Episode 969: The Shadow We Cast as Leaders

Summary

The Official BNI Podcast – Episode 969: The Shadow We Cast as Leaders
July 15, 2026
Host: Dr. Ivan Misner
Guest: Mary Kennedy Thompson, BNI CEO

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the concept of leadership influence—specifically, the “shadow” that leaders cast within their organizations. Dr. Ivan Misner is joined by Mary Kennedy Thompson, CEO of BNI since 2024, to explore how a leader's behavior, priorities, and management of relationships directly shape organizational culture. They share personal stories, actionable leadership tips, and highlight why consistent values-driven conduct matters more than words.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Shadow of Leadership and Organizational Culture

[02:54–04:09]

• Mary Kennedy Thompson introduces the metaphor of a leader’s “shadow” as the lasting cultural impact made by their daily actions.
  • “When you're a leader, you often have a spotlight on you and that spotlight creates a shadow. And the shadow is the culture of our organization.” (Mary, 02:54)
• Ivan and Mary both emphasize that this shadow is usually invisible to the leader but apparent to everyone else.

2. Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

[03:23]

• Mary reinforces the primacy of culture over strategy:
  • “Culture eats strategy for breakfast every single day. Culture will always win.” (Mary, 03:23)
• High-growth organizations succeed due to strong cultures rooted in core values, not just strategic planning.

3. Three Pillars: Behavior, Priorities, Relationships

[04:09–10:01]

a. Behavior

[04:16–07:47]

• Behavior, not belief, shapes culture.
  • “It's not your beliefs that make you a better person, it's your behavior. And it's not big giant behaviors, it's everyday behaviors.” (Mary, 04:25)
• Mary shares an anecdote about her mentor, Mike Bidwell, who quietly fixed a problem (a crooked filing cabinet) without seeking recognition; his action inspired her to serve others.
• Demonstrated integrity matters even when no one seems to be watching; a story from Mary’s franchise days highlights employees observing—and being shaped by—leadership behavior.

b. Priorities

[08:00–09:56]

• Leaders often struggle not for lack of priorities, but because they have too many.
  • “When a leader is struggling, almost always it's because they have too many priorities.” (Mary, 08:00)
• Humans cannot truly multitask effectively (supported by referenced MIT research).
• Calendars reveal real priorities, both personal and professional.
  • “Show me your calendar, because I can tell you your priorities by what's in your calendar...” (Mary, 08:41)
• The “crystal balls and rubber balls” metaphor: focus on the few things that must never drop (crystal), and let “rubber” ones bounce as necessary.

c. Relationships

[10:01–10:32]

• Building relationships happens incrementally—“one moment at a time.”
  • “We only can build relationships one moment at a time.” (Mary, 10:01)
• Regular connection (like BNI’s weekly meetings) helps foster lasting trust and collaboration.

4. Leadership Accountability and Setting the Tone

[10:32–11:38]

• Leaders set the tone not only by what they do, but more importantly, what they allow.
  • “You set the tone by what you're doing and what you're allowing. And oftentimes what we allow is what we get.” (Mary, 10:52)
• Allowing poor behavior or lack of discipline erodes culture.
• Ivan closes this section reinforcing accountability as a positive, supportive action:
  • “Accountability is something that you do for someone, not to someone.” (Ivan, 11:38)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Leadership and Culture:
  • “Culture eats strategy for breakfast every single day.” (Mary, 03:23)
• On Behavior vs. Belief:
  • “It's not your beliefs that make you a better person, it's your behavior.” (Mary, 04:25)
  • “The older I get, the less I believe in words and the more I believe in behaviors.” (Ivan, 05:52)
• On Priorities:
  • “Humans really cannot multitask… And so when I sit with leaders, I often help them figure out which priorities to say no to...” (Mary, 08:00)
• On Relationships:
  • “We only can build relationships one moment at a time.” (Mary, 10:01)
• On Allowing Behavior:
  • “What we allow is what we get. Not oftentimes, all the time.” (Mary, 10:52)
• On Accountability:
  • “Accountability is something that you do for someone, not to someone.” (Ivan, 11:38)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:54] – Mary introduces the leadership “shadow” analogy.
• [04:16–05:52] – Stories on behavioral leadership, including Mike Bidwell’s influence.
• [07:56–08:00] – Transition to priorities as a pillar of leadership.
• [08:41] – The calendar as a reflection of true priorities.
• [09:37] – “Crystal balls and rubber balls” leadership metaphor.
• [10:01–10:32] – Relationships and how BNI structures help build them.
• [10:52–11:38] – Practical advice for leaders on setting and enforcing tone.

