CASTLEY : Your twenties have to be about discipline and, reading a lot and challenging yourself. And as hard as it is, as uncomfortable as you may be, you really have to get your brain used to being challenged because being an entrepreneur is so hard. Being an engineer is so hard.

And if you spend your 20s, like just kind of coasting and taking the easy way out, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. So go challenge yourself and be uncomfortable and get used to it.

ADAMS: In this episode, I speak with Dr. Danielle Castley founder of Becq a radiation shielding and materials engineering company, and the president of Container Technologies Industries, a steel fabricator specializing in radioactive waste containers. Danielle’s path to engineering was influenced by a love for puzzles, math, and strong encouragement from her parents. After completing her bachelor’s and master’s at Drexel University, where she gained industry experience through co-ops in defense and robotics.

She shifted into nuclear engineering. Unfulfilled by defense work, she pursued her passion for clean energy, eventually landing at Holtec International before returning to school for a PhD focused on radiation shielding. Danielle’s leadership example centered on managing brilliant jerks, high-performing but difficult team members. She shared her journey of learning to balance patience and accountability, highlighting strategies like one-on-one meetings to gain buy-in 

and using process improvements to reveal true performance gaps. Ultimately, she emphasized the importance of aligning technical excellence with team values and culture.

 Her advice to aspiring engineering leaders, cultivate discipline and systems in your 20s, read extensively and build self-awareness through prayer, reflection and thoughtful decision-making. She encourages leaders to develop clear vision, make smart decisions quickly, and empower teams through effective communication and servant leadership. Without further delay, here is my conversation with Dr. Danielle Castley.

ADAMS (02:29)

Hi Danielle, welcome to Mastering Engineering Leadership.

CASTLEY (02:31)

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me, Angelique.

ADAMS (02:34)

I am thrilled to have you here.

Can you start out by telling us how you got into engineering as a career path?

CASTLEY (02:39)

Sure. It kind of honestly happened for me. When I was little, I was always doing a lot of puzzles and I had a very cool truck set that I loved and I loved doing my math homework when I was little. I’d do math problems with my dad and my sister and my mom would just always kind of say, oh, you should be an engineer. You should be an engineer.

Then in high school, I went to engineering camp at Drexel University, and then I ended up going there for my bachelor’s and master’s. it’s kind of, I guess it kind of happened naturally. I do joke with my mom a little bit that, okay, you know, I liked puzzles. was solutions oriented, but I also liked playing with my dolls and making coffee for dad every morning. Like you didn’t tell me I should have been a stay at home wife.

ADAMS (03:29)

What was their answer to this? 

CASTLEY (03:32)

She was like, you can still do both.

ADAMS

That’s true. And I’m curious, do you have engineers in the family?

CASTLEY 

I mean, my dad was a chemist. So certainly like we, we, and my mom was an accountant. So we were kind of a math and sciencey household. And my dad was always doing cool stuff with us. So, and my mom had this idea that was like, go major in engineering and then you can do anything. If you can, if you can get through that, then you have the skills. And it turns out leadership is a lot, a lot less of like, figuring things out and solutions and tasks. And it’s a lot more of the people skills that, so that does kind of make me laugh a little bit. But yeah, I think my mom just was honestly just a great, I had great parents and they were very nurturing. And when I was in high school too, or maybe like middle school, my mom gave me this book and it was about entrepreneurship. And I remember reading the back cover and I couldn’t even read the word. And she said,

Do you know what that means entrepreneur? And I was like, no, I mean, and she said, it’s like someone who starts their own business and I think you could do that someday. And I thought, okay. And I read the book. was interesting. It was about, you know, Michael Dell and Martha Stewart and all these people that started their own businesses and their, their journey early on and what their high school and early career years were like. And so it was like geared towards the younger audience and

and then I kind of like one thing led to another and it worked out. yeah, I would say my parents were her reason. That’s great.

ADAMS (05:11)

That’s great.

And so you, you got an undergraduate degree in engineering and then spent some time in industry and then decided to go back and get a PhD. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, your, your career, early career experience, and then your decision to go to graduate school?

