Getting the ‘RIGHT’ Job

Your Work Friends Podcast: Getting the Right Job with James Hudson

Jobs aren’t magic…

And, they’re not always the right fit for you. Jobs are built, banded, and budgeted—before you ever apply. In this episode, we sit down with Talent Acquisition expert James Hudson (Regeneron, Nike, Levi’s, Net-a-Porter) to break down how jobs are created, how pay gets set, and how to land the role that actually fits you. Plus, we answer your biggest job search questions—and call out some wild hiring trends you should probably skip (yes, even that one with the parents).

Listen to the full episode here

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Francesca : 0:00

The fact that you can whisper to Alexa and she whispers back is a little creepy. I'm not gonna lie, it's a little creepy.

Mel : 0:08

Sorry to have taught you that, yeah so me and my son.

Francesca : 0:12

So now it's like yes, Francesca.

Mel : 0:18

I am banned from Portland.

Francesca : 0:36

Hello and welcome to your work. Friends were to HR leaders with no filter, but we're exposing the work stuff you need to know I'm Francesca and I'm Mel and Mel, how are you today?

Mel : 0:48

I'm doing great. It is beautiful morning in Portland. It's been Fantastic to spend a few days with you here, seeing the city, planning our year, so I'm excited for 2024. How?

Francesca : 1:00

are you? Yeah, mel made the truck out from Connecticut to to semi snowy, cloudy Portland Oregon.

Mel : 1:09

I've experienced all four seasons in three days. It's great.

Francesca : 1:12

That is Portland in winter. There you are, yeah. Well, now this week we had a really fantastic interview with James Hudson, who is a talent acquisition leader. He's held executive roles at places like Nike, leave eyes for over 21 netta portet and he's a contributor to Forbes, and I think he's just an all-around rad person. We talked to him this week about Getting a job, and not only getting a job, but getting the right job. Now, what did you think about our talk with him.

Mel : 1:44

I think it's so valuable the information that people will get out of this episode, just the tips, good practices, red flags to look out for and wonderful to meet James. He's fantastic yeah.

Francesca : 1:56

So here's the deal, folks today we're going to give you the interview with James Hudson, a talent acquisition vice president and leader. You'll be able to leave that episode understanding how jobs even become a job and how do you really get the right job For you. And we also asked an answer some of the burning questions you all have, like should you negotiate your offer and is it really all who you know? He answers all of that. We'll come back after the interview with our roast and toast. So here's our interview about getting the right job with James Hudson. We are super stoked to have James Hudson with us today. James, how are you this today? How are you today? What's going on?

James : 2:42

I'm pretty good. Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me on your show. It is an honor to be here. I just got back from a long trip over the holidays to Europe and I'm back in what is supposed to be sunny California and it's rain outside my window. So whilst I'm currently working on my job Outside my window, so whilst I'm grateful to be home, the the weather, it's a little bit of pathetic fallacy, it's yeah like outside and maybe I feel a little bit bleak inside.

Francesca : 3:09

But oh, you get past that today. You got to bring the energy, james. You can't, you can't bring the bleak energy. No, it's so funny. I think I'm just north of you up here in Portland. Mel and I are sitting up in Portland today. We're getting snow, you're getting rain, we're getting snow, we're getting snow.

Mel : 3:24

It's, it's coming. I did read, though, that in 40 days, the sunshine is going to stay out until 7 pm Again, so that's moving us from the sad era yeah.

Francesca : 3:34

I think we all needed to hear that today. I think I think James needs some sunshine in his soul. So there you go. You got 40 days to go, james. 40 days. Yeah Well, friends, we're stoked to introduce James to you today. James is a talent acquisition leader and has been an executive at places like Nike, levi's, netta Porte. He's also a pre-massive contributor on Forbes and an all-around rad person. And, james, you and I Overlapped when we were at Nike.

James : 4:04

We share that very unique trauma bond it.

Francesca : 4:07

We indeed do, and if you know, you know, you know, you know. So Today what we wanted to do is give everyone a survey of how this stuff works. How do jobs even come to fruition? How do they go from a concept to like a job board? How does someone find the right job for them Not just a job, but the right job for them, especially from your perspective? And then there's a lot of burning questions that are out there, so we'll do a quick round robin at the end to see what do you think about some of these burning questions. Everybody wants answers to. How does that sound? I'm gonna do my best to answer all these questions.

James : 4:42

Yeah, there will be a test. We will be grading you and judging you at the end.

Francesca : 4:45

So there you go. I'm just so, James. How did you even come into this space as a talent acquisition leader?

James : 4:55

You know, I've been leading talent acquisition teams for a long time now, for the best part of two decades. My last team at Nike, where you and I worked together, I had a team of our hundred recruiters that the team. Before that at Levi's, I had 60 recruiters working for me. So over the course of 20 years I've worked alongside hundreds, if not thousands, of recruiters and obviously met many more peers in the industry at events. And what have you? Of all those thousands and thousands of recruiters that I met, nobody ever intended to become a recruiter, and my story is no different. I fell into the profession Like everybody else appears to have done. If there's anyone out there that in high school, wanted to be a recruiter, please come and find me. I want to talk to you. So my actually, I actually think my story is pretty interesting in that In college, first time around my undergraduate degree, I worked on the shop floor at Gap and ice Dating myself.

James : 6:03

Here in the late 90s in Europe, gap a was expanding pretty quickly and B had fairly innovative approaches to how they manage their workforce, in that they recognize that a large percentage of the folks working for them would be part-time, transient workers, college kids what have you.

James : 6:25

In the UK, unlike here in the United States, it's pretty common to go quote-unquote out of state to college. Obviously we don't call them states but people. You know, people live in one part of the country and Go to college in a completely different part of the country. Back then the cost model was completely different. Our cost model in the UK now is Getting closer to the cost model here. Well, obviously, more frequently people tend to stay in state because it can be cheaper, cheaper, yeah, anyway, you, I like many people in the UK, my undergraduate degree was far from my home and Gap had this program where during term time you could work in your college store and during vacation time you could transfer your employment to your home store, and so they had this really flexible workforce that you could be employed year round.

Francesca : 7:18

Yeah, Get that discount too. Get that discount at home. Got to be looking right in those genes 1969.

James : 7:25

Yeah, that was cool in the 90s. Yeah.

Francesca : 7:27

I know, I know, I'm so what happened to Gap? Because I'm like, I'm still like is Gap still a?

James : 7:32

thing it's going to be. The new CEO just came over from Mattel and was responsible for the Barbie resurgence, so I'm excited.

Francesca : 7:42

I'm pulling for Gap. I'm pulling for Gap Gap banana. I'm athletic. Well, maybe I'm pulling for him all.

James : 7:47

Yeah, san Francisco hometown. Then in my last year of college I ended up moving to the team that hired the staff for all the new stores. So that was my first taste of interviewing and of hiring at scale, and I really enjoyed it, even though I was like 19 years old.

Francesca : 8:04

Making those decisions. I love it. What did you major?

James : 8:06

in.

Francesca : 8:06

Did you even major in HR, or are we Were you like mechanical engineering, my undergraduate?

James : 8:10

degree was art history. Nice, I didn't go back to business school eventually and get a proper degree in something sensible, but yeah, my undergraduate degree at art school was art history Not very useful at all. So, yeah, that was my first taste of hiring. Then, like very many British people, I took a year out after college and went traveling, and I actually stayed away for a year and a half. I spent six months in Southeast Asia and a year in Australia, and then when I got back to London a year and a half later, I had no money at all because I'd basically been on vacation for a year and a half and I have no idea what I wanted to do. And somebody said why don't you go work in recruiting? Because you've done that before and you'll make a ton of money. And I was like, oh OK, that sounds good. And so I interviewed with lots of different search firms in London, without really even knowing what executive search was, and landed a job with a search firm that operated in the sort of retail, head office, corporate retail jobs space, and so that was my first taste of professional recruiting. I did that for three years and what I learned was I loved the people side of search, but I didn't enjoy the cold calling and business development and sales that comes with agency recruiting, and so I knew that I wanted to make the transition to an in-house role so that I could keep the people side but lose the sales and business development element.

James : 9:37

I had just bought a house in London and one of my clients was at the time. This tiny little website had fewer than 200 employees, less than $40 million in revenue, but I just totally believed in what they were doing. Natalie, the founder, was just so visionary. Naomi, the head of HR, who I'd been working with as a vendor, I just adored her, and every week they would send out a list of all the open vacancies that they had and ask us and their other search partners which we could fill. And one week the list came through and they wanted their first in-house recruiter on a six month contract, and I knew that was it, and so I took a 50% pay cut and left a full-time job, even though I had a mortgage to pay, because I just really believed in what Netaporte were doing.

James : 10:30

And still, 20 years later, it's the best career decision I ever made, because when I joined it was this tiny, tiny company and I was just super fortunate to be right place, right time and to be able to grow with the organization for the best part of the near decade that I was there. We had triple digit year-over-year growth, so complete hypergrowth. We opened offices in New York, in Hong Kong, in Shanghai. We opened distribution centers around the world.

James : 11:02

I got to build out the internal recruiting function. In my first year there I hired 150 people on my own. By the time I left, nearly a decade later, we were hiring thousands of people every year and I established recruiting teams around the world. They sent me to business school and it was just the most amazing experience because I was having practical, real-world examples of everything that I was learning in school, because the business was growing so fast. We went through three rounds of M&A so I got to see both sides of the corporate transaction and I think everything that happened during that first decade then enabled me to make the transition to much larger scale quote-unquote corporate America where I've been ever since Right now.

James : 11:48

I'm resting, but yeah, well-deserved rest.

Francesca : 11:52

Well-deserved rest too. It's interesting, too, when you know you're running towards something right, even though it means a 50% pay cut, even though it means a smaller footprint, but then it turns into something exponential right, and it turns into something that sounds like it just married your gap experience, your agency experience, just from a global perspective too. Even that art history, I'm sure, came into play somewhere. Somehow. Design is design. And then you've gone on to things like Levi's, nike, et cetera too, and just kept on growing your career. It sounds like.

James : 12:28

Yeah, exactly, If Nettaporte hadn't grown so quickly, I don't think I'd have been able to make the transition from dot com to corporate America, just because of the scale and complexity.

James : 12:41

But by the time I left Nettaporte I had teams that I directly managed in Shanghai, Hong Kong, a very large team in London, I had a technical recruiting team in London and then a non-technical SGNA team in London and then another large team in New York.

James : 12:57

So because I'd already been able to have the global experience, the cross-border experience, multi-lingual recruiting experience, that then enabled me for my first big job, which was Levi's in Europe. So I moved to Levi's, moved me to Brussels, and so for two years I was crisscrossing Europe rolling out the workday technology and re-establishing the recruiting function in the region, and then from that job I was promoted to the head of recruiting role in California. So that brought me to San Francisco eight years ago now. And then my most recent job was head of talent acquisition for Nike's director consumer businesses worldwide. So, as you know, Nike's roughly $50 billion in revenue or it was maybe not this year and the director consumer piece was roughly half of that. And so my team worldwide hired 40,000 people a year for all of the satellite offices and stores around the world.

Francesca : 14:01

Yeah, this is the thing and one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you today, because I think most people that don't sit in HR or sit in talent acquisition, I don't think most people understand how big and complex recruiting organizations, internally at companies, are. So if you're in a fortune, if you're trying to get a job at a Fortune 500, 1,000, 5,000 firm, you're going to be dealing with a very large team of people that are incredibly skilled at trying to find the best person for the role Sometimes, yeah.

Francesca : 14:34

Listen, there are some real dipshits out there. That's actually true in every single team and everybody knows that. But there are systematic tools, processes, procedures in order to find the right person for the role and, a lot of times, some great people and sometimes some dipshits. So one of the things that we wanted to jam with you about, james, was to kind of educate people on how does something go from a concept like we need somebody in this role to a job posting. I'm wondering if you can open the hood for us and just share. How does a job become a job? Almost like how does a bill become a bill. How does a job become a job?

James : 15:11

It's a great place to start, thank you, thank you. It's one of those areas where there's a ton of myth and misunderstanding. Quit. Let me caveat this by saying everything I'm going to say is from the perspective of large scale organizations, fortune 500 size companies and obviously in smaller organizations you know 100 people organizations everything is a bit looser.

James : 15:42

But the second that you get to any kind of scale, there is a huge amount of rigor and guardrails in how the business is run, and especially once that, because that business becomes publicly traded, there are rules and laws around what you can and cannot do, and that bleeds into every part of the enterprise and obviously HR is no different than any other part of the enterprise. There are rules, regulations and, in many cases, laws around what we can and cannot do. So caveat number one In any large organization there is a strategy which is, you know, often a three to five year plan, and there is an annual operating plan or budget, which is the shorter term, you know, six to 12 month horizon plan, and everything is captured in that plan. For most organizations, irrespective of industry, for most organizations the number one overhead is people. Yes, labor.

James : 16:48

The wage bill is the biggest expenditure and therefore subject to the largest amount of scrutiny. Organizations have a very clear idea at every point. So over the next 90 days, over the next 180 days, over the next year and over the next five years, what their wage bill is going to be. This is all a very long way of saying. Jobs are planned way in advance and as recruiting teams, we play a role in how those roles are brought to market. But we do not create those roles, we do not decide those roles. They're decided by at the highest level of the organization, then with the leadership teams within each function, with their finance teams way in advance, so that the biggest expense of the organization can be controlled and measured.

James : 17:49

In any normal established organization, 80% of jobs that are hired are going to be backfill or replacement for people that have left and roughly 20% are going to be net new headcount growth.

James : 18:03

That has been decided as part of the budget and strategy strategy process to decide we're going to grow this discipline or in this market or in this geography and therefore we need to add x amount of headcount so that 20% of headcount is pretty fixed because we've decided we need x amount of people in Germany or India or in data science, for example.

James : 18:28

The 80% is a little bit more ambiguous because obviously we don't know in advance who is actually going to leave, who's going to get another job, who's going to get promoted, what have you? But we know that in any given year, 20% of your workforce will leave one way or another, so you know that you're going to have to backfill 20% of people. So if your organization is 10,000 people, you know that in any given year you're going to have 2,000 vacancies to fill. You don't know exactly where they're going to be, but you can broadly assume, based on the size of the individual functions within your organization, we'll have 200 to fill in finance, we'll have 150 to fill in marketing, and so that's kind of at the highest level. What's going on with like how headcount is created and how roles come and go and exist within an organization?

Francesca : 19:21

Yeah, I think that's important, though, to know, because I just even know that most organizations are looking at like a 20% of the open jobs they have every year net new right we decide we're going to start making paper clips right Now we need paper clip makers, and we've historically been paper makers, for example. I think that's really important to know, especially because when people one of the questions we get a lot is especially around layoffs, for example, like how can people have open jobs and lay people off at the same time, and a lot of sometimes that's because a skill gap right, Because people we still need to hire the paper clip makers and we had to lay off the paper makers, if you will. So I think it's just helpful to have that context of how these things come into bear annually.

James : 20:05

Yeah, totally so. Then let's get into how the business is operating day by day.

Francesca : 20:11

Yeah.

James : 20:12

I'm running a team in finance and I know that for this quarter ahead I've got two net new headcount that have been assigned to my team that I can hire in this quarter. I can't hire them any sooner because the cost of that headcount is phased into the overall operating plan and if I'm the leader of that team and I want to hire those roles early, I can't just open them. I would have to get approval from either the leader of the function or maybe even up, depending on the size of the organization, maybe even up to C level. That's how tightly controlled costs are in most organizations. So even though the headcount exists, the headcount exists from a point in time, from a point in the budget, and if you can't even bring it forward because that would be adding more costs that wasn't planned for. So I think that's an important caveat that new headcount is phased and is hired when it's supposed to be hired Then if somebody resigns from the team and again, depending on the organization, it isn't even an automatic one-for-one approval that we could replace the finance manager that resigned.

James : 21:24

You often still have to go through an approvals process to get that role opened and the leader of your function may decide to reassign that headcount elsewhere and you might not get to backfill that role. But only after all that has happened does the role get passed to the recruiting team. The recruiting team just executes on a plan that has already been set. We're not responsible for creating headcount, for gatekeeping headcount, for deciding on which roles get filled. That is all done at the leadership and at the HR business partnering level.

Francesca : 21:58

Yeah, I think it's really important for people to know too, because a lot of times, when people interview for jobs, there's a difference between the hiring manager, the person that is going to be your boss, right and there's a and your recruiter. And this is why it's because the person that is going to be leading you is not the person that's going to necessarily be finding you and taking you through the acquisition process. Those are two separate people 100%.

Francesca : 22:21

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, the other thing I'm curious about is do you find that in most organizations like, for example, when I've been leading teams before I had $2 million for payroll, that was my payroll budget and I could decide how those roles and that pay was distributed among roles? Do you find, too, that when you have a job rec open that you're given a dollar amount? Like so, for example, you've got a job role open and this role cannot exceed $100,000 a year, $200,000 a year Are you typically also given a dollar amount too when the job rec opens? Just out of curiosity.

James : 22:59

So there's a few different things at play here. As the leader of the organization, it can happen in a few different ways. You can be given a total number $2 million and therefore you can hire 20 people $100,000, or you can hire two people at $1 million each. Yeah, in some organizations you're given both size and shape. You're given $2 million is your headcount budget, but you can only hire one leader, three managers and 10 associates, and so then that $2 million is already portioned out for you.

James : 23:37

Irrespective of how that happens to you as the leader of the organization, when you decide how your headcount budget is going to be spent for net new hires, those roles then need to be graded and leveled, because and again this is in larger organizations there are set bands and steps in the compensation framework and all roles are anchored to those bands and steps, and in a large organization there can there's typically 16 different steps in the pay hierarchy, so the bands run horizontally and then across the bands running vertically are job families, and so a level one role in finance will have a salary range and a level one role in marketing will have a salary range, and whilst they will be similar, they will not necessarily be identical because the ranges are anchored back to the organizational compensation philosophy, which is either tethered to the cost of living or the cost of labor in the market where the organization is either operating or hiring talent.

James : 24:54

So there's a huge amount of complexity in the background as to how roles are graded and priced and so as a recruiter, when you're given a live role, you know exactly where it sits in the organizational hierarchy it's a level five. It's a level five role in finance. So you know the salary band for that role. Roles are typically pegged at the midpoint of the range, so $125,000. So as a hiring manager, you will be told okay, you've got a level five role and it needs to come in at $125,000. But then your HR business partner might say well, actually the rest of your team is pretty legacy.

James : 25:47

And therefore their salary level are all around the sort of $115, $120,000. So you can't even go to midpoint. You can only go to 90% comp ratio for this hire to maintain internal equity. And so as a recruiter, when you get the live role, you get a lot of pieces of information about where this job has to land, whereas recruiters do not decide. We have to execute against what the budget is based on. All of those factors I've described.

Francesca : 26:20

Going back to what you started, this conversation with. This is so complex. It can get incredibly complex in terms of the amount of people in the room making the decisions from top to bottom. All the variables that we need to consider, even from bands that are well established to things like pay equity on a team to make sure that things are equitable and that you're also competitive right in the marketplace from a talent perspective. It's just really good to know, because if you've never been in HR or in talent acquisition or a hiring manager, most people don't know this and would be like well, I just want to make a million dollars a year, can you do that? It's like no, you're a level five in finance and this is the midpoint, and that's why Also good to know that there's just things like bands and pay equity as well, just to understand the lay of the land. I know, mel, you wanted to talk about finding a job, and not only finding a job, but finding the right job for you.

Mel : 27:16

Yeah, I really love earlier how we talked about your story, james, that you ran towards something that had a fire in you, and we want everyone to feel that way right, so want to make sure folks are finding the right job, not just landing a job, and would love your tips and tricks on that.

James : 27:32

A great question and it's, I think, very timely, in that we're living in an information age where we have far more transparency in all areas of our lives than we did even a decade ago, but there is still a degree of opacity around what it's like inside organizations. But yeah, we're also living in a time when we have five different generations in the workforce in some organizations, and the expectations of Gen Z are wildly different from even millennials, and I just think it's really interesting how these expectations and demands of the newer workforces are changing the work landscape and hopefully for the better, because what we have has not worked for so many different parts of society. Right, it's very clear that how we've run things up to now has not been great.

Francesca : 28:42

Yeah, it kind of sucked. I think this is the thing that a lot of people don't think about.

Francesca : 28:47

I was telling Mel this the other day when I first started working. So I'm 44, right when I first started working, my first job was at Accenture and I got a desktop and I remember I loved my time at Accenture. It's not an Accenture, but I remember being in the office and working until 10 o'clock at night and there was not a question of whether or not I was going to work. This is what was expected. You earn your stripes, you labor so you can get to that partner level. That was what was expected and I love the idea. We've been talking a lot on the pot around. Do we have to live like this? Do we need a dream of labor? And I feel like your Gen Z is coming in and being like guys. This blows what are we doing?

Mel : 29:26

Yeah, my favorite tic-tac recently was a young woman who just started her first full-time job and I really had empathy for her because she was like is this, it Is this life? I work, and then I have no time for my friends or any of my hobbies. I work, I come home, I go to the gym, I cook dinner, I go to sleep and it's like Groundhog's Day and she was having somewhat of a panic attack about it. Right, and she made a good point. Francesca, you and I have the same kind of history there. I also had a desktop in my first job in big law, working until 10, and then you get home and you're like just recycled. But we were always told this is what's expected. I really love that.

Mel : 30:06

Gen Z is bringing a different perspective and millennials started it a little bit. I like to see that Gen Z is really kind of demanding more transparency in the workplace, including recent laws around salary transparency, even in job descriptions. I think now it's more important than ever. How can people find the right fit? So one of the things that's an interesting topic to me is the legitimacy about what the culture is like, what you're going to experience in the workplace. How can people find that information out? So if a candidate's going out and they're researching different companies for the job that they're looking for, how do they know that that company is legit about what they're putting out there and it's not just kind of word, lip service, on their website?

James : 30:54

And what's great about? I mean, there are a lot of negatives to living in the information economy, but what's great about the information economy is that it was so much more networked than we ever were before. So my number one tip is obviously start by trying to connect with people on LinkedIn that work at the company or companies where you're hoping to work, and obviously try and connect with a cross section of folks, so people within your discipline. So if you're a marketing, obviously focus on the marketing team. But also, what's great about LinkedIn is LinkedIn will help you find the people that are most active on the platform. So go where it's warm, right? So if you want to work at Nike and actually the people at Nike that are most active on LinkedIn are in supply chain well, start there, right, because they still work at the organization. So target folks at the places that you want to work and start to make connections with them on LinkedIn, and then the more time that you spend with them virtually will hopefully lead to at least a coffee chat where you can ask them what it's really like. Tip number one yeah. Tip number two Glassdoor is a great resource.

James : 32:09

If you take it to the next level, glassdoor is like Yelp, right Right. It's polarized, in that you've got a lot of positive and a lot of negative, because those are the people that are mostly motivated to say something. So you have to be a little bit discerning when you're reading reviews on Glassdoor. Still will tell you that the average user reads six comments before they form an opinion. I would say, okay, read 30. Do you know what I mean? Like this is somewhere you're going to be spending 40 hours a week for the next two, three, five years. Like read as much as you can to get more of a sense of are these just angry people or is this a theme that may or may not be concerning to me? And then where it gets really interesting is last year Glassdoor launched really powerful new functionality, which hasn't had much airtime and I really wish more people knew about it, in that they allow you to slice the data by demographic and so on Glassdoor. Right now, you can see the average company rating for the employees that work there and it's out of five and they might have a 3.5 or a 4.0.

James : 33:30

And then what you can do is slice it by demographic and say well, what do women think? What do LGBTQ people think, what do people of color think and what's really? And I encourage everyone to go and try this. What's obviously really disappointing is that for virtually every company out there the underrepresented folks, their scores are always lower In every organization, even your dream organizations. Women, people of color, lgbtq folk consistently have a worse time than the general population. That sucks, but that's the society that we live in. What I encourage folks to do is look at the Delta. If you accept, rightly or wrongly, that it's always going to be lower for those of us that are not straight white men, look at the Delta and where the number is, particularly where the gap is particularly big. That might indicate not might it does indicate that that organizational culture is not somewhere that you would thrive, irrespective of how you identify. Do you want to work in a place where women, lgbtq folk and people of color consistently have a worse experience?

Francesca : 34:45

No, the answer is no, absolutely not. Don't go there. Yeah, exactly.

Mel : 34:52

Oh, I love that feature because I think it's incredibly important to gain that perspective, especially as a woman. If you're LGBTQ, if you're a person of color, being able to see what that experience is like it gives you that inside look into the culture.

James : 35:09

There's no smoke without fire, right? If there are consistently people saying really terrible things about the place that you want to work, there may be some truth in that. And then my last tip is if you get as far as an interview at your quote unquote dream organization, again, irrespective of how you personally identify, ask if the organization has ERGs employee resource groups and then ask as part of your interview process if you can meet with someone from that group either a group that you identify with or a group that you're an ally to and if they don't have ERGs, red flag number one. And if they have ERGs but won't let you speak to anybody, red flag number two. It tells you that something shady is going on and you don't want to work there.

Mel : 35:58

What other red flags should people look out for in the job description interview process? What are some things that stand out to you that folks can pay attention to?

James : 36:08

There's a ton of click-batey articles about these red flags in job descriptions, and I'm super wary of that because, again, coming from having worked in a side corporate America for a long time, I know that job descriptions can often be literally 10 years old and have been no relation whatsoever on what it's actually A what the job is or, b what it's like to work there, and so, yeah, you never know who wrote the job description or how old it is. So I don't know that there's anything super valuable that you can get from that. It's more what you can pick up on by people that are currently working there either what they're saying on review sites, what you're able to glean from them by networking on LinkedIn, or what you're able to discover during the interview process. I think that's your best barometer.

Mel : 37:05

That leads me to my next question. Around the interview process, you're in the interview, especially since a job description, as you said, it can be old. Sometimes they don't get updated for years, as you mentioned. So what are some questions candidates should ask in every interview to make sure that they understand what their duties will be? What does their day-to-day look like? What does the team look like? What are some things that they should ask, no matter what, just to get a very clear picture of the truth, of what their experience will be like in that position.

James : 37:38

Yeah, and before I even get into specific questions, I think it's about remembering and framing it in your mind that the interview is a two-way street.

James : 37:52

You're interviewing them just as much as they are interviewing you and what is scary. But what you have to get really good at is that when you come out of an interview and you think, oh hell, no, then you have to hold on to that. You have to be like no, trust it. Yeah, I have decided no, because, especially in a market like this, where it's so easy to fall into a scarcity mindset, we come out of an interview thinking that, ooh, I've got a bad feeling and then we talk ourselves into it because we need to get a job. Trust your instincts. If you get a bad feeling, there is a reason for that.

Mel : 38:30

Trust your gut. I've had that feeling before. Have you ever walked away from an interview process after an interview and just said no and sent them a note about it?

James : 38:41

I have done the opposite of that. I've done what I've told people not to do, in that, if you look at my career history, you'll see that I'm a tenure guy. I tend to stay around in places for a long time and wherever it's been a short tenure, it's because and there's only two of them it's because I found out too late that my personal values did not align to the values of the organization. And I had a very brief stint at Forever 21, which, since I left it, went bankrupt and is now owned by a VC firm. So I feel comfortable saying this. But when I went to interview at the HQ in Los Angeles, there were Bibles in the meeting room and I was like this is weird, like religion does not belong in the workplace.

Mel : 39:41

Absolutely not. That's strange, that's very strange.

James : 39:45

Yeah, and it's because the family that owned at the time were very strong believers in their faith, which is great. But that does not belong at work and obviously I ignored that giant red flag and was one of the more toxic environments I'd worked in because they were trying to mix their personal views with corporate America and those two things I will tell you.

Francesca : 40:10

That has been absolutely true for me too, like I've had two jobs that I knew in the interview process no bueno and they ended up being no bueno, and it's almost like dating. You know you date somebody and like week two you know week two like the thing that's going to end it. It's like food poisoning as well. Right, you can eat a whole day's worth of stuff, but you knew it was the fish. You know that's the same shit. It's the same shit. Love the advice. Don't do it.

Mel : 40:39

Just say no, just say no.

James : 40:41

Trust your instincts.

Mel : 40:42

I recently read that there's a proposal to pay people for their time in the interview process to avoid this type of thing. What do you think about that?

James : 40:58

I really strongly believe that if you are going to be setting folks any kind of take homework or any kind of lengthy assessment, you should pay them for their time.

James : 41:14

You certainly shouldn't be requiring people to give you their IP for free, right? However, having worked on the other side of the desk in corporate America, trying to bring any of that to life would be such a nightmare, both in America and in Europe, where we have different sets of rules and regulations. Like you're essentially trying to either payroll someone that's not already on the payroll or create, make a new vendor for someone that's not a vendor, and for anyone that's worked in corporate America, you know that doing either of those things is an administrative nightmare. So trying to get to a place where that happens at scale, I just don't see it happening anytime soon, because you know how are you going to pay hundreds or you know, in my case, hundreds of thousands of people that are going through an interview process, and not just the money, how are you going to fund it, which is question one. But even assuming there is a budget for it, how are you actually going to physically pay these people, right? Just, it's not going to happen.

Mel : 42:25

Yeah, that's complicated it can be. It's its own whole department just managing that alone.

James : 42:29

How are you going to ensure that they pay their tax so that they've identified you from their tax, are they?

Mel : 42:33

1099?.

Francesca : 42:36

Yeah, I feel like everybody's getting target gift cards Be happy.

James : 42:40

Even that's questionable right.

Francesca : 42:42

Yeah, there are rules.

James : 42:43

Yeah, yeah, like.

Francesca : 42:45

Oh yeah, you can't go over.

Mel : 42:46

Yeah, there's a lot of complication. It's interesting. I've heard that tossed around a few times now. It's an interesting concept.

James : 42:55

Nice idea. I just don't see it being executed at scale.

Mel : 42:58

Yeah, yeah. In terms of the inner how many interviews? How many is too many? What's what's a red flag a candidate should look out for In terms of you know, now you're on your 15th interview for this role. Is there a magic number or a place where you're like, if you're getting to this many interviews, you should probably hit pause? That should give you that's a red flag that you should look out for.

James : 43:26

I love this question because there is a clear, unequivocal answer which I wish more people knew. Over the course of three or four years, Google did a huge longitudinal study where they looked at tens of thousands of hires and hundreds of thousands of data points, and they were able to conclusively prove that the magic number for interviews is four, Because after four the quality of the decision making process does not improve enough to justify the initial, the further investment of time. The sweet spot for high quality decision making is for interviews, and so any forward thinking and well run TA function knows that because they've all read Laszlo Box book work rules. If you haven't read work rules, I encourage you to go out and read it. It's phenomenal, not just for hiring but just for how Google think about or thought about people back when Laszlo was running HR. So four is the magic number. Most places in corporate America, probably for senior level roles, probably still around six. Anything beyond that is just a joke.

Mel : 44:55

It's a waste. Yeah, it's a time waste. Well, we'll link to that recommendation in the show notes because that's a great recommendation for folks. So we'll do that. For job seekers, I read your post today on LinkedIn about the post pandemic job market, so I'd love to give space to talk about what job seekers should know about this post pandemic job market and finding success and finding the role that's right for them. What advice would you give?

James : 45:21

Sure, I think what's really interesting that's happening right now is a perfect storm that is exacerbating conditions that have been prevailing for a while. What I mean by that is, in the talent marketplace there has always been a signal to noise issue in that a decade ago, a job posting or job ad might receive 100 applications and in every part of the enterprise in every geography that I've worked in, the numbers are always the same. In aggregate, of those 100 applications, roughly 25 of them will meet the minimum criteria for the job and 75 are just not qualified at all. And part of the recruiters job is to separate the signal from the noise right to find amongst those 100 applications the 25 that qualified, to speak to those 25 people and decide of those 25 who were the six or seven that most closely match the brief from the hiring manager and take those into the process At the highest level. That's, you know, a big chunk of the recruiters job for dealing with inbound applications.

James : 46:42

And then we'll move on to today, where we are living in the after effects of the massive structural changes to work and labor that the pandemic created, the macroeconomic tsunami that we've all been through and the significant strides forward in consumer facing tech, which, to be clear, all good things. As a job seeker today, as an applicant, today, you have so many powerful tools that enable you to turbo charge your application process, which is fantastic. What that means, though, is that a because of the macroeconomic situation, be because more people have had a taste for remote or hybrid work and want to pursue that, see, because we've got so much more visibility in the age of information. And D because of the powerful tools that are now in the hands of everyday job seekers, application volume has gone up 10 or 100 X. So a job oh yeah, you could get 100 applications could now get 1000 or 5000. And those ratios are still the same. Of those 1000 applicants, still only 250 people are going to be qualified in 750 and not, but a recruiter cannot speak to all 250.

James : 48:02

No way, and so it's the signal to noise issue has just gotten so much worse. And, yes, you can send out more applications and send out more curated applications and send out better applications, but your chances of the application being seen by the right person have diminished exponentially.

Mel : 48:21

And so, what can they do?

James : 48:23

to navigate.

Mel : 48:24

What? What can candidates do to kind of cut through the noise, especially if they feel you know pretty strongly that they they fit the profile. How can they cut through that noise? I see on LinkedIn all the time you see how many folks have applied for the job, which can be super intimidating. So how can you kind of put yourself ahead of the pack if you're qualified?

James : 48:47

So there's a few things. That number that you see yeah, it's not the number of applicants. The number that you see is the number of people that have hit apply, oh OK, which is different from the number of applicants that are inside the ATS.

James : 49:03

That's misleading yeah well, it's not misleading. Okay, that's the data that LinkedIn have which is valid. That's a number of people that did click apply, but I can tell you from sitting on the other side of the desk that the attrition from apply to applicant is massive. Okay, in that, in a volume environment, so you know companies that are hiring 10,000 people a year or more the average pull through is 16% and in one place I worked that may be a place that someone else on this the pull through was 1%. Oh, wow. So for every 100 people that click apply, only one applicant made it into the ATS, into the applicant tracking system, because the application journey was so cumbersome that 99 out of 100 people gave up. In most places, it's 16 out of every 100 that will come through.

Mel : 50:07

So you do not be intimidated by that number. If it's a high number, that's good to know.

James : 50:11

Do not be intimidated, because most people won't complete the application.

James : 50:14

Okay, and of all the people that do complete the application, only 25% of them are going to be qualified, but, that being said, it can still be hundreds or thousands of people that do all of that Right. So there is still a signal to noise issue. It's just not as bad as it appears on the surface to the everyday user, but I see both sides and it is worse than it was before, and recruiters have this deluge of applications to deal with. So just submitting your application is no longer enough, because if you just submit an application, it might never get seen. So you also need to try to figure out who is the recruiter at the company and get in touch with them, and who is the hiring manager and getting in touch with them, and ideally get a referral from somebody that already works there, because candidates that are referred by existing employees often go into a fast track processing lane and your application is more likely to be seen Not guaranteed to be seen, just more likely to be seen. So you have to go the extra mile.

Mel : 51:25

Yeah, at a minimum if you have a referral. Typically my experience in the past is when I worked in TA2, if it was a referral coming in, at a minimum we had at least a one-on-one screening interview with someone from talent acquisition to meet with that candidate, just as a bare minimum.

James : 51:41

In larger organizations? Sure, in smaller organizations maybe not.

Francesca : 51:46

And you can use LinkedIn to do all of this. You can be using LinkedIn to figure out who the recruiter is, figure out who the hiring manager is, send them an email. Linkedin is a great product, but LinkedIn is your place. Where you'd want to do this, yeah, 100%.

Mel : 52:00

What if the recruiter is not listed on the job rec on LinkedIn? What's a good way to identify who the recruiter may be or to get in touch? What can people do?

James : 52:11

Yeah, and by searching LinkedIn right for recruiters at Nike, for recruiters at Apple and, bear in mind, at large companies, there will be hundreds of recruiters.

James : 52:24

And so then you need to figure out, okay, and recruiters are normally obviously very active on LinkedIn.

James : 52:32

So once you find people that you think are going to be in the right area, then you need to figure out okay, this person's a recruiter at Apple, but do they recruit product managers or do they recruit marketing folks?

James : 52:44

You need to figure out what their area is, and you can usually see that by what they say on their profile, all the types of things that they post, and the closest you're going to be able to get as a normal user is figuring out the recruiter at the company in the broad job family that you're targeting, and then reach out to that recruiter and say, hey, I've applied for this role, and give them the unique reference number or whatever you get from the applicant tracking system, explain in three very short bullet points why you've applied, why you're a fit, and ask them to connect you with the right recruiter.

James : 53:16

If they're not, obviously, just make their lives easier. Now you might still not get a response, but you will stand more chance of getting a response. If you work in supply chain and you reach out to a supply chain recruiter, they're more likely to respond because they'll be able to see that you're qualified for the job that you've applied for. And if you're consistently doing this and consistently not hearing, then maybe it's time to ask yourself are you being honest with yourself and the types of roles that you're applying for?

Mel : 53:46

Yeah, that's great advice. Just don't keep repeating the same thing if you're starting to see a trend for yourself.

Francesca : 53:56

There's a lot of just burning questions around getting a job and telling the acquisition, and so I thought let's do a rapid round with you. You can answer yes, no or a one word answer. Are you ready to play?

James : 54:09

Yes, I'm going to really struggle with one more answer, but I'm going to try.

Francesca : 54:12

Okay, I believe in you. I believe in you. So, rapid round with James about getting a job. James, is it all who you know?

James : 54:22

No.

Francesca : 54:24

Should you put the green banner on in LinkedIn if you want to get a job?

James : 54:28

100%, and let me talk about that later.

Francesca : 54:30

Okay, should you do a cover letter? Do cover letters matter anymore? No, should you customize your resume for each role?

James : 54:38

No.

Francesca : 54:38

Thank you notes Do we write them or not?

James : 54:40

Yes.

Francesca : 54:42

Should you negotiate your offer?

James : 54:43

Yes.

Francesca : 54:46

Should the interview process last no longer than 60 days.

James : 54:51

Depends.

Francesca : 54:52

Should you quit your old job before starting your new job?

James : 54:56

Ideally not All right.

Francesca : 54:59

I want to go back to. Should you put the green banner on if you're looking at LinkedIn, the open to work banner? This is such a hot topic. Thoughts.

James : 55:09

There has been so much clickbait around this and it infuriates me.

James : 55:13

I actually wrote a piece and included quotes from the LinkedIn product managers that built the feature. Let me say unequivocally there are, in fact, two features. There is the open to work functionality, which most people don't know about, and then there is the open to work green banner, and they do slightly different things and, as a job seeker, you may want to do one or both of them. So, first of all, there's the open to work toggle, which, in your settings, you can indicate two recruiters that you are open to work, and you can also detail where you're open to work so both in your hometown or if you're open to relocation and the types of work full-time, contract and job titles that will be of interest to you. If you click that toggle, it is only visible to recruiters, and what all of the data from LinkedIn shows is that folks that do that typically see an uptick of 40% of in-mails from recruiters. That's huge, that's significant. There is no reason, if you're looking for work, why you shouldn't do that.

Francesca : 56:31

Even if you're curious, like, even if you're curious, you're like I don't know if I want to see at this gig, just put it on.

Mel : 56:35

Yeah, Put it on all the time, potentially just to have conversations.

James : 56:39

Yeah, why not Right? And LinkedIn say but do not guarantee that it's not visible to recruiters at your own company.

Mel : 56:50

That's good to know it's only visible to recruit.

James : 56:52

They can't guarantee 100% accuracy. And so what? Even if a recruiter does see that you're open to work like it's not, unless you work somewhere that's really evil, it's not going to come back on you.

Mel : 57:02

Yeah, good work environment. I mean, as a leader, I think everyone should always have their ear to the ground, right? Never know when your dream job might happen. So good work cultures, I think, encourage folks to always keep their ear. You hate to lose good talent, but you also shouldn't deter anyone from having those conversations if you're in a good workplace 100%.

James : 57:24

So that's the open to work feature.

James : 57:25

You should absolutely use that.

James : 57:26

The Green Banner, which has obviously had tons of click baity articles and what's really annoying is that most of the people that have an opinion about it have never worked in HR or recruiting and have no business talking about this Again.

James : 57:39

What the data from LinkedIn shows is that system wide, folks using the Green Banner get 20% more in-mails from the entire LinkedIn user base, so not just from recruiters, but from folks across LinkedIn, and for most users that is going to be a good thing because, even though the in-mail is not coming from a recruiter, the more connections you can make and the more you can bring in broad in your digital footprint and it might be from the hiring manager, it might be from someone that works with the hiring manager that knows that that person is looking for the type of employee that you are. It is a good thing to get more inbound outreach across LinkedIn, especially if we go back to what I said before about the signal to noise issue. If you can be more discoverable to either recruiters or people that can influence the hiring decision, that is a very good thing. So you should unequivocally, in my view, use one or both if you are looking for work.

Mel : 58:42

That's good advice. We'll link to your post on that because I, like you, I hate the clickbait around it or the shaming that, like the weird shaming that was going on around it. It's like don't listen to the noise Do your thing.

James : 58:54

The former Google recruiter who now runs a small business in Salt Lake. I wish we could just say for what it is he runs a small business in Salt Lake. Good for him. He's not the king of recruiting. Right Opinions are not valid Right, right.

Francesca : 59:10

Well, they can be really harmful too, because I think the thing is, I feel like we're going to see more and more upticks on layoffs. Quite honestly, it's just going to be more. There's a running thought right now, quite honestly, around you're one quarter away, potentially, from getting laid off. That's literally how business is operating right now. People will be looking for work more and more. I feel like we're going to be flipping more and more into gig-type work or trading jobs more and more. We have to get used to this conversation that people are going to be open to work and then working, open to work and then working. There's no room for shame in this discussion. It's a marketplace. At this point, 100%.

James : 59:51

Yeah, I'd go back to what I said earlier that, yes, we are increasingly in a world where careers are not for life of course they're not and increasingly moving to an environment where people have side hustles and portfolio careers, and that is all a great thing. But ideally, when you move to your next job, you're hopefully going to be there for two or three years right, maybe four, maybe five, if you're going to be spending the next three years 40 hours a week somewhere. Invest some time in doing your research, doing all your due diligence. Think about how much time you spend researching your vacation or maybe that's just me, but what is the hotel like? All of that stuff? You spend hours and hours, yet people spend no time at all on researching the place that they're going to spend all of this time. Do your due diligence. Reach out to folks at the company, ask to speak to people in the ERGs, read the review sites, make an informed decision and don't be afraid to walk away.

Francesca : 1:00:59

I love that. Sage advice, sage advice. James, thank you so much for joining us today. It has been a pleasure. We'd love to have you back to talk about more subjects around acquisition and talent acquisition, but thanks so much for your time.

James : 1:01:11

Thanks, you're welcome. Thanks for having me, yeah.

Francesca : 1:01:16

So now it's time for our segment called Roast and Toast, where we roast some companies or individuals that need some light roasting and some that need some great toasting because they're doing it and doing it so well. And we're going to start with the toast. Who are we toasting this week?

Mel : 1:01:33

I have two toasts One for candidates, candidates that ask the tough questions and do their homework during the interview process. So toast to you Organizations who streamline the process I'm talking no more than four interviews and those who have a high touch of candidate care and transparency. Toast to those folks.

Francesca : 1:01:58

Love it. Yeah, I think that idea quite honestly of doing your homework. It is so easy to get swayed by your dream company or companies that you think are going to be an amazing employer. But sometimes just because the company is really sexy doesn't mean it's the right company, the right role or the right team for you. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. So doing your homework Huge.

Mel : 1:02:22

Huge yeah. Sometimes it's glitter on a pile of poop, so check it out Indeed it is.

Francesca : 1:02:27

Indeed, it is. That's awesome. Well, and today I am roasting, actually, an article that I saw in Business Insider, which brought up some memories. Here it is. This is it came out this week Some Gen Z job seekers are bringing mom and dad to interviews. Yeah, this is just a hard pass, people and, by the way, gen Z, not the only generation that has been doing that right.

Mel : 1:02:53

It is not just you, I know. Back in the early 2000s, when I was working in TA, I had a dad call me up asking for swag from the law firm I was at because his son was interviewing and he thought, well, I just want to represent like you do for colleges. I'm like not the same thing.

Francesca : 1:03:13

And I just was like candidates trust yourself.

Mel : 1:03:16

You got this you got this.

Francesca : 1:03:18

Yeah, that's my thing. This is not just a Gen Z thing. This is actually going on. It melts here very good for about 10 years a long time. We are seeing an uptick in it. Friends, don't bring mom and dad into the interview process. They're not going to be there with you for work. Don't bring them into the interview process. It's not a good look. It's only a good look when it's bring your mom and dad to work day. Yeah, yeah. That's the only time. That's the only time.

Francesca : 1:03:43

So, yeah, a light roast of bringing the parental units into the interview process.

James : 1:03:47

Just don't do it.

Francesca : 1:03:49

You want to bring them on a date. You want to bring them on an interview, and if you need me to explain that to your parents, have them call me. There you go, follow us, music Mel. How about that interview with James about getting the right job?

Mel : 1:04:04

Yeah, I mean, look, James is a huge expert in this space. He knows his stuff. I think if listeners walk away and implement just one thing that he shared, they're going to find different success in finding not just a job but their right job for them. So just loved it. So thankful he was able to join us and to share these tips with folks. How about you? Yeah, absolutely.

Francesca : 1:04:28

It kind of reaffirms my belief in why we even started the pod is because we really wanted to open the hood on how this stuff works and how you can actually use this knowledge to your benefit. So stoked to have him with us. Friends. Really thanks so much for joining us today. We're stoked to be back next week with New Week, new Headlines. Mel and I have been together this whole week planning out the year of the pod, and so we're stoked to be bringing not only New Week, new Headlines every week, but really rich topics like the one we brought today. Really cool guests like the one we brought today. Thanks so much for joining us. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. If it moves, you come over and say hi on Instagram, the tiktaks or LinkedIn, hit us up on yourworkfriends.com and if you found this episode helpful, please share with your work friends All right, take care, friend.

Mel : 1:05:20

Bye, friend, Bye friend. Also thanks for staying with us today.

Career Pivot: Escaping Corporate

Your Work Friends Podcast: Escaping Corporate with Brett Trainor

Burned out, boxed in, and dreaming of a way out? You’re not alone. In this episode, we’re breaking down exactly how to exit corporate life without blowing up your life. Whether you're plotting a pivot or planning a full escape, this one's your blueprint.

Learn the art of the entrepreneurial leap with Brett Trainor, The Corporate Escapee, and embrace the power of fractional/freelance work that fits into the life you want to have. In this episode, we tackle: 

• What's a Corporate Escapee?

• Who Should Escape? Who Shouldn't?

• The Market for Fractional / Freelance, etc

• The Money in Fractional / Freelance

• Planning Your Pivot out of Corporate

• The First Three Steps You Need to Take 

• And the Biggest Piece of Advice to Make the Leap 

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Brett: 0:00

seeing the number of solar businesses with seven figures, folks think they need to build the next Google or Microsoft. Like if I leave corporate I've got to start a company. Like not anymore.

Mel: 0:25

Well, hey, friends, this is your work. Friends, we're two HR leaders who have no filter, and we're here to expose all of the stuff that you need to know about work. I'm Mel, I'm Francesca, and with us today is Brett Schreiner, who is the founder of the corporate Escapy. You can find him on LinkedIn. He has an awesome podcast. He also just launched a Slack community. That's pretty rad. I just joined that community myself, and he's from a fun town called Wheaton who has a annual fair called the cream of wheat, in which just made my day last week when I heard this news. So, brett, welcome to the pod.

Brett: 1:08

No, it's great to be here. I'm thrilled that you asked me to come on and looking forward to the discussion. And yes, the cream of Wheaton. Never thought of it as a big event here, but it is kind of clever.

Francesca : 1:18

And they don't serve cream of wheat at cream of Wheaton, which I feel like is a miss, it's a sponsor miss, for sure, right, and they're using the name for it.

Brett: 1:26

Yeah, so funny.

Francesca : 1:27

The cocoa wheat still out there. If you grew up in the Chicago Land area, there used to be the show called the. Bozo show and it was sponsored by Cocoa Weets. You remember Bozo?

Brett: 1:35

I remember Cocoa Weets. Yeah, we went down memory lane that too long ago with some of those cereals that are no longer available, but they should bring them back. I know some people are bringing back those retro brands yeah. They went out of business or bankrupt, but the name still means a lot, so I think we're starting to see more of that.

Mel: 1:53

I just bought Captain Crunch Crunch Berries a couple of weeks ago for the first time in 15 years. Scrape the hell out of the top of my mouth, but it was delicious. It was delicious and worth it.

Brett: 2:04

I'm more of a peanut butter crunch, but I do like the crunch berries. Yeah, remember the old like Count Chocula in Franklin.

Mel: 2:11

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Brett: 2:12

Boo-Berry. Was Boo-Berry a seasonal or was that a? It was at a ongoing.

Mel: 2:18

I think it's seasonal right Boo-Berry with the ghosts.

Brett: 2:21

Yeah, so good.

Francesca : 2:23

So good it's so funny.

Mel: 2:25

Oh, look at on top of that. How do you, how do we get this? Yeah Well, brett, the corporate escapee. I love your mission, which is to help 10,000 corporate Gen Xers escape the nine to five. Tell us more about it. What's the corporate escapee?

Brett: 2:42

Yeah, it was funny because I got to that point about four, four and a half years ago after a 30-year career, mostly corporate, a couple of stints out to the entrepreneurial world and back into corporate, ended it with a year and a half running management consulting Cause that's what you should do at the end of a corporate career is go into traditional management consulting but just realized that I was just done right. It wasn't like where is this going? What am I going to be doing? Right, we don't have pensions. I shouldn't say we, the collective, we just didn't. The right corporate didn't offer pensions. So am I just going to be fighting this treadmill for the next 10 to 15 years or is there something better? And, like I said four and a half years ago, didn't have a plan High inside. I highly encourage folks if you're leaving, have a plan. Don't have to, but it makes the transition easier. And then the last year really there's got to be more of me out there, right?

Brett: 3:34

Cause for the first two years 95% of what I was doing was the fractional work, did some consulting in the B2B space, I was by myself, really didn't tell anybody that I was doing it, and then slowly gain momentum, caught up with some different folks and I'm like, yeah, the corporate escape, be that's, it's more than just work, it's the lifestyle.

Brett: 3:55

And then I just started playing with it. I decided just to have some fun, to get on Tik Tok and test cause. I'm like short attention span at 60 seconds, 90 second, and all of a sudden that took off, no idea why. But what it reaffirmed was that there is a lot of people. I think I've got like 20,000 followers on Tik Tok and to a person that I talked to it's like, yeah, I didn't know I was stuck, I didn't know there was other folks, but man, it really resonates with me. So I decided to make that more my personal mission to say if anybody's out there that wants to get out, there is opportunity, there's a path forward, there's tools, et cetera. So, even though it's been around for probably about a year I was in the last two to three months it's really found its footing.

Mel: 4:41

I will admit I found you on Tik Tok. I am a recent corporate escapee and I immediately was like, yes, let's connect on LinkedIn, join your Slack community, because I think what's really appealing for me to what you're doing is the community that you're building around. It is someone who's new to trying it out, and I think that community is so important just to help you succeed right Lessons learned, sharing. So I really love what you're building over there. Who is this for? Who is this not for?

Brett: 5:12

Yeah, good question. I say I tell everybody that if you've got 20 to 30 years of experience and if somebody's paying you to do a job, you can do it right. The can and should are two different things. I think who it's not for is if you're really risk adverse we're not talking super risky ventures, you're not putting your family's savings into a new business or something like that but what corporate does give you assuming you don't get laid off is a steady paycheck and they pay some form of your benefits, and so there's a floor in corporate that you always know you're going to have that paycheck. But with freelance, fractional what I call the corporate escapee the ceiling is much higher, the utility is much higher, but there could be lows. Right, you could have a zero month where you're not bringing any revenue in, and you have to be comfortable with that and knowing that it's not going to stay that way, but it's not for everybody.

Brett: 6:06

The other thing that I found is important is you have to be accountable to yourself.

Brett: 6:11

I really took that for granted as I transitioned from corporate into the solo space was I own the priorities, I own my schedule and for the longest time I found myself just cramming more work into the day, but I really wasn't getting stuff done until I flipped and scheduled and put some structure into my day. But yeah, if you're not accountable to yourself and you like somebody else's direction, then this may not be for you Everybody else. I think you want more flexibility, freedom, control, opportunity than absolutely you can. I had probably 120 conversations with TikTokers, genxers that have came in and more for my learning to say what else can I do or what can we do to support what I was finding is the nichiest of niches in corporate. There's still businesses that are looking for that help. I call them the SME. Small and mid-sized businesses, startups, nonprofits are looking for that type of help. If you've got experience and somebody's paying you to do a job, there's an opportunity to help free yourself from that task.

Mel: 7:16

What do you think is for folks who are successful? When they do this, do they have a specific mindset, skill set that stands out to you?

Brett: 7:24

I think, open mind, because one thing in corporate it just teaches you to go follow the rules, don't rock the boat. Incremental improvements are good and you just have to have more of an open mind. We use the cliche of Gen X, but it's released back into the wild. We grew up without the rules and the restrictions and then 20 to 30 years in the box of corporate. You have to go back and be okay with experimenting and asking. We talk about can and should and it's will A lot of people. I can do that, I can go, so I do have that experience. I can run this project, I can work for it, but will you do it? It's the people that actually take action are the ones that are successful. I know I mostly work with Gen X, but I've had some 20-somethings that are super curious about how do I do this. I said well, look, if you get your job, you do this. What is the problem that you're solving for this company? There's probably a bunch of smaller companies that have this problem. You can just restructure it. 20 minutes later he's like okay, I got this. Thanks, see you.

Brett: 8:25

He was going to go take action when I think, if we've been around longer, we like to over engineer it, we like to overthink it and we're trying to look for the perfect plan. I'm guilty. One of my colleagues in Mansion Consultant used to tell me Brett done is better than perfect. That was a harder thing for me to transition from. Just go do it, it's okay. If this little experiment doesn't work, you try something else. And it's going to be okay Because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, you can go back and find your corporate job. If it's not for you but I encourage anybody that's thinking about it just give it a 100 percent and see. If it doesn't work, don't have acid and then, if it doesn't work, go out. Wasn't for me. If you're going to do that, then maybe it's not for you anyway.

Mel: 9:08

If this is your new business, you treat it like a business. Otherwise, it's a hobby. It's just a hobby.

Francesca : 9:15

There's something suffering about going back to thinking about your feralness as a kid or thinking about the world of opportunity that you get as a child. I remember being in college and thinking, wow, anything's possible, anything could happen, and I think you get that when you're creating your own space. I'm wondering if you're seeing that in the landscape now. What is the market for folks that want to do freelance fractional? Do you see it's picking up, it's growing, it's depleted. What do you think?

Brett: 9:45

Yeah, I absolutely think it's picking up, because that's one of the concerns I hear from folks is it's saturated. I'm like we're the farthest thing from saturated when you think about the number of small businesses that are out there and the help that they need. I think we're in the early stages of this. And what kind of opened my eyes is I was on a podcast called the Human Cloud and John and Matthew do a lot of work in freelancing at the enterprise. I have more focus on the small business and part of our conversation was me flipping out of him and asking well, why are you seeing this rise in freelance? And what he told me was we haven't seen. Even three years ago there wasn't somebody with your experience or expertise that was open to fractional work for small businesses, so small businesses have never had access. You two are a perfect example of that as well. If a small business was looking to hire you, they couldn't afford you, and so what do they do? They have to hire somebody junior just to take a chance on somebody new or promote somebody within. Not all bad choices, but if you really need help and your org's growing, this is a perfect solution. It's the rare, perfect, perfect or win-win, especially with fractional. There's other ways you can slice it, but fractional is easiest transition, I think. And so what fractional is? Basically? It's a day per week per client and most of the time it's focused on strategy work, not a lot of the tactical and the doing stuff, because it would be hard to do that one day a week. But what you will be able to do is save that business a third of the cost. If they're going to hire a full-time equivalent for that HR lead, they couldn't afford it, but with you, for a third of the cost, they can. Now they can start to build a team with a couple of other fractionals. That gives them expertise that they couldn't have otherwise had.

Brett: 11:33

And the other last piece that I encourage people to think about the business owner is it minimizes risk. If you make a higher, it's an 18 month mistake if you get it wrong. And if you're hiring a type of role you've never hired before, that's hard. And if you can bring somebody in, that's fractional. Maybe it's a three month to start, but then it's month to month and a lot of what the fractionals will do is work with that business to transition out. If they're ready for a full-time, they can help you find that full-time person.

Brett: 12:02

So I think where the industry or where the overall market's got to catch up is fractional, still in relatively new term. But when you explain it to the business owner, they're like yeah, I get it and we're starting now to actually see hey, we are actually looking for fractional CFO for this role. So you won't find it in LinkedIn job postings yet. But it's not like this is just one-sided, where it benefits the escapees because they can charge a premium for what they do. It gives them more flexibility. But the businesses are actually going to benefit from this as well.

Francesca : 12:35

Yeah, you see a lot of movement in organizations trying to outsource works or work that is not core to their competence, because they don't want to be in that business, and this is one of the ways I think that they could do that either through fractional or contract full outsource. It does seem like we're at this wave of this coming right. Business is understanding the benefit of not holding on to full-time labor because that's so expensive. It's expensive for turnover too if they don't work out and also people wanting a different lifestyle. Work to means different things and still get paid and paid well. Do you feel like in five years this is going to just get bigger, or do you feel like it's going to go the other way? My gut is it's?

Francesca : 13:17

going to get nuts.

Brett: 13:18

It's going to get nuts. I think Every last dollar I had it's going in this direction. Just because a couple of reasons, and think about it from when you were in corporate, what percentage of your week was actually spent on the job that they brought you in to do? 30%.

Mel: 13:34

It's really.

Brett: 13:35

Maybe at a high end. So you're paying 60% of overhead from the business perspective and that's where fractional is there. They're super intentional about using you only for what you're good at, because they don't want you on unnecessary meetings. It just doesn't make sense. So I think just economically it's going to make sense and that's why I think that the small and mid-sized can really take advantage of this, because the bigger orgs they're still trying to figure out sales and marketing alignment. How do we go? Digital Things they probably should have figured out 15 years ago they're still struggling with. So how do they incorporate a more flexible workforce is going to be hard. I think certain organizations or operating units within bigger companies are starting to figure out how to do it, but for the most part it's not there.

Brett: 14:19

I've used a couple of analogies that help people see it. The one is think about it as if you're making a major movie Hopefully it's a blockbuster but you got hair, you got makeup, you got actors, you got film. You got all these different, mostly small entities that come together for 12 to 18 months, build this thing. They go away and this group may work with each other here and they may work over there. And then the other one that's similar to that, if you remember the movie Ocean's Eleven.

Brett: 14:46

George Clooney wanted to rob the casino. What did he do? He needed a make disguise artist, he needed a bomb guy, he needed X-Wines. All specialists that come together, get paid for what they do, drive towards an outcome and then go back to their separate ways. I just think the Industrial Revolution pushed us into offices. There was value in having people side by side because everybody was doing the same job. You can learn now All that side by side stuff is going to be automated, and what are you actually learning? When we did answer Francesca, your question, I think it's fundamentally going to change it and it just depends on how quick. I think we're in the early stages, so it's going to be fascinating to see where this goes.

Francesca : 15:28

That's a thing for employees. I've been hearing from a lot of people that they feel they're stuck in organizations, they're at a manager plus level and they're like I thought I was being brought in for my expertise, but I'm not being listened to sometimes, and or to your very good point the majority of their day is spent on shit that is absolutely not even relevant to their job, and there's something so beautiful about having an agreement that you're being brought in for your skill set, you're being paid for your skill set and all the other minutia goes away. So from a business, this makes sense. From an employee or from someone that this is their craft, this can be a really beautiful way to work too, because you're actually getting paid for your expertise.

Francesca : 16:09

Yeah, and you can do it where you want right?

Brett: 16:12

Yeah, that's what I'm watching. These return to office mandates. I'm like you got to be kidding me. You've been in the workforce for 30 years and this is the way I love your viewpoint on this. We just talked about it, yeah.