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Conclusion

Dr. Ivan Misner and Mary Kennedy Thompson deliver a rich conversation on the unspoken influence leaders have over their organizations. Through personal stories and actionable insights, they make clear: culture is crafted by everyday actions, leaders must focus on a few critical priorities, and relationships are built steadily. The way leaders behave—and what they tolerate or encourage—defines organizational culture more than any mission statement.

Useful for: BNI members, business owners, and anyone seeking to be a more impactful leader by aligning daily actions with core values.

Transcript

[A]

Episode number 969, the Shadow We Cast as Leaders.

[B]

You're listening to the official BNI Podcast with BNI founder and Chief Visionary Officer Dr. Ivan Meisner. Stay tuned for networking and referral marketing tips from the man who's been called the father of modern networking, along with suggestions and insights into getting the most from your membership in the world's largest networking organization, bni.

[A]

Hello everybody and welcome back to the official BNI Podcast. I'm Priscilla Rice and I'm coming to you from Live Oak Recording Studio in Berkeley, California. And I'm joined on the phone today by the founder and the Chief Visionary officer of B and I, Dr. Ivan Meisner. Hello Ivan, how are you and where are you?

[B]

I am doing great and I leave later this afternoon for California to go see my eldest daughter and my grandson and son in law who's an amazing young man. So I'm going to take a few days off this week.

[A]

That's great. Okay, well tell us what, what you have for us today.

[B]

Well, I have a guest and she is an amazing person. She is the Chief executive officer of BNI since 2024. Her name is Mary Kennedy Thompson. Mary has more than 30 years of leadership experience in franchising and business development. Previously she served as the Chief Operating Officer for Neighborly and she had significant contributions that were made for the growth of the world's largest home services franchise organization. It's a series of organizations. She's a former US Marine Corps logistics officer and Mary began her career as a successful multi unit franchise owner and has since become one of the most respected leaders in the franchising industry and that association. She's recognized for driving growth, fostering innovation and building meaningful business connections worldwide. And when Mary actually ran a franchise, she was a BNI member. Mary, welcome to the BNI podcast.

[C]

Well, thank you, Ivan. Thank you so much for having me here today and for the kind introduction.

[B]

Well, listen, my pleasure. I thoroughly enjoy working with you and not a lot of founders can say that about the CEOs they're working with. And frankly, probably a lot of CEOs can't say that about the founder. But I think we have a really good working relationship.

[C]

I could say you're an amazing founder, Ivan. We celebrate you each and every day and we're grateful that you created something that has allowed so many of us to belong to something very remarkable.

[B]

Well, thank you. I appreciate that and I love working with you. So there are a number of things that you want to talk about with leadership and I've Heard you talk about this content before and I love it. When leaders cast a shadow. What's that look like?

[C]

Yes. You know, I started thinking about this a few years ago. You know, you know this very well as a founder and a leader. When you're a leader, you often have a spotlight on you and that spotlight creates a shadow. And the shadow is the culture of our organization. It's what everyone sees that maybe we as a leader don't see is tied around our behavior, our priorities, and how we build relationships.

[B]

Yeah. And that's really part and parcel with the culture that you're referring to.

