An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis

Take Risks: Taking risks is the ultimate form of pushing people forward into the uncomfortable. As Leaders, we must be open to taking more risks and rolling with the punches when they arise. The path to success is often not a steady course, so it’s your grit that determines how far you will go. For example, when I wanted to become a more well-rounded professional, I took a risk by pursuing my MBA. At the time, I had a young family and a full-time job to prioritize alongside this new endeavor. But by taking a risk on myself, sacrificing time, and investing in my skills, I learned the tools to become a stronger professional, even though I did not know where it would take me at the time. While it may be hard at times to take risks, it’s crucial to develop the grit needed to make something better for the long haul.

As a part of my series about “Grit: The Most Overlooked Ingredient of Success,” I had the pleasure of interviewing Elkay’s Vice President of Operations Kraig Kniss.

Kraig Kniss is Senior Vice President of Operations at Elkay Manufacturing, a 102-year-old family-owned and privately-held manufacturing company and leading manufacturer of world-class stainless steel and quartz sinks and the award-winning ezH20 bottle-filling stations. In his role, Kraig is responsible for the Operations and Supply Chain Management for the business, including overseeing multiple U.S.-based manufacturing and distribution facilities, its global procurement, sourcing, planning, and distribution teams, and its central services quality functions. He joined Elkay in 1980 as a product engineer, and through the years, held a variety of management roles in quality services, inventory control, materials, and manufacturing.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what events have drawn you to this specific career path?

The road to the career path I followed started when I began to pursue a degree in engineering. Before I graduated from college in 1980, I began interviewing for engineering roles with optimism to land the perfect job. However, what started as a great year with the economy booming and opportunities galore quickly became a time of deep recession in the United States due to several unpredictable worldly events and political-economic changes. I had several offers from prominent companies at the time, but once these events occurred, they had to scale back their hiring efforts. This turn of events made securing a job out of college more complicated, but I reluctantly took an entry-level Engineering Technician role in my hometown. Unbeknownst to me, this company had a factory that made water bottle coolers and drinking water fountains. Now, 41 years later, Elkay, the company I began working for during a time of such change in our country, continues to be the company I work for and help lead today.

Can you share your story about “Grit and Success”? First can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

When I began my career at Elkay, my Manager at the time took a specific interest in career development. I was fairly new to the professional field of engineering, and I had to learn engineering skills I was not entirely prepared for at the time, including Refrigeration and Mechanical Design, Metallurgy, etc. I persevered through these challenges and worked hard to develop these skills by taking on additional training and leveraging the knowledge of my peers and industry contacts. In general, in my career, I would say I have always strived to improve my skills and keep abreast of the industry through additional training. No matter where we are in our careers and our professional journey, we always have gaps that drive opportunities for development. After being in this engineering role for 12 years and pursuing my MBA, I worked my way up through multiple operations roles. Within that journey, however, I had restrictions to relocate, so I took advantage of the opportunity to take on other lateral roles, including a two-year assignment away from home on a business systems integration. This opportunity fell outside my field and comfort zone but benefitted my cross-functional experiences. When my life entered a new season that allowed me to take on more broad-based organizational roles, it led me to where I am today as Vice President of Operations.

Looking back on my experiences, it was my hard work and dedication to becoming the best I could be, leaning on continuing education and experiences, and facing the real-world head-on that allowed me to have the position and responsibilities I have today. By having the courage to pursue a career I didn’t feel fully prepared for and having perseverance and grit in my character, I was able to turn an entry-level job into a long and fulfilling career.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

I grew up on a farm in Northwest Illinois, so hard work and long days with laborious responsibilities were a part of my upbringing. These experiences helped me develop a gritty work ethic that I embraced throughout my life after pursuing a career beyond the farm. For example, some of my first jobs included working in a small screw machine factory in high school and doing concrete construction jobs during the summers while attending college. Several years after I was an established professional, my Manager inspired me to learn more about business management to create more of a balance with my technical education and background. At the time, becoming a business leader required gaining more breadth in my business leadership skills, so I began to work towards my master’s degree.

