Leaders by Design, Not Default┃Shelby Morlock┃Ep. 29

Katalina Dawson (00:10)
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Career Path. I am your host, Katalina. Today we are covering the topic of Leaders By Design, Not Default. And here to discuss this with me is Shelby Morlock who is the author of an article by the exact same name. Now, in addition to being the author of an article,

Shelby is the VP of Operations at Shepard Outsourcing. She was also the recipient of the Operational Excellence Award at WCF in 2025. And she was just recently selected as one of South Carolina's up and coming women for the 2026 Women to Watch by Greenville Business Magazine, which is a huge deal. Congratulations on that front, Shelby. But it is so great to have you on today. I'm so excited to talk about this topic with you.

Shelby Morlock (00:58)
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is my first podcast, so forgive me if I seem a little nervous, but I'm super excited to be here.

Katalina Dawson (01:07)
You're going to be absolutely phenomenal. I have had the pleasure of meeting Shelby a number of times at different conferences. I even saw you get the award at WCF, which was so cool. So if you don't know Shelby, she's amazing. And she came up to me at one point and told me, hey, I wrote this article and it's about creating leaders by design, which is obviously the topic we're talking about today.

But she had such a passion about this topic and was like, this is something that is so relevant, not only to our industry, but industries in general, just anybody who has a company and is promoting people, especially if you're promoting within, this topic is a hundred percent for you.

Like I am so excited to dive into this, but before we get a little too much ahead of ourselves, Shelby, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today?

Shelby Morlock (01:56)
Yeah, so currently I hold the title of Vice President of Operations at Shepard Outsourcing. But I have been in the receivables industry for about 15 years now, a little over. I started as a collector and kind of worked my way up. I've worn a lot of different hats within this business.

And I have a passion for learning and you know, a actual subtle passion for teaching, even though it may not be that subtle. But yeah, so I've done a whole lot and I'm excited to do more.

Katalina Dawson (02:30)
Yeah, I am super excited for your article to be published. I know it's coming up. So to dive into this topic, this Leaders By Design, Not default, can you tell me like the definition of what you would consider a leader by design to be?

Shelby Morlock (02:42)
Well, I'd probably say in my head, it's somebody that is not created just by having a title. It's a leader that has been intentionally developed, has acquired and practiced the skills it takes before the title is even given.

Someone who you've intentionally developed to fit your business and fit the kind of culture that you want for your organization.

Katalina Dawson (03:07)
Yeah, so it sounds like a big part of this is the intentionality. Like you said, it's not by default. There's an intentionality behind it. So you're not just training after they become the leader. You are training for the role before they embody it. Is that correct? Okay, awesome. So it's this reactive versus intentional. So let's talk a little bit about why this is so important.

Shelby Morlock (03:11)
Yes. Exactly.

Well, so I mentioned before that I've held many different roles within my business and with that of no fault to anyone else, I'm a natural born learner and I just naturally figure things out. But I can't help but think about if I had the kind of development that I have invested into my people.

If I would have been further along in my career, faster, all kinds of different things, I have zero regrets. But other people have a lot of aspirations and goals. And if you're a leader, that is pretty much your job to make sure that your people are successful. And giving them the skills to do something successfully is the whole point.

So if, especially in a growing organization and like you referenced earlier, Katalina, especially if you hire from within, this is very important. It can't just be your top performer. It can't just be someone who wants it. They have to be able to know what they're talking about and be able to teach that and develop others.

Katalina Dawson (04:41)
Yeah, because leadership skills aren't necessarily the same skills that you're doing in a day-to-day operational job. To quote you directly from your article, because I do have your article pulled up here, you said, quote, "high performance does not equal leadership capability," which I think is just so powerful. That makes so much sense. Leadership is not just even knowledge of ideas of leadership, because I think

You can read leadership books, but that doesn't necessarily mean in practice. You know how to do it. So to quote you again, because I pulled a couple of quotes from you that I was like, these are such great nuggets of wisdom. You said "Leadership skills cannot be developed through just reading, research, and mentoring alone. They must be practiced." Again, that is so powerful.

Shelby Morlock (05:10)
Yes, and thank you for that.

It really needs to be kind of a combination of all of that. I mean, I read leadership books all of the time and I apply what I learn. Not everybody knows how to do that, combine all of those methods together. All of them are valuable, but practice, I mean, that's really kind of the key.

