Nyco Sani-Spritz

Culture starts at the top. Most leaders have heard the phrase. A recent panel discussion at the ISSA Altus Summit pushed the idea further: Leaders do not simply shape culture but set the emotional climate for an entire organization. Their optimism, resilience, and authenticity spread through a company, and so does their stress. Laurie Sewell, President of the Board of Directors for ISSA, the Association for Cleaning and Facility Solutions, moderated the panel, “The Sunshine Effect: How Radiant Leadership Transforms Culture, Retention, and Enterprise Value,” which included Kim Althoff, Executive Director of ISSA; Jill Davie, industry advisor at WorkWave; and Michelle Audas, CEO of Swept Janitorial Software. “People first isn’t soft,” she said. It is, she argued, one of the most powerful strategies a leader can use, one that drives engagement, retention, performance, customer experience, and ultimately the value of the business. Her own leadership identity grew out of a moment of frustration. Asked once to define her personal brand, she landed on a single word for how she shows up: sunshine. The point behind it, she said, is that “kindness and accountability can live in the same space.” Warmth and high standards are not opposites; holding both is just harder, and it takes intention. When leaders lead badly The panel opened with a deliberately humbling query: Describe a moment when you led badly and what it taught you. Althoff shared that leaders often feel they need every answer. The harder truth is that leadership is a partnership. Moving too fast, pushing a personal vision too hard, can shut a team out. Her takeaway became a refrain for the session: slow down, listen more, and make the team part of the decision. Audas offered a story about a senior leader she hired into her executive group. The new hire kept turning in weak results, she said, and she let it go too long. When she finally pressed for a plan, she heard blame and finger-pointing, and caught herself joining in. The moment forced a reckoning: She had never clearly conveyed the organization’s values to him. She slowed down and made it plain that blame is not how the company holds people accountable. Course-correcting was the job, she said, even when moving fast made it hard to see. Davie said she had a leader on her team she believed in, a hard worker who had built something strong and had asked for more responsibility and pay she had earned. Her CEO at the time disagreed, and Davie deferred to the CEO rather than fighting for the worker. The employee quit. Davie said she would never forget the look on the employee’s face when she could not explain a decision that was not her own. The lesson stuck: Disagree and commit, but speak your mind, even when someone outranks you. Staying quiet cost the team, the culture, and the business. Leading through the hardest seasons Sewell next asked the panelists what was the hardest season you led through, and what did your people surprisingly need from you? For Davie, the hardest stretch of her career was a cybersecurity attack a couple of years ago. What her team needed most, she said, was not reassurance but honesty. She told them plainly that the next two weeks would be brutal, laid out what was coming, and promised they would get through it together. The candor let people stop bracing and start solving, and the bonds formed in the trenches strengthened the culture for good. Althoff echoed that the heart of leadership is honesty, transparency, and communication. Leaders forget how valuable plain, honest conversation is, she said, especially when times are tough or someone is underperforming. Telling the truth is how you make a person better, and trust is what holds a team together when things get hard, she said. Audas, who has led technology organizations for 15 years, pointed to a different kind of hard season: an acquisition and pandemic-era employee cuts. Those decisions can break trust, she said, and they demand equal care for the people leaving and the people staying. She added leaders must take care of themselves, too, because hard decisions take a toll and a leader must be in a good state of mind to make them with humanity. For Sewell’s company, the test was the COVID-19 pandemic. Client sites stayed open, so her teams had to show up in person. To prove leadership was in it with them, she said, her leadership team personally delivered masks to those locations rather than directing the work from home. Keeping the leader’s tank full Sewell admitted she winces at the phrase self-care, joking that her version runs more toward chocolate than the spa. The panel quickly reframed the idea as self-awareness and resourcing. Audas said it comes down to self-awareness. Because she works remotely and draws energy from connection, she said, she is intentional about surrounding herself with advisors and friends before hard decisions, so she is not isolated when she must bring her best to a difficult moment. Self-care, for her, is less about spa days and more about resourcing herself. Davie gets her energy from her team. Showing up with a smile and a little humor, even in hard times, is simply who she is, she said, so although she walks into a meeting feeling drained, she usually walks out rejuvenated. Sewell built on the self-awareness theme, recalling that personality frameworks define introversion and extroversion by where a person draws energy. She comes across as an extrovert, she said, yet recharges alone, through reading and quiet moments. Knowledge of what recharges her and recognition of her own breaking point warns her when to step back before her filter wears thin. The business case for people Called out for the idea that people-first leadership is soft, the panel turns to examples where investing in people moved the numbers. For Althoff, the example is the team itself. ISSA’s Emerging Leaders program selects rising leaders each year for development, coaching, and mentoring, she said, because

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