CASTLEY (05:28)

Yeah, my early career was super exciting. I went to Drexel, I did my bachelor’s and master’s and I loved Drexel because they had so many programs for students that wanted to do more than just go through class. So they had a co-op program, which is basically an internship for those who aren’t familiar with co-op. You prepare a resume, your second year of school, they have a whole matching program online.

Upload your resume and then you just check off all the jobs you would be interested in, you match for interviews and then after your interview process you rank the job and then the company ranks you and you match. So my first co-op was at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Philly and it was in defense and so I had the secret clearance and so that… comes back later, my first job was in defense. And so then my second cop was at a robotics lab in South Korea. And so I learned Korean and I shouldn’t say I learned Korean. I started studying Korean. I still study it. I’m still not there yet, but I lived in South Korea for a little bit. And then I finished my bachelor’s and master’s at Drexel and I accepted a job with general dynamics, advanced information systems up in North Jersey. And honestly, I just hated the defense industry. It was, it was a top secret facility. So like everyone went into their little bubbles and worked every day. And I just had no idea what I was designing anything for. And I’m really motivated by like, the goal of something I don’t, I’m not the analyst type who just likes to like the science of something. 

I’m like, why am I doing this? I really need to be motivated by the end goal. I didn’t know what it was. So I just was not motivated in that job. And I talked to my dad and I said, you know, I really want to work in the nuclear industry. I really want to do clean energy. And he said, you should, and this was like 15 years ago. So I give my dad a lot of credit for being a visionary and giving me this direction. But he said, you should work for, you should work for one of these small modular reactor companies.

He was like, these reactors are gonna be small, they’ll be in people’s backyards, they’ll be on trucks. And now that I’ve been in nuclear for 15 years, I’m like, we’re not even close. We still have another five years to go. But 15 years ago, I was like, that sounds so cool. Well, Holtec International, I Googled small modular reactor, New Jersey, and Holtec International came up and they had a job posting for an international project manager for projects in Spain and Korea and. wow. So like it worked out. I ended up at for three years. I had this great exposure to the nuclear industry and the whole QA process, which is a significant part of the industry. And so for those who aren’t familiar with Holtek, it’s a nuclear engineering company in their main campuses in New Jersey. They’re leaders in spent fuel management. And so they manufacture these huge components for the nuclear industry, massive steel structures that are used to store spent fuel. And then they also started designing a small modular reactor and they do other things, heat exchangers, so many other things. They’re an incredible company and the owner is an entrepreneur. He started it from nothing, built it up into one of the most impressive nuclear companies today.

And they do power plant decommissioning, just like the list goes on. so 15 years ago, they were a lot smaller and I’ve really enjoyed my time there. I loved nuclear. I loved, and I really loved manufacturing too. I thought it was so cool, but I didn’t know quite enough about it. And I was honestly always a little confused, but I still for the most part really liked it, was really grateful. I kind of considered that my first job and I was really grateful that I got to do that for three years. And then in my exposure to the spent fuel industry, I learned about radiation shielding and the importance of shielding materials in the importance of better shielding materials to reduce the cost of spent fuel management.

And so after three years at Holtec, I left to go back to school and get my PhD and study neutron shielding materials in particular. So that was kind of like my early career journey. honestly, it was a lot of fun. I have to say I had a lot of fun. All my experiences I think set me up for everything I’m doing today. And it’s a small industry too. And it’s just really great always being able to see people that I’ve

I’ve worked with when I was 22, 23 and seeing where everyone is today and the impact that they’re having.

ADAMS (10:09)

Yeah, I agree. mean, so now you are an entrepreneur in the radiation shielding business. And so I do love this thread. Well, first of all, I love the Korea thread because first I was thinking, wow, like she’s so brave and fearless to like, know, into I mean, co-ops and internship. Sure. It’s nice to study abroad, but kind of think of,

English speaking places are, you know, the easier ways or Europe or something like that. And you’re like, no, I’m going to go to Korea. I’m going to figure it out. And you did. And then, you know, that ties back to, can imagine that whole tech would like saw you and you were probably like a unicorn to them, right? Like, here’s somebody is an engineer who’s been to Korea, like who’s done all this stuff. So I’m sure you’re like this perfect match for them. And then now with the, you know, you go back to study radiation shielding. So tell us a little bit about what you’re actually doing now that you finished school and you started your own business.

