The Profiles in Leadership series features conversations with organizational leadership experts to discuss important lessons they have learned and what “Hiring for Good” means to them. This series helps us better understand how leadership drives positive transformations and growth for people, organizations, and the world around us.
This episode features a conversation with Melissa Angeli, Principal at Jacquarden. She focuses on creating environments where leaders can disentangle overwhelming obligations and concentrate on what brings them personal fulfillment. Her unique blend of business acumen and interpersonal connection enables her to develop tailored strategies that align with each organization’s growth intentions.
Melissa is a business strategist and leadership coach dedicated to empowering entrepreneur-led enterprises. With over 20 years of experience in cultivating innovative cultures and guiding small businesses through growth challenges, Melissa specializes in helping leaders reclaim their vision and passion while navigating the complexities of business operations.
For smaller, entrepreneur-led businesses looking to grow, Melissa empowers leaders to build their enterprises while maintaining their vision. Growing small enterprises often leave leadership in a state of overwhelm, balancing expertise with operational responsibilities. What starts as a vision can turn into a struggle with urgent issues, making strategy and meaningful change feel out of reach.
Be willing to have difficult conversations, but respectfully. I would say with love. Because people can’t get better unless you can have that. So be willing to challenge people. I think those are really important. Because if you really care about how people work and do and if everyone’s seeing something and no one’s willing to share that information, the person’s at a disadvantage. You don’t really care about the person.
Profiles in Leadership Transcript
Suzanne Hanifin: Well, hi there, I am Suzanne Hanifin with Acumen Executive Search, and I am so happy today to have Melissa Angeli from Jacquarden here with me. Melissa is an executive coach. She calls herself a “Culture Weaver,” and she works with organizations to help them grow and scale. More importantly, Melissa and her team really focuses on that culture piece and the people side before operations. Melissa, did I explain that well, and is there anything you’d like to add?
Melissa Angeli: Yeah, we actually concentrate on both people and the systems because we think they’re both important. In order to scale, you need certain systems, but the people are the ones who go through the systems, so we actually do both.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah, thank you. I love that you call yourself a Culture Weaver. Talk to me about that because I think that’s such a great title.
Melissa Angeli: Yeah because culture is the habits and what’s kind of in your company. The reason we call ourselves a Culture Weavers is we like to take what you want as a culture and what we know that makes cultures really robust, and kind of weave them together. That’s kinda how we got our name, too.
Suzanne Hanifin: Yeah and you were just talking to me about that previously before the recording. Tell us about this name.
Melissa Angeli: Jacquard. There’s jacquard fabric which is made on a weave, which on a loom, and there’s the Jacquard loom. So we decided that we take what people have and what we know, and we weave it together. We really try to go in and yes, we have certain things that we know we want to show, make sure the companies have. But we really want to listen deeply on what they want and then figure out what we have and kind of like make it match. So, we really kind of specialize in doing custom solutions for our clients knowing that there’s certain pieces that are really important to have in a company.
Suzanne Hanifin: That starts with you and your experience. It’s just the perfect segue into you know, kind of to talk about these informative leadership experiences that you’ve had in your life that have helped shape, whether it’s a mentor or something that’s gone wrong or right that brought you to who you are today. What are some of those formative leadership experiences?
Melissa Angeli: That’s a really great question because I was just explaining to a client that there was going through a hard time that I know this is hard but these will be things you will never forget and that will help you in the future. As I think back, I think the most..the first one that was really informative to me was I started, I was managing a temporary help company. I was managing it. I had, I had seven employees that work for me and then I had a bunch of people who are temporary out on assignment for me. And we did everything. It was like a small little business. We did payroll and everything like that.