[C]

Yes, absolutely. The shadow that we create as leaders, it is the culture that we create in an organization. And I've been very fortunate to belong to some organizations and cultural groups that are very high values. Everything from my family to the Marine Corps to Neighborly and now to bni, that has a great set of core values. You know, you know this. The essence of who we are is all about givers gain and how leaders behave and what they do sets that tone and that culture for the company. And I've heard you say this before and I've always believed it that, you know, culture eats strategy for breakfast every single day. Culture will always win. I've been part of very high growth companies over the years and the ones that grow are the ones that have high culture.

[B]

So you talk about three places where leaders can create culture, behavior, priorities and relationships. You want to touch upon those three.

[C]

Certainly, you know, like I like to think about behavior. A lot of people believe that what they're supposed to do is tell everybody what they believe.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And it's really not your beliefs that make you a better person, it's your behavior. And it's not big giant behaviors, it's everyday behaviors. One of the examples I give is one of my former mentors who I worked alongside for close to 18 years, Mike Bidwell. He was very much a servant leader, but he never walked around telling people he was, he just was. And one time long ago, he came in my office and just to check on me and see how things were going. And as we were talking, the, the drawer in my filing cabinet kept opening because my filing cabinet was little askew or wonky. And when the drawer opened, I kind of kicked it shut. And then partway through our conversation, open again and I kicked it shut. And on the third time when it opened, he, he asked me, he said, does that happen a lot? I said, it does, but don't worry, it doesn't bother me. I just I just kick the door shut throughout the day. And then we went on with our conversation. I really didn't think another thing of it until about a week later when I realized it had been a few days that my filing door cabinet had not opened. And it was because he'd come in and put a wooden shim. He'd come in early in the morning, and I was an early in the morning person. So was he. He'd come in earlier than I had and put a wooden shim under my filing cabinet, so it was fixed. And he never walked in and said, I'm the CEO. Look what I did for you. And he never walked around to anybody else and said, see what I do for others? He just did it. And it made me want to do that for others. It made me want to be better and to serve others in a quiet way. That it's what you do, not telling people what you believe.

[B]

Yeah, it is a Behaviors and words are powerful. I mean, everybody knows words are powerful, but the older I get, the less I believe in words and the more I believe in behaviors, because very much so it's easy to say words, but to have those behaviors match those words, that's powerful. And that, if it's a healthy behavior, is what creates an amazing culture.

[C]

Well, when you think about the shadow you cast, you don't realize you're doing it. When I was a franchisee in Cookies by Design, we used to have this big order. Actually, the order came from my being a B and I member came from. It was Dell Computers. And as a member, I, I was in the same room with the VP of marketing of Del when they were brand new, they just moved into their building, but they did a really large order with, with me every year. And I mean, it was tens of thousands of dollars. And when you're selling cookies, that's a lot of, that's a lot of order. And they came early one morning to pick up a big, a big grouping of this order. And they had extra money that the, the team had put together because they were doing some cookies for a party they were doing. And when I went to write out the invoice, it was really early in the morning. The lady said, you know, you don't need to ring up the cash. Just, we'll just take the cookies. Don't worry about it. I said, no, no, no, I, I need to bring that up. I, I, we ring up everything here. And I didn't think anything about it, but my baker was there early that morning catching up on baking and she had heard that conversation. And about a year later, when she got ready to leave the organization, she got ready to leave my company because she was moving. She said, you know, I told everybody, don't ever, don't ever steal from this company because. And don't ever steal from Mary, because Mary won't even steal from herself or from the company. She said, I saw what you did. And I always told everybody that I never even thought when I, when I was doing that, that anyone noticed or was watching. And so our behavior really is what makes us better. And it's the everyday things that we, if we say we're doing it, the question is, are we doing it?

[B]

Yeah, the words, the words are good, but the behaviors, they cement the words because they see that you, you act out those words in real life.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

You get two more priorities and relationships.

