From the Field: Eve Dreher Talks Leadership, Connection, and Culture

Above: Certified Trainer Eve Dreher.

Certified Trainer Eve Dreher knows culture.

A leader of culture change, brand strategy, and corporate communications whose career highlights include VP of Executive and Internal Communications at Starwood Hotels and VP of Corporate Communications at Coors Brewing Company, Eve has led and witnessed the transformation of organizations from the inside out.

The key to success? Leadership centered around wellbeing and social connectedness.

Eve joined the Inspiring Comfort team as a Certified Trainer this winter, drawn to the work for its breakthrough, innovative approach to cultivating a culture of care.

Inspiring Comfort’s Kelly Shannon sat down with her for a conversation on connectedness, culture, and leading with heart.

At Inspiring Comfort, we talk about the “breadcrumbs” of our lives that have led us to the work we do today. Can you talk about your brain/professional trail, your heart trail, and your circumstances trail and how they connect together?

Eve: When I think about the story and the journey of my life, I think about my childhood and my early adulthood and how rich that was with connection. I remember from a very early age feeling very connected, whether that was to my family or to my small town. I grew up in a small town in Kansas, and being with family, friends, neighbors and a close-knit community very much became part of my story and my way of being in the world.

This feeling was an anchor for me as a young adult when I faced some tough challenges. My parents divorced when I was a teenager and my family struggled with the disconnection. Then, when I was 21, my mom died by suicide. That was a traumatic and formative moment for me, where I felt the loss, the grief, the shame and aloneness of what had happened. That was at a time where suicide was rarely talked about, and was — and still is — very stigmatized.

But I also felt a sense of this connectedness again, with the community and my family and friends around me.

What I look back and reflect on now is how people did connect with me and comfort me through that time, when there were no rule books; there were no guide books. There was nothing like Showing Up that showed how to talk about it, but people found their way. Two friends in particular really stayed close to me and said, “You know, this is gonna be a journey. And we're on it with you.”

They didn't change who they were. They treated me and acted toward me exactly as they always had — nothing changed. I thought the world was going to change. My whole world was upside down. They showed me very quickly that nothing changed about me and they didn't change who they were. They weren't afraid; they were just right there.

What I found, especially at such an early age experiencing the suicide of my mom, was as I went out and presented myself into the business world, and found myself in communities of coworkers, my empathy and compassion for people who were going through difficult times was very much a part of who I was and also a big part of my career.

Clearly you had very impactful and formative early years that were deeply influenced by the presence of connection. How did this translate into your career and professional life as you moved forward?

My career thread through 35-40 years was finding ways to connect with the people around me. You worked so closely together. In my twenties, thirties, and forties, I worked very closely with teams of people in leadership roles. I found where my heart was in terms of being empathetic and being compassionate toward people, and was able to mentor, guide, and coach people through some really difficult times. In most cases, these were coworkers.

As I changed jobs, I always looked for those team environments and cultures that were set up to be supportive — places where humans could be humans and we really could connect with each other. And that was expected of me as a leader. It's something I've continued to look for throughout my career.

It leads me to where I am today, which feels very much full circle to me: to have this opportunity to be a positive influence in the world and in my life. I have the choice to be able to find organizations like Inspiring Comfort that have similar values, and where I can use my gifts.

You mentioned that you were looking for places that were set up to be supportive and where you could also be supportive for others. Can you talk about what that looked like as a leader in terms of like showing support and creating a culture of care in these spaces?

Eve: I sort of have a nose for culture — an intuition, if you will — whether that was within my job, or even when I would be looking for interviewing for positions. Through conversations, I’ve been able to get a really good sense for what that culture is and how the leaders of that organization want to change that culture. And that's been the common thread through my career: I've always been a change advocate. I've always had a role that deliberately involved moving people towards something better. And a lot of times that was about culture. How do we get these norms and behaviors and mindsets embedded into our culture so that people do feel seen?

You want to make sure that your workers do feel heard, legitimately — not just an anonymous survey, one-and-done, kind of thing, but heard — and that they feel like they can speak up and feel seen and validated. So that served me well, having that intuition about culture. As a consultant, I felt empowered to be able to do things both differently and better when it came to the people side of business, and help whoever I was mentoring or coaching at the time see through a different mindset: how they might, as a leader, find ways to connect and engage with people.