CASTLEY (11:02)

So I went to school and I specifically picked Dartmouth because they had, you could do an engineering degree, your PhD in engineering, or they have some like general engineering thing that they do that you don’t specialize your PhD. But anyway, you could also apply for their innovation fellowship. And one of the reasons why I didn’t wanna do my PhD anywhere else, cause I had looked was I’m not really an academic,

I wasn’t focused on academia. I didn’t want to write a PhD that was going to sit on a shelf. And I’m so impressed by those types of people that are just real like deep thinkers, so deep into the science and soft things. I should be more like that, but I’m kind of results oriented and there’s no way I like can’t change the fabric of who I am. just like, I want a product. I want something useful. I want a solution. So they had an innovation fellowship and with that they really supported your entrepreneurial pursuits if you were a PhD engineer and some engineering programs they hold you in there for cheap labor like they’re like this is a six seven year PhD and we want papers and we want presentations and podium sessions and so some universities push that and Dartmouth was, again, like a very nurturing environment, small school, and our professor who led the innovation program. I did my PhD with Ji Feng Liu, and he was also very supportive, like, neutron shielding was not his core focus. He was an excellent materials engineer, but he really just supported me in what I was committed to working on. And then our Innovation Fellowship Professor, Professor Fossum started the program at Dartmouth because he was an engineer entrepreneur and he knew how hard it was. So Dartmouth gave you funding as an Innovation Fellow that you could put towards starting your company. It was something like $10,000 a year, I want to say. But they also fully funded your research. So you weren’t chasing papers and chasing things that weren’t supporting your real career goals. And I loved that. And I’m so grateful for that program. And so they helped me get into I-Corps. I did this grad student pitch competition at the American University of Chargé in the United Arab Emirates. 

And I won $50,000 in startup money for my company. And so then after Dartmouth, I started Becq, a radiation shielding company. And at the time, we were singularly focused on developing a high temperature neutron shield. And high temperature for neutron shielding, you can either go like be in the ceramics world of a thousand Celsius plus, or we were in the 200 Celsius range 

for sped fuel containers. And so we got NSF funding to develop the material. And then we started working with customers and I realized that, like, even though we did so much I-Corps work, and I-Corps is a federal program where they give startup companies basically  I think $50,000 to go interview all these potential customers and make sure you’re real before they give you R &D money, you have to make sure that your customers really want your product. Well, what I learned is everybody, every spent fuel company wanted something slightly different. And then, so then my competitive advantage became customizable shielding.

And now that’s what we really do best is we built a software to go with our material customization approach and it’s called ShieldCalc and we’re really heavy now on shielding design work and material customization. So our customers have been also just incredible to work with, but like we have a diverse set of customers, Lockheed Martin Space.

GE Hitachi, Oak Ridge National Lab, Sandia National Lab, Westinghouse, all these different types of advanced reactor company. We have customers in three continents, like spent fuel customers in Europe, in Korea. And so it all,

ADAMS (15:13)

All comes back. Yep.

CASTLEY (15:14)

And I was really excited when we got our first contract with a South Korean company. And so at every customer, we kind of do something different, materials development, engineering design. And we basically developed a method for optimizing shielding for any scenario. So since I saw all these customers needed something slightly different, I didn’t feel like I really had a competitive product.

It’s expensive and nuclear to launch a new product. Everybody wants something slightly different. The ROI has to be there. The return on investment for them to like implement a new product, it really has to be there. And it’s only gonna be there if you give them exactly what they want. And so since we were materials engineers, it kind of…

we didn’t look at shielding from this nuclear engineer perspective, which was how much lead or polyethylene do you need? We looked at it from the materials perspective of, well, you you’re trying to make your container or whatever lighter weight and you have steel there that’s not doing enough for your shielding. So could we make a structural steel so that you don’t need a structure and a shield, for example. So that was

That’s really how Becq went from cross the chasm as people like to say from R &D to commercialization. We had this initial product offering and then we sort of tweaked it for everybody and we built a software to help us figure out how to best tweak it for everybody. And so for these customers we have, we’ve been able to bring weight.