I had someone falsify timesheets for a really long time and I didn’t know it. It was before the days of..where you know, they had a fax in their timesheets. So you know, and then clients, we send clients bills with the fax timesheets and not, they weren’t paying and we couldn’t figure out why. It turns out that the person was falsifying the client’s signature on the timesheet. So, we were paying with a timesheet. This is before people could do it electronically. So, we saw a signature on there. We assumed that was our client’s signature. We didn’t compare. And he stole a bunch of money, so came to be ok, he stole some money. It was really complicated because it was a client’s son and he had..she had asked him. So, there was that complication. And then we had to make sure that was the case. And so, it was a big, huge thing. I went to the boss, the owner of the company and said this is going on. He’s like don’t worry about it, we can write it off and I’m like no that doesn’t work for me. And so, I got the case together. He was still employed. He was still working for us. I went to, I went to. I was living in the DC area. I called the police, called and called and called. No return on phone calls. I had a whole packet of stuff together. I went to see the Portland Police..Sorry the DC Police. I didn’t bring donuts and coffee. I brought bagels and coffee. I got myself in the door. I showed them this whole packet and I said, “Can you help me with this?” And they sent two plainclothes officers. I was working in a townhouse in the DC area. In order to go to my office, you have to go up the stairs. So, you walked in there’s receptions in a conference room. They had the plainclothes officers in the conference room, and they looked scary. And as he was walking in, they grabbed him. And he was so smart that he said I’m..oh no this is not me. I’m I have a twin brother and I’m the twin. And so, so the police officers called me from top and I was up the top of the stairs and said does he have a a twin brother and I said no. I had no idea. Now the owner of the company was there too but he wasn’t right around the corner when they called me, and I was like no. And as it turns out it’s it’s really kind of a sad story and an interesting story that you never know what people’s motivations are. So, people would assume maybe he needed the money. Because we could have placed him somewhere else. It’s not like we couldn’t have helped him. He was doing good work. But actually, he was a a child that had given a big trust fund by his grandfather. His parents had no control over it, and he did it for the thrill of trying to see if he can make it work. And so instead of, instead of prosecuting. So, then I had to call his mother and tell his mother what was going on because I had done something, right. So, I had have that difficult conversation. She was horrified. And they..we made a deal instead of prosecuting him that he was going to go in the military. So that his parents said you’ve got an option. They either going to prosecute you, or you can do this. So, it was an interesting thing. I learned a lot about the importance of systems. The important about people in systems. I learned the importance of having difficult conversations, which I had to have with the client. And also about where, like you never really know what people, what people are taking care of. Because I just assumed it was because he needed the money right. I mean I don’t know.
Suzanne Hanifin: Isn’t that funny? The motivations. We talk about that a lot that leaders, in particularly, bring in these core values that are so important to them. And then those core values tend to get multiplied throughout the organization. When you look at yourself, unlike that story of his motivation. What are some of your core values that you hold personally that you have operationalized throughout your career?
Melissa Angeli: You know it’s interesting because that story probably helped with some of them. One is be curious. And meet people where they are, and appreciate that we’re all on a journey. We need to respect that where people are. The other one that I think is really important to me is have..be willing to have difficult conversations, but respectfully. I would say with love. Because people can’t get better unless you can have that. So be willing to challenge people. I think those are really important. Because if you really care about how people work and do and if everyone’s seeing something and no one’s willing to share that information, it’s..the person’s at a disadvantage. You don’t really care about the person. So, I think those are kind of the big ones for me. Know that people are where they are. Respect where they are. Be curious and be willing to have those difficult conversations. Those challenging conversations with kind..with kindness and respect.
Suzanne Hanifin: Absolutely. That is wonderful. You’ve work with all size organizations, and you’ve seen a lot throughout your career. What are some of the key findings that you think make up a strong leader?
Melissa Angeli: A strong leader to me is someone who can listen deeply and has good reflection. Is willing to make decisions but also to..if they make mistakes, like repair. I think those are really good things. Depending on on the organization, someone who’s willing to share when they make mistakes. You know you can’t share certain mistakes but certain mistakes you can share with your team and and be vulnerable and open. I think to me those are the leaders that not only people want to follow but you know as I as I work with CEOs, it’s the loneliest place to be. And sometimes, you know, they needed they need to feel supported and they’re usually not, you know. They think they’re supposed to have all the answers and so leaders that are open to not having all the answers and being curious and you know seeking help or I think to me are one of the better ones.
