, pain, death. Their brains get rewired for negativity. So much so that studies have shown that police officers are more likely to die from suicide than in the line of duty.

  This just isn’t okay to me. Which is why I’ve brought the science of positive psychology into my work in law enforcement and beyond. There are proven, practical ways to change negativity – and not just for police officers.

EVOLVING YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

I grew up, from Cadet to Chief, in a culture of taking orders. There was a clear chain of command that everyone was expected to follow. Anyone who did not take orders potentially threatened the safety of everyone on the force, which is why any dissent was punished.

When I became Chief, I redefined the chain of command. I gave my team permission to speak up and share their input. Not in all situations, but in the ones where they were the best authority. By increasing their sphere of influence, we began shifting the culture of policing.

The culture of any organization is a living and breathing organism. You cannot see it in the tangible sense but you can feel the gravitational pull when someone acts outside of the norm.

It’s exactly this type of ‘out of the norm’ behavior that you must invite to shift culture. But you must do so in a way that moves the entire organization forward, in the direction you want to go.

EVOLVING WOMEN LEADERS

Throughout my career, I have been underestimated. From the moment I earned my badge, I’d show up on a call and people would say, “You’re too little to be a cop” or “Do they let you ride by yourself in a squad car?” As I moved up the ranks, I was often asked, “Do those men follow you?” I learned to shrug it off or retort with a witty comeback. I never got angry because I tried to respect the templates for which those people saw the world that made them doubt me. It made me try harder to disprove their world view.

And I did.

I became the first woman Lieutenant, first woman Commander and first woman Chief in my department. In order to achieve these leadership positions, I learned how to tame the imposter in my head – the voice that said, “Can I really do this?” As women in leadership, we need to stop conforming to these templates for how others see us and defy them – blow them up even. And that might mean making others uncomfortable in the process. If you can become comfortable with making others uncomfortable, you can transform an organization.

EMPOWERED LEADERS EMPOWER OTHERS

I learned from Professor Marty Linsky while attending the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University that “Leadership is about disappointing people at the rate they can absorb.” I thought that statement was absurd when I first heard it while sitting in his class. It wasn’t until I became the chief and was met with resistance at every change that I began to understand what he meant.

People hate change. What I came to understand is that it’s not so much the change that is painful, it’s that space before change happens that stretches us in the most uncomfortable ways.

But once you get to the other side, people are appreciative and even wonder why they didn’t do it sooner. The only way we get to the other side is to go through it which requires us to become comfortable with disappointing people on the way to changing things.