Leading Women of Horticulture: Emily Showalter, Willoway Nurseries

For Emily Showalter, Willoway Nurseries has been a part of her life since she was a child, when she worked alongside her twin sister in the greenhouse, weeding, watering and fertilizing plants. Though her resume may only include the past 18 years, her career there spans nearly 30, growing up in the business her grandparents founded 71 years ago. 

After graduating from Ohio State University with a degree in agbusiness and applied economics and a minor in horticulture, she came back to the family business, based in Avon, Ohio, and asked where she was needed most. That led her on a path to her current role as chief of human resources. 

As a third-generation leader specializing in HR, Showalter is laser focused on leadership, company culture, transparency and accountability. In this wide-ranging interview, Showalter talks about how Willoway, the industry and roles for women have evolved; how “The Great Game of Business” transformed the company; and why Showalter utilizes her resources and relies on the wisdom of the crowd.

Editor's Note: Listen to the full conversation with Emily Showalter in episode 2 of The Growth Industry Podcast.

This interview has been edited for length, clarity and style.

Michelle Simakis: What made you decide to pursue human resources specifically and not something that was more grower specific or on the horticulture side?

Emily Showalter: I didn't pursue human resources. Human resources found me. I started at Willoway as an administrative assistant right out of college, working alongside my grandma. She did a lot of administrative tasks, and she was nearing retirement. Then they said we really need help with the H2A program and our internship program. I had just done an internship myself. And the H2A program is very complex, … but I loved it. I really loved making sure we were in compliance and also taking care of our team. And then a few years after I was the administrative assistant, our human resources manager retired, so I took it over at that point. I have no formal certifications or degrees or anything in HR. I just truly, still even to this day, try to utilize my resources. I have great benefit consultants, partners, a great agent that helps us with H2A.

MS: You’ve been in the horticulture industry your whole life. How has the industry evolved since you started and what are some major things you've noticed that have changed?

ES: I remember as a young kid and even coming out of college, we were in a growth industry, and I feel like it's really changed to more of a mature market. And even before I really knew business, everyone would say, “Oh, you just grew plants, and people would buy 'em.” I don't feel like it's that way now. I don't know if it's work or competition, everyone's fighting to be able to sell their product and to have their product on the shelf. Even in our business, we've adopted a lot of new business structures and technologies and ways of running the company that are very different then when I started.

MS: Is there more of a focus on marketing or technologies, and what do you mean by business structures?

ES: We actually started changing the way we thought about running the business back in 2014. We started running the business on [the Jack Stack book] “The Great Game of Business,” and it's all founded on open-book management. We share our financials with everybody in the company. We literally have a floor-to- ceiling income statement posted around the nursery. And we also talk about the financials every week. This morning, on Friday at 6:58, I led our company meeting, and we talked about our financials, what's going on in the company, if we're doing well and if we're on track to hit goals. We've really thought about business differently. 

Editor’s Note: Read more about how Willoway implemented strategies outlined in The Great Game of Business in this profile of Willoway president Tom Demaline, who received a Horticultural Industries Leadership Award in 2017. 

MS: Okay, so 7 a.m. Friday morning, that is your company meeting. 

ES: 6:58. 

MS: Right, you did say 6:58. You didn't start it early. That is the time? Can you explain that a bit more? 

ES: No, that is the time. It's all about just being aware. It does create a little bit of excitement and questions from employees. You mean 7:00? No, I mean 6:58. We had two new employees even start this morning and I reminded them 6:58, don't be late. It helps people get engaged, and we get going right away.
We are in person, we kind of feel like a little TV news channel because we have Zoom going, we have a lot of audio, visuals, mics, cameras, we do some interaction. We might play videos. We might ask for participation from one of the outlying locations because we also have locations, one in Broadview Heights and one in Hilliard. Our shops, our shipping docks, they all join on Zoom, and they can see the meeting and they can also participate in the meeting. We also have our large conference room where 40 to 50 people can be in person.

MS: What else do you usually talk about every week, and how long are these meetings?

ES: They can be no longer than 30 minutes. We share what's going on in the company, wins, celebrations. We also share the truth. If something is off track, we share what is actually happening because one of the laws of Great Game of Business is if people don't know, they make it up. And that's what we were finding before we started practicing the Great Game of Business was that a lot of our employees, they just didn't know what was going on. So, they were making stories up in their heads, they didn't know where the money was going, and we wanted to change that. It's all about communication, and that's a big part of leadership too. 
We introduce new employees, talk about our financials. Profit's a good thing. A lot of companies don't want to share that. And we have changed the paradigm with that and said, we need to be profitable. We just celebrated 70 years. Our next milestone we're shooting for is 100, so if we want to be here, we have to be profitable.