At the time, there was not a remote or online option for receiving this kind of degree, and because I had so much technical-focused training in my undergraduate education, I had a lot of catching up to do with business curriculum to receive an MBA. But I was committed to becoming a more well-rounded professional and the leader I knew I could be. It was this drive and Midwest work ethic that drove me to travel more than an hour one way to attend classes on top of my regular work schedule, complete homework while having to care for a young, active family that was incredibly supportive, and gain my master’s degree over seven years. Despite it being quite a challenge for me at that time, I knew that working hard to learn more and become who I wanted to be would be worth it. In addition, my experiences sharing with other business leaders about facing similar challenges, working through new ideas, and bringing in the social, organizational behavioral aspects of people in the workplace were extremely valuable and important. Today, this same drive pushes me to continue working toward becoming a better leader and equipping others with the tools they need to do the same because the power to do so is within people.

So how did Grit lead to your eventual success? How did Grit turn things around?

Some of my most difficult times in business revolved around leading in times of uncertainty and when jobs, and the future of specific businesses and product lines, were at risk. Being able to motivate and keep employees engaged amidst job uncertainty, high levels of cost control, and workforce management taught me a lot about being a leader, including the importance of the people that make up our company. The respect I gained for our company’s people caused a huge transition within me, making me go from being just a boss to a servant leader. The contributions and sacrifices that our employees make in times of difficulty can hardly be described. During those times, it separated good leaders from great leaders. Those experiences showed me that to be a great leader, I must always do whatever I could to preserve the longevity of their livelihoods through my support, transparency, and continued challenge for not my success but those of our employees.

I once had a Manager that told me that I would never understand the responsibility of a plant or organizational leadership role until I sat in that seat. But if you are a great leader, the switch will turn. As a leader, you will realize that it is no longer about you and your job, but rather the decisions you will make, strategies you will develop, and drive to preserve your team member’s employment, livelihoods, and quality of life. He was so right, and I think that mindset separates selfish leaders from selfless leaders.

Based on your experience, can you share 5 pieces of advice about how one can develop Grit?

• Empower your people: To develop grit within people, they need to feel empowered. Empowerment, however, does not just mean supporting employees to do their own thing. With empowerment must also come accountability and ownership. To be successful, business leaders must work toward aligning people with the focus around critical business objectives while also pushing people forward into the uncomfortable, with an individual purpose, so that they can grow. By empowering your people to lean into the uncomfortable, they will have the opportunity to grow their unique skill sets while also growing as a team so that they can continue to achieve their goals and better the business. However, grit isn’t developed overnight. In my experience, grit is developed through trial and error and learning over time through having to make hard choices, making mistakes, and even failing on occasion. Therefore, leaders must set clear standards, define what success looks like for their team, and empower people to recognize where they need support and what barriers leaders can help them remove. Leaders can then ensure that grit sticks within people by consistently empowering their employees to become the best versions of themselves, be patient with the results, and be there at the conclusion with personal, genuine recognition. Once grit is within your people, they will work harder and smarter than before and empower others alongside you, and develop a culture where success is recognized and appreciated within the work unit.
• Take Risks: Taking risks is the ultimate form of pushing people forward into the uncomfortable. As Leaders, we must be open to taking more risks and rolling with the punches when they arise. The path to success is often not a steady course, so it’s your grit that determines how far you will go. For example, when I wanted to become a more well-rounded professional, I took a risk by pursuing my MBA. At the time, I had a young family and a full-time job to prioritize alongside this new endeavor. But by taking a risk on myself, sacrificing time, and investing in my skills, I learned the tools to become a stronger professional, even though I did not know where it would take me at the time. While it may be hard at times to take risks, it’s crucial to develop the grit needed to make something better for the long haul.
• Prioritize Perseverance: Since grit takes time to develop, those who want to become grittier must prioritize perseverance. When challenges arise, people with grit don’t back down or bow out; they are determined to press on and find new ways to overcome challenges. I often stress the importance of persevering through situations and challenges by sharing my experiences with the same philosophy as when I coached sports. I frequently apply those parallels back to the workplace when facing challenges or setbacks. I have used common football themes when leading my team, such as “inch by inch,” or “on the two-line” with projects, so need to score” or like “we can just Punt, or we can pull together and go for it.” It may sound silly to some, but these ideas are the same in business. As with sports, these challenges often create motivation, and with success, there is an opportunity for grit to form. Once you have the perseverance to withstand the storm and come out on the other side stronger than before, there isn’t anything you can’t accomplish.
• Think Ahead: It’s a leader’s responsibility to develop effective strategies and consider your business’s future needs. In order to be a gritty leader, one must think ahead often, and not just about where your business’s industry is headed but also where you are and what you want to achieve in the future. To do this, leaders must often think about what are new areas can improve with opportunities to close performance gaps, when teams should reset processes and shift mindsets about how things are done so we can leverage new technologies, and what are the best practices and approaches other industries are using to create the competitive edge. I once had a Senior Leader that I often saw just looking out the window in deep thought or going for a walk by himself during the day. I remember it used to frustrate me to see him doing nothing. Then one day, I asked him about it, and he shared with me that as a leader, you have to find time “to just think” within the chaos of the day. It did not resonate with me at the time, but now as a leader, it certainly does. As a Senior Leader, you have to make time to think outside of the box and challenge yourself to think long term. To have grit, you have to use the time to develop the skill and strength to provide thought leadership and challenge your team and teach them to challenge you.
• The Power is in Your People: Some of the most challenging times as a leader center around making tough decisions regarding your people. To have continued strong performance requires a solid team of talented, committed employees who are loyal and have your back as a leader. However, having the benefit of that as a leader is not a given, as it has to be earned with mutual respect and care for each other. That said, some of my toughest responsibilities as a leader have centered around addressing situations where individuals are not equipped or not motivated to do the job, or their influence causes dysfunction to occur within a team. This happens for several reasons, such as misalignment of the right talent at hire or a change in job scope. I have learned over the years that grit is required to have the managerial courage to address these directly and transparently with targeted, time-oriented personal development goals and plans, rotation of the job role to be on the “right seat on the bus,” or purely acknowledging the misfit of the individual in the role requiring a separation. I believe in people, but as a leader, you cannot ignore your responsibility to organizational performance as a whole and must make tough decisions to maintain quality business operations. I can think back to many situations early in my career where I delayed taking action or was passive in addressing issues, ultimately impacting overall team performance when it should not have. All employees have the right to succeed, and it’s a leader’s responsibility to ensure they do. Still, there are times when it just is not going to work, so having the managerial courage to address it is critical.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped you when things were tough? Can you share a story about that?