And volume down for different things, 30%, shielding weights down 30%. And that’s significant. If we look at an example like the high flux isotope reactor at Oak Ridge National Lab, they’re doing beamline upgrades. And if they’re putting in more beamlines, even though it’s stationary, well, if their shielding is the same way as it’s been for now these additional beamlines, now you have to reinforce your floor and you have this additional load on your floor.

That the building wasn’t designed for 60 years ago. So if you can reduce the weight of your shielding by 30%, then you don’t have this massive construction project. If you’re going into space and you’re spending $500,000 per pound to send something into space, a five to 10 % reduction in your shielding weight is significant. And so we work with a lot of customers that need or basically have these challenges and shielding, whether it’s weight, whether it’s volume, ultimately it comes down to cost and they want to save money. And so we have a lot of customers who need help in those areas. And again, it’s been fun because we’ve had such a diverse project range and diverse customer base, and we just continue to grow and do cool things and it’s not easy. as I’m like listening to myself tell these stories, you know, going to Korea for your co-op and working in the robotics lab, it sounds so fun, but it was miserable in a lot of ways.

ADAMS (18:24)

I’m sure. Yeah.

CASTLEY (18:26)

like people made, I remember I was the first female to work in the lab. And this was 15 years ago, I didn’t have a cell phone that worked internationally. I had, I would get lost all the time. And I would like, try to get my iPod touch to get Wi Fi somewhere so I could email everything out where I was. And, you know, I didn’t, I just didn’t understand 90 % of what was going on. And so it was cool.

But I think about how that experience got us this big customer in Korea. I’m like, it was so worth it, but it was also so hard. And I don’t think, I think it helps to just let other people know if you’re, if it’s really challenging and if it’s really hard, then you’re probably doing the right thing. You’re probably doing something new that other people haven’t done before. And that’s part of being an entrepreneur.

ADAMS (19:15)

Absolutely. there’s so many great things that I want to follow up on. One thing that you said early on was you really only wanted to go to Dartmouth because they had this innovation program. And so you had the self-awareness to know, this is really what I’m looking for. And then you found a perfect fit for you with something that was both innovation, it was solutions oriented, you’re working to spend all your time writing papers that you didn’t care about, et cetera. I’m just curious where the self-awareness comes from. Do you intentionally kind of think about your goals and your motivations, or is it just something that is naturally coming to you? Can you talk a little bit more about how you have cultivated this self-awareness to to be very clear on what it is that you want to go after.

CASTLEY (20:04)

You know, as I’ve gotten older, I think I’m more religious than I realize. Like I don’t go to, I don’t go to church a whole lot. I grew up Orthodox Christian Greek Orthodox and their church just takes forever. But I do say my prayers a lot. And honestly, I think in a way I’ve just always had it in me. Like I’ve always known what I wanted and there’s just no telling me no. 

I remember when I did want to go to Korea, I don’t know why I felt like I heard about it. I wanted to do it. And my parents were like, you’re not going to Korea. And it just went in one ear and out the other. I think I was signing off. was like, well, they’re in denial, but I’m going. When I said I was leaving to go to Dartmouth, my boyfriend at the time who was in New Jersey was like, we had been together like six or seven years. And he was like, you’re going to New Hampshire. We’re here. And I was just like, 

It went in one ear and out the other. I was like, no, this is it. This is what’s happening next. so, and even with starting Becq I remember talking to colleagues from whole tech and they were like, shielding really like rad waste is the lowest of the nuclear industry. Who are your customers going to be? And I was just like, I’m going to figure it out. If you guys don’t want to be a customer, I don’t even care. There’s this industry is growing and I’ll pivot and I’ll figure it out.

So I think I say my prayers a lot. then also, I got to say not drinking and not doing drugs and ever, like all the things I’ve said no to, I think also have an impact. Because I do look at people who spent a lot of time drinking or doing drugs in their teens and twenties. And I just wonder, like, doesn’t that ruin your inner compass? doesn’t that, like, just confuse you, like how do your instincts know what to do if you’re drunk or if you’re on drugs? Like I think so much of what I do is just, kind of comes from my gut and my instincts. And I’m sure it sounds crazy, but I don’t think that I’ve ever done anything that, I don’t think I’ve ever made like a bad decision. I think it’s all worked out for me. So I kind of keep going that route.