Mel: 16:23

Yeah, yeah, feelings. We agree with you wholeheartedly. You hire adults. These are experts You're hiring to come into your organization, but you don't trust them to get the job done, and that's a larger issue we think is happening.

Brett: 16:38

If you don't trust them, they're not going to work any harder in the office and you can argue they're more inefficient at the office. I grew up in it, so I saw the value at times when having colleagues and working. I just think that those days are gone.

Francesca : 16:51

They're gone, they're gone. It's interesting because there's these decision makers that are making really regressive decisions, like we're just going to keep going back, we're going to keep going back, and it's like that ship has sailed and I think the people that are willing to think about a new way will win.

Brett: 17:06

And as long as we're on this, culture is something I've been thinking about from a pure execution standpoint, from a company, and I think culture matters for the ownership group. This is what the vision, this is the thing we want to create. And once you get below a certain level, everybody's just doing it for the paycheck. And you can tell me there's companies that believe in the mission, which I'm 100% sure there are, but I'm saying 80% of the companies, 80% of the workers, and they just want to be paid fairly, treated with some flexibility, right, and then they'll do a good job. I don't want to say culture is overrated, because it's not, but don't think the 10,000 employees are all going to buy into your culture. You're never going to get that, especially with return to office man and all that other stuff. But if you plug in specialists for a lot of these key roles that just love to do this job they like you and the company you're going to get a lot further than trying to force people into a box again.

Francesca : 18:00

My whole thing on companies right now is they are not everybody, but most of them are misrepresenting themselves in terms of what they're offering from an employee experience perspective, because a lot of organizations are we're a great place to work, we're a great place to work for mothers, we're a great diversity, equity, inclusion, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We have all of these benefits, we care about mental health, we care about all this stuff, and the actual working experience day to day doesn't match the brand that they've been sold, and so there's this sense of betrayal, there's this sense of like. What the fuck you know? Excuse my French, yeah.

Brett: 18:37

I get it.

Francesca : 18:38

I'm going to get it out. To me, one of the best relationships you can get into in anything romantic friend, parent, job is when it's honest. Yeah, contracts are honest. Yeah, my dogs are honest. You know what you're gonna get. Oh, I love your point of view on this. I think a lot of employees feel like I thought I was signing up for something completely different. Then what I've been given.

Brett: 19:01

Yeah, the one-way street.

Mel: 19:04

Yeah, we're hearing that from a lot of folks who independently reach out to us to share, and I agree with you wholeheartedly, francesca, because culture is the responsibility of the organization, team and individual.

Mel: 19:15

But it takes all three of those elements for it to be effective throughout. But if at each of those levels you don't have everyone bought into your good point, brett, there there comes a point sometimes when an organization Potentially is just too large where they're not going to be able to manage all of the micro cultures that have now popped up. It's like having a core set of values and making sure that Everyone operates within that core set of values and how they work is so critically important. But if they're not really paying attention to that or have expectations around that or build performance management around those expectations and they're really measuring it, then the culture and the micro cultures get out of control. Into Francesca's point yeah, there's a sense of betrayal from people who were sold hey, this was a great working environment from others. But you know, I joined this team and my direct leader won't let me leave early to go watch my kids soccer game Then that's not a great organization for that mom, but maybe a mom on another team is getting the opportunity to do that.

Mel: 20:18

But, it all depends on your direct team. Yeah, what's?

Brett: 20:21

interesting when I was starting to have these conversations is the the relationship between, as a corporate escapee or an employee employees. Definitely, it's mostly command and control some companies to give you some flexibility. But I heard that command and control. I talked to a executive recruiter friend of mine who told me that there was a CEO, they were hiring a chief people officer and the board was basically dictating who he was gonna hire. I'm like, so he's being micro managed at the highest. And this wasn't a family-owned company. This was a pretty good-sized business and when I started to think through this, this is why I think fractional can start to even that playing field.

Brett: 21:01

So the way I think the old days of freelancer is really transactional Okay, we're hiring you to do this job, we'll pay you this. We both agree, done, done. Where fractional is more of a partnership right, I'm part of that organization just on a part-time basis. I've got to be on the same page as the owner of the sea level. That's bringing me into that organization. We've decided together what's gonna work. Right, you can't tell me what to do all the time because, one, that's not why you brought me in, but two, that's not the way our relationship is. So you got like commanding controls and employee Partner is a fractional, transactional, is freelance and there's some service Businesses in there that are definitely more transactional. But at least give the employee a leg up.

Brett: 21:42

The other thing I encourage folks to think about even if you're staying in corporate, think of it as you are a still the CEO of your own company, company of one, and your product is your expertise, and what this company is paying you to do that job is salary, benefits and the requirement of you being on site three days, five days, one day, just everything that's involved. And would you run your business that way? If this is the way the customer, maybe you would and you're willing to trade off because this is what you need, but for me, I forever I just take it All right, this is what you're paying me, this is what I get, right, this is the vacation and all those things, and just accepted it, versus thinking if I treated this as this was my company and this is my skill, I probably would have done things differently, maybe not have had as many options, but too often I think we're just way too reactive and not as intentional with it.

Francesca : 22:29

I think a lot of people think that that's the only way. I grew up thinking you're gonna go to college, you're gonna go to grad school, you're gonna get a job at Accenture and you're gonna keep on did it, did it did and this is. This is the way, this is the path, and it's not the same thing.

Brett: 22:41

It's the right thing. Right. My plan was I was the first one in my family they actually went to college, so business.

Mel: 22:48

I do.

Brett: 22:49

That was, and so my goal before I started was game warden in Wisconsin. That sounds awesome, yeah. Then, 30 years later, I'm like what the hell happened? You get into that. Somebody called it a treadmill and I think it's the perfect thing. Somebody said that salaries the drug that keeps you going. It's that next level. I just get promoted to that next position. Then I'll end up with enough money to do this. But it's never really enough, and what's happened this last year Is the fear factor against him. Yeah, lay it off. What are you gonna do? There's nothing out there, and they scare you into Staying into a job longer than maybe that you would want to, and times are changing, which is so exciting. There's enough signs that we're moving in the right direction.

Mel: 23:40

I think so. I think the sign of how many folks and younger folks who are looking at exploring this space too and not just going into corporate. There's a real desire, I think, for people to own their time and how they spend it and who they spend it with. And I think that's so beautiful about this type of work too, because you have a bit more autonomy around what you're working on, who you're working with, when, after COVID, I will say my personal experience was really reflecting on how do I want to spend my time and I tell Francesca this all the time I went to work where there's a three-legged stool of Respect, relationships and meaningful work. So in everything I do, that's what I want to do and that that's appealing to me about your messaging and going out on your own, and it seems possible.

Brett: 24:28

It's true, an author, steve Glovesky, australian guy wrote time rich and he's like look, you can always earn more money, but you can never earn time back.

Brett: 24:36

I'm like so true and you think about our corporate careers. We built our lives around those jobs, whatever it was right vacation, school Workouts. You had to get up at 6 am If you wanted to go to the gym. A little more flexibility now, but not Completely so. Our lives really revolved around whatever corporate job that we were doing and not the other way around, which, again, we're gonna look back in 50 years. You know what the heck, yeah right.

Francesca : 25:22

We talk about the money for a second, because I think this might be one of the things that People get nervous about when they think about this. Do you find in general, that the money is like net-net it's better, it's worse. I think it's better.

Brett: 25:34

You've got the risk, because when I left, it was all about the money. What had happened to me was, as a management consulting firm, I saw they were billing me out as, and I saw what I was taking home about that billable rate. I'm like this is crazy. What it did teach me is what my market rate was, and that's one thing I think we all do is undervalue what we have and what we do. Where it's definitely going and I can speak from the fractional and from the service side, because when I say fractional, it's again that on average it's a day per week, probably no more than 10 hours a week, no more than two hours per day, depending on how you spread out per client and the billable range that you can charge is between six and twelve thousand dollars per month and and what I see more consistently is between seven and ten.

Brett: 26:21

Now it's a bigger company that you're doing some work for. Maybe it's a couple more hours. It's on the higher end, so definitely outliers. In either way, this is for sales leaders, marketing leaders, customer success folks, hr Recruiting, anything that needs a leadership or strategy component within those companies. You can transition that to fractional, and this isn't just my experience. You can like voyage, or you, which works with exclusively fractionals and fractionally. United with Karina she's got six thousand fractionals in there and they just had a data Study that came out that showed wages or the hourly rate Amongst different levels of skills and what role on the organization, and it was consistent. If it's more of a less strategic role, you're gonna be down in the $150 per hour or $100 per hour.

Brett: 27:10

One rule of thumb that I think if people at home want to do the math is whatever your corporate salary is, chop off the three zeros and that's what your hourly rate. And if you do the math backwards which I'm not a fan of the public math so if you're making a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in corporate, think about it is about a hundred and fifty dollars per hour. You know times that by ten hours you know per week, per client, and it adds up to being able to replace your income with two to three Clients and only working two to three days per week, and that's ideal. That's after you get running. If you don't leave corporate, that instantly happens, but it's definitely more. I wouldn't call it an industry standard yet, but it's definitely becoming accepted. And the other data point I'll share is one of the companies that I was a chief Revenue officer for. They were less than three million in annual revenue and they were still paying in that range, so it's even a smaller company is willing because they need to invest.

Francesca : 28:07

Right, and so if you do worth it, yeah.

Brett: 28:10

So that's what I'm saying, and when people say it's a tree, I'm like do you how many companies that are between two, five ten million dollars that could use your skill set for 12 to 18 months as they figure it out? The other beauty of this is you can start to think about your expertise as a service. I know we're going to level two now, but I think there's that's where I encourage folks at your new CRM specialist, maybe they're not gonna bring you on as a fractional CRM Person, but what do these small businesses need that you do really well that you could do for three thousand dollars a month. They're five thousand dollars a month. One their entire CRM, do whatever it is.

Brett: 28:48

And the other example I'll use from the design sites there's a graphic designer named Brett, his company's design join. He's been super open about publishing his track record. The last year he did two million dollars as a solo company. He does all his own design works. He charges brands, I think between 5k and 7k per month. I think the rule is you can only do one design at a time. You can't send him six design requests at once. Maybe do the math backwards of how many customers he needs he can manage that. He said to get overwhelming at that level but like well, if you don't want to do two million one, bring somebody in which he didn't want to do. We'll just reduce the number of clients you have. So that's why I said, if the rules don't exist, if you can solve a problem and add value to a customer, there's a way that you can structure that that it's gonna make sense for you and for the business.

Francesca : 29:39

I mean in two million dollars a year, is that's kind of livable?

Mel: 29:47

Right in your recent newsletter. I loved the template that you shared around what's problem Are you solving for people? What skills are you bringing to solve that problem? We'll link to that because I think it's super valuable. I'd love to talk about if you're in corporate. Today we hear from a lot of folks in high-pressure industries so think law firms, the finance world's, banking, all of that who are Looking to pivot. For folks who are in these intense industries, they're also highly regulated so you might not be able to start a side gig because it could be seen as sort of competing priorities with what you're doing. What do you recommend for them to be able to make space to plan for this kind of pivot?

Brett: 30:31

Yeah, it's a good question. It's this highly regulated, maybe a bigger issue. There's still gonna be a way around it. It's still gonna come back to what the problem that you solve you solve it for and even if you solve it for free on the side, for a few folks, you can test the idea. Target maybe a different industry.

Brett: 30:49

Because that's one thing I've found is, unless you're specific in, like a healthcare technology or whatever it is that doesn't translate, then you may be a little trickier and you may just have to get yourself set up, build some runway and say, alright, I'm going all in, I see the, the future of this. But short of that, there's no reason why you can't start to have these conversations and do some mini engagements with folks. Right, everything that we're building to go solo. You can build on the side and then just start to have the Conversations one off with people and then you get a sense of is this really a need to solve problem? Is this a nice to solve problem? Hopefully it's really the need to solve that the business has. So I think there's date ways around and that's the number of the folks I'm actually working with and I'm testing a new Offering 60 days, your first customer and it originally had the grandiose plans of you know, end to end of all the things that you should Be thinking about.

Brett: 31:46

What I found was all these folks are really smart and don't necessarily need all the pieces, but when you get down into what is the specific offering look like who is the target customer cut through all the noise because we all like To chase the shiny objects and go too many. But let's pick one path. What's the problem? What is it you want to solve and work on and then build the offer into that? Most of the people I'm working with they're still Incorporate, so it can't be just broadcast to your network that you're open to fractional and contract work. It's not gonna work. So we're gonna have to be a little more targeted with some of the outreach.

Brett: 32:20

But it's absolutely possible I think that's what we talk ourselves into that when nobody's gonna want this or we have to have a full-on marketing plan. I'm like the end of the day, for us to be successful and I say most, if you have ten customers that you're not gonna be able to service ten. So you think about it really to read if you're thinking about replacing that income and still working less. Two to three customers is all you need. That's not very many. That's super targeted and through relationships Referability of John arms talks about all the time and then just solving that problem. You got to Break the ice with the first one, but then it's much more manageable even than it was five years ago when you tried to. You almost Did have to have a marketing plan.

Mel: 33:00

It's just starting the conversation with folks and offering Advice for free to build those relationships. I've also seen this done, where folks start to have the conversation with their employer and they've turned that former employer to a client Once they've transitioned into Freelance. Have you ever seen that happen with any of your I know people have done it.

Brett: 33:20

I wouldn't be comfortable going to my most really recent employer. But if you were like me and worked for three or four or five other companies, maybe there's some folks in the past that know you, the work that you do, and need some additional help to get that going. You can be super targeted with LinkedIn and I'll give you just an example. When the corporate escapee took off, I didn't want to forget about the work that I was doing with the small business, so these corporate escapee work. So everything you see on my social and LinkedIn now is mostly the escapee stuff. But I did some targeted outreach to some clients saying, hey, I've got this full network of Estapies now misses or? Mr Business owner, are you still stuck in your traditional Recruiting ways? Are you only looking at a full-time equivalent? Are you open to ideas around flexible staffing and fractional those types of things? And I was just sending that out to Not direct connections but second-degree connections.

Mel: 34:17

Yeah.

Brett: 34:17

I probably an 80% connection Acceptance rate. Most of them would say, now, that's not my business because I was targeting too small. Then I went up the next level 10 to 25 employees and Most people accept the connection or say no, I'm not in that. But a handful are now saying, yeah, I'm interested in learning more. We're just about to that point. Again, I'm not selling anything on those things, but I've got three or four leads that I'm working. If I was still employed, they'd have no idea that I'm even talking to these companies Can't, don't do anything illegal, but you know they can't keep you from right, trying to to grow you.

Brett: 34:53

Whatever you want to do on your own, you're free time and your own time and what you want to do the future so. So the point is there's ways you can start to Identify customers, even if you're linked in. It says I'm fully employed, just have to be a creative sometimes just building relationships as key.

Mel: 35:10

Yeah, like my name.

Brett: 35:13

That's what I've found with this community. Everybody is super helpful and maybe Great myself.

Brett: 35:19

But yeah, again, everybody realizes we're breaking the mold in corporate. Where it was every person for themselves, it was the political if either be eaten and all that. We're here. Everybody's more than willing to help. And again back to the community. That's really what I want out of this group is to say, hey, this I came across an opportunity. Doesn't make sense for me, but I know somebody that was an IT that this would be a good fit for and we just start referring each other into Opportunities. All of our networks are big or big enough for us to figure out what we need to have. I've never been more optimistic about a path then, if you would ask me this three years ago. I think you get work really hard and figure it out, but now we can eliminate some of those blockers there that the traditional learning curves.

Mel: 36:02

I love your slack community. I'll keep plugging it because being a new Corporate escape me myself joining that slack community. I think it's been an invaluable experience because everyone's just wanting to help each other, learn from one another, help each other grow, and I think that's the beauty in this is that Community piece and you're sort of indirectly creating your own quote-unquote corporate culture through that community Culture of just helpers, people who are interested in helping organizations and helping each other, and it's really nice. I'm so glad you're here. I love you too. I'll see you next time. Folks don't talk about this often, but it's hard to get your first client. But how was it having to fire your first client?

Brett: 37:00

It's usually mutual. Usually If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Usually you get a sense in the first three, six months of it's going to work. And I was working with a client doing some sales but really what they needed was marketing support, some branding. They had a really good tool, really strong, competitive product, but nobody knew them. Less than 3% of the industry knew who they were and I basically said, look, take the money that you're paying me and go invest in a marketing and, more specifically, a product marketer. That's really going to help, because their entire business was contingent upon. If this one product hit the growth targets, you can understand the product from the customer research all the way to how do you position it and move it into the marketplace. Spend your money there, because it's going to be much better than me trying to help you figure out how to cold call our way to that business. And so we agreed to move on just because it didn't provide the right fit. You get a sense of the cultural fits going to be there.

Brett: 37:58

But the way I like to structure my engagement is the first ones a. Don't call it a get to know you, but as we're having a conversation and we're saying, hey, this is what I think my organization needs and I'm saying I think this is what I can deliver. Until you actually get involved into the business and know what you have, it's hard to know, so I always liked the 30 or 60 day. Let's validate everything that we thought we knew and then build the roadmap from there. Even if you're fractional, that's really what you're doing is helping them build the strategy and go from there. So I always build an out after that paid assessment period I hate that term, but I don't know a better way of a paid validation. Right, those are going to be value. We'll build the roadmap and at that point we'll know if I'm the right fit for what your business needs and if not, then we can find somebody else to go in there.

Mel: 38:48

Love the concept of a paid assessment time when everyone gets to test it out and see if you're still in alignment after that 60 day is really nice actually.

Brett: 38:56

There's a few businesses, like one guy that was working on a corporate development and really the work that he needed to do it's a six month right to do the due diligence, so he can't do that one month a month, but almost all of them you absolutely could do a trial one month, two months three months just to make sure everybody's happy. And again it takes the risk out of the business zone. It's an easier sell at that point too.

Francesca : 39:20

It's actually beneficial, Like yeah.

Mel: 39:22

Where there's an out.

Francesca : 39:41

What are the things that you want to avoid when you're getting into this space that you don't need?

Brett: 39:46

Yeah, that's a really good point. I see less of the scammy, right, they're there, right, but I think, yeah, we over complicate what we're doing and you don't need a hundred tools. The thing that I found that would have been helpful would have been how do I reduce the learning curve? Because everything I did was the first time it was on my own. There was nobody to share what was going on, and that's kind of the way I've approached that with TikTok and the newsletter. I'll tell you everything I know you know for free. And then if there's still stuff that you want help with, then fine, and that's the way that I approached with other folks as well.

Brett: 40:23

That said, hey, I really need some help, like, I've got somebody helping me on the community Never done a community. I've got an escapee that does it for me to help eliminate some of those big potholes that I don't need to hit. And so I think that's the biggest thing is don't let somebody sell you on. There is no secret sauce. If you do this one thing, you'll get 10 customers. No, it just doesn't work like that. I think it's the fundamentals. The basics. It's everything you already know, but people will tell you you have to do more than what you know, and that's just just not the case.

Francesca : 40:55

You're talking to somebody the other day and they're like I don't even know how to get started. I'm here, I know I hate my job, I'm in the muck, have the talking heads like this is not my beautiful house, this is not my beautiful life. On repeat, right. What are the first? Like two to three things you just need to do.

Brett: 41:11

Yeah, if you would have asked me two years ago, I wouldn't have necessarily thought of this. But it's what do you really want, right when?

Francesca : 41:20

Best question ever. Best question ever.

Brett: 41:22

It's hard to answer and it might changes, but I've gotten much more settled into it because, if you can answer, that is your number one goal just to replace your double your income Cause that's going to send you down a path of doing X, y or Z. But if it's, hey, if I can just supplement my income or get 50% of it and it. But I only want to work one day or two days. I want to be able to do it from the beaches of Florida in the winter and on a lake somewhere in the summer and really think through what is it you want from this next phase. And there's no wrong answer. But having that answer makes it easier to figure out. What are the next steps that you do to drive that business Cause. Again, if you want to build the design joy with the two million revenue, you're going to have to put a little more work into. I just want to replace my income and work a couple of days a week and I'd be able to do whatever else I want on the other five or four or five days. So in the more macro sense, I think some people probably roll in their eyes and say, trust me, I was that person. But now I always encourage you to go down that path. This is personal work on it. If you've got a spouse, partner or whatever, be on the same page, because if you're not on the same page it's going to make it really difficult not impossible, but really difficult to go through this. And then from there, I would find that problem right. I tell people to go through a skills and experience inventory and if you've done something for 20 to 30 years, you'll be shocked at how many different things you have to do. But from that then think about what is it you like to do, cause you're at it now a point you get a little bit. You may have to take some jobs or a couple of projects that aren't exactly what you want to do to get started. But start to think about what that is, who you want to work with, what type of business? Right, because some of the folks I talk with they could go into sales, so they could help small business with sales. But they're also really good at software, so they understand right, are you getting at the ROI off your current software? So there's multiple paths. You just get it down on paper and say, all right, here's in, francesca. Back to your point. There's three or four main problems that you can probably solve that you've got the expertise and your LinkedIn profile will show you can walk into these small business and say, yeah, I've done this type of thing and then you can start to figure out what does that offering look like?

Brett: 43:44

I think too often we go straight from well, I've got 30 years, I want to be fractional, but make it happen now. Just take the steps to go through it. Did you maybe make it happen Again? That was part of my learning curve. Was in consulting.

Brett: 43:58

Really like man, why did I do this? This isn't even what I like to do. I like the conversations, I like the problem solving, but I don't like project management. I don't like tracking down stakeholders, I don't like recapping meetings, those types of things. So I think it's figuring out what you want, identifying that problem at the most accurate or clearest point you can from a business owner standpoint, whoever you're solving it for in the business, and then the type of work that you want to do, and then you can start to craft options again, because those $3,000 to $5,000 a month engagements add up pretty quickly and if it's in your core expertise, it's probably not going to take you a lot of time to do it either. I don't like to oversimplify it, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be.

Francesca : 44:42

Yeah, those are such important questions and things to define and I'm surprised when I talk to people and they're in these situations and I ask them what do you want, like what is it you really really want? And they don't know or sometimes they don't want to admit what they really want because it's very far from where they are today. These are really important questions to ask yourself, for you to get to a space that you are meant to play in and that it'll be easy to play in as well.

Brett: 45:11

Yeah, I get feedback from folks that said that they took me two days right, they were longer to go through and actually think through what it was. But when you think about what's next for you, we've got a lot of options and flexibility. So that was the time. Like I said, I'm planning on living a while and healthy. So what am I going to do for the next 20, 25 years? Jesse Itzler he's NetJet's guy. He's Sarah Blakely's husband. He's built a really successful business, but one of the things that he had equipped not too long ago. He's like look, I think he's a year younger than me. So, statistically speaking, I've got 23 years left to live, which means I've got 23 summers and I want to do as much in those 23 summers as I absolutely can. I'm like yes, it's so true. And again, I think we get so conditioned that we can't think like that, like that's not for me, that's only for the rich can do this. No, that's the whole point of this exercise is, you can start to define what does that life look like? And then how do you incorporate your business into it? I'll give you one quick example.

Brett: 46:16

And she was my poster child forever. She and I worked in our last corporate job together. She was training and development, just hard charging corporate. She was moving up the corporate ladder. Then after that she's like you know what I'm done? And she wanted to start a business training and development and her whole mission was I want to take the month of August off so I can go climbing it didn't matter where in the world. So when she set up her training she worked with companies and basically said I'm not working in August. So they knew up front that she wasn't available for that. From that point on she grew her business. She hired some contractor to just do some work. She ultimately lived intentionally in her van, the van life, and then I think she's been in Australia now for six months running her company. But the whole point of that is she built this, she built her life and then figured out how to work, actually fits into it and I'm like that's so good.

Francesca : 47:08

Right, we're to do it. Yeah, it's build your life and then figure out how to put the work into it. I think that is the right equation. Right, that's the right stack of that story.

Brett: 47:19

It should be, like I said, better late than never for me figuring that out now. The other thing folks think they need to build the next Google or Microsoft, like if I leave corporate I've got to start a company. I'm like not anymore, I've solo businesses. Seeing the number of solo businesses with seven figures, I mean if you start to do the math and we can do that afterward you can see it's not that difficult. With the right couple of right freelancers or VA's to help with certain tasks you can build that. So I'm like how is it possible that these one person companies are doing one million or two million in revenue but yet there's three and five million dollar companies that have 22 employees?

Francesca : 47:55

There's so much opportunity. It's very exciting to think about.

Mel: 47:58

I love that, the concept of designing your life and then figuring out how work fits into it. That's how it should be. That's a great point. The one thing we can never get back is time. Well, hey, we have something we call a rapid round. Fun questions, yes or no? Are you up for a rapid round?

Brett: 48:37

Fire away.

Mel: 48:37

Okay, have you ever regretted leaving corporate?

Brett: 48:42

No.

Mel: 48:42

Have you ever had to turn down a dream project because it didn't align with your freelance goals?

Brett: 48:48

Not yet.

Mel: 48:50

Did leaving corporate improve your life 100%. Is it easier to say no to projects now that you're your own boss? No, it is TensorFlow. Think of what you needed when you came here.

Brett: 48:59

Yes, ish, Instinct still wants to take jobs, but my getting better at saying no if it does in a line, and usually I've figured that a little bit earlier in the process than I would have before, but yet still tempting right. If they're willing to pay a certain amount of money, it's do. I want to do this, so that's a car.

Mel: 49:24

Do you attend more or fewer meetings now than when you were in corporate?

Brett: 49:30

You were much fewer Good answer.

Francesca : 49:32

Good answer.

Mel: 49:34

Do you think contracting has made you a better negotiator overall?

Brett: 49:39

That's a good question. I would say yes. You go through more negotiations with potential customers, you get much more comfortable. The first couple are like oh my God, I can't you get. You're prepared for three days, right, and whatever they say, you're going to say yes to you because you don't want to jeopardize the deal. But then, as you start to go through a few, you realize it's more of a value based exchange than it is them walking away because you wanted a few extra dollars.

Brett: 50:09

It's good to hear you got nervous on your first negotiations too, oh for sure Common thing the bigger deals that you do get nervous because again, especially if it's a project I want, then it tends to get more nervous. The more you really want something, the more you tend to get nervous for.

Mel: 50:27

Have you ever worked from an unconventional location?

Brett: 50:31

That's a good question. I can't think of what an unconventional would mean anymore. I was actually working at home for a few years prior to the pandemic, so I kind of worked where I've been. So I wish I had a more exotic answer for you Like a treehouse in Costa Rica?

Mel: 50:49

or something.

Francesca : 50:50

Not a closet.

Brett: 50:53

No, I've been on a Zoom call with some guy that was cruising down the highway at 65 miles an hour from Detroit to Chicago on a. Zoom video. I'm like dude. It's okay, you can put it down and sound. I don't need to be seeing you scooting down the highway.

Mel: 51:08

Please don't get into an accident. Do you have your midday naps taken an uptick?

Brett: 51:15

No naps. I haven't figured out the naps, but definitely more. If I want to shut it down, nice, nice, can I give you just one tip?

Mel: 51:24

that I learned from this.

Brett: 51:26

Because when I started it, everything was I'm like ah, it's your contract, I can schedule my day however I want. But what I found was it was chaotic. And again back to that book time rich. It said, hey, if you calendarize and block time, it changed my life. It really did so. If people are struggling with that, I'm not saying you have to calendar or block. Find a system that works for you, because you'll be surprised at how much more time you actually do have.

Mel: 51:53

Time blocking. I also am a fan of the time block and I love that you're building in walks because that's good. Get some vitamin D. Last question, more of like a superstitious thing Do you have a favorite coffee mug or something that you're superstitious about for your work days?

Brett: 52:08

I wouldn't say superstitious, but that's funny. I don't know if you can see, oh puppy yeah, it was unfortunately, she was 18. We had lost her last year, but she was my office mate for like five years, and so my oldest daughter got me this cup as a gift, so I keep that as the good luck cup, so not superstitious, but more of a comfort feeling.

Mel: 52:32

I love that. I love that yeah.

Francesca : 52:53

Right before we adjourn. If you were talking to your kid or a best friend who is contemplating this, what would you tell them?

Brett: 53:01

Yeah, don't wait. Right, If there's a way to take control at the big macro, and it's don't run your life around your job. You may have to in the short term, but figure out a plan to get away from that as soon as possible. Get the skills you need to pay your dues, but always keep in mind that there is another way. You just want to be in control. Easier said than done sometimes, but it comes back to that time factor, and maybe now I'm just more sensitive to it as I'm older. But the earlier you can get that that it's okay to find alternative paths. My daughter's no by now.

Brett: 53:38

That corporate I'm not a big fan of anymore. It served me well, it had its purpose. But I think there's better ways to do that. And just again, take control of your own. Figure out a way to build your life and then incorporate work into it. And the last thing I'll add to that is figure out what you want. You may not know it at 25 to 29. You may not know, but I'd still have a plan. Even if it's this plan changes, think about where you go, Cause if you're not driving towards something, then it's you're just along for the ride.

Francesca : 54:09

And there's a lot of good work to do right and a huge space like wide open spaces.

Brett: 54:13

And people that appreciate that. These business owners and business small businesses appreciate it. They're open to it. There's enough that appreciate what you can do If appreciate your point of view, appreciate your thoughts on something, and I've heard from a number of folks that said that's one of the most refreshing things is somebody's actually listening to me. They're out there and they're hungry for your expertise.

Mel: 54:34

Time to tap into your main character energy.

Brett: 54:38

I like that yeah.

Mel: 54:39

I like the main character of your story, so build the story you want.

Francesca : 55:00

Brad, thanks so much for joining us today. We'll post in the show notes your Slack channel, your podcast, tiktok and your LinkedIn, just so everyone can go out and be part of your corporate escapee community. Thank you for joining us today.

Brett: 55:14

Yeah, that's my pleasure.

Francesca : 55:34

We'll be back next week with new week, new headlines. Thanks so much for joining us today. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends. Thanks, friend.

Salary Negotiation: Earn What You Deserve

Your Work Friends Podcast: Salary Negotiation with Kate Dixon

Stop underselling yourself…

Did you know, if you never negotiate your pay, you could leave almost $1M on the table over your career. Yeah, that's an 'M' -  as in million.

So, we called up our friend, Kate Dixon - one of the leading experts in all things compensation. Kate is the author of "Pay Up" and "Name Your Price". She's also the founder of Dixon Consulting - a compensation and leadership coaching firm.  What we love about Kate (there are a lot of things to love about Kate, including her dog, Jeffrey), is that she consults with companies from Nike to Intel to Silicon Valley Start-Ups to architect their compensation strategies.  And, she also coaches executives and employees on how to get the best compensation package possible.  

We’re talking real-world strategies, how pay decisions actually happen behind the scenes, and what it takes to ask for more—without the awkwardness. If you're ready to own your value and earn what you deserve, this episode is for you.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Kate : 0:00

Fundamentally, the way that I look at it both pricing conversations with clients and salary negotiation is you're solving a business problem. That's what you're doing.

Mel: 0:27

We are your work friends, two HR friends who have no filter and are getting you through all the work shit. I'm Mel.

Francesca : 0:35

Hey, and I'm Francesca.

Mel: 0:37

Today we met with Kate Dixon. Francesca who's Kate Dixon?

Francesca : 0:42

She's the principal and founder of Dixon Consulting, a leadership development and total rewards consultancy. She's also the author of two books that honestly, everybody should read. One is called Pay Up Unlocking Insider Secrets of Salary Negotiations. This is the book that a lot of people use to figure out how do you negotiate your salary. The other, if you freelance or you're a contractor, name your price. We got to talk to her today about how do you go through earning what you deserve.

Mel: 1:10

Yeah, salary negotiations Hot topic. Good for everyone to know here's Kate. Hey, Kate Nice to see you. Hello girl. Good to see you too. We're so excited to talk about Comp with you today. I'm just going to jump right into it. Why does it matter that people know and negotiate their market rate?

Kate : 1:43

Oh my gosh, there's so many reasons. One of the things that people don't realize is that if you don't do a good job of it at the beginning of your career, it can impact you over your lifetime. Studies shows that over the lifetime of a woman's career, she can lose up to a million bucks. If you have that million bucks at your retirement, it's going to be a different retirement than if you don't have a million.

Francesca : 2:08

I have a huge, such a big interest.

Mel: 2:10

Huge, yeah. What assumptions are holding people back here in this space? What do you think holds people back?

Kate : 2:17

I think the biggest one is the assumption that I don't know enough to do it right. I don't want to make an idiot of myself, and so I'm not going to do it. I think that was probably the number one thing. I think that there's also this weird thing that people think about, that they're going to have their offer withdrawn if they negotiate, which is not true. But yeah, two big things.

Mel: 2:43

I believe it because I remember working in talent acquisition I could tell the hesitation to have the conversation and I think good recruiters will push you through that and then you'll have some who don't. They're like okay, that's what you accepted, though that's a great call out. We have this saying explained to me like I'm fine how the hell does comp work here? How does comp work? Walk people through? How does it even work?

Kate : 3:07

Comp went a lot right. So, basically, what happens in most companies is they create a job architecture. This is a leveling kind of a thing where you might have a professional, a senior professional, you might have a manager, a senior manager, director, those kinds of things. That's what we call a job architecture, and a lot of times when we're putting together job architectures, we're also putting together functions and families, and some companies pay differently based on the function and family, some don't. I'm really trying to encourage my clients to have a few differentiators based on function as possible, because we know that function is one of those artifacts of how we always have done things.

Kate : 4:00

There's a reason why finance and HR don't pay the same. It's because finance people used to all be dudes and HR people used to be all chip, and so what you're seeing in those functional differences is really the impact of gender bias in pay. So, anyway, I don't think that it's really worth carving out a lot of functional differences, although I have a client in high tech that's based in the Silicon Valley. They do software stuff, and so they have a specific structure for software engineers and then one for everybody else. So the job architecture has the different levels. It has different functions and families. And then what a comp person would do would be to look at a salary survey and this is a place where companies submit data about how they pay different jobs and then the company that's running the survey basically spits out a report that says, hey, this is about how much an accountant with zero to three years of experience makes in these different zip codes or these different areas, in these different types of organizations and that sort of thing. So what a comp person would do is say, oh okay, we have an accountant one and so we're going to match to this job in the salary survey and bring in all the data.

Kate : 5:30

They'll put together salary ranges either by job or by family and function or by level a number of different ways to do it but they'll come up with those salary ranges.

Kate : 5:42

Then they'll put on top of that some policies around. Here's how we want to pay people within a range. Typically they'll say entry to the bottom third of the range, for example, would be for folks who are new to this level with not a lot of experience doing this particular job. People around the middle would be seasoned folks who've been doing this kind of work for a while and have good, satisfactory performance. And then the top third of the range is typically folks who've been either at the same job for a while or have spectacular performance over time, and typically it's some sort of combination of the two. Sometimes you'll see people at the top of the range who have really unique skills that they're bringing into the organization with the assumption that they'll train other folks. Ai has been likely in recent years right, but it's typically at a new skill, super hot skill, and over time the premium that gets paying for that new hot skill regresses a little bit as more and more people get that skill.

Mel: 6:51

It's helpful to educate people on how is this stuff even determined. It's not a dartboard just to throw at certain ranges. There's a lot of research and thought that goes into it. The overall package of compensation is beyond just the salary. What else is typically included in a comp package that you can negotiate?

Kate : 7:10

It really depends on the level of the job. To be honest with you, most jobs and most companies have base pay and some sort of an annual bonus. Again, in the frontline roles you don't always see a bonus. Sometimes you'll see some sort of activity, commissioning kind of thing. That will happen, but there's usually a base and a bonus kind of thing. There's always going to be some sort of benefits health insurance, life insurance, dental. You might get a gym membership.

Kate : 7:45

As you go up in the organization, you tend to see other kinds of things like equity.

Kate : 7:51

When we say equity pay, equity is one thing, but equity we're talking about compensation can mean stock options or restricted share rights or things like that. In my startup clients a lot of times we'll talk about it as a percentage of ownership of the company and then, as you get even higher into the organization, we see things like long-term cash programs and things like that. So those are the main building blocks With negotiation. Typically we'll see some sort of sign on cash and we'll set sign on equity, depending on the type of organization. Again, high-tech organizations tend to have more of this sign on equity, especially for tech people, and if it's a company that's owned by a parent that's outside of the US sign on stuff is not very common. It's not very common to do sign on cash or sign on equity outside of the United States. Just know it's not kind of part of their lexicon typically. So I do have a company that is a client that is owned by a Japan parent and they are pretty disciplined about offering sign on cash and sign on options.

Mel: 9:09

It's good to know, if you're American and you expect that a sign on bonus would be something you're offered, and if they're not a US company and you're trying to negotiate, that it might be the wrong thing to negotiate, because that might it might be a little harder.

Francesca : 9:23

I've always wondered this and I would love to ask you, because you've seen it all Do you make more money over time going into a private company or a public one that gives you the RSUs or gives you the stock options? What have you found?

Kate : 9:36

I've developed my philosophy of over time on this, but one thing that I will tell you is that a good, strong company that has a history of gross equity that you get from that is probably going to be worth more in the long run than stuff that you get from a startup and people like, no, they told me I'm going to make $1 million. But what is true now that was not true even 15 years ago is that most startups wind up getting investment from PE firms and the PE firm. Their entire mission is to harvest value out of these companies that they invest in. That's what they're there for, that's what they're doing, and so, as a part of that harvesting, what I typically see is that the equity arrangements get changed pretty dramatically, especially for people who are not the founders.

Kate : 10:36

I've had clients who said, hey, I need you to help me negotiate my pay because we sold our startup to mega big fang company and I was told I was going to make millions out of this. And I actually made 20 grand and I worked 80 hour weeks for years to make this happen and we didn't get much of anything out of it, and that's because of the impact of PE firms. There's all kinds of different things that happen. But again, it's not saying don't work for startup, because one of the things that startups do better than any other company is provide boots on the ground development opportunities to learn a ton and get the opportunity to do a lot of stuff.

Kate : 11:21

Most startups that I have worked with, consulted with, they're all like oh, you're going to raise your hand? Great, have that. You want to write our report to our community? Yes, you go do that, and so the opportunity to really build a skill set unmatched, and so that's why you want to do it. Maybe it's to have a big title or have the whole CFO kind of experience. Could you do that at a big company with just a little bit of experience now, but you might be able to do it at a startup.

Francesca : 12:09

How does someone know what their market rate is?

Kate : 12:12

Yeah, there are a number of ways to look at it, and this is not about your worth as a human being. The work that you do for companies is worth Right Again, salarycom, indeedcom, glass door ladders, I mean there's all kinds of different ways your professional organizations that you belong to, alumni associations, all of these places are great places to collect data on pay, and one of the most effective ways to do it is to ask people, and there's a lot of of serving of little ditam池amerses.

Kate : 12:50

And it's hard to excuse making difficult money for them, because you may only use five different ways that you could do it, and one of the ways to find them is that's a new market to lucre fueron steer them to ask for more pay, which is hey, my research shows that jobs like this are getting paid between X and Y in the marketplace. How does that land with you? It's something that you could ask somebody who's doing the job that you're interested in today, and then they could go well, that's really high, or well, that's low, or maybe I should need to ask for a reason. But at least that can give you some of the guardrails around what's normal for what you're looking at.

Francesca : 13:37

Yeah, does it differ if someone's freelancing Freelancing?

Kate : 13:43

pay can be all over the place. Again, professional organizations can be really great. So, if you're a coach, icf does a survey every year and stuff like that. But, yes, do try to gather data because there are data sources out there. But it's really about the value that you're able to sell into the client, not necessarily XYZ dollars per hour, although some people do price stuff that way. I see some people getting big bucks in the consulting, freelance coaching space when they don't have a ton of experience, but there's a pretty good correlation. So if you've got a 20-plus year career in corporate America and now you're going to go out and be a consultant, you're probably going to get paid a lot more than somebody with the newly minted MBA. It's going to be different than somebody with an MBA plus. Yeah, that's super fair.

Francesca : 14:40

Kate, you've written several books Pay Up, name your Price, which I love too, because it also focuses on folks that are contracting in freelance. One of the things you talk about in both of those books and in your consultancy is this idea of mindset. Yeah, and I think about this conversation, especially today, as an international women's day. Today, this is when we're talking happy Friday, happy international women's day, and we're sitting in the year 2024. We're all sitting in the country of the United States and women, especially, are making 16% less on the dollar than men, and we also know pay discrepancies happen across every gender, race, ethnicity, you name it and everybody at some point needs to negotiate their salary. And I'm curious about mindset. When you're going into these conversations Wondering if you can talk about what do you coach people on in terms of getting into the right mindset as you're thinking about earning what you deserve?

Kate : 15:36

Yeah, I think it's really critical and a lot of people go, oh, I don't need that, that's woe was stopped.

Kate : 15:42

But fundamentally, the way that I look at it both pricing conversations with clients and salary negotiations is you're solving a business problem.

Kate : 15:54

That's what you're doing, and especially when you're talking about pay for yourself, it's so hard to get that emotional distance that is important when you're doing any kind of work at work. So creating that emotional distance is really important, and one of the ways that I coach people on doing that is to meditate for even 10 minutes before you get on a conversation with the person you're negotiating with and clear your mind as well as you can, and then, when you come out of that, really be intentional about how you want to show up. What do you want people to notice about you? And chances are pretty good it's going to be like hey, I'm a really valuable person, I bring valuable skills, I'm on it, I'm on my game, I'm cool, I'm great. Those are things that you want people to notice about you and if you can clear your mind of some of the assumptions about yourself and maybe the other person you're negotiating with before you get on that call, you're going to do a lot better.

Francesca : 17:00

Yeah, the energy you show up with will be different and more attractive. Quite honestly, yeah, yeah, I got it. One of the things I think about, too, is that you have the right to ask for something. Yes, and I've talked to so many people where I can't ask for that. What if they pull off the table? What if they say no? What if? Do you find that people are afraid to even broach the possibility that they deserve more, or that they deserve what they're looking for?

Kate : 17:28

Yeah, and there's some people who just think to themselves the person I'm talking with knows more about what I'm worth than I know. What I'm worth and what the person that you'll negotiate with does have more knowledge of is what's going on inside the company. And fair right, they should. But you may have a different take on what your value is in the marketplace. This idea of are we worth it? I don't know and I don't feel like I can ask.

Kate : 18:01

This is really deep-seated socialization. That's happened particularly with women, particularly with people of color, around money stuff. You should be grateful just to have an offer. No, that's not the full story. Yeah, I should be grateful for my offer. They're making you an offer because they see that you have value, and one of the things that I coach my clients on, too, is that sometimes the client company places a different value on the work that's being done than you do, and so in that kind of a case it may not be a match. When you think about a marketing person, where are they going to be most highly valued? I'm going to just tell you, I worked at Nike. It's going to be a place like Nike, they're grown for it.

Kate : 18:51

And if you're a marketing person, you're going to be like Nike. And if you're a tech person, you're going to want to go to Intel, and I've worked for both of these companies and I can tell you that a tech person in Intel is likely going to be more highly valued because the work is more highly valued and more tied to their line function, their intellectual property, than it is in a company like Nike. Again, if you're a marketing person and you're talking to Intel and Intel has great marketing people, don't get me wrong but if you're really thinking about premium package, because you're a premium talent, working for a high-tech company may not be the right match for you.

Francesca : 19:38

It's good to know to not get discouraged. If you go in and someone says we're going to pay you half of what you can get on the market somewhere else, it doesn't mean you're not valuable, it just means that they're not willing to pay that rate. Understanding your market rate in different markets is really important, yeah.

Kate : 19:56

I've had clients. People ask me this all the time. Oh, I saw the range posted. What I want is more than what's posted Generally. They're not going to go above the range, but if you really feel like, wow, this is a great match, and perhaps the potential employer may not be as connected to the marketplace as you are, it's okay to go in and say, hey, I really feel like this is a great match for me and I don't want money to get in the way of a good thing. You should know that my research is showing that jobs like this are paid like this in the marketplace.

Kate : 20:34

I had a client about a year ago who was faced with that and she was like hey, I'm in a good place. They approached me and I don't want to go to work for them for less than a good increase from the thing that I'm doing now. So she actually negotiated a 10% higher than the top of the range. Oh, wow, but I think, too, they hadn't really leveled the job appropriately and she was able to show hey, these are the technical things that you're asking for, and so this is how it should be paid in the marketplace. Is that a common thing to do? No, but it certainly does help. It's worth it.

mel: 21:17

Worth it to have a conversation. We always say that just have the conversation you never, know, you never know. I'd love to talk about the dos and don'ts of having this conversation In your practice. You talk about the four-part recipe on how to have this conversation. What is that? What is the four-part recipe?

Kate : 21:37

So the four-part recipe is pretty similar between internal conversations with your boss and external. The first part is about expressing delight. So thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me. I'm so glad that XYZ Company thinks it's as good of a match as I do. Right Done, express delight because your recruiter doesn't always know if you're going to say yes, you want to set it up? Hey, we got some breadcrumbs out there.

Kate : 22:09

So that's part one. Part two is asking questions, and this is not where you're going to ask for. What you want more of this is you're trying to clarify the offer letter and, psm, by the way, read every damn thing that comes with your offer letter Everything, yes, yes. All the attachments, the policies.

Mel: 22:31

Get out of highlighter. Print that baby out.

Kate : 22:34

Write all over it Because you don't want to waste your time or their time asking stuff that you already actually have the answers to and remember you want them to think good things about you. One of the classic questions that my clients ask is something around 401k match, because a lot of times they'll say we have a very generous 401k match but they don't say what it is in writing stuff and say, hey, I see that you got a 401k match. Could you help me understand what that looks like? And then what the recruiter talk? Let your HR person or the hiring manager, whatever talk about that. And again, there are psychological reasons that we have this recipe in this order. But one of those things is these should be answerable questions that the person that you're talking to should be able to answer off the top of their head or answer with a very quick look up, so that you're making progress toward this conversation. And the number three thing is making your request. Now, a lot of people think negotiation is you start with number three, but do not start with number three. Right, it's a business problem. You're solving the business problem. You want everybody on board, so follow the recipe and make your request, like if somebody wants to ask for more base pay. This is how I ask them to do it. So my research shows that jobs like these are paid between X and Y in the marketplace. Remember that from our previous thing about asking your friends, based on my fill in the blank, some special thing about you. I'm targeting the higher end of the range. How close can we get? And this is important, this whole thing. So my research shows, yes, they want you to have done some research, right, and we want to be basing it based on your research, not on, hey, it might historically been paid lower than the market and so I would like to get paid lower than the market again. No, we want to base it on the research. So my research shows the jobs like this are paid X between X and Y. You want to give them a range of places to be successful right, but you don't want this to be if I can't have a pony for Christmas, I don't want anything. You want them to be able to be successful in different ways and the range should probably be about 10% wide. Maybe it's 55 to 65 or 55 to 62. You could say mid 200s if you want to, but X and Y in the marketplace, based on my special thing about myself, right, based on my directly applicable experience, based on my if you're doing an internal, based on my outstanding track record, if you're just coming out of school, based on the fact that I went to Northwestern, based on my special thing, we're targeting the higher end of that range. Right, okay, we say mid 200s. Well, that's 230 to 270. So I would like to be up at the top and remember, if you're saying mid 200s, 230 to 270 is in your head, you want to make sure that 230 is not your basement. Right, you'd be happy with 230. Based on this, I'm targeting the higher end of that.

Kate : 25:51

This last piece is really important. How close can we get? Now, again, this is a collaborative way, it's not. Can you do this, right? And you're asking how close can we get? Because you don't want to guess, or no question, because that fires off really quickly in the brain. You want them to stop and listen to it. Close can we get? And then the most important piece of this question is what you do when you're done, and that is you be quiet.

Mel: 26:19

Faved you. Yeah, you're like sure.

Kate : 26:21

no, it's for a while they're thinking right, and you've asked them something that they have to think about and it's a multiple part question, and so you want them to have time to process this and chance are very good that they're not going to be able to give you exactly what you want in that conversation. It's not your goal to have them say, yes, you can have $270,000, right, right. Your goal that we offer them, but it's not reasonable. They always have to go back, just like car salesmen. They always have to go back to the manager and have that expectation. So you're making a request to maybe three tops I wouldn't make more than that and rank them in the order of their importance. And that's not just like well, gym membership Okay, good for you, but if you get an extra $5,000, you can pay for that, you can count it. So rank it in terms of like, volume and importance.

Kate : 27:21

So then, once you've made your request, then the fourth piece is ending on an up note, and there are a couple of different pieces of this right, and one of them is we know that the end of conversations is more important than the beginning in the middle. It's stupid, it's true. If you look at Yelp reviews, they're all about like took them 15 minutes to get my bill to me and then I got mad. So one star. Yes, I know making the request it's very hard, it's very emotional, but you're focused on having a good ending this conversation. Thank you so much for advocating on my behalf, did they think?

Kate : 28:00

they were going to advocate on your behalf. Maybe not, but thanking them for doing it.

Mel: 28:05

It's always a good thing. A little bit of thanks goes a long way.

Kate : 28:08

You both know this. We're not getting any love.

Mel: 28:12

No, they're in the middle getting beat up on both sides.

Kate : 28:15

We need help If you're recognizing what they're doing for you and appreciating that it goes a long way. Yeah, it goes a long way.

Kate : 28:22

Yeah, thank you so much for advocating on my behalf. Then you have to figure out when you're going to talk to them again, because people think that doing this negotiation is the hardest part of negotiation. No, it is waiting to hear back from the recruiter. That is the worst. People make up stories and they're head about how it works. You can take the lead on this. When would be good for us to talk again? The insolver recruiters are going to be great and they're going to say, oh yeah, let's talk again on Thursday. But if they don't say that, when would be a good time for us to talk Sounds like you've got some background stuff that needs to happen.

Kate : 29:05

I want to make sure that you have enough time to do that. What about next Wednesday? Does that sound like a good time for us to connect? Sure, I guess we could. I've got nine o'clock free. Can I send you an invite? Take some work off of your recruiters plate, because, guess what, they have 30 to 40 requisitions. You're not the only person that they're talking to, so make it easy for them and then you're done. Right, you've expressed your delight, you've asked your questions, you've made your quest and then you've ended. On an up note it's a recipe for success.

Mel: 29:43

Having a collaborative conversation and you're providing options, just like they've provided you with options, and it shows that you're willing to compromise. And it's a two-way street, go the long way and it's and you're poor recruiters. They're really trying. They do want the best for you and Kate to your good point. They're usually handling 40, 50 recs. They're having this negotiation conversation with a million candidates and going back and forth with hiring managers on what could move. So just a little bit of kindness goes such a long way. I have two follow-up questions. It sounds pretty clear and straightforward from your four-part recipe. This is what you should say. Don't deviate from this, because this is a solid plan. But what should you absolutely not say in these discussions?

Kate : 30:31

I have a number one thing you don't want to say for an internal conversation with your boss, and that is to use the word fair in any way, shape or form, because, even though it may be objectively true that it's not fair the way that you're being paid, what managers tend to hear with that is you, manager, are acting out of integrity and nobody wants to feel like they're not doing the right thing and you need your manager to advocate on your behalf. Just like the recruiter in the external scenario, your manager is going to be the one who's going to be advocating for your behalf in an internal scenario. So you don't want them to be mad at you or to think, oh my gosh, she thinks fair. I'm immediately thinking wasu and we're going to batten down the hatches and not talk about anything. That's not what this is about.

Kate : 31:31

So if you're really focusing on the external market and not, oh my gosh, my friend Mel is making 20,000 more than me and that is not fair. No, my research shows a job like these are being paid between X and Y in the marketplace. Based on my super awesome thing, I'm targeting the higher end of that range. How close can we get? That's a perfect, legit conversation to have with your boss, but it also pulls the focus away from their actions and protecting the company to what really they need to focus on is what's going on in the marketplace.

Mel: 32:12

Follow the formula it works, it works. You talked about gym memberships and getting clear on what you want to negotiate. Are there things you absolutely should stay away from negotiating?

Kate : 32:24

So the gym membership is actually a little foreign my side, because I did have an executive when I was internal to a company that shall remain nameless, who is an executive at a Fortune 100 company, I will say that and who wanted to negotiate every stinking thing in his package, including a gym membership. Dude, you're making so much money. This is worth maybe three grand to you, come on. So, yeah, if you're an executive, don't be negotiating the little things, because everybody will hate you for it, including yourself.

Kate : 33:03

When somebody says, okay, we've had enough, but benefits, you probably won't be able to negotiate anything with benefits because everybody's getting the same thing. You could try, but it's not even worth the effort. To be honest with you, what else do you not want to negotiate? I think that for the most part, work conditions again, some of them, whether or not it's hybrid or work from home situation those absolutely should be negotiated, but negotiate those after you figured out the package, especially if they've hinted through the job description or whatever, that people are part-time, working at home or whatever. Don't be negotiating work conditions before you do your other stuff. What have you all seen that you have with Regis?

Francesca : 33:51

There was an executive he had come from a very large technology company, was going to a smaller technology company that didn't have free food everywhere and asked for $10,000 a year for lunch stipend. And it was like, bro, you're making like $20 million a year, you don't need the $10,000 lunch stipend. Run for the border like all of us. You know what I'm saying.

Mel: 34:14

Get real. It sounds like people should be realistic. Focus on your base, focus on the right stuff. One thing that's come up for us recently and it would be fun to go down a rabbit hole to see what people have negotiated you must have some examples, kate, of like weird stuff you've seen negotiated and included. One of the things Francesca and I were talking about recently with all of the layoffs was can you negotiate your severance upfront? Is that something you can negotiate as part of your starting package? If I'm to be laid off within the first year or within the first two years, I'm given this package, an agreed-a-pound package, is that something you can negotiate?

Kate : 34:54

It depends on your level in the organization. Perfectly frank with you. When I'm working with C-suite folks, even in smaller organizations, that is always part of the conversation that we have. But typically below, I would say, a VP level, I haven't seen that because below the VP level there's usually some sort of a policy that's in place Even at the VP level. A lot of times there is too, but it is more common to negotiate it as part of your employment agreement, if you have one, and those typically don't start until VP level. But the same thing goes with relocation. If you're doing a relocation package, a lot of times there's some flexibility, but not a lot, because with larger companies they typically tier it based on the level of job that you're at. And another reason to do away with levels in my own bed. But until then, one of the crazy things I've seen I know somebody who had two great dates who could not fly because they you can't fly, you can't put them under the belt in the plane.

Kate : 36:07

There's biggest of the plane so you can't. But that person was able to negotiate renting a van. They used that as part of their moving. It seems fair. It seems fair.

Mel: 36:20

You want your pets or your loved ones. What do you do if you've done the research, you've done the four-part recipe, you've shared the research and they come back and say that's anecdotal information.

Kate : 36:36

It depends. One of the things that I advise people to do too, before they even get to negotiate, is figure out whether your bottom line is, and so you know. Sometimes the bottom line, the offer, is already in there, and so it's okay. If you can't negotiate anything, that's not necessarily a loss. But again, think about how the company is treating you through this process. If somebody told me that my research was anecdotal, I'd be a little pissed off. Yeah, do I want to work here. But if they're saying, hey, that's not consistent with what we're seeing in our salary surveys and you don't know all the stuff that's behind what they're putting in and they may be wrong in your opinion and you're not going to be able to come to an agreement, and that's okay. If they don't value the work the way that you want to be paid you feel like you should be paid then again it's not that it's a bad call by the company or a bad call by you. It's just not a match.

Mel: 37:57

Every company also has their own comp philosophy. So who's doing comp right?

Kate : 38:03

Oh, my gosh. I think it depends, and I wouldn't say that any one company is doing a super great job across the board. But my companies that are doing more in terms of salary transparency, pay transparency some of it is fair enough because they wanted to comply with the law. That's always a good thing. But a lot of my clients who are located in California, which is where the big pay transparency stuff is going on, they're being open about it all across the country, even where there's not pay transparency laws on the books, and I think it's just great and people are like oh, that's really simple pay transparency. But what it translates to a lot of different things that really are around health in this area, which is, hey, we're going to be really consistent with the way that we level our jobs, we're going to be consistent with the way that we pay our people. We're going to talk about pay with our employees. Those things are all really great.

Mel: 39:06

Are there any companies today that you're like man? They're really progressive here.

Kate : 39:10

Every single company, even companies that are doing well in this space, I'm sure have individuals that they are paying the way that they probably could, and so that's why I don't want to go. Hey, xyz Corp totally is nailing it, and then there's one person getting paid like crap.

Mel: 39:28

Yeah, they're like wait, I'm paying peanuts over here. You don't know your time. Yeah, I get it. I totally understand.

Kate : 39:35

Are there any companies that you guys would hold out as?

Mel: 39:38

good models in this space. When I think of like good practices, it's not different from what you've already mentioned. It's organizations that are making sure that they're looking at the research, probably in an annual basis, and making sure that people are in their comp ratio and in the market rate and they're really doing that analysis to make sure, if folks are under their market rate, that they're making them whole in some way and finding a way to do that. I think it's hard to get it perfect to make sure that you're trying and in your transparent about the steps you're taking to make it right. I think that's so critically important.

Francesca : 40:17

I've sat at tables where we're reviewing comp and there have been some companies I've worked with where we're not going to talk about things like pay equity, we're not going to have these types of conversations. And then I've also worked at organizations that are very open to that conversation and that might sound really basic, but the ability to even say, hey, we've got a discrepancy here. What can we do to start working towards bridging the gap? I applaud organizations that are willing to have that conversation, because not everybody is.

Kate : 40:45

And, ironically, some of the most transparent with pay organizations that are out there are actually governmental organizations. So, like, my first job out of drug goal was with the sting of Colorado and we had this book and you could look up everybody's spending. And now it's online, because that's how old I am, but we come from book era too. That's the way things work. It's everybody knows what everybody gets paid. There's really a lot of openness about that and people make it their business to know why things are the way they are. It's a really good model and people don't typically go oh yeah, the government. That's where I want to go for my party. They've been doing it and doing it well for years and years.

Francesca : 41:34

Yeah, the best learning and development organization is the military, so they get things right.

Mel: 41:39

They do get things right.

Francesca : 41:39

Yeah.

mel: 41:41

But the way that COMP is structured is also evolving over time. I'd love to understand from your point of view, how do you see COMP evolving and how would you like to see it evolve.

Kate : 41:54

Hmm, interesting, two different answers. I think so. One of the perspectives that I carry is that my company is a B corporation, so we're really all about people and planet and profit. So I work with lots of B-corp. I also work with lots of nonprofits. I also work for other companies too, but my perspective with the nonprofit and B-corp group these are mission focused organizations, purpose driven right, and I am seeing a lot of these companies shifting toward employee ownership, which I think is super cool, and there are more and more tools available for organizations that want to go this route than there have been before.

Kate : 42:41

It used to be a very daunting process and I'm not going to say it's easy now, but again, tons more resources, a lot more specialists consulting in that area. So that's one thing that I'm seeing evolve for purpose driven companies and it's pretty cool and also requires a completely different leadership model. Right, a few employees who are owning the company. They want to know the stuff. Right, it's like taking pay transparency to the next level, right? Not just pay transparency, it's P and L transparency and I just I think that's great, I think it's awesome, and I'm also seeing, with these companies purpose driven companies I'm seeing a trend toward really advancing the pay of frontline workers. One of my clients decided that they wanted a family housing wage to be their minimum wage. They pay over 2x what the market rate is for those jobs. That's amazing and I think it's terrific and appropriate. And our minimum wage has lagged from a federal perspective, even our state perspective. I'm in Oregon and, yeah, it's much, much higher than the federal, but I don't think it's kept pace especially with when you look at how our executive pay has shifted over time. So I'm digging those things and those are things that I would want to see every company shift toward.

Kate : 44:12

Well, another thing that I'm thinking about is how have the systems of bias and oppression contributed to our pay program? So I think about antiprecipate a lot, and what can we do to move away from that? One of the things that I try to work with my clients on is removing individual performance as a factor that's going to determine pay. Do you want to still keep track of what people are doing and how they're doing it? Absolutely, that's fine. But we know that it's bias the way that we look at performance. Performance standards for women are substantially narrower than the most for men. For people of color, it's very dramatically different, that behaviors that are okay in the dominant culture are not okay in some of these cultures that have been marginalized by the dominant culture. How can we make pay less problematic from those kinds of perspectives? So that's what I'm really focusing on these days.