Certainly, having a strong support system with faith, family, and friends is all foundational. I have been blessed with this and have seen others inhibited without it. Developing a strong network of trusted allies both personally and professionally is very important. I give a lot of credit to those who have supported me for the professional success I have had in my career. I have also been fortunate enough throughout my career to have had strong leaders helping me grow and providing me with opportunities to grow on my own as well through trial and error.

Often, failures teach you more than successes. For example, in the middle of my career, our company was going through a significant business systems change and converted from a mainframe system to an ERP system as part of the industry’s Y2K transition. I was working at a remote plant at the time and was approached and asked by my Manager if I would be willing to support the project, which involved weekly travel for extended stays over two years. The purpose of my assignment was not only to represent the interest of operations for the new system but also as a personal development opportunity for me. My role at the time was as a manager of several functions and multiple plants that were key to plant operations. The expectation was that with his support and support of the team, I would stay connected with those responsibilities while taking on the role in the special assignment, so my current organizational position was not put at risk. As I think back on that time and my experience, working on a business systems project was probably the single best catalyst in my career, given the personal relationships and broader understanding of how a business runs I developed from it. Had I not had a supportive Manager that influenced me to do it and preserved and supported my existing organizational responsibilities, my career trajectory would have looked much different.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

One way I aim to bring goodness into the world is by being a developer of people. Coaching sports has always been a part of my life, and after coaching youth and high school football for many years, I saw the impact authentic leadership, coaching, and mentorship can have on people. It’s incredibly rewarding to have kids I coached in the past follow up with me as adults to share how my coaching impacted their life. So now I do my best to leverage the fundamentals of coaching within my leadership style and aim to coach people, whether it be in sports, business, or life in general, to work toward becoming the best versions of themselves. In coaching, you must be humble and have empathy, which is sometimes difficult to balance in a competitive environment, just like leading in business. So, I try to maintain a positive, winning attitude in whatever I do to potentially inspire others to do the same. Sometimes, the best thing you can do in this world is stay positive and work toward making the world a better place.

Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?