Katalina Dawson (05:50)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the best way by far that people actually learn. And I was talking to somebody really recently, I think it was potentially the last episode I filmed. And she was sharing that when she was training a new collector one time, she was like, all right, we're just gonna give you like the most wild circumstance and we're just gonna run through it. We're just gonna go back and forth and run through this, the worst case circumstance you could possibly get and we'll just do it.

And they did in the training and she's like, you're never gonna get a call like that. Don't worry. That's just for practice. The first call this collector gets is the closest dang thing to that wild scenario training that she put out there. And the managers who were overseeing that collector at the time didn't know that they had trained on that and they watched them do it. And we're like, how did you handle that call the way you did? You did phenomenally.

And they were like, oh, cause I trained on it. I literally trained exactly the scenario. And so something that should have been like insurmountable to somebody brand new coming into this role was actually totally achievable just because of that experience, that, that actual active training. They didn't just read a book. They didn't just hear it in theory. They had actually practiced it. And it was so powerful, so powerful.

Shelby Morlock (06:57)
Okay. Yes, yeah. And I mean, if you bring that up a level to leadership, there's all kinds of scenarios that we as leaders deal with on a day to day basis that we're approached with. There's things like, know, HR that are maybe HR sensitive issues or, you know, having those tough conversations with an under performer, knowing you know, what can actually motivate them.

Celebrating the wins, supporting that good behavior, know, attendance issues. mean, you name it. We deal with a lot of different scenarios as leadership. So if you're not exposed to any of that before you get before you have the leadership title, you're already going to fail because either A, you'll give some really bad advice, B, you'll maybe, I don't know, violate an HR guideline, which, eh, no, we don't wanna do all kinds of different possibilities that you could come across and handle poorly just because of lack of preparation.

So, my concept is more so, knowing what your performance indicators are within your organization, what they tie to as far as, you know, in collections, your conversion rate, that is how many right party contacts actually convert to payments.

So what part of the call does that directly tie into? You gotta know about that in order to coach it. And in order for your coaching and your development and your time that you're putting into your employees, it's absolutely valuable, but is it resonating? You gotta know how to make it resonate with your employees. So how do you get to know your employees?

You may not want to be their best friend, but you need to have some sort of influence there so that feedback that you're providing them actually hits home and gets taken seriously. ⁓

Katalina Dawson (09:12)
Yeah, because now you're not just accountable for yourself. It's you're taking accountability for everybody on your team and you want to speak to each of them the best way you can so that they are effective in their role so that you can be effective in your role.

And what you're making me really remember back to is one of the earliest episodes I did of Career Path, which was with Kelli Van Cleave. And she talked about part of neuro linguistic programming where it's the idea of packaging a concept to somebody. Think of like giving somebody a birthday gift.

If you go to give them a birthday gift and it's wrapped in, call it Hanukkah wrapping paper, they might be a little confused why they're getting a Hanukkah wrapping paper thing versus if you wrap it in birthday wrapping paper.

It's just the package that the same thing is coming within, but one is very welcome and the person is ready to receive it. And the other one might cause confusion and might not be as well received. It's just this idea of how you are talking to different employees, saying the same sort of things, but maybe not in the same ways.

Maybe with one employee, you need to be a lot gentler with your feedback because they're already really hard on themselves versus another who's like, no, I want you to call me out and just, you know, call it like it is. You can be hard on me. I like it. So it's very, very different. And as somebody who was working alongside everyone, changing into this role where you're like, I have to talk to everybody a different way, that's a huge leap to make. It really is.

Shelby Morlock (10:50)
Yeah. And it's hard when you're promoted into skills that you don't know about. It's hard when you're given a role or a task. If you're starting at zero, if you have no concept, no training, no, no roadmap for whatever situation that you are handling, you are already set up for failure. So it's very uncomfortable.

Katalina Dawson (11:02)
Yeah. I think that's the root of the importance that you're getting at. It's like too many leaders are promoted just because they were the top performer and they have no leadership training. And there is a massive gap, not only here, but with industries as a whole. I don't know about you, but I do not see many leadership books that even talk about this. They just talk about like when you're in the role, you need to do this. They don't talk about how to train employees prior to that role. This is something that is like, not talked about. Not nearly enough.