Francesca : 45:17

What would be your definition of anti-oppressive pay structures, because I don't think a lot of our listeners know what that is?

Kate : 45:24

Yeah, Well, it's actually a term I came up with. It's some different avenues that we look at in terms of what determines pay. So levels, so the more levels that you have, the more likely it is going to impact people who've been marginalized by the systems, because at every inflection point where you're moving from one level to another, you have this kind of this filtration system that's built in, this social system that's built in, and women, people of color, differently-abled folks, lgbtqia plus folks, they find it harder to get to that next level and I think that's honestly that's going to be the last one to fall, because we think, of course, ceos should make more than frontline workers, but pay is a social construct. We made it up.

Mel: 46:18

It's not like there's a law about that, yeah, it could be revolutionary and change it and blow it up.

Kate : 46:26

And I sit on a group with a woman who's a CEO of a B Corp who pays everyone in her entire organization the same, including herself. That's right, though, yeah, 100% anti-oppressive right, because everybody gets it right. So levels are one, functions are another one. We talked about that a little bit ago. Individual performance as a determiner of pay that is huge, and that's probably the number one thing that I'm trying to communicate with my clients is hey, you know what? The government does a great job here. They have step stuff, and I get a lot of pushback. But oh, what about performance? Because that we have to make sure our shiny stars get more.

Kate : 47:13

There's some myth around individual performance in my mind, because no person's an island. If you've got somebody who's doing really terrific work, chances are they've got a really terrific team that's surrounding them, and the big archetype of this is sales. Dude, right, and sales are trillion, trillion widgets, and it's like this rugged, individualist thing and it's a myth, right, it's not a real, true thing, because they've got somebody who's vetting all the leads for them. They've got somebody who's arranging their travel, they've got really great products behind them. All of these things are conspiring to help this sales person be excellent, and it's not that they don't have any value, and they may be fantastic at creating the kind of relationships that lead to long-term success. So I don't want to take away from that. Should we be paying that person 3x what other people get? I don't know. I don't think so. Probably not.

Mel: 48:16

Yeah, it makes sense because, to your good point, they're not an island. They have a whole team of people setting them up for success. So, although they help close the deal, at the end, it's all of the steps that led up to that, though, that really helped play into it. So everyone has an equal role in that success.

Kate : 48:32

I really like that concept and there are a couple of other factors too around antipressive pay, things like making sure that people have access, like right now. We talked earlier about the things that are different as you go up the scale and having only executives being able to participate in equity programs or long-term incentive programs. I think that's silly, because people who are on the front line are doing things that are going to impact the long-term success of the company, and LTI tends to be one of the big wealth building vehicles for people, and if you just say, okay, 90% of our population doesn't even have access to that, so go away, that's not great, and when I worked at Intel, they gave every single person stock options and they don't do it anymore that way, but it created this completely different mindset for people who are on the manufacturing floor. That was tremendous and very good for the business. I'd love to see LTI if you're going to use it everywhere.

Francesca : 49:37

Walmart started to do that in terms of options to make their store managers owners in the company. Great, that's the kind of movement we love to see 20K in options which can be, over time, life changing for a lot of people, especially when we think about retirement or having a savings nest.

Francesca : 49:54

The other thing I think about. May I tell a story? I'm going to go on a scenic route and then I'll come back. Mel knows the story. I have two master's degrees. This is not a brag, this is just more funny than anything. I like to be in school. If I won the Lotto I would just go back to school. I love it. But my first master's degree was from Northern Illinois University. My second is from Northwestern. Why am I sharing that? Because when I went to Northern it was if you get a job, you may see this, and at Northwestern is when you're a chief marketing officer. This is what you'll see. And I think the idea of setting a band and saying this is the step, and here's the bar for everybody to hit, here's the bar, as opposed to paying for performance which, to your very good point, can be riddled with bias, and this is a team sport. It's a really interesting inverse, because what I have found is when you say here's the bar and it's an attainable bar, most people will meet it. Yeah, yeah, it gets like.

Kate : 50:57

Everybody wants to come to work and do a good job, right? Nobody comes in and say, hey, I want to be an asshole today.

Francesca : 51:03

There's that one guy the one who's going to come in.

Kate : 51:07

But people love success and they want to get the heart of success and they want to contribute to the success of the organization and they're kept in the loop about what's going on. And again, this is back to some of the things that employee owned companies do. If people are brought along in that venture, yeah, they're going to respond. The problem, like with employee engagement in general and I've done a ton of employee engagement research over my career, which I do like a weird geek about and I love. People need to understand that North Star. They need to feel like what they're doing matters and the more visibility you can create for that, the better it goes. Yeah.

Francesca : 52:11

So, kate, we have something we like to do with all our guests called Wrap it Round. We're going to give you a few questions. What's something that everyone should write into their offer letter?

Kate : 52:21

I don't know, because I work with people at all different levels of the organization. So what's really appropriate for my executive clients? Probably not the same as for my recent college grad, even our recent college grads. I would advise them to ask for a sign-on bonus and, if you don't know what to ask for, 10% of your starting salary, your base pay.

Francesca : 52:44

I like that 10% number, maybe not the use of the company jet, if you're just spitting off, I got it. What's the biggest mistake people make in negotiations?

Kate : 52:54

I think, just accepting the offer on the spot, even if you ultimately accept it and don't negotiate it, because a lot of times what companies will do is try to do what I call the pre-offer. If we said $60,000 right now, could you say yes right now? And it's not a car right? Let me see everything in writing and read about the benefits, because you may find that there's some significant gap that you don't know. So don't say yes on the spot.

Francesca : 53:22

This could be work-related. It could not be. But what do you love to negotiate, oh God?

Kate : 53:27

I love negotiating pay. Now I don't really negotiate my consulting rates or anything, and there's a whole reason behind that, but I just I love salary negotiations so hard and everybody should ask me about it because I will tell you. I will tell you all the things and I think it's super fine. My son is like my hype man and so he makes all of his friends call me and yeah, let's talk about it. So I love paying the compensation.

Francesca : 53:53

I really do. You should have like a ticker tape of how much money you've gotten people Like 70 billion served. I love that.

Kate : 53:59

I should, because, like my top one, I ever did a million and a half.

Mel: 54:05

Wow, get out of here.

Kate : 54:10

I was walking with a little swagger there for a second. We should, oh man.

Francesca : 54:15

Kate, we need to talk. Yeah, the trinities. This might be a very philosophical, perhaps a stoic question, but what should you never negotiate?

Kate : 54:26

in life, never negotiate things that don't really matter. We talked about the little things in an offer. It doesn't matter. Let go, you can use your energy better elsewhere.

Francesca : 54:39

Yeah, I love that so much of life is energy management, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, listen. I think everyone should read. Payup Name your prices are amazing books for everyone to read. Kate got into some of these things today. But, kate, I'm curious what other book would you recommend everybody read?

Kate : 54:57

One that is just on my mind recently because I heard the author speak yesterday is called Career Forward and it's by Christiana Giesmit Giesmit's. She it's terrific. It gives you lists of things that you can do and think about in your career to manage your career better, and it's really good.

Francesca : 55:16

One is you'd mentioned meditating in terms of getting into that mindset. Do you also recommend that folks have a hype song? I know a Nike there there's like the hybril. We get that sort of thing. But should people have a hype song?

Kate : 55:26

So my son was a baseball player and so he always got to pick his walk on song every season, and I love that. I think it's a great idea because we know our neural pathways. Sound allows us to dip into that space pretty easily, so maybe it's a walk on song, maybe it's the song that you play to calm your nerves or whatever, but however you want to show up in that moment, pick a playlist or a song or whatever to play beforehand. I love that idea.

Francesca : 55:58

What's yours If you had a walk on song, what would it be? I think it depends on what it was walking on to.

Kate : 56:04

This was like totally silly, but I love the song Happy. It was one that I played over and over when I was running half marathons and stuff, and so it just has all this good vibe. It's a jam. What's yours? I have to know that.

Francesca : 56:22

I have two. One is let's Dance by David Bowie just a jam. Two is Nas made you look which is a stuff I probably thought. No, what's your theme song?

Mel: 56:35

Oh my God, I was just thinking of Rihanna's bitch, better have my money. That's probably really inappropriate. That's her salary negotiation.

Kate : 56:46

I don't know, I think it's good.

Francesca : 56:52

This has been so wonderful. Let's talk with you today. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us, my great pleasure.

Kate : 56:59

Thanks for having me.

Francesca : 57:08

Thanks so much for joining us today and subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriendscom. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Mel: 57:25

Thanks, friend.

Spotting Trustworthy Employers

Your Work Friends Podcast: Spotting Trustworthy Employers with Adam Horne

Job advertisements sell dreams…

But reality? That’s another story. Job descriptions, interviews, Glassdoor reviews—there’s truth in the subtext. Adam Horne, co-founder of Open Org is on a mission: to build a more trusted, transparent world of work. So, we wanted to get him on the pod to talk about how in the hell do you do that? Turns out, it's not only doable (let's start with employees having ZERO surprises around biggies like compensation, benefits, etc), but, when done authentically - can improve (like majorly improve) hiring, retention and overall health of an organization.  

Our conversation covers aligning internal and external transparency, the costs of cultural mismatches and the unintentional humor (or not) of hiring managers who promise more than they deliver.  Most importantly, this episode is loaded with practical advice for creating genuine, transparent work environments. If you want to avoid the smoke and mirrors and find a workplace that walks the talk, don’t miss this one.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

So we're of the view that there needs to be some sort of level of openness and transparency to call yourself transparent to a degree, and we provide that level of structure, but we don't necessarily prescribe where that transparency should be and necessarily how deep that should go. So the way that I try and talk about it with companies is work on defining it for yourself first. What does that look like? And that for me, starts of understanding, like why is this word important? If you're putting on your career site or your job ads or just putting it out there, there's got to be a reason why you're saying it, and if there's not, it's just an empty word.

Speaker 2: 0:48

Mel, good Monday to you. Good Monday to you, yes. Yes, I'm going to start saying that. It just feels like a thing, it feels like it could be a thing Feels like Shakespeare Good morrow is good morrow thing, I don't know.

Speaker 3: 0:59

I'm making that up.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Good morrow is a thing, that's a thing.

Speaker 3: 1:03

Good morrow Good morrow to you.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Well, I'm stoked to talk about Adam Horn. Adam Horn is the co-founder of OpenOrg, and what I love about the work OpenOrg is doing is they're on a pretty cool mission to rebuild trust by bringing clarity to the world of work, and they're doing that by making sure that people have zero surprises at work, like when you're interviewing for a job. They want you to have zero surprises around things like comp, culture, benefits and career development, and Mel and I were really taken with what they're doing and we had a chance to talk to him. And Mel, what did you think of that conversation?

Speaker 3: 1:40

I thought it was refreshing. It was really eye-opening to hear the perspective from Adam and his experiences working with organizations and truly the benefits of transparency, which feels like a no-duh situation, but not a lot of orgs are doing it, so I'm just really excited by this work.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:02

The other thing I really liked, too, was his twist on this. This is not open Oregon Adam dictating what transparency needs to look like they're really working with organizations to say, hey, what is authentic, what works for them, what works for you? Yeah, it's a really cool way of thinking about the zero surprise game for employees and whether they're coming into a company or whether they're in a company as well.

Speaker 3: 2:25

And the bottom line for your business.

Speaker 2: 2:27

A thousand percent Packed within this discussion are things that organizations can do, what individuals can do and what can you do if you're leading a team and you want to be more transparent, even if your organization might not be. So here's our conversation with Adam Horne. Adam Horne, welcome to the pod. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1: 2:56

Thank you so much for having me. Thanks for having me on. It's awesome.

Speaker 2: 3:00

Yeah, adam, you've had a really interesting career, right. You've started multiple organizations. Now you're pulling into OpenOrg. You're a new father as well too, so you've got like a lot going on, probably trying to get some sleep here and there. Just super curious as to how did you even get into this work? How did you get to where you are today?

Speaker 1: 3:20

Yeah, I gave up on sleep a long time ago.

Speaker 1: 3:23

It's like this way, my latest uh child is my third and I've got three under six now and I've navigated the, the three kids and businesses etc over the the period of having COVID and stuff going on as well. So yeah, it's been interesting the last sort of four or five years, to be honest. But yeah, my, my career as a whole over the last sort of 12, 13 years is is all centered around people and talent. So nine of those 12 years as a founder or co-founder myself as well. So I've navigated the complexities and challenges of being a founder and trying to build and run a business, always bootstrapped, always anywhere between sort of five employees up to 70, 80 employees so that size but challenging in its own way but also a lot of that time actively working with clients externally on their hiring and their people strategy. So over that time I've had a lot of exposure to working with startups or scale-ups all over the world hundreds of them over the years and have, from a hiring perspective in particular, I've seen a very clear difference in terms of how companies benefit from being transparent or not. I've worked with some really open, transparent companies and you just tell when you walk through the door and you settle in that this is a very open, transparent environment. I've got resources, information landing on my lap and your job becomes very easy, regardless of what you're doing, but particularly when you are in that role where you're dealing with bringing new people into the business, being able to offer clarity and depth to candidates and applicants before they join, you see the benefit of that when they walk through the door it's really clear and things like attrition, retention, all of those sort of key metrics that businesses look at to try and point them towards some level of organizational health, feel really clear, really nice.

Speaker 1: 5:09

I've also had the benefit on the flip side, of working with companies that are incredibly secretive, some by design but some just through pure chaos and uncertainty and lack of communication. But as an example, I've been parachuted into businesses before where I've been told I'm not allowed to know what funding round we've just done because it's a bit secretive. So if candidates ask an interview, just tell them. You can't let them know. And I've been given about 10 different values from different employees who don't really know what values the business has.

Speaker 1: 5:39

So that end of the spectrum effectively in terms of the way businesses operate and you can still hire, you can still get people through the door, but I've seen what happens after people join and then, generally speaking, you've got that sort of revolving door type situation in those types of business and you see the struggles and the cost and the time it's been trying to just maintain headcount, let alone grow. So over that time I've had a really clear view on what transparent culture looks like and what that benefit is from being more transparent, and I've been lucky enough, whilst running my own businesses alongside that, to be able to pull that experience into how I build my own companies as well, and I've always defaulted to my own level of transparent, my own level of open, and it's worked incredibly well for me. So that, as a bit bit of a backstory, is where I come to today as regards to launching OpenOrg.

Speaker 2: 6:28

We want to talk about OpenOrg because we've seen this conversation about how transparent organizations are evolved, especially, I feel like, over the last and I could be wrong on the numbers, but it feels like especially over the last four years. Five years. Is you need to put this information out there or this is now the expectation? So I'm loving these conversations around now. Transparency is the expectation from a marketplace perspective. So, Adam, what does OpenOrg do?

Speaker 1: 6:51

The way we come in to it really is. I co-founded OpenOrg with an old friend of mine and we've known each other for 12 years, so we've had this talk track for 12 years, even about the world of work and culture and how it's broken and one day we'll fix it. And we've talked I don't want to name names, but talked about the damage that toxic review sites do to employers and to applicants and so on and so forth and how one day we'll find a new way to rebuild trust in terms of that intersection between you know, applying to a role and starting in the right type of business for you. So that's where a lot of the conversation about open org has come up and that's exactly where we sit. We want to get to the point with open org where we can help companies not just become internally transparent with their employees.

Speaker 1: 7:34

That's a really good, healthy place to be, but it only does so much for us. You've got to mirror as much of that as possible externally. There's some things you maybe aren't comfortable doing and that's fine as a limit, but there's no benefit just to being internally transparent For us. There's huge benefits to opening that door a little bit more and showing people under the bonnet, showing people exactly what they're going to be getting when they come in, because without that, people are coming into your business with the wrong expectations. Without that, people are coming into your business with the wrong expectations. So Open Org operates exactly that intersection of employer brand hiring and both internal and external transparency and trying to help employers get more aligned across that spectrum to build healthier alignment across that entire employee journey.

Speaker 2: 8:21

It's interesting when you look at why you should really think about transparency as an organization. I'd like to take it from the employee side a little bit more and also from the organization side, because one of the things you talk about is really to have employees have zero, zero surprises. When you start a new job and I personally felt that I think we all have right where you thought you were getting into a gig, you thought it was one thing, and then into it you're like, oh hell, this is this is not this at all. You talked about this a little bit earlier, but I'm wondering if you can walk us through what the benefits are to have zero surprises as an employee so much across that entire life cycle.

Speaker 1: 8:57

If you look at some of the sort of stats and the research out there around people leaving new hires leaving roles within the first 90 days or so, I think there's a stat out there and I take them with a pinch of salt because you hear different things and different things, but there's so much research on this ultimately around how many people leave roles. I think it's something like 30% of new hires leave roles within 90 days. Such a waste of time for everyone. Such a waste of time for everyone the money you spend interviewing, hiring, the time you spend in the salaries for paying all of that stuff to get into that. It's such a waste of time for everyone involved. And then you have to start again to rehire all because and most of those people leaving site misalignment on cultural role as one of the big reasons for them leaving. And then there's other studies out there that link to that.

Speaker 1: 9:43

Four in ten hiring managers have admitted to lying to candidates about a role or a culture or how business operates. So lying yeah, they actually these are the hiring managers actually admit to lying about this and this is like a resume builder survey study that you can go out there and find online. That's just the people who admit to it. It there's probably more over and above that who haven't admitted to it, but again, just at that interview stage, in terms of attracting talent, attracting candidates, there's a whole lot of problems going on there. So there's a time factor that is being wasted here. There's cost, there's money. There's also well-being and mental health involved here, particularly for the candidates and the employees, but also for the hiring managers, and my co-founder, john, has had this himself as a hiring manager in a larger corporate business, hiring people knowing that he's selling the wrong version of what people are going to get. But he's in this corporate environment where he's just feeling like he has to hire and grow and his own well-being and mental health took real damage because of that, which led to him leaving because of that situation too.

Speaker 1: 10:49

So there's a lot of reasons why transparency really is important in building trust at that early stage. But then, when you look inside the business internally, day to day, there's so many things that point to the benefits of of being transparent and opening, communicative with individuals when it comes. But once they're in, the benefit of being transparent and communicative with your employees is really important as well when you're thinking about to use layman terms like getting everyone aligned and on the same page. That's a lot of what ceos talk about wanting to get and wanting to see. That's all about communication and getting people aligned and understanding where are we going, what are we doing, and that can boil down to so many different things internally in terms of what transparency does look like, and that will differ for different people, but the benefits are there when it comes to productivity, performance, profitability. The research is out there.

Speaker 2: 11:41

What do you think really drives organizations to not be transparent, because we see this so much, especially as you get in these big behemoth organizations. There are some that do this, okay, but I would argue that most of for us, the fortune 500, I don't know if they do this really well. What is holding organizations back from being transparent?

Speaker 1: 12:04

Lots of different factors that could be founder mentality. Obviously that's probably more prevalent in smaller businesses. But if you have a more traditional CEO founder who doesn't believe in seeing employees is that they're equal ultimately and understanding the power of employee could bring when you think about things like co-creation and just communication, they see them as workers rather than, again, equals. That creates silos immediately in how companies are structured and how hierarchies work and those silos immediately cause problems with communication and what's shared and what's not shared. So there's a founder ce leadership mentality, mindset thing that is really common and we see that so much with the people leaders we speak to.

Speaker 1: 12:48

There are some instances where companies in fairness are operating in certain industries or environments where they can't share certain information and that's completely fair. But I think what I see happen there is, if they're operating in this sort of environment or industry where it's a little bit more secretive or confidential, that stops them being transparent in ways that they still could be. They suddenly put the shutters down and they use it almost as an excuse to say we can't share this, so it means we can't share anything else. We try and find ways of showing them actually there's still some really relevant information you can still share.

Speaker 1: 13:21

That's safe and okay, but the default to being closed and secretive because of that and I guess the other one probably is some companies that have just grown either very quickly or very slowly over time, with a certain mindset, with a certain culture, and it's almost too much for them to unravel now, particularly in a larger corporate sort of environment. You've got problems with pay equality and equity across the entire business. Where do you start? How do we unravel that? What do we do? It's almost easier just to keep pushing on in the direction we're going and hope that it never causes us too many problems or assume that if it does cause us problems, it's going to be cheaper for us than having to rework all of this and rebalance salaries and so that there's some companies that may be too far down the road to care about it.

Speaker 2: 14:08

It's just like that big nod of Christmas lights or something that you're like we're just not even going to handle.

Speaker 3: 14:14

Just walk away slowly. Oh gosh, adam. It's so shocking, as someone who worked in talent acquisition, to hear that hiring managers would lie in an interview. And I would say why? Just why, because people are going to find out as soon as they start the job. So it's just an interesting choice to me.

Speaker 1: 14:37

Yeah, I think there's pressure from above. Particularly when you work in a larger corporate type environment, I think you probably are more likely to just feel this pressure from above to hit targets when it comes to hiring for your team. You just do what you need to do to get people through the door and you probably have more resources around you as well, so you don't think about the cost. And when it comes to time that's invested in hiring, you've got a TA team that will. Yeah, they do. They just do their magic stuff in the background and you don't really appreciate how much work goes into that as a hiring manager sometimes. So there's lots of again reasons why people might do it. But yeah, I was shocked to see that as well.

Speaker 2: 15:14

I think I've lied. I think I've lied. Have you? Yeah, I think I have not. Let me ask you all this Is this a lie? Like when you feel like you're probably out the door anyway, but you're hiring people and you're like, yeah, the culture is great.

Speaker 3: 15:29

I actually won't say that. If someone asks me interesting, I will just what's the culture like and I've been honest.

Speaker 1: 15:36

I'll give you the good, the bad and the ugly, because I think you deserve to know it so I had this conversation with someone recently who's a I won't again name names because it's a bit of a delicate one, but it was a people leader. I think there was an m&a event. Their business has been acquired, everything would change. They were basically checked out and said I'm committed to moving on. Now everything's changed. That's not what we've built anyway, because they're in a people lead a role. They were heavily involved in hiring and interviewing.

Speaker 1: 16:04

So we that touched on that discussion of what should I be doing, and I guess my advice was similar to the. What Melza said there is that the most positive thing you can do now is try and make sure that anyone else that walks through that door and joins that business is aligned, because even though you don't think it's a great place to work anymore for you, it doesn't mean it's terrible for everyone, and there are still people out there who really will align with that culture. Even if you think it's crazy, it doesn't make any sense, there are people who might like it. So do what you can to present facts and, rather than being opinionated, try and talk explicitly about what culture looks like here, which I think actually is what so many companies don't actually understand at the starting point is like what is culture here? How do we describe it and understand it, rather than giving an opinion on how fun it is here?

Speaker 3: 16:57

Either happy hours yeah, yeah understood, yeah we have a foosball table. No, I'm just kidding that pods. No, and it's interesting because the cost I thought I read this week that what they previously thought the cost of making the wrong hire was significantly low to compare, comparing to what the actual true cost of that is. And, adam, I'm sure you must have some number that you know about. What is the cost of that at times? What could it be up to?

Speaker 1: 17:25

Yeah, I again chatted about this yesterday. I can't really give you a figure because I just keep seeing all these different figures out there, in different, yeah, but it's high. The one that seems to stick in my mind is up to two thirds of someone's salary to replace. So if someone's on $90,000 a year, it could cost you 60k to just replace them. And again circling back to the benefits of being open and transparent, the more you can share up front, it's not just about getting people aligned to the right culture. It's not just about getting people aligned and to the right culture. But there's so many benefits around onboarding and ramp up time and getting people to a point where they are more productive in the early days within your business. So companies are always looking at like how can we shorten that ramp up time so that people are effectively making us money sooner, which is completely fair? How do we do that? The more share, the more you provide up front, the quicker that happens.

Speaker 3: 18:37

What does a good open culture look like from your perspective?

Speaker 1: 18:43

that's a really interesting question. It's really hard to answer as well, because people ask us quite a lot like how do you define transparency? And this is the whole world that we're in. So we, we don't define it. We were very keen from the outset to make sure that we aren't the ones trying to define what transparent looks like.

Speaker 1: 19:01

That's part of the problem for me, like some of these awards and accolades out there that you can win about we've got great culture or a great place to work. The problem is you're prescribing to someone else's view of what good looks like You're jumping through hoops and like ticking boxes view of what good looks like you're jumping through hoops and like ticking boxes. So we're of the view that there needs to be some sort of level of openness and transparency to call yourself transparent to a degree, and we provide that level of structure, which I won't dive too deeply into, but we've got an assessment and a framework companies can follow. So we do have some level of it, but we don't necessarily prescribe where that transparency should be and necessarily how deep that should go. So the way that I try and talk about it with companies is work on defining it for yourself first. What does that look like? And there's a very high level journey that, for me, starts with understanding like why is this word important? If you're putting on your career site or your job ads or just putting it out there, there's got to be a reason why you're saying it, and if there's not, it's just an empty word. So where I tend to see it, there's two paths.

Speaker 1: 20:00

Typically, when it does work well is it's either heavily linked to your product, your value prop idea you're doing something that's bringing transparency to your customers or whatever that might be, via a platform or a product, and you can lean into transparency as a business yourself, which works really well or it ties heavily into your values and when you dig a little bit deeper and understand what those values are and why, that's when you can start to work with companies to help them understand what they should be leaning into and what they should be sharing more of.

Speaker 1: 20:28

I'll give you an example. Company I worked with recently talked a lot about they believe their strength is in having a diverse team, but they offered nothing around diversity, no transparency externally around what diversity looked like for them. I talked to them about the fact that they talk about strength and diversity and this is a really core value for them. That's an opportunity to be transparent and double down in that particular area. So, long story short, transparency is going to mean different things to different people, but I ask companies to look at their culture, their values, intrinsically to that, and look at where they can double down. You don't have to share everything across the entire spectrum, but think about what it means to your business, find ways you can double down and over index in certain ways, and that starts building a little bit of meaning behind the word for you as well.

Speaker 3: 21:13

So it's more personalized, depending on your business. I know at OpenOrg you're going in. You're taking a look at this with them, so it might not necessarily be like this is what good looks like. But in terms of leading practices, for example, what would something like open compensation what's a leading practice you might recommend, regardless of that company's personal mission? What advice would you offer?

Speaker 1: 21:41

We've still got some like minimum standards that we would say people should try and attain and get to, and then the optional. This is how you elevate it if you want to go crazy and go for it basically buffer style but for us, the minimum expectation, ideally, is to get to the point where you can comfortably put a salary or a salary band on a job advert when you're hiring. Now that, for us, is really important because you're then providing some external transparency, building trust with talent, reverse engineering that. How do we get to that stage? There's a lot of work that goes into that before you can get to that stage. So you've got to work on your compensation philosophy, your bands and your levels.

Speaker 1: 22:19

How do we benchmark our salaries? Where do we get that data from? We encourage companies to share that internally as well, as much as you possibly can, and if you can't, that's okay, but as an absolute minimum, what people really want to see is how is this decision being made? Whatever I I'm being paid, that's fine.

Speaker 1: 22:38

How have you come up with that decision? What data have you used and where have you got it from and how has that been assessed? So it's the why and the how behind the decision is actually really key for me as a minimum requirement. People don't care about what their colleagues being paid, necessarily, as long as they can see what they're being paid is fair and they feel that that lines up with what they should be getting paid. That's really key. So again, minimum expectation provide the how and the why behind the decisions with the things like pay and hopefully get to the point where you can comfortably put a salary on an advert and not have chaos ensue internally where people are reapplying for their own jobs because they see that you're paying someone else 30k more.

Speaker 3: 23:18

I never really understood why that isn't public information, because people are going to find out anyway, because they talk about it. So it's interesting to me that they don't share the process, because it is an in-depth process to go through salary band review each year and it's good for folks when they're talking about their year end and bonus and seeing where they're at and if they have room to grow. It's a good discussion to have with your people.

Speaker 1: 23:43

It's hard work and it takes a long time and that puts a lot of companies off and it won't suddenly mean that everything goes perfectly. You're still going to have some really tough, awkward, tricky conversations with employees who are unhappy about what they're paid, why they're paid it. It's not going to make everything go away, but it builds so much trust as a starting point so that when you have that conversation, people feel like they trust you. They can see it, it's open and it's a starting point for a conversation effectively. And you've got that backup. Most businesses have done their working out. They've got some data source behind them. That should build some confidence in you to have that conversation and say, look, we haven't just plucked this from thin air, this is what we've used, so share it.

Speaker 3: 24:24

It's honest and it helps others really understand the process, because I think if you're not in comp, it does feel like a mystery. Did you just throw a dart at the dartboard and pick this number? So it's good to include that. What about some leading practices in terms of company culture?

Speaker 1: 24:40

yeah, so we culture is one of the pillars under our framework and it's probably like one of the broader ones. What we try and get companies to do is really think about what does culture mean here? What does it look like? Because I think the default for a lot of companies when you look at career pages is like we've got great culture and then there's like a picture of a team playing like crazy golf or whatever they're doing on a team social and that like sums up culture on the face of it. And we're trying to get companies to start moving away from that.

Speaker 1: 25:07

Don't start sharing like all the positive employee stories of it's fun to work here, it's great. Start sharing some facts and reality around, like how do we succeed as a team? What is the sort of unique DNA or blend of how we work, our ways of work that enable us to work well together and succeed? And how do we learn? How do we fail? How do we thrive? How do we like communicate?

Speaker 1: 25:28

There's so much you can gain from understanding how a team communicates day to day. Is it synchronous? Asynchronous Boundaries have reset to communicate. Communicates day to day. Is it synchronous? Asynchronous boundaries have reset to communicate. It might seem like a lot of information, but you can get that across to people really nicely on on wiki or careers page or a job advert.

Speaker 1: 25:46

The companies that do this well do really well and they hire people who succeed really well in their business. So for us, that's culture. It's thinking more about operational excellence rather than that word culture. And when you start breaking it down like that and thinking in that way, you can actually look at some of those areas around communication and documentation and meetings. That's one of the areas under our culture pillar is encouraging companies to talk more about their approach to meetings. Engineers in particular, and others as well. Now, to be honest with you, really benefit and enjoy having blocks of time for like, deep work and focus. They don't want to be sucked into six hours of meetings a day. So start talking to people more about your approach to meetings as a business and people have the opportunity to opt in or out. That's like what we refer to as culture, rather than the coffee, the beanbags, all the other stuff.

Speaker 3: 26:38

Yeah, that's how we work around here. Right, that's all good stuff to highlight. What about benefits? How do you feel about leading practices there?

Speaker 1: 26:46

Yeah, another bugbear, and this is hard right. Like you can only get so much information on some careers page, for example, or a job advert, but they have defaulted over time to just being a little bit vague and shiny and like you can't really see much. So you see, like competitive salary mentioned, like just go a little bit deeper, even if it's an extra line to say we benchmark and pay on the 75th percentile. You can't just say it's competitive and that's going to suddenly mean it's competitive to everyone. Someone could be working for the you know business that pays 90th. Someone could be working for somewhere that's 30th.

Speaker 1: 27:20

You can't just say that and have it apply to everyone. So just add some meaning. So, generally speaking, best practice on benefits when we work with companies and look at this is just really I don't want to say tearing apart, that sounds a bit aggressive but like line by line, going through each benefit that they've listed and actually looking at how can you elevate that and add a little bit more clarity to what that is. And I think maternity leave, paternity leave, is a big one. So many companies write enhanced parental leave.

Speaker 3: 27:48

What does that even mean?

Speaker 1: 27:50

A week and if so, how much? Buy or would you offer 12 months full pay? Just tell people what it is. Actually, it's not a deal breaker for most people. It just helps them understand and plan ahead and think what does that mean for me financially if I do join here and I do decide to have a child? And it's not a deal breaker, but it helps set expectations and it's one of those things, famously, that's always been really hard to find out before you join a business.

Speaker 3: 28:14

Yeah, it's so interesting to me because my experience in organizations one that I was interviewing with or to have worked with although there's information provided, it's so high level and so vague and usually it's not until you get to the offer stage where someone will finally meet with you to get into the details. And I always think that's a disservice, Because if you're just exploring an organization, you want to be able to say what does this exactly look like, so everyone's happy in the end, You're not waiting all the way through.

Speaker 1: 28:44

Six interviews have happened, You've wasted five hours of everyone's time, You're at the offer stage and you lose that candidate because they didn't like the benefit package that they're getting Another example and one company that does this really well and you some might argue it's a bit overkill, but health insurance might work differently in the uk to the us. I don't know whether it's a little bit more comprehensive and everything's covered regardless, but absolutely not over here, like even if you have insurance.

Speaker 2: 29:11

It's absolutely like it's garbage. It's garbage.

Speaker 1: 29:14

I don't want to say I made the assumption. But it's the same here as well. There are some companies that say we offer health cover. Great, on the face of it, brilliant, I'm excited. But then you join and you realize, okay, it's just for me, it's not for my family. I didn't realize that. Or you realize, okay, I've got a very specific, rare condition that's not covered by this particular policy, so that's not a benefit to me. Now, and there's a company called Juro and others do this as well, but I know about Juro. You can, on their notion, you can dig deep on their benefits, click into their health cover and actually look at the exact policy document that they've got for their business. And it's long, it's in depth, but you can actually go and find out.

Speaker 1: 29:51

Is my specific condition covered, which is great.

Speaker 3: 29:54

Yeah, that's fantastic because that's the stuff people need to know when they're moving, especially when it impacts your family, as you mentioned, if you find out after the fact. Oh wait, that actually happened to a friend of mine where she found out with her new job, it only extends to her, it doesn't extend to her family.

Speaker 2: 30:10

So, yeah, I think a lot of organizations are doing really cool things too. I worked for an organization where, after I had my son, they flew my breast milk like overnight yeah Back to my house, which was like $800 a pop, and they did that for every single mother. And that, to me, is I don't know why you guys aren't screaming this from the effing rooftops. Yeah, there's also stuff that the organization could be screaming from the rooftops and they're not. Yeah, there's also stuff that the organization could be screaming from the rooftops and they're not.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Yeah, and this is again it's personal choice in terms of how much effort you want to put into it, but there are companies that will have. You know that we call them handbooks in the UK and try not to refer to it too heavily as handbook in the US, because it's a slightly different, slightly more legal document in the US, but like a wiki or a resource hub for employees effectively to be able to go and dig deep and look at this stuff. And you can keep it high level and say we offer enhanced parental leave. Or you can really provide a heap of depth on parental leave and not just like what do we give parents, but what does returning from maternity leave look like? How do we help you and support you and all that entire journey? There are some companies that do incredibly well, so it's not like to disparage everyone, but the majority don't scratch the surface.

Speaker 3: 31:27

What about with professional development is typically it's not something people think of as falling under benefits, but it's also something that you hope, as an employee, you continue to get, because then you feel that organization is invested in you, they're invested your growth. They want you to succeed. What does a good leading practice look like in terms of transparency around how much an organization is investing in your career development?

Speaker 1: 31:51

yeah, this is again. This you've just said those words as well. I think is like there's such a standard phrase on career sites of like we invest in people and we've got world-class career. If you're going to say that you've got world-class like career investment, whatever that might look like, show it like don't just dangle a carrot and then don't offer anything over and above that.

Speaker 1: 32:12

Really show what you offer people and give some clarity as to what that looked like on a a couple of levels. There's a few things on that. If you're going to list it as a benefit, again, something that we see a lot of companies do is dangle a carrot to say L&D budget, but again just a few more words to say what that budget is. It takes no effort and really helps people understand what they're going to be getting here. So there's tiny little tangible changes companies can go and make that really make a big difference to people. I think the deeper work and the work behind the scenes to really elevate that is looking in depth at how you progress and promote and keep people growing within your business. So career development frameworks is something that seems to be missing in the loss of companies, I think, probably for a reason. It's often it's hard to build. Sometimes if you're a bigger company and get everything in place and something that works and it ties heavily into performance, calibration and compensation and again you've got that big ball of christmas lights whatever we're talking about earlier that you can't unpick.

Speaker 1: 33:14

So career, when we look at the data of all the companies that take our assessment to understand, almost like a heat map of what companies do and don't share.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Career development uh, frameworks are always in the red, but for the large majority of companies they don't even share anything internally.

Speaker 1: 33:30

So there's a lot of companies out there saying we invest in people, but then you walk through the door and you don't have visibility of what's my next step look like or how can I move internally. So, again on our framework, one of our 35 areas that we zone in on and talk with companies about is sharing more information around internal mobility. So can you even share some basic data with people to say that this x percent of people moved internally last year, whether it's latently or vertically for promotion? That gives you a real indication as to like how people move within your business and how people can grow. So anyway, there's a lot of deeper work in depth you can go into there, but I think getting that internal clarity is helpful to people. And then, once you've got it, why wouldn't you share it? There's a few reasons here and there, but you should. And again, there's a couple of companies out there that do really well at just flipping their their internal documentation external.

Speaker 1: 34:26

And then, and it's amazing, who's doing this really well there's a company called cleo in the uk who I don't know. If you've come across a platform called progression fyi really cool, check out progressionfyi. They have their whole platform is about helping companies to build career development frameworks and using their platform. But progression fyi is also like a collective open source career development frameworks that companies share publicly. So clio have got theirs on there. They've shared it publicly and you can go on and look at all their engineering pathways, the salary bands attached to every single role, criteria for progressing.

Speaker 1: 35:04

They've got such a great name, particularly in the UK, for this stuff. And another one is Learnably, who again might not be well known outside of the UK because they're relatively small tech startup scale up, but Learnably are like an LMSms platform, so they major on development and growth for employees and they really drink their own champagne because of that. Going back to what we were talking about earlier with defining what transparency means to you, that a huge part of their value prop is about lnd and growth. So they've decided to major on being transparent about career development at learnably. If you're going to join us, we're going to make sure you know what you're going to get and how you're going to grow, and everything they've done has been crafted around that whole idea of lnd, because that's fed into their, their entire value prop as well where do you see this going in the next five years?

Speaker 1: 36:15

yeah, I am in a bubble. I have to admit that we operate a lot more at the startup scale up end of the spectrum. So companies anywhere from 20, 30 employees up to a couple of thousand starting to get larger. But we don't work with many 30, 40, 50,000 employee businesses and I get they're probably not going to be making the drastic changes anytime soon to how they operate and how they communicate. That's a lot harder. But certainly there's so many earlier stage businesses coming through. It precede stage.

Speaker 1: 36:45

I know a lot of founding teams who support what we're doing. They're a bit early stage to fully embrace and have a lot of this work verified because they haven't started hiring yet. But you see the mindset and the passion and the belief there and I'm not saying every founder coming through is like Gen Z. A lot of them are. A lot of them are coming into this world of work setting up their own companies now and then we will talk about the fact that Gen Z have. Everyone cares about transparency and trust, but Gen Z are more demanding. They care more deeply about it. It's a really important part of how they work, deeply about it. It's a really important part of how they work and they're building their own businesses now with this as a core value. So five years time I'd expect to see, particularly in the startup scale up world, businesses that do default more to transparency, whatever that means to them. They're at least able to say we're transparent and we've defined what that means, and if that's okay, because if it doesn't align with you, then fine, but it will align with certain people and and we're healthy and etc. Etc.

Speaker 1: 37:41

I'd like to see, hopefully, some good progression around pay transparency in particular. There's obviously a lot of movement in the US legally, so that's going to make some sort of change, I'm sure, and then there's some incoming changes across the EU as well. So what's sad is that either side of the UK right now we've got some legal waves happening, which is really enforcing some change, which is great, but nothing in the UK at the moment. So we'll see if we follow suit. But certainly on the pay front, that will change and I think as a knock-on effect to that, going back to what we talked about earlier, I'd heavily to. Pay is performance in career development. You can't suddenly become transparent about pay without giving people some context around how that ties into career development and levels and and how, then, they're going to be assessed to get to that next level, so that, as a trio is going to have to advance together? For me, um, as best as possible anyway yeah, that makes total sense.

Speaker 3: 38:38

I know you're as you say, you're in this the bubble, but with the, the gen z, really coming in and leading the wave of this bubble, those startups could become either clients or partners to these larger organizations. Do you think their approach to transparency may have an influence on some of these large organizations in the future?

Speaker 1: 39:01

I hope so. I hope so. As much as I don't operate so heavily in the large corporate world. As much as I don't operate so heavily in the large corporate world, I have to say some of the larger organizations out there are the ones actually doing better when it comes to things like pay transparency and visibility on career development, probably because they've got the resources there as well to do it from like a people team perspective. But particularly in the UK, the public organizations you like the NHS and you can apply to jobs and you know exactly what grade you're going to be at, what salary you're going to be at. Everyone's on the same, salary gets paid the same. There is visibility in a lot of the public organizations here which I imagine is maybe similar in the US.

Speaker 3: 39:40

It's similar. Yeah, the US government actually does transparency well.

Speaker 1: 39:44

Exactly, yeah, and there are things that you can give a little bit of a hat tip, so you just actually you know what, that there is the structure in place and similarly big consulting firms in the uk and imagine it maybe again similar in the us, like your pwc's, your ey's, etc. They've been around so long, they've got their structure so firmly set that, whilst they may not have the perfect culture for everyone, that's okay. People know what they're getting when they join. They know what they're not going to get and also the grading and the pace is like how you progress in those types of businesses is fairly clear to people and well known because they've been around for so long. So I'm I'm always wary of disparaging like large companies too much, because actually there's some things that they do really well that actually startups and scale-ups could learn from as well. Where they tend to get things wrong maybe is things like communication and day-to-day internal culture starts to get go wrong there because they become this sort of size where things start falling apart.

Speaker 2: 40:38

From that point of view, so funny with this conversation around transparency and even just like your relationship with work. I can't help but think about it like a really any relationship you have with a person, Meaning and I know we've talked about this. But when I think about dating or getting into a relationship with someone, if you're not honest or if you misrepresent yourself from the jump, you're going to have a problem. And when we think about any kind of dating scenario, if you would be like, yeah, they said that they really wanted to have X, Y and Z, but then they didn't, and we talked about how how can people start to get more transparent up above right, Especially at the org level? But I'm thinking here about where this really comes down to is individuals, how individuals are feeling as they're moving through these organizations. I'm thinking here about where this really comes down to is individuals, how individuals are feeling as they're moving through these organizations.

Speaker 2: 41:31

And I'm wondering if we can really double down on if you're a manager or if you're an employee and you're sitting in an organization that may have some opportunity. Everybody has some opportunity Individually. I have some opportunity, have some opportunity for transparency, but you really want to be this person that shows up well for your team or shows up in a way that you feel you need to as a manager. What can a manager do, agnostic of the organization, to drive transparency and drive that kind of honesty on their team?

Speaker 1: 42:06

Yeah, it's very tough. I think in some respects in smaller organizations it's more down to mindset of founder CEO. They're probably still close enough to the individual employees day to day for them to be the driving factor here. I think maybe when you get into larger organizations and most people have never ever met the ceo or know really what they look like or who they are, there is more of an opportunity possibly for managers, middle level managers, more senior managers, to try and direct and formulate some level of team level transparency. Everyone knows that as companies get larger, culture and values becomes lost on a broader level because you end up with your microcultures and across the entire business. You do have this opportunity to form your own microculture, microverse within your team. So if managers do care deeply enough about it and not to say that they're going to suddenly change the entire business and how the business operates, but there are steps that they can take to start understanding how they can build more trust with their team.

Speaker 1: 43:04

And again, this is a whole nother podcast episode, I'm sure, but managers are highly underdeveloped, under supported, under trained.

Speaker 1: 43:12

I think the latest stat that's flowing around now is like 82 percent of managers are accidental managers, like it's completely broken in terms of how management even works itself, and so most managers don't know where to start when it comes to how to manage a team and how to communicate with them, and et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 1: 43:30

So, in terms of like steps you can take, we're building an open manager handbook with our community now building it together like a building public community exercise, which is really cool, but that's going to be filled with a heap of like resources, guidance on like how to build trust with the team, how to communicate with the team, how to run effective one on ones, but all with a lens of how to build trust with the team, how to communicate with the team, how to run effective one-on-ones, but all with a lens of how to do it in an open, transparent way.

Speaker 1: 43:54

It's tricky because some of it will go against the grain a little bit, potentially with what you're being told you are allowed to share and aren't allowed to share. But if you're not able to be transparent ie share the reality you can at least be clear with what you are and aren't allowed to share. So there's a bit of a difference between clarity and transparency. So even if you don't have the information to share with them, you can tell them what you can share and what you do and don't know, and that in itself is at least building some trust with your team.

Speaker 2: 44:21

I've been in. I think most of us have situations where you're leading a team and you're going through something really tumultuous layoffs, budget cuts, the business isn't doing well, et cetera and I've worked with people, colleagues and peers that have been like all you need to say is that you absolutely trust the direction of the company. You're behind this 100% and we're going to move on, and I have found that when I've tried that tactic earlier on in my career, it goes over like a fart in church because people, what they want to know to your very good point is I don't need you to tell me everything, but I need to trust that you're going to tell me what you can and you're going to keep me updated and we're going to go through this together. Yeah, people don't expect you to tell them everything. They don't even expect you necessarily to tell how you're feeling about it, but they need to be able to trust that you've got their best interests and that you're going to keep them updated as they go along.

Speaker 1: 45:17

Yeah, and you've got two examples of companies that do a relatively good job on this. Again, in terms of again, this probably has to be something that is ideally fed from higher up, but maybe it could be implemented in a larger organization by a middle manager. There's a company I mentioned earlier called euro. They're really intentional as a leadership team as how they will approach crisis types scenarios, whatever that might be. Layoffs interestingly, an interesting one, because you can see a layoff coming so you can plan for it. You could think about our comms plan how we're going to approach it. Weirdly, there's no argument real argument for companies doing a really bad job on this because they they always see it coming, they always have time to plan for it and they have the opportunity to communicate it if they want to. But there are things that happen that you can't control and euro was one example. They were backed by, if you remember, the silicon valley bank issue that happened a while ago.

Speaker 1: 46:06

Yeah, everyone sort of just forgot about that a little bit. So sorry if I've given anyone ptsd, but that happened and that affected juro and within minutes of that news being announced, juro's ceo was on slack. The entire business couldn't give them an answer as to what's coming, but there was at least communication there immediately to say this has happened. We could be affected. We will keep you posted and I can't remember exactly how many updates they were given, but there was continual updates very regularly throughout the entire weekend. No expectation for employees to read this, but it all happened over a weekend, didn't it? I think from memory and yeah, that's do committed to slacking the entire business all weekend about what was going on that that sort of level of intentional communication calms nerves, makes people feel involved, looked after as safe as they possibly can be and informed, and they're an incredible business. You have to work hard at that, but that's really great.

Speaker 1: 47:01

Another example, slightly different, is someone like gitlab, who a lot of people know and accept as the most transparent company in the world. If you go on their handbook, when they talk about transparency as one of their values, they're very clear about why it's a value. They're very clear about what they do share and they give you examples of the things they share. But interestingly, there's a line in there that says there are some things we don't share and when we don't share them, we publicly document what that is and why. So you can click a link and they'll tell you exactly what they don't share with people and the reasons for not sharing that information as well. And that is like perfect scenario, like defining transparency but building expectations with employees to understand and get some context for why certain things aren't being shared.

Speaker 2: 47:48

I think that education is equally important. Right, there are some things that it is in everybody's best interest not to share at a certain point in time. Right, there just is in business. But I think the ability to say this is it and to be very upfront about it again, it's so. People know what to expect, they know what they're getting into. Yeah, it's really that. Know what to expect, they know what they're getting into. Yeah, it's really that clear yeah.

Speaker 3: 48:10

It's also just acknowledging going back to the example about the Silicon Valley Bay, it's acknowledging something is happening. We know what's happening. We don't have all the facts, but we're going to communicate to you. So people aren't like trying to fill in the blank. That's what always happens, right? They fill in their own blanks. Conspiracy theories spread throughout an organization, and then it just now you're fighting that and the real information, and then no one believes the real information when you finally give it. So I love these examples.

Speaker 1: 48:38

The comfort it must build of thinking okay, my CEO is on it, like you don't communicate anything. If an employee sees it, that news, and they haven't heard from their CEO on the weekend, they might sit there and think should I tell them about this? Do you think they've seen the news yet? Or, knowing that your CEO is slacking you on the weekends about something like this, I think yeah, the trust in that leader must just be through the roof.

Speaker 2: 48:59

Yeah absolutely, absolutely. One of the things that I think is really important is being able to control what you can control. Is being able to control what you can control and, as an employee, you're either interviewing for a job. Maybe you're sitting internally at an organization and you're wondering what could I be looking at in terms of this organization? And I'm wondering what would you tell people You're best friends interviewing for a job? What would you tell them in terms of figuring out what that company really is?

Speaker 1: 49:26

Yeah, I haven't ever had to answer that. To be honest, we do a few things to try and help folks a little bit as much, as our advice usually is trained more on helping the companies rather than because we think if we can help the companies do better, that will automatically help employees and candidates. But I spend a lot of time personally looking at career sites and job adverts and I think I've gotten very good at just cutting through the rubbish. Basically, that's there, the buzzwords, the vagueness that actually a lot of people maybe read and take for granted and take as accepted. So encouraging people to not just see the words transparent on a career page but actually, if you see that, take that as a signal that you should be looking for some level of openness or something further that gives you an idea. Or, if someone's got a core value of diversity, start understanding whether they share anything about diversity or the commitments, failings, whatever that might be. So just try and think a bit deeper and go a bit deeper on that. That's like the high level stuff. There's basic things on the job adverts that people should be looking for some clarity on and most people do, frankly, is like thinking about like compensation and flexible working, like when will I be working? Where will I be working and can you think deeper around like policy on?

Speaker 1: 50:36

Someone just says hybrid three days a week. What does that actually mean? Their questions you won't have answered pre-application, but taking that into an interview to actually like really dig deeper on that and understand is it just three days a week or is it a monday, tuesday, friday, like whatever that might be? We built and shared what we call like our interview question index and which is like an open resource on our website and it's I think it's 60 or 70 questions. We just we did it for fun, to be honest, but like opportunity for people to understand that the tougher questions they could ask employers and interview to dig deeper on things like culture, like understanding, like, and what one of the questions on there is like why did the last three people leave this team?

Speaker 1: 51:14

Or what was the last mistake your ceo admitted to which I got some flack for and people said you should be a bit softer with that like and maybe like. So maybe someone could ask what was the last thing your ceo shared you that they learned, which for me became a bit fluffy. It could be like I've read a book and learned this, so I want to understand how open are CEOs and leaders about their own mistakes, their own vulnerabilities? It gives you a real indication of psychological safety and how people communicate and share information, and if an interviewer can't give you certain information, it's not necessarily that you should run for the hills, but it might give you a bit of an indication as to how communication and information is shared in that business. If they haven't even genuinely been given the information themselves. As a recruiter of 12, 13 years, that would signal some alarm bells in my head alarm bells in my head.

Speaker 3: 52:08

Yeah, I always tell people to ask the question what brought you here and what keeps you here? Because it's the what keeps you here, where the honesty starts to come out for folks, or if you see them. Oh, I don't know yeah, yeah, that pause tell is telling yeah, there's.

Speaker 1: 52:20

Sometimes I have to, like really work hard to find out why I'm still, why I'm still in this business is, but then and even the danger with that is there's almost very opinionated. So what, what's keeping someone else in the business might not be the thing that keeps you there as well, but understanding it's hard, because so many of these things could be linked to opinion. But again, understanding, like, who is the last person that failed to thrive here and why? Like what are the factors that leads to failure in this company, rather than always saying, like, why am I going to love it here? What do do you do for fun? Like always trying to find all the fun stuff. Understand who doesn't thrive and help you understand whether that might, you know, connect the dots for you as well.

Speaker 2: 52:59

I think it's really important to dive way deeper than most people do in their interviews and to not be afraid to ask those questions. I've had many conversations with people that they really want to know X, y and Z, but they're afraid to ask or they feel like if they ask then they're going to get penalized somehow in the interview process. And I feel like these are questions that you should be asking to really get a sense of what is the organization like, but also if you're getting any kind of pushback about those questions or even asking those questions, that's also information as well.

Speaker 3: 53:33

That's when a rejection is protection. Yes, ultimately.

Speaker 1: 53:39

The hard thing right now, at this moment in time, is it's such a hard thing to advise on because they're ultimately braver questions for people to ask, slightly scarier ones, and the mindset that so many people are in right now is I've just got to find a job.

Speaker 1: 53:53

So, like at the moment, people are just trying to find, prioritize finding jobs, even if they're not perfect, and it was a similar back in 2020 with, with covid, people were joining companies as a stepping stone, knowing I just need security for now and when the market improves then I'll move. So right now, this stuff isn't always a priority for people, but I've known a good few people in the last number of months who have jumped to jobs just for a job's sake and they've left them in weeks. There's no point in joining a business and going through onboarding and ramp up and hope if your gut is telling you that this is not the right place, because nine times out of ten it won't happen and you're better off still investing your energy and your time into trying to find the right place. But it is hard.

Speaker 2: 54:35

It's a really tricky time to be doing that and I hate to put it on an employee to say you've got to go through this journey, but I think it's really great, though, that people have these tools and these questions to ask to see what situation are they getting into, what's?

Speaker 1: 54:47

really sad is it's often the TA teams and the recruiters who get the flack for this. They're useless at giving me the information I need. They're really vague and the poor recruiter that's nine times out of 10, they just haven't been given the information. I've had this myself, like not being told what funding round we just done. How am I going to do my job properly if the leadership team won't give me the basic information I need to interview? So it's not usually the TA team's fault. Honestly. They don't sit there openly trying to hide things. It's just we're working with what we've got. But again, it's a huge indication really of like how does communication happen in this business?

Speaker 2: 55:20

A thousand percent, yeah, and quite honestly, most TA teams are armed with the sexy ass information and all the information they can have so they can get those folks through the door. So if they don't have it, again I think that's a really great call out that it might not be as clear in the organization. The other thing is, if the hiring manager we talk about this sometimes there's a difference between talent acquisition, like your recruiter, and then the person that's actually going to be quote, unquote, your boss, and if either of those people don't have that information, or I think it'd be very interesting if they give you different information as well, again, I think it's just, it's a big archaeological dig.

Speaker 3: 55:56

Put on your curiosity and critical thinking hat during the interview process the rapid round, here we go adam, no pressure, by the way, try to make this as fun as possible and not terrifying. So terrible, at least yeah, all right, I going to dive right in. Some of these could be yes or no, or true or false, and some might have broader explanation, and that's totally okay. I wanted to ask of the open org companies that you are working with, are there similar characteristics that you see in their leadership teams?

Speaker 1: 56:44

yes, I can divulge a little bit more if you want yeah of course. Relatively progressive, a younger generation less precious about titles and flatter hierarchies and structures in their business.

Speaker 3: 56:58

Okay, what is the next lever being added to the list above? We talked about comp benefits, career development, culture. What else might get added?

Speaker 1: 57:10

Flexibility is another thing that I think is just such a big topic at the moment the lack of clarity on are we working from home? Is it return to office? How does that look? Is it different things to different employees? There's a lot of problems around that at the moment. So, like clarity on that should be really simple, but it's terrible at the moment, so that should be a big one.

Speaker 3: 57:34

Okay, okay. We see a lot of large organizations today talking about social impact, environmental impact. Do you think, given the age of climate change, that companies should be transparent about their environmental impact, even if it's not flattering?

Speaker 1: 57:45

Yeah, I do so. The gen z, gen z, sorry big topic for them around, like esg and environment and climate. So it's a big thing that a lot of them are looking for, apparently, from employers when they join companies. So it will signal to me that the longer that it goes on and the worst things get out there, the more important this is for companies to talk about. The downsides is the pressure of greenwashing, etc. And everyone's talking about just doing something or trying to make it look as good as possible, and that's happened with diversity over the last few years. Definitely is like huge calls to do more on diversity, but it's become very performative. So yes, definitely, but but be careful okay, okay.

Speaker 3: 58:25

Do you think social media is going to make companies be more transparent or just more cautious?

Speaker 1: 58:31

hopefully both, hopefully both. So a trait I see from the really transparent companies that I follow and watch is very vocal ceos. On linkedin, for example, they post regularly. They post about whatever they want and they're not afraid to to either be vulnerable and share failings but also like really celebrate stuff. And it's interesting the the slightly larger or secretive companies. You never hear from a ceo and the fact that they don't post about anything starts making you think are they waiting for someone to comment on a post and call them out? And this happened with bupa very recently. The ce CEO posted about an award they won for women in their leadership team and there was a comment made that went viral and it all blew up. So more cautious if you're not able to be fully transparent, but hopefully that transparency will remove the need to be cautious.

Speaker 3: 59:22

Okay, true or false? Every company should have a public fact sheet about how they operate, true, okay? And is there such a thing as too much transparency?

Speaker 1: 59:37

There could be. Arguably no, but in certain instances there could be. And again it's a bit like the greenwashing example just now. Don't make it become like a performative exercise just for pr. Make it like embeddable. Don't overreach.

Speaker 3: 59:51

As soon as you can't model certain behaviors, it will start to fall apart what's one organization either one that you're working with or one publicly that you've seen do this really well, like you think they're a pillar example of good transparency.

Speaker 1: 1:00:14

A company called PostHog. Posthog is a small-ish tech business in the UK. I won't drone on because I'll talk about it for hours, but check out PostHog. They've got a public handbook. They share their roadmap. Their CEO is posting on LinkedIn all the time. That's so open, so transparent. They're amazing.

Speaker 2: 1:00:26

Adam. I love the work you all are doing. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Workplace Cult of Disruption

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Problem with Change with Ashley Goodall

Change is worshipped in the workplace…

But at what cost? From reorgs to reinvention, disruption has become the workplace religion. For the past 10 years, organizations have not only been incented and are, seemingly addicted to change and disrupting their companies. Mergers, acquisitions, new leadership teams, new technologies, new strategies, new, new, new.   How do we get to this place where it really feels like we're all working constantly in a cult of disruption?

Ashley Goodall helps us unpack how we got here, why it’s exhausting everyone, and what leaders should be doing instead to create meaningful progress. Spoiler: there’s a better way.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

A sensible, healthy, capitalist, profit-maximizing organization will ask itself the question how can we help our employees do their best work first?

Speaker 2: 0:27

Hello friend.

Speaker 3: 0:29

Well, it's June. It's June in 2024. It is.

Speaker 2: 0:33

It's happening?

Speaker 3: 0:34

Do you guys go to the beach? Yes, we do go to the beach, so we live about an hour and a half two hours from the beach when you drive there. I swear to God, this is where they film all the car commercials because you can get on some really nice like serpentining switchbacky roads. They're all tree lined. You just imagine the Porsche commercial with the back tire kicking up leaves and that kind of stuff. It's a beautiful, beautiful drive and you live on the beach.

Speaker 2: 1:01

Well, I wish I lived on it live five like five minutes away. We just got our beach pass. I like to go early in the morning when no one's there, so I'll typically be there early and then I stay until noon and head out when all the people show up. Do you have an umbrella and stuff? If I stay there past noon, if it's going to be a full day thing, I have one of those tents that you, you. It has like a little window in the back and you see like I'll hang my legs out, but I am too Casper, the friendly ghost, to be out in that sun. I got melasma so bad one year. It looked like I had dirt on my forehead. What'd?

Speaker 3: 1:39

you do to get that off Like you're like right now? Yeah, Just eventually eventually rubbed off.

Speaker 2: 1:45

It just looked like I had a straight up patch of dirt on my forehead, like ash.

Speaker 3: 1:49

Wednesday was all here in the name of the father and the son. Yeah, oh, that's really funny, thank you.

Speaker 2: 1:57

Thank god for chemicals we are here because we met with leadership expert, consultant and author of several books, but the latest book, the Problem with Change, ashley Goodall.

Speaker 3: 2:11

He's held executive positions at Deloitte and at Cisco, heading up people organizations. Full disclosure Mel and I have both worked with Ashley in the past when our paths all crossed at Deloitte. What Ashley is really wonderful at is thinking about how humans can thrive in the workplace. And in order to do that, what do they need, mel? Stability, stability. I'll tell you, mel. When I read this book, I had two very distinct feelings. One was just total delight because the way the case was written around what work feels like right now was so absurd and so fucking accurate, at the same time that I was laughing through half of the book because I'm like, right, it was so relatable I'm thinking, yeah, man, I could have written these stories too, because this is a hundred percent the experience.

