Fostering Trust, Alignment & Growth - Leadership Strategies for High-Performance Organizations with Jim Tolbert

Curious how fostering trust, alignment, and growth opportunities can help leaders tackle talent challenges in high-growth organizations?

In this Leadership Levers Podcast episode, Jim Tolbert, CEO of Adelante Education Group, Chancellor of Universidad Santander USA & the Managing Director at PL3, shares his journey from investment banking to leading education-focused organizations.

Drawing on his extensive experience, Jim emphasizes the critical role of culture in driving organizational performance and aligning teams around shared values.

Jim highlights the challenges of attracting, retaining, and developing talent in high-growth environments, particularly in PortCo & people-centric industries. He explains how leaders must assess whether team members can grow alongside the organization and make tough decisions when they cannot.

One of Jim's key strategies is fostering a visible and transparent leadership style. By regularly visiting locations, communicating directly with teams, and sharing clear organizational priorities, he continues to grow a culture of trust and alignment that boosts performance and morale.

The conversation concludes with insights into PL3’s work, which brings analytics and data-driven approaches to evaluating leadership teams in private equity-backed companies.

Jim shares how this innovative focus is addressing a critical gap in leadership selection and development, driving success in high-performing organizations.

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Learn more about the Performance Leadership Learning Lab - PL3

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Seeking to align your culture, boost performance & impact your bottom line? Let’s chat—no sales, just real talk about your challenges. Not ready? Join our PL3 Community for free insights & connections.

Episode Transcript

William Gladhart (00:00):
Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast.
I'm your host, will Gladhart,CMO at the Culture Think Tank.
At the Culture Think Tank, weempower leaders with metrics
that strengthen culture, driveperformance and return.
We're here today to learn aboutthe actions leaders have taken
to address organizational change.

(00:21):
Address organizational change.
Today, our guest is Jim Tolbert, ceo of Adelante Education
Group and Managing Director atthe Performance Leadership
Learning Lab, or PL3.
Thanks so much for taking thetime to join us.
It's my pleasure, will.
Yeah, let's begin by having youshare with our audience a bit
about yourself, your backgroundand the organizations that you

(00:43):
lead.

Jim Tolbert (00:45):
Sure, my pleasure.
I started my career actually ininvestment banking.
I worked with Morgan Stanley inthe mergers and acquisitions
department.
I then got my MBA at theUniversity of Chicago and had
the privilege of working forMcKinsey Company in their
Chicago office for several years.
I left and started my career asan entrepreneur.

(01:05):
At that point I set up acompany that provided funding
for students that were attendingtrade schools, and this also
began a very long career in thebusiness of education, and I
call it the business ofeducation because it was very
much not traditional academics.
It was through that that Ifirst became the CFO of a

(01:26):
private equity-backed educationcompany and then after that,
became the CEO of an educationplatform that I started and also
had private equity backing.
Today, I'm working on severalprojects.
One is I'm partnered with auniversity in Mexico,
Universidad Santander, to helpthem expand into the United

(01:47):
States to serve the non-Englishspeaking Latino population in
the United States, and I amthrilled to be the managing
director of PL3.

William Gladhart (01:57):
Well, I'm glad you don't have that much on
your plate these days, so we'llbe discussing three questions
today as a warm up to ourconversation, would you share
why you believe a healthyculture is critical?

Jim Tolbert (02:08):
Yeah, absolutely.
I spoke with you at one othertime, Will, and I really made
this an important point.
You can't be everywhere at thesame time.
You can't look at what peopledo when they're in their office
and the door is closed, and so,to me, culture is one of the
best ways of creating a valuesystem for an organization.

(02:29):
People don't like to bemicromanaged, and I understand
that.
So by setting a very strongtone of culture, it gives you
the comfort level that, to theextent that it does permeate the
organization, people are goingto make the right decisions.

William Gladhart (02:46):
Yeah, well, we often hear from leaders that
you have a culture, whether youintended to or not, and many of
those actions around culture aredriven by the behavior of the
leader and how people feelcomfortable and connected in the
organization and understandtheir roles.
So, Jim, it's been ourexperience that leaders tend to

(03:07):
struggle in three key areaspeople, process or profit.
In your role as CEO in multipleorganizations.

Jim Tolbert (03:25):
I guess people would be the biggest challenge,
and particularly in an industrylike I was in, in education,
where it was a very asset-lightbusiness and it was very much of
a people business.
And there's a lot of otherindustries that have a similar
high labor content to theproduct they deliver.
You know pretty much anyservice organization hospitality
, travel, what have you.
It's, to me, finding the rightpeople, it's attracting the
right people and it's also beingable to retain them, and this

(03:48):
is going to become increasinglyimportant.
The United States and, frankly,most of the Western world, is
dealing with this demographictime bomb where the aging of the
population is creating asituation where we're going to
continue to have workforceshortages and if any
organization wants to attractthe right people and keep them,

(04:08):
that people part of the equationis absolutely critical.