Shelby Morlock (11:46)
Not from this perspective anyway. There are, there's so much material out there, know, podcasts, books, articles, webinars, you name it, about how to be a better leader, how to be a servant leader, you know, all kinds of types of leaders and developing your

But that is after you are already in the position of a leader. There is very little content about how to be ready for that role. ⁓ There is some, but again, like you said, it's not talked about nearly enough. Because yeah, mean, your top performer, yeah, that gets a lot of attention, but can that person, a group of people to do those same things and essentially multiply that person that you're losing from production and putting into leadership? Can they multiply their skill set and effectively teach?

That's something that I was actually asked in one of my roles. was a back office role before I was the new hire trainer several years asked me hey you know i'm not quite sure why you're doing a back office position when you are very good on the phones as a collector and in performance and I forget what my answer was in that moment but they said yeah no if you're not going to be producing I need you teaching people how to produce like you.

So that way, yes, we're losing you, but you're developing 15 others that can do what you did. So you're multiplying your influence. And I said, yeah, I'm up for it. I can handle that. And I did, but not everyone can. And that is a very common misconception.

Katalina Dawson (13:14)
Yeah, multiplying your influence. Yeah, absolutely. So now we've talked a little bit about what it is, what leadership by design is and why it's so important. Let's start diving in to the execution of it. Starting with, you had talked about it a little bit before, this idea of awareness. Can you start at that point?

Shelby Morlock (13:51)
So it all starts with self-awareness, knowing who you are, what you're capable of, and then what you're good at and what you're not good at. And it's OK to say, I am not good at delivering negative feedback or feedback that might be taken negatively or having those tough conversations. That makes me uncomfortable because I don't like to upset people.

Okay, now you know that you have that gap and then that's what they can work on with their leader to develop that and gain that comfortability. But if you start that after the leader's already a leader, they are already behind. There's probably five different tough conversations that have needed to be had.

And then here you are a few weeks into your role and you haven't had a single one of them. So your performance is naturally going to dip because those conversations have not been had and those people may not know.

But once you have, once you gain self-awareness, you gotta have some operational and situational awareness. You gotta be aware of what's happening around you, what your people are good at, what are those strengths look like? What do their gaps look like?

Analyze, you know, okay, is this, are people distracted? Does this person get distracted easy? How can I help that? So you gotta understand what's happening within your team after you realize what's happening within yourself.

And that real awareness of each situation that you come across can help you anticipate challenges and respond strategically instead of reactively.

Katalina Dawson (15:21)
And going back to your article, you talk about connecting metrics to behaviors. So not just what is happening, but why it's happening. Because that data that you figure out the why behind, that should actually inform your coaching strategy. I'm sorry, I love your article. So I just keep quoting you from it. But it's a brilliant point. You need to have this action plan for coaching and you need to have an action plan as a leader.

But let's jump into the next piece that I'd love to discuss about this, which is how to bridge the gap of starting as somebody who is not a leader and becoming that leader, stepping into that role and what it looks like when you make that leap.

Shelby Morlock (16:05)
Well, first and foremost, again, self-awareness. If I'm somebody in an entry-level position and I want to pursue leadership, even if there is not a current need for it, that does not mean can't happen. One of my favorite leaders actually told me in the past before, hey, if the job's not there, create the job that you want.

Like, it's not there, create it. Create the need for it. Create the space for it. So even if the posting isn't there or the opportunity may not be there at that point, you have to be self-aware enough to know, okay, I do want to be a leader one day. Who do I need to talk to to get there? It's kind of, you know, looping in from the seven habits of highly effective people. Begin with the end in mind. So if a person's end game is I want to be a leader,

Okay, every step they make needs to be tied to that end goal. And that was a huge lesson for me when I read that book every year. I've done that for the last couple of years now and it continues to remind me of really awesome fundamentals.
Anyway, so you got to ask yourself, do you want to be a leader and who do you need to talk to? Is that your leader? Is that your leader's leader? Is that maybe the owner? It just kind of depends on what your operational structure looks like. And then, how do you do you bridge that gap? Well, hopefully that leader will take you under their wing and help you.

Okay, why do you want to become a leader? You got to identify those reasons. So you have your whys already built into you, which is a natural motivator.

But it's just a matter of taking action instead of waiting for the opportunity to come to you. You've got to create that space for yourself, regardless of where you are and what your goals are. That's kind of applicable to anything and everything.

But yeah, I mean, if I'm an entry level person and I want to be a leader, the first thing I'm going to do is identify my whys and ask questions and find out who I need to talk to, what needs to happen to get me in that seat and do the work for it.

