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Melissa Thompson

Melissa Thompson

Host of the "Becoming Her" podcast; Latina CEO, believer, and founder of a multimillion-dollar beauty brand affiliated with Cypress Creek EMS.

Aug 12, 2026

10:06
vulnerable,
10:07
sharing more, asking more questions, letting them lead, taking a step back.
10:13
I mean, I could go all day.
10:14
I could list this like bubblegum shrimp recipes.
10:17
I could like list out thousands of them.
10:19
But yeah, I think it's also creating that psychological safety for them to be able to fail and fail and teaching them how to fail fast and It's also making sure that you're creating a learning environment for the team.
10:32
I think there's so many things.

8 MINS LATER

18:46
And so if you take the time to go and listen to your team, you're going to find that up and down the organization, there's the opportunity.
5:16
I'm going to maybe ask you to start with a story, and this is probably the only piece we'll stick to our plan on, but Project Bengal, tell me about that.
5:28
Well, first, it's a play on a Bengal tiger because we built a tiger team to help with a specific challenge that we had.
5:41
I have said I love working at Ford, but one of our honest challenges is that we don't have a workforce plan.
5:47
So sometimes I will wake up on a Monday and hundreds of new words over the weekend.
5:54
And that is really what Q1 felt like on a loop, on a loop, on a loop.
6:00
And we could not just add resources as the way to solve the problem.
6:06
And so I actually...

9 MINS LATER

14:47
So walk me through that, explain that logic to me.

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