Speaker 3: 3:02

Yeah, especially in the last 10 years. You and I were talking like it doesn't feel like it's always been this way, but the last 10 years it's just gotten more and more and more.

Speaker 2: 3:11

Yeah, and change for change's sake not necessarily meaningful change, and it can feel that way sometimes that it's not meaningful, it's just to do it.

Speaker 3: 3:21

The other very distinct emotion I got was a massive sense of urgency, which is one of the reasons why we wanted to have Ashley on the pod, because it really does feel and the data is in that organizations are not only incented to disrupt and incented to change, ie, bring in mergers, re-strategize, reorg, bring new leaders in. Not only are they incented to do that, but they're almost addicted to it. How do we get to this place where it really feels like we're all working constantly in a cult of disruption? Because that all has a massive human toll, that all has a massive negative impact on companies' bottom line, and so we wanted to bring Ashley in to talk about this. And then what the hell do we do about it?

Speaker 2: 4:10

Yeah, Well, with that. Where's Ashley?

Speaker 3: 4:30

Ashley, welcome to the pod. Thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 1: 4:34

It's lovely to be here with you both.

Speaker 3: 4:36

Nice to see you. It's been a while. It's been a while.

Speaker 1: 4:40

I think it must be on the cusp of double-digit years, but we're all basically the same people we were.

Speaker 3: 4:46

A thousand percent. Maybe a little wiser, wiser Maybe.

Speaker 1: 4:52

A little calmer. Yeah, certainly smarter. We're definitely smarter than we were.

Speaker 3: 4:57

And we went through the plague. There's that.

Speaker 1: 4:59

Okay, and that's true. Yes, that's true, yeah, so yay, for the last 10 years.

Speaker 3: 5:03

Yeah, we're going to talk about cheat. One of the things that really struck me with this book was this life in the blender. While I was reading it, I was just like this has been my last 10 years of work, where here comes a merger and acquisition. We're going to re-strategize something. Oh, by the way, now we're going to switch up the leadership team. Oh hi, here's the management consulting firm coming in and they're in the era of the CHRO or they're in the era of the CEO, and now they're going to put their stamp on it. This was something that was like every 10 years, and then it was every five years, and now it's every two to three years, and there are some companies that it's almost every year. They're re-strategizing and it's just so much change that it makes it impossible to feel like you can get anything done, and there's like this massive human toll on it too. One of the things you talk about with the life in the blender is this idea that change doesn't equal improvement.

Speaker 1: 5:58

There's an experiment that I don't write about in the book, involving rats and pellets, so we should probably chat about rats and pellets for a quick. I'll do it, I'll do it.

Speaker 1: 6:06

And I haven't looked it up recently, but I know how it goes. So it goes like this you put a rat in a cage and there's a little lever or, as I say where I come from, a lever, and if the rat presses the lever or the lever, it gets a pellet of food sometimes and other times it doesn't. And so you can do this nice control condition and you can see how often does the rat press the lever if every time it presses it gets food, how often does it press it if it never gets food? And how often does it press it if it never gets food? And how often does it press it if it sometimes gets food. And the result is that the rat that always gets food doesn't press the lever very much because it just presses it when it's hungry and then goes off and has a rat nap somewhere. The rat that never gets food gives up really quickly because rats aren't stupid. The rat that sometimes gets food presses the lever like a maniac because it's like the spontaneous, the occasional reward drives this crazy behavior.

Speaker 1: 7:13

And in a way, listening to your narrative of we used to do change a little bit and now we've done it more, and then we've done it more. It's like we've only got one damn lever at work. It worked a couple of times a few years ago. Has anyone else got any ideas? I don't know. Let's press it again, shall we? It didn't work that time. Let's press it again. It still didn't work. And the rest of us now the rat metaphor fails a little bit are on the other end of the lever somewhere.

Speaker 1: 7:41

I think this idea of constant change, reinvention, transformation, disruption has become the only idea about how to run a company, which doesn't mean it never works. I think there's plenty of evidence that we've gone past the point where it's helping, certainly to the extent that we're doing it today. The irony of all of this is the godfather of disruption, if you like, is Clayton Christensen, who writes a book in 1997 called the Innovator's Dilemma, where he says the young upstarts companies will eat the lunch of the old, established companies because they have a different series of economic constraints and they have many more degrees of freedom, and so they can innovate and innovate, and innovate and innovate. And all of a sudden they go from a crappy product at a ridiculous price point with new customers to customers who suddenly flip from the established players to them because all of a sudden the price point got a little bit better. They got a minimum set of features and everyone can see the upside and hallelujah.

Speaker 1: 8:44

So if you're a big company, be really worried because the upstarts are going to going to take your business away. And everyone goes oh yes, kodak, yes, blockbuster, and you recite the litany of names, of which there are like there aren't 20, but anyway, um, but then you, if you actually read that book all the way to the end, you discover what his prescription is. And his prescription is if you're a big company, you're worried about being disrupted. What you should do is you take a small group of people, separate them from the company, either spin them out or make them a special product team, put them in a different place, wall them off. Give them a guaranteed budget. Give them a guaranteed budget. Give them a very clear mission. Keep a tight group of people. Don't change direction for a while, leave them alone and they will do the innovating for you. And what's that? That stability?

Speaker 3: 9:35

that's stability on both ends.

Speaker 1: 9:37

It's a stability in the legacy corp and in the incubator the innovators dilemma, said differently, is how can we create more stability at work? But no one has ever, to my knowledge, said that's what that book is about. It's actually a book about stability and you know we turn it into catchphrases and it's disrupt everything and disrupt yourself and fail fast and move fast and break things and all of a sudden all hell breaks loose. And here we are having a detailed conversation about how miserable change is at work. I don't think anyone ever intended that we get to this point, but I think we're massively in it now and I think we've got to come up with some different things.

Speaker 2: 10:15

This has a serious impact. This life in the blender is throwing so much around and if businesses are in this hamster wheel of every year you're making a change and you don't have the time or the runway to see the impact of that change and whether it's working before you change it again. So now it's this vicious cycle of the blender. Does it become critical that organizations start to create psychologically safe environments where people can say, hey, this is not a good idea. Do you think the C-suite is open to that? Or boardrooms are open to that?

Speaker 1: 10:49

So I wrote the book, partly out of the sneaking suspicion that C-suites were not aware of all of this. We need to raise our awareness of all of this stuff. Psychological safety is an interesting one. It's a real thing. It's very clear in the literature. That's a thing.

Speaker 1: 11:09

In our discussion of some of the other sort of psychological impacts of change, we can lose sight of the connection between the environment of work and the performance of humans, and it's too easy for people to go you know what. Suck it up. It's called work for a reason. We haven't created these institutions to make you lot happy. You don't get to feel good every day, you don't get to have your mental health and your psychological safety and all of these things, because this is the school of hard knocks. So I think the most important thing to do the whole time is to go listen. You could choose to create a healthy, supportive environment, because that's a good thing to do and you're a human too. But if that argument doesn't get you there, these things are what lead to performance or non-performance.

Speaker 1: 12:03

It is a silly way to run a company to subject it to life in the blender, to constant change, because what you're doing is removing the ability of your people to solve things for you or massively, ironically to innovate. Innovation doesn't come from change, it comes from stability. It comes from a predictable set of relationships and environments and rituals and rhythms that allow people to go all right. I don't have to worry about a whole bunch of stuff. I can focus my time and attention and creativity on a well-understood problem without having to worry that in three weeks' time, I'll have a new boss and I've got to explain what I'm doing to them, and then, three weeks after that, I'll have some other thing and some other thing, and some other thing and some other thing.

Speaker 1: 12:49

So the prescription for all of this is, for sure, change less, have a higher bar on all of this stuff. Understand that we are playing with fire here. Understand that the fire is not people's upset but people's performance. Understand you're dealing with that. And then, sure, we've got to change once in a while. But people have got to learn what stability looks like at work, what the inoculation is against change. And we've got to be very deliberate at creating stability at work, because as soon as you say that to anybody, as soon as you say, how about some stability? The people who are humans go. Oh yeah, that sounds really nice.

Speaker 2: 13:38

Relief right your shoulders drop.

Speaker 1: 13:42

I think that's the world people are imagining, where they say you know what? I believe in change. They're imagining a world where change comes, improvement comes from stability. That's what we're actually all trying to reach for.

Speaker 3: 13:56

Out of curiosity, when you talk to leaders that are sitting at a C-level and you're talking about this case for stability right, the problem with change the case for stability right, the problem would change the case for stability, what is?

Speaker 1: 14:07

their reaction. The ones I talk to, feel the tension between the pressure to change and the need to look after people. I haven't run into many people who would name it stability. So I think what I took away and again, I interviewed people up and down organizations for the book there are people who see quite clearly in executive positions the downside of change. We just haven't given them words and techniques for the counterforce thing. But the folks I spoke to, or the folks I speak to, are not going oh goodness me, I've got to turn down change and dial up stability. They're saying I've got to turn down change. And then what? And is there a way we need to teach leaders, we need to tell stories that the stuff that we all want in the changey change actually comes from the stability. And the stuff that we want in the changey change is performance. Innovation actually comes from stability more often.

Speaker 1: 15:21

It is not to do the jobs for them or tell them how to do their jobs or decide for them how their jobs are best to be done, or tell them how to do their jobs or decide for them how their jobs are best to be done. It is to pin back your ears and listen and look and offer and support and help. And again, the role of an organization is to support its employees in doing their best work, which doesn't start with ignoring the employees and deciding what best work looks like. It starts with paying attention to the employees and how best work happens and where it comes from and back to stability. It leads you to teams. It leads you to ritual. It leads you to helping build people's competence. It leads you to a whole bunch of stuff. But you don't follow the path to any of those things if you don't first understand that a sensible, healthy, capitalist, profit-maximizing organization will ask itself the question how can we help our employees do their best work?

Speaker 3: 16:24

first, Work first. So much of this I am wondering is this on the capability of leaders. When I think about the people that are making the decisions about the change, the transformation, in my experience a lot of those people have MBB firms in their ears telling them this is what your competition's doing, this is what the market's doing. They have pressures from various stakeholders the stock market, the board. You have to keep up. You have to keep up. Some of the reason why we're here is because leaders have the lack of capability to lead.

Speaker 1: 17:06

We can offer a couple of candidate explanations. Right, one is that leaders are living in an ecosystem that demands this stuff and the ecosystem you've named, I think, many of the bits of it. There is a stock market and, by the way, the stock market isn't a person, but the people who analyze the stock market are people, and they've learned that shareholder value is the most important thing. Then there are the people who tell the CEOs what to do, and they're the activist investors and the consultants and the investment bankers, by the way, and they've been brought up in all of this and you keep going down the chain to who are all the decision makers and what are the unwritten truths or, in many cases, the written scale quotes truths of this world, and a lot of it is. We have to maximize shareholder value, even though we can't measure it over any sort of decent time frame or human time frame. At any rate, you run into the sort of idea that you have to take dramatic action, and if you're not taking dramatic action, somebody else will and your competitors will. So there's a lot of reinforcement of a set of ideas and not a lot of people standing up and going hang on a second.

Speaker 1: 18:31

But the alternate concept of work might be run an organization so that its employees can offer their best and reason up from that, up and out from that idea. Up and out from that idea, and that's not crazy in terms of looking after the interests of owners or the interests of customers or the interests of God, help us employees. But that's not the place we live today. We live in a place where there are certain accepted truths about how you run a company and you get to look after the employee stuff until you feel it conflicts with the set of accepted truths, at which point you snap back into the set of accepted truths and you do the layoff and you do the restructuring and you do the spinoff and you do the spin-in, the spin in, and in between them you say words like people are our greatest asset, and everybody rolls their eyes and they put up with it because apparently not many people can think of a different way of doing all of this. But yeah, there is an ecosystem component to all of this, I think.

Speaker 3: 19:40

My concern with that is when that ecosystem is running on quarters like we need to see improvement. We need to see impact financially within the next three months. That's the way almost every organization is living right now. I've seen so many organizations do this as of late. They're needing to make an impact. One of the lever levers is absolutely change and another one is dump the people, get rid of these people. How do you think most organizations view people, view their employees?

Speaker 1: 20:15

I think that many leaders are actually sincerely torn because they can see enough of the ecosystem and they can see enough of the humans and they know that the layoff isn't a wonderful thing to do. And they probably know in the back of their minds that if you do the layoff and the market doesn't like it, that will be the wrong outcome. But if you do the layoff and the market likes it for a couple of days, that will be the right outcome. And they probably also know at the same time that's not the leader they set out to be when they were more junior. I think if you give leaders the benefit of the doubt, you can imagine a leader sincerely and honestly conflicted about all of this. My point would be, to the extent that's true, could you choose option B once in a while? Could you actually choose the people once in a while, or could we have a conversation about starting with the people once in a while, as opposed to the needs of the machine must always drive what we do, because we can't stop the machine, because it's something, sooner or later you go. The machine is us. Come on, folks, we can decide to stop the machine. One way to stop the machine is to take your company private. For goodness sakes, it was Francesca.

Speaker 1: 21:54

You and I have a history at Deloitte, and Deloitte does not worry about what's going on this quarter with nearly the intensity that public companies do, and so Deloitte, in a way, has a different attitude, and private companies have a different attitude to their investors which, by the way, is weird because they're more intimate with their investors, because most of the investors are the partners who are walking up and down the corridors every day. So it's like the private company world has a closer relationship with its owners, which allows them to be long-term thinkers Isn't that strange? Which allows them to be long-term thinkers, isn't that strange? And that the public company world has a much more arm's length relationship with many of its investors at least, which forces them to do short-term things. It's because there isn't a relationship there. It does strike me that when you change the context in which leaders are asked to make decisions, then they can tilt more towards people. I remember one of the things I was most impressed by in my time at Deloitte was what Deloitte did in the Great Recession.

Speaker 3: 23:02

I know that I use this story. Yeah, tell the story, because this is that you tell the story. You tell the story. We'll see if we're telling the same story. It'd be funny.

Speaker 1: 23:11

Fabulous, there were two great stories, yeah yeah, so mine is that deloitte said look, there are some storm clouds on the horizon. So what we would do if we were to do the usual thing would be fire a whole bunch of people and try and weather the storm and then, probably in a couple of years, we'll hire them back again. But that's silly, isn't it? Because we're going to upturn a whole bunch of lives and already things are pretty bad because it's 2008. And we know what was going on in 2008. And so we'll upturn a bunch of lives and then we'll have a whole bunch of hiring costs that we don't need. So we're going to go.

Speaker 1: 23:48

The quote, the phrase I always remember was we're going to go long on people and we're going to carry those extra costs and we're going to take it out of the partners pockets, and the partners will support this, and the partners did support this. And we are going to put people first so that when the storm passes we are more strongly positioned to face into the future. And it worked, and it was just massively sensible. And it shouldn't be the only example I can think of that in the last quarter century. That's the thing that really upsets me.

Speaker 1: 24:26

I'm sure there are other examples that I haven't come across yet, but that's a terrifyingly rare thing for a company to do, and I think if a public company did that today, they would be in all sorts of trouble because the ecosystem would go you people are crazy and the activist investor would show up and go. I'm going to have a proxy fight with you guys now, because you shouldn't be allowed to run this company and the institutional investors would go. You just sank the stock price, so blah blah, blah, blah blah. Was that your story?

Speaker 3: 24:54

No, it wasn't my story. But during the same amount of time and I might be getting these wrong right, big fish stories periodically might have embellished, but during the same time.

Speaker 1: 25:06

Did you say big fish as a verb?

Speaker 3: 25:08

I did. That works, I know, there you go Big fish. Okay, so 2008,. Right, so they went long on people. Another way I remember them going long on people was deciding to build Deloitte University, oh yeah, so not only are we going to go long on people by holding our people and keeping them, but we're also asking for a capital call of the partners, and if you don't know what that is, hey, partners, I need everyone to cough up I'm making this up $100,000 to build a corporate university which, by the way, this was not something that people were doing, because we want this to be this cultural hub to invest in people. As a evidence, proof point of going along on people, again, while everyone was cutting, they went long, and the thing that I think about, though, is that was 2008. It was a recent example.

Speaker 1: 25:59

Our listeners need to write in.

Speaker 3: 26:01

Yes.

Speaker 1: 26:03

Goodness me gosh, how old do I sound. Write in on an envelope, put a stamp on it. Goodness me gosh, how old do I sound. Write in on an envelope, put a stamp on it and send it to us at PO Box, goodness knows what. There are quite a few firms that have gone private recently because they want to exit the quarter-by-quarter ecosystem, the activist-investor ecosystem. There are probably other examples out there of having greater freedom as a private organization. But the answer to all of this can't be go private. It can't be. If you're a large company, that means you've got to find hundreds of billions of dollars. The answer to all of this has got to be have better companies. Yes, people have better companies. How are we going to do that?

Speaker 3: 26:42

Yeah, or going back to every once in a while not even all the time, but every once in a while going along on your people, like making that courageous decision potentially to go along or getting good at the difference between change and improvement.

Speaker 1: 26:56

Everyone's interested in improvement. That's fine. That's actually what the activist people want and the consultants want and the investment bankers want and the analysts want. They actually want improvement, but we've just lost the ability to distinguish between change and improvement. So every change looks like a good change and off we go. How can we make things better?

Speaker 1: 27:29

You have to start with the recognition that change and improvement aren't the same thing. I think people at work know that and most people know a half-baked idea fairly quickly when they see it coming baked idea fairly quickly when they see it coming. And it is career suicide to raise your hand more than a couple of times. So the serious point here is we cannot say in organizations tell us if this is a bad idea, because we've created again a power structure and ecosystem where it's hard for people to tell you. If you're a leader, you've got to get curious and you've got to get skeptical about all of this stuff and you have to think much harder about whether I am in change creating. As you mentioned a moment ago, mel learned helplessness. So people have such a lack of control that all they feel like doing is phoning it in every day, or you're creating anxiety, control that all they feel like doing is phoning it in every day, or you're creating anxiety, or you're upsetting teams, or you're disturbing people's sense of place or meaning or any of those things. But we have to teach leaders, they have to be the ones doing this, and we have to explain what no one has ever explained to them before that this stuff ain't always a good thing and it has some very serious psychological consequences. And if you're in the business of improving an organization, then very serious psychological consequences are things that generally you want to avoid. We need to train leaders massively more intensively and massively differently than we do it today, because we've all seen this Most leadership training in organizations is a sort of afterthought and we very often give people the job of a leader before we train them to do the job of a leader.

Speaker 1: 29:15

And you don't do this for surgeons or for pilots or for anyone who's got somebody else's life in their hands, or for any job where it's really important to be good at it, but somehow we do it for leaders as though, yeah, the leader thing. Look, you were the best of the people at doing the follower job. So we gave you the leader job and the trainings in six months, and meanwhile, here are some articles all about change and disruption. You'll enjoy them Off, you go, good luck. And then what's the person? Do they look around and go? What are all the other leaders doing? They're doing reorgs. They're doing disruption oh dear, I'd better do that as well. And we again perpetuate a cycle of leadership capabilities you were asking Francesca a little while ago about. Is this about leadership capability? I think for sure. It's about leadership training, it's about leadership selection, it's about leadership support. It's about the leadership infrastructure and ecosystem of our organizations in a very significant way.

Speaker 3: 30:15

If I could add one to it and I'd be curious about your reaction to this the cohesion of the leadership team as well. I've seen senior leadership teams where the loudest voice in the room gets the win, and if you can't dissent, or if you can't at least understand how to work together as a leadership team, I don't think your organization has a chance. When you look at leadership teams that don't have a healthy cohesion or a healthy dissent ability, your organization is pretty screwed.

Speaker 1: 30:42

And what does that team therefore lack? It lacks a sense of belonging, it lacks a sense of place, it lacks a sense of meaning, it lacks a sense of certainty, it lacks a sense of predictability, it lacks a sense of control. It is a failing team because the place where all of the things that we're talking about either thrive or wither is on a team. And, yeah, if the top team doesn't experience stability, doesn't know how to foster its own stability, then, yeah, good luck everybody else.

Speaker 2: 31:16

It's interesting, especially if stability is the name of the game, right? One of the use cases is around the onboarding of leaders. When you think about a leader's first 90 days either a new in an organization or just new in their role there is this expectation that they've changed something, that they've innovated on something. Do we start there? Is that the lowest denominator to say stop having this expectation for new leaders?

Speaker 1: 31:41

It is part of the ecosystem thing as well, isn't it? Because we teach people to come in and make change in the first 90 days. Therefore, change is the thing that leaders do. Therefore, new leaders must come and make change. It would be a lovely and fascinating exercise to say to a leader all right, in your first 90 days, I want you to discover everything that's working and elevate those things and explain to everybody why.

Speaker 1: 32:10

Those are examples of the sorts of things you, as a leader, want to build in an organization and just completely flip the script. If you flipped it that way, you would be building massive stability for people, which goes here's who we are eternally. Here's how we do our work eternally. Here's what we value eternally. Here's who we seek to serve eternally. We're going to keep all of those, honor those, elevate those, preserve those, and over here, x and Y. We need to find a better way of doing these things. Can you help? For me at least, that's a very psychologically healthy way of beginning a narrative that feels like an improvement narrative, not a change narrative. Now, this whole conversation is about a hell of a lot more than the narrative, but it is interesting to just try on a few words for size and see how they make you feel as a leader or as an employee, and to see if we've actually put the emphasis on the wrong syllable when it comes to all. Things change and we should emphasize some stability too.

Speaker 1: 33:47

So Mel and I like to do this thing with our guests called rapid round, ideally quick short answers.

Speaker 3: 33:50

However, if you met me, I know I understand, I get it, I get. But this is the thing, this if we need to go off, we need to go off on the scenic route. That's the point. It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. All right, are you ready to play ash Ashley?

Speaker 1: 34:00

The medium quick, medium rapid round. Yes, I am.

Speaker 2: 34:04

We're not willing to take a stand on anything. Hopefully this is a fun one for you. In your book you mentioned the word disrupt. Gets folks extra bonus biz dude points which crack me up. What buzzwords would you like to see die off already?

Speaker 1: 34:24

you like to see die off already. Strategic, which is not considered a buzzword, but is affixed to the front of far too many things to make them sound better than they are and to paper over a lot of very lazy thinking. So you just have to call it an asset. It's not a strategic asset. You have to call it an investment, not a strategic investment, and we can save a few syllables from the world.

Speaker 2: 34:43

I appreciate it. Let's simplify. What new buzzwords are on the horizon that you're like? Let's stop this immediately, before this catches on.

Speaker 1: 34:53

AI is getting.

Speaker 2: 34:54

Oh.

Speaker 1: 34:54

Jesus up to everything.

Speaker 2: 34:56

Truly.

Speaker 1: 34:57

And some things that are AI, which is a thing, but plenty of things that aren't AI and that are actually just math or an algorithm, but it's AI, this and AI, this and AI, this and AI is the new blockchain, because a few years ago it was we'll do this on the blockchain and this on the blockchain and this on the blockchain and this on the blockchain, and sooner or later, you just want to go shut up and sooner or later, you just want to go shut up. Ai is terrifying, I think for me certainly, because it seems to remove humans from a lot of necessarily human interactions, and you've got to ask yourself where does that point to? But I don't think we help by affixing AI on the front of things that aren't AI-like.

Speaker 3: 35:38

All right. What would you like to see CEOs do more of? Lesson how about less of? What would you like to see them do? Less of?

Speaker 1: 35:53

Change for the sake of change. By the way, can I go back now? I'm going to go back to my prior answer Listen. There is an art to listen I don't just mean be conversationally savvy. Create the systems and structures to understand the experience of work on the front lines and then pay attention to that so that there is like an infrastructure that needs to happen yeah, but listening to occur I love that answer.

Speaker 3: 36:14

There's a very deep schism a lot of times between the front line and leadership and, quite honestly, we have all the tools Qualtrics, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah to do that efficiently. It's just listen to it and maybe do something with it. Would be nice too.

Speaker 1: 36:28

But you have to make it a priority and you have to realize that the things that people tell you are not the whole story.

Speaker 3: 36:33

Fair. Yeah, All right. Same question for CHROs, our chief HR officers. A lot of times they are in the ear of the CEO and the people voice sometimes, but what would you like to see them do more of?

Speaker 1: 36:56

I wrote a chapter about it in the book Advocate for Employees. And again, that's a hard thing because of the business decisions we want to make and not necessarily come up to the C-suite and go. You shouldn't do this because this will create uncertainty, anxiety, unbelonging displacement, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. You shouldn't do it. But I would like to see CHROs feel the necessity of doing that more. And, by the way, to give another answer to one of the prior quickfire questions, which is now a slow fire question, I'd like to see CEOs demand that of their heads of HR more. I'd like to see more CEOs go. You know what we actually do, really need to change the balance on the people stuff. And so, head of hr, that's on you, and if you come and tell me we've got the balance wrong, I'm gonna listen to you yes or no?

Speaker 3: 37:53

do you believe most hr organizations are working in benefit of their people?

Speaker 1: 37:57

I think they're missing a few things, like if you look at the way HR is structured. It's structured to support business leaders. Mainly it's structured around business priorities. I've spent countless hours sitting in HR off sites where HR says, all right, as good citizens of life in the blender, we're going to change our strategy. What should the new strategy be? And someone around the table goes we should start with the business strategy and then we should figure out the people implications of the business strategy and that will tell us the HR strategy won't hit. That's an incomplete answer. Yes, it is, because the other part is what do the humans need? And the humans don't need the business strategy. The humans need the conditions of human performance. So those are things we could bring those into the conversation. We could bring those into the strategy.

Speaker 1: 38:45

I would love a stability governance organization in a company. What would stability governance look like? You can imagine HR playing that role. It doesn't at the moment. How do we train leaders, how do we listen and how do we deploy ourselves so that we understand the experience on the front lines? Because, again, most of the time you have to be a business of a certain size to get one HR person who has then massively run off their feet trying to keep up with the leaders charging around doing the business strategy stuff. Their feet trying to keep up with the leaders charging around doing the business strategy stuff. We've got to figure out a way of rethinking that so that we expand HR's portfolio to include the conditions of human performance, because, goodness me, those should live somewhere in our organizational construct.

Speaker 3: 39:34

Yeah, and right now it's like learning and development. Sometimes it's looking at the talent management team and being like aren't you doing that? Are you doing that? Because I'm not doing that, that's not my domain, so it doesn't feel like it's something that is its own entity and needs to be its own entity.

Speaker 1: 39:46

And there's a little bit more to continue my very long answer to this now.

Speaker 1: 39:50

Not at all quick fire. This is the slow fire round that. When HR talks about performance, we get very quickly to performance management and skills and all the things that we can capture in spreadsheets and that the software gives us. But if you go and talk to people on the front lines about what are the ingredients of performance, they go a leader who talks to me in language I understand, a sense of predictability and a set of relationships on my team and there is no line item budget in HR for those things. So the definition of performance needs to be agreed and understood, because HR doesn't actually map to those things. Hr maps to things that you hand money to vendors for, and those things are good organizational administration things, but if you think that those are the same as performance things, then you have a very strange idea of what performance looks like.

Speaker 3: 40:55

Ashley, thanks so much for joining us today. It was a pleasure seeing you and chatting.

Speaker 1: 41:00

Lovely, lovely to catch up, and let's do this again soon.

Speaker 3: 41:03

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends, Thanks Fred.

Jerks at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jerks at Work with Dr. Tessa West

Jerks are everywhere…

The micromanager. The drama queen. The sly saboteur. Toxic coworkers come in all forms—and they’re not just annoying, they’re disruptive. Ever wondered how to handle that gaslighter or micromanager in your office? Well, we’re exploring these challenging workplace dynamics with Dr. Tessa West, a psychology professor at NYU and author of "Jerks at Work."

In this episode, Dr. West shares her journey from the high-end retail world to academia, offering practical advice and engaging anecdotes that illuminate the complex nature of dealing with difficult colleagues. We unpack how to deal with jerks at work without sacrificing your sanity, success, or standards. You'll walk away with actionable strategies to not only survive but thrive in your professional environment.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Every jerk I've talked to, because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely, and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked.

Speaker 2: 0:15

The worst kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 0:28

Mel, what's going on? Hey, y'all have a heat wave.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Yeah, we have a heat wave. Yesterday we had an advisory for the air quality. Always a fun alert to get. Fantastic Remember when New York City, though, was in the wildfires last year, you know yeah, I happened to not be home during that time, but my husband sent me pictures. The sky was just completely orange over here, so it's just wild, ah fun with climate change.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Fun with climate change, yeah, good times, yeah. Well, speaking of New York City, we talked to someone from New York City, didn't we? We?

Speaker 2: 1:02

did, we did, we did. We spoke to Tessa West, who is a professor at NYU, and we wanted to get down on the topic of work, jerkery all the jerks at work.

Speaker 3: 1:18

Yeah, this is something that I'll tell you. One of the big themes coming out of a lot of our conversations and a lot of our work, especially on the pod, is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks? The on the pod is how do I deal with these people at work that we will broadly categorize as jerks the gaslighters, the credit stealers, the micromanagers, all the jerks that we deal with. And so we called up Dr Tessa West. She is a professor of psychology at NYU. As Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. Mel mentioned, she's also a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She has written two books One she just dropped that's very cool called Job Therapy Finding Work that Works For you, and the other, mel. What is it? Jerks at Work, jerks at Work. Dr Tessa West has literally written the book about jerks at work, the type of jerks you meet. What do you do about them? What did you?

Speaker 2: 2:06

think about this episode, Mel. I really loved it because I think we've all been jerks at work. I don't think anyone's immune to being a jerk. I think it's on a spectrum, like we say, with a number of other things. But we've all been there. We've either been one or we've experienced it, or both. It's really insightful to think through what that looks like, how that shows up and how you can deal with it.

Speaker 3: 2:28

Loved everything that Tessa walked us through in terms of the types of jerks. What do you do about it? Stick around for the round Robin, because she absolutely gave the best one-liner for how you respond to someone being a jerk that I've ever heard in my life. I'm getting it embroidered on a pillow Awesome, yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Well, with that, here's Tessa. Welcome, Tessa, to the your Work Friends podcast. Tell us your story. How did you get into what you do?

Speaker 1: 3:06

I'm a psychology professor at New York University and I study uncomfortable social interactions. So everything from feedback conversations with your boss to having an uncomfortable interaction in the doctor's office to working with an international group of people on a team and I've been doing this for 20 some odd years. I actually got started really studying this kind of topic of how we handle uncomfortable interactions and how they play out at work by working in retail myself and selling men's shoes at Nordstrom. I have an academic life but a non-academic path to get there, and I think if anyone's ever worked retail high-end retail in downtown Santa Barbara was where I worked. That is just the sort of perfect breeding ground for all difficult people jerks at work, status climbers, customer stealers, all that juicy stuff. I joined a lab at the same time at UC Santa Barbara. That did nothing but put people in these horrifically uncomfortable situations where you're interacting with someone who is giving you dirty looks while you give a speech on why you're a good friend. I was actually the person who gave the dirty looks.

Speaker 1: 4:15

That was my job, and so I learned academically how to study these things and study the physiology underlying people's stress they're under the skin responses while living it out in my own life working in retail, and eventually brought these worlds together to study these topics in the workplace. In the last maybe five to 10 years I've really focused on those really difficult moments we have at work, trying to figure out why we're stressed, why stress threads from one person to another and what we can do about it. And so now I have a good 30 some odd years experience uncovering all the difficult things people go through in the workplace.

Speaker 2: 4:51

One. Anyone who's been in retail myself included, also in shoes, I will add that is a very interesting experience. If you've been in any sort of customer service facing role, I'm sure you've had to have the most insane conversations. So I love that. I know, francesca, and I hear often from people am I a jerk at work one, and how do I deal with jerks at work? Which inspired us to reach out to you because we saw that you wrote a whole book on jerks at work and now job therapy. So in your study I love that you won. Your job was to give people dirty looks Interesting experience.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Sorry, but I'm thinking about. First of all, I know the exact Nordstrom you worked out is the one down in, like the city center of Santa Barbara. Really, yes, I can't imagine like that clientele selling shoes, selling men's shoes, especially when you're a pretty woman as well 18.

Speaker 1: 5:45

I didn't know what I was doing at all.

Speaker 3: 5:48

The dynamics there and the idea of. I love how this started, with this idea of like, awkward dynamics. I'm just wondering how much of that started with either you feeling awkward or you feeling like this person is awkward. Was it a mutual thing or is it more of like? Why do I feel awkward in this situation?

Speaker 1: 6:04

I think at first it was very much. Why do I feel awkward? I'm in my own head a lot and I think there's a lot to play around with there. One.

Speaker 1: 6:12

I grew up in Riverside, california, which is not a fancy place. My dad was a construction worker. I was not used to interacting with these rich Montecito men who would come in and say I need shoes for my gardener and buy like $600 shoes. So there were all there's a lot of status cues going on. So one thing I ended up studying later on was how we have cross status interactions with people who are richer or poor than us or more educated, and how we leak out our social class and all these subtle ways. So I think one of the reasons why I found those interactions so uncomfortable is because I grew up very blue collar and now I'm at UC Santa Barbara selling shoes to this like rich, white, older male population and I was asked to do all kinds of really weird things. I got down on the ground and pet someone's poodle and let it lick my face while I was putting shoes on and I just thought to myself I guess this is just what you do.

Speaker 3: 7:03

I'm okay. I'm okay, this is normal.

Speaker 1: 7:06

This isn't degrading at all. Totally fine. Totally fine, I'm going to make $60. It'll be totally worth it off the sale.

Speaker 1: 7:12

So I think a lot of that awkwardness lived in my head. It came from a lack of understanding norms, not getting the hidden curriculum of how one ought to behave in front of wealthy people. I didn't get that kind of training. And was I awkward? I'm sure I was, but I think most of us walk around with a lot of it living in our heads, more so than it actually becoming a dyadic or interpersonal phenomenon, and I definitely. For me, I try to turn lemons into lemonade and try to make a whole career out of all that really uncomfortable shoe sales experience I had. But yes, I think that the awkwardness is layered on with social cues and status issues and gender dynamics. I was the only woman in whole shoe sales, like in the men's shoes. They never let women sell men's shoes. They had a bro culture. I was brought in because I worked in the store in Riverside where I was also the only woman and convinced them that I could hack it with these bros.

Speaker 3: 8:09

So there's a lot going on, yeah, but what a great story, because I don't think you're obviously not alone in this and not alone in the awkwardness, not alone in the figuring out how to work with people and what those dynamics can do, especially in a work environment.

Speaker 2: 8:22

What was one of the most surprising things that you learned through all of your work.

Speaker 1: 8:27

Yeah, I think one finding that I kept seeing over and over again and I learned this by studying physiology and behavior at the same time is that when we're the most uncomfortable and we could see this in the lab because we measured people's blood pressure so you would get those readings live and measure their heart rate when you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest readings live and measure their heart rate.

Speaker 1: 8:45

When you're the most uncomfortable, when you're the most stressed, you're the nicest, most over the top version of yourself, and my colleague, wendy Menez started calling this brittle smiles effect. So like you're so great, this kind of high pitched voice over the top smiling, and what's fascinating is because you're feeling stressed. At the same time, the anxiety still comes out, but in these kind of like weird creepy ways where you smile but not with your eyes right, so you don't have a douche and smile. We have a kind of lower half of you is smiling or you're fidgeting and avoiding eye contact, but saying the right thing and so if you're on the receiving end of one of these things.

Speaker 1: 9:17

It's like the words coming out of the person's mouth are nice, they're supportive, but it's all oozing out through these anxious cues. And what we started realizing is there's the controllable behaviors what we say and then the ones that are difficult to control how we say it and those two often misalign and that can lead to very difficult communication between people. And even talking to your jerk at work, you're probably really nice to that person if you were to go up to them. And we see this in all kinds of contexts and it's a pretty universal phenomenon, also cross-culturally. It's not just in America. I've seen it in Abu Dhabi with people from 50 countries. They do the same thing. I think that's one of our more consistent tried and true findings we found.

Speaker 3: 9:56

That's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 9:59

That's so interesting because I think one. I know I've done that when I've had to present somewhere like the over nicety to people in the room. Oh my God, but it's so interesting, Just the body language that people exude. You can't hide the body language.

Speaker 1: 10:15

Yeah, you can't control it. If you tell people okay, take a deep breath, don't look anxious, it makes it way worse. We tried that. We even tried telling people your partner's not anxious. They just had a ton of coffee today, so they're a little fidgety, they're like anxious coffee, oh my God. No, it actually makes it worse. And then they see even more anxiety than is actually there. It's really hard to get rid of this. It's a super sticky phenomenon.

Speaker 3: 10:37

It's very difficult to undo you just wrote Job Therapy, which we're super stoked about, and in the book you talk about some of the sources people have in terms of the frustration with work is actually due to some of those interpersonal relationships. When I think about people looking at a job pivot or they're unhappy in their career or they're thinking this isn't working for me anymore a lot of times people think it's because I'm not doing the right job or I'm not at the right company, not necessarily about the people you're surrounding yourself with.

Speaker 1: 11:30

I think relationships are everything at work, and I mean that in a lot of ways. So one of the main things that turns on or off our work happiness is our interpersonal relationships with people, and that doesn't just include your boss or the people on your team. That includes the people that you see day in and day out. I think that even if you're an individual contributor and I hear this a lot I'm an individual contributor. I don't need relationships. Of course you do, we all do. It doesn't matter what the nature of your work is. Those dynamics are at play and we know social networking is an important part of the work process, but we don't really understand how. So that's another component is, in addition to the one-on-one interactions you have, where you learn new information. You learn the hidden curriculum. You figure out whether your kiss-up kick-downer has a widespread problem or if it's just you.

Speaker 1: 12:11

All of those things, those kind of sticky interpersonal issues, can really turn our stress on and off. And when it comes to exploring new jobs, people often think about it very structurally I want something hybrid, or I want to work in this new city, or I need a better compensation package. They don't think about the relationship part so much, even though that's actually one of the biggest predictors of what leads us to actually drift apart psychologically from our jobs is the change in interpersonal dynamics at work. But we don't focus on that. We focus on how much we're getting paid or whether we can get promoted. But those things matter, but not as much as those interpersonal relationships, and those relationships are key to doing complex things like developing a new career identity.

Speaker 1: 12:52

Like you can't do that by reading websites or taking courses to improve this and that skill. You really have to sit down for 15 minutes and talk to a stranger and say tell me what your day-to-day looks like. That's really how you develop clarity around things, like a new identity at work, and so I really encourage people even shy people, even awkward people, even people who are individual contributors to really embrace the relational component at work in lots of different ways, and I don't mean you need to be best friends with anyone at work. You can think about relationships in different ways of serving these different purposes, but they're absolutely essential to feeling good at work and feeling good about yourself. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:31

I've absolutely felt that right, especially when I've been in organizations for an extended period of time. Where you feel like you have the relationships, where you feel like you have the network, it's so much easier to get things done and, quite honestly, a lot of times, work is just so much more enjoyable. Yeah, but the thing we talk about a lot too in terms of career development or even getting promoted, is you have to have sponsors, you have to have a board of directors. People need to quote unquote know who you are. That doesn't just happen and that isn't typically just based on your great work. It has to deal with do people want to vouch for you? Do they like you? Do you have the relationship to your point?

Speaker 1: 14:06

Are they willing to expend social capital to?

Speaker 1: 14:09

stand up for you. You know we often don't think about how getting promoted, you know and I don't just mean like literally getting a new job title, but having someone in the room vouch for you is costly for them. You know, even if it's, even if you're good and everyone agrees you're wonderful, if they are going to put their neck out for you and argue that you should get promoted, that means that they can't do it for the next person. In academia, it's like every time the chair goes to the dean and asks for money for a person, that's one less person that they can then ask for the next time, because we have a zero-sum amount of stuff that we're working with and we have to think about. Are we earning these relationships that are helping us in the moment but also helping us build our careers out? And every recruiter, internal and external, that I talked to for this book said that they love developing relationships with people in different stages of their careers, because they will place the same person five times. It's like a real estate agent.

Speaker 1: 15:05

They will sell you a house five times over your life and it is essential for them to get to know you and know if you're going to actually stay in a job. Do they want to place you? Because they don't get a bonus if you don't stay for six months, and so they're going to place the person they know will stay because they stayed in the last thing they placed them in. And those kind of lifelong relationships are also essential for us just in terms of our whole kind of life career trajectory, and we often don't really think about those lifey relationships outside of our specific job context.

Speaker 3: 15:34

Yeah, and then you meet these people that have these massive networks of people and they're so much better off typically than people that don't. I see this a lot too. This is such a small microcosm of this, but when you see people get laid off and then all of a sudden they're starting their LinkedIn profile, or all of a sudden they're starting to reconnect back, and it's like you should have been doing this all along, or nurturing these relationships all along to have that network to fall back on, it's a very small example, but something we see all the time.

Speaker 1: 16:02

Oh yeah, like you don't maintain those relationships and you only turn to them when you're laid off or you blast your whole network one message Like please help me. Like without those interpersonal connections. It just feels like relationship spam and I think no one likes to feel like they're being spammed in any context, especially with someone they know Not at all my parents used to say like relationships are, it's like a garden, it's a reciprocal thing.

Speaker 3: 16:24

Right, you have to tend to them, you have to nurture them and you have to give to get. You can't have it be only when I need you. So nurturing those very strong relationships obviously huge, and also giving your data something that really makes meaningful careers. And then I'm wondering on the other side of it too, where what happens when those relationships turn out to be with people that are just dicks and I've had that experience too, where you're like you're a dick, you're a jerk. And I am curious about how not even neutral relationships, but adversarial, jerky relationships impact people's careers and what they think about their careers.

Speaker 1: 17:06

I think when we have these failed relationships, losses loom larger than gains and we can perseverate on a turned relationship. For years and years I've talked to people that were like I had a best friend and then he became my boss and then I overheard him talking about me in the bathroom and it killed me. I said when did that happen? 1987. I'm still thinking about it and that's normal. When we feel like someone betrays us, we really hang on to that and to the point where we maybe have a bit of a spotlight effect, where we think it's going to damage us more than it actually does and we start to get a little conspiratorial and thinking about how they can damage our networks and things like that.

Speaker 1: 17:46

One of the people I talk about in Jerks at Work is a gaslighter and they're like the masters of trying to damage your network. Right, they don't just go after you, they go after your reputation and by doing that they hit everyone. That's a node in your network. Most jerks we deal with have less power than we think they do. Even if they tell us they're full of power and full of status, a lot of it is more bark than bite, so you need to actually do the work to figure out if there's a real concern there about that reputational damage and then be proactive about not trash talking the person but just information gathering.

Speaker 1: 18:19

We often have this instinct of they're going out there saying bad things about me.

Speaker 1: 18:22

I'm going to go out there and correct that by saying bad things about them.

Speaker 1: 18:26

But stop and take a breath and think, ok, I'm just going to information gather and get the lay of the land of my own reputation so then I can correct it and not make it about them at all, even if the person deserves that kind of negative reputation.

Speaker 1: 18:39

You have to just be super careful with gossip because you just never know how it's going to be used in the future. And we all gossip and it serves an important purpose. But the retribution piece, the piece that the it inside of you really wants to go crazy, is where you just have to focus more on controlling the narrative around your own reputation, figuring out how white for the problem is, and then I'd say these relationships fail fast. If you are getting red flagged that this person is saying negative things or credit stealing or whatever, disengage as quickly as you can from that. We all have stories I have some of when I first started going too far into a relationship with someone who is weirdly competitive or had some other tick that just didn't align with me and letting that relationship stay for too long.

Speaker 1: 19:20

And I think that's where we get a little messed up at work. We think people need to be our best friends and sometimes you figure out they're not and just disengage. I think is key. But yeah, it can hurt. I still have my stories from 20 years ago I still think about so I think it's pretty normal.

Speaker 3: 19:35

I have a reoccurring dream about somebody and it's just like why won't this go away? I see your face.

Speaker 1: 19:44

I understand. I understand it's like an ex-boyfriend they got a weird breakup with and there was no closure, none.

Speaker 3: 19:51

Yeah, and I still. There's certain things. I can't listen to. A certain song You're just like oh, I am burned. You're like I can't. Nope, nope, nope, yeah, but taking away that power to your point around when you're in it, disengaging like you don't need to keep working at it. Disengage number one and number two.

Speaker 1: 20:17

Focus on your own PR and not bad-mouthing them, right, ie Taylor Swift trash-chakes itself out at some point, hopefully, or just be very strategic about the nature of the bad-mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want to bad-mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the nature of the bad mouthing. I'd say if you do go to HR, you want a bad mouth, don't focus on your feelings about the person or your kind of description of their personality. Focus on exactly what they've done. When I have conversations with leaders about difficult people, I'll say something like okay, I'm going to tell you what happened, and if I start to editorialize this a little bit, just let me know, because I don't mean to. And then followed by we had this meeting and this is what was said, leaving my emotions aside and I don't use words like they're untrustworthy or they're disrespectful. Those are very eye of the beholder and not everyone's going to agree with you about what those things look like. So I just described the behaviors and then it makes me look like a more mature person.

Speaker 2: 21:03

Stick to the facts. But all goes back to the golden rule right Is like focus on yourself.

Speaker 1: 21:13

Don't worry about others. I'm curious, why do people show up like this? I'm a firm believer that most people who are jerks don't actually know it, because it harms them a lot to not have solid networks and good reputations. I'm dealing with a jerk right now at work and we just got some feedback about the people who report to her and it's all pretty terrible and she's been here for a long time and I asked her closest colleague what's going on. He goes oh, no one tells her. No one's ever told this person what's going on and I said why not? Because she gets a little scary and defensive.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So it's like one sign that this is going to involve some conflict or a little bit of social finesse to maneuver around and everyone's like, no, thank you, they're not getting rewarded for giving her this feedback. They don't win. She's powerful. So they could actually lose social capital. And I think most of us walk into those conversations thinking I could lose a lot if this goes poorly. And what am I gaining really by being honest with this person?

Speaker 1: 22:04

And most feedback is delivered pretty poorly and it takes the form of what I just mentioned. It's things like you're not trustworthy or you're disrespectful and no one really knows what. Some of them are out to draw blood, but I think most of them aren't. They just aren't very socially perceptive either. They don't pick up on cues that maybe, like other people, are unhappy with them. Every jerk I've talked to because I've been brought in by a lot of companies to do de-jerkifying coaching and most of these people are actually like lovely and you're like I was expecting a monster and I'm just getting a sad person who is shocked the worst kind of thing.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Yeah, we talk about that all the time how the feedback just doesn't happen. Renee Brown's clear as kind is for a good reason and real time, and not just those big words, as you mentioned, but like actionable things that they can truly address, like clear feedback that's actionable, not just feelings. What's the worst kind of jerk that you've seen in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 23:16

The one that causes the most psychological damage, I would say, is the gaslighter.

Speaker 1: 23:21

And that is a word that like took on its own. It had its own moment. It's very much in the zeitgeist, but those are people who are lying with the intent to deceive on a pretty big scale and they socially isolate their victims. And so a lot of the people who've been gaslit. It's been going on for a very long time. They've been cut off from their social networks and also it's not always in the form of an insult, or you're not good enough or you're going to feel a lot of it's fiery feedback.

Speaker 1: 23:48

You're a special person. I'm only bringing in one member from the team to know about the super secret mission that we're on together. Before you know it, you've stolen company secrets and general counsel's at your door, but you had no idea. You thought you were a part of a super special secret mission. So I think people have a complicated emotional reaction to being gaslit, partly because there's a guilt that they have done some unethical things, that they felt silly, that they were talked into, and then they have no idea what other people actually think of them and who they can trust to to get an understanding of their reputation and they feel very lost and many of them, because of that, have so much trauma that they don't trust anyone ever again in any workplace. So for these folks this is really a traumatic experience. I think it's fairly rare to run into a true gaslighter. It's different than someone who lies, but that is a very damaging one.

Speaker 2: 24:40

Yeah, I've experienced that before, francesca, you have too, I think. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 24:45

Do you think a gaslighter is like pathological?

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, I think it's like access to personality disorder stuff. I think it's a lot of these are contextually based.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Jerks can be bred at work, but I feel like you have to have a special combination of some dark triad traits or whatever to really thrive, because and a lot of these gaslighters are quite good at their job- and they're very powerful and they're well-connected and they know how to frame up themselves to be protected from whatever they've asked you to do in aiding and abetting, and they usually walk out with pretty clean reputations at the end of the day and that's very frustrating for people. There's not like a sense of procedural justice.

Speaker 3: 25:29

One thing I've been having a hard time, and I am someone that is there's a special place in hell for women who don't support other women. That is my thing, and so it pains me to say this, because this is just my observation. What I have been trying to suss out, though, is most of the gaslighters I have met have been women, typically, I'd say 40 plus. I know there can be male gaslighters that are 18 years old like that, so that's fact right. What I've been trying to suss out, though, is how much of that type of behavior has been the world that they've grown up in and had to fight for and compete for in a male dominated world, yada, yada versus the pure pathology. And then where's the line where it's no, this is just who they are versus this is what they've been bred to?

Speaker 3: 26:10

do that's hard sometimes for me to suss out.

Speaker 1: 26:14

There's a lot of research on queen bee syndrome and things like that right, so you get these women in male dominated fields, and I'd also say that discrimination against women is there are no gender differences in who actually does it, and so people are like women shouldn't be discriminating against women. They do just as much as men do.

Speaker 1: 26:33

There are almost no documented kind of gender of the perceiver effects, meaning the person who does it. But when women do it, it stands out, it's much more salient and it also often takes more of a social aggression form, because the way women tend to be aggressive is much more sort of convoluted and social. And it starts when we're six years old and we learn these tactics of aggression through. Little boys hit each other, little girls gossip about each other, and there's a developmental trajectory of how we learn to be successfully aggressive that we can then take to work and the queen bees the women who've made it in these male-dominated fields. They have often suffered quite a lot. That they think earns them the right to then behave the same way. I have had a very similar experience where the people who I felt discriminated against me the most were more senior women who felt like they went through the gauntlet. It's now my turn and I need to just suck it up.

Speaker 1: 27:27

So there's a lot of kind of stereotypes about what one ought to do as a woman, when you're allowed to have babies, how you're supposed to behave and dress and no one's ever told me how to dress, except for other women showing up in job interviews. So I do think there's like a special dynamic that I think happens there with these women who have succeeded in these male dominated places.

Speaker 3: 27:47

Yeah, I like the term queen bee though, because I think that gives a nice frame for that, because it's hard Sometimes it's hard to assess. You talked about the gaslighter. In your book you write about other types of jerks at work and I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of this survey. What are the other types of jerks people meet at work?

Speaker 1: 28:05

My favorite is the kiss-up kick-downer, and this book is actually based on someone I worked with at Nordstrom's. This is why I love this person. They are very good at their job and they're super socially savvy, and so they're high on what we call status acuity. They can read the room. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can walk into a room and tell you who has status, who has respect and admiration and who doesn't. They can figure that out pretty quickly. So the boss tends to love them. They tend to be top performers, and if you are to complain that they are mistreating you so they kick down people at their level or beneath, you're going to get a lot of eye rolls and you're just jealous, and so they're very clever and savvy and Machiavellian and are able to get ahead through these kind of tricksy ways. They're very careful about who they gossip to and about, and they only do it in a very strategic way. And so if you have a workplace with a hierarchy which every workplace does these individuals tend to be very good at climbing up that hierarchy and then reading who has the status within that hierarchy. So that's my favorite.

Speaker 1: 29:04

I think some of the more straightforward ones are like the credit stealer who we are all probably pretty familiar with, and this person is also savvy. They tend to actually they don't just steal all their credit, they'll give you public credit for certain things so that when you then go complain it's much easier for them to say what am I talking about? I just gave them this whole speech publicly about all the hard work they've done. So credit stealers have a bulldozer type in my book as well. So this is a person who takes over meetings and agendas. They can usually work power structures behind the scenes, so you have a lot of things that end in an impasse and you're not quite sure why or what's happening, and these can all be team members.

Speaker 1: 29:43

And then I have two types of bosses. I have the micromanager, who I think most of us are familiar with, those insecure bosses that oversee all your work and they tend to do a lot but not get anything done. And then the neglectful boss, who, ironically, tends to also be a micromanager. So that's usually one person who oscillates between micromanagement and neglect. While they're micromanaging you, they're neglecting someone else, and so the neglect really gets operationalized as ignore, ignore, show up at the 11th hour, top-down control, change everything. Everyone freaks out, has a stress response and then they leave again for six months. So they go back and forth. So micromanager and neglectful boss are two people, but often one person.

Speaker 1: 30:27

And then the gaslighter who we just talked about.

Speaker 2: 30:37

I feel like I've encountered all of those in my career At the same time, sometimes all in one. I'm curious do you think every employee has been a jerk at work?

Speaker 1: 30:51

Yeah, if you've worked long enough, you are a jerk. We all have our own Achilles heel. We all have the worst version of ourselves that we can bring to work. And maybe that's a person who gets jealous and insecure and so it gets lashy outie. Or my son would say you're lashy outie. Or it's someone who feels like they need massive certainty and they're not getting it from their boss and so they hover over your Google page as you're working and they call you and you have to hide under your desk. I think we all have that version of us. When we get stressed and anxious, and some of us, that instinct is to try to overpower, to get that internal sense of control. Some of us disengage completely and become neglectful, and then some of us just have an inner instinct to be a little bit Machiavellian.

Speaker 1: 31:36

It's what we've seen, If you work in a law firm, anyone who's made partner probably is a little bit on that Machiavellian scale and thinks it's okay to kick down to climb ahead. And I think the key is just knowing what that ugliest version of you is on the inside so that you can then not make it go away but put steps in place structurally to prevent that person from coming out. But I do think we all have our inner jerk and that can be a different person at different stages of your career as well.

Speaker 1: 32:03

When you're more or less secure in a role versus completely overwhelmed, but plenty of security psychologically. But I'm a cynical person and I study the dark side of human nature and put people through really egregious social interactions to bring out the ugly version, because the nice version is not so interesting for me. But yes, I do think most of us have some inner jerk.

Speaker 2: 32:24

Yeah, I think it makes sense. Right, we're human beings, you show up that way. But I think, to your point, it's the self-awareness that's so critical, just knowing what that is what can come out. So how do you tame that, focusing on that? For employees, specifically, what are some of the ways that they can identify a jerk? Because, as you mentioned, there are covert jerks. They might not even realize that person's a jerk. And then there are some in your face jerks. One of my favorite things that you say is work jerkery, right, is this an environment full of work jerkery or not? Starting in the interview process, can they start to see that?

Speaker 1: 33:00

Yeah, I used to study first impressions. What can we get from the first 30 seconds? And actually thin slices of human behavior are actually pretty accurate predictors of the future. One thing is most work jerkery shows up a little bit ambiguous. In fact it is rare to say they're prejudiced. You don't you got to add up all these behavioral cues and then blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 33:27

Work jerks are a little bit like that, where you're going to have maybe a gut instinct that there's an ambiguous situation that could go either way. The first thing I tell people is do not just trust your instincts, that you can magically read what's going on in someone's mind simply by looking at their nonverbal behavior. I've done a lot of research on interpersonal accuracy and what it really takes to know what someone's thinking or feeling, and there is no magical thing. You simply have to ask, and in the case of work jerks or in an interview, you need to ask around. You need to ask networks of people. I think if you're interviewing for a job, you want to ask at stage two or three of the interview to not just talk to the hiring manager or your boss but to talk to their team members and to talk to people who've cycled out of their team at some point. You want to gather as much information as you can by people who have what's called non-overlapping social information, so they're not always in the same room at the same time with the person. They've known them at different time points in that person's career. They've known them at different jobs or on different teams and look for the signal and the noise there.

Speaker 1: 34:31

Don't trust your instinct based on what they say or their nonverbal behavior or whatever. Base it on data that you can collect. We aren't great at information gathering in an interview stage because we want to impress so badly that we just try to put our best foot forward and say the right things. But once you get far enough in the process, you should feel confident enough to ask for other connections of people and people who know those people to gain that kind of like reputational map of the individual.

Speaker 1: 34:53

What you're looking for is like cross situational consistency across these 15 different interactions, across these 15 people. When they're stressed, they do X, when they're relaxed, they do Y. And you need as much data as you can get because any one person could have a weird experience, and so you're just looking for some consistent patterns of behavior. But really don't trust your instinct. I think that's where most of us go wrong is oh, I saw them give me side eye, or they looked bored. I think they're a jerk. No, none of that stuff is actually predictive. Gather information from the networks of people in the interviews.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Okay.

Speaker 3: 35:25

Yeah, all of us with a resting bitch face appreciate that answer.

Speaker 1: 35:28

Thank you, I have an RBF. There's a science behind the RBF, folks. If your upper lip turns down when your elastic mind does, that gives you RBF. That's the magical ingredient, and so do we want to assume that everyone with a downturned upper lip is a bitch?

Speaker 2: 35:42

No, we do not. I was in a meeting once and I had a leader IME as I was presenting like fix your face.

Speaker 1: 35:49

I'm like what? That's not cool, that is bad behavior.

Speaker 2: 35:53

Yeah, I'm like I don't even know what's wrong with my face. I can't see it so cool, not helpful, yeah. Okay, I'm curious psychologically because you even mentioned something earlier. Some folks might not even ever recover from the damage that this does to them. Like, what are the long-term psychological impacts on the individual, but even teams and organizations? What happens when there's a culture of, like, jerk culture?

Speaker 1: 36:22

Yeah, I think people learn what it takes to get ahead, and the smart ones will do it, and so jerk cultures, beget jerk cultures. If a place is a place where jerks can thrive, then they will hire and they will stay there and they won't ever cycle out because nobody wants to recruit them outside of that place. And this happens with a lot of high performing jerks. There's a reason why snakes in suits is a phenomenon that we actually talk about that you get high up enough you become a little bit of a psychopath. That's not true for every organization, but it's really hard to correct an organizational cultural reputation. That can take years, and you can even wipe everyone out of the organization that was a jerk and hire a new, and it will still take forever.

Speaker 1: 37:05

We know from the science of social network and reputation spread that removing those people with a negative reputation actually does very little to change what people think of the network as a whole. And if you can think of organizations that have had Title IX issues or Me Too issues, simply getting rid of those people isn't sufficient. And it's because people know that firing is easy, but actually promoting from within and proving that you don't breed that is hard and that takes years and years. And a lot of organizations went through this with me too. They just fired all those executives that sent those nasty text messages or sexually harassed women or whatever.

Speaker 1: 37:49

That seems like too easy of a solution to most people. They think, well, why did that person get away with it for 20 years? I don't care that you're firing them now. And there's a bit of a moral licensing effect that happens. Okay, now you feel like you got rid of them. Now you're going to really go crazy because you checked off the box right, like you're feeling good about yourself, morality wise. So I think there is damage that can last years and decades. And to the individual, they're just going to be super sensitive for looking for anything that is similar to their past, jerk and even incidental similarities that have nothing to do with it or are going to cue them up. I've talked to people who go to the same hairdresser. I can't trust that person.

Speaker 1: 38:23

Or they're wearing a similar jacket or they went to the same university or are trained by the same manager 20 years ago. Incidental similarities loom large for us and we often see correlation and inferred causation from that, and so people will start to get a little bit too triggery with those things and it can really hold them back right. Or they develop lay theories about why that person treated them in a certain way that are not ever really tested or explored. But we just have our theories and then we believe them and they're idiosyncratic and we stick to them, and I think that can really lead us astray as well.

Speaker 3: 38:57

What do you do? What do you do if you have that person? Let's take my example. I have a reoccurring dream about this dumb person. I know what do I do you?

Speaker 1: 39:04

don't have any closure in that relationship. Did it just end one? I have this with like exes. It just ended one day and you never saw them. You never did the exit interview where you said all the things or it's really hard to let go of these. Like the social psychologists would call this a goal incompletion.