Katalina Dawson (18:10)
Yeah, so on the flip side, if you're already in leadership and you're looking to promote other leaders, what does that look like? What is like the leadership pipeline? How should you be approaching making sure that somebody isn't just thrown into leadership who isn't ready for it?

Shelby Morlock (18:28)
So ties directly into the leadership development program that I implemented within my company last year. And I was recently able to promote all three of them. We identified the people that were fit for the potential role if and when that came down. I had no plans of promoting right then and much less not all three of them at the same time.

I wrote out kind of a playbook for, you know, what kind of skills are essential to have when you enter the leadership position. What do you need to know about yourself and what are you accountable for and things like that. And then I just kind of started and this can be structured, whatever fits the organization. But for me, I just kind of ran with it. I put a meeting on a calendar and we started with step one.

Identify what kind of leader that you believe to be right now in that moment and then we did that same exercise at the end of the program too and it the changes were pretty cool. But yeah, I think we met Bi-weekly and it was for you know, sometimes just 30 minutes sometimes an hour and I did give them homework to kind of practice on roleplay exercises, just real life, hey, this is what this means, definitions, vocabulary, all kinds of things.

And it was like, it was about an eight month program. And seeing the transformation in just those three really inspired me. I'm like, okay, I'm onto something here. Because now, now that they are leaders, they don't need the interpersonal development. They don't need the how to have a tough conversation. They don't need the accountability training for it. They just, they got their new job descriptions and they ran with it. They only needed to learn the technical side within our database because that's obviously permissions, it's got permission guidelines.

Katalina Dawson (20:14)
Yeah. So by running them through this curriculum, you were able to build them up to be leaders before they stepped into the role and they were beyond ready at that moment when they just were like, all right, all I need training is your system. And that is it because everything else you set them up for by doing those questionnaires, by giving them homework, by having them role play and practice and run through scenarios, you provided this framework in which they could become leaders before they even needed to be leaders.

And I'm gonna pull out another quote from your article that I loved so much. And that is that "leadership does not have to have a title." You can be a leader without having that title, which is so cool. And you built it.

Shelby Morlock (21:16)
So first of all, I to highlight when I was able to promote them, I had the one on one conversations. They all accepted the role and very excited. But when I rolled it out to the rest of the staff, I explained the whys, I explained the whole process. I welcomed anyone else that would be interested to reach out to me directly and in preparation for the 2026 round, because you can't just one and done it, right? You gotta keep it going.

But it was very cool because one of our staff members, as soon as I said, from, this area promoting and they were saying the names of the people as I was saying them. So they already knew. So one thing that I firmly believe in is that like leaders should never be a surprise.

If you promote somebody without the training or someone that's not already showing the leadership skills and kind of elevating themselves on their own or with your development or before they have the title, someone's not naturally elevated in how they carry themselves or how they talk to people or their intentional, you know, helpfulness, their initiative to help out others around them.

Those are the kind of things that make it a natural progression. So your next leader should not be someone that's a surprise. Your next leader, it should be a, yeah, that makes sense. All right. Yeah, absolutely. She's already kind of doing the job or he's already doing the job or whoever. But your staff should not be surprised by the leader that is promoted. And this just completely reinforced that.

Because if your staff is surprised and they're like, that doesn't make sense for that person to get that job. I'm not sure about this. You risk losing employees. You risk already having that mistrust. You risk losing that buy-in.

And that's really important, especially for a new leader. If people already believe in them, they're naturally going to excel faster and even further sometimes than someone who is already starting kind of behind the A-ball and trying to catch up and get to know people and all the things. It's valuable. It can still work. It's just not the most effective.

Katalina Dawson (23:27)
Yeah. Now for somebody who say was thrust into a leadership role, they may have been a top performer and they were given this next step and they're like, I don't feel ready. I haven't received any like leadership training. I don't know how to have these hard conversations or how to delegate properly or how I should be talking to my team in all these different ways and be accountable for all of their different actions.

What would be a good first step for them to take to start embodying leadership because they're already there. They got to learn somehow. What would you recommend would be a good step for somebody who's in that position?

Shelby Morlock (24:03)
I would say to talk to their leader and understand clearly what their expectations are and ask those questions of, here's a few questions that I have in my parking lot of, okay, what if I come across this? And, know, honestly, some of it though, in that perspective, if you're just thrown in, I have a lot of experience with that progression, but trial by fire, can also work, again, it's just you have a lot more bumps in the road than making it a smooth ride. And at the end of the day, we all want a smooth ride.