ADAMS (22:12)

Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn’t sound crazy at all. mean, to me, what I hear you saying is, one, you have a spiritual connection that is really important to you, and you cultivate that in a specific way that’s meaningful for you. You say your prayers. And then you really have this sort of mind-body connection that you keep that sort of pipeline going by taking care of yourself and not allowing yourself to subdued or other ways by substances. And so with those kind of…kind of two pillars, you are really connected to your intuition and your gut. And so far, it continues to serve you extremely well, which I think is excellent. I think those are strategies that people can think about trying to deploy themselves. The second thing I wanted to talk about… sorry, go ahead.

CASTLEY (22:58)

I think also reading a lot helps, because that’s how your gut knows what to do. just, you know, and, and having your own set of your own logic and critical thinking skills, like people get so caught up in the shiny objects and sort of like chasing their ego and what can I post that’s going to make me look a certain way? Like, use your critical thinking skills to consider is this sustainable, you know, like so many when I was in college were pushing wind and renewables. And I thought, absolutely great. There’s absolutely a place for them on the grid, but think bigger picture year and longer term. We need nuclear. There’s no way around it. And so I think just having your own critical thinking skills. And then if you’re consuming a lot of information and looking at the way people are reasoning things, then your instincts will help you figure it, like sort it all out.

They always say that you’re collecting what, like 10,000 data points a second, and you can’t possibly process all this information, your body will tell you how to feel about certain things. And so yeah, I’m a big trust your gut person, but you got to give your body and mind the information so that it knows what to do. So it all comes together, yes.

ADAMS (24:07)

Yes, that’s great. The other thing I want to ask you about is this insight that you and your team had at Becq about, we’ve got all of these data points that the people in this industry need something custom. And I think one way, or maybe a more common way to have gone would have been to sort of maybe come up with a couple of different options and really try to force.

Force the customer base to change and say, you don’t need infinite customization or you don’t need a lot of customization. Really, we can do something good for you with these like, you know, four or five or whatever options. And you said, your team said, no, actually, our innovation is allowing the customers to have the customization they want and developing the tools to to make it easy for them to maybe figure out what it is they actually need and then helping them 

to build what they need. I’m just curious where that insight came from and how, know, did it, it like an aha moment or was it sort of over time, trial and error? I’m just, can you just talk a little bit about how you really, it sounds like you really unlocked the competitive advantage for Becq with that insight.

CASTLEY (25:17)

It was, I mean, it didn’t happen right away. We did try to push our first shielding material on people and it was a strong no. They were like, we need better thermal conductivity. So then we went and got better thermal conductivity and they said, okay, we need two, three years of testing. And so we are, we’re in that process with some customers of testing these materials for long-term use, bu when you have a company, have bills due every month. You can’t wait for this big milestone in the nuclear industry in three years. And that’s one reason why five years ago when I started Becq, so many government agencies were, that we kind of met with for funding for R &D, like the SBIR program. We did get an NSF SBIR because the program manager there said,

you’re not going to get money from private investors. Nuclear takes too long. These people aren’t getting their investment realized for a decade or two decades, whereas there’s so many other places they can put their money into. And that’s changed a lot in the past two years. Suddenly, like, nuclear is so hot right now. You have all these different startups. But I was definitely early on, early in one of the earliest startups in nuclear with this new wave of nuclear, I would say.

And it just, that was the reality of it is that this nuclear industry where the average age is over 50, they do not want to change. And so I had to figure out like, how am I going to get these people to be customers now and customers later? And the thing I could sell them right away was design work. And if I could design materials for them, well then I’m selling them on design today and I’m selling them materials testing for the next two, three years, and then I’m selling a product for the next three to 20 years. And so I wish I could say that we were like these visionaries, but we were really just figuring it out as we went along. Like the question to the customer was like, so what do you need? What do you need? What do you need? And then we went and figured it out and like, it’s, it continues to evolve too. 