At this point in my career, one of the most fulfilling projects I am working on is preparing my successors to become leaders themselves in the future. After 41 years with the business, I feel it is now my responsibility to leverage my experiences and support other leaders by sharing the lessons I have learned and how they inform the way I lead today. To prepare my successors for what they will eventually take on, I have been actively sharing my past experiences and providing them with different perspectives on business challenges to frame their thinking and future leadership. I also actively support a mentorship program at Elkay and have several mentees that I meet with regularly to discuss business challenges they are facing and help them with their personal development plans. I find this rewarding, especially since most of these mentor/mentee relationships are two-way. Often there is a natural age difference, so I leverage the opportunity to receive reverse feedback on things I can do to be a better leader by understanding the needs and wants of a different generation. Giving and receiving transparent two-way feedback is vital and very fulfilling.

It is also essential to equip our future leaders with the tools they need to succeed, and one way I can do that is by leveraging lessons I’ve learned through my past experiences to teach them so they can be better leaders. As we all continue to face new business challenges, we must do better to embrace the opportunities in front of us with advanced technologies using digital data, enabling an increased processing speed and new means for analytics. Many within the industry refer to this as 4.0, referring to the times we are in and utilizing these tools as the start of the 4th industrial revolution. We have multiple projects being deployed that embrace this thinking, and I believe it will significantly change how we do business. Embracing a progressive mindset to learn and be open to the changes and benefits this technology brings will be essential for us as leaders. This will change not only our business processes but also will change the talent we need within our organization, including leadership. Of course, these kinds of lessons can only come from people who have experienced it themselves, and as a leader, I feel that it is my duty to prepare future leaders for what is to come. It is my hope that these lessons and the on-the-job learning alongside me will help them to become even better leaders for the company’s future.

What advice would you give to other executives or founders to help their employees to thrive?

Employees thrive where they are respected and valued. At Elkay, our company values, which include “Our Strength is in Our People,” “Knowledge Empowers,” and “We Value Quality in All We Do,” drive not only business decisions but also facets that create expectations of us as leaders and our employee which in total define of our culture. Each value touches on a unique feature of Elkay’s business culture, but they all have one thing in common: they all relate to our people. With that being said, my advice to business leaders is to express the value of your company’s people regularly. This can be done through providing ample professional development opportunities for employees to pursue, ensuring leaders keep an open-door policy so employees feel that their ideas and concerns are being heard, or regularly recognizing the hard work and dedication of employees.

Of course, this can mean different things to different leaders depending on their industry. When I open each of my leadership meetings, I begin by asking leaders to identify opportunities where I personally can recognize an employee or team. These opportunities can include a service anniversary, personal accomplishment, contribution of an idea to their team, or even a simple act of extra effort or kindness. Having employees who know that I care and that their Leaders took the time to tell me can be extremely powerful. It creates followership, unity, and overall work unit performance excellence. Still, no matter the way it’s accomplished, leaders must express the value of their people so that they create a culture where their people feel appreciated and empowered every day.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

I would want to inspire others to value the impact of their work. Too many times, I’ve encountered employees that do not feel as though their role or work is important or makes a difference. Every person is unique, making their individual contributions just as unique and unable to be replicated by anyone else in their very same role. Still, I’ve found that many people do not see it that way, and many times this can be because of the way business and their role in it is discussed. Business leaders often fall victim to the dangers of corporate-speak, which can result in referring to people as “heads” or “numbers” by their job instead of their personhood. Intentional or not, this way of speaking and the way we as leaders can often carry ourselves is felt by employees and makes them feel less important and valued. If more people understood and embraced their importance in their role, felt valued, and understood their impact, I believe the workplace could become more positive for all and invite two-way dialogues that lead to overall improvement.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Professional basketball player Ed Macauley once said, “When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him, he will win.” While the quote is about sports, I often quote this in the workplace. Whether in sports or business, the message is the same: You have to keep working hard to make yourself better. At each of our business competitors, there is someone with the same role and responsibilities as you. If you work harder, longer, and with more commitment, you will perform better and grow. Then you will be able to do your role and lead your teams and employees to do better. So, the next time your business’s products, services, and reputation meet those of a competitor, you will win. At the end of the day, always working hard and toward becoming better are what really matter and make a competitive difference.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Readers who wish to connect can follow and reach out to me through LinkedIn.

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.

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Kraig Kniss Of Elkay Manufacturing: Five Ways To Develop More ‘Grit’ was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.