[C]

So priorities are. You know, sometimes I'll sit with somebody, a leader, who might be struggling to get things done, and I'll say, let's list out your priorities. When a leader is struggling, almost always it's because they have too many priorities. I think people believe this because they don't have enough, but it's not. It's because they have too many, and they start listing them out. And there was an interesting study done at MIT about the human brain, and it finally concluded that humans really cannot multitask, that we're not capable of that, and those of us who think we're good at it are really bad at it. And you, you really can work on one thing at a time. And so when I sit with leaders, I often help them figure out which priorities to say no to in the interim so they can say yes to the most important ones. And I, I will also ask them, I'll say, show me your calendar, because I can tell you your priorities by what's in your calendar, both personally and professionally. So if your priority, you know, if you say family is a priority, if you have no time set aside in your calendar for family, like you just said, you're about to take some time off and go spend time with your, your daughter and her family and your grandchildren. That's putting, that's put. You put that on the calendar, and so that's important as well. And so our priorities tell us where we're going and where we're heading. And I encourage people to sit down, write out their priorities, and take the bottom half of those priorities and pause them until you can really focus on the most important. And then lastly on priorities, someone told me, once you're Juggling all these balls. You have crystal balls and rubber balls, and you just need to make sure the crystal balls never fall out of your hands, that they never hit the ground. And at any given day, I have rubber balls that are bouncing all around me. But those crystal balls, the most important things, like the member experience, like where I spend time with my family, like how we interact with our members, those are crystal balls that I can't afford to drop and must pay attention to. And so those are the few and know what your crystal balls are.

[B]

All right, we've got about a minute left. A little over. Talk about relationships. How's that fit into this?

[C]

Well, one of our core values is building relationships. And we only can build relationships one moment at a time. And that is why, like for instance at bni, having those weekly meetings, those weekly meetings help create and build those relationships so we can help one another and do business with one another and serve one another. We do it by building relationship 11 to 1@ a time, one weekly meeting at a time, and by really seeing the individual and getting to know them.

[B]

Last question for you. What should leaders do? And we've got a lot of leaders. I mean, really, almost everyone in BNI is a leader at some level. They run a business, maybe run a sales department. They own a business. So we're all leaders. Of course, we have leadership teams in our chapters. What should leaders do to set the tone in their organization and or their chapter?

[C]

Well, you know, I, I would say you set the tone by what you're doing and what you're allowing. And oftentimes what we allow is what we get. Not oftentimes, all the time. So I encourage people to look to see what are we allowing? Are we allowing members to do things like miss meetings without having a substitute and stay in the chapter? Are we allowing people on our team to be lesser version of themselves when we know they can do better than that? Are we allowing ourselves? Are we negotiating with ourselves, which we shouldn't do? And being a lesser version, let's not allow that because that's how you build culture.

[B]

Yeah. The accountability is one of our core values and it's important and I to do a podcast on a theme that I've talked about once or twice, and that is accountability is something that you do for someone, not to someone.

[C]

I love that. Absolutely.

[B]

All right, all right, I'll do a podcast on it coming up in the next couple months. Mary, thank you so much for being on BNI podcast and for being such an amazing CEO for the company. And of course, everyone listening bni.com if you'd like to see Mary's bio, you can. You can see Mary in a photo of Mary and learn a little bit more about her. Thanks for being on B and I podcast. I appreciate you.

[C]

Thank you, Ivan. We appreciate all that you've created for us. It's helping hundreds of thousands of people really build meaningful businesses. Thank you.

[B]

Thank you. I love what I do, and I love that you let me do it freely and just run with the ball. So it's a blast.

[C]

The same. Back to you, sir.

[B]

Back to you, Priscilla.

[A]

Okay, great. Well, thank you both. That was a really nice podcast, and I'm glad we all got to meet Mary. And I think that that's it for this week. This podcast is sponsored by MeisnerAudioPrograms.com these audio programs will provide you with the tools and the inspiration to powerfully enhance your B and I experience. So check out the great material that's available to you [e-mail] and then use the promo code IVAN5O for 50% off of everything. All of the proceeds go to the BI Foundation. Thank you so much for listening. This is Priscilla Rice, and we look forward to having you join us again next week for another exciting episode of the official B and I podcast.

[B]

Sam.