MS: Going back to 2014, when you decided to shift and talk about these numbers more openly and be transparent, What motivated that change?

ES: Well, we were coming out of the [Great Recession], and we were just struggling, trying to figure out how to be profitable. Our employees were asking for communication. We didn't know what they wanted to know. So we were searching for something and Tom [Demaline, Emily’s uncle and president of Willoway Nurseries] went to Van Belle Nursery in Canada. They practiced Great Game of Business. [Tom Demaline went] to the Great Game of Business conference. We read the book; we hired a coach. They came in and taught us all the different pieces of it, and we've stuck with it since then.

MS: And how have you seen the business shift since then, the culture and the team and profitability? 

ES: I'm getting chills, literally because it's changed the way we do business. We aren't perfect, obviously, but our profits have improved a thousand percent. I'm not just exaggerating. We show our employees, now we have profit, we can reinvest back in the company. We just talked about our capital reinvestments yesterday with our managers. There's a list of 40 things. We're reinvesting back into the company this year with equipment, hiring new people and succession planning and all of that. 

There were some when we started that did not like it. It's a lot of accountability. Some people didn't like that. A lot of people did like it. And we do feel, especially with the younger generations coming in now, they like to know what's going on, and it's been very positive for us.

MS: What's the best career advice you've ever received, and how do you apply it to your role now?

ES: Surround yourself with people smarter than you. Use your resources. You don't have to know everything. And I definitely don't. I know enough to be dangerous about how to grow a plant, but by all means do not put me in charge of ordering fertilizer and all of that because there's no way. And I think it's just being open and honest and saying, “Hey, I don't know. Can you help me?” It takes a huge team to be successful. It's not just one person.

MS: What are some other things that you're doing to unify the team, especially when people are coming in at different times seasonally and through the very hectic nature of a spring?

ES: Just telling people when you're hiring that you are open and you share your financials is a huge recruiting tool. Leadership does not always know what their team wants. You might think you do, but well, we found we don't. We take the time to make sure that we are lockstep with our team. I don't make a decision without asking my team. Employee Appreciation Day is coming up. [I ask] “Do you guys want to do anything for that? Is that important to you guys or not?” We do a lot of surveys and then we use the wisdom of the crowd, like I said, and do what the majority of our team wants to do. 

MS: In terms of retention, are there any other things that have been helpful? 

ES: We do stay interviews. It's basically the opposite of an exit interview. When somebody leaves the job, you get an interview [and they ask], why did you leave? Getting a letter from somebody giving us their two- or three-week notice and it being a surprise is the worst thing. And then sometimes in the exit interviews we found out if we would've known these things, we could have fixed this and you wouldn't be leaving right now. So in stay interviews, we ask them, “Are you getting the training you need? Do you have any problems with coworkers? Are you happy? Is this what you expected?” Those are the main reasons people leave. “Do you like your manager?” Most people quit their manager—they don't quit the job. 

MS: What do you think are the most important characteristics of leadership?

ES: Definitely empathy. My bar for stress is a lot higher, and it's nothing bad, it's just how I am. And I have to remind myself and put myself in [other] people's shoes and say, “Okay, I understand this is a big deal.” And remind my leadership team too. We have to slow down. We have to put ourselves in their shoes and explain the why, help them understand why we're making a decision. 

MS: What projects or plans are you working on for 2025 or beyond? You mentioned succession planning as something that you are looking at.

ES: In addition to Great Game of Business, we also operate on the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS. That's been a great tool also for succession planning. It's more of a structured way to collect our data, and that was something we were missing. And even with Tom [Demaline] and Cathy [Kowalczyk, Emily’s mother] in the second generation, they have so much in their head. We grew so fast while they've been leading the company that it's in their heads and in their team's heads that our big focus is generational transfer of knowledge.
There's also a tool with EOS called the accountability chart versus an org chart, which gives you the power to structure your team from the bottom up versus saying, well, you report to you. It's about functions and roles. Yes, there's people's names on the accountability chart, but it also gives you a forward-thinking approach. You can show your team and say, here's opportunities for growth and advancement for you. 

MS: And everybody knows what they're responsible for. It's not just a guess based on your title.

ES: Exactly. We say on the accountability chart, you should put in your box, “Why does the company pay you?”

 
MS: You’ve (officially) been with Willoway for 18 years. Do you have a favorite moment or something that you're most proud of?