William Gladhart (04:12):
Yes, yeah, it's an interesting challenge
and I know that in our otherconversations you've expressed
that, in the private equity aswell as the finance-backed
marketplaces or business placesthat that people component is a
huge challenge, especiallyamongst the leadership ranks.
How do you retain, train,identify the performance gaps,
et cetera.
So can you identify one of thechallenges in one of the

(04:35):
organizations that you worked inand how did it negatively
impact the organization?

Jim Tolbert (04:41):
Yeah, I'll tell you , something I've actually spoken
often about is, particularlyfor a fast growing company is
making sure that your team cangrow with the company.
And, frankly, sometimes theycan't and they're able to and
sometimes they're not able to,and what's good.
You know what's a strongmanagement team at one level of

(05:02):
revenue may or may not be theright team at the higher level
of revenue.
So to me, the kind of the twobig challenges we faced was
growing the team as the companygrew or, frankly, just being
able to understand this personcan't get to the next level and
being able to move on at thatpoint.

(05:22):
And you know, I had incrediblepeople at all sizes of my
organization and sometimes youhad to move on from people who
were not able to grow with theorganization.

William Gladhart (05:37):
Yeah, well, that's also a.
I appreciate you address that,because that's also a unique
trait for a leader to be able toidentify those individuals who
can move forward with theorganization in a high growth
setting and those that maybeneed to find a different role at
a different place.
What was the one thing, jim,that you identified that helped
impact culture or performance orthat people element positively
that you did across the board?

Jim Tolbert (05:57):
Yeah, one of the things and frankly, I enjoyed
this the most about my job is Igot to be the politician, I got
to be the cheerleader.
We had a distributedorganization.
We had locations throughoutthree states and I made sure
that multiple times during theyear I was at each of our
campuses, I had a campaignspeech.
I used to call it.

(06:17):
I'm out there shaking hands andkissing babies.
But they got to hear from theleader of the organization what
was important and I tried to beas transparent as I could.
When I went out to the variouscampuses, it was usually around
a lunch-type meeting and I thinkfor a leader to be visible is
really very important and Ithink that most organizations

(06:38):
want to hear it directly fromthe leader what's important and
how we're doing.

William Gladhart (06:42):
Yeah, I love that you shared that.
We have seen, statistically,analytically, data-wise, across
the board in our assessmentswhen the leader communicates
effectively and directly to theorganization and next steps, we
see increases in performance, wesee a drop in anxiety, we see
better retention across theboard.

(07:02):
So you're pointing outsomething that's absolutely
critical to be able to measurethat, but also think about how
the actions of the leader areaffecting the entire
organization.
So, Jim, there anything elseyou'd like to add before we wrap
up today for any other fellowleaders?

Jim Tolbert (07:17):
No, the only thing I'd like to add is what I'm
doing now with PL3, and I'm veryexcited to be part of this
organization.
We have two incredible partnersthat we have pulled together
with the Culture Think Tank, andwe're addressing a very
fundamental business challenge,particularly in private
equity-backed companies, wherehaving the right leadership team

(07:38):
is critical, and I think it isnot uncommon for private equity
firms to have a very subjectiveprocess of evaluation and
selection of their leadershipteam, and I think the one thing
that we are doing with ourpartners in bringing a little
bit more analytics to thesituation is going to have a
huge impact on private equityfirms to back and to grow their

(08:01):
leadership teams.

William Gladhart (08:02):
Yeah, and you're pointing out something
that is a much needed piece ofthe marketplace, where 78% of
leaders, especially C-suiteleaders within private equity
high performing companies, exitin two years because they're
either not the right fit orthey're not able to grow the
company.
They're not the right personthat understands the growth
trajectory.
So, Jim, I've enjoyed havingyou on our Leadership Lovers

(08:25):
podcast.
Thank you so much for yourinsights.

Jim Tolbert (08:28):
It's been absolutely my pleasure.
Thank you, Will.

William Gladhart (08:32):
Thank you for joining us on the Leadership
Levers podcast.
Find all our Leadership Leversepisodes on the Culture Think
Tank website at www.
theculturethinktank.
com or listen on your favoritestreaming platform.
We'd love to hear from youabout the challenges you have
faced as a leader.
Tune in weekly as we inviteleaders to share their

(08:56):
experiences in strengtheningculture and performance, one
action at a time.