Speaker 3: 39:39

You didn't complete the goal of ending the relationship, and so it's this kind of subtle, incomplete goal that you have, like never jumping off a high dive, and so you're just going to perseverate on it, or it's going to like sneak into your subconscious every once in a while, and that's true for all things that we don't complete.

Speaker 3: 39:46

Should you call them up? Who is this? I don't even know who this is. No, it's super fair. Super fair, I think, even just knowing, look, it's going to pop in. That's it. Let's just know what's going to happen.

Speaker 1: 39:51

I still dream about, like people from sixth grade that I feel like I didn't have like closure on, and that's normal. It's actually totally normal. It doesn't mean that this person is still haunting you in any meaningful way. It just means that there was something incomplete that you are not able to fully move on from because you just didn't finish the goal of ending that relationship in some kind of formalized way. And that's how most relationship ends. I think that's like just how relationships are. We don't usually have some kind of light switch that goes off where it's done. It's just like a lot of ambivalence, a lot of feelings that go up and down, and then eventually we move on. But what does move on me? I don't. Yeah, it means you're still dreaming about the person, but you're functional, so it's nice.

Speaker 3: 40:34

A thousand percent. I'm glad I'm not the only one, though, so I appreciate it.

Speaker 2: 40:37

Just write them a letter saying all the things you need to say and throw it into a fire and release it.

Speaker 1: 40:43

She's going to be dreaming about the fire and talk to the fire to get the letter back Will be a worse nightmare than it started as.

Speaker 2: 40:52

Okay, scratch that All right. So with say, you're in a new job, it's the first 90 days and you're like, oh shit, I thought I did my due diligence in the interview process. I talked to people but it is clear no one gave me the real story here. What can people do? What do you do to protect yourself if you start to identify work-jerkery happening?

Speaker 1: 41:19

I think, first off, a lot of people try to go at this alone. They think that the negative treatment happens in a vacuum. And I think I've done a lot of research on what it's like to be a newcomer at work and newcomer status and the newcomer hump, and knowing what that hump is will help you strategize of what to do next. The first thing is, when you're a newcomer and you experience this, you assume that everyone around you knows it's happening and they don't care. And so first you actually need to test that assumption. Probably people don't know what's happening because they're in their own world. There's not actually an awareness of what you're up to and how you're being treated by other people, even if it happens in a meeting. Most of us spend most of our time in meetings rehearsing what we want to say next, and we almost never pay attention to what other people are actually saying. So we can remember what we said and when we were interrupted. But if you were to say, hey, mel, did you interrupt your buddy Tom, or when was he interrupted? You'd be like I don't know. All I know is when I was interrupted. So I feel like we have these spotlight effects on ourselves, so you need to break that a little bit and actually break that assumption that everyone knows what's happening except for you.

Speaker 1: 42:26

There's also a lot about norms in the workplace and hidden norms and things like that you probably aren't aware of, and so the best thing to do to learn about norms of treatment of people at work is to take what's implicit and make it explicit and just explicitly ask about how people ought to be treated.

Speaker 1: 42:41

And that sounds silly and dumb, but there could be a culture of sarcasm here or a culture of treating each other a little roughly. That is just does not sit with you well and you need to know if you're being mistreated or if this is just a normative way people act around here. I remember in academia we make people go through this like terrible two day interview process and there's a job talk that's an hour long and in some microcultures you can interrupt every three seconds and that's a good sign. It shows engagement and others. If you interrupt every three seconds, that means you're done, that means they hated the talk, and so we often have these little microcultures at work that we assume are bigger and more industry-wide than they actually are, so people could be assuming that you understand a norm that you don't because it's weirder and more idiosyncratic than they even realize.

Speaker 1: 43:28

And this is even true for jargon at work. People assume everyone in an industry uses jargon. Jargon is team-based. The five people are using the same weird words. So you want to just test your assumptions around that If it is widespread and everyone agrees it's okay behavior and you don't like that, that's your red flag. You are not going to change the whole organization and get them to all behave differently. So those are like the two key pieces of this job is probably not going to work out for you.

Speaker 1: 43:53

Widespread and everyone's okay with it, not okay with it not widespread, then you have hope. Then you can proactively work with your network or your boss or whatever. But almost everyone assumes behavior is both more widespread and more acceptable than probably others realize and they're shocked when they hear about it and a little bit surprised. So test those assumptions before you jump ship and start something else. But it is pretty normal to think you're hired into one culture and show up and get something different. I'll say all that with one major exception being. A huge problem that came up during COVID and still happening is engagement issues. You thought this would be a really engaged workplace where everyone was on board and they were active and they were in, and then you show up and like literally no one is there. That is a really tough kind of cultural level of disengagement or neglect. That is hard to fix and I wouldn't try to take that particular issue on.

Speaker 2: 44:44

What if it's your boss in those first 90 days?

Speaker 1: 44:48

Yeah, you can talk to other team members to see how they're being treated. But my favorite lay of the land networking reality check tactic for bosses is you don't want to go to your boss's boss, you want to go up and over. You want to find people who know your boss, who are at the same level as them, and so they can give you insight into this treatment. No-transcript, I have all these kinds of like little tricksy rules based on marital therapy of how to do it. But before you're even there, you want to know oh, is this what all middle managers do, or is this just mine? Going two levels up is a little bit difficult, but up and over at their level in the network is useful to just get feedback from other bosses who have a similar role as yours.

Speaker 2: 46:00

I really like that because then you're comparing and you have data to compare it against, and it isn't just the assumption that your boss is the problem, so to speak. Not saying their behavior is great if it's common either.

Speaker 1: 46:13

But yeah, but you want to know. I think when people are like, how do I know if the jerk problem is too much, I, my first question is how widespread is it? How culturally normative is it? Are they hiding their behavior Cause they know it's bad, which is a good sign for you, because that means this organization doesn't actually like it. It's so scary to deal with, but that's a good sign that it's not just the whole well has been poisoned, it's just this one person. And is it OK to give any kind of feedback to bosses and some organizations? They have a very tight hierarchy and it's completely unacceptable to ever have a real conversation with your boss that is not just about your own career path and your own performance, but about theirs. So you want a place that actually does like bite-sized, normal conversation, organic feedback across all levels.

Speaker 2: 46:59

I know we're talking about like how leaders can manage this one-on-one with folks on their team. But what do they do if they see that the team is developing this culture of jerkery together? What can they do to address it without killing?

Speaker 1: 47:15

morale on the team or trust within the team. I think you know I teach this little program called the tricky situations, and it's just a bunch of these workplace dynamics and one of them is I actually give people an example of a situation like this where you think you know who the jerk is. Bob is constantly taking on the work of senior people. It seems like there's a free rider problem at work. Why is Bob doing everyone's work, even though he's the most junior person? How do you deal with this potential free ride problem? And half the people will come to me and say, oh, clearly these senior people are taking advantage of Bob and they're offloading work. And the other half will say, oh, I've had a lot of Bobs before. These are these go-getter junior people who steal the work of senior people in an effort to climb up, and they do this in a systematic way. And so we have our lay theories of who the actual jerk is in the situation. But we should probably test that out a little bit.

Speaker 1: 48:10

I don't love the idea of bringing people in one by one and interrogating them and asking them what's going on. I actually more like to keep track of the structure of things who's doing work and when Was this work you were assigned to do or not? Let's talk about the feedback interactions you're having and focus on the little behaviors and work together with everyone as a group. One-on-one meetings end up with conspiratorial thinking often, and sometimes you eventually have to get to that, especially if HR is involved. But you want to hear. You want your whole team to hear one message from you at the same time and not assuming that the jerk is the high status person or the low status person or you even know what's going on. So I'd say, like a lot of information gathering and put your stereotypes aside of what you think is happening before you do. But I do think that teams that there's a lot of structures and systems that we can put in place to prevent jerks and not allowing things like informal networking behind the scenes to pull levers of power good old boys club networking, things like that that used to work to get people's way and so far as we continue to reinforce that and we don't have real procedural justice around rules and decision making, I think we're in trouble.

Speaker 1: 49:15

And I'd also say for bosses and leaders, if you want to make a jerk free place and you want to prevent Machiavellianism and things like that on your teams. You need to lay out super clearly what the structure is for determining raises and promotions at your organization, down to things like certain bosses don't have the status and power to do it until they've been here for five years Really clear. And then I'd say the other thing is we need more failure pipeline data so that when we aren't promoted or when we're not succeeding, we're not bitter about it. We don't start to engage in kiss up, take down behavior to get ahead. We understand that it takes five times to get this promotion and we're only on time three or we know who our social comparison others are.

Speaker 1: 49:54

So there's procedural justice around decisions that don't often favor us, because what happens when people aren't getting ahead is that's when they turn to this jerk behavior to try to do whatever it takes. And transparency, I think, can move mountains with just explaining to people, even if they don't like the rules. If they understand them, they're less likely to turn to jerk behavior to get ahead, and that's usually where we see it actually to get their way to get ahead, to pull levers of power. That's where most people turn into jerks at work.

Speaker 2: 50:20

We can see that Francesca and I talk often about the power of transparency in the workplace, because you're removing the confusion for folks immediately and they don't have to fill in the blanks and suddenly they're in survival mode every single day because they don't know what the story is or they don't have clarity on the situation. So now it's just an unsafe environment. Do you think organizations are doing enough to address jerks at work?

Speaker 1: 50:45

No, they wait till the problem crops up and then they play whack-a-mole. There's not a lot of prevention. Think about this through the lens of healthcare. Right, we wait for the heart attack to happen and then it's time to lose weight. There's not a lot of prevention and early detection and conversations to see the early red flags, to see their warning signs, and I think that's just because most of us don't know, and often the early red flags are not what ends up being the problem later. Those early signs are not often perfectly aligned with what ends up getting you reported to HR. Anxiety and stress and feeling overwhelmed is often an early red flag of micromanagement. But that could be anything. So I don't think so. I think people talk about it a lot, but they don't do a lot to actually address the issue. One of the dark reasons why is because a lot of these jerks are high performers.

Speaker 3: 51:32

At the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 51:33

We are very much yoked to performance metrics and that if you have a board, they care about that. If you're publicly traded, that's what matters, Not nice people, not so-called soft skills. And so there's good reason for people to just say I don't care about all this stuff. I have to answer the board and if our numbers stay low, I don't care. That we have jerks, we can't afford this. Bring in the Machiavellian people who will bring our numbers back up. Sorry, that was a little bit dark.

Speaker 2: 52:00

We've seen it.

Speaker 3: 52:05

Yeah, I know, there's the whole Gary Veer chat. If your best-selling salesperson is a total asshole, go in and fire him tomorrow. No one's doing that, and you can absolutely do the long-term analysis of how much that is costing you by having someone be a jerk right Turnover and we know all the stats. But that's a long-term play and we live a quarter mile at a time in corporate America. Okay, all right, tessa, we do this with all our guests. It's called Rapid Round. They're quick, short answers. They're meant to be fun. Are you ready to play Tessa? Sure, okay, six questions, so no pressure. In your opinion, who's the biggest jerk of all time?

Speaker 1: 52:52

Donald Trump, is that basic?

Speaker 3: 52:56

Depends on who you talk to that guy. Oh, that guy.

Speaker 1: 53:02

Yeah, that guy. There's no redeeming qualities, there's just not.

Speaker 3: 53:07

I can't, I can't, I can't, can't, I can't, I can't believe I know, okay, yeah we're here again. We're here here we are here, we are, here, we are, and this is why I'm looking for eu citizenship. So, looking at property in italy, looking at property in spain, just in case shit hits the fan, there you go all right, I right, I have a Canadian husband.

Speaker 1: 53:27

I'm good, I'm covered.

Speaker 3: 53:30

Nice, excellent move, excellent. Toronto's looking really good these days. That's so funny.

Speaker 1: 53:38

What's the fastest way to identify a jerk in the workplace Ask around, just ask around. Don't trust your instincts. Gather data.

Speaker 3: 53:46

What's the best one-liner response to a jerk's rude comment?

Speaker 1: 53:50

When someone's rude to you and I wish I could go back and do this the last time someone did something awful to me that I just met I would say how many other people have you said that to?

Speaker 3: 53:59

Oh, I love that.

Speaker 1: 54:04

That's great. It's a good zinger and it really gives you the power back and makes it look like you're just judging them for the behavior. But you're not internalizing it. Oh, that is the shit.

Speaker 3: 54:16

How many people have you said that? To Just give me goosebumps. I'm like, oh, that's good.

Speaker 1: 54:19

That's very good I love that. I love that For more mean girl advice, come to me yeah.

Speaker 3: 54:26

So awesome. What's the best way to get subtle revenge on a workplace jerk without getting caught?

Speaker 2: 54:31

Does that just make you the jerk?

Speaker 1: 54:33

Yeah, this is an easy one, guys. You make friends with building maintenance and you either make sure their trash never gets taken out again or you make their office incredibly hot or incredibly cold. Attack the creature comforts. Those are actually what stresses us out the most at work, and the best way to get someone to quit a job is to move their office somewhere uncomfortable or take away their parking spot. Whoa, I know how to get people to retire. That won't retire. It's parking spot and inconvenience office and a faraway bathroom that's in a weird spot or an office next to the bathroom.

Speaker 1: 55:10

Either too close or too far.

Speaker 3: 55:14

It's so simple and so brilliant. Yeah, what's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to workplace behavior? What's the one thing you're just like? Come on.

Speaker 1: 55:22

Trash talking on social media Slack or email, but will hide from you in person. I hate it when people do that. If you're gonna do it, just own it. Just do it to my face it takes a special kind of spinelessness to do that read about me and then, yeah, not, but work right next to me as you're tweeting about me I know a place that will uh mail that person poo.

Speaker 3: 55:47

I will send you that address. Just trope load if you need that. Okay, if you could give just one piece of advice to someone dealing with a difficult coworker, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 55:57

You are not alone. You're probably the 500th victim of this particular person, so don't feel like you're being isolated. Most jerks actually isolate people and make them feel very alone and that there's something wrong with them. You're not. You are probably the 500th person on the receiving end of this jerk. The best thing you can do is ask around and figure out how many. But I think that sort of feeling stupid and alone is the shame that comes along with being victimized by jerks. That we often don't talk about, especially if you're new at work and you feel like you're being bullied.

Speaker 1: 56:29

It's like back in school. Why am I being bullied? It's not about you, it's about them.

Speaker 3: 56:34

Yeah, it's nice to frame it that way, because you can honestly almost get a little bit more objective about the situation and what you can do to get yourself into a healthier place, if you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you place. If you know that's what this person is like and it's not about you. It's been so lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. Of course, this is so fun you guys are awesome.

Speaker 1: 57:00

I love the vibe of this. I feel like I need a drink of prosecco or something in my weird cubicle right now.

Speaker 2: 57:06

Delicious. Next time, next time, come back.

Speaker 3: 57:14

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at friend@yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and, if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends and checkout yourworkfriends.com.

Speaker 2: 57:29

We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends.

Socioeconomic Status Impacts to Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Socioeconomic Impacts to Work with Brayden Olson

Class isn’t invisible…

It shows up in how we speak, how we network, how we navigate work—and who gets hired. In this episode, we sit down with Brayden Olson, co-founder of Almas Insight and author of Twilight of the Idols, to expose how socioeconomic status silently shapes career access, confidence, and opportunity. From college applications to job interviews, we unpack the unspoken class system baked into our workplaces—and what it will take to finally level the playing field.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

the most significant determinant of someone's future is how much money they were born into, and it's not even close. So when you compare it to race and gender and sexual orientation and all of the other statistics that we have invested a lot of infrastructure in protecting for it doesn't even come close to the amount of advantage that people are experiencing based on wealth inequality.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Hey friends, we're excited because we have Brayden Olson with us. Brayden has had a long and successful career in the tech and human development space. In 2022, they became the co-founder of Amis Insight Inc. A company backed by Learn Capital that quickly and objectively measures human capability at scale. In 2019, they joined Deloitte as the Enduring Human Capability Center of Excellence lead, leading a team of passionate people about better understanding of human potential and how orgs can be even more effective by fostering that human potential. That's also where I had the pleasure of working with Brayden. Brayden also has a very deep background in game design. He was an NSF grant recipient for work in this field and has designed games to better understand human behavior. He worked with to pass legislation relevant to economic inequality the Washington Jobs Act in Washington State and he received a pen from the governor. So, brayden, welcome to the podcast. We're so happy to have you here. You've had quite the journey, so we'd love to just hear about your journey. Tell us more about how you got started in this space.

Speaker 1: 1:52

My pleasure to be here, so great to be with some fellow Deloitte alumni. The way I like to talk a little bit about my journey. It's always easy to talk about the end state or the successes or the accomplishments. I really like to get the message out there. The reason I'm here today has a lot to do with where I came from.

Speaker 1: 2:11

My educational journey was hard so I didn't have money for school. I had to get basically a government program that helps Washington students go to school, basically get their associate's degree through community colleges first before going on to a four-year degree. I had to overload all my classes. I ended up graduating with my four-year degree 18 months after I graduated from high school, working in the school cafeteria and I barely made it right. I was on two-thirds merit scholarship, public subsidy, the whole thing. We'll get into it, but it's part of why I care about this stuff so much.

Speaker 1: 2:47

I went through a period where every day was looking at my bank account and thinking did I get another overdraft fee? Can I afford to eat this meal? There was a time before getting financing for my first company where I was like I don't have money to eat, I can't go get a sandwich and I always want to make the point my parents did absolutely the best for me that they could. There is nothing that they didn't do for me that they could do, so I don't want that to get mixed at all. The fact that I went on to become an author and a researcher and an entrepreneur at all is something that I am grateful for every day, and that was a hair's breadth from never happening. So that's the way I like to tell my journey and why I care about this stuff.

Speaker 2: 3:35

Yeah, it's incredibly important and powerful right, because that's what's really powering you behind all of this initiative and it makes sense. It's tough. We've been there, francesca, and I talk about it often that early, early days of just the struggle bus when you're getting started and it being really difficult. And I have a very similar background to you, brayden, so for me your work is also really important. I just think giving people the opportunity that you had to really struggle to find is incredibly important. We're here today to talk about socioeconomic bias. You've written a book about it. You've built technology to help eliminate it. What is socioeconomic bias? Explain it to someone like they're five. What is it at the most basic definition level?

Speaker 1: 4:19

Yeah, I'll say it personally and then I'll say it more technically. When I went through that process I just described and I said I was so close to none of these things ever happening, I went back and I did the numbers and if I had been two years younger, the increased cost of tuition would have meant that none of this would have ever happened in my life. I would have ran out of money for food before I became an entrepreneur and anything subsequent to happen to that. So what socioeconomic biases mean is, you know, put you in the same role that were, but a couple of years later and all of a sudden you become a different person. You can't make it. Those doors closed for you.

Speaker 1: 4:59

This is an active and progressive issue. Now, in a more general sense, society can be structured so that an individual's fate is based on their contributions or on their endowments, in other words, what they bring to the table and what they do for others, or what they started with. And socioeconomic inequality is what kind of a culture do you want to live in? One that's a feudalist culture you're inherited into whatever your life is going to be, or one where your ambition and capability and talent are what drive those outcomes?

Speaker 2: 6:05

no-transcript. Something that really hit me hard was that story that came out about celebrities who were paying for their kids to get into those prestigious schools when they didn't have the merit or do the work to do it. And you just think, oh my God, that's just so unfair to so many people that these little kind of backdoor entries into these institutions exist even.

Speaker 3: 6:38

But Mel, the Full House mom's daughter, was an influencer, so we could talk a lot about being on the rowing team and I wrote at UConn, so I was like even that's fake.

Speaker 2: 6:47

It made me so angry, but so I just. I really think this is such a critical topic because it does. It starts in in the education space, which we know. Education and higher education isn't the only path to success right in the world today. However, that is a big path to success and opportunity, and when there's five padlocks to get through those doors, you can't even get into the workplace because it starts with the education piece. So it's just yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:19

Can I give you an unfun?

Speaker 2: 7:19

fact. Oh, please do, please share.

Speaker 1: 7:23

This is unfortunately an unfun one, but so I was doing a little research on this recently myself. I was talking with someone who's from a different generation and we were talking about what's changed, and he'd gone to Harvard himself and he was aghast to know that now there's this industry built around graduate advisors. And you would think what's a graduate advisor? Oh, if you get your master's, you have a graduate advisor who helps you get ready for your PhD. No, these are private graduate advisors. Use them for applying to master's programs or undergraduate programs, and they're admission officers that then sell their services to help you prepare your essay, your extracurriculars, what clubs you should say that you belong to, exactly what to say in your application. What they're looking for and what they promise is for $25,000, 90% or higher rates of acceptance into your top three schools of your choice. So, regardless of merit or background or current level of education, they can get 90% of the people they help, or above, placed in one of their top three schools in the world.

Speaker 2: 8:30

That's the system, unreal, because they're admission counselors and they have that network. How is that not a conflict of interest?

Speaker 1: 8:37

Yeah, so it's admission counselors who just left the admission board and it is a conflict of interest and the implication is but they don't have any insight today. They're not in touch with the colleagues that just rolled into the admission office. I don't believe that personally, especially with those rates of success. But that is the idea, is that it's not quite illegal because they are not currently the admission officers.

Speaker 3: 9:01

I like to frame that under hashtag bullshit.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Unreal, 100%, all right and we know this is rampant in education but say you made it through those hurdles. You have your education. Now You're ready to go out into the working world. How does this show up in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 9:19

I'm going to answer that, but I just have to like say but the premise is, how many people are making those hurdles? I think we really think there's so many more people who are able to get through an educational system, but it's what? Third? A third of people get through, and most of it is financially derived now. So I just want to say those are big hurdles. It's hard to get to the other side, but once you get to the other side, they're going to show up.

Speaker 1: 9:47

There was a scandal a couple of years ago that I actually think is maybe one of the best things that could have happened.

Speaker 1: 9:53

That has happened, which was Amazon created an algorithm completely de-biased, objective algorithm, in theory that was just meant to basically look through people's resumes and indicate, you know, who should be brought in for interview, and when they set the AI to look at the commonalities in the resume, what they found is that the people they had and the people that they were bringing in were from the same schools, from the same clubs, from the same associations, and so the same is true for birds of a feather flock together, right?

Speaker 1: 10:30

So if your senior boss went to the same alma mater that you do and I don't want to make it just about school but is in the same club as you. Right, you're in the golf club. Together. That is going to influence your career, and so, at every step, at every juncture, we place people that we have connection and familiarity to. So, even after the schooling is done, it's what clubs and associations you block to, which, again, are related to how much money you have. Right, you don't belong to the golf club and you don't belong to the Columbia Tower Club. You don't belong to the St James Club, unless you're already wealthy enough to be there.

Speaker 2: 11:09

I worked in talent acquisition for years prior to getting into talent development and that is absolutely rampant in organizations where it's.

Speaker 2: 11:19

These are the schools that our people are from, they're alumni.

Speaker 2: 11:23

These are our main campuses that we're gonna focus our time and attention to and there are a lot of services that come with that relationship, because internal talent acquisition teams at organizations typically build deep relationships with the programs at those schools career services offices, they provide workshops, they provide interview prep. You're providing all of these free services and connection and relationship with those quote unquote chosen schools. And then you have what we would call essentially these are the fringe schools and the time and effort and resources aren't really put into recruiting from those schools unless someone's really pushing for it, and it used to be just mind boggling to me like how much talent are we missing out on? Because you will only prioritize these 10 schools and we have 30 that we can choose from, with exceptional candidates coming out of all of them. But if it's between two candidates, there's this preference for someone that comes from one of those known schools. I know that's changing and there's a lot of good discussion around that today, but it's definitely hard to see and hard to work through.

Speaker 1: 12:35

You might actually have this data point better than I do. I just generally say how many people get jobs going through the standard, apply for it on the website, submit your resume, get called on the basis of your resume, and how many people get jobs because they know someone at that company. Right In my mind, the most common way and I'd love to hear your expertise on it. But referrals are socioeconomic bias. Inherently they know you because you are in a social sphere to know them, whether that was from your parents or from your school or from your social club or from your church. That is inherently the system and I again, you might know the numbers better, but I would imagine it's pretty high the number of people who get in through a referral.

Speaker 2: 13:23

Yeah, we have obviously nepotism rules that you need to follow to avoid that bias and try to get ahead of bias taking place just in terms of standards. But you could definitely feel the unspoken pressure right of this person in particular really wants them to come in for this internship and at times, yeah, you're like what the hell, man, I don't want to be part of this choice or this conversation, and referrals are definitely a way that it at least gets your foot in the door for a screening interview the majority of the time.

Speaker 3: 13:58

And referrals. When you're in the organization, they're incented. We were offered thousands of dollars If we found someone from our network and they were hired into those organizations. We would get thousands of dollars for that. It's not even just a hey, could you refer this person in it's? You're financially incented to do that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:22

Yeah, and on one hand seems harmless.

Speaker 3: 14:26

Seems like it yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:28

It seems very efficient. It cuts down on the time of potentially finding good candidates right, because that takes time and money. I always go back to it. Started with positive intent but quickly got dark.

Speaker 1: 14:39

Exactly.

Speaker 3: 14:42

Why are we all white guys named Chad Exactly?

Speaker 2: 14:45

Why are we all?

Speaker 1: 14:46

white guys named Chad. We were all part of the rowing club.

Speaker 3: 14:50

You went to University of Illinois too. Oh my God yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:54

I accidentally made it on the rowing team. My friends will tell you.

Speaker 3: 14:57

How do you accidentally make it? How do you accidentally Listen?

Speaker 2: 15:00

it was a dare to try out. It was like a fluke thing and I'll just yeah anyway, but then it was awesome. With everything, there are misconceptions on topics. So what are some common misconceptions that people often think about? Socioeconomic bias in general and then in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 15:36

I'm going to respond to that question with a question, and this is a little bit of a hot take on my part, or I want to say a hot take. It's really sound in the data, but there's a lot to talk about here. So my question is what do you think are some of the most common biases that we talk about in workplaces today, or that we create policies around?

Speaker 3: 15:56

Race gender, age, sexual orientation, religion.

Speaker 1: 16:03

Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot we talk about in this field. So there's some great research just three years ago out of Georgetown that shows the most significant determinant of someone's future is how much money they were born into, and it's not even close. So when you compare it to race and gender and sexual orientation and all of the other statistics that we have invested a lot of infrastructure in protecting for it doesn't even come close to the amount of advantage that people are experiencing based on wealth inequality. So the common misconception is this is not as big of a deal as it really is.

Speaker 2: 16:44

I believe that, though, because we have an unspoken class system in the US, I like to say we don't have this caste or class system here, or you often hear, oh, middle class, what does this truly mean? But it does feel like people have their stations and it gets harder and harder to climb to the next level, and there's this misconception that you can do anything if you just pull up your breech straps. You've been going and work hard, but it is not the case.

Speaker 1: 17:17

That is what the economic data tells us.

Speaker 3: 17:20

I think because there's a money thing to it. There's also to me. I grew up upper middle class. I remember I had someone very close to me that their parents had immigrated to this country and he was eight when he immigrated and I remember we were both in grad school and I was going into corporate. My parents were both corporate, his parents worked in factories and we had this discussion around navigating corporate and that I knew what to do because my parents were helping me navigate all of this stuff. There was a language that I inherently grew up with and understood, that was absolutely foreign to him, and it was the first time in my life where I was like, oh wow, it's a money and opportunity piece. It's also a unwritten language of how do you even navigate college applications, how do you navigate social crap that happens when you're in these circles or not. It's all of that.

Speaker 2: 18:17

It's all of that with Francesca and I talk about it all the time because we're like, wow, this experience was way different. But like you, brayden, and to your point, francesca, similarly I did not have that guidance. It was a financial aid officer at UConn that helped me fill out my FAFSA, because my parents didn't help me do it. And then I remember my first job interview. I didn't realize you had to wear a suit because I didn't have parents to teach me. They were like telling me that guidance and I borrowed a friend's suit to interview because I was rejected by three jobs because I showed up in a button down shirt and pants and it wasn't a formal suit and I was like, what's the problem? Why does that matter? And I didn't even own a suit and I didn't have the money to buy a suit, so I borrowed one just to have that first interview.

Speaker 1: 19:10

Yeah, I would love to amplify because you're exactly right, it's all of these subtle and small things we don't even think about. And then there's this level deeper let's talk about, like how a person perceives themselves in the world, confidence, what their worth, what their inherent worth is as a human being. And when they study this they're like they can do the standardized tests on kids young and they'd be like this kid's in the top 10 percentile in terms of math capability, but bottom 10 percentile in terms of economics, and what happens? So they see that their scores go down and down and down Right, and the other kids scores go up, and part of that is the tutors that the parents can afford, but the other part of that is one of these kids is getting affirmation.

Speaker 1: 19:53

One of these kids is being told that they're worth something and that they're loved and that they're valued. And that adds up in how, like, I'm going to take it all the way to the workplace, right? So you have that kid who starts out like always feeling they're super talented, they're super capable, and they always feel behind and they're always made to feel not enough or not as good as their peers. Are they asking for promotions when they're 25 and when they're 30 and when they're 35? Or are they just happy to be there if they succeeded in being anywhere? And so there's, like this inner confidence and value and self-worth and problem of caste systems, as you said, you know.

Speaker 2: 20:31

Yeah, it sounds like there's a lifelong kind of issue there where they're not going to ask for those opportunities or feel they're worth going after them. So, man, we could probably talk about two hours I'm like oh, there's so much to uncover, how, how does this, or does it even differ between industries or professions Is there? Is it more rampant in certain professions over others, or have you found that it's pretty much across the board?

Speaker 1: 21:02

Well, it's going to sound like good news. It's not across the board, but the bad news is it's directly proportional to how much status, money, privilege, come with that position. So the more desired the position, the more socioeconomic barriers will be an impediment If you want to be a CEO, or you want to be a senator, or you want to be an astronaut, or you want to be if it has power, and so you can see this again. I've done some of my own research more recently and my own personal experience with graduate programs, so it's fresh on my mind. I don't want to keep going back there, but the families that are wealthy want their kids to go get a medical degree, get a law degree, get a business degree, get an engineering degree. These are going to be inherently more competitive and bought and purchased programs. Someone going for a fine arts degree? I don't know, there's probably not a lot of low economic people that are trying to go to a four-year school to get a fine arts degree, but it's more competitive the more money is associated with the role.

Speaker 3: 22:06

I'm laughing because my undergrad was in Italian printmaking, which is etching on copper plates. Again, I made really dumb shit decisions. Sorry, yeah, I'm laughing. Oh, yeah, oh my god was that about privilege I'm gonna come for?

Speaker 1: 22:26

I'm here for the joke, yeah but it's yeah, I love it and yeah, yeah, it's, yeah, it's good, we need to care about the issue. We need to laugh too, because that's how you do with this stuff. It's good, we need to care about these issues. We need to laugh too, because that's how you deal with this stuff. It's sad, yeah.

Speaker 2: 22:39

I love that we're having this conversation and we can joke about it, right, because, okay, what can we do to make it better? That's the ultimate goal, and talking about it helps bring awareness. I think even just sharing our personal stories about what was your experience like can be really eye-opening of how different Back I remember when I was younger, I knew there was a difference, but I didn't realize how much. And it's these stories as I get older, with peers and friends and talking about it, where you're like holy shit, how do you change this? How?

Speaker 3: 23:07

do you change it? Brayden? One of the things you talked about earlier was this idea of confidence from an individual. What is the long-term impact of socioeconomic bias on individuals? One of those impacts could be on the confidence piece, but what have you found in terms of what are some of the other long-term impacts of this, as people are going through their career.

Speaker 1: 23:29

Okay, let's take it step by step. I think that self-worth thing develops early. I think whether you can afford to get an education which a majority of people won't. So these are big barriers each time. So, whether you can afford to, can you get into a prestigious one? Do you have the with the right people in the right ways especially now with the remote work outside of work, in your social clubs and golf clubs and whatever to get promoted more quickly as you go through your career? For most people that's about promotions.

Speaker 1: 24:09

I do want to take a slight turn and say a lot of these people don't do it through the traditional career workforce. Right, they might go on to be politicians or celebrities or. But I'm an entrepreneur. A lot of people are trying to move in that direction now and that is highly correlated. Whether the people that can make your company successful I how deep do I want to get into this, there's so much I can say being able to get money for your company is completely who. You know, I sit in these different meetings, so I see both perspectives very clearly.

Speaker 1: 24:44

For people who go in and pitch to VCs and the VC doesn't know who that person is, is a button down professional pitch, super nuts, they are going to talk about the business and they're probably going to get a no. If the VC knows the person and again, I sit in on these calls they say, oh, nevermind, don't worry about the pitch. Yeah, how are we going to get this done? Verbatim, how are we going to structure this deal? Which of our friends are we bringing in on it?

Speaker 1: 25:11

Which? Which influencers are we going to tap for this one? Oh, it's like the other one we did right, so let's tap this one and this one. So it's everywhere. And so they might do it within promotions, they might do it by trying to be an entrepreneur or start their own business. They're still going to count it. And I think the longest term implication, and the one that we need to be the most concerned about and talk the most about, is that the impact of socioeconomic inequality on that person's life is also going to be the primary determinant of the success of their child's life and their child's life. It's like generational at this point.

Speaker 3: 25:49

Yes, I just read a study that one of the greatest impacts on a child's happiness and their well-being is actually how happy the mother is. Did you see that?

Speaker 1: 26:00

Which makes sense.

Speaker 1: 26:01

So there's a great book called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which is written by one of the greatest addiction experts in the world, and in that book he talks about all of this research and about basically what leads to addiction.

Speaker 1: 26:19

His point is amazing, which is we're all oriented to addiction and we all have some form of addiction. The question is, how much do we express it? And that has to do with how much we suffer, love the message. But his point on this mother thing is he says that the number one determinant, or the most impactful determinant around whether someone will become a drug addict is the abnormalities that they have in their serotonin and dopamine production, because basically, people who have abnormalities will have different experiences with drugs, where it's like they really don't feel normal without them, and the primary determinant of that is how much eye contact they have with the mother between the ages of one and three and what were her stress levels. And so then you think about that and it's which mothers are with their children constantly between one and three and don't have stress or have the least amount of stress.

Speaker 3: 27:14

When I think about some of the highest stressors that people face too money, if you are feeling like you're living paycheck to paycheck or you're on the verge of homelessness that amount of stress, in addition to raising children, in addition to trying to be a partner or a spouse or a daughter, a son, a sibling, it's incredible. That's an incredible amount of stress. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:35

And working right. And the other thing we didn't say is how many families can either parent but one of the parents afford not to work? That's a wealth option. Yes, yeah.

Speaker 3: 27:49

That's from a For those folks that have gone through all of those hurdles. I'm looking at two of them that have gone through that and come out very successful as well. Are there advantages Meaning are you stronger minded, right, or something of this sort? Do you find that there's better skills coming out of that or no? Is this a bad?

Speaker 2: 28:11

this is a weird question but you get where I'm going with this. No, it's not a weird question.

Speaker 1: 28:15

I did a talk on resilience and we talked about what breeds resilience and there's lots of things metacognition and lots of things are really important to talk about. One of the really important things is how much have you been through? And if you can reference back to oh, I've been through harder times than this right, that's the easiest way to be resilient. I did that. I can survive this right. So resilience is directly proportional to how much someone goes through and experiences. I think empathy is a muscle that you're gonna grow, because it's easy to see, when you almost don't make it, why someone else might not have made it, and that not being a reflection of their inadequacies or, um, in game build lack of capable. I think it's a really relevant consideration. I think the problem is that you never really know where you would have gotten without the barriers, so you can't really compare to who you would have been and I can't say whether it would have been better or worse.

Speaker 3: 29:19

In a way that's true for everybody Right have you ever seen the? Movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow. What was that, Mel? From like 1994? I have no idea. I think so. Yeah, I love that movie. Brady, do you know the premise of this movie?

Speaker 1: 29:31

I don't, you'll have to tell me.

Speaker 3: 29:33

You're like really, this is what we're talking about. So the premise of the movie is Gwyneth Paltrow. Basically, she takes one subway or she takes another subway, and depending on which subway she takes, her life just ends up completely different. Like it's that question of if I would have just taken path A, how would my life be different? The answer is that question, but it also begs an interesting question In order to gain empathy, or resilience too, do people have to go through hardship in order to get? That Is a different question. Curious about impact, so we talked about it at the individual, I am wondering how this might impact work, culture or impact a team.

Speaker 1: 30:13

I'll say a light thing first, which is the birds of a feather thing again. Right, so teams are probably going to get organized around people they know and comfort level, and so birds of a feather, that's a very light thing. I think that as a culture, we are moving more and more towards what makes us different. It's all about this group and that group and you're not part of my group and my group group and that group and you're not part of my group and my group just got smaller today and you're not part of it anymore, and so as we move in that direction, this becomes part of it. It's one more thing that divides people. That's where you middle class or low class or upper class and do I trust you because of that or do I not trust you because of that? Does one group feel resentment towards the other or contempt towards the other? I see those things showing up. I don't want to speak to other people's experiences, but that's something that we see emerging. So that relates to teams, right, people who might not feel as comfortable trusting of each other, because it's one more divide that's getting between us.

Speaker 1: 31:11

My bigger message on that and we could circle back to it later, but I don't know. I just said circle back. I know that's like the most hated term in corporate. We could talk about that again at a later time. But the real message is like there are so many things that divide us right now. How do we start unifying? Because this is an issue that impacts almost everyone in the United States. Like you can make arguments about oh, I'm upper middle class or middle class or lower middle class or dirt poor, or, but it's really just like the one percent and then everybody else. The differences are so severe and so substantial.

Speaker 1: 31:51

And look, harvard ain't admitting that many people this year. Nor is Oxford, right, we're talking about small numbers of people in one camp. And look, harvard ain't admitting that many people this year. Nor is Oxford, right, we're talking about small numbers of people in one camp. And there's just so many other things that divide us today. And a lot of us have this in common, and it is again the single most impactful thing as to what our futures will look like, at least financially speaking, at least in terms of our wealth and accomplishments. We got a lot in common, and I think coming together is going to help a lot.

Speaker 3: 32:19

You feel it in politics. This isn't a political statement by any means, but when you look at, for example, a lot of what the Trump campaign had run on, continues to run on, is this idea of you've been left behind economically and I'm going to be the person that's going to bring it back in. And then you have the Biden administration, which is looking at more, bringing everybody along. They're both an economic message coming from different places, but I feel like both of those messages are very different. They're very divided. So you have the politics happening with that kind of economic message. You also have technology, with AI, and we just got the job support, for example.

Speaker 3: 32:59

I think, there's going to be a lot more fear around economics and the 1% and those that aren't. How do we move towards that common ground when it just feels like there are so many vices that are just pushing us further and further, apart from an economic perspective?

Speaker 1: 33:18

I can sometimes sound like a super pessimist when I talk about the data, but this is actually something I'm quite optimistic about, oh, sweet, because we need some good news, because I'm like, I'm bummed, bring the good news please Look.

Speaker 1: 33:31

At the end of the day, we have a lot that's working to divide us. Your point is exactly the right point and I'll put even, like a pin on top of it, who is the Trump administration speaking to and who is the Biden administration speaking to. They're talking about different economic problems, so I'll just put a label on it. I'll be the person.

Speaker 1: 33:52

One might be talking about white male problems and the other might be talking about people of color problems, women problems, and the reality is the cake for all of us is getting smaller every year and has been since 1971. Under every administration Republican, democrat, doesn't matter. Congress controlled by Democrats, president, republican doesn't matter, matter Congress controlled by Democrats, president, republican doesn't matter. Every administration, the pie has got smaller for all of those groups. Now we're fighting over it in different ways and it might be getting split up in different ways, but it's getting smaller for all of us and has been consistently. And the reason I say I'm a bit of an optimist is one humans might be my belief, but I think most of us are empathetic and compassionate and believe in essential equality, believe in modern political terms. They talk about this kind of era as liberal equality what is?

Speaker 1: 34:51

that, okay, there's all. So all political philosophy is underpinned by moral philosophy. So we start with a set of morality and then we build it into an idea, and utilitarianism was an idea that we should maximize the good for everyone. Right, and so it became a political movement that, under that kind of, helped destroy feudalism, because it was like this isn't the best for all. There's these three people at the top, or whatever. Unfortunately, we've come back around back to dead your servants.

Speaker 3: 35:23

Okay, fantastic, that's good all right.

Speaker 1: 35:25

So then we entered into this, this era, and there's some great works by a guy named Rawls and Dworkin great names to a theory of justice and and it's a lot of what we talk about today where they're like, hey, this is what it would ideally look like and a lot of people bought into this message.

Speaker 1: 35:43

It's where a lot of these like pushes for equality and people shouldn't have these negative dispositions on them. Unfortunately, it hasn't really translated to our politics, but it is something we naturally feel. So I think there is both this sense in human beings that, like we innately have compassion, and there's this cultural zeitgeist that, like people fundamentally feel about what is right in politics, and so there's a lot of systems that are holding that back, but it is holding back something that is natural, something that is believed and accept and been felt by most people, like super majority of people, and so my optimism is look, the politicians are not going to lead us to the promised land here, like they are working to create divisiveness among us, and whether that's a conspiracy or what helps them get elected doesn't matter to me. They're not solving the problem.

Speaker 3: 36:39

No, the data shows that yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:40

Yeah, but we should be optimistic about the future because culturally we hold these beliefs and take off some of this kind of unnatural confusion and we're compadres. We're in the same journey, fighting for the same things.

Speaker 3: 36:54

Yeah, I just feel like there's so much more that unites us than divides us instinctually and actually as well that it'd be. I am looking forward to seeing more of us leaning into that and not waiting for institutions to make that happen.

Speaker 1: 37:11

I agree, and that's where it's going to come from. I think it comes from us as individuals, but a mentor of mine says he teaches leadership to, has the best selling books on leadership in the world and he really understands the topic. He said I've given up on politics. I gave up a long time ago. Any hope I have in the future is in business leaders stepping up, and so I think it's individuals and I think it's organizations that are hopefully going to move this message forward.

Speaker 3: 37:36

There's a lot of organizations can do right.

Speaker 1: 37:38

Yes, there is, especially when 96% of elections are won by whoever raised the most money.

Speaker 3: 37:46

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:47

And now about 80% of the money that goes into campaigns comes from businesses and super PACs. So there's a lot of the business community.

Speaker 2: 37:56

Absolutely, absolutely so what measures can organizations start to take? One to identify the socioeconomic biases that they're upholding within their structures and systems and policies.

Speaker 1: 38:29

There are some basic things right. Ditch the degree requirements, especially where they don't matter. You could say stronger programs around, don't take referrals, so maybe don't incentivize the referrals or put some policies in place to stop them. Obviously, I'm going to say gather human capability data to actually understand the people and look at what is effective instead of where people came from. Ask more about people's stories in the interview process and filter that information into how you're judging their responses. As an example to your case, mel, if they asked about your background, maybe they could have overlooked that you weren't in a suit, building stronger reskilling programs, thinking about people as people and saying you know what. You didn't get a two-year accounting degree, but you've got all the makings and we're going to invest in some people this year and get them skilled up. The upswing for companies is these are exceptionally loyal people. That's everything that we see in the data. So if you want to save a ton of money on attrition, invest it on these kinds of programmatic changes.

Speaker 2: 39:39

I think that's such an important call out. I think organizations miss the forest through the trees because they're not going to see an immediate return on investment in some of these things or don't see the value of implementing some of these things. What role does leadership play here in addressing and reducing these issues in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 39:58

Referencing Bill George leadership at Harvard for 23 years. He wrote the True North book series. I've had a beyond unbelievable opportunity to be mentored by him for 16 years, which came out of nowhere. It was one of these never should have happened things. But actually you know what I'm going to tell that story because I think it answers a bit of your question.

Speaker 1: 40:22

So I was, he was doing a tour, talking to all these universities, and he came by a relatively not prestigious Seattle university and gave a talk. I skipped my class so that I could attend. I didn't know who he was, but the talk was on like ethical leadership and that was appealing to me. And so I went to this talk and I just challenged him in a polite way. I was if you're so good at business, like, why didn't you start your own? Why did you just become a CEO of a company that was almost a billion dollars and then make it a international 18 billion or something? At the end of his tenure grew at 23%, and he loved that. And so I went up after and I gave him my card and he was like oh, I'm so glad that you, that you came up, let's keep in touch. And I emailed him once and he never responded. I emailed him a second time he never responded. I emailed him a third time he never responded. I emailed him a fourth time and he was like I was waiting to hear from you, so good to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 41:15

And two years later we went for a run together and he was like do you know why we're friends? And I said I have no idea. And and I had just passed him on the track and he was like do it one more time and I'll tell you. And he was a good runner, but mind you. But I looped him again and he said no one that I teach at Harvard will run.

Speaker 1: 41:36

And so, in a way, he was looking for people that aren't normal, not what most of these leaders are surrounded by, which is people that they're very comfortable with, that don't challenge them, that just support their views, that just say gosh, you're the best person that I've ever met met. And I do want to say I'm sure there are some people at Harvard and not everyone is there with all these things that we're talking about. So I don't want to say anything negative about any institution, but the point nonetheless he was looking for something really different than what organizational leaders typically look for, and I think that's what we need to do. And this is the long way of moving back to that.

Speaker 1: 42:21

96% of politicians win based on who raised the most money. So politicians aren't going to change it. It's on business leaders, and I think it's the defining issue of our time. So I think it's up to us. I think that business leaders have to look outside what's efficient, natural, comfortable in front of them and say this is an issue I'm aware of. What can I do about it in the day to day things that I do.

Speaker 2: 42:48

When you think about business leaders presence throughout communities, it's massive. Your experience alone a lot of business leaders spend a lot of time on campus, where people are just beginning their journeys of career exploration. So even how they show up there or think of candidates differently, or interacting with students differently and having those conversations or being willing to give, I got to ask, though I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: 43:15

I think we are absolutely not talking about the very important thing in that story is you had a card in undergrad.

Speaker 1: 43:24

I didn't want to say anything Absolutely, and I will make even more fun of myself. I wore suits.

Speaker 3: 43:36

Oh.

Speaker 1: 43:36

I know.

Speaker 3: 43:37

We're ending the conversation right now. Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more.

Speaker 1: 43:47

I was working in the school cafeteria, I was overloading on my classes and I was trying to start a company, and so I was like, okay, I'm like, I am showing up to this game, I am working as hard as I can work I actually I don't even know how I did it these days but so I was like suit, I had a card for my company. I was like this is my dream, I'm going to go after it. That was me, and so this one other guy we joke now because we're both like super laid back and super I wear like Mandarin cut shirts and not normal. And we were the two like. We showed up in suits and we stayed friends and we're both like the opposite now oh, that's so funny.

Speaker 3: 44:22

How did you know to do that? Like literally, how did you know to do that?

Speaker 1: 44:25

or did you just free this up? Gosh, I didn't. I certainly didn't know how to do it. I struggled for such a long time. Yeah, I had no experience, no, no one to teach me at all. I did so many things wrong for so long. I guess it was just like I was just going to give it everything I had every day. But again, if I had been two years younger, none of it would have ever happened. It didn't matter that I had overloaded all my classes and still graduated magna cum laude and big gamma sigma and worked in the school cafeteria and didn't have enough money and started a business. None of it would have mattered. It wouldn't have been enough.

Speaker 2: 45:04

Timing and luck are big components of, in addition to that ambition piece and the business cards, let's not forget the business cards.

Speaker 1: 45:16

And don't underestimate the kids sitting in the suit in the business class.

Speaker 2: 45:20

Wear your suits, class kids.

Speaker 1: 45:22

Kids go in places.

Speaker 2: 45:26

AI is the hot topic everywhere. What role does technology play in either holding up socioeconomic bias or eliminating it in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 45:39

I think that totally has to do with what leaders do. I think it'd be very the technologies are becoming available. I'm working on them, other people are. It calls on leaders to not ignore the technologies that are becoming available, to recognize that they will get lower attrition rates, that they are going to save money, that they are going to get better people and that they're going to do good for the world all at the same time.

Speaker 1: 46:04

And honestly, you mentioned AI and automation. Are some of my biggest concerns because throughout time, the conflict has been between labor and capital. All economics or models are built on this, and wages for labor has not matched productivity gains for 55 years now something like that and the problem with AI and automation is the power of the labor class to negotiate is getting pulled out from under them. It's been a concern. I think it is an increasing concern and I don't know how fast it's all going to change. But labor needs to negotiate now and get political influence now if we're going to live in something other than a dystopian altered carbon society in the future. Yeah, because yeah.

Speaker 2: 46:57

It is a little scary Because, yeah, it is a little scary. Yolo, yeah, all for universal income. It's like figuring this out Because, to your good point, the room to negotiate is getting smaller and smaller and I think most organizations don't even know yet what this looks like for them. So it's like in five years time, what world are we going to be living in? Your company, Almas Insights, you are building technology. You have technology that helps remove inherent bias in resume review, referrals, interviews. Can you tell us more about that tech?

Speaker 1: 47:31

Yeah, absolutely, and I'll give some thank yous here as well. So the essence of our technology is we put someone in a digital work sample for 45 minutes and they go through a variety of situations like you will experience in the workplace and demonstrate their preferences and behaviors and capabilities and how they respond and how they react and that's all cool, but that's not actually what we do. What we actually do is all the data on the other side where we say what kinds of people are being successful in this role at this organization, and that all happens automatically in the data. So a company just baselines it. The statistical significant things basically highlight in that and the machine learning algorithm matches that with people who are applying or people who already exist in that job who have also taken the measurement. So all of that becomes automated and it says this person is likely to stay with your firm for a long time If you hire them. This person is likely to be high potential in this role, and it's all objective data.

Speaker 1: 48:34

But what we did and I think what proved to be one of the important aspects of how we approach this was we put it in a fully contextualized environment. So when I say digital work sample. I don't just mean situational questions. There are avatars on screen. You see what's going on. You have full context of the experience towards Deloitte and also the University of Washington. There was a validation study that doesn't eliminate all other biases, and it did so. Level of education didn't matter. What someone's current job was didn't matter they could be an Uber driver or a Deloitte consultant because they had so much context. And then people said, hey, this was like the most accurate thing that I've seen for a Sethi and myself.

Speaker 2: 49:22

This is going to completely remove all bias about your match to this role and how powerful for talent acquisition to find the right people for the right jobs at the right time. That helps with workforce planning. That helps with so many things. So kudos to you, that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 49:40

I'm excited about it. Vision here is, as you look at unemployment right and you look at some of these people who are very talented and on the fringe and being overlooked, having something that can give employers confidence and giving people like that opportunity is what the world needs more of.

Speaker 2: 50:00

Yeah, that's huge and giving those people confidence as well. Totally brayden, we like to close out each episode with a rapid round. These don't have to be one word answers, but maybe one sentence, and it's just to get your like immediate reaction to some of these questions. How does that?

Speaker 1: 50:38

all right, let's see.

Speaker 2: 50:40

Okay, if you could change one workplace process or rule nationwide for everyone, what would it be?

Speaker 1: 50:48

I guess I go to ban the degree or forget the degree thing.

Speaker 2: 50:52

What's one book everyone should read on this topic.

Speaker 1: 50:57

It's so hard. I would say, if they're interested in just the economics and reality of what's happening capitalism in the 21st century by pickety if they are interested in the political concepts, that we should probably be listening more to a theory of justice by rawls. And of course, I would be amiss to not mention I also have a book on the topic which is Twilight of the Idols, an American Story which gets into. How is this impacting, in particular, young American lives today?

Speaker 2: 51:29

Yeah, we'll link to that. We'll link to that in the show notes for everyone. What's the biggest barrier to workplace equality?

Speaker 1: 51:37

Two words, but downstream consequences. Tell me more equality Two words, but downstream consequences, tell me more. Yeah, well, so we can't start fixing it in the workplace? It starts with kindergarten, right? And so the downstream consequence of having someone, as we talked about, not confident, or having someone who couldn't get a college degree, or having someone, and then the downstream consequence on the other side of this is going to be the primary determinant of their children's future. It's a downstream consequence problem. I don't think we could just say the workplace fixes this.

Speaker 2: 52:06

What was your first job and what did it teach you about socioeconomic bias?

Speaker 1: 52:11

Working in the school cafeteria to pay for my college degree. That's my first like real job and people look at you different. That's what I learned. There's the kids who need to do that and the kids who don't need to do that, and I learned real quick that people look at you different when you are serving them their food. And it's just heartbreaking to know that.

Speaker 1: 52:31

They're your peers. So it's like it's one thing if it's the local Taco Bell or something, but if it's like it's you and your classmates and they're out behind the cafeteria and you are behind the cafeteria, yeah.

Speaker 2: 52:43

Yeah. What's one myth about this topic that you want to bust today for everybody?

Speaker 1: 52:49

It's just the insignificance of it. It's that it is the single most determining factor of someone's future and we need to organize around that. We are in this together.

Speaker 2: 53:00

What's one piece of advice you would give to your younger self? And we need to organize around that we are in this together. What's one piece of advice you would?

Speaker 1: 53:05

give to your younger self. This one's hard, it's just hard feedback to give. But I think I would tell my younger self play the game, Don't lose your soul. And then give it all away. And I probably could have gone a lot further, a lot faster, if this didn't enrage me so much. But but I wanted to beat the system or prove it a different way. And the system is the way the system is. If you have influence, help break it, but you have to have the influence first.

Speaker 2: 53:40

We're glad you were enraged because you're doing good things. Last question future of work. Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

Speaker 1: 53:48

I think short-term, long-term, short-term pessimistic, long-term optimistic Pessimistic because what are the things happening and what is the direction they're going, but optimistic because movement towards public benefit, corporations, triple bottom lines, intentional communities which probably no one on this, or a lot of these people, are not going to be aware of.

Speaker 1: 54:10

So I will just say there, these groups there's more than 10,000 in the world now. I had no idea how many, but there's like an example, twin Oaks in Virginia and it's a group of people, a couple hundred people that live and work together and they sell like tofu and hammocks and stuff like that. But everybody makes the same money, they all live comfortably, they have stipends they can spend on whatever they want, they have 600,000 in profit every year that they invest in their community and it's very much how indigenous tribes live. I had the opportunity to live with one for a couple of weeks, which is amazing. But there are all these models emerging where people are taking care of each other and thinking about business differently. We've never really seen culture sustain economic inequality as long as we are seeing here. So change is bound to happen, and hopefully really positive and really soon.

Speaker 2: 55:10

Brayden, we're glad you are working towards helping to change that little by little in what you're doing, because eventually that will become what is it take one bite and suddenly the whole meal is done right, like it'll be a bigger impact long-term so excited to see it and we really appreciate you talking about this with us today.

Speaker 1: 55:29

Thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 3: 55:34

Thanks so much for joining us today. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there and if you found this episode helpful, share with your work, friends, bye.

The Talent Fueled Enterprise

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Talent Fueled Enterprise with Mike Ohata

You can build high-performing teams and create a workplace people actually want to be part of. Just ask Mike Ohata—Fortune 15 talent leader, author of The Talent-Fueled Enterprise, and the guy talent insiders call a badass. In this episode, Mike shares how to lead with care and results, why psychological safety drives performance, and how to stop treating people like capital.

From the future of AI to why simplicity beats scale, we unpack what soulful leadership looks like in today’s world—and why it’s not just possible, but essential. If you’re ready to fuel your org with both head and heart, this one’s for you.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Speaker 1: 0:00

It just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO kept saying the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come. We'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could feel it. He knew in his soul what the values were. He knew in his spirit what he was after and what he saw. And you go like, yeah, I get it.

Speaker 2: 0:28

What's going on, Mel?

Speaker 3: 1:00

Not much. I feel super energized. I belong to this community, through Culture First, that hosts co-working days in the city. I just love it so much. Not to speak for you, but like me, we kind of thrive on like hive togetherness of collaborating and brainstorming. So I just get a lot of energy out of just leaving my house and sitting in a space with other people who are getting shit done and then being able to connect and ask questions. So it felt good today I did that in the city. What about you? Nice?

Speaker 2: 1:14

And by the city you mean New.

Speaker 3: 1:16

York, I mean New York. Yeah, yeah, sorry everyone.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Yeah, I got to say I don't think I have prepared myself as a parent around sports. I did not grow up playing sports Like we were in like ceramics camp and dance and piano. That's what I did. I didn't really play sports, yeah. But my son is super into sports. My husband played soccer in college. Like they're into sports. I was not prepared for the amount of practices and such like. Just for soccer, just for soccer. And he's in first grade. They have practices on Monday, games on Saturday and then this weekend there was a jamboree like a fundraiser.

Speaker 2: 1:56

I'm like this is three days three days, three days out of the week, dedicated to soccer wait until he gets into middle school and high school.

Speaker 3: 2:06

That'd be five days a week, and then you'll have a pasta dinner to raise money. I was not prepared. Oh, I know what to get you now as a gift I have lawn chairs, I do have not a lawn, not a lawn chair, not a lawn chair like one of those pop-up tents.

Speaker 2: 2:19

What do we do? What do you hell?

Speaker 3: 2:20

yeah, the pop-up tent for outside, so. So when it starts raining, you could just zip yourself in.

Speaker 2: 2:26

It has a little window Like a little drive-thru window Like what here's your snacks. Yeah, it has a little window that you can look through, you're nice and cozy. Throw Clif Bars out of it. Yes, please get me that. That's funny, that's funny Okay. That's funny, that's funny Okay.

Speaker 3: 2:41

Oh man, yeah, you're going to be busy, yeah.

Speaker 2: 2:44

Well, we had a pretty rad discussion with Mike Ohata, didn't we?

Speaker 3: 3:02

We did. Yeah, yeah, mike Ohata joined us. He's a talent executive and strategic advisor. He's worked for organizations like Microsoft and KPMG and he's the author of the Talent-Fueled Enterprise. We read the book. It was awesome, and then we got to talk to him about it.

Speaker 2: 3:11

And we think there's a lot of good knowledge nuggets for folks to take away from this conversation. The book is written and geared towards. If you're the head of HR, the head of learning and development, if you're a CEO, right, it's looking at strategically what do you want to do to make sure that your enterprise is really garnering the full potential of everybody that works there? Right? Listen, if you are in those roles, it's a must read, absolutely, but that's not really why we wanted to have Mike on. It feels like there's this conversation happening in the ether, especially around anything HR or people related that it's very polarized.

Speaker 3: 3:40

Oh, it is right now. I read something yesterday around you're not strategic. If you're a bleeding heart HR person, take some issue with these types of comments, because I think something that you and I talk about often, and something that Mike emphasized, was this need for balance, the balance of caring for people and your bottom line and how you can bring those two things together in a really effective way.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Where work and where goodness really gets done is in trying to find the common ground, is in trying to figure out what is the balance between to your very good points, profit and being really good to your people, or really understanding how you can maximize the potential of your people, and we highly recommend Mike's book With us. He walked through how can anybody, whether you're a manager, a leader of an organization, really fuel your organization with not only talent but with soul as well, and gave some really really practical advice, and it was just a fun conversation.

Speaker 3: 4:43

And, side note, there's a lot of great movie quotes and tiebacks in this book, but this is a great conversation and with that, here's Mike Ohata. Mike, we are so excited to have you with your work, friends, today, and you've written the talent-fueled enterprise, which is focusing on how businesses can thrive by really focusing in on their talent, and we'd love to start off with what inspires you to write this book having me.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I'm really excited and I'm looking forward to our conversation. I've had the fortune in coming out of professional services and the firm I work is. There's this age where you time out and you're asked to retire. In that, just this notion of being able to be liberated from your organization, the stepping back, stepping away, getting out of the organization, has allowed to really share all the things that you'd like to work on. But you don't always have the opportunity to work on and also just get up all those kind of pent up feelings and thoughts around what could have been, could be and why can't we get to them in your careers.

Speaker 1: 5:56

It's really hard sometimes to get things done because we're constrained in these systems and these are of these organizations. The other part of the inspiration it sounds super corny, but it really is the people you work with right. It's the employees in our particular firm and the partners as well. But the people are really inspiring because, at the end of the day, they are the potential right and they are the engine of the organization. And you got to step back and go. I love that we do the work that we do in HR and talent and learning, because we love the people and we want to see what we can do for them and see what they become.