ES: We've done different fundraisers. We ask our employees, “What do you want to do?” My coworker in HR, she has lupus. Every year we do a walk to support the Lupus Foundation. One time—again, I have chills—the leadership team decided we were going to, instead of doing something for Employee Appreciation Day, donate the money to her campaign. 

And one other thing too that happened recently that I was just blown away by …. We've had a really good group of college students coming in for the past several years, and one of the girls, she wrote me an email a few weeks ago. She said, “I don't think I'm going to be able to come back. I'm going to grad school. But I really wanted to write you this email because working for you changed my life and taught me work ethic. It taught me how to communicate with people I didn't know of different cultures that spoke Spanish. I didn't even know how to communicate with them.” I shared that with the leadership team, and I shared that with the managers, and I said, “This is what it's all about. This student came in and worked for us just wanting a job and we impacted her life.”

MS: So we talked about some of the proudest moments and some of the things that you were really excited about. Can you talk about a challenge you've experienced in your career so far, and how you navigated that?

ES: Definitely Covid was the biggest challenge that I had to navigate through. I just remember in March sitting there, and everything was closing down. Nobody knew what to do. It was trying to navigate the business. And then also employees, [who asked] “Do I come to work? What do I do with my kids? Am I supposed to work from home? I don't know if I can leave the house.” And then we were an essential business, so we still had to keep our plants alive and keep the business going. And we house 300 people in dorm-style housing. And I was just scared to death that someone's going to get sick, and it's going to get in the entire workforce. And again, I utilized my resources. I became best friends with Erie County Health Department, Lorain County [Public Health]. I called them up and I said, “This is my situation. I don't know what to do. We need help.”

MS: You may have the same answer here, but which life experiences or events do you think have influenced you the most?

ES: I think Covid is on the list, but I think just navigating having a family. I have two kids, a pretty demanding job, and navigating trying to keep everything going and trying to stay positive and having a healthy balance in your life. I think those things are a challenge. Every single day is different. 

MS: Your mom is in the industry as well, and part of this series of interviews and conversations is in celebration of Women's History Month. Can you talk about how the industry has evolved for women specifically since you started, since your mom started, stories that she shares?

ES: It has evolved positively for sure. I just look at Cultivate, and they do a women's lunch, and there's 400 people there. That would not have happened 20 years ago. There's still a lot of times where I find myself in a room, and it's just me. I mean, my senior leadership team is six people. I'm the only female. And I know we have tons of great women working for us right now that I've got my eye on that I know are going to do great things. And they already are. Women have a different way of looking at leadership and business. If you're the only female in the room, you have great things to share, and you'll only get more comfortable and more confident when you start to share. So don't be afraid to ask your question, speak up, because somebody else in the room is probably thinking the same thing as you. 

MS: Any other advice that you would share for other women in the industry?

ES: Get involved as much as you can. The first thing my mom said is you need to get— it was OFA when I started—get on the GenNext committee for OFA [now AmericanHort]. I did that, met a ton of great people. I still keep in contact with them. It doesn't have to be outside of your organization, but it could be in your organization. We have culture teams, we've got all sorts of different committees. That's how you get recognized and that's how you learn to lead. 

MS: What are culture teams?

ES: One of my favorite things. We have five culture teams at our company, and they are based in different departments. They meet weekly. There's 10% of that department on the team. They focus on four objectives. They are teaching, communications, engagement and playing to win. It is not a complaint club. So we watch that carefully, but if there are issues, we bring them up. We use the culture teams a lot to get that feedback. They're our voice. And it's a great way too to build your leadership skills to get on the culture team and lead the culture team.

MS: Is there somebody who you're mentoring on your team?

ES: We have a program at Willoway. It is not a mentorship program because that's scary. It's just too formal. One of my coworkers [suggested calling] it an “employee engagement expedition.” So we have Employee Engagement Expedition leaders or EEELs. So we have a little mascot. The leaders are the mentors. I'm a mentor, and I have two newer employees who I work with. We give prompt questions [and suggest mentors] take mentees out to lunch, get them coffee, make sure you check in with them, get to know them. And they have a resource that's not their manager or their direct coworker at the company.

MS: What are some of the most inspiring books that you've read or that have helped shaped your approach to leadership?

ES: “Great Game of Business” book. Highly recommend it. You don't have to fully implement Great Game of Business. It is a big commitment, but there are pieces in there that are great for leadership, just great values to think about, great ways to be open and honest with your team. And then “Traction” is a book that is based on entrepreneurial operating system or EOS. And there's also a really awesome book that we use a lot in our company called “Winning with Accountability.” It puts a positive light on accountability, and it teaches everybody the same language of accountability.