Suzanne Hanifin: Oh absolutely, absolutely. You’ve hired a lot of people in your career and on your teams. What type of characteristics do you look for when you hire?
Melissa Angeli: I always look for, well one, I want to make sure that the role that we’re hiring for and what success looks like in that role and what’s expected that person is pretty clear. Because not hiring someone doesn’t mean they’re not good, it just doesn’t mean they’re good for what is being asked for them to do. Because what I’m trying to create is a win-win where they get value and the company gets value. So having a really clear..what that would that look like, what would success look like, would really is helpful. And then the second part for me is again it goes back to the values like what is it that they need and want, the person who we’re trying to hire and what does the company need on the value side, you know are the values matched or not matched. It makes a big difference, and so those are the things, those are the two big things I look for. Of course there’s technical competence but that’s the third one for me. you know. That’s how..that’s how I looked at, I think those first two are really important. Really have what your..what with success look like. Because no one can be successful if you don’t know what it looks like. You know you can’t build a house if you don’t know what the house looks like, you know. I mean you got to figure out what that looks like first and then you build the house then you can figure out how you want inside what all the things you want. What does the house look like. So those are what I look at like first.
Suzanne: Yeah and you work with a lot of..and and I know it’s a big passion of yours, mentoring and helping young entrepreneurs and actually young people to where they want to be in their career, in their growth path, what have you. And so when you’re working with a lot of the
the you know younger, less experienced CEOs and you’re helping them to hire, I..we found that they tend to focus on those technical skills much more than on the softer skills because they have a problem and they need to solve that problem. How do you communicate to them that it is about the house and not just these technical nuances.
Melissa: I think I always reassure them that of course you need to have these technical things. That’s that’s enough course, right. I mean yes that’s why you have the opening but I usually can point out that they’re having, there is personality or there’s things that aren’t working and I can usually point that out to them in a current thing. I think sometimes it’s hard to say abstract if they don’t know. So like you see that dynamic on that. You see how that works really well, you know. This is why, because people are matched. So I try if I’m in there I try to show them something so they can actually see it so it’s not so abstract. Because it seems like like abstract. oh yeah yeah of course. Like sometimes I’ll say well how do you know, like what is your culture? How do you know you can look for it. Oh, I just know when I talk to someone. Fair enough. Sometimes sometimes you can. The problem is too, is you know for me, a good team also has divergencies in it. So yes you want people who are culturally aligned but you you kind of have a big swath of what that looks like right. That doesn’t mean you want to have everyone exactly like you. And I find a lot of times people want to have people exactly like them. I think it’s human nature. The problem with that is then you’re in an echo chamber and echo chambers aren’t useful for you to getting the best teams and making sure you get the best thing forward. And so I do talk a little bit about that and biases and things like that so we kind of get into nuances. I don’t have a problem challenging people so usually we go down that way.
Suzanne: Yeah and that makes sense. So let’s kind of turn, flip the the question around just a little bit. Looking back on your career, what advice would you have given your 20-year-old self?
Melissa: That’s a great question. Looking back my 20..I think I would give myself grace about failing. Grace about trying things. Really pushing myself more to try things I was a little afraid
of and make mistakes. I think I would have se..s..sought out mentors more and said I wanted to learn more. I mean sometimes in you’re in that age you’re like thinking you’re drinking from a fire hose anyhow. But I wasn’t sure I was as intentional as I as I could have maybe been. And I don’t think I had in my body yet that it’s okay to fail. I think I was so afraid of failing especially at the beginning like fear that they’re going to think I don’t know what I’m doing. That I think that you’re right, you don’t know what you’re doing and it’s okay. You’re learning and you know you can, you’re gonna fail on certain things if you push and you can check right. And so I think that’s what I would told myself. I think if you don’t fail it’s really hard to learn sometimes. It’s not to say you can’t learn without failing but you really should be pushing it and I think I would have told myself that. And I know that’s some of the advice I give people now who think they need to know everything as they get out of school, and it’s like to me, hopefully college or or wherever you’ve learned has taught you to be curious and want to learn. It hasn’t probably taught you what you need yet to be successful in all positions. So.