Speaker 3: 6:30

So that was my starting point on how I got inspired love of people and the value of them in the workplace, and how we can make it better. Why is talent such a crucial element in a company's success? Can you explain it to our listeners, like they're five? Why?

Speaker 1: 6:52

is that the case? Talent is just one of those words we use to talk about the people in our businesses, in our organizations, and it is the word of the day. It's become a little bit of the slogan of the day too, but it also shows the recognition that people really do matter for businesses. The broader question, though, that really comes up from that is so what do you do about it? We're talking about talent because we're trying to find a better way to talk about employees, about employees. There is this kind of deep felt in our values and so forth and our feelings that people really do matter Really. They are the heart and soul of the organization, but then the organization keeps churning on doing what it's always done, and so I think it's really important for all of us to understand is that, collectively, we're all here at this place around really needing to understand how to think about talent differently?

Speaker 1: 7:46

And the other thought that goes through my mind and why it's so important, is for the last 23 plus years we've had this notion around talent as a scarce thing. We have this mindset of scarcity and we talk about the war for talent all the time. There's a lot of relevance to those models around like looking at sort of high potential, high performance, et cetera, but it's an incomplete view, and so the challenge that I've kept coming across is that if we're all looking for the same people, the same resource, the same talent, that just doesn't compute, because we're surrounded by all these people and you know this story right Like we've hired the best people and then you wind forward and go, we can't find the right talent. And I'm just how does that even work? What happened along the way? It really begins to speak to this condition around, this philosophy or this point of view that says there's only a handful of good people out there, and I'm just like that's not really a way to live, it's not a sustainable way to live.

Speaker 3: 8:39

And so, in this current framework around you know leaders talking about talent and it's super important for us to realize is that there's a vast wealth of potential in the organization. That starts with understanding all employees and creating sort of opportunities for all of us. I like the shift in the mindset right, Because every employee that you hire, you hired them because you believed that they have this high potential. So where does that change? There's a real opportunity here to support them and their continued growth and potential.

Speaker 1: 9:09

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 9:10

In the book there was a theme that really resonated with me throughout. You mentioned that the talent strategy mindset that inherently values the human and the concept of I see you is super important. How can leaders and orgs show their talent, that they truly see them?

Speaker 1: 9:28

That's tough. I say it's tough because it's really easy to say do this and do that, but it's really kind of a set of practices that we all pick up every day. It's the simple things from around. You spend time regularly with your teams, with your people. You stop to say hello. It doesn't have to be super formal, but do you actually have a way, a practice, to understand what do people really want to get out of work? What do they want to get out of the job? What do they really desire a year from now, two years from now? Is it the model of performance that drives the business outcomes that drives those questions, or is it a real interest and curiosity in the manager or leader that's going to say I just want to know what's going on, but a lot of it's just connecting and building community.

Speaker 3: 10:12

Yeah, it makes me think of the real need to build psychological safety. So if a senior leader is asking what you're up to, the initial response isn't oh, am I in trouble? But more of they're coming from a place of curiosity.

Speaker 1: 10:24

Yeah, yeah. Isn't that a telling statement when people say, well, am I in trouble? Because they feel like they're not safe or they may be at risk.

Speaker 3: 10:32

Yeah, you also talk about how orgs often refer to employees as resources and the workforce as human capital, which is ultimately dehumanizing right, because it's not seeing people for who they are as humans. What changes would you recommend orgs make in regards to how they refer to their talent to bring back that humanity in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 10:57

Yeah, in general, there's nothing really wrong with the words right and selves. They're just words, and they're just words. Come and go. Really, what's going on here from a theory perspective, is just around. People are watching all day long what leaders are doing. They're watching all day long what the practices, the lived experience of the organization is, and so I think what's really important is you can use words like workforce or human capital, but really the fundamental thing is, what do people see you do? So like, for example, the really common one in which is tough and there's no easy solution or answer around this.

Speaker 1: 11:31

We have this need for a business outcome, but we're not making our plan, and I think I've heard you folks talk about this and then but you're, so what do you do when you have too many people? So the typical thing that often happens is we downsize the workforce or we right-size it, so to speak. Right, and we go through that riffing process. And I love the story that you folks talked about on taking that long view, that long game with people, that behavior and set of actions around. Taking that long view communicates so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter, so much to the organization on how you think about people and where they matter.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Now, at the end of the day, people get it. If we're run, like during the great recession, if we're not making it like we've got to make a choice here, but the point there is just in like how transparently clear about it. Leaders often spend so much time getting all spun up over the right words and they lost the opportunity to connect with people and I've had so many employees over the years. Someone was like I want to appreciate it. You just tell me how it is. It doesn't have to be pretty, but at least I don't have to guess what you actually need.

Speaker 1: 12:33

And I think that's what's at stake here. Now, the flip side of it, since we're HR professionals, is that there's this whole kind of HR label thing that we have to go through to make sure we say the right things. I think you can still do that. You just can't get too spun up with ourselves.

Speaker 3: 12:48

A couple of our other guests in line, I think, with this collective thinking of it's okay to be transparent. Even if you're following all the compliance, you can still connect on a human to human level. One of our guests had mentioned, for example, his approach was hey, you're not going to like this, I absolutely don't like it, and it's okay to acknowledge like for lack of a better word, so I apologize the turd in the room, so let's acknowledge it together and get through it together, but to your good point, making sure we're continuing to connect on a humanity level that these are people.

Speaker 1: 13:23

Yeah, One of the stories I remember is that I did have to reduce the number of people, and there's one particular team that got impacted and I just broke down crying, talking to them. The director like called me up after just said but I really appreciate it, but you also got to do your job and it was really just an amazing moment where you know she and the team appreciated the humanity, but you got a job to do, so Get on with it too. Back to the balance, right.

Speaker 2: 13:48

You know, it strikes me, though, the idea of being seen. You talk about people being developed holistically as well, but when we look at HR, I don't think it's set up to do that. We're set up to do more of the compliance, more of the block and tackle. When you look at the amount of funding HR teams get, it's such a small percentage of the overall funding of the organization. It's not a knock on HR leaders at all, because I think HR leaders have the best intentions. They're trying to do the best they can with what they have. There's a lot going on, yeah, and part of me wonders and I'd love to get your take on it in order to really set up or operationalize being seen, holistic development, looking at talent differently, do we have to secede from the union Meaning compliance goes over here to legal and then talent becomes a different beast in and of itself, almost like the human team or the product innovation team? We need to separate in order to really do this, or can we still go the way we're going?

Speaker 1: 14:51

Yeah, we have like this classic mindset around either or right, we have the compliance engine, all the process-based kind of work we're like the people shoveling coal in the coal fuel engine or train and we're just heads down, we just got to keep this thing moving. We're doing that work all day long and then we think, or it'd be really great if we could be focused on the people, and the reality is they're all integrated right. So then it's a matter of how you do the process work, and that's really easy to say conceptually or theoretically, but it really is. It's around how do you combine the two? So, for example, we know empathy is one of those kind of capabilities that bring the two together right. Authenticity, transparency, and when you think about those, we're all talking about those human kind of attributes that actually make us who we are. And that's the heart of it, because people get the engine part of it. There is compliance stuff that happened. There are processes we have to run. It's just that whether or not we still feel like the processes have a soul in it.

Speaker 1: 15:50

So, for example, this is one thing in one of my past jobs is I remember writing just said you know what, like it'd be really great to get transparency around what the corporation has budgeted for bonuses, because you say it's zero to 15%, but we budget it for six, right? So we're here and I'm giving a performance review and the person got 7% and they feel like they're a failure because it's not 15. 7% compared to 6% is actually pretty decent looking right In a scheme of things, I said. And then I'm talking to a professional, an employee, that's looking for $2,000 and because they're going to build a cedar deck in their backyard and they just want to buy the materials but they're going to do the labor and that money means a lot to the individual, but we don't have a way to talk about what the sort of the constraints of the system say.

Speaker 1: 16:42

Wind forward, that organization actually started saying, like here's what we think your bonus is going to be based on, what we can plan for, and you're up or down from that. Now everybody goes oh, I can live with that, but that's a place where you have the constraints of the process and the system. That needs the rigor of the financial model that's, allocating a set amount of resources and a transparency approach that allows people to then understand. Now I have a better idea of where I match up right now. Different conversation. Whether or not they like the evaluation or the assessment, that takes a lot of stress out of it and takes a lot of anxiety out of the process.

Speaker 2: 17:19

I love what you said about the soul. We have to put soul back into some of these processes Benefits, comps, conversation, even layoffs. Right, you can have soul, you can see people in those. When you see this done really well, how do the leaders or the organizations really truly view their people?

Speaker 1: 17:39

So what I generally see in organizations is that most leaders have a good concept of what they're after in terms of goodness.

Speaker 1: 17:49

They have the right concepts in place, so the messaging is right, but what they don't realize is that they themselves, the organizations, the functions, are stuck in the system of the organization and they haven't figured out how to disrupt that sort of state or to change that slowly over time.

Speaker 1: 18:05

So then we're in this place of messaging over here Because it sounds really great, but operating over here all day long, and that's the part when you look at it saying, hey, we love people, you got to go right. That's the kind of stuff that creates that dissonance in the organization. So what really has to happen is we have to talk about what the constraints are. We have to talk about what we're trying to balance out in the organization, and I think that's where I think again, our professors, our employees, they get it, they understand it, they appreciate things really, really deeply. The other kind of funny thing I think about if it really created connection and community, you would know what people feel like they need to be seen and to be understood, versus kind of stalking on fishbowl to see what kind of throwing shades going on. I do think organizations understand it at some level and they have great mechanisms, councils and so forth, pulse surveys and all that. But again, are we enamored with the process and the activity or do we really want to know what's going on?

Speaker 2: 19:06

The older I get, I will tell you. I think so much comes down to fundamentals like basics 25 years ago or something. Somebody wrote that book, everything I Needed to Know. I Learned in Kindergarten and it's this just idea of, yes, connect with people, talk to people, ask them what they need, ask them what they want. A lot of times people get really fearful of doing that because they don't know if someone's going to ask them for something they can't give or they don't know how to be perfect in that dialogue or conversation. But all they really need to do is start with care. People feel that when you start with care I get that from you, mike that you give care, energy, you give very big care, thank you. I want to talk about this idea of developing people holistically, especially when we're talking about AI. Mel and I were just talking about Klarna, for example, who they're going to lay off. What was that, mel? Like 85% of their business.

Speaker 3: 20:19

They just laid off a bunch of folks, got down to half their workforce and I believe they're hoping to get down further within the next year.

Speaker 2: 20:26

Yes, there's two energies that are happening in the world. I'm getting very woo-woo, forgive me, but right, there's this one energy of scarcity. Oh my gosh, ai is going to take jobs. We're going to start seeing a lot of organizations making big moves around completely replace humans with AI, and then you even wrote about this in the book too. Then we're looking at people who want to augment. What does that look like when this AI conversation is happening, where we can look at it as scarcity or we can look at it as augmentation? If I'm a Jane Doe employee, what does it look like in an AI world to be developed holistically?

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yeah. So there's a couple of things. One is, when it comes to AI in particular, I get the sense that a lot of business leaders feel like there's one really good question to ask around how do we adopt AI? And I think that's a question. I think it's not even the best question. I think it's a starting question and I think the exercise that we all need to take is what are the next 5, 10, 17 questions to ask around AI and the implications for the organization.

Speaker 1: 21:37

When I think about it and I step back, we've been surrounded by computer technology, computing technology, innovation for a long time. We keep talking about the speed and the disruption for decades now, and there's a point that says we're not really talking about anything new here. So what's really going on here? So the part of it says to me we should get over it in some way and then start thinking what is the intersection of AI and humans? That's one of the really key questions.

Speaker 1: 22:04

Holistically, it's going to be really around coming back again to these fundamentalists around what does it mean to actually see the employee as a person? And I actually think the answer for that really depends on the organization. That it is because different organizations are doing different things right and there's different kinds of labor and different kinds of work, and holistically might mean that we need to do things that are fun. That celebration is actually a really key part of our culture, so we may do that. Other things may be. I need the latest science, I need the latest technical knowledge and I need you to help me to get there, because that's super valuable to me as the profession that I'm in.

Speaker 3: 22:42

That's one of it.

Speaker 1: 22:42

There's a number of levers that we can use to think about seeing people holistically, but one of them is going to come down to is what are we trying to achieve with our people? And just having clarity about that. You don't have to be all things to all people, but having clarity about what we're trying to accomplish, I think, is super, super important. For example, if we think that it's really important to have a really great hiring process, let's say, focus on skills, understand really what skills you need and what the skills are in the marketplace. If you really think it's important for your organization to train and to develop those skills, then train them. If you think that retaining people is important to the organization and you want your people to understand that, then create some kind of mobility, not because you have to react to their need, but because it's really important to be thoughtful around how they're engaged across the whole organization.

Speaker 1: 23:33

The other thing in convincing people holistically is we often start off with the most basic set of needs. So where do we go when we want to make sure that you know your value? We start off with benefits and compensation, right, and you take math instead of hierarchy of needs. We're talking about things that address our abilities to make sure we have health care, that we can buy food, that we can buy shelter, rent an apartment, buy a home, and then we understand but miss sort of those kind of self-actualization things.

Speaker 1: 24:03

The things that people desire more and this gets back to the holistic thing is that people want to develop. They want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills. But there's this other appetite or other need, so to develop, they want to grow on some level, and that's beyond just training, because training is about skills, but there's this other appetite or other need, so to speak, that actually goes beyond that. And that's where I think the opportunity is to see people holistically is really understand well, what are you after Beyond kind of the work gig you got and the pay you get? What do you want out of life? Right, and the answer is going to really vary depending on the organization and the people who go into that organization. But I think the truism that we see in the research shows this and Gardner talks about this, right, and they talk about the human deal is that people are looking for a very different set of things than what people were looking at 20 years ago, for sure.

Speaker 2: 24:48

Yeah, I think about this a lot. What does the future organization need to look like in order to do this? What are some of the big ticket structural changes that would need to happen in order for this to be the employee experience?

Speaker 1: 25:03

Philosophically, the first thing that's going to happen is a mindset shift in leaders Leaders Okay, Because actually I think the structural shift will follow this ability to imagine what things could look like. So, for example, people talk a lot about workforce planning and that can mean a lot of different things. For a lot of organizations it just means resource management. But what has it happened? Or what needs to happen if you want to get structural changes around how you recruit, how you create opportunities for people is you actually have to imagine. There is a model out there, for example is that if we get people that have the right attributes and we can develop those attributes and then we can develop the skills, we can actually create a workforce that has greater agility, for example. But today's practice is keeping most of us grounded in buying today's skills and then getting all kind of worked up around tomorrow's skills. So then we get into this hyper motion around that we need to do training and rapid upskilling and we got a whole set of terms for those kinds of activities and they're all OK. They're all the OK responses and good responses. But can you imagine a system where everybody believes in the ecosystem of work? It says I may only have it for a year to three years and then you're going to move on, because people do. We know there's a lot of research that shows this, but that actually has huge implications for how we develop people.

Speaker 1: 26:25

The question for all of us is can we actually develop people in a way knowing that they're going to leave? Because if we do that, there's a whole bunch of structural changes have to happen. Like we have to rethink the work. What does it mean to have work that's being operated or executed by people who aren't there all for a long time? And we know there are certain industries, say like logistics, call centers, where, like they know what turnover looks like and so they actually have had to come up with a work model. So the work gets structured in a way that kind of fits that demographic pattern. But that's the kind of structure thing I think could potentially take place much more broadly in corporate America. It's hard to move because there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of day-to-day operating results that we need to deliver, and I think you can do both. You can find those areas where you can begin to slowly shift.

Speaker 2: 27:12

It's interesting I think this was in Ashley's book. This idea of an organization would be a state, a team would be a neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 27:21

It did.

Speaker 2: 27:21

And that you're much more likely to make change at the neighborhood level. And there's responsibility I would say responsibility to your very good point around the neighborhood level and I know that Mel and I wanted to talk about. What are some things that we can do at the enterprise level, at the team level, at the individual level.

Speaker 1: 27:43

Yeah, so it's a great analogy. I'll start because if you take that notion it goes right back to that idea around is the team, is the learning unit. It is also where community and connection is most tangible. So one of the things that has to happen is how do you bring that level of tangible community and connection as you go up the organization? It's what has to happen.

Speaker 1: 28:08

It's a really tough thing to say do this and it all magically happened. The really basic question that the executive team has to ask is what do we want to accomplish with our people that's going to make us a better organization tomorrow and it integrates well with the business outcomes that we're accountable for. That sounds tactical, but I would tell you that is a really hard thing to answer. When leaders can answer that and get it down to one or two things and you know what happens when one or two things comes like to seven to 13. No, really, what's like the one or two things you're going to do that actually moves your people In what direction do you want to move in?

Speaker 2: 28:49

I've been thinking a lot lately about this idea of simplicity, because when I've seen organizations do this really well, they're not doing 15 things in shallow depth. They're doing one, two, maybe three things and they're going really hard on them in terms of yes, campaign and strat and funding them, but also in process, in the way that we build workflows, the way that we talk and the language that we use, all around these things to the point where their employees can talk about it and they know it and they feel it. It's very hard to do with 10 things.

Speaker 1: 29:24

This is going to sound harsh, and it's not meant to be harsh, but it feels more like an observation. But we tend to not focus on the one or two things because I think it actually takes a lot of courage to do. It does, and it doesn't mean that leaders are feeling less powerful or sinful, it just takes a dimension of courage. And I remember one CEO who just said we kept saying and to your point is the most simplistic message. He goes if we get our culture right, the rest will come Like we'll win in the marketplace, we'll win clients, we'll sell bigger projects. And you could, just you could feel it Like he, just he knew in his soul what the values were, he knew in his spirit, like what he was after and what he saw. And you, just you go. Yeah, I get it, you didn't get spun up on what are we on now? Like 7A of the nine point strategy, on the five year plan that gets revised every six months. It wasn't known sounding like that. It was just like this really simple view of the world.

Speaker 3: 30:24

I have a question.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Sure.

Speaker 3: 30:26

How do we crack this nut? Because I feel like we hear this story consistently, that there's a need even for the CEO, to have courage. But if you're leading the organization, why do you need to have courage? You can say, no, this is how we want to do it. So what's preventing leaders from taking that stand as a collective and saying, yeah, we're all in on this, we don't need to have courage because this is what we believe, so it's not. Again. I keep feeling this, even at the leadership level, the C-suite level, this lack of psychological safety to say this is what we need and this is what we should focus on. What makes it so challenging for people to take a hard stance.

Speaker 1: 31:10

My theory around this is that organizations as systems have different or varying permissions.

Speaker 3: 31:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:16

So some organization will give a lot of permission to its leaders to have courage around how they want to drive and how they want to lead, and other organizations don't.

Speaker 1: 31:26

And I think the leaders who prosper in whatever organization they are, I think they figured out right one way or the other, either consciously, with lots of self-awareness, or they just found what was comfortable and found a way to prosper in the environment they're in. But what I would say to any leader at any level that if you're not feeling that sort of integration of yourself and your values with the organization's values, then it's something to question and to think about. Dear colleague john blumberg writes about this around the return on integrity and he talks a lot about personal values actually have to really align with the organizational values and that's a journey. But I would say sometimes what happens is that leaders are like all of us, get caught up in the systems that we're in and so they only have, or feel like they only have, certain permission to go a certain way. The transformational leader not meaning about creating transformation organization, but the leader who's transforming themselves will find a path. They'll find a way to rise above that, to transcend them.

Speaker 3: 32:29

It's just so interesting even to hear that there are certain organizations that still don't value that perspective in this day and age, with all of the research that shows when you commit to your people, you will see business results. I think I ask every guest why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value?

Speaker 1: 32:54

Why do you think that is? Why do you think there are still some organizations that don't see the value? It comes down again to this view around what matters most. Right in its simplest terms. And if you're someone who's wired by power and you're wired by money, and that's what gets you excited and energized, that's what gets you energized and you're going to operate that way. If you're wired a little bit differently, then you have different set of priorities and actions. And here's the thing that I think we know theoretically in all our leadership development, research and so forth is that it takes a diversity of leaders to make it happen, but most organizations tend to put in place a leader who looks just like everybody else, because that is the ethos of the system. That is what we value in the system is that we value making money, we value power, we value the political game or what have you. And again, not all organizations are wired that way. That's one pattern.

Speaker 3: 33:45

Yeah, what advice would you give to that leader that has a mismatch with their organization but they want to try to make a dent in a positive direction? What advice would you give to that person?

Speaker 1: 33:59

Yeah, I love American landscape portrait, like just because there's this notion that humans are really small and the landscape of kind of the continent was just so daunting. And without getting into sort of the historical politics around, who was here first? Because I appreciate that discussion very much but built into the psyche, I think, of what we do sometimes is around this notion around that it could be lonely, right, you could be out there foraging your way. But what's so exciting about it, I think, for the leader who's up for this, is that you can be in the worst set of circumstances and have the best time of your life Because you have this authority to tell the story that you want to tell, to cram the path or kind of create the path that you have.

Speaker 1: 34:45

And I think what the irony of this statement is that there are a whole lot of people watching, taking notes and maybe following along at the same time and I think every organization, as homogenous as it might feel, there's this huge diversity of potential in people that actually see this and want something more. That's what's so amazing is that you could be in a really tough situation, but the arc and the joy is freeing out a path through all of that, even if you don't get to the change that you would like to have gotten to. Is the change the goal or is the journey? It's the destination of the journey more important, but I would say the journey is more important Totally makes me wonder.

Speaker 2: 35:25

Just an offshoot point I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I'm on a journey myself. This idea of work because so much of work has been around quarter by quarter results, revenue, shareholder return, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's profit driven. Yeah, point blank Done. One of the things that I'm excited about AI is that it's going to force conversations around. How do we view people, how do we think about augmenting people and enable them to do their best work? Because all the other administrative schmutz could be taken care of. There's so many opportunities for those discussions. I'm optimistic about it. With what's happening in the ether, can we swing the pendulum from everything has to be around profit and rev a little bit over to people and balance it more?

Speaker 1: 36:11

Yeah, but again, we're not on either end of the pole right.

Speaker 2: 36:14

We can't be, we shouldn't be.

Speaker 1: 36:16

We're somewhere that we're trying to figure out what the balance is of both of these things, and we all live and benefit from being in a capitalist society. So, whether or not people want to admit it, we're all capitalists at some level, and that's an okay thing. The question you're on is then again, like where you're getting to is what is the balance for that, for how we think about people? So back to the ai. The question is how do we redesign work? What's tomorrow's work? Because we know tomorrow's work isn't going to be today's work. But if we only think about replacing today's work with ai and automation, we can miss the question.

Speaker 1: 36:52

Yeah, so we do that and we should be asking okay, what are we doing tomorrow? It's not today. And that part's really exciting because, look, if you look back around for these analogies, if you look back around when you had horse-drawn carriages moving people around, just think of all the technology changes that are taking place we're going to find a way. And I think, through all of this, what's really exciting is this talent discussion has come to the foreground, because we all recognize that people are really a critical part of the equation and while we think that there's slogans or initiatives to talk about workforce planning or kind of talent and culture and different things like that. And all those things indicate is that we understand there's a new equation, that we have. That part gives me a lot of hope.

Speaker 3: 37:57

This is our favorite part, Mike.

Speaker 1: 38:00

Yep, okay, I'm prepared. The fun part is.

Speaker 3: 38:03

You hopefully don't need to be so it's just a group of questions. Yes, no one word answers or a longer answer. If you're like this needs a longer response, that's totally fine. That's some of our best conversation, but we'll just go through the series and the point is first thing that pops in mind. If that sounds good, sure, okay, what are you currently reading, or I'll say listening, in case you're a fan of audiobooks.

Speaker 1: 38:28

Yeah, I am a reader because I just I absorb it sticks a little bit better. There's two things I'm currently reading. One is it's the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory by Tim Alberta. I don't know if you know this book, but it's about the Christian nationalist movement and how it's taking place. It's a long read about halfway through but it's a really fascinating bit of journalism that he's done. The other one is by a friend and colleague. It's called Leading to Greatness, by Jim Reed, who was the CHRO of Rogers in Toronto.

Speaker 3: 38:55

What song is on repeat for you? Oh?

Speaker 1: 38:59

I got two. One is a young artist named Jalen Nwunda, it's called I think it's called Come Around and Love Me, and the other one is an older one. It's a jazz tune. It's by Stan Getz and Oscar Peterson. It's called Tour's End.

Speaker 3: 39:11

Many people feel their companies don't care about their growth. From your experience, what are the top two signs that a company genuinely invests in its employees? So, like you're interviewing, you're researching, you're talking to people, what are the two big giveaways that they're truly investing in their employees?

Speaker 1: 39:31

Yeah, the way I think about this or feel about this is twofold. One is you'll hear and see an excitement and that the employees see a connection around what they're doing in their day job with who they are. The subtext of that is, or the vision that you may get a sense of is and who they're becoming Right, one which is related to excitement word, but you have this real sort of palpable sense of energy around that they're actually learning and growing, that their job is not just a job but it's actually a building block along those lines around where they want to get to. It could be career and it could be beyond career.

Speaker 3: 40:11

I love that. The thought of like their face lights up, because we've all seen that right, when you've had an interview and you ask someone about their experience, you can really you see the shift, someone who truly loves it. Okay, ai, the big elephant in the room. Ai and how it's going to impact people. What's the one thing an employee can do today to avoid being left in the dust and stay relevant? What's one thing they should just do if nothing else.

Speaker 1: 40:39

Okay. So there's a tactical thing If you're organizing, or two tactical things. If your organization's got like LinkedIn Learning, for example, or you could go on the web or what have you, you need to learn fundamentals about AI. Go and do that, it's great. The other thing, what I would do, is it's available, but use Copilot, use ChatGPT and integrate it into what you do in your day-to-day and you'll soon find out, at least in this kind of the large language model stuff. There's just so much opportunity for how it can enhance your work process and how you use your time and energy to get work done. And there's this whole thing around that. Microsoft puts out research around work, and one of the things he said, one of the skills to learn, is how you do delegation, ai delegation, which is basically how you prompt AI right, and especially in this sort of co-pilot context, and I thought that was so interesting, because they're learning how to get the answer that they feel like they're looking for by getting the right prompt.

Speaker 3: 41:39

Microsoft does offer really cool ongoing education for folks on AI, so highly recommend it for anyone. There, you go, yeah, okay. What's one thing that's giving you a lot of joy these days?

Speaker 1: 41:52

Oh, my goodness, wow. There's a lot of things, but I'm a little bit of a fitness kind of person. I have this routine every morning that I do core exercises for 30 to 40 minutes and while it's not always comfortable for me, it brings me a lot of joy because I see the reward of the habit that I've worked on. So that's probably one thing that's top of mind.

Speaker 3: 42:13

Nice, I like it. Who's a leader you really admire?

Speaker 1: 42:17

Okay. So I don't know if I have a leader that I really admire, and the reason being is that I think leaders are situational. The qualities of leaders depend on the situation they're in. That said, I'll give you an example of a leader that I do admire in the situation that he's in, and that's President Volodymyr Zelensky and what he's doing to keep Ukraine together and fight the war. Would I ask President Zelensky to run the transformation around our AI strategy for an organization? Don't know, don't know. It's a different set of capabilities, different situations. For me it's like a multiple answer, but I think there's a lot of leaders in a lot of levels. They have really fantastic qualities.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Mike, it was so great to talk with you today.

Speaker 1: 42:58

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited and I enjoyed the privilege of being able to share my thoughts and feelings with you.

Speaker 3: 43:10

Hey friends, this episode of your Work Friends was hosted by Francesca Ranieri and myself, Mel Plett.

Speaker 2: 43:16

This episode was produced and edited by Mel Plett and myself, Francesca Ranieri.

Speaker 3: 43:22

Our theme music is by Pink Zebra and you can follow us over on all of our social media platforms Instagram, tiktok, youtube and, if you're so inclined, joined us over on LinkedIn in our large and growing community, and you can email us at friend@yourworkfriends.com, or visit us on yourworkfriends.com. Also, folks, please like, subscribe and leave a review. If you enjoyed this episode, and if you really enjoyed it, please share with a work friend or two. Thanks friends, thanks friends.

Hire Your Next Job

Your Work Friends Podcast: Job Moves with Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta

Career paths change…

The climb isn’t always up. Sometimes the best move is sideways, bold, or completely unexpected. In this eye-opening episode, we sit down with Michael B. Horn (Co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, Harvard Graduate School of Education) and Bob Moesta (Founder of Rewired Group, Kellogg School of Management) to discuss their groundbreaking book "Job Moves" and revolutionize how you think about career transitions.

Discover why the traditional job search process is broken and learn how to take control of your career path by "hiring" your next job. Our guests break down the four primary career quests that drive job changes, debunk the myth of "getting lucky" in job searches, and reveal why money isn't the real motivator behind career decisions.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Just because you're good at it doesn't mean you like to do it. Yeah, part of it is being able to actually know who you are and know what you're good at.

Speaker 2: 0:22

I almost wore that same lipstick today that would have been hilarious.

Speaker 3: 0:25

Sometimes you just need, like a, just a boost you know, yeah, so really it looks really beautiful. Thank you Honestly. There's just so much schmutz going on in the world right now the news cycle I cannot I cannot, I can't keep up with this news cycle Listen. We had a pretty kick-ass conversation last week.

Speaker 2: 0:43

This has been one of my most favorite discussions in a long long time. I mean, I love all our guests, but this has just been a really. It was just a rad conversation.

Speaker 3: 0:54

Yeah, I thought so too. We talked to Michael B Horn and Bob Moesta.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Yeah, Michael Horn is the co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute and he teaches at Harvard Graduate School of Education. And Bob is the founder of Rewired Group and also an adjunct lecturer at the Kellogg School of Management for Northwestern University and also a fellow of the Clayton Christensen Institute and just all around amazing human beings to talk to us about their new book, Job Moves, Job Moves. As someone who has been deeply involved with talent acquisition and now I do career coaching for individuals, I just think the tool that they've pulled together on their website and understanding the quest that you're on which, by the way, we all have four quests that we typically are on to decide what our next move is going to be Highly recommend reading the book just to understand that.

Speaker 3: 1:53

This book, honestly, is giving people permission to hire their next job. We are all in that position. This is not where you're at the mercy of employers. This is really permission and an amazing opportunity and, honestly, the data to tell you no, what you really need to do is be honest with yourself about what you want, what your strengths are, and then go out there and hire your next job. This conversation was so fun for me just because a they're just so well-researched, great conversationalists and, honestly, gave a lot of really great tips on how do you really think about hiring your next job.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Yeah, if you want to feel empowered with your career and the decisions you're making around your career, this is the book to read and this is the episode to listen to. So with that, here's Michael and Bob. Let's just get to the point real quick. What's the biggest myth that folks tell themselves about their career, growth or progress?

Speaker 1: 3:00

The one that surprised me the most was how much they thought they got lucky to get their next job, and when you really kind of unpacked everything they said and how they did it, luck is more the fact that they were prepared and the opportunity appeared and they were able to actually seize it, and so I wouldn't call that luck, but they wouldn't assign any kind of causation to it. And what we found was that there are very simple things that actually have to happen to you to make you ready for the next job and then all of a sudden, you only see them when these other things happen to you.

Speaker 4: 3:30

So that's one of them. Bob, you stole mine. I was going to say the exact same thing, so I agree. The only other thing I might add is I think people discount the role that their network plays for them when they're looking for a job. They think it's a very solo like. I applied online to hundreds of jobs. These days, increasingly, AI supported me and they don't realize the importance of their network as part of that process that Bob alluded to. Coming in, making them aware of opportunities, helping them get the job, being the trusted broker right so that I will trust and actually hire you. Most jobs are filled by someone that you know in network. They're not filled by anonymous, random things. So that's the second one I might add is people discount the role of their network around them.

Speaker 1: 4:20

I'm going to add a third. The third thing to me was money. Money is a means to an end, so money turns out to be about respect, or money turns out to be I have to provide for my family. More Like. There's like five or six different definitions of why people want more money, not one. And you start to realize like people are mixing them all up and they're just using that lever of here. Let me offer you more money, and it's it's not just more money that makes job the work satisfying.

Speaker 2: 4:45

I love to hear you say that, because I just had a conversation with a friend who was feeling so down on themselves because they hadn't reached what they felt was success in terms of salary. And she's worked with incredible people, incredible organizations, but somehow that was the sole thing telling her or at least her own narrative that she has not been successful because of that one element. So it's good to remember that doesn't define your true success.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Well, but the fact is it's one of the wrong metrics, but it's a metric of how what success or progress feels like for them, and so when you start to put that there, you don't have the why of like. Really what I want is respect, and ultimately there's other ways to get respect, and so this is why, for example, sometimes a position change will actually help people feel that progress, and without a salary increase. There's many variables here at play and ultimately it was very fascinating because we did almost like the exit interview but the real exit interviews. We did over a thousand of them and it was so fun to hear the stories and what had to happen to them to make them ready to look and then ultimately how they found it. It was kind of what the book is all about.

Speaker 2: 5:50

Yeah, I love it. What gets in the way of true progress? What? How do we remove it?

Speaker 4: 5:57

Part of it is. I mean, starting with that, we don't actually know what progress looks like for us, right? So we'll tell ourselves these storylines. Money is a great example. I want more money, and once you want more money, you want more and more. There's no limit to that, right, without understanding underneath causality of what's actually driving me to say these are the things that are not good enough in my current role, these are the priorities that I really want to get in my next role. And so not really understanding what progress looks like for you, I think is actually a big thing that gets in the way of progress. And then the second one that's maybe sort of goes in concert with that is I don't actually know how to make the trade-offs for that next role to get the progress that I really desire.

Speaker 4: 6:42

And the thinking behind that is a fewfold One. There's no perfect job on every dimension. Every job is going to have some suck in it, it's going to have some things that I don't love about it. But what are the things that I'm going to consciously choose, not settle for, but say like, hey, I'm going to take the lower salary so that I get the basically non-existent commute, I get to have the title I get to be around my kids, whatever the set of things are. We could drill down deeper into all of those, but how do I make those trade-offs? Most people, I think, don't know how to make those and as a result, they get caught up in roles that sound good in paper. They're quick returns to ego, but they're not actually helping them make that progress.

Speaker 2: 7:24

Yeah, I believe it. I think I've definitely found myself in that position, right. And then, when you don't measure the trade-offs and what's really important to you, you find yourself in the same position just two years later, like here I am again.

Speaker 4: 7:39

The yellow brick road was supposed to lead somewhere, but somehow I just looped back and we're right where we started.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I have one more to add on this. I think one of the other things is people don't have a realistic or real understanding of what they're good at, what they suck at, what gives them energy, what they don't really know who they are and how they're driven. They haven't taken the time to study themselves, and so that's part of this is having people reflect back and find those moments where they got energy and find out those moments where the energy got sucked out of them. And just because you're good at it doesn't mean you like to do it, and so part of it is being able to actually know who you are and know what you're good at. But I always think for me, the thing to learn most is what do you suck at and how do you actually realize like you don't need to get better at that?

Speaker 4: 8:27

You need to find a teammate who's actually who loves to do this stuff you suck at, yeah, and actually, mel, just stay on that for a moment, cause Bob put me on the hot seat in the last week or two on this, where he was like saying but you're so. I stopped wanting to manage people when my twin girls were born in 2014. And Bob was like but you're really good at managing, like that was something that was like a superpower of yours, and I'm like. It was like but you're really good at managing. That was like a superpower of yours. And I'm like it's the last thing I freaking want to do. And he was basically like right, because just because you're good at it, the context changed doesn't mean you get energy from it anymore.

Speaker 4: 8:56

You did Right, but here's the thing. It goes back to your friend who was telling themselves the narrative of like I need to make this much money or whatever it is. We often say like, oh, success is then I'm going to be a manager and I'm going to have this big team and I'm going to measure based on the direct reports and their direct reports, and et cetera, et cetera. And like maybe that isn't what gives you energy at this stage, even if it is something that you could do, but we don't pay attention to the context and those signals about ourselves.

Speaker 2: 9:25

Yeah, Just because you can doesn't mean you should always right. Just a good rule of thumb and your, our priorities and our values change over time, so that's constantly like you have your twins and so that's right.

Speaker 2: 9:38

Things change. Okay. Something I loved I'm going to pivot really quick. Something I really loved in the book because, as a career coach myself and a former recruiter, I always tell people you're interviewing your employer just as much as they're interviewing you as a reminder. And what I really loved was you both said it is critical to hire your next job. Why Tell our folks why?

Speaker 1: 10:04

So this is one of the things that we flipped the lens on, and we used a theory that I built with Clay Christensen called jobs to be done, and the whole premise is people don't buy products, they hire them to make progress in their life.

Speaker 1: 10:16

And so part of this was to realize, at some point in time, when you talk to people around hiring, you start to realize actually the lens is flipped. And the fact is, know people around hiring, you start to realize, like it's actually the lens is flipped and the fact is we, as an employer, you think you hire somebody, but the fact is everybody's an at will employee, or most of them are at will employees and they choose to come to you or not, and so it's actually they're hiring you more than their, than the employer is hiring the employee. And so you start to realize when that's the case, you actually need to study the employees and say why, what causes them to say today's the day I'm going to leave and what causes you to say today's the day I'm going to move to this thing better? It's really, ultimately, we're trying to get employees to hire better because once you find the place, it's the right place. It's not work anymore.

Speaker 4: 11:12

Yeah, Right, yeah, I was. I was thinking, mel, when you, when, when you said that like of of how you're coaching people to interview just as much as they're being interviewed. That really changes the agency, it really changes the equation, and I think it goes back to what Bob said in the beginning around luck is, the reason people don't do it is they think that I'm going to cross my fingers and just hope that this works out and I'll be lucky enough to be the one chosen for this job, and they're not thinking about what their priorities are. What does progress mean for me and that I get to choose? Is this the job I'm going to do in exchange for the benefits around, and not just around money, vacation, et cetera, but also the work I get to do on a daily basis and who I interact with, and so forth.

Speaker 2: 11:59

Yeah, I was equating it to being an adult and realizing you still have free will to make choices. Like I want a piece of cake, so I'm going to go have one for dinner, and you sometimes forget, in all of the everyday schmutz of life, like, oh, I do have agency and free will in these choices.

Speaker 4: 12:17

So we're the social contagion right Of like. We tell ourselves these narratives of how we think we want to be for others and how we think we're supposed to show up as opposed to. Well, what do you want and how do we understand that?

Speaker 1: 12:30

The other thing to me is the fact is is that when you study kind of the employee, employer side of this and you learn about the job description, you realize that the job description is just made up.

Speaker 1: 12:41

It's just made up and so everybody's trying to morph themselves to fit this unrealistic ideal situation of like make the people fit the job, when the reality is is what we should be doing is actually shaping the work that to fit the people. Because when you actually do that intentionally, you start to realize like okay, I suck at these three things, so, and it's part of my job, so how do I actually figure out how to get rid of that and do more of the stuff I'm really good at and find somebody to do the stuff that I suck at? And so it's this notion of like. At some point, if you really study how people make job descriptions, it's either they copy it, they do chat, gpt, they then take all the things that they don't want to do and add it to the list and it's just, and so as an employee, you don't realize that that's actually all made up and very negotiable in some cases on certain dimensions.

Speaker 3: 13:33

I want to back up what you're saying because, having led a lot of talent organizations, I can tell you that most people don't even know what they're hiring for or what they want people to really do. And the idea of opening up the opportunity to have that conversation and figure out how could this fit together, I think is really on the table, because it is shocking how many hiring managers and, honestly, how many like talent organizations don't really know what they want their people to do.

Speaker 1: 13:58

By the way, the notion of a hiring manager. I got confused by the whole process because I'm thinking, well, the hiring manager is the person inside the HR. I'm like no, no, that's the person that actually they're going to work for. I'm like, yeah, but who teaches them to write a job description? Nobody.

Speaker 2: 14:12

Nobody.

Speaker 1: 14:13

It's compliance cut and paste For half the time you're not even trained to be a manager. You're trained to be a leader, but nobody teaches management skills anymore right. You're just left out on that.

Speaker 4: 14:24

And this is why the job description has been so enduring, right? Is it's really a legal document to give me justification for my hiring and firing down the road as well, More than to your point, Francesca, like an actual set of what's this person going to do? How do I want them to contribute? What's the outcomes right? What's the work?

Speaker 2: 14:42

Yeah, we need a whole revamp on the job description. Yes, indeed.

Speaker 1: 14:48

Michael and I are going down that road. It's like we wrote this primarily for employees, to empower employees, because a billion people a year switch jobs. Most of them don't actually switch jobs in a positive way, and so part of it is how do we actually help them make better decisions so they can actually feel like they've made progress in their career. But along the way we've realized like there's so much about the employer around, kind of how do you manage, how do you do performance reviews, how do you think about fit, how do you actually rethink the hiring process and all those kinds of things, and it's really helping us kind of rethink a different way of kind of seeing it from that perspective.

Speaker 2: 15:23

We love to see it. So do we of seeing it from that perspective. We love to see it In the book. You touched on the great talent shortage and what's happening by 20, that it could exceed 85 million people. And we hear stories from folks all the time how they're applying to a thousand jobs and they have no luck, or they've been out of work for a year, right. But when you hear this one story, there's this massive talent shortage, and then you hear this other narrative that nobody can find a job. These two things are conflicting, right. So I'm hoping I can do some myth busting with you both here. Do employees actually hold the card.

Speaker 4: 15:59

So I think it's interesting. And let's just go deeper in the paradox, because the other piece of this is, if you looked at the job market, you'd be like it's actually really healthy what economists consider full employment, and people are coming off long-term unemployment and coming into the job market, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and yet it's taking longer and longer to hire. There's articles like in the Wall Street Journal even Harvard MBAs can't find jobs, and so there's all this anxiety on all sides of the market and I think what's happening is that there's a lot of paralysis because of that lack of clarity that we were just talking about of what do I really want? How would I know someone can actually do the things that I want them to do, and do they really know what they want to do and the trade-offs they're willing to make to go get it? So there's like a lot of lack of clarity on all sides. Might there be a skills gap? That's contributing Absolutely, but might it also be that we just don't have clarity about what work looks like and should be and so forth?

Speaker 4: 16:59

I think also the case, and in terms of this talent shortage. Look, all these are projections based off of a lot of macro stuff, so I think, believe it as far as you can throw a piece of paper, but I think the bottom line is that we know that there's a lot of change in skills. Ai is certainly changing the job market. The baby boomers are leaving, millennials are starting to retire, there are lower birth rates of people coming up underneath, and so that's sort of the dynamic in which you have this maelstrom we just described.

Speaker 4: 17:31

But from my perspective, employees do carry a lot more cards than they realize or would be employees. But it's not through this anonymous online posting pray for quote, unquote luck right Approach. It's instead getting clarity about myself what are my priorities, what's the work I want to do, and looking for fit, rather than just hoping someone hires me and me being able to go to the employer and be like this is what I can do, this is what I suck at. This is how I can help you and have that conversation, because I think it's a very different dialogue when you're coming in with your cards, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 18:12

Face up that way, market has been automating the insanity because at some point it starts at what I call there's three layers of language. There's a pablum layer of language where we can, hey, how was your day? Oh, it was great, right, but it really wasn't great. Or if it was great, what made it be great right? And you start to realize that you have to get down from the pablum level to the fantasy level, past the fantasy down to the causal level, like what caused it to be a great day right? And so part part of it is what they did is they literally are taking everybody's resume. They're filtering it in certain ways. They're basically doing all these words Like I was trying to be on a public board and one of the things that they said is I had to have the word business leader in my CV like four to eight times, or I wouldn't even get past the filter.

Speaker 1: 18:51

I'm like what's that? Like, how does that work? I'm an engineer and I was taught to simplify and then automate, and so part of this is what we're trying to do is like how do we get this down to? What is a good job look like for me as an employee? What's the work that I need to get done. That helps me as the corporation. And how do we? Actually it's fit. It's just like product, market fit, but it's employee, employer fit, and so it's this notion of being able to do that and I think, like you said, if we stay at the pablum level, it's going to look like employment's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

Speaker 1: 19:20

Because when your answer to the question is what's your greatest weakness? Oh, I work too hard. That's just not like. Come on, everybody sucks at something and you have to be able to actually be very articulated. What we found from the book is that when people can talk about look, I love to do these things, I get energy from doing this and oh, by the way, I can do these things, but they really suck the energy out of me. It allows people to actually be humble and become real. Which the pieces of paper?

Speaker 4: 19:47

don't do If we can just stay on it for one second right. Essentially, the employers we've already established are looking for unicorns, like these huge job descriptions with all these skills and whatever else. So the individuals on paper are then constructing themselves to look like superheroes, which the employers don't believe. And so if you come in there with an articulate conversation around, this is where I get energy, this is what I'm awesome at, this sucks my energy, this is what I suck at, etc. Etc. You're being honest and now we can talk about fit and you go from one of a thousand applications to one of three or four people who actually are going to fill what I need to make progress on the employer side. But it's because we've broken out of this game of like unicorns and superheroes that we all know is a lie.

Speaker 2: 20:33

Oh, agreed, it sounds like you have another book in your back pocket with the clarity shortage going on on both sides. So the unicorns. As a former recruiter, oh yeah, working with folks wanting the unicorn.

Speaker 1: 20:45

I think the other part is it's what the resume has, is what you did, it's not what you do, and just because you did, it means you don't like to do it. And so again it's this lack of clarity around what do you want to be doing and what are you actually good at and what gives you energy?

Speaker 3: 20:58

It's like this massive search for honesty on both sides. I feel like if the job market was dating, this would just be like. You know what I'm saying. You know it's like. This is how you mentioned. A million people change jobs every year. That's 30% of the workforce, which I think most people don't think that many people change jobs, but they do. And the reasons why you outlined in the book. You talk about four quests. What are those reasons why people leave?

Speaker 4: 21:47

First, as a sort of prelude, we found 30 forces that are pushing and pulling people to say, today's the day I might want to switch, and when certain combinations of them come together, they overwhelm the anxieties and the habits that are sort of holding us in place. And so the four quests for progress are essentially looking at the clusters, or closest to each other, if you will. That comprise a quest, or what Bob earlier would have called the job to be done. And so the first one we saw is what we call get out. So these are people I don't like the way I'm being managed. This is a job to nowhere. The company's going nowhere, fast stuff like that. It's a lot of push right and they're like I got to get out and fast.

Speaker 4: 22:29

On the flip side of that, there's what we call the take the next steppers, if you will, and these are people like hey, career, personal, whatever life milestones hitting, I'm ready to take that next step in my career. It feels almost like the logical next thing I would do. This is the closest to the career ladder, although it's not synonymous with it, and sort of it feels like I'm going to build on what gives me energy. I'm going to build on my current capabilities and let's keep on margin. Those are sort of the two poles, if you will. And then we have folks that say I want to regain alignment. And so these are people who say I actually like how I'm energized at the moment, but I don't like what they're asking me in terms of my capabilities to do, or I feel fundamentally disrespected on the what I do, and so these are people that I want to regain alignment in terms of the skills assets that I get to use on the job.

Speaker 4: 23:23

And then, on the other side of it is the regain control folks, and they're basically saying I actually, in this case, like what I get to do, but I don't like how it engages my energy or my time and things like that. I feel fundamentally out of whack. This might be the work-life balance folks, as an example. This might be people that say I'm being micromanaged. This might be people saying God, they're telling me I have to come into the office five days a week when I know I do the job well, when I get to work two days at home, what the heck's going on here? So these are the folks that are looking to regain control.

Speaker 4: 23:56

And basically these are four quests. They're not absolute. As you probably saw when you take the quiz. It gives you sort of a most likely fit score for each of them, but it helps you understand what's progress for me right now. And I'll give you a classic example. If you're like regain control and you're just going to march up the totem pole and take the next logical job right on the mythical career ladder in your current employer, that's probably going to be a fundamental mismatch for the things that you're actually looking for, and so you really want to understand what's driving me, what's causing me to say today's the day and then start to use that as a sorting mechanism.

Speaker 3: 24:37

Yeah, the assessment is really powerful and I consider myself someone that is savvy when it comes to my career or even knowing myself. I feel like I try to be very introspective and I will tell you, when I read the book, I realized that I haven't been as introspective as I could have throughout my career. I was just like go to whatever was paying more or the next step up. It was one of those two things. That's how I made my choices, even though it wasn't necessarily the work I liked to do, or even putting myself in a healthier situation. And I'm wondering, flipping this from, like, an employer perspective, why should employers care about the four quests?

Speaker 1: 25:16

The reason is twofold is like, at some point the current employees are going to want to make progress and if you don't have opportunities that actually match the quests of where they want to go, the reality is that they're going to have to go somewhere else, and so that's the first aspect here is that when we talk about trying to have company loyalty, it really is. It's not company loyalty like brand loyalty. This is literally like I'm willing to stay because you're actually looking out for me. Most people, they end up having to take a job because there's a vacancy in the job and the fact is it's not part of their career path, and they end up having to slot in because, oh, we have this opportunity for you, but it's not with any respect to who they are necessarily or what they want to do.

Speaker 1: 26:02

It's so we can actually keep the business going. So I think part of that is one. I think the second part is that to realize these quests, you can actually recruit completely differently. Go find people who are actually wanting to get out, Because at some point in time right now, when we put a job out there, we're only looking for the people who've already raised their hand. But I know that he's got these pushes I can attract and say, hey, don't want to be micromanaged anymore, Want to actually have a place where you can do these kinds of things. Come, come, talk to us.

Speaker 2: 26:25

My favorite recent example of a recruiter doing this really well was on LinkedIn this week where, in response to Zuckerberg's recent interview with Joe Rogan, an interview called out hey, if you don't want to work for a guy like that in an aggressive environment, come work for us, and it was flooded with comments. So I just think it's interesting for companies.

Speaker 1: 26:46

you know they'll win if they get ahead of it, and that's the thing is. But I think the employers have to realize they have to talk about.

Speaker 3: 26:53

What's the work you want me to do Is it the work you want them to do and is it also kind of tapping into that emotional need around, what they need to see in the quest, for example? You mentioned like if you don't want to be micromanaged, but is it tapping into that quest language?

Speaker 1: 27:08

Yes, and it's using that language we talk about. There's things that push you to leave and there's things that pull you to the new job, and it's ultimately the trade-offs you make that actually make it happen. For example, who's thinking about leaving? We talked to people who really left their job and went somewhere else, and so there's a big difference between wanting to do it and doing it, and so ultimately, there's a certain amount of energy that has to be part of it, and we have to understand both sides of that.

Speaker 4: 27:32

I think it's a really cool hack also right If you're a marketer or if you're trying to attract and understanding who you're trying to attract the pushes and pulls that cause people to leave. This is ultimately like their language, lived experience. This is like actually what's happening to them. It's not invented from what we would call the supply side. The company is imagining why someone might want to come to them. Companies imagining why someone might want to come to them. This is the real energy that causes someone to say today's the day and you get to use that to get the people that are right for your role. And, by the way, you get to continue to use that information on the day-to-day.

Speaker 4: 28:09

Because here's the third thing I would say we know that roughly two-thirds, depending on the survey of workers are completely disengaged. Call it quietly quitting whatever you want to do from their current role. That's not an employee I want to be hiring on my team. That's not someone I want. I want someone who's engaged, hard charging, doing a great job. So how do I make sure I understand the forces acting on them right now so I can better engage the people that I actually want to keep on my team?

Speaker 1: 28:40

I work mostly in the startup world and so I have some people have taken this and they've taken the pushes, which are, you know, do you feel micromanaged? Are you pushed across your billies? Are you bored? Do you not know where to go next? Like there's a list of 13 kind of things that have to happen, and if any four of them happen, that's when you start to get activated. But they're using that as part of the sit down and the quarterly review to say are any of these things happening? If they are, let's talk about them, because if there's no push, there's no way they're going to start thinking about anything else, and so part of it is to realize that the pushes are the things that actually create the space in the brain for you to kind of go like all right, I got to look somewhere else. So there's these little things, but those little things then accumulate into two things, and then three things, and then four things is where you go all right, it's time for me to look.

Speaker 3: 29:24

Yeah, I think, organizationally doing those kinds of audits as a team or even as an org I'm thinking for my own work and doing like culture strategy looking at those things and seeing is this true in our organization, is this the type of culture we have? And then we can get into the marketing exercise of saying, if you want this, this is where you can come in terms of us. So that's awesome. I want to go back to the employee side, because in the book you also talk about things like progress versus progression and I'm curious if you can talk through that.

Speaker 4: 29:52

So progression is that career ladder, the supply side right, we have our org charts. Career ladder, the supply side right, we have our org charts. You come in as an entry-level worker, probably an individual contributor. We imagine that you start to move up, you become manager, director, right, on and on and on, and it's sort of that climbing of the career ladder, the next step. We just keep on this progression. It's the thing that drives. Frankly, mel, like your friend who's like I had to be making this amount of money right, because that's progression, whereas progress is all the things we've been talking around, these quests and what is driving your energy and getting more of that in the next role, in the current context you're in, and so forth, and those things sometimes line up Progression as an organization or employer would think about it and progress as an individual. But our research suggests that at least 75% of the time they're not lining up that there's actually divergence between the two.

Speaker 1: 30:46

That's huge. I think the other part, though, is that as you start to think about it is when you get to progress. Most people feel like they have two lives. I have a work life and I have a home life. The reality is we have one life, we don't have two and two lives I have a work life and I have a home life. The reality is we have one life, we don't have two, and the fact is is we have to learn how to merge the two, and the reason why somebody might be great for the position but something happens at home, got to take care of the parents, have babies, whatever it is, the fact is, life changes and then, all of a sudden, what you want to make progress on before is very different than now, and nobody takes into account that we have one life and we have a whole bunch of things we have to move and, ultimately, how do we make of these spheres as very separate you?

Speaker 4: 31:21

jumped on your career track. You stayed there and that was it, and then you had your life and that was going on. I don't think that was ever really true to Bob's point. But now individuals are living increasingly in a way that shows just how much of a lie that is and how interdependent our careers and the rest of our lives are. And it's one of the reasons Bob will tell someone when he's coaching them he's like look, you don't have to get it all in the job. You can have a side hustle and then you can volunteer here and then make sure you're doing this there and together you get the things that are most important to you. But you look holistically and organizations need to sort of recognize that that's true for their employees. They can put their head in the sand and pretend it's not, but that doesn't mean the individuals aren't going to live their lives that way.

Speaker 3: 32:23

This might be an obvious question, but why don't you think people have done this type of introspection before, like why it's hard, it's hard, it's hard.

Speaker 1: 32:32

I mean, one of the things is we wrote the book, we have nine steps, like, and if you do all nine steps, you're gonna be like amazing, but the reality is not everybody's gonna do every step and but there are there's three or four of these steps are really really essential. For example, energy drivers and energy drains. You need to start to pay attention to where are those moments where you walk into a situation and you get energy. That's a thing you need to actually pay attention to, and the fact is is most people don't pay attention to that, or they know it but they don't account for it and they don't actually think about, like, what is it about this situation that gives me energy? Is it the people? Is it the topic? Is it the pressure? There's variables in that situation that does that, and so it's making people way more mindful about where do they get their energy from and where does their energy go when it gets sucked out.

Speaker 4: 33:19

I, yeah, yeah, I agree with that. The biggest question we often get when we show the pushes and pulls to audiences, they say, like money's not on that list or like the surface level thing, and I think the thing is like we've been telling ourselves a story. Bob would call it at the pablum level, I would call it. You know, we're not yet at causality right, and so what I think this book and the research frankly does is we drill down into real root causes and then we gave language to that causality. That hopefully makes it I don't want to say it's easy, it's not, but easier so that more people can start to identify what really is driving me at this point in time.

Speaker 2: 34:22

I know we can't cover the full nine-step journey and I think folks absolutely need to read your books, but one of the pieces of the journey that stood out to me was the experiences, not features. Part of that.

Speaker 4: 34:35

Yeah, absolutely. I mean features. Right are the things like the money, the vacation, the title, all those sort of surface level or problem level that we were talking about before. Experiences are what do I actually do on a day-to-day basis in the role the doing right and, as Bob would push us, what will you do as opposed to what have you done, and what is this going to look like and how is it going to integrate with the rest of your life on a day-to-day basis?

Speaker 4: 35:02

The analogy we use in the book is thinking about real estate listings where they tout lots of features natural light, granite countertops, bob's built homes so he can talk more about this and the reality is they all start to blend into each other and it's not until you actually think about how am I actually going to live in this space, what are the experiences that I want, that then features actually start to take on meaning around. How will it or won't it work with my life? Right, in my case, any house I live in. I need a quiet space where I can do my work, where the kids are not going to interfere and run around as they come home from school and the like. That all of a sudden gives definition to what is a good or bad choice for me, not whether there's natural light and granite countertops in the abstract.

Speaker 1: 35:49

The reason why I love the house one is you can look at a listing, but you don't know what it's like to live in that house until you go there. And so part of it is this reality is like where's the grocery store and who are the neighbors and where's school. And you start to realize at some point they tell you all about the house but you don't even get a feel for like how to live in it. And so it's this notion of, well, we'll get you a virtual tour. That's not the thing, man tour.

Speaker 4: 36:14

That's not the thing, man. No right. My mother-in-law right now is looking at downsizing and she sent us a place that she clearly had never been to and I was like, oh boy, that's a busy intersection, there's no way that's going to work. But she had to go. She went and she emailed me. She's like, wow, that's a busy intersection, no way that's going to work. And I'm like yep.

Speaker 2: 36:28

There's an airport nearby or a church bell goes off.

Speaker 4: 36:32

every Sunday it's like a Burger King on one side and a McDonald's drive-thru on the other, and I was like I already know the answer to this question, but go for it. But part of it is they have to experience it?

Speaker 1: 36:40

No, the experience is important.

Speaker 4: 36:42

Right and her imagining oh wow, what's my day-to-day going to look like? Against that, there's nothing that replaces that.

Speaker 3: 37:00

Yeah, yeah, got to do your homework, got to do your homework. I want to flip over to where work is going, because I mean I'm excited to be alive right now, but there's just a ton of shit happening either politically with AI, yada, yada. Where do you see work going in the next two to five years, especially as it relates to job movement?

Speaker 4: 37:12

Look, obviously the velocity is high right now and the anxiety around it, I think, is higher. I think the reality is AI at the moment is more of an efficiency innovation. It's sort of automating and allowing us to do what we already did a little bit better. I think the evidence is suggesting it actually helps those who are lowest performers be better. I do think the reality is it's taking out a lot of entry-level work right away, a lot of employers, the jobs that they had open as entry-level roles. They're taking them off the table, and so that's, I think, where it's maybe making the biggest immediate impact because they can imagine how AI allows that next person on the rung to quickly use that tool to do it and then actually become more productive. For people starting their careers or switching industries or whatnot, getting experiences when you're out of before the job market, in schooling, internships, entrepreneurially, side hustles, whatever it is is going to become more and more important to show you know what to do and you can actually do the work.

Speaker 4: 38:14

I think the bigger term transformations that people love to sort of dream and speculate about. My own belief is that that's not going to come until new business models and organizations are built around these technologies sort of organically and it goes to how every technology has made its biggest impact, whether it's electricity, where people realize, oh, we can distribute, we don't have to put everything around the watermill anymore and things like that, and we can do factories differently, or I mean even frankly, digital advertising, when it's sort of a P&G brand that wants everyone to come in the store because of the way they've thought about consumer packaged goods, versus a startup that's thinking much more targeted, performance-based advertising. Technologies, I think, are most transformational when business models are actually built around them as an enabler, as opposed to trying to cram it into the existing models. I think we're a few years away from that still.

Speaker 3: 39:07

Yeah, we're just starting to see people think about AI-first organizations.

Speaker 4: 39:11

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 39:11

Yeah, I look back to history on this. When I was early in the workforce, I worked at Ford and they had something called the typing pool. This was just a bunch of people who wrote, who typed, and they had carbon paper the whole. You guys have no idea that this existed, but the big thing was like, what is word processing going to do to the typing pool? And you started to realize that it's somebody. Everybody was against it because the typing pool is going to go away. Where are they going to work? Well, it turns out those people could actually write copy and they could do all these other things and do much higher level things.

