Pairing Challenge with Support to Transform Your Team - HBMA Store

Pairing Challenge with Support to Transform Your Team

Presented by Joe Olwig

Recorded on August 12th, 2025

This program is valid for 1 CHBME credit.

Description:
Behind every thriving team is a leader who understands that true growth happens when high support meets high expectations. Yet, finding the right balance between empathy and accountability is no small feat. Leaders often default to being “too nice,” breeding complacency, or “too demanding,” fostering fear. The key is learning how to be “warm and demanding” at the same time.

In this webinar, we unpack what it means to be profoundly supportive while also holding high expectations and challenging team members to do their best work. Drawing inspiration from leaders like DeMeco Ryans, the head coach of the Houston Texans, we’ll examine how to foster a culture of excellence by both cheering on your team and pushing them beyond their comfort zone. We’ll bring this concept to life with a role play demonstration of a manager applying Support/Challenge with a direct report, offering a clear window into how to strike that delicate yet vital balance in real-world situations.

Learning Objectives:
Course participants will be able to:

1. Discover the Transformative Power of Support/Challenge: Learn why balancing empathy and accountability is the key to elevating performance and engagement.
2. Apply Insights from a Successful Leadership Model: Explore how DeMeco Ryans employs warmth and high standards to unlock potential on the field—and how to adapt his strategies in your organization.
3. Cultivate a High-Impact Culture: Equip yourself with practical steps to create an environment where people feel supported, challenged, and inspired to perform at their best. 

Speaker Bio:
Joe Olwig
One thing has always stood out to Joe Olwig: when our work has meaning, we engage more deeply, become more productive and, ultimately, more effective. This ethos is at the heart of his work as an entrepreneur, cofounder, and trusted business advisor at 6 Levers and the book he co-authored, At the Heart of Work: Rethinking What it Takes to Build a Healthy Organization (Oct. 6, 2024). Joe currently serves as managing partner of 6 Levers, where he is fueled by his passion for coaching leaders and developing growth-driven teams to pursue healthier ways of working. He stewards the organization’s expertise in the areas of leadership development, professional training, and organizational systems design.

Prior to co-founding 6 Levers, Joe served as the VP of organizational solutions at Mission Matters Group, where he led a team of consultants who partnered with nonprofit organizations on projects ranging from strategic planning and implementation to leader training and coaching. Joe was previously the school principal of KIPP Inspire Academy, a 5th to 8th-grade public charter school, in St. Louis, MO, where he and his team built a reputation of academic excellence
recognized at the state level.

Joe holds a bachelor’s degree in business economics, entrepreneurship, and finance, and dual master’s degrees in business administration and education leadership from Saint Louis University.