Suzanne: No, I, you know, we talk about this a lot with different CEOs, that it’s the scraped knees. It’s, it’s the falling down that you learn, what, you know. Again what to do what not to do or how to something. And, so I think that’s a valuable valuable lesson that we can all learn from too.
Melissa: Yeah, and I think it’s something that when I talked to CEOs, it’s like do you have, are you open to having that in your organization? How are you taking care of that. I in the company that I talked about at the beginning, it was a great entrepreneurial CEO and he actually paid us if we made a mistake and we talked about it and we talked about what the mistake was. No I never did. Except for, I should take that back, this big mistake that I made with the the gentleman that I okay’d the time sheets, which I thought was a big mistake. Which he was okay with. I did talk about that one. So I shouldn’t say I never did. But he would pay us and the reason he’d pay you is because he wanted to encourage that behavior that people to share. So it was a safe, it was safe to fail in there. And like I said when I told was happening he’s like oh no big deal. He wasn’t worried about it. I was worried about it. He didn’t even need me, he didn’t even want me necessarily to go to the police and do all that I did. But I did. Because it was like that was bothering me so. I think that if CEOs are open to having some space, you know there’s certain things you you know you can’t afford to have someone make mistakes. It’s life and death decisions. There’s stuff in there that, you know, but a lot of times that’s not the case and can you make a little bit of room for people to…and that’s why checks and balances are important and systems.
Suzanne: Yeah a absolutely. Well, this podcast is called hiring for good and so really, what does hiring for good mean to you?
Melissa: Yeah. I think it goes back to the same thing that I said before which is is hiring for good means that you have a good match both ways. So that not only do you get what you need but the the employee also gets what they need. I mean if there’s..if they’re, they’re matched and
they know what they’re supposed to do. And they feel value and they feel they can make impact and you have that kind of role and there’s a match, there’s like the sky is a limit on what can happen. And I know people, if you can get all people in that way and my feeling is you can. You can match people to roles and get it that way and it’s like a well-oiled machine. And then there is going to be issues, there’s gonna be stumbling blocks but it’s like, you know. They always talk about the the rock, how water can go around the rock, over the rock. Your team can do the same thing. I’ve seen it happen. I’ve I’ve been lucky enough to be on teams where that was the case and then something came out, like a big boulder, and we figured out, you know, oh, we just go over it, we go around it, and we worked as a team. And I have to tell you that those are some of the best experiences that I had as an employee and we had a lot of fun doing. It even in the crisis times.
Suzanne: Yeah and so again let kind of expand on that just a little bit. Because I think we’ve all experienced, wow what a incredible team we were, and it’s usually in hindsight, like you don’t realize it when you’re in the middle of it because you’re dealing with work, you know, day-to-day issues or big problems or what have you. But beyond that alignment with those values and and I and I liked what you said not everybody has to be the same. But kind of talk to me in your opinion what made that such a great team.