Speaker 1: 39:42

And so, channeling Clay here, clay would say what we want to do is have people work at the top of their profession, and the work that sucks is the work that we want AI to be doing for us. The thing is, we will still think more than AI, but AI can actually provide us the input to actually help us think better. I think that what's going to happen is it's going to force people to be kind of again. You know, my children ask me when they're like, what's going to happen to all the cab drivers when we have self-driving cars, they're going to figure out something else to do. They don't get to retire and they don't get to move out of that thing and they'll always be somebody who wants to actually have a human in the cab.

Speaker 1: 40:19

But the reality is it's changing the market and basically being able to say but how do we get humans as a whole to basically step up to the next level? Because we got some technology that can take care of things at the lowest level that we don't need to worry about. I'm very bullish on where it's going to go. The question is do people really want to work differently and think better and harder?

Speaker 3: 40:39

I think that's the thing, because it's like, when you think about, we can do this higher level thinking, this higher work as well, that does take work, because it's breaking out of what we've been doing I mean, we're talking about knowing thyself in this whole conversation and then it's like how do you get to that higher level? But I think we'll get there. We have gotten there before, we'll get there, it's just the next.

Speaker 4: 40:59

And there'll be dislocation right as we go through it, like there's going to be a whole bunch of people in the moment that it's stressful and they're going to have to work through it and we'll figure it out. But I think over time Bob's right, that's the direction it goes and the pathway at the moment, frankly, is those people who help people make progress on that journey. They're going to become employers of choice as well, in my mind.

Speaker 3: 41:21

Yeah, absolutely Absolutely. Anything you would recommend employees do now.

Speaker 4: 41:26

I think having a clear sense of your strengths but maybe equally what you're not strong at and you don't want to do and what you are going to choose to sort of say I'm going to suck at, so that you know what to build on and you know what to let others do, or let AI do for you, or whatever it might be, I think is a really important step. And then the second one comes from the book. It's this career balance sheet idea. This is where I think this idea is powerful is understanding the useful life of your current assets and where and how am I going to have to invest to make them still relevant in the future and have some sense of? Are those trade-offs that I want to make in terms of my time and money to keep those things current, or are there other things I want to invest in?

Speaker 1: 42:07

The thing to me, is the energy drivers and energy drains. Like the fact is is just being able to know what are the things that have to come together to enable you to have energy is when I'm coaching people. What I'm doing is I'm like I want you to go through the next week and just start to write down when it happens because I don't think people are actually aware of it and then start to then parameterize it to understand, like what's going on Well, oh, I get to learn a lot of new things, okay, or, or it's I get to organize things. Like my wife is in finance and the thing is my wife loves to balance. Like when it balances, it's like I hit a serotonin. Like, oh, my god, I just like that balance is perfect.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I'm like, yeah, I I get nothing from that, but she gets a lot of it's knowing where it comes from, but then all the conversely, knowing when the energy gets pulled out of you, because a lot of times you're so caught up emotionally that like it's almost like you need to step back from yourself and look at the situation and go like why is this basically draining all my energy? What's going on here? And it's like it's people, it's, it's situations, it's time of day, it's like a whole bunch of things and start to see those patterns. I it's like a whole bunch of things and start to see those patterns.

Speaker 4: 43:13

I think that's, to me, the biggest advice I'd give people and, by the way, I don't want this to be said the wrong way, but I think it's actually the easiest step you can reflect on in the book in many ways, because, as Bob said, it's not something that I have to lock myself into a closet and think three hours. It's literally I'm living life. When am I in flow? When did that suck? Okay, start to notice the patterns, start to interrogate it.

Speaker 3: 43:38

Right, just keep a sticky right and start noticing and unpacking them. I did it on my cell phone.

Speaker 4: 43:46

It's kind of like keeping a food diary it's not, and it's just you know, you just get it in the habit.

Speaker 3: 43:48

It's an excellent exercise.

Speaker 4: 43:49

And the cool thing is, you don't have to then figure out how big was that portion and how do I measure it, because that's the part about the food diary I could never figure out.

Speaker 2: 44:07

We like to do rapid round because we want to know you as human beings, aside from just your work and your book. Does that sound okay?

Speaker 4: 44:13

Yep, let's do it.

Speaker 2: 44:14

All right. What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 4: 44:17

I'm eclectic on music tastes. I've been really into the Merrily we Roll Along soundtrack, though the last week and a half I have not been able to get it out of my head. We saw it on Broadway a few months ago at this point, I guess, and it all of a sudden came back into my subconsciousness. So I've been really enjoying that.

Speaker 1: 44:37

So I'm listening to mostly I don't know the kind of music, but it's basically Bobby Alua and Matt Duncan. It's a little bit of reggae, a little bit of beach vibe, a little bit of background beat, but it's just. It's one of those things where, because I'm ADHD, like I like to have the same music play over and over and over again, and so it's one of those things I'm deep down into that one where it's like I've probably listened to the same playlist now 50 times. So that's where I'm at Nothing wrong with that. It just it just makes it lighter. It's a, it's light and airy. That's all I can tell you.

Speaker 2: 45:10

And does it make you feel warm, even though it's five?

Speaker 1: 45:14

degrees it reminds me of going to Mexico is what it does and it's like okay, here we go.

Speaker 2: 45:19

Yeah, love it. Okay, what are you reading right now?

Speaker 4: 45:24

I'm currently reading a draft of my father's book that he thinks he's writing for publication.

Speaker 2: 45:33

He thinks Well based on what I'm reading, so you're getting the feedback before.

Speaker 1: 45:41

I'm giving it to him, so maybe I should just leave it there. Does he know our podcast? Probably not.

Speaker 4: 45:43

He's got some more work to do. If he thinks it's ready for primetime, okay.

Speaker 1: 45:49

How about you, Bob? So for me I'm listening to. I have a couple of books I was listening to. One is called Radical Humility. It's very interesting. I would say I learned my humility from the best, who was Clay Christensen, but ultimately I didn't understand kind of like the components of how it works and what it is and the reality is. It's very interesting to kind of see how this person has basically broken it down and figured it out. The other book I'm reading is Fingerprints of the Gods. I'm very deep into basically electromagnetic waves and basically geometry and how the two work together, and so it's just this notion of a lot of things in ancient history. Take into account this notion of geometry and frequencies and just I don't know why I'm down there, but it's very fun, Very fun for me.

Speaker 2: 46:32

You know, in Chichen Itza, where if you clap it makes the sound of the bird in Mexico. Is that related to this?

Speaker 1: 46:39

book. The notion is that frequency, like everything, has a frequency and everything actually generates a frequency. And when you start to see natural harmonics happen, it's kind of when you get those moments where you get energy. It's related back to energy drivers and drains. But it really is this notion of like, where does that emotion come from and how do you actually get it? And it comes from, I believe, electromagnetic waves and basically geometry. So it's very deep, very deep down the rabbit hole. Sorry, no, don't apologize.

Speaker 2: 47:08

I have a million more questions, but yeah, who do you both really admire?

Speaker 4: 47:13

Am I allowed to say Bob? I feel like Bob is someone who has superpowers, who sees around corners before things happen because of his superpowers and knew we would be friends and colleagues and get to collaborate with each other Well before I understood this fact. And the reality is it's like it's come together because he understands causality in a way that I'm constantly aspiring and learning from. So I'll say you, bob, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to say you, no, I have a feeling I know who you're going to say yeah, I have to say my wife.

Speaker 1: 47:46

I most admire my wife. So I'm a neurodivergent person. I've had three close head brain injuries. I can't read, I can't write. I've done seven startups, I've worked on 3,500 products. I've had four children in five years, but my wife is the one who holds it all together. And that is just one of those things where I'm working on a book now around relationships and finding your life partner. And one of the things you realize is I thought when I got married I could not possibly love my wife anymore and I realized it was actually the lowest point of how much I love my wife. And it's just grown so much that we've been married to 35 years and it's just one of those things where we've been able to kind of just move. And it's one of those things where who are opposites don't get along well or there's there's always friction, but we know how to actually dance together very well and so it's it's it's just, it's just a joy to spend time with her and be with her oh someone cutting onions in here.

Speaker 2: 48:43

Yeah, I'm like, oh shit, I'm getting teared up I knew he was gonna pull at the heartstrings all right last question what's one piece of advice you want everyone to know, and it can be related to the book or just something personal that you want to share?

Speaker 1: 49:04

I will tell you that I think that people should be much more cognizant, explicit, intentional about the progress they're trying to make in their life. Every time you buy something, every time you change something, it always has an intention, and the more you can actually become intentional about it, that one is the less change you'll make and the more meaningful changes you'll make. And so this is just one example in your career. But like finding your life partner, buying a new pair of socks, Like I know it sounds crazy, but the fact is is all of them have that same thing of like. Do I really need a new pair of socks? And why do I need a new pair of socks? And how are these socks better than the socks I had before? And so being intentional about the changes in the purchases you make is probably one of the most satisfying things you can do, because it allows you to actually be explicit about the progress you make and take control of your life.

Speaker 4: 49:55

Far be it for me to try to build on that, because I've tried to take this into my own life, as Bob knows, with every decision I make. Now I'll say something totally different, which is a motto that I always live by, which is a kuna matata from Lion King. But no worries, I think we overstress and have a lot of anxiety that are about things that we can't control, and we should focus much more on the things that we can and worry less about the details and keep the big picture in mind.

Speaker 2: 50:25

I love it. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends. Bye friends.

Rethinking Work & Workplace Culture

Your Work Friends Podcast: Why are we here? Rethinking Work & Workplace Culture with Jennifer Moss

Work is broken…

Burnout is at an all-time high. Engagement is at an all-time low. And work? Well, it’s not working for a lot of us. In this episode, we sit down with Jennifer Moss, workplace culture expert and author of Why Are We Here?, to talk about why so many of us feel unfulfilled at work—and what leaders actually need to do to fix it. We bust the biggest myths about workplace wellbeing, talk about why hope (yes, hope) is a leadership strategy, and dig into why Gen Z is side-eyeing corporate life.

If you’ve ever thought, “Is this really all there is?”—you’re not alone. Let’s rethink work, together.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Okay, finish this sentence. Work should feel more like blank and less like blank.

Speaker 2: 0:06

More like fuel for you know your sense of accomplishment, Less like a grind Damn right.

Speaker 1: 0:15

Love it, Love it hey, welcome to your work, friend. I'm francesca ranieri and I'm mel plett. Mel, what's going?

Speaker 3: 0:37

on. You know, spring is springing and it's sprung. Almost. Last week was the arctic, the cold here, but this week it is sunshine almost until 6 30 so, and I hear the birds chirping. I will take it. How about? What's going on with you?

Speaker 1: 0:55

say what you will about portland in the winter. We've had a very sunny winter for portland, but what most people might not know about port is in the winter the moss turns like an electric green. It's like almost fluorescent. So it's just a very cool time to be here. I love it. Yeah, pretty yeah. Yeah, I got to enjoy the nature. You know, got to enjoy the nature you do.

Speaker 3: 1:18

I think I'm one of those sad sufferers the seasonal affective disorder. I have one of those lamps. Have you seen those lamps that help you slowly wake up with the sunshine? I use that. I need the atmosphere to feel sunshine included.

Speaker 1: 1:34

Totally get it. Completely get it, completely get it. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:38

Well, we met with Jennifer Moss. Jennifer is a workplace expert, harvard Business Review columnist, author of Unlocking Happiness at Work, author of the Burnout Epidemic and now her new book, why Are we here? And it's all about creating workplace cultures where everyone wants to work and we just had such a fantastic conversation with her, Francesca. What did you think about this conversation?

Speaker 1: 2:06

Yeah, I was stoked to talk to Jennifer because she is, to me, the leading person to look at on burnout. Any of the work that Jennifer does it is absolutely locked and loaded with the latest research on things. To have her answer the question around how do you create a culture that people actually want to show up for was really interesting. The book is fascinating. She is someone that you know how you meet people like. They're so accomplished and they're so freaking good at what they do, and then they're just a very cool person on top of that. Jennifer Moss.

Speaker 3: 2:39

Yeah, 100%. She was amazing. I couldn't agree with you more. You and I talk about this all the time COVID and then our own life experiences and things that happen outside of work have really reprioritized what is meaningful for us and where our priorities stand, our values going forward, and I think so many people are going through kind of that level setting and gut check for themselves. What I really loved about Jennifer's book and I do want to read a quote that she started with that made me really think about what most people are going through. She mentions that people aren't less ambitious or lazy, we're just feeling uninspired, and that really stood out to me and I was like, yes, 100%. She's weaving together all of these really big concepts about work and providing tangible things that you can do today for yourself, for your team, to make workplaces that are inspiring.

Speaker 1: 3:35

It's practical, tangible, and most of the things that she talks about in the book and with us are things you can do in 20 minutes or less, sold in 20 minutes or less, 20 minutes or less, 20 minutes or less, 20 minutes or less. Like, come on, let's go, let's go, let's do this.

Speaker 3: 3:49

Yeah Well, friends with that, here's Jennifer Moss.

Speaker 2: 4:26

Jen, I'm going to jump right in here. What is the biggest myth about workplace idea? That you can't have one without the other. If you invest in well-being and you invest in employee happiness that somehow that's just like a nice to have and you're a human-centered leader and I think it's an ego thing like I'm just doing this for you because it's so important that people are happy and I'm a hero for that and instead it's really if you're a capitalist, if you want to be competitive you know I'm a hero for that and instead it's really if you're a capitalist, if you want to be competitive, if you want to have a really you know, future ready organization you invest in well-being.

Speaker 3: 4:55

I love to hear you say that, because I think back to the days where, when work-life balance was the thing and people were like who needs that? Like it's a badge of honor to just drive yourself into the ground, but it's bad for business, right?

Speaker 2: 5:09

It is bad for business and I wrote this article for Harvard Business Review that I think it went viral because people felt really connected to this idea of toxic productivity and the title was let's End Toxic Productivity. There is this heroic attitude towards people that don't sleep and they don't eat and they don't even take time to go pee, they just work all the time. It's like they're the high performing people and that's just because they feel like that's what they have to do to be able to be promoted. It's not anyone's real desire, but it's become something we celebrate and we need to get better at. Looking at rest is not a four letter word that. It is actually good for all of us and it makes us more productive and leads to lots of good business outcomes.

Speaker 3: 5:54

Listen, I am all for bringing back the afternoon nap. Anyone a fan from kindergarten? I feel like that was a good refresher, so let's build that in. You write that work is fundamentally broken. How did we get here?

Speaker 2: 6:11

This is a long time coming. You know, the office is 550 years old. We have sort of behaved in the same way, around that same framework. I mean we went from seven days a week to six to five, so now we're in the five zone, which has been the last hundred years. But you know, nothing's really changed about work and going into the office and it being very transactional.

Speaker 2: 6:34

But I say, since the advent of the car phone, where we were able to move our work into the new office which was our car, that changed work from a transactional relationship to a social contract. You're asking us to bring work into our home, into our personal life. You know that really breaks the expectation, and so we've had this unwinding of what our expectation of work has been and also the demands on us to be working all the time with all these blurred lines. And there was a point in the pandemic which crises do? They exacerbate all those existing problems that were there, that were boiling and exploded them, and so in the last five years it's like we went from breaking to broken and now we have to figure out a new framework for work.

Speaker 3: 7:28

Well, throughout the book, you really explored why so many of us are feeling unfulfilled at work. Do you think this is a modern problem, or is this something we've always struggled with?

Speaker 2: 7:41

When you look at Gallup's engagement data, it sort of stayed the same. We are at the worst level of active disengagement levels that we've seen in a decade, so it's extraordinarily bad now. As far as how many people are actually happy at work, it always really has stayed in that. You know, globally around 13, 15 percent and in the it's 30-ish Canada same thing, but so there's really a huge swath of the workforce that hasn't really been happy at work. But what I believe is that we had a different expectation of it before and we knew part of it was going to be a grind and there was generations that felt like, okay, that's just part of work is that it's not going to always be enjoyable, and I'm okay with that. I have different expectations from a different identity and your identity about what you did was more important than, say, pay or work-life balance or some of those other things. So our frame of reference in the last five years has really changed, and so things like flexibility used to be a perk, now it's a right. We look at being able to not be sick at work. You know, like expecting not to be burned out. That has definitely become more of an expectation, and yet we're seeing higher levels of burnout than we ever have, even since peak pandemic. And you know, we're asking more of work and work is asking more of us, and so I think we're becoming more disconnected.

Speaker 2: 9:11

Each group is being more disconnected from the other, like this data point that I had in the book on the purpose gap. You see, 85% of executives really do see and they feel their purpose. They say they live their purpose every day, whereas only 15% of frontline managers and employees feel their purpose every day. We've lost the expectation of work and we have a new frame of reference. And also, when you're trusted with something like everyone was allowed to work remotely. We did really well with that. There was investments in well-being, which was really great. There was investments in DEI, which felt really good. Employees felt like, okay, here's the moment where we're going to turn the corner and there's going to be respect and there's going to be an understanding of our needs, there's going to be empathy and compassion. And then, five years later, and all of those things are being clawed back, it feels like. And then, five years later, and all of those things are being clawed back, it feels like, oh, now I don't feel as much hope.

Speaker 1: 10:38

And so I think that's been catastrophic to levels of engagement and happiness at work. Why are we here? It's such a well-researched book, it covers a ton of ground and I'm wondering if you can talk about the three key areas leaders really need to approach differently.

Speaker 2: 10:46

Key areas leaders really need to approach differently. How I ended up really thinking about this book is that I really do think it's a stacking kind of on, based on the first part, which are foundations, and then it's addressing the novel challenges, because it's a whole new framework. We're in the multiverse of work. We've skipped, you know, timeline. We're not even the future of work, so that's sort of in this business challenges that we have to face. And then the third part is you great data point a few days ago, which was amazing, that showed that the entire workforce is pretty much feeling the same way, that leaders that have hope are what they need right now. But it's really hope, purpose and community. So feeling a sense of mattering and feeling like you have friends.

Speaker 2: 11:39

You know that work isn't just like going to school without our gym or recess. There's actually like kibitzing, like you talk about, and fun and joy. And then there's novel challenges that we need to deal with. I talk about, from a sense of compassion, freedom and openness. And compassion is really how do I take my empathy into, and that act of listening into, action with AI, fear of becoming obsolete, this sense of I hear you but I'm not doing anything about it, and this is why we need compassion, you know. Then we have freedom.

Speaker 2: 12:11

The idea of flexibility is so focused on where, but how can we maybe think about it for the 60% of the non-remote enabled workforce, why and with whom, and what we do and when we do it? There's lots of ways that we can create flexibility for that group, and just freedom is such a fundamental part of who we are, and when that strips away, we will resist it to our death. I mean, it is baked into us, and so the way that people are tackling these return to office mandates are just terrible. And then you know openness is generational divides. We need to be listening to each just terrible. And then you know openness is generational divides. We need to be listening to each other more and belonging and recognition is really, how can we have a shared vision if we can't pull people together? We're going to have just a siloed vision and that, no, we know that doesn't work. So it's about pulling people together in a sense of belonging for all of us to work better together.

Speaker 1: 13:03

I think each of those stacks is so important, think each of those stacks is so important and each of those layers is so important. And we're not going to go through all the stacks on this episode, but we do want to double click into a few of them that just seem so critical and so anchoring. And I want to talk about hope first because, I will be honest, I read the Gallup research last week, read your book as well, and I was thinking. The first time I read I was like we've grown up professionally saying hope is not a strategy in the book. And now Gallup also validates it. It's actually scientifically proven to be a strategy and you can operationalize hope. I'm curious about hope. When we are wondering why we are here, hope is the answer. Why is that?

Speaker 2: 13:44

And it's amazing because I spent some time and you would have read the book where I talked to senior leaders in the military that say hope is their only strategy, and they say you know, think about it. You're sending people out on a mission that could risk their lives and if they don't feel hopeful, they are not going to even sign up for that. Sign up for that or they're not going to be able to achieve their mission because they don't see the point of it. They don't see that there's a potential for them to hit that goal. It's too risky, and so you extrapolate that across any organization. That's the same way about asking people to risk when it comes to ideas or innovation or, you know, being being psychologically safe.

Speaker 2: 14:26

All of those things are dependent on people feeling like that. What they do is actually going to come to some sort of fruition, or it's going to be helpful, or they can see themselves in the future of their organization. You don't have hope. You do not get anyone on board with AI, and this is why we see one in two of the global workforce now saying they have AI anxiety. Hope is super fundamental and I actually feel like it's the economic tool that we need if we're really looking at solving big policy problems. We're talking about women, and this whole fertility crisis is a big conversation we're having all the time, and so you see countries putting in a whole bunch of money for women at work four-day work week in Korea and these types of things but when you actually talk to women and families that are talking about why they're putting off having children, they say I don't see a world where I can bring a child into it is heavy and it's not financial incentives that we need to give people now.

Speaker 2: 15:36

It's hope. This is the economic driver that we all need across organizations, societally and globally, and until we really get to that upstream kind of thinking about it, we're still going to be in crisis in the next 20 years.

Speaker 1: 15:51

I want to double click on this because we talk to a lot of folks, especially at the middle management level, that are burnt out. They feel like they've been asked to do more. Just like you said. They're feeling that discrepancy between feeling purpose and being like what purpose you know. And so when you say hope is the strategy, and then we have middle managers that are feeling just how the hell am I supposed to have hope? What does hope look like for me as a middle manager? How do I show up with hope when I've got 55,000 things going on? How do you respond?

Speaker 2: 16:23

to that. So I love that you've asked me this, because hope is actually one of the easiest skills that we can build, and so much of the book is changing culture in 20 minutes or less. Like I've been saying, it's just these 20 minute meetings here, these incremental shifts over here. It's not a big value change. It's actually middle managers are the ones that are the most empowered to make these changes. And when you think about hope, it's really based on Snyder's hope theory and this is what I've talked about for many, many years.

Speaker 2: 16:51

It's this idea of having goals. So really focus in your team around setting goals and not five-year goals. But how do we set daily, weekly, monthly goals that lead up to that year, that lead up to that big career pathing five years? And then the second part is having pathways. So you're planning your goals, but do you have a plan B? Do you have a plan C? Do you have a plan Z? Having secondary and tertiary plans around your goals makes you feel like that one goal, if I don't hit it this way, I have all this other backup. I've had all this other planning to hit that goal. And then it's about agency. We need autonomy in hitting those goals.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Google does a great job co-creating goals, talking with peers. Peers celebrate. It's fluid, it's just challenging enough that you feel like you've accomplished something, but not so challenging that you could never accomplish it, and not too easy that you feel like, oh well, that was easy. So you don't feel that sense of accomplishment when you reach it. All of this builds up cognitive hope day to day.

Speaker 2: 17:57

And you know, lululemon is really good I was their happiness strategy strategist way back and they do a good job of having these BHAGs, these big, hairy, audacious goals. But then they also have they celebrate the small wins. So that weekly goal or the monthly goal, the manager can be like, yeah, like sticker, you know, like here's a gift card at the end of you know you achieving this two month goal or this quarterly goal, like these are the things that we, we need to help people do, because subconsciously it builds up our hope capacity or cognitive hope, and the more hope we feel, the more we feel like we can accomplish bigger goals. And then the more risk-taking we are, the more innovative we are, the more cohesive we are with the rest of our team because we're you know, we're working, we're gelling together in a really helpful kind of way it just breeds such a good social contagion of hope across the culture.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Yeah, I love that. I know you've talked about it in some of your past books too. But that idea of chunking things out for your folks and it doesn't need to be the beehives we all love the beehives and the moonshots and it's all sexy, sexy but sometimes it just comes down to those small wins until you get the bigger wins and chunking it for your folks. Oh, I talk about purpose too, because we talked about hope and then you pull up into purpose right, that's that second element of that strong foundation that you talk about when it feels like your org is on the fourth reorg and you actually don't know where the hell it's going. But you're leading a team and you're like, all right, here's our purpose. Like, how do you do that in that 20 minute sprint?

Speaker 2: 19:31

This is a really key, I think, when you ask me of, like, what are the things that we get wrong about leadership and culture? Sorry, this is another place where we fall short a lot of, and it's because of the purpose gap. A lot of the people in that executive role feel very connected to the big mission statement. They feel it like they're in it. But most of the workforce doesn't really care about the big mission statement. They're not thinking about the vision every day, they're really in the work and sometimes that work can feel very monotonous, really boring, and so you want to stop trying to make it so far away from people. You want to tie the day-to-day work into things that people care about, and you do this in this way. That's very practical and I've watched this intervention and tried it across organizations and it's been incredible. But it's 20 minutes of a non-work-related check-in where you ask what lit you up, what stressed you out and what can we do for each other to make next week easier. So the lighting up piece managers are able to kind of get clues into what excites people. You know, what do you care about? Does it really matter that your kids are in a good school? Do you care about watching Broadway films. You have a passion for going to New York once a year and seeing all the Broadway films. I mean, these are things where it should seem innocuous but it's actually. It's really great data.

Speaker 2: 20:51

This is where you're like how do I motivate people and connect their day-to-day tasks to that thing? You know, and if and then when you look, you know at the stress stressors. People aren't going to say what they're stressed out about to their boss in day, week one or week two Absolutely not. You're putting on the front. You know it takes months actually, but that consistency and frequency and managers showing up every week saying I'm still going to ask and I'm still going to share my stressors, that vulnerability and leadership opens up psychological safety amongst the team.

Speaker 2: 21:24

So people then start sharing, like what is going on, and if you create an open space, people will tell you this is what I need, this is what's holding me back from connecting to my purpose or doing what makes me feel good every day. And so over time, consistency and frequency builds trust and then you get to use this and then the quick win piece is the hope building. So every single week you're helping each other cohesively in this team building thing like helping each other to solve problems, and so work gets easier, gets more fun, it's less toxic, it's also less exhausting and you can help each other. You learn these small ways that you can tactically help each other with workload and so overall, you start to feel like your work has more meaning, it matters more. You feel more aligned with your motivators and your purpose to the day-to-day tasks and it changes so much of how people feel about their work and how it contributes and makes an impact.

Speaker 1: 22:25

I love that too, because at the end of the day sometimes I think about if you distill down what everybody just really basically needs at a human level. It's just to be seen.

Speaker 1: 22:36

Or for someone to be interested, genuinely, like what does light you up? Or what are you about, you and me together, human to human. It's like simple, elegant questioning that really helps you, as a manager, understand and get the data to your point, but also enable someone to feel seen. We've all had leaders where we felt that potentially, hopefully you have, and you have had leaders where they don't give a shit. You know what I'm saying. They don't care. Yeah, they don't care, and you're kind of dying for them to ask or just be interested, like do you even know me?

Speaker 1: 23:06

I had a leader one time asking me how my kids are doing, after I'd worked with them for four months. I have a kid, I don't have two, and it was you know. It's like those moments where it's like you're not even in this. This is so transactional for you. I love that on the one-on-one. And the other thing I want to ask about you talk about the importance of friendships at work. Mel and I actually fun fact we're work friends and then we started this podcast and so we know the value of work friendships. But I'm wondering how organizations can facilitate community more like the idea of the true community.

Speaker 2: 23:39

This has always been something that I've been so interested in is this community piece, because going to work and not having that person a person, just a single person there, that's all you need. But people that don't have that. It's just a very miserable experience for them and I wrote about that in the burnout epidemic like a toxic, unhappy group of people that you work with can actually reduce your lifespan, like that's how detrimental it is on your mental health and well-being. So you need to have that person or else work just does, just feels really lonely. And what's happened in the last five years? And everyone wants to blame it on remote work. But I don't think that that's the case and I've shared really the data to say it's not remote work that has impacted relationships. We've been dealing with lowliness at work for a long time but it's that we have organizations that just focus on simplex relationships which are transactional, like you said. It's that I need you for this. It's basically a shared services and that's how you interact. But organizations that really focus on building multiplex relationships where it's. I know you and I know that you have a kid, not two kids or three kids, and I know that this is where that non-work related checking comes in handy because it's about developing more robust relationships that create bonds.

Speaker 2: 25:08

Five years, especially with these return to office mandates when people go back into the office, it's not like they're spending more time doing what we should be doing, which is collaborating and connecting with each other and bringing back rituals.

Speaker 2: 25:16

You know, I love that Atlassian has the hackathon every quarter, and there's companies that do a really good job of pulling people together to do cool stuff and they build relationships.

Speaker 2: 25:27

We've lost a lot of investment in team building and networking and a lot of that social piece, that social binding, is gone, and so right now, the way that we've developed friends would be different than you and Mel, which would be organic. It used to be like you'd walk in the office and maybe you were friends with someone in marketing, maybe you talked to someone in accounting. You'd have ways of having conversations with lots of different people. We've continued to hear in the data is that it's very siloed now, so we only care about our team. We don't know anything going on across the rest of the organization and the thing that I used to look for which was compatibility and you know if you made me laugh or we were both interested in cool movies. Now we're looking for conscientiousness and accountability. Those are the traits we're looking for in our friendships, which is very, it's very the ones to go dancing on Friday night with their accountable, conscientious friend Like no line.

Speaker 1: 26:27

So that didn't even accumulate with our country.

Speaker 2: 26:30

I guess that sounds fun.

Speaker 2: 26:32

That's it. We're only looking to have relationships at work that will continue to foster better work and to me, like that is the thing that we need to rework is bringing people back into spaces where, like I was talking in the book about the third space making it like Starbucks, where you're going there to debate and discuss and be connected and then you go home or wherever, to your own little world to do the heads down stuff. But right now, going into work is just like a replica of working from home and that's not building any sort of friendship or community that anyone really cares about.

Speaker 1: 27:12

It's interesting, though. I mean companies could totally reimagine those spaces to be more communal or like office, as an amenity to foster that organic relationship building or get back to it.

Speaker 2: 27:23

Yeah, and we're so time starved and we're so burned out that our social tank is really, you know, has been depleted and so again, it's like hygiene. We need to, we need to manage overwork, we need to create space for people to actually connect. You know, in the again, the 20 minutes or less. Cornell research in the book said 20 minutes of having lunch with one person once a week completely changed the dynamic of organizations. They found that morale was improved, job satisfaction increased, people made less mistakes, which I thought was really interesting. Their work performance improved. And that was 20 minutes of just having lunch away from your desk once a week. It's super simple again, but these are the things that create incremental network effect, that we're all kind of doing some of these pieces of the puzzle. Eventually the culture will flourish would be.

Speaker 1: 28:29

I would have the 20 minutes, the lunch away from my desk more, but I would invite someone from an accounting or the gallon marketing or whatever just to network more earlier on and just go to lunch with people more. I wish I would have done that. It's so nourishing.

Speaker 3: 28:38

It's so special. I worked in a big law firm when I first started out in New York and we did have that. We had a lunch crew and they had a cafeteria, but everyone knew everyone. It was a mixture of administrative staff. Paralegals, even like the lunch staff crew, would come in and eat with us and it was one massive table. There were 25 of us every single day. That's what we looked forward to and we talked about everything but work and it just made our week, but it made work better. And to this day, and it just made our week, but it made work better. And to this day, even though that firm's long gone they merged with someone else, the building's been taken over, but there's a Facebook group of alumni from that workplace down from everyone to security, to all that crew, because that's how close we were. It was like a very special environment which you don't see anymore.

Speaker 2: 29:24

Really, I love that, Mel. I love that because in the book I shared a case study of this person I interviewed at a tech company and he met with a lot of his coworkers and people in the building for lunch. They were pulled back on a project that ended up making them having to work all these long hours and slowly but surely they abandoned their lunch and he said that his team started dropping out and moving to competitors, and even in the exit interviews for me it just felt like we stopped having lunch, we stopped caring about each other. It's more than that. It's more to a lot of people, and he ended up after six years being on a track to be in a high position in that organization, left to a competitor and he initiated the lunches in the in his other place and it became this whole popular thing again.

Speaker 2: 30:12

It's so much more than people realize it's. It's the pausing, it's the connecting, it's the not talking about work, it's developing these depths of bonds that sustain and and we're not investing in that anymore because we're thinking 20 minutes, oh well, that means I have to leave 20 minutes late, I'm going to be stuck in traffic. It just means more work. When I come home at night I'll be in my pajamas working till midnight. When you're burned out, when you have that kind of toxic productivity, you don't engage in 20 minute lunches.

Speaker 3: 30:43

Now, I also am a fan of in virtual environments, because I do think you could do this in a virtual environment, like having a fun weekly debate on something random like is a hot dog a sandwich? Put it up on. Teams for everyone to contribute to the conversation, right, like how do you get what's a weekly question? But like, get creative, what can you do to engage everybody across the org?

Speaker 2: 31:04

Yeah, Is pot fruit considered to be acceptable on a pizza? Yes, no, it is a good question. Yeah, you have lots of debate, but I do think it needs to be levity, you know, and about all of the new challenges, and boy do we have them.

Speaker 3: 31:47

Ai, multi-generational workforce I think we just read something recently about Gen Z doesn't even want what we have, so there's a whole problem there. The backlash on DEI, the backlash on remote work, extensive burnout as you write about. Employee happiness is just continuing to drop. When you think about all of these new challenges, what's the one thing workplaces need to focus on now to overcome the competition against all of these things when they're trying to create a good culture?

Speaker 2: 32:19

One of the things I keep telling leaders that I work with is why do you feel, like, five years into this complete cataclysmic shift in work, that you're supposed to have it figured out? I mean, no one even knows what hybrid is Like. Why is it two or three days a week? We don't even know. Hybrid could be four times a year. Hybrid could mean lots of different things, and there is this kind of ego, I think, around us needing to have this thing sorted and wanting to just put the pandemic and now poly crisis on some sort of back burner and not think about it. And so I've been saying the one thing that leaders need to do is just let go of all of that sort of that expectation and recognize with self-awareness that we are in a completely different mindset.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Behavioral, you know, the behavioral mindset of this workforce today is clearly different. The priorities have shifted. We have Gen Zs that do see us as terrible models for what work looks like. You know most of us burning out, all of us resigning, saying we hate work, we're not great models, and so of course they're going to say I don't want that and they're going to find new avenues.

Speaker 2: 33:30

We're losing our mature workers. They're retiring early at a pace that we've never seen before, and they say I don't really fit into this workforce, it's changed. So let's get on top of that and say, okay, let's be agile, let's iterate, let's test, let's see if this works and if it doesn't, that's okay. We're going to be just much more fluid in the way that we build our strategies until we feel like, over time, I feel like we're in the pilot stage of this experiment that you know, when you look at 550 years old for the office, we're looking at a pretty long time before we're going to get any of this kind of mapped out. So for me it's about self awareness, agility and pausing and kind of coming up with a new plan.

Speaker 3: 34:21

Yeah, well, it's also like will we really ever have this all mapped out? Or is this just start being okay with the unknown and working together to be like I don't know either, and we'll figure it out together?

Speaker 2: 34:49

I love that you say that, because even five-year strategies right now, when we have Gen AI and what's changed we have to imagine that that's going to be five years where the things that we thought were going to happen have been totally changed around, and so that is really. It is understanding that we're in a state of uncertainty and will be for quite some time now. That's why, if you really want to be successful, it is managing through change and learning how to do that much better. Unfortunately, we just see a demographic of CEOs. Most of them are male, most of them are in their 60s, and it's been very difficult. We've seen just that like trying to shift over into especially what Gen Zs are asking for. That feels so foreign, it feels so far away from the way that they were professionally raised. So I have empathy for both groups, but we do need to connect somewhere, because having divisions, that and us being that far apart in our goals, there's no way we can hit those plans, that vision, if we don't start talking to each other.

Speaker 3: 35:45

Yeah, if we can't find common ground, it is moving to a danger zone. I think last week Francesca and I were, we were covering new week new headlines and we read something around how it was like 73 percent of Gen Z's that were polled Don't quote me on this, because I think it was somewhere around there where they were mentioning they don't even want the job. Like we're heading for a manager meltdown this year, in fact, because they can't find common ground and what they see is what they don't want. But, as you mentioned, it's deeply affecting the future of organizations and business. So what are your thoughts on that? Like, how can we start to find common ground?

Speaker 2: 36:24

I say first across the organization. Even managers can do this. How often do you express frustration with an entire generation and how often do we have conversations like oh, I'm so frustrated like my boomer, my Xer, whatever bandager, usually Xers are boomers. Everyone's a boomer if they're over the age of like 45. So it's like how does my Xer.

Speaker 1: 36:50

I don't appreciate that.

Speaker 2: 36:51

That I do not appreciate being I don't like being lumped in there but, I'm here but to get everyone on to say I'm a boomer, so it's like anyone over a certain age. It's kind of like this exasperation. And yet then we see this rise of youngism. We've never seen it this harsh before, where young people are coming into the office and it's basically like they're already defied as lazy. And if they do ask for things like respectful hours so that they can have friends, I mean they're just trying to meet people and develop relationships that might be long lasting, so they can have family and plan their lives. But if you're working 60 or 70 hours a week, it's just not appropriate for anything else in your life. The fact that they're asking for this with this perception that they're just lazy, it seems like what they're asking for is just so, gen Z, that puts people off. They're opting out of the workforce. Because of it. They're willing to accept an extraordinarily less amount of pay. All the data showing it's up to 37 percent less pay to have work life balance. So for them they're not like Xers and boomers were where it was by the house get married, have kids, so you have all these golden handcuffs tying you to your job. They're putting off buying homes later because of financial the situation that they're in. They just don't have that. They're living longer with their parents, they're not getting married, they're not having kids, so their ability to be mobile and take less pay makes it so we're not holding onto them, and with the same carrot. And that means having to be flexible.

Speaker 2: 38:28

And so I keep telling managers just like audit your language, audit the narratives that go on in your organization. Try to remove those things that really do separate you. Auditing your language really changes how you feel about another group, and I should also say the youngest generation. Their whole point is to push back on the status quo, like that's what you expect. Every generation does that. Why are we surprised that this generation is pushing back on the status quo, like that's what you expect. Every generation does that. Why are we surprised that this generation is pushing back on the status quo Like this is their job, this is every generation's job is to question whether the generation before them have done the right job. You know, societally and politically and economically, and every generation's done that. So here we have another generation that's just coming in to tell us we're doing a bad job. That's the way it goes.

Speaker 3: 39:20

I feel like Gen Z's role is actually to remind us that we're all human beings in here for a finite amount of time, so maybe we should all stop prioritizing work as the number one priority.

Speaker 2: 39:31

I love it. I say Gen Z's say well-being is not antithetical to work ethic. They say that loud and clear and I fully agree with that. So it's probably why I have maybe my bias to say let's listen to Gen Zs because you know, maybe they're pushing the pendulum really far in one direction, but that's the only way that we're going to have change, that sort of meets in the middle. So let's let them do that and then figure out a way that sort of marries all worlds.

Speaker 3: 39:59

Couldn't agree more. Another big topic is AI, and you talk about the fear of becoming obsolete. So how can leaders navigate all of what's happening in AI today and really kind of squash the FOBO that's happening for their teams?

Speaker 2: 40:19

So I love the term FOBO. I mean Gallup really stripped it with that one. You know I love JOMO the joy of missing out. That's one of my favorite. Fobo is a good one too.

Speaker 2: 40:29

The data is showing that it's really increasing, and it's increasing a lot for younger cohorts. It used to be automation, so mature workers were ones that were most threat. You saw that obsolescence really coming out in that group. But our younger generation are feeling it, and a lot of that is that we've got again like hyperbolic language. We're in a mass extinction event I robot and everything's going to fall apart, or it's 300 million jobs are going to be lost, or or then it's everything's rosy with AI. Everything's going to be great. You know we're going to, they're going to be our pilot and you won't have to work again, and I don't like the idea of people not wanting to work or not working again. A, that's an economic catastrophe, because how are we going to care for everyone not working? And B, just from a human standpoint, we get a lot of fuel from work, and so what?

Speaker 2: 41:22

I have this LinkedIn course that I basically took that chapter of FOBO and brought that in to say how do we create AI enthusiasm instead of AI anxiety, because it's here and that's the reality and so we need to normalize it. We need to talk about how ubiquitous AI is in the rest of our lives so it isn't so scary. We need to make sure that people feel skilled up and not overlooking mature workers, because we're seeing that they're getting constantly overlooked for training in AI. It's kind of like both of them are giving up and yet pretty robust research looked at mature workers and said and there was 40% of them that said I would stay longer if I had this continued training, if I felt like you were training me up to handle this, but I'm overlooked constantly. So there's things that we need to do around training and just preparedness. We also want to create curious cultures.

Speaker 2: 42:18

Have a once a month meeting around some new experimentation that you had with AI. You share it back with the team. It can be personal or professional. You can have some personal, some professional so you can talk about oh, I did this trick and I used AI and now I've been able to do my work faster. It's been great.

Speaker 2: 42:34

So that's really important is create experimentation, and I would say the most important part and this is probably at the executive leadership level is we need to deliver on the promise of AI. So the promise of AI was that you will have your mundane tasks taken away and then you will have really creative, cool work that you get to do. A lot of people that I've interviewed are saying I had the mundane stuff taken away, but now I have extreme boredom and I'm not getting any of that. So there's a promise undelivered. And then also Gen AI is supposed to save us time, so if we're finished our project early, we should be given that time back.

Speaker 2: 43:14

It shouldn't be that we're just adding more productivity when it's supposed to create efficiencies. So these are two things at the policy level that I think executive leaders need to say. Are we delivering on the promise of AI in these two areas? And maybe it's changing the way we measure productivity. It's more around goals, not hours, and so that's at the GDP level that we need to be looking at that. But just even in organizations, we can change policies to make the promise of AI feel like it's worth investing in for employees.

Speaker 1: 43:48

I'm wondering if most organizations even have mapped out what the promise of AI was to their employees, because they're very focused on stakeholders shareholders but not viewing their employees as stakeholders and or saying this is what AI can do for you. Like, I don't feel like a lot of organizations have explicitly said that or put that in their EBP as either it's a major problem.

Speaker 2: 44:13

A major problem. The Microsoft Trends report that came out in collaboration with LinkedIn found that 60% of CEOs don't believe that there's a strategy, and so this is what happened, and there was this really interesting report, too, that showed that technology wasn't even on the radar of sort of business disruptions up until the last two years, and it went from not even being on the top set of stressors that CEOs were feeling to sixth place and then in a year to first place. This last year was like first place biggest disruptors to business, and so everyone's really just adopted AI. Because I need to adopt AI, I need to show that I'm competitive, but with no. I need to show that I'm competitive but with no strategy, and you need to know your why before you adopt AI. Know your why before you adopt AI, so then you can then communicate that, and that lends to managers being able to communicate the why. I'm curious about what organizations or are there?

Speaker 1: 45:17

organizations that are getting this right. I'm curious about what organizations, or are there organizations that are getting this right?

Speaker 2: 45:33

Yeah, there are. There's just so much right now that I'm seeing that are, you know, are making it difficult for people to stay on track with some of that investment. I talked about Bain and Company in the book. I mean they're doing things like even just cold rooms for women that have menopause, for example. It seems again so simple, like just having spaces that you can work in that are cooler.

Speaker 2: 45:58

But for me as a perimenopausal 47-year-old, I had the worst brain fog in writing this last book in the first six months and I actually felt like I'm not supposed to be a writer anymore. The amount of questioning of my capacity and my efficacy was really wild. And then it was going to my doctor and she was able to just say I think you're going through perimenopause, and that was such a weight lifted. I really did feel like I was not good at my job anymore and I think of women at this age peak career my job anymore, and I think of women at this age peak career feeling ineffective. And so there are organizations that are saying we can't have that. We need to do things that are more responsible for women.

Speaker 2: 46:44

We still are seeing, which I feel is like these big declines in keeping women in the workforce. We're at the thinnest executive pipeline that we've seen yet in history. For the first time in a decade, global CEOs of women have gone down, and it was already like a shit number in the first place. I think it was 11 and a half percent. Now it's 10 and a half percent yeah, celebrating incremental gains.

Speaker 2: 47:08

I'm very over that, and so I think work isn't working for women. We need diverse thinking. We've demonstrated in Anita Williams Woolley's work at Google that collective intelligence increases when you have more female gender representation on teams. I want people to start looking at this as this is a business strategy, not a benevolent strategy. This is not to be benevolent. I'm not being an ally, I'm being a capitalist when I in my executive pipeline, and so the more we can look at it as a business imperative versus a benevolence imperative, the more we'll. I think we'll put that into the strategic priority set, and right now it just it's a lot about allyship and doing good and not seeing diversity in represented in leadership is actually being really good for business, and the more that we can change that narrative and talk about it in that way, the less it's something that can be cut out, and I do think that, and you would have read in the book that I do think the way we've done it so far hasn't been really successful.

Speaker 1: 48:14

What I've always tried to reconcile is the data, even though these programs haven't been around for that long. When you look at the history of work, I appreciate that, of how powerful your ROI is on inclusion, belonging women in leadership roles, diversity, happiness at work. I mean all of the things that you're talking about. Hope, purpose, right, the data is there, the return on investment is there, hard dollars, and you can make the monetary case for all of this and I'm wondering is it the narrative around? We need to start talking about hard dollars on this all the time, when we talk about this stuff to sell it more. What is this flip in the narrative? I can't figure it out you know what.

Speaker 2: 49:06

It's always going to be a bottom line issue and as we start to see a deficit in our talents resources and this is what I think Anita in the book that I love that she shared is just like we're wasting this incredible talent pool and no one seems to really care that it's slipping away.

Speaker 2: 49:28

And what I'm seeing is and I think it's actually, in a lot of ways, maybe beneficial to women is that women are saying I'm seeing is and I think it's actually, in a lot of ways, maybe beneficial to women is that women are saying I'm going to start to build up my own IP, I'm going to start up my own companies and, because they are so good at it, they're going to create their own space and they're going to start to demonstrate that they don't really need that other infrastructure.

Speaker 2: 49:50

And we're going to create this whole economy of women leading organizations and actually having patents and having opportunities for other women, because women will hire more women, because you hire like, and so, as that starts to break ground, which we are seeing, we're seeing so many more women move into part-time roles so that they can work on some of these other things. We are seeing like IP for women increase. We are seeing women opt out of workplaces that are not inclusive and moving to organizations that are, so they're demonstrating with their feet, and so the more that becomes something. That is a bottom line issue, which might take a while to show up maybe irrationally optimistic of me, but the data feels like it supports it, that that's what's going to start to happen and we're going to see this very different shift in this economy for women.

Speaker 3: 50:45

Well, it's funny, francesca and I just did a whole thing. I mean, women drive the global economy. We own almost all of the purchasing power globally and a recent article said if you, you know, if the economy is running well, you might want to start by thinking women today, and one of the stats that recently came out was, in 2023 alone, 49% of small businesses for the first time, more women than men are starting small businesses. So I think, yeah, I mean, the stats are showing they're leaving in droves because they're leaving places where they're not considered. They aren't.

Speaker 2: 51:21

And policies like return to office are actually extremely exclusive for women, and until we're solving the second shift and making sure that unpaid labor is balanced across both teams in the family, this is the only option for women. So those exclusive policies women are just like. That's not what I want. The core heart of the book is that we faced our mortality as a collective, and what happens to the brain when you face your mortality is you actually start to subconsciously reprioritize things that are about legacy leaving. It's more about what matters you know in the world, what matters to you as a human being, and so for women it was. They felt years of just having to take care of their family, protect them from such risk.

Speaker 2: 52:13

It was a very strong emotional experience for a lot of families and women in particular, and so now they're looking at it after they face their finitude. They're like this thing that I'm doing, that's toxic, that does not include me, that does not care about me. I don't really see that as something that in when a life is short mentality that I can accept anymore, and when you're not faced with that, you really don't see that there is something that's sort of like happening very quickly. You don't have the same urgency on it, but that experience and polycrisis has put urgency on us to leave legacies, put urgency on us to do more with our lives, and so for the people that are pro-social, for the people that care about the world and care about these things, they're looking at work as not something that matters as much, but they're still equally ambitious, and that's the thing that's cool about women. They're like how do I make work fit into my life instead of trying to fit into work's expectation of me, and I think that's like where it's going to be really cool.

Speaker 2: 53:17

I have gone back a few times to Riyadh. So Saudi Arabia has this real focus on 2030 women empowerment goals. So I also think other countries are going to go. Ok, we always looked at that country as being so far behind, it wasn't progressive, and they're putting this huge investment in women right now because they do understand it from an economic standpoint If one of the things that Saudi Arabia does understand is wealth and how to build wealth, and they are just looking at women as their builders of wealth right now.

Speaker 3: 54:02

All right, jennifer, we're going to move into a rapid round. This is not a pop quiz. It's meant to be fun and to get a little more versatile. To get to know you, we'll start with the work question. It's 2030. What do you think work's going to look like? This is such a great question.

Speaker 2: 54:20

It's going to look the same, but I do think that we're going to see incremental differences in a more pro-social way.

Speaker 1: 54:34

Okay, finish this sentence. For companies to build work cultures everyone wants. Leaders need to model the behavior.

Speaker 2: 54:42

Employees can't be what they can't see. Leaders need to model the behavior.

Speaker 1: 54:47

Next sentence Work should feel more like blank and less like blank.

Speaker 2: 54:53

More like fuel for you know your sense of accomplishment. Less like a grind Damn right.

Speaker 3: 55:03

Not it? What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 2: 55:07

I'm super into Olivia Dean. I don't know if you've heard her, but she's so good and she has a song called Dive. I would highly recommend it. But she just became super well known because I guess she has a song on the Bridget Jones new movie, so people are learning about her. But she's great, okay.

Speaker 3: 55:30

Is Dive one of your favorite songs from her, or do you have a favorite that's like on repeat?

Speaker 2: 55:34

Well, Lola Young does the song Messy, which I really like, and she does a version of it which I love. But Dive, yeah, there's something about it that's sort of catchy and lovely, but a lot of her songs are like that and I really like Bakar B-A-K-A-R. If you just want to have a good vibes hang out in your car and feel like kind of like moving your shoulders, yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 3: 55:58

Got to get some jams for my Trader Joe's parking lot. My bell Going on All right. What are you reading?

Speaker 2: 56:04

right now. Oh, so I like almost solely read fiction, which is hilarious as a nonfiction writer. But I'm reading Coco Meller's book. I don't know if you have heard of her. She's really good. It's oh God I just blanked on the book on the name it's Frankenstein and oh God, I can't remember. But it's really such a fun little book and she's got cool. I don't know really cool ways of thinking about characters. And I'm also reading James, which is this cool book that is. So I read multiple books at the same time and I'm always reading. I have a book with me, I carry it with me all the time, I read constantly Like I'm a super reader. And James is the idea of Reed telling the story of Huck Finn from Jim's point of view.

Speaker 3: 56:55

How fun it's really so far.

Speaker 2: 56:57

It's really neat. So one sort of beachy reads and then the other is like I got to have some meat in my brain, okay, okay.

Speaker 3: 57:06

Who do you personally really admire?

Speaker 2: 57:10

It's a really good question because there's lots of people that I really do admire, but you know, I would say my mom. So my mom was the first nurse practitioner in all of Canada and she's in the books, you know and she didn't ever talk about her stuff because she was a nurse and a nurse practitioner and so you kind of would come home. She had told me later on in life that she would come home and she had, like, had to deal with really traumatic, awful things, especially in a lot of car accidents in rural towns where she lived. And even when we moved, you know, to Canada, like to Eastern Canada, what happened was just like this sense of, I don't know, having to come home and be a good mom and also have to deal with all this stuff. And when she moved, she had to give up being a nurse practitioner because there did not exist in Ontario. So she was like, ok, well then I'll figure something else out.

Speaker 2: 58:09

She was very resilient, so she ended up teaching nursing at McMaster University, which was huge, and then working in ICU at McMaster University McMaster Hospital, which one of like it's a sick kids hospital, so they do just great work and then she decided that she wanted to stop nursing and started her own manufacturing company and sold quilts and had like multiple stores and a whole bunch of sewers working for her as like the final stage in her life. And I just feel, like you know, as a person that we never thought was the entrepreneur, I realized she was and she just didn't just do things like in small ways, she just did things in big ways, but she was so quiet about it and it wasn't until later on that I went wow, like you have subconsciously been my person that I've admired, that I've tried to mirror my life after Okay, Last one what's one piece of advice you want everyone to have?

Speaker 2: 59:10

This has been hugely beneficial for me, because I didn't learn this until I burned out and it's. You can have anything, not everything, and it's always about a series of choices and we constantly want to have everything and you can have anything. You just need to choose in your priority structure what matters most and when. You have that really figured out in your priority structure what matters most and when you have that really figured out that anything feels like everything.

Speaker 3: 59:40

I love it, thank you, thanks for sharing with us.

Speaker 2: 59:42

Yeah, I love it. So easy to talk to you. Oh, it's pleasant. You have fun. Yes, it's great.

Speaker 3: 59:52

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

Jobs, Politics & Policy at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Jobs, Politics & Policy at Work with Ryan Stygar & Harrison Newman

Elections shape work…

A second Trump administration could bring major changes to your workplace—whether you're an employee, a leader, or in HR. From labor rights and healthcare to immigration, DEI, and workplace safety—this episode dives into how political policy directly impacts your day-to-day work experience. No spin. Just straight talk on what’s potentially coming, and what to start paying attention to now.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

All right, I think we're live.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Yeah, yeah, Okay. Well, hey, we're here Welcome to your work friends and we're here to talk about jobs, politics and policy in the workplace and what you might expect with the new Trump administration coming in. I'm Mel Platt, I'm the co-host and co-founder of your work friends and owner of Cordelia Consulting, and with me is my partner in crime, Francesca Francesca.

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hey, I'm Francesca Ranieri, co-founder and co-host of your Work Friends pod with Mel, and I'm also the founder of Frank.

Speaker 2: 0:36

Yeah, yeah, and friends, we have been doing this work for a long, long ass time and what we want to do is connect you with the best experts.

Speaker 2: 0:47

With us tonight, we'll introduce those folks in a second to really break down all this work stuff to help you stay ahead, and that's our goal for tonight. With us is Ryan Steiger. He's an employment lawyer with Centurion trial attorneys in San Diego, California, but you also might know him as attorney Ryan on TikTok and Instagram, and he's also a former wildland firefighter, which he's incredibly proud of. We're incredibly proud of him too. And then with us is also Harrison Newman. He is the VP of HR benefits at Corporate Synergies in New York City. He's also the VP of communications for New York City SHRM and a budding harpist only for one night, from what we understand. So welcome to you both. Thank you both for being here and with us.

Speaker 2: 1:34

So here's the deal. We are going to be talking about five core topics around work policy, and those include labor and wage policies, healthcare and benefits, immigration, DEI and workplace safety all of the hot topics everyone's hearing about. We have about five minutes for those five topics each. We're also going to be making some bold predictions here along the way all speculative, of course, because we don't have crystal balls, but we're going to be ripping things from the headlines and making our best assumptions to help you think through things. Going to be ripping things from the headlines and making our best assumptions to help you think through things. If you are joining us live, please, please, please drop your questions in the chat. We will be monitoring them and we have some live Q&A at the end. But we're going to jump right in with a nice little question for you both.

Speaker 4: 2:18

How's that sound? Right on, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 2:20

Yeah, I actually want to do this for all of us, because I'm really curious. I know we all have a point of view on this. If you were to think about one word that would describe the workplace in 2025, what's your word? A single word, a single word, or what you're expecting?

Speaker 4: 2:37

what you're expecting. In a single word, I'm going to go with burnout.

Speaker 2: 2:41

Oh, that's a good one.

Speaker 4: 2:42

Yeah, I hope it's not tired at this point. It's been going around quite a bit, but the general consensus I get from all the employees I represent, the people I talk to is people are tired, things are more expensive than they've ever been, wages are going up but they're not keeping up. And that creates a bit of a conflict, because your employer is sitting there saying my costs of business are going up and I'm paying you more than ever. The employees are saying, yeah, you're paying me more than ever, but it's really not a big increase, boss, and meanwhile my rent has gone up like 50% over the past eight years. It's getting rough out there and now, with what many anticipate will be fewer worker protections, not more, that burnout could turn into apathy. I certainly hope it doesn't, but burnout is my word of 2025 so far.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Yeah, good one Harrison.

Speaker 3: 3:32

I'm going to cheat a little bit. I'm going to use a word, but I'm going to give it a slightly different definition than typical. I'm going to use disruptive, but I'm not going to use disruptive in a bad way per se, because I don't know if disruptive is necessarily bad. I think you're going to see a lot of disruption in the workforce. I think you're going to see a lot of people wearing hats they've never worn before, because I think there's going to be a lot more responsibilities thrown on HR, thrown on executives navigating things in real time, because things might move very fast, because it might be one morning this is the cool thing and the next morning some other idea comes up and everything changes, and I think we're going to see a lot of disruption. Um, but I'm not going to use disruption as a negative term, because sometimes disruption leads to good things. Sometimes you need to burn something and I should not be using that word right now with everything going on but sometimes you need to burn something down to build something else new, and I think that disruption is really the word, but I'm going to tweak it a little bit and disruption which could be positive disruption, yeah all right, can I change my answer to seesaw because now that I'm thinking about it and it's pertinent to some of the things we're going to talk

Speaker 4: 4:38

about um anyone following nlrb guidance, eeoc guidance, dol guidance we're going to talk about that in detail. Everything that Biden just undid is going to be undid again because we're dealing with a Trump sandwich. The problem is, the Trump we're getting this time is a little different than the Trump we got last time. He has new people in his ear with new ideas, and a lot of those people are mortal enemies with conflicting ideas. So I think we are going to see disruption is a great term, but I think, seesaw, we'll see press conferences where he boldly declares one policy and then the next day something totally different comes out.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Ryan, my word was whiplash for the exact same reason.

Speaker 3: 5:21

Oh, there we go.

Speaker 1: 5:23

Yeah, Mel, before we, before we.

Speaker 2: 5:25

I actually was going to pull from our good friend, uh, Ashley Goodall and say blender. I feel like we're all going into the blender. It's just going to feel like we're in a constant blender. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:37

I uh, I had a lot of people say you know, francesca, get yourself centered, get yourself grounded, get your chakras out. This year You're going to need it. It's going to be a lot of change. We all know that. What that change will be, hey, you know, we're not sure, but one of the reasons why we're here is to think about what could happen and what we're already seeing. Let's get into it with our first topic, which is around like labor and wage policies, and, ryan, I'm going to take this over to you first. What are you thinking, again, when we think about labor policies, wage policies, things like overtime have been talked about, all this good jazz. What's 2025 going to look like?

Speaker 4: 6:15

Well, we're going to see a massive shakeup in the beginning, and that's not unusual for when we have a new administration come in. But I want to dispel any myths that Trump is at all a normal candidate. He is not a normal presidential candidate. We're going to see big changes. We're going to see him fast. So the agencies I'm looking at the most are the National Labor Relations Board, the EEOC, the DOL, of course, and OSHA. So the first thing we're going to see is a complete change in leadership. It's going to start with the National Labor Relations Board's general counsel, jennifer Abruzzo.

Speaker 4: 6:51

Now what we've seen in the past four years is the NLRB greatly expanding their interpretation of the National Labor Relations Act. We saw things like a ban on captive audience meetings. That's where the employer requires you to come into some kind of hallway and they explain their position on unionization. Thanks to the NLRB's most recent ruling on those captive audience meetings, employers can't do that anymore. They can have meetings about their views on unionization, but they can't track attendance. They can't punish you if you don't go. It has to be voluntary, but all the people advancing that expansion are going to be fired and we're going to see a new general counsel. We're probably going to see a Republican majority because on December 11th, the Congress did not extend the terms to 2026 like we had thought they would, so we're going to get a Republican majority in the NLRB. We're going to get a Republican majority in the EEOC.

Speaker 4: 7:53

And what's interesting about the EEOC, particularly and I know we don't have a lot of time so I'll wrap this up quick what we saw in 2020 was something really groundbreaking. What we saw in 2020 was something really groundbreaking. We saw LGBTQ status, gender expression, gender identity being protected. For the longest time. It was actually legal to fire someone because they identified as trans in some states, but the EEOC reinterpreted that. Well, not the EEOC, I'm sorry. The EEOC issued guidance after the Supreme Court's ruling in Bostock v Clayton County, georgia. The thing is the most likely person to chair the EEOC. Now she let me pull up her name again it's Andrea. Do you guys know who I'm talking about?