So now what I’m seeing people need is you have all of these different types of advanced reactor companies. They have shielding engineers in house. They don’t want us, like we meet with their shielding engineers and obviously the shielding engineers don’t want us to take their jobs. So what can I offer them instead? Well, I can make ShieldCalc, the software that my engineers use, I can make it available for them to use and they can get a subscription to it. And so you kind of just constantly have to look at like, why wouldn’t people want to buy what we’re offering? And what would they want to buy instead that’s making their life easier? The ROI for them is there and start building that relationship with the customer. Cause nuclear is really tricky. You have a very risk averse mindset and you have people who are really set in their ways. So.

It’s always like, here, just like, what’s the small thing we can start working on so that we can build trust and you can see how helpful this will be for you. And so that you’ll want to continue working with us.

ADAMS (28:29)

All right, Danielle, what leadership example are we gonna be talking about today?

CASTLEY (28:33)

So we’re going to be talking about a leadership example that is a little bit general, but it’s something I think about when I first met you a couple years ago and I said, Angelique, if I’m successful in three to five years at this, what will I have done to become successful? And you said that if I could learn how to manage brilliant jerks, then that would be my key to navigating being an entrepreneur in this high tech industry. And it has been hard and I continue to learn and you have to be careful that it doesn’t turn you into a jerk because that’s always the risk. in general, think when you are a leader, really have to you have to constantly calibrate what kind of leader do you want to be. And I read a lot about being a servant leader and how you prioritize the needs and the growth and the wellbeing of your team members and the organization above your personal ambitions or authority or anything like that. And leadership is all about bringing together the right people to build the right processes and get the results that you as a team are really want. And like I said earlier, I know I’m good at this because I picked the right parents. when you have that confidence of like, I picked the right people, then it sets you up for entrepreneurship. But yeah, managing, as you put it, managing brilliant jerks is…

One of the things that I think your engineering entrepreneur students will, and not even entrepreneurs, just being in an office environment with people who are so smart and so sure about how they’re going about things. what I’ve seen a lot of is there are brilliant jerks that you do need to learn how to manage, and then there are brilliant jerks that you have to let go. And the impact on your team,

People’s personalities, their impact on your team is so significant, it affects morale, collaboration, retention, your core values, and ultimately productivity, and if you’re building the right processes to get results. at Becq, had some really, like a variety of exceptional nuclear and materials and chemical engineers.

I think when what I had often was I was very challenged by our chemical engineers and like they didn’t love the material customization approach. They loved the off the shelf product approach. And what we had to, and so when you have these just differences in opinions where it’s not a technical solution, it’s more commercial, know, technical solutions are usually easy with that team.

you do some study, you see who’s right or wrong, and then that’s your answer. But when it comes to getting technical people on board for a new commercial approach, you have to, A, really evaluate, can I do this without them? Because if their personality isn’t lining up with the rest of the team, the question is like, are these skills I can get from someone else who does agree with the team and is pushing in the same direction?

But if you have a very talented engineer, very talented technical people, then what I’ve learned you have to do is you have to, the best way to manage the negativity that they may bring to a meeting is to have one-on-one meetings with them beforehand and get their buy-in before you bring it up in a group. And I hated doing that because it would take so much extra time, but in the long run, it saved time because they weren’t like setting you back and setting the team back with negativity and an argument. So then the two of us could hash out the details and then bring a fully baked idea to the group instead of having a group discussion. And I think being prepared in those situations when you’re managing, challenging people, have to really pack, you have to really be the patient one and ask a lot of questions.

And I think that’s just really the best way to manage them. And a lot of people in general is to ask the questions of, well, instead of saying, no, that’s the wrong way to do it. Let’s do it this way to just ask question after question so that they defend their position on why they’re doing it that way and be prepared to let them ask you questions and offer that up. well, why do you…

how would you do it? you know, like get them into position to feel like open, you’re open to answering their questions about it. And it’s, it still is very difficult for me because I’m a little bit of a people pleaser. So I don’t, I don’t really like the conflict. like, come on, we’re all logical grownups here. We.