What I learned is that we're all carrying something. Whether we see that on the outside or not, we're all carrying burdens. We are carrying our own history and our own story with us. So being open to and honoring that as a leader, and helping other leaders lead differently became something I was really passionate about.

You worked at this for 35 years. I'm sure you've seen the impact of this and you know what a difference it makes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Eve: That's a fun thing to talk about because there's a couple of standout moments with different organizations and companies. People that to this day I'm still in touch with talk about is how they resisted cultural change at first. Why would we do it this way when we've always done it that way? Why is it necessary for me to open up a little bit as a leader? And the comments that I get to this day are that some of the workshops that we did, the experiences we created, and the lessons we learned together were the most impactful of their entire career. They still talk about it. They still think about it. They still use it.

So they have been able to really internalize new beliefs and mindsets and training. It's changed them. And along the way, it changed the culture. And culture, as we all know, doesn't change overnight. It's not a flip-the-switch. But the people that I've worked with fortunately have seen the tide not only turn, but also sustain.

You went on to work at Starwood and in the hospitality sector. We've talked a little bit about the intersection between hospitality and creating a culture of care. What did you learn from working in that sector?

Eve: That was a really rewarding time when I look back. Hospitality is all about serving others and doing so in a caring way. Everything that we did at Starwood was around the guest experience. So with that: how are we going to make each person feel when they're in one of our properties, and how is that experience going to allow them to feel cared for, seen, and recognized? It was such a natural extension to be surrounded by that every day, and to see our hotel teams live and breathe the guest experience and care for the guests.

The hotel is very much a microcosm of life. It's a team — it's not one person. The person that you greet at the front desk or the person who's cleaning your room, or the valet who's getting your car, or the GM who's making sure that the hotel is full, or the marketing person who's helping sell those rooms every night. It's very much a team effort, and it's all wrapped around that caring attitude.

To quote Frits: [CEO of Starwood Hotels] it's almost like people who have been in hospitality have a head start on all this. They're already wired to look at others in a caring way.

What drove you to get involved with Inspiring Comfort?

Eve: It's an interesting time of life for me now to feel as if I'm coming back full circle to that sense of connectedness, that sense of self, and that sense of being seen in my life and in my world.

You know how I said I have an intuition about culture and what it means to an organization — and sort of reading the room, so to speak, or reading the culture. Dave [Marr] and I were connected and stayed connected after Starwood.

I started following Jen [Marr], and immediately, intuitively knew that I wanted to connect with her. I knew we shared values. I knew what she was doing was important. Being known as, or being thought of as a person who is accessible to people and a soft place to land for folks who are struggling, that's really important to me and what I want to be a part of my legacy.

I looked at it as innovative and breakthrough because we were in the middle of a pandemic, and none of us could have predicted where we would be, and still can’t. But I knew there would be a time where what Jen and the Inspiring Comfort team was doing would be really important in the world, and especially in workplaces. So that’s what led me to get involved.

You went on to become a Certified Trainer, and a crucial part of the book launch — in fact, it was you who first came up with the book title, Showing Up. What led to you choosing those two words?

Eve: I think it’s such an of-the-moment phrase. The notion of what Inspiring Comfort does is simple — being able to reach out, be able to overcome our limiting beliefs about whether or not it’s appropriate for us to connect with somebody who we know is struggling. It’s about overcoming any doubts, or awkwardness that we have around that, and being able to trust and have confidence that we can be there for somebody.

We can be a safe harbor for people. We can hold space for people who are struggling. When I was doing my brainstorming, I wanted to encapsulate this in a way that was simple; in a way that people would really resonate with; in a way where they would understand immediately what it feels like when someone shows up for you. I would have meaning right away. It wouldn’t need to be explained. I think that was why it resonated with our team. All of us immediately said, “That’s it.”

Because that’s what it’s all about — showing up. We’re all human beings that need to know that somebody’s going to show up for us. We need to show up for ourselves. We need to show up for others. And we need to have faith that others are going to show up for us.

*The above conversation has been edited for clarity.

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Kelly Shannonimpact