Melissa: So, for me ia I think back and there’s been a couple cases where I’ve had this..I’ve been lucky to have this. I think that someone did a good job to know that we all had strengths and weaknesses and to try to see what those are and to make them apparent. So if I had a weakness there was someone in the group that had a strength that I could work with and vice versa. So we kind of were all aware people’s strengths and weaknesses and instead of always working on our weakness, we took our strength as something that’s really important. And then we kind of said okay these are all the strengths in the team. What should we work on? So I think those you actually had that conversation. I..we had that conversation. And so then you knew like, oh if I if I wasn’t good at something, I could ask, you know, I can ask John and John can help me and I can help John with this. And so again, we played as as as as a movable team on depending what we were. So we’re very..as a team we knew strengths and weaknesses. We worked on the soft skills communication, listening. We had respect for each other and you know deep trust. And I was..I always define trust in three ways. Trust in competence, that that person is competent. Trust in..in sincerity, that they’re honest. They’ll say what..they’ll say that it works or not works. They’ll be honest with you, what’s not working. And the last one is what I call trust in care or involvement. They know what’s important to me and I know what’s important to them and we work together to do it. And when I’m on a team there’s all three trusts going. And if I go back to that first company that I worked at when I was an early, early leader, I actually stayed there for 15 years. Unfortunately, the young entrepreneur, my boss, who was amazing, had a you know brain aneurysm and died instantly at a very young age. It was very tragic. And they brought us all together as as team leads and I had been there a while so I kind of moved up the ranks and we were..his will and everything happened and they were going to sell the company and they let us be the people who were going to take the offers and do the company and do all that kind of stuff. And we, you know, in like..in we worked so hard as a team. We had the best year ever, in the year before as we were getting ready to sell. Because of the of the teamwork. I mean, we were just like tight team and to this day I still stay in touch with those people. I mean we are still in touch and that was that was 25 years ago. So those are..that’s kind of what you you..kind of..you form kind of a, you know, a strong alliance. You care about each other. You care about each other’s success. You want to be there to each other. I mean to me that’s that’s a team and I’ve been lucky to be in a a lot of those teams. And I actually think that all companies can create that, but you have to be intentional and one of the things you have to do and this is where and you may know this because in the business you you’re in is people always rush to hire because they got a lot of work. And we have to fill it right now because we got a lot of work. And yes you have a lot of work and I’m sure it’s killing you but if you don’t take the time on the front in to try to figure out what you need, to me, there’s more waste
Suzanne: Oh absolutely. You’re truly speaking my language right there so. No this has been great and I want to do..take one more second because the last time we talked you spoke about mentoring and helping younger, young, and I don’t want to say kids because they’re in their 20s, young, young adults young adults adults. Yeah, tell me about that and and what what you
would like to do with that.
Melissa: Oh that’s my passion project. I speak with, well first of all I have children in that age
group. So I’ve been lucky enough then to be introduced to a lot of kids in that age group. And you know, unfortunately with what’s going on in the world right now I hear a lot of apathy and a lot of worry right. When I got out of school, people weren’t as worried. I mean, they knew buying a house was maybe an option after they worked really hard. They saved some money
and now with kids and their debt from school or, you know, how high housing is and how everything they they just feel a little bit more apathy and it makes me really sad. To me, kids are a future and so I really like to work with kids and explain, you know, we don’t have all the answers. You guys are our future. You guys are going to see the world in different ways and you know, how together can I share my knowledge that I know what I know. And together with what you want the world to be like and what you name, how can we do this together. And so that’s kind of where it is. So it’s really a passion project for me. It’s something that gets me really excited and I’ve been fortunate enough to..I even help someone launch a business that they had and I was just there to support them and share the stuff that I knew. So, it’s kinda what I’ve been doing. And so, I’ve been finding people or people find me. I’m hoping to maybe make it easier for people to do this. I haven’t exactly figured out how that’s going to be or have some kind of open space or space where people can come together and talk as young adults about what their worries are and see if there’s ways to hook hook them up with people who you done something similar or want to help the future generation and so that’s kind of where where it sits currently as a passion project.
Suzanne: Well, and somebody said and and I’m trying to remember who so I could give them credit, that great leaders..they they have found their passion and that’s what makes them a rockstar. And, and the way you talk about this I know you’re gonna figure that out and it’s going to be amazing. So I wanted just to say thank you so much Melissa and all of her contact information is there. Whether you are starting your career or you have a career in a business that you need some help with. And again, what a great valuable you know asset you can be Melissa thank you so much.
Melissa: Thank you so very much.