Let’s be nice. And, and, but like people’s egos really get in the way of things. And it sometimes turns into an ego thing. And I think, I think I’m so blessed because of that. have a great team and everyone has like really positive personalities, really strong technical skills, really growth oriented mindsets that when we have had these moments of sort of negativity and managing the brilliant jerk, it hasn’t pulled down the company, but I think it can. And I part of being a leader sometimes is you have to let people go and you have to say, this is doing more harm than good. And, and,

Luckily, Becq, it’s never gotten to that point, but in some other experiences I’ve had, it has gotten to that point where you just think about this person is doing more harm than good, and I don’t want to manage a brilliant jerk anymore. I want to not work with you. And so I think that as long as you’re going about your days where you’re very fair and you’re getting everybody’s buy-in on things and you’re transparent and you set expectations, then you set expectations, you get a grant. And then when it comes time to holding people accountable, then you have to do it. And that’s kind of where you make the decision of like, do we keep them or do we do we let them go? And again, it’s very hard, I think, to, to, to fire someone. And I always want to believe the best in people. And I’m like, no, they’re not the problem. It’s me. I’ve got to do this differently and that differently. And

What I’ve learned is actually some people just, they gotta go. If you can’t change people, you have to change people.

ADAMS (35:12)

That’s a great phrase. So this is a great example. mean, managing brilliant jerks, as you said, is a common leadership challenge. technical people aren’t the only ones who can be jerks. I you can have brilliant jerks in sales. You can have an ops in everything. And in your case, you work in highly technical field. so you are that typically takes the form of technical folks for you. And I’m curious, first, can you give us some behaviors that signal to you that this person is in the jerk category or that needs maybe to have a different management strategy than maybe someone who just is asking a lot of questions or saying, you know, I disagree with that idea and and moving forward. So can you just maybe just describe what a brilliant jerk, how that appears for you.

CASTLEY (36:11)

Absolutely. Good question too. I think one sign is when they’re undermining their leadership or their coworkers, again, violating core values, I think is a big one. They disregard companies’ culture. They prioritize their personal success over the collective goals. And the whole reason you have these collective goals people forget sometimes is to help all the individuals, right? Like if the company grows, your salary grows, you get to do new things. And so having like that small mindset, having a resistance to change, I think that’s great in some businesses. If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s probably, and you’re in a startup or a company that is wanting to grow, then that’s probably…

I would consider that like a toxic mindset and a red flag. An individual who is maybe customer facing and speaking negatively about the company. If they, I don’t know if I want to use the phrase gaslight, but if they don’t take accountability for things, that’s always hard. If you define if you spend time setting clear expectations, defining acceptable behaviors, and then they continue to violate these boundaries, red flag. But with the, you can’t change people, change people. I always insert my own phrase in the middle. If you can’t change people, change processes, and then change people. Because I do think sometimes the processes are the problem that person just didn’t know. Why didn’t they know? Okay, you didn’t send a company-wide email. You told nine out of 10 people, somehow you missed that person. So now you need a better process to communicate information to the group. like sometimes it’s a process thing, or let’s say it’s something more complicated like inventory management. And you’re like, this person just is not signing in this product. Why does he never sign it in? 

Okay, wellchange how he has to sign it in and maybe he’ll do it. Maybe it’s not an actual violation of a requirement. And so I think there’s a lot that managers can do to change processes, but then when you change these processes and when you’ve made it clear, you’ve gotten their acceptance and then you’ve changed processes to make it easy, you’ll see who the problem is. The negativity will just kind of always be around them.

And so again, I think those are key things to look for, violation of core values, undermining leadership, violating boundaries that you’ve set. And then if you find yourself having to have the same conversations with them over and over again, and of course being resistant to change and growth and improvement.

ADAMS (39:00)

Yeah, I think I appreciate you taking the time to share that. And I love what you said about, as a leader, you check in with yourself and say, maybe there’s something process-wise that can be improved that might actually allow this person to be a better version of themselves or de-bottleneck some of the challenges that they may be facing that are hindering them from, you know exhibiting the behaviors and executing in the way that you want and I always think that’s a really good thing for leaders to do is to have that self-reflection and try to make changes because typically when you change processes, they’re gonna benefit they’re gonna benefit the whole organization and then I also like what you said about you know, another strategy that you employ particularly maybe when it comes to comes to the change change management side is if there are people who you know are resistant to change you can pull them aside one-on-one 