We all want good days at work and no hard days and go home to our families and our lives outside of work, right? So hard days are not fun, but they will happen more often if the person is not prepared properly.

Katalina Dawson (24:46)
Yeah, absolutely. And it's strenuous when you're somebody who's jumping into leadership for the first time. I can at least speak for myself. There isn't a day that goes by that I'm not like, I really hope I'm doing well as a leader. I hope I'm supporting everybody right. I hope I'm doing things right.

And I do think when I have those moments and I almost have a little bit of self-doubt there, I try to remind myself that, I think a truly bad leader wouldn't even be worried about being a good leader like I am and not going, did I do that conversation correctly? How could I improve for next time? I I find myself sometimes on ChatGPT being like, okay, so this is what just happened today. Like we went through this. This was the email thread. What could I have done better? How could I improve next time?

Cause there, I think there's always room to improve. Even if you were set up for success, you can continue to learn and hone those skills as you're in that role.

Shelby Morlock (25:51)
Absolutely. And just because you start with this leadership development and like before the title and then the person gets promoted, that development does not stop. Like I still meet with those same three people. It's not near, it's not as often, but I still meet with them very regularly to understand, okay, what are your challenges since the last time? What are your wins? What kind of bumps in the road have you ⁓

What do you need my advice on while you like you have my undivided attention? I still do that. So I definitely don't want to want it to come off that you it's you develop them and then you give them the title and they're perfect because no one no one's ever perfect. Unfortunately, but no one's ever perfect.

We all have things that we need to work on and understanding those and being able to name those struggles, that's what's really important because if you don't know how to do that and you don't know what category your struggles fall into because you didn't know the fundamentals, you're kind of in a worse off position.

Katalina Dawson (26:55)
To wrap this up, a leader by design, not default, is essentially training for the role, not training after they're already in the role. that, ⁓ use what you said, like a trial by fire, it's prepping people for the best success. And it's so important because it is a huge gap. Too many people are promoted because they were just the best performer. And that doesn't necessarily mean that they're the best leader because that takes true practice to become that good leader.

And if you are somebody who is interested in becoming a leader, start by asking a question of, what do I need to do? Looking at that endpoint, I wanna get there, what's the first step I need to take to get there? And who do I need to be talking to? What do I need to learn to take those steps? And as a leader who's looking to promote, you're looking for people who have that potential and have that interest that you can then take through steps to find out, what kind of leader do you think you are?

Help hone those skills so that they naturally slide into the role and the promotion is not a surprise to anyone around them, because that's a clue that they're probably not right for the role or not, maybe not right, but not ready for the role, at least at that time. And that leadership does not stop in terms of learning. You can always learn more. You can always hone your skills better. And there's always room for improvement. Did I wrap it up pretty well?

Shelby Morlock (28:17)
Yeah. Also, if you're someone, if you are a leader in your organization already, there is kind of a selfish.

Caveat to this too, because someone also once told me you're only promotable as you are replaceable. And as someone who has worn many hats at the same time before, that's not fun. But if you are, like this is how you scale the growth, right? You already have people ready for the position if and when that position becomes available. And if it's not, then hey, you've got a ton, you've got your entire staff, hopefully, I mean, in a perfect world, you have a bunch of people in your staff that know how to hold each other accountable, know what the key performance indicators are that will drive success in their role and in your company.

So that will automatically, naturally elevate performance. So either way, if you don't end up promoting and you still develop, that gives you scalability and that puts you, it puts you in a really good spot no matter which way it goes.

Katalina Dawson (29:26)
Absolutely. Those are great, great last thoughts. I so appreciate Unfortunately, we are out of time for today. So Shelby, I want to thank you so much for joining me, for sharing all of your insights and this incredible article that you wrote, which if anybody is interested, it will be published on receivablesinfo.com. You can go take a look. We will be putting the link along with this video.

And I believe it might be published at a couple of associations coming up. We will see. But again, thank you so much, Shelby. This was incredible to have you on today.

Shelby Morlock (29:56)
Yes, thank you so much for having me and thank you for all the viewers.

Katalina Dawson (29:59)
To our listeners, if you have any questions, comments, or any topics that you would like to see us explore in the future, please leave them in the comments down below. We will always do our best to get to all of them. Otherwise, we will see you in our next episode. Thanks. Bye.