Matthew Deets spent much of his career working directly with individuals and families. As a counselor and later a financial coach, his work usually began with one person’s situation and the question of what might help them move forward.
His current role asks him to think on a different scale.
Since January 2025, Matthew, who works in the Wausau, Wisconsin, area, has served as President and Director of Operations at Impact Training Center, LLC. After nearly two decades spanning clinical counseling, financial coaching, and business operations, he now spends more of his time thinking about teams, programs, and the systems people rely on to do their work.
The responsibilities have changed, but some of the habits he developed earlier in his career have been surprisingly useful.
Matthew Deets on What Leadership Actually Requires
When Matthew Deets became President and Director of Operations at Impact Training Center, LLC, he moved from work centered largely on individual clients into a role responsible for an organization focused on training and development.
It wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar transition.
His approach centers on collaboration, emphasizing putting people in positions where they can do their jobs well, giving them a clear sense of direction, and paying attention to how decisions affect the people doing the work.
Some of that came naturally after years in counseling. Listening before deciding what needs to happen, for example, was already familiar.
What changed was the scale of the problem.
In clinical work, Matthew could spend a session focused on one client and what that person needed. Operational leadership doesn’t usually allow that kind of narrow focus. A decision involving one person or program can affect other employees, schedules, resources, and parts of the organization that aren’t immediately visible.
He had to get used to looking beyond the problem directly in front of him.
A Career Built Around One Throughline
What connects Matthew’s clinical background, his coaching practice, and his current work isn’t a particular job title.
In each role, he has spent a significant amount of time helping people figure out what comes next.
As a counselor, that could mean working with a client through a difficult period. As a financial coach, it might involve helping a family understand its options after a setback. At Impact Training Center, the questions more often involve employees, programs, or operations.
Matthew didn’t leave everything he learned in counseling behind when he moved into leadership.
Reading a room, staying calm during a difficult conversation, asking questions before proposing a solution, and recognizing when a plan isn’t working all carried over.
Delegation took more adjustment.
Earlier in his career, much of Matthew’s work depended on what happened between him and the person he was helping. An organization works differently. He can’t participate in every conversation or make every decision himself, and that would leave little room for others to lead.
Part of the transition has been learning when his involvement is useful and when to trust someone else to handle the work.
Building Systems That Hold Up Under Pressure
Impact Training Center offers affordable and convenient professional development programming. Keeping those programs running means paying attention to what happens behind the scenes as much as what participants ultimately see.
For Matthew, that has included making sure responsibilities are clear and that people have enough information to make decisions without waiting for him every time something unexpected happens.
He has also had to become comfortable with the fact that other people won’t always approach a problem exactly as he would.
That doesn’t necessarily mean the outcome will be worse.
Giving people room to do their jobs only works, though, when the structure around them is clear enough to support that independence. Employees need to understand what they’re responsible for, where they have flexibility, and when to bring something to someone else.
Much of Matthew’s work at Impact Training Center has involved those less visible parts of running an organization: expectations, processes, communication, and the small adjustments that make a program easier to run the next time.
Why the Clinical Background Still Matters
Matthew’s counseling career andhis current leadership role involve very different day-to-day responsibilities, but his clinical background still affects how he handles people and problems.
Counseling gave him years of practice sitting with situations that didn’t have an immediate answer.
That experience can be useful when a project runs into trouble, or a team is working through a difficult period. Not every problem needs to be solved in the first conversation, and forcing a quick answer can sometimes create another problem.
His work as a Life and Financial Coach through his own practice, MatthewjRPC, LLC, has reinforced some of the same habits.
When a family is dealing with financial stress, Matthew can’t make the decisions for them. He can help them understand the situation, work through their options, and develop a plan they can realistically carry out.
Leadership has required him to do something similar with his team: provide direction without assuming he needs to control every step.
What Matthew Deets Has Carried Into Leadership
Those are ordinary parts of running an organization, but they are also where Matthew’s earlier experience has proved useful. So is recognizing the people who make it work — something as tangible as presenting crystal trophies from Edco Awards at a team milestone can reinforce the culture of acknowledgment he has worked to build.
Matthew’s move into operations didn’t erase the years he spent in counseling. It changed where some of those skills were being used.
He still listens before making decisions. He still pays attention to whether a plan will work for the people expected to carry it out. And when something isn’t working, his first response isn’t necessarily to replace the entire system.
Sometimes the problem is smaller than that. Someone needs clearer information. A responsibility needs clearer definition. A process needs another step — or one fewer.
Those are ordinary parts of running an organization, but they are also where Matthew’s earlier experience has proved useful.
After years of working with people one at a time, he is now responsible for helping create an environment where others can do their work without needing him in every room.