and help overcome some of their objections that they may have. And they may have more objections than the rest of your group. But if you can do those on a one-on-one basis and onboard them and get their buy-in, then they come to the larger group discussion in a much more positive state. I mean, they may not be fully embracing the change, but at least they’re not dragging the whole rest of the team down with their with their objections. And I also think that’s a very smart strategy as well. And then as you said, mean, as hard as it can be, there can come a time where you just decide as the leader, okay, this person is causing more damage than their super smart ideas and great technical calculations or great, their great sales record or whatever it is that is really,

you know, bringing so much to the table on one side of things, their performance, you know, their metrics or performance or whatever, and recognizing that the damage that they’re doing to company culture and team morale and productivity is substantial enough that you need to make a change. So yeah, I appreciate that example, Danielle. I think it is something that leaders have to, all leaders will eventually have to manage sooner rather than later. So thank you for that.

All right, Danielle, what advice would you give to engineers who want to move into leadership roles?

CASTLEY (41:21)

So my advice is to, in your 20s, you have to learn discipline and you have to get your systems in place. I’m a big fan of that phrase, systems in place. People forget your brain is plastic, you can train it. You can train it to do things you wanna do and you can train it to stop doing things that you don’t wanna do. And 99%, I think, 99 % of being a good leader, I think is just knowing what you want. And I think that’s what it is, how you get to be good in sales too, is you have to know what you’re asking for and what you’re trying to sell and what you’re trying to guide people to. But when it comes to being a good leader, people are looking to you to tell them, where are we going next? And you need to know the answer to that. And so I know a lot of your audience for this podcast, they’re college students and

And I just can’t say it enough. know, your twenties have to be about discipline and, reading a lot and challenging yourself. And as hard as it is, as uncomfortable as you may be, you really have to get your brain used to being challenged because being an entrepreneur is so hard. Being an engineer is so hard. Honestly, having a job every day and going to work every day is so hard. And if you spend your 20s, like just kind of coasting and taking the easy way out, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. So go challenge yourself and be uncomfortable and get used to it. And then also read a lot. I think that’s important. And then if you do get to the point where you are in a CEO role, and you’re running a company. One thing I like to have, I like dashboards for all my different metrics. And I like to go through dashboards. And even if you’re not running a company, like get into the discipline of doing these things. When I was younger, I was listening to something about Rockefeller and how he would always look at his ledgers. And so when I was younger, would always like, I would prepare my books and.

Then when I had a company, honestly, I was in the habit of doing it. Like I kept track of all my spending and all of my income. And I’ve always been very proud that Becq has never carried any debt. We’ve never gotten any loans. I never needed an investor. We were in this high tech industry. We went from R &D to commercialization without any debt, without selling part of the company, without a big investor.

Because you’re in business, like you have to know your numbers and it’s just, even if you’re not running a company, get into the habit of that. And I think also when you’re younger, it’s important to learn a second language and that I think like the language skills have gotten me a lot, like learning Spanish, learning Korean has really helped my career in a lot of ways. And one thing I learned from Bill Woodward who has been

one of my biggest mentors over the years, he and I worked together at Holtec and then he helped me start back, is don’t be a lazy communicator. And he always pushes me on that, because he’s like, you have a tendency to go from A to Z. You need to give people more in the middle. so he’s, and I’ve seen like what a difference it makes to just take the time to think through how am going to present this and how are they going to receive it? And then making sure that the connection is there. Like how you’re presenting it is actually going to be how you want them to receive it. So I would say the key things to be excellent as a leader or set and communicate vision and then keep communicating it and then communicate it some more. And then make excellent decisions and you got to make them quickly. And this is where I think having good intuition helps. And then one thing I read years ago, I forget what book I read it in, but they say as a CEO, make big moves and then keep making big moves. So I’m a risk averse person. I feel like I make medium moves. I’m thinking, you make medium moves, but I’m learning. And then builds and empower high performing teams and give your team, be a servant leader and give your team what they need to succeed.

So some books I like, I like Robert Green’s books. I really like Traction. And I really like The Hard Thing About Hard Things. And then I like to, I’m kind of all over the place with podcasts, but I really liked How I Built This by Guy Raz. And I listen to some like motivational speakers sometimes. And I say my prayers.

ADAMS (45:55)

That is excellent advice, Danielle. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us.

CASTLEY (46:01)

Thank you so much for having me Angelique and good luck to all of your students.

ADAMS (46:05)

Thank you.