Conway’s Crystal Kemp on the Power of Paying It Forward
Conway Corporation CMO Crystal Kemp’s initial reaction the very first time someone referred to her as their mentor was to say, “Oh, I’m not a mentor. I just want to help.” It took her a long time to embrace the term, but there’s no better word for the role that she has played in guiding and championing others as a longtime leader on the Conway team as well as through her work as a Mid-America Cable Telecommunications Association board member and as Arkansas Women in Power’s board chairman.
Kemp recalls having a boss who mentored her early in her career. “[He] saw something in me before I saw things in myself,” she says. “I remember one time him saying to me, ‘We’re trying to get to this point so that if you want to go somewhere else, you have this,’ and I thought, ‘That’s a really weird thing for a boss to say, right?’ Not that he ever wanted me to [go], but he just thought, ‘There’s more that you can do than maybe you can do here.’” Kemp has adopted a similar approach when mentoring others: “Look for things that maybe they don’t see in themselves yet.”
One of Kemp’s most meaningful mentoring journeys is with a Conway team member she’s managed for over a decade, guiding her to a management position within the company’s Business Solutions team. Kemp worked with this employee to develop her leadership skills, which included how to handle tough conversations through a mix of role-playing, debriefs and “reinforcing her natural empathy as a strength.” Today, this mentee is not only a leader in her own right but also mentoring others. “She has become someone her peers turn to for support, and she’s helping shape a positive leadership culture within our organization,” says Kemp. “Watching her transformation—from individual contributor to confident, trusted people leader—has been one of the most fulfilling chapters of my career as a mentor.”
But Kemp’s mentorship efforts go beyond the workplace. For the last 20 years, she’s also served as a Girl Scout troop leader “helping young girls build confidence, courage and character [and] guiding them through problem-solving, goal-setting, public speaking and teamwork.” Kemp currently leads 3rd grade Brownie and 4th grade Junior troops and thinks of her work with the Girl Scouts as “the most grassroots form of mentorship,” as it encourages girls to “believe in themselves and their ideas from an early age.” Before working with the organization, Kemp says she “didn’t realize the leadership potential in someone so young,” but she’s now seen firsthand the creativity kids bring to activities such as an entrepreneur workshop she organized for her troops. The lesson: “Okay, we’re shaping leaders.”
Kemp is also a big believer in the Birkman Method, a workplace personality test designed to make teams more effective by measuring each individual’s usual behavior, needs and stress factors. The test was first rolled out to the customer service team a few years ago but is now being used across other parts of the organization. Kemp, who is certified to administer the test to others, says at least 150 Conway employees have used the method. The goal of this exercise is to improve team cohesion and unlock better collaboration. In other words, it all goes back to helping people see things in themselves that they might not see at first. “The more we learn about ourselves and learn about the people whom we work with,” Kemp says, “the better we can work together.”