Speaker 1: 8:41

I do not.

Speaker 4: 8:43

I'm blanking on her name for a minute.

Speaker 1: 8:45

But that Andrea Andrea thing, that's always a, that's a tricky.

Speaker 4: 8:50

Yeah, well, anyway, here I'll pull up her name in a minute. I'm blanking on her name for no reason at all, but basically what's going to happen is she has expressed a serious dissent with the EEOC's interpretation of Bostock v Clayton County, georgia. So we are going to see a retraction, a restriction, a neutering of protections for LGBTQ employees. The reason we're going to see a retraction and not just a cessation on progress is because she has Andrea I can't remember her last name has expressed many times that she feels Clayton County, georgia that decision was a mistake. She feels that LGBTQ quote unquote special interests are an attack on women's rights and an attack on religious freedoms. We can debate whether we think that's true or not, but what's not up for debate is the EEOC is going to greatly restrict its expansion of those LGBTQ protections. We also may see some restrictions on the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and how the EEOC interprets that.

Speaker 1: 9:50

Harrison, what would you add?

Speaker 3: 9:52

Just going back to the LGBTQ, I think you're going to see a lot in.

Speaker 3: 9:56

So MySpace obviously is in the benefits side, but I think you're really going to see a huge change or shift in DEI initiatives and we're going to talk about that a little bit later on probably, but we're going to see a major shift in and I hate the word wool culture, but I think a lot of the election was based on that.

Speaker 3: 10:11

I think that's really going to impact the workforce in general because I think people who feel a certain way might feel empowered by the results to act on that more. So I think it's going to be the role of businesses to balance that out and see so a little bit, because some of the C-suite who might've felt a certain way but acted differently because the culture and the trend was going one way, the results of the election, the way the election was run, might empower those same people to start shifting work environment and the culture inside of works. I think it's going to be important that the people inside of the businesses HR specifically, but everybody there to help navigate that culture and make sure there's still an inclusive culture inside of the workforce.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm wondering just to go back specifically, really quickly before we go on to our next topic around labor and wage we got a lot of questions around overtime and Mel and I did an episode on Project 2025, trying to interpret that largely thought of as the Republican platform right right around some of these things. Are you all seeing anything around overtime at all in terms of it retracting overtime or going to that like four-week look?

Speaker 4: 11:18

I think it's possible, though remotely like not really likely, remotely likely, leaning towards unlikely that we'll see a change to those overtime rules. If anything, we would see something like the Project 2025 80 hour rule rather than the 40 hour rule. There was some discussion about that, but I really don't think it's likely. I think it's right up there with no tax on overtime and no tax on tips. I think Mr Trump was just saying what he thinks his base wanted to hear. Most of his efforts it's this. It's, on one hand, look, no tax on overtime. I'm going to new rules at the DOL. He's going to throw out most of the inclusivity efforts at the EEOC. So really, what we're going to see is a major change of leadership and then the people in those leadership positions are going to make small changes over time. Something sweeping with the overtime. I really don't think is likely.

Speaker 3: 12:25

Yeah, I think we might see multiple changes in leadership. If this is anything like the first administration, the people in his ear right now might not be the same people in his ear six months from now. So I mean, once again, we talk about that whiplash, but if it's anything like the first time around the people in his ear, he sours on them very quickly and that can change. So what we see right now could be very different six months, one year, two years, for good or bad, but it could be very different as we go along.

Speaker 1: 12:50

Super fair, super fair Mel.

Speaker 2: 12:55

Yeah, we're going to talk about healthcare and benefits. So, harrison, I know like you love this topic very, very much. A lot of people stay in their jobs for healthcare and insurance. I can argue until the cows come home. Those things should not be tied together, but they are. Let's talk about what you're seeing here. How could employer provided healthcare change?

Speaker 3: 13:18

So we don't know what's going to happen. For the most part, there's a lot of talks around the ACA and how the ACA is going to go away. As you go, attack the ACA. I don't see that happening. With everything else, he might change the name of the ACA. I mean the fact that it's referred to as Obamacare I'm sure bothers him. If it was like the Gulf of Mexico, maybe we'll change the name. But besides for that, I don't see the ACA going away because in the first administration they removed all the parts of contention. For the most part, everything that people really didn't like is already gone and in some capacity, the ACA is working. Will we explore different ideas, as he said during one of the debates, if somebody comes up with a better idea, will that happen? Possibly, but I don't really see that.

Speaker 3: 14:01

Where I see the workforce really changing is going back to what we talked about before is from a culture standpoint and balancing that culture and the results of the election. The culture I see people looking at more broad based benefits and more flexible benefits because we don't know what's coming up next. His actions indirectly the repeal of Grovy Way and companies have to pivot to have travel benefits, because if you lived in one of the states where abortion was illegal, you had to pay for employees to travel and stay elsewhere. There was a Supreme Court I don't know the exact ruling if it went through regarding gender reassignment surgeries in certain states being illegal. I think Tennessee was one of those. So you might see an expansion of those benefits and travel benefits to start covering other aspects. But I think the biggest change I look at benefits and you would talk about benefits being the reason people stay at a job. I look at benefits as one of the easiest tools that a company has to create a culture. It's one of the things you can build on and manage completely and if you're offering a benefits, the benefits is a culture of the organization. It speaks for the values of the organization and I think you're going to see that more because the outside values might be very different. There might be attack on LGBTQ rights, there might be attack on abortion rights, women's rights, and I think you're going to see an expansion of benefits, whether it's through lifestyle accounts that have very broad uses, potentially, where you could use it for multiple different things, through HSA accounts and stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 15:29

I do think you're going to see companies look more towards their benefits package to build the culture that they want, because there are other regulations and other things coming down the pipe that might prevent them from doing that. So I don't think the ACA is going away a pipe that might prevent them from doing that. So I don't think the ACA is going away. I do think we will have an expansion on HSAs and these pre-tax benefits. Interestingly enough, I do think towards. One of the last things he did from the benefit standpoint was extend leave. So I do think we might see more leave management and paid leave, whether on a state level or federal level. But I think, overall, if you're looking for the global biggest change to the benefits, I think and it's been happening overall, but I think it's going to be more important now than before because of external sources it's going to be those broad benefits that help build a culture within the organization.

Speaker 2: 16:18

Yeah, Francesca and I were talking right before we started the live about that. It's like the employers who are going to be kind of winning in terms of the talent marketplace in a few years are those that create benefits packages that benefit their employees and really retain employees and attract new talent in their organization.

Speaker 4: 16:37

Yeah, that brings up some other interesting points too. I mean, as we discussed, my world is really more in the EEOC. By the way, our current share is Charlotte Burroughs, who's fantastic in my opinion, and, by the way, the person who I predict. This isn't certain. There's been no announcements. I predict it's Andrea Lucas is her last name. She's a Republican, she's the only Republican there right now and she'll probably be the new head of the EEOC, which could be problematic for anyone seeking things like gender-affirming care, protection from LGBTQ discrimination, the right to use a bathroom that they're comfortable with. Also, there's some other issues that come up.

Speaker 4: 17:16

Remember, the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act was passed in 2022. That instituted sweeping, pretty exciting guidance on how to protect pregnant women at work or women seeking fertility treatments. Those fertility treatments that were protected under EEOC guidance included things like fertility treatments and abortions. No way in hell is Andrea Lucas going to let that continue. She is going to either decline to enforce any actions under that guidance or issue new guidance is what I expect. So, unfortunately, what I think we're going to see is a patchwork.

Speaker 4: 17:54

They keep saying that they want to return all of these questions to the states, but I think anyone with two brain cells to rub together knows. The ultimate Republican agenda is a nationwide abortion ban, no exceptions, and we know that's where they're headed. So what we're going to see, at least in the short term, I think, is a patchwork where employees in California have more right to access things like IVF or an abortion, if you need it, than an employee in Florida. So we may see a tug of war with people wanting remote opportunities or relocation, but certainly we talk about access to employer-sponsored benefits, your employer's right to maybe deny certain benefits based on your fertility treatments. There may not be as much recourse as it as we'd hope to see. That's my current prediction. No, and it's going to be difficultourse as it as we'd hope to see. That's my current prediction.

Speaker 3: 18:43

No, and it's going to be difficult, as you mentioned, from the state level. You're going to have state by state and there are very few employers right now that are single state. Most of them have multiple states, so you're going to have different rules and regulations for each state. It's going to come on. It's going to add a lot more work to the HR departments and the finance departments, even because it's going to be state-by-state regulations. Having these culture benefits or these travel benefits. I mean we might get some good out of it. Look, we've got ICHRs, we've got the individual HRAs the first time around. He's shown a tendency to think outside the box when it comes to benefits. Maybe there'll be some changes in the prescription standpoint.

Speaker 3: 19:16

I'm optimistic. I don't know if I'm optimistic because there's a reason to be. I'm optimistic because you have to be optimistic, so there might be some good that comes out of it. But going back to my first word, I think it's going to be disruptive. I think you're going to have a lot more hats being worn by HR and finance having to navigate different rules on a state-by-state basis, because I don't think we'll have a federal ban. I don't think there's enough push for that right now. I don't think they want a federal ban 100%. They want the argument of a federal ban. I think they like having the conversation more than the actual doing of these things. But I do think, on a state by state basis, you're going to have states where these laws are going to be very. California and Texas are going to be very different when it comes to what's covered and not covered.

Speaker 4: 19:57

Forgive my ignorance.

Speaker 4: 19:59

Harrison and I did want to say Mel. When we talk about optimism, one thing to be optimistic about is Mr Trump has talked about concepts of a plan to repeal disastrous Obamacare. Let's not forget who he is. He is a performer first, and everything else second. He knows that his base hates Obama. Doesn't matter why they hate him, he just knows they hate Obama.

Speaker 4: 20:28

So if he says I'm going to destroy Obamacare and liberate all the poor people affected by Obamacare, most of those followers of his do not realize he's talking about the Affordable Care Act and a lot of those people have health benefits because of the Affordable Care Act and I would hope that any advisors advising Mr Trump would let him know hey, if you take away your voters' health care, that is going to be an immediate life change that they notice and it's going to be really hard to blame Democrats for that. So I think one of the things we can be optimistic about is ACA fundamentally is probably not going anywhere. It would be pretty self-destructive to attack it head-on. So many people's benefits may stay the same, although abortion and healthcare-related benefits may be harder to access. And I'm sorry about the jump. I have a dog who wants to go on a walk really bad and he's giving me little nips on my knee, and that's why I keep jumping around.

Speaker 2: 21:20

Turn the conversation.

Speaker 3: 21:24

What's that, mel? How do you ask a question, or yeah?

Speaker 2: 21:27

I guess I I wanted, I wanted to follow up on the abortion um ban because I'm curious when it comes and forgive my ignorance because I'm not very closely related, tied to this work. But, um, you know, I imagine, if there are regulations in place in a state-by-state basis, can employers be? Can employers be held accountable if someone receives an abortion? That's on their play role and what? What kind of legal implications might they face if they are providing access to resources for that service if it's like, illegal in their state?

Speaker 3: 21:59

So what's interesting is in Texas you have to offer benefits that cover. The employee has the right to choose whether their benefits cover or do not cover abortion. Now, whether you have abortion, whether abortion is so, I can opt out. If I feel abortions morally wrong, I can say I do not want abortion being covered under my policy. Where somebody else says I believe abortions right, I want abortion covered, it's the exact same benefits, except one covers, one doesn't. Even though in the state of Texas you can't get an abortion anyway. What that means is based on my policy, I can't go to a neighboring state where it is legal and do that.

Speaker 3: 22:35

So far and I'll leave the legal questions more to the attorney so far we haven't seen any litigation about allowing them to travel outside of the state. In theory, that would be against the Republican theory of state rules, because if a state wants to do it, you can't do that. Now, we all know people don't play nice in the sandbox and because something doesn't fit a narrative doesn't mean they won't go against it. I don't see them penalizing in that regards. But I do think that you're going to see an expansion of these travel benefits, which might cover more LGBTQ or what they call the woke benefits aspect and some of these things that might be banned in certain states and allowed in others. I think you might see very, very different benefits in different states across the board.

Speaker 2: 23:16

Ryan, what do you think?

Speaker 4: 23:18

Definitely. I was trying to find the Supreme Court case that sort of reaffirms this, but I'm just going to say it, you're going to take my word for it. We have a constitutional right to free interstate travel, ok, so one of the things we're finding is states really throwing up lots of restrictions around abortion for many reasons and some liability for the employer who offers a benefits package that theoretically covers some of those treatments and you take it out of state. That's an open question. I haven't seen any litigation on that, but we do see things like Texas's $10,000 abortion bounty hunter rule, which there actually was at least one successful prosecution under that law that we've seen so far. So what is going to happen?

Speaker 4: 24:06

Optimistically, I would say that a near total abortion ban and a total ban on employer benefits across state lines for fertility treatments may not happen, because we have a constitutional right to interstate travel and the whole point of that right is that Americans would, in theory, have the same fundamental rights in Tennessee as they do in Louisiana, as they do in Colorado. Now we know in practice, especially over the past 10 years, that's not really the case. Unfortunately, we have a pretty far right Supreme Court right now, and it's a Supreme Court that has demonstrated over and over again that they're not afraid to legislate from the bench. They're not afraid to take precedent and throw it out the window. They're not afraid to give a president criminal immunity. They're not afraid to overturn Roe v Wade. They don't really need a lot of justification to do it.

Speaker 4: 24:54

So why am I going on that rant? I think that what we will most likely see is attempts by the federal government, with their Republican majority almost everywhere, to do a total abortion ban. Any way they can do it, and they might first attack things like employer benefits, maybe trying to hold the employer accountable, deny them certain federal funding, deny them certain benefits or taxes, or fine them or sue them if they offer any kind of fertility treatment or anything like that. But that would immediately be challenged by the coalition of attorneys general in blue states that are trying to protect those rights. So I think the optimistic take is that it would be tied up until Mr Trump's term is over and then hopefully a new president could take a new DOJ and end all of that. But I do think that those reproductive rights are going to be the first thing under attack starting this year.

Speaker 2: 25:53

Okay, thank you both. On to the next topic.

Speaker 1: 25:56

All right. So we've talked about labor and wage. We've talked about health care. The next topic up we wanted to talk about was the latest of du jour between Elon Musk and the constituents on the right, where he told someone to F his face immigration. So I want to talk about immigration.

Speaker 1: 26:15

For those that may not know, especially as it relates to employment. There's two types of visas that typically people work under right when they come to this country. There's an H1A visa, which I believe is typically more seasonal work, agricultural work, and then there's the H1B visa, which is much like, seems to be much more skilled work. You're for longer periods of time, you're sponsored by a company and it could be like Silicon Valley basically mostly Silicon Valley, some professional. Silicon Valley, basically mostly Silicon Valley, some professional. Quote unquote the argument this week or last week I have no sense of time anymore is that they wanted to get. The Republican Party said we want to get rid of these H-1B visas. Elon Musk said hell, no, over my dead body. I want to know we're not even in week two of the year, so we're not even in week two of the year. What's going to happen with?

Speaker 4: 27:07

immigration this year. Harrison, I'm going to go you first. Yeah. Harrison please Give me the hard one.

Speaker 3: 27:12

No, I mean, who knows? Like I said, it goes back to who's in his ear at this day. Elon Musk is in his ear right now and I do think he has a lot of power and I don't know what he is politically, but he's not a Republican. He's for him, basically, but he's for innovation, he's for growth, he's for disruption and going back and might not be the positive way we were talking about earlier, but he's for these things. I don't see them taking those full aspects.

Speaker 3: 27:40

I think a lot of these things and I think Brian mentioned it earlier a lot of these things are campaign talk because they rile people up, but I don't know how practically speaking, these things are, because illegal immigrants are one thing and he's going to target and he's going to do that, but getting rid of these visas, these people use these employees, they need these employees and if they don't have these employees, their business is going to be expensive the money they're going to have to pay a lot more for somebody else who doesn't have these visas. And we already have a work shortage. I think there's, for every 100 jobs globally, there's 95 employees at this standpoint. So there's already a work shortage in that standpoint. So I do think, practically speaking, while it sounds great in a bumper sticker, the people in his ears right now must be one of those main voices who I do think does have his ear. I don't see major changes from the visa standpoint of getting them out of the workforce, because they're necessary for the workforce in many ways.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Yeah, I heard a stat I can't remember what, I'll put it in the show notes, though that for every H-1B visa holder it creates 1.86 jobs. So to your point, it's not only about the job shortage, but it's also about job growth, sometimes with the H-1Bs. But, ryan, you were trying to hop in there, sorry about that.

Speaker 4: 28:52

Well, there's an interesting sort of exponential effect Creating more jobs actually leads to creating more jobs. It's a funny thing, kind of like how you make more money when you put more money in a high-interest savings account. That's kind of the effect we see. So I believe you, francesca. That makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 4: 29:07

Now, h-1b visa I don't think it's going anywhere. I actually don't. I'm not an immigration attorney. This is just based on my tangential knowledge in employment law. I don't think it's going anywhere and I don't think there's going to be many restrictions on it, for two main reasons. Number one national security. Trump is one of the first presidents in my lifetime to want a military parade and he wants to invade Greenland and he wants to invade Panama and he's going to need a big giant military to kick off World War III. If we are going to have any hope of national security during whatever he wants to do, we need the best and brightest engineers to make our F-22s and F-35s and battleships and stuff work, and the defense industry is heavily dependent on skilled labor like that. Boeing alone has thousands. And speaking of thousands this is the second consideration Trump's most important allies rely on H-1B visa labor for their companies. Musk alone has, I think, 2,000 that he's employed across his companies.

Speaker 4: 30:06

And Musk has Trump on a pretty tight leash. Musk has a lot of power. It's quiet power compared to Trump's, but it's a lot of power. And then we look at people like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and all the big billionaires who are trying to curry favor with Trump. They rely on those engineers and mathematicians. And that kind of leads to a third point. If your goal is to eliminate or declaw, the Department of Education and the United States continues to slip in science, technology, engineering and maths compared to other industrialized peers, we really have no option except to get that talent elsewhere other industrialized peers we really have no option except to get that talent elsewhere. So if we want to remain an economic and military superpower, H-1B visa is an essential part of that.

Speaker 3: 30:49

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You can't get rid of it. You need the workers, and the people in his ear are not going to let him get rid of it, so not unless you don't want your missiles to launch when you hit the button.

Speaker 4: 31:01

I mean it's going to be a consideration.

Speaker 3: 31:03

unfortunately, it might be a good thing from our standpoint.

Speaker 4: 31:07

Yeah, you know that's something we can debate whether it's good or bad, but the point is I don't think H-1B is going anywhere. What I do think and this is a bit more concerning to me one thing that we see in OSHA anti-retaliation statutes and US Department of Labor anti-retaliation statutes is employers cannot take advantage of undocumented labor, also known as illegals, is what Trump supporters call them, but I call them undocumented. Undocumented labor and pay them less than a minimum wage or not pay them at all and threaten them with incarceration, them less than a minimum wage or not pay them at all and threaten them with incarceration, violence, reporting them to ICE, things like that. The reason those anti-retaliation rules exist is so that no employer can benefit from human trafficking or straight up kidnapping. That's actually a really big problem. Even here in California, I've been in cases where we have 20, 30 undocumented immigrants who don't want to work for the employer, but they have been threatened and intimidated into staying there for subminimum wages. Now why is that so important? Trump is borderline violently.

Speaker 4: 32:14

Anti-retaliation statutes against undocumented people are not enforced, or perhaps reduced or rescinded when, basically, if you say, hey, I'm undocumented, but I'm working in this warehouse and they're not giving us safety gear. They're paying us $4 an hour. Sometimes they don't pay us at all. Um, the new osha, the new dll under trump, is going to say hey, that's really interesting. By the way, you're under arrest. Uh, that that's what my biggest fear and concern is. That's worst case scenario for me yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 1: 32:57

I was reading an article the other day. It was a article, but it was about how do you handle workplace raids around immigration as a leader, and you know the fact that we're talking about that as something else that might be happening in the ether is just on a human level.

Speaker 4: 33:16

It's upsetting, that's why I opened by saying I want to dispel any notion that Donald Trump is a normal president. He is not George Bush, he is not Mitt Romney. He is an entirely different creature that operates on a completely different system than any US president I have seen. Because, whereas other presidents sure there was corruption, ineptitude, certain moral decisions that we might disagree with, certain moral decisions that we might disagree with, the sort of seesaw, whiplash, unpredictability and violent rhetoric Really it's the violence in the rhetoric that's so different about Trump.

Speaker 4: 33:51

What it creates a concern for employment rights advocates like me is listen, even if you're here illegally. Yes, you might have broke the law, maybe you were trafficked, I don't know. That's a separate issue. But but even so, I do not want a legal framework that makes it possible for employers to exploit your undocumented status to extract free labor from you. That is a serious human rights concern and, and one of my biggest predictions is that a lot of those protections may go away. Right now they're still intact. So if you are undocumented and your employer is taking advantage of that, you should report it or at least talk to an attorney about your options first.

Speaker 3: 34:29

I'll just add on one thing. You're talking about the civility, the incivility, and I agree 100%. It's a crazy world we're living in, but I'll be the optimistic and I'll keep my optimistic eyes and glasses on. I think, mel we were speaking about this when we first spoke is the one thing we didn't see was the massive incivility after the election that we expected from either side and once again, obviously one side won. But I think there's something to be optimistic about is the workforce is almost controlling itself.

Speaker 3: 34:57

We were prepared that whichever side won, we were going to see massive incivility and, truth be told, if the other side would have won, we probably would not, would have seen it and a couple of days ago, January 6th, might not have been exactly the same and there might have been other results that the other side would have won. But we're seeing the workforce really take that step and not showing up to work and reacting differently. We're seeing a much more mellow, civil reaction where, all right, we can do this and I think the workforce HR specifically is a really good job of building that culture with an organization where, whatever comes, we're going to help and we're going to control it and we got your back, and I think that's my optimism is hopefully that will offset some of the external craziness, and it's another role HR and the businesses are going to have to run is keeping civilian workforce. But optimistically, based on the election results, using that one snapshot, they might be getting the hang of it and doing a good job at that. Hopefully at least. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:06

I also like the idea of business potentially as a check and balance that unwritten check and balance, I guess on culture it might not be a bad thing for sure.

Speaker 3: 36:15

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 36:16

Mel, you want to go into our next topic? Let's go, let's dive, right in DEI.

Speaker 4: 36:23

Oh boy Cool, More good news.

Speaker 2: 36:25

More good news. Yeah, more hot topics we saw in 2024, DEI was certainly under attack in the corporate sector. We know SHRM even removed an element of DEI as well, which had a lot of interesting backlash, which had a lot of interesting backlash. Do you think this continues in 2025? And can there be? Do you expect there to be further rollbacks and challenges with DEI programs in workplaces under the administration's policies that might be coming?

Speaker 4: 36:57

I can go for this, but I feel like I tend to jump on these. Harrison, do you want to go, or shall I run? I went first last time. I'll give you the easy one. I got the hard one. Right now. Swing very far to the right, very quickly.

Speaker 4: 37:17

We're going to see a majority Republican commission and my prediction that I would bet money on is Andrea Lucas to actually chair the EEOC, and that is very much a case of the fox in the hen house. The EEOC arguably exists to improve diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, and we will have the I guess we could call them the anti-woke people in there. The most serious immediate concerns I have is the EEOC rolling back protections, rolling back enforcement, but also the federal government punishing certain employers who have DEI initiatives, because the current chatter on the right-wing side of policymaking is DEI is inherently racist and anti-American. I know that sounds insane, but they've done many mental gymnastics to justify that position. So what they want to do is say that well, if you have a program that promotes equity, diversity and inclusion, what you're really doing is being racist, you're being anti-white, you're being anti-male, you're promoting people based on skin color, and that's not OK. So we will see.

Speaker 4: 38:34

I think federal guidelines that punish employers for having DEI initiatives. A great example would be anyone accepting federal money, anyone with a federal contract. They would be required to disband any DEI initiatives they have. But on the flip side of that we have companies like Costco which are basically coming out and saying no, having diverse viewpoints is actually part of the reason we're winning, it's part of the reason we're so successful, and that's not going anywhere.

Speaker 4: 39:03

So there is the sort of hard policy and soft policy tug of war we're going to see, and I think what we're going to see on hard policy is a lot of initiatives by the Republican majorities to punish DEI programs and discourage them. But soft policy will have companies that say well, what do our customers want, john Deere? Those companies very proudly disbanded their DEI initiatives because they know who their customers are. Costco also seems to know that their customer base tends to be middle upper class, young professionals, educated people who tend to lean more liberal, and that could have informed their decision to put their feet down and say no, dei is here to stay. I will say this regardless of the federal government's new direction on being anti-woke or anti-DEI, the Civil Rights Act is not going anywhere. Its enforcement might change, its interpretation of some details will change, but, straight up, discrimination is still going to be illegal, at least for the next couple of years.

Speaker 3: 40:07

I'm curious if you're looking from the legal standpoint, where I look at it is more from the practical employer standpoint of the mindset.

Speaker 3: 40:15

I look at the last election and one of the things I saw was I think it was definitely a statement of one side and I hate the word woke, but one side ran on an anti-woke culture, dei being one of those initiatives where they're running where it's, it's it's. We want everybody to be equal. I don't see color, which I know is one of the worst things you could possibly say, but that's what they're running on that standpoint, say, but that's what they're running on that standpoint. I'm curious to see the employers, the C-suites, the people higher up in the companies, what message they take out of the election results. Does that free them to do like there was a lot of pressure from a lot of these CEOs and executives to instill these DEI initiatives? Even from the legal standpoint? Just to me, that's the way the culture was going, that's the way society was going. Do they see this election results where Trump won most of these states and we could debate whether it was a landslide victory or a lot of small victories, but one significantly and one without a shadow of a doubt. Do they take it as a mandate to do what they want to do from the first part that these initiatives are wrong or do they take it as a mandate?

Speaker 3: 41:18

I'm curious if you're going to see those hiring standpoints and once again going back to the role of HR and I'm a benefits nerd I'll roll it back into employee benefits like I do everything else. I think it's going to be the role of the workforce to offset that. I think you're going to see going back to your CISO. I think you're going to see a CISO between some of the CISO level executives and the old school higher up executives who might have one view of the EI and the people on the ground in the workforce, and it might change state by state of business by business.

Speaker 3: 41:45

But I think the businesses are going to have to create a culture and employee benefits is one of those main aspects where you might start seeing more DEI initiative benefits inside the workforce. You might see more benefits focusing on the LGBTQ plus community. You might see more benefits that have mental health solutions, more ERGs, employee resource groups coming up outside so they can talk and have safe spaces and once again, another word I hate, but safe spaces discuss these issues and talk so, even besides the legal standpoint, I'm curious what the election results not even the Trump presidency, but the message that people take out of the results. I'm curious how that trickles down to the workforce of a DEI initiative, and that's really what scares me the most.

Speaker 4: 42:29

Yeah, I think whether employers interpret it as some sort of mandate is honestly going to depend on their biases. You know, I think a mistake we all make is we look at big corporations, big institutions and think that they're these sort of ultra-rational things and they really are not.

Speaker 3: 42:46

They think everyone's right.

Speaker 4: 42:48

Yeah, there's a lot of hubris, that's for sure, and they have their own biases. What is the Walt Disney Company going to do today? Well, let's find out what kind of mood Bob Iger is in. He's a person, he's not a machine. Uh, so here's what I think we're gonna see. I think, if you want to look at what the next few years will look like, look at the past few years, and it actually starts with believe it or not. I want to quickly talk about rings of power produced by amazon. Did you guys hear about that show or see that show?

Speaker 1: 43:16

rings of power rings of power.

Speaker 4: 43:19

It was an amazon adaptation of jr tolkien's the lord of the rings.

Speaker 1: 43:22

I knew this. I knew this was going here. I'm like he's gonna be talking about lord of the rings.

Speaker 4: 43:27

It supposedly covered events thousands of years before the original trilogy occurred. Now the quality of the show, in my personal opinion, is atrocious horrible writing. They spent a billion dollars. The sets look like my niece could have made them, like I don't know where all that money went. It's a very poorly produced show.

Speaker 4: 43:45

But that aside, one thing that really upset a lot of people was a black elf, a black female dwarf, a female lead who was accused of being a Mary Sue, and having watched nine episodes I agree she was a Mary Sue, very poorly written character. Many of the main characters from Tolkien's work who happened to be men were completely written out of the show. So what happened was? That show, I think, is a perfect specimen of the culture shift that we're going to see, and this is a sort of soft policy. This is not hard policy. It's a soft policy where people, because of pop culture productions like Rings of Power, rightly or wrongly believe that America has become too woke and has started doing diversity, equity, inclusion for its own sake and at the expense of better qualified men and white people. Whether you agree with that is one thing, but whether that's the prevailing wins right now.

Speaker 4: 44:40

I don't think is up for debate. I think it's very clear. That's where we're at. So what I think we're going to see is a very strong quote, unquote anti-woke culture in a lot of businesses, in a lot of media, especially with Trump at the helm, where we're probably going to see some. Really, we might see some rational discussions, really we might see some rational discussions.

Speaker 4: 45:00

Like Rings of Power should not have written out very important male characters to Tolkien's work just because they didn't want too many male characters dominating the scene. They should not have completely rewritten Galadriel's character to suit a political agenda. That was a mistake. So we'll see little changes like that. But we might see more aggressive things like joking about racial slurs is now okay. Don't be so woke, don't be so soft. You know women aren't the same as men. Everyone knows they're more flighty, irrational, emotional. Let the men handle this. Uh, perhaps that won't be seen as outrageous and rude as it ought to be. So I think what will happen is the pendulum will swing very far right. I think a lot of companies are going to go anti-woke for a while and it may trigger more instances of incivility, insensitivity, straight up, jaw-dropping instances of discrimination, and then that pendulum will left again, hopefully to a rational center, where it belongs.

Speaker 1: 45:59

Oh go ahead.

Speaker 2: 46:01

Oh, I was just going to say, Harrison, to your point about the election results. What I thought was so interesting is it wasn't a landslide. By any means, I have the final numbers up. Do you want to tell my?

Speaker 4: 46:11

dad that.

Speaker 2: 46:12

Yeah, because Kamala, you know she had 48.3% of the votes and Trump had 49.8. So when you look at those numbers, that is a very like almost 50-50 split in terms of what representation looks like and who people wanted as a candidate to represent them.

Speaker 3: 46:31

When you think of People see in statistics in general. People see in statistics what they want to fit their definition.

Speaker 2: 46:38

A hundred percent, I'm just. It's curious, though, when you think about the workplace, or like CEOs thinking about these policies and how they're going to react to their workforce and support their employees or the culture they're trying to build, like they need to almost look at the workforce as it could be this 50-50 split.

Speaker 3: 46:56

So that's where it's interesting and that's where I think the biggest challenge and I keep picking on HR, but it really is HR that's going to be the biggest challenge with HR, because you're going to have certain people, honestly, probably the billionaire owners or the higher up people in these corporations not to pick on the billionaires, but who see the results one way, who see the results that this was an electoral landslide and we're going to use that mandate of this is what the country wants, based on those results. And then you have the fact that, yes, it might have been an electoral college landslide but, as you said, the actual employees, the boots on the ground. If you did a straw poll of the employees who they're working with, it could be 50-50. It might even be a little bit more more in some states. It's probably a lot more new york, california, it's a lot more where they don't care. So it's going to be. Hr is going to be stuck in the middle there. So hr is going to have such an important role of balancing that and it's it's going to. It's going to be I hate to use the word fun because it's like fun which is disruptive, disruptive fun, but it's going to be fun to watch the HR role grow in 2025, because they're going to be balancing that out a lot more, because it's exactly what you said.

Speaker 3: 48:08

It's two statistics that are both. It's two truths. You won the election in the electoral landslide, but the actual vote count was so much smaller. So, from the CEO or the high-level executive standpoint, this was a mandate of anti-woke, but 50% of your population still feels that he was the wrong candidate and voted the other way. So HR is going to be an interesting pickle or conundrum, or whatever cool word you want to use to do that. But, brian, the one question is should I watch that show or not? You're saying it's horrible.

Speaker 4: 48:43

Watch a YouTube review of the show Listen. As a writer myself, I care very deeply about things like plot, structure and character development. Rings of Power is a masterclass in how to do the opposite of all of those things.

Speaker 3: 48:59

So not on my net, not on my not on potatoes one or it's.

Speaker 4: 49:03

It's just a badly written show. I I don't know who the chief writers were, but they need to try another profession.

Speaker 2: 49:10

I love it. Thank you both for for uh talking through that and we're going to move on to the next final topic kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but I do want to talk about safety and workplace safety.

Speaker 1: 49:22

Mel and I have talked a lot about like child labor laws. We've started seeing some of this eek out already in florida, for example, of some of these child labor laws, labor safety regulations getting loosened already under the biden administration. Um, what, what happens with, again, regulations, safety?

Speaker 4: 49:43

2025? We're speculating, of course. We don't have crystal balls. We don't know what is going to happen.

Speaker 1: 49:49

I have a magic eight ball if anybody wants it. Oh lovely.

Speaker 4: 49:53

And then I'm not going to pretend I don't have a strong anti-Trump bias I do. I think he's a grotesque human being, apart from his policies. So I tend to look at him with a strong lens of distrust. I don't trust the guy. I don't trust he's going to do the right thing. I don't trust he's going to act in people's best interest. So with those disclaimers out, let's take a look at the past.

Speaker 4: 50:12

In his first term, donald Trump greatly reduced OSHA protections. He reduced OSHA investigators to a historic low. I think there were only something like 600 and something OSHA investigators during his term, which sounds like a lot. Until you realize, I believe the statistic that they released later was it would take those 600 something investigators over 60 years to investigate every covered employer in their jurisdiction only once. So not enough investigators, a record low of actions taken to protect employees, and there is at least a correlation I don't want to say a causal effect, I don't think I'm qualified to say that but there is a correlation of higher instances of workplace injuries and workplace deaths when we have fewer OSHA actions, because the truth is most employees are too scared or they don't know their rights or they don't have the means to access private representation. So it really is up to OSHA to assert workplace safety.

Speaker 4: 51:11

The other thing that we're going to see much less activity from OSHA creating new protections for workers. A really unfortunate example is OSHA's heat safety rule. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that does not have a unified heat safety standard. It's a patchwork across the states and some states, like Texas and Florida, have even banned heat safety protections. They said we don't have a heat safety protection rule Cities, cities and counties. If you make one, you're in big trouble. It's void. So that's pretty weird that the right-wing republican agenda seems to be not just not creating a heat safety standard but banning it.

Speaker 4: 51:50

So what I think is going to happen? The osha heat safety proposal is gone. Uh, anyone trying to enforce an osha action is more likely than not going to have to rely on the general duty provision, which is that employers have a general duty to create a workplace free from unreasonable hazards, not anywhere near as profound as we'd like to see. If an actual hey, if your employee is really hot, you should give them water, that would be nice. So we are going to see fewer investigators, we'll see fewer new rulemaking and we may see more lax interpretations of rules in Rocha's jurisdiction. I think that general duty statute, as loose as it is, is going to get a little looser.

Speaker 3: 52:29

Yeah, I mean, this is not my area by any stretch, but just based on basic logic. He's pro-business and anti-litigating business and letting them do what they want, and he's looking to cut money from the federal government and cut as much money as possible. Which is going to cut these people investigating situations. Put those two together and you're not looking for it's not looking at great results. Once again, I'm not being optimistic over here, but you're not. The optimism is that businesses will do the right things amongst themselves when not being asked Fingers crossed, who knows? But at the same point, from a federal standpoint, he's looking to cut as much as he can from the federal budget and cut as many jobs that he sees unfit, and he's going to let businesses do what they want. So I don't see outside of maybe state laws and maybe on a-state basis, they're implementing some rules and regulations. I don't see that being a good idea.

Speaker 4: 53:22

State-by-state. We'll see, Harrison. And the reason I brought up the Texas and Florida bans on heat safety proposals is, you know, depending on how zealous Republicans decide to get with their policymaking. Remember, I come from a far-right background. I was raised in a very conservative home and I worked for very conservative employers in a red dot in the blue sea that is California. So I'm pretty familiar with their interpretations of these things. They genuinely see departments like OSHA as unconstitutional.

Speaker 4: 54:01

In fact, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has even opined that if a challenge to the existence of OSHA comes before the Supreme Court, he would like to strike the agency down. He thinks the entire existence of OSHA is unconstitutional. Now, does he actually think that? Or does Harlan Crowe think that? And Harlan Crowe took him on a yacht trip? That's a totally different discussion. But the point is, the people with a position to eliminate OSHA or greatly restrict its rulemaking authority have already made their intentions clear and we're already seeing challenges in the Fifth Circuit. Harrison, I think I detected that you're in Canada. Our court system has federal circuits. The Fifth Circuit is in Texas, Louisiana. It's the Deep South and that's known as a Republican stronghold rule, saying that they're affected by the rule because they know the Fifth Circuit will go their way and now they're going to try to go up to the Supreme Court. So there is a risk that OSHA will have its authorities severely restricted or the agency even disbanded. That would be pretty extreme. But severely restricted, I think, is more likely.

Speaker 3: 55:15

Go ahead, Harrison. He's going to target the administrations that targeted him. He's going to go after first. I don't think there's been any OSHA attacks on him, so I think we might limit that a little bit. But yeah, he's not going to invest into it. I don't think it's going to go away per se, because I think there still is enough push from people and even though they do have a Republican majority, it's such a thin majority at this point.

Speaker 4: 55:35

I think he's going to hopefully pick his dad, I'm talking about the Supreme Court's majority, which is 63. The Supreme Court has the authority to say oh, this whole OSHA experiment, it was unconstitutional. The executive branch overstepped their authority by creating this horrible network of unelected bureaucrats I'm doing quotes for everyone listening Unelected bureaucrats, when really Congress needs to make these rules. Congress created OSHA and empowered it to enforce Congress as well, which is important because when Congress writes laws, they are intentionally broad and intentionally vague. There's been this narrative in the Trumpverse that, oh, congress is so bad at their jobs. Look how broad the legislation is. They do that intentionally because the lawmakers cannot foresee every possible hypothetical that may occur under that statute. So it makes a lot more sense to have an agency tasked with enforcing that statute, like how the EEOC enforces our Civil Rights Act, to help address those little what-ifs and hypotheticals and niche situations as they go, because, as we've seen, congress is really really, really bad at reaching a consensus on niche, specific issues.

Speaker 1: 56:48

Yeah, you know, the thing that I hold true to that is that just because some of these whole departments and or some of these regulations might get lowered or just gone away, go bye, bye. Basically, it doesn't mean that a company needs to lower its standards, right oh?

Speaker 4: 57:03

absolutely not. And I will say the more probable thing if anyone in Trump's camp is even remotely intelligent and I hope there's at least one smart person there if they want to affect their agenda with the minimal pushback, the smartest thing they can do is put certain people in charge of those agencies and they simply decline to enforce. That would be the more probable thing. I see where Andrea Lucas at the EEOC might see a very egregious gender pay discrepancy at a company and just say, oh, didn't see it, don't know anything about that. Because what better way to get your way without rocking the boat than to simply take charge of the agencies and have them do nothing? If they do nothing, it's like they don't exist at all. I think that's a possibility as well.

Speaker 2: 57:49

That's interesting.

Speaker 4: 57:51

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:52

Mel over to you.

Speaker 2: 57:53

Yeah, well, we have some listener Q&A and we just touched on OSHA, so I'm going to skip that question, but some of the stuff coming in. Someone said I'm a parent and I'm interested in what we might see to support families. Trump pushed a very family-centric policy with his messaging. Do you think things like on-site child care will be a greater priority in workplaces?

Speaker 3: 58:16

Yes, so on-site I don't know, but you definitely are going to see it. I say you're definitely going to see as definite as anything can be in a Trump administration, but I do think that they run on family values and a lot of this is family values. So a lot of it's going to be an enhancement of parental leave, child care support. You might see stuff like dependent care, fsas limits be enhanced significantly. I mean, obviously you're going to see tax incentives for families. You're going to see a lot of enhancements on the quote unquote family value benefits, a family value workforce. For some that's going to be very beneficial, as a parent is going to be very beneficial.

Speaker 3: 58:59

I do think you're going to see paid leave In New York. They instituted I'm going blank on the word, but not maternal leave, pregnancy leave, prenatal leave where you actually have hours where you can see doctor's appointments paid in New York. You might see stuff like that be expanded. It's a very Republican, very evangelical presidency right now. That's what we're seeing.

Speaker 3: 59:22

I do think stuff that all of the family value title really be enhanced and I do think that's where you're going to see a lot of the change, a lot of the growth which could benefit some people significantly. Once again might make it a little more complicated to administer on the employer's behalf, but I definitely do see that being a focus to appease his base and show that he's doing something positive for at least some people in that situation. Yeah, childcare is expensive man it is and pre-taxing that is definitely going to be a value. And paid leave is one thing. I think america I'm not going to pretend I know the numbers, but I do think the um attorney and paternity leave in america is one of the worst in the world and we don't take advantage of those as much.

Speaker 3: 1:00:02

So I do think it sucks, it totally sucks yeah, yeah, so enhancements that significantly, and he started doing that at the end of his last term.

Speaker 2: 1:00:13

Okay, there's been significant talk about raising the federal minimum wage. Absolutely not happening. We have a better shot.

Speaker 4: 1:00:23

We have a better shot at paid parental leave, and the reason for it's actually not crazy to say this. I know that Trump gets painted very negatively by people like me. There is actually a not zero percent shot at paid parental leave under the Trump administration. It's very slim for a number of reasons we could get into, but in 2019, he actually signed legislation to approve paid parental leave for some federal employees, which is shocking because, oh my God, you're spending money on people who have nothing to offer you. Mr Trump, that is not a character, but we welcome it, so it's possible that we could see more of that.

Speaker 3: 1:00:56

Yeah, but it doesn't affect him specifically. But you're seeing where he's going. Once again. He doesn't have views. He was pro-abortion before. He was anti-abortion. He has views based on the people around him and you're seeing the pro-family values really chip in. And I do think if you're looking to invest in benefits or buy stock in benefits that are going to do stuff, whatever that might be, in any capacity, it's going to be the pro-family values. It's going to be the parental leave. It's going to be, once again, we want you to have more kids. We want you to have these values. We want you to have the family. We don't want the abortions Stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:01:39

I definitely do think he is going to invest because, even though it doesn't help him specifically, I do think part of this term I'm hoping that he realizes this is his swan song. He's not running again. He at some point in this presidency. He is so egotistical and this is a good thing. In some ways he's going to look at his legacy and he's going to look at what he can do from his legacy standpoint and I think things like paid leave and family value issues will tie into that and I do believe strongly that at some point in this presidency he's going to look at his legacy and I do think that's going to be one of the ways he's going to try enhancing it universal health care in there.

Speaker 1: 1:02:10

Man just like wrapping up up yeah that he's not gonna do I definitely know on universal health care.

Speaker 4: 1:02:18

Uh, if, anything he'll try to create something to give uh private health insurances some kind of benefit or leg up on government sponsored health care. He wants to get as many people off government health care as he can yeah, I mean, and he's done some good stuff like that.

Speaker 3: 1:02:31

Once again, he's done in his first can, in his did the ICHRAS, which are the individual HRAs, which is surprising because he's pushing people towards the Obamacare marketplaces. But he allowed employers to create these health accounts to buy. Instead of having an employer paid policy. We're going to give you money to buy money off the exchanges. That was something we did in the first term to enhance stuff like that, the HSAs.

Speaker 3: 1:02:56

He's a tax man. He's going to look at the financial aspect. So when it comes to things that are tax benefits and things that will help the rich hide money in certain regards and his buddies and himself hide money he's going to do that. So let's take full advantage of those situations. So I do think, when it comes I don't think it's all doom and gloom when it comes to health care yes, certain things abortion rights, fertility, dei rights, 100% those are going to be under attack. But I do think stuff like parental once again I hate to say it, but the family values aspect of the benefits, things like ICHRAs going to the individual marketplace, benefits to help child care, paid leave and stuff like that I do think we might see a major growth, specifically towards the tail end of his presidency, where he is looking to build a lot of legacy.

Speaker 2: 1:03:40

I know we are over time, so I'd love to jump to our crystal ball. Well, it's all been a crystal ball, but our closing crystal ball predictions here, if that's okay with you both. It sounds like the theme of the night is workplaces really are going to have to take charge in terms of setting the tone for what the experience is, and Francesca and I talk about this often. Do your due diligence when you're choosing your employer because, guess what, you're choosing them as much as they're choosing you. So with that, in 60 seconds or less, share your boldest prediction for how jobs, politics and policy will evolve under this administration by 2028. Boldest your boldest. You're big and bold. We'll come. Well, I'm gonna rock the vote right now.

Speaker 4: 1:04:27

Unless he dies or is literally too sick to put up a fight, trump will not peacefully relinquish power in 2028, and I know that because he tried not to do that last time. I mean, that shouldn't even be bold. That's like beyond obvious to me that unless he is dead or too sick, he's going to cling to it. He's not going anywhere. But let's look at how that affects people at work.

Speaker 2: 1:04:52

If we will.

Speaker 4: 1:04:53

We are going to see tax cuts. Uh, they're going to probably favor corporations and the wealthy and what they choose to do with those tax cuts. Hopefully we see enough pushback on soft policy that the downwind effects that trickle down that we've been promised since the 80s that should come any day. Now I hope we actually will see some of those tax savings invested into the workforce. I hope, but that may not be likely because we will see a retraction of union power.

Speaker 4: 1:05:23

Donald Trump has said that he will veto the Protecting Workers' Rights Organized Act, the PRO Act. He is definitely going to scale back NLRB efforts. There are cases on the docket now which could dismantle or greatly gut the NLRB. So we are going to see much more diversity of protections, state by state ton of litigation of federal agencies under the Trump regime trying to curtail certain rights and protections and the coalition of democratic AGs trying to fight that. So we're going to see a lot of lawsuits, a lot less union power, probably some tax cuts and maybe, hopefully, as a result of those tax cuts, your employer offers some kind of enhanced medical or other programs for you. Those are my predictions currently.

Speaker 3: 1:06:18

Okay, you took the dark side.

Speaker 3: 1:06:19

I'll take the light side of things, please do. I think, my biggest prediction. Well, I think if we ran this podcast every six months, our answers will change every six months for the next four years. That's the boldest prediction. I think that's not even bold. I think that's obvious.

Speaker 3: 1:06:33

What I see and I think interesting is, I think the HR world and my focus is on HR and human resources and, as a benefits consultant, those are the ones I deal with on a daily basis I think the role of HR is going to skyrocket. They've wanted a seat at the table for years. They're slowly starting to get it. I think you're going to see, over the next four years, them really have a larger seat on the table for all the reasons we've spoken about. There's so much going on in the workforce where HR is going to be so necessary that they're going to need to have a seat at the table. So my bold prediction is we're going to see a significant growth in the human resource space, and there's going to be good, there's going to be bad, and there's going to be good, there's going to be bad.

Speaker 3: 1:07:16

Our hope and optimism is that the businesses are able to take the good and benefit from the good and will work around the bad. I think it's going to be a lot more pressure on the workforces. I think it's going to be a lot more reliability and it's going to be more important and this is really where HR comes in. Employers are going to be much more specific of picking where they work. I posted on my LinkedIn today the famous thing from Jerry Maguire show me the money and that's where you chose your job and that's where you chose you're going to work. That's not going to be in four years. The next four years. That's not going to be what employers are looking for. They're going to be looking for culture, because they're not getting it anywhere else. And the employers, hr, finance, the CEOs, the C-suites.

Speaker 3: 1:08:00

It is going to be so important to build a culture within your organization that you're going to help attract and retain, because there are going to be a lot of obstacles against you and their roles are going to be done significantly. And show me the money is not going to be the answer, it's show me the culture. At this point, I just made one catchphrase.

Speaker 2: 1:08:14

The culture we got gotta make some bumper stickers, harrison, I'm already making shirts.

Speaker 4: 1:08:17

I'm I'm stealing that and I will not be giving you credit.

Speaker 2: 1:08:20

Harrison, I'm sorry we're gonna work on that statement, harrison, we'll give you, we'll put your photo next to it. Uh, francesca, what about you?

Speaker 1: 1:08:33

you know I I will go out. I just to be very candid, I vote on like predominantly on social justice issues and after the select, I voted for kamala. I'm sure that's not. That's probably obvious. Um, I try to write an rfk, but after the election, the feeling I had was know, when you're dating someone and you're like I think they're cheating on me, but I'm not sure. And then you find out they're cheating on you and you're like well, now I know.

Speaker 1: 1:09:05

And there's a freedom in kind of knowing. This is what you're dealing with and what I think will be very interesting over 2028, and this is not an optimistic or negative I think what you're going to see, especially in organizations and Harrison to your very good point around culture is now it's going to be very clear, for whatever reason, what your company stands for or not, what kind of culture your company has or not, and you can opt in to whatever that is as an employee. And that's where I'm actually kind of like that meme eating the popcorn and just walking it, because everybody has the opportunity to choose their lane at this point. Yeah, I'm excited about it, the clarity that comes with knowing that someone's cheating on you.

Speaker 4: 1:09:54

I agree with and I do think that the big winners over the next few years, um, spoiler, big shock. Uh, women make up a large percentage of the workforce and they are incredibly talented. Uh, I am one of only two men in my organization. Uh, that's not for any discriminatory reason, just the most qualified candidates have happened to be women. So I think we are going to have a very strong trad culture that's pushing back that sort of oh, men are in the office, women are at home. But organizations that open up their culture, open up their doors to female professionals, are going to be the big winners, because if you make that kind of talent feel comfortable in your organization, you have a leg up on the people who make them uncomfortable.

Speaker 2: 1:10:37

Yeah, I would say the research out there shows also that women are better leaders. Sorry, I did a whole episode on this based on a recent report, but also we lead the buying power in this country, and so I think when corporations are making decisions about how they treat employees and how they show up in the world, they're going to have to really think about that. Women are more than 50% of this population and we have the power to impact their bottom lines for each.

Speaker 3: 1:11:06

Now we need to teach the voters they're better leaders, but that's it.

Speaker 1: 1:11:09

By the way, women buy on all sides too right by the way, women buy on all sides too, right.

Speaker 2: 1:11:19

So I guess my bold prediction was going to be that I think overtime is grossly going to get thrown out away completely. They're really trying to get rid of overtime and paying people overtime. I feel so passionate about this subject, but I agree with Harrison, I agree with all of you actually. I think culture is going to be at the center, and I don't think it just falls on HR. It falls on every leader within an organization to run culture. It's not HR's job to lead culture, and, in fact, organizations that lean too much on HR are going to lose, because it has to trickle down from the top, and so I think if you are paying attention to your employees and you're caring for them, through all of the whiplash, you will come out winning, no matter how things go.

Speaker 4: 1:12:00

That's a really good point, mel, and I think one thing employers should realize is just because the federal government says you can do something doesn't mean you should. There's a lot of things as an employer I could do to my employees if I wanted to, and they have no redress. But guess what? They're just going to leave. If you're going to be a bully and point to the rules and say, oh, the rules say I'm allowed to do this, it's like you're allowed to do it but it's not a good idea.

Speaker 3: 1:12:22

The other interesting thing is they might benefit from that. The fact that it's not mandated gives them an advantage, because not everybody's doing it. When it's mandated, everybody's doing it because you have to do it. If you're not mandating and you're doing it anyway, you're going to get a leg up on the good quality talent, because they're going to want to work for you guys. Yeah, 100%, that's the glass half full.

Speaker 4: 1:12:45

It's a positive, that's fantastic, Harrison, I agree, and not to gloat, but I have a really fun sort of rule at my firm that's different. We comply with overtime rules in California, of course, but we have a special overtime rule that is not required, but it's the rule here. If you're ever asked to do something that is outside your normal job duties, regardless of how many hours you've worked, we pay time and a half for that. If you are an office manager and I ask you to take on a role that maybe the intake specialist would normally do, are an office manager and I ask you to take on a role that maybe the intake specialist would normally do guess what Time and a half. The reason we do this is to help avoid things like people feeling scope creep and then they wake up one day with a million new job responsibilities they never agreed to and no raise.

Speaker 2: 1:13:26

Duties as assigned.

Speaker 4: 1:13:29

Exactly. I don't do that because I know firsthand the resentment that that can create. So I'm not trying to say, oh look at me, I'm the best employer in the world.

Speaker 4: 1:13:37

It's smart to say you're doing something outside your job duties time and a half. So employers who are always looking for a way to nickel and dime their own employees they're going to lose and you know what's going to happen is those employers are going to go to people like me and look for anything. Any violation they can to sue those guys over is going to go to people like me and look for anything, any violation they can, to sue those guys over.

Speaker 3: 1:13:56

Disruption creates success. Disruption does create success. Look at COVID, look at everything the people did really well during those times because they adapted. People are going to adapt to what's going on with Trump. There's going to be people who are going to be very successful and there's going to be people who are going to fail under the Trump administration. It might not be the people you think. It might be the complete opposite of people you think. It might be people who see differently than him, because they're adapting to what's going on and they're making themselves better because of it, and we're going to see a lot of success. We're going to see a lot of failure, like everybody, and we just hopefully all your listeners now have to listen to this.

Speaker 4: 1:14:34

They're going to be on the successful side. Yeah, I think the people who can be pragmatic despite any moral or personal outrage we see to what's going on will be the winners.

Speaker 2: 1:14:40

Absolutely Adaptability. Yeah, protect our peace too. All right, thank you both. So much, Francesca. I'm handing it over to you.

Speaker 1: 1:14:48

All right, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. Please like and subscribe, and follow us on your work, friends, on the platform of your choice. Also, feel free to join us on any of our socials on Instagram, tiktok or LinkedIn as well. Harrison Ryan, thanks so much for joining us today. Appreciate you both.

Speaker 4: 1:15:05

Thanks so much for having us Always great talking to you, Harrison. You're a lot of fun too. I guess we'll hang out more.

Speaker 3: 1:15:10

Well, we'll definitely talk Ryan. More Well, we'll definitely talk Ryan. I'll follow you now and I feel bad. You're attorney, ryan. I should have been employee benefits Harrison but people don't forget what you do.

AI Impacts at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: AI Impacts at Work with Carol Scott & Theresa Fesinstine

AI is here…

But it’s not taking your job—it’s changing it. In this episode, we’re joined by Carol Scott (Microsoft, The Action Imperative) and Teresa Fesinstine (People Power AI, former Fortune 500 HR exec) to cut through the noise and break down what AI will actually mean for your work in 2025.

We talk real-world changes, not headlines—from performance reviews and creative work to the new skills that will matter most. Whether you’re leading a team or just trying to stay ahead, this episode is packed with smart, practical advice to help you thrive in an AI-powered workplace—no tech degree required.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I think that for a lot of leaders that are non-technical, they make the assumption that the technical team is sort of the knowledge keepers on AI. We shouldn't be held back from inserting ourselves into the process, into the conversation, into the strategy around cascading these tools out because we're afraid that we don't know enough or that we're not informed. Don't believe that hype.

Speaker 2: 0:42

So welcome everybody to your work friends. I'm Mel Plett and with me is my work friend, francesca, and with us tonight we have guest speakers Carol Scott from Microsoft and Teresa Fezenstein from People Power AI, who are our experts, to talk about AI at work. What's real, what's the hype, what can you really expect in 2025? So with that, I'd like to introduce Carol and Teresa.

Speaker 3: 1:11

So, carol, why don't you introduce yourself? Thank you for inviting me, and I do want to kick off with saying that Mel and Francesca we met through work and we're work friends, and so I appreciate the opportunity at Deloitte and we spent a lot of great years there. But real quick, carol Scott. I'm a senior director in our software and digital platforms group at Microsoft, and we manage our largest partners that go to market and lead with AI globally and also a recent founder of the Action Imperative, which is really focused on how women and others that need to speak up and have a voice can do that using AI, and we're very excited about that as well, and I'm excited to be here today.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Well welcome friends. All right, Teresa, well welcome friends.

Speaker 1: 2:03

All right, Teresa. Oh, I definitely ditto Carol's sentiment around just the appreciation of being here and the ask. You know, I kind of feel left out because I've never been technically work friends with you guys. You are now. I am now. I love this. I love that everybody I meet is a work friend because I have my own business. So I'm Teresa Fessenstein. It's so nice to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:34

I spent 25 years in corporate HR, so, whether it was vice president of learning and development or moving into CHR roles, I had the amazing opportunity to work for large global enterprise organizations as well as small, bespoke commercial real estate, privately owned businesses and all of the kind of been through the gamut of experiences.

Speaker 1: 2:51

And then, in 22, I decided to leave to start a culture consulting business, which then evolved into People Power AI after I became immediately absorbed and obsessed with learning more about ChatGPT in December of 22. And that's really led me through two and a half years of my own learning and then taking that learning and sharing it out with others, whether that's through workshops or conferences. I also have the opportunity which is amazing to be an adjunct professor at City College of New York, teaching HR management as well as AI in business and I'm a very proud member of organizations like Troop, HR Women Defining AI, and I'm a mentor for All. Tech is Human, where we really focus on making sure that AI is democratized and people have an opportunity to learn more about it and to learn how to use it and bring it into their world of work. So thank you so much for having me again. I'm so excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 3:48

Well, thank you for being here. We're so appreciative of you both. This is a conversation that our listeners have shared with us is one of the biggest things that is top of mind for them. We know this is 60 minutes and we are going to move quick. So here are the four things we're going to cover tonight AI at work what's real versus what's the hype. Will AI take your job or make it better? How to stay ahead? So skills, tools and mindsets and we'll get through some listener Q&A and we want to hear your bold predictions. With that, I'm going to jump right into what's real versus what's the hype. So what's the biggest AI myth employees should stop believing today?

Speaker 3: 4:28

Well, I'll start out and say one of the myths is that they can wait because their company is not doing anything. Or you know, it's not required in the job because things are moving really quickly and your company also, big or small, may be doing more than you think. But I would say I'll just start with that is you might be thinking about it, you might be dabbling in it. I think you need to know more than you think you do because it's moving so quickly, teresa.

Speaker 1: 5:01

I'll honestly play a little bit of a like I think it's a both and I think that a lot of organizational leadership, certainly in small to mid-sized businesses that I've seen, are sort of figuring out what the walk and the talk around AI is going to look like without, without kind of with the ideology that employees aren't actually digging in and BYOAI-ing at work, right. And so I talk with a lot of organizations, organization leaders, hr teams where when I ask you know how many of you have put, you know, guidelines, out, roadmaps for your AI strategy it's quiet in the room, I'll put it that way. And there's this, I think, intrinsic belief that people are going to wait for that and they really aren't. They are sitting at their desks and have their iPads and their phones on the side of them using ChatGPT, whether we've endorsed it or not.

Speaker 1: 6:00

I also think in terms of Sorry, go ahead, no, no, go ahead. I was just going to not. I also think in terms of sorry, go ahead, no, no, go ahead. I was just going to say I also think you know and I don't know if we want to jump into this yet but I do think that there's this. I think the conversation you mentioned, mel around. Is AI going to take jobs? Is also a both end conversation. We should be having both end conversation we should be having.

Speaker 3: 6:23

Yeah, and I would say a myth is that, oh, you know, ai is going to replace a lot of jobs. I do think it will replace some jobs or some tasks where things can be consolidated. I also think and we've seen this in the tech industry I think there are new jobs and new roles that are going to come out and that people will be working differently. And I also just want to add one other thing that you know, some people think, oh, ai is only predominant in tech companies, or they're leading, but it is everywhere.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Yeah, we're seeing that too. We're hearing a lot of what you're saying. So one of the things I recently read, for example, is there the biggest disconnect is in terms of, you know, employers' expectations of how their employees are using it, and employees are saying tell me how you want me to use it. So there's a big conversation that seems not to be happening. So that's interesting.

Speaker 1: 7:16

Well, I also think, Mel, that it's not just tell me how you want to use it, but tell me how to use it, and I think that's a huge gap right now. There've been a few reports out in the past, say, five months, four months, around the disgruntledness of CEOs that haven't seen the productivity gains but they also haven't put the investment through to make sure people understand the what and the how of it. It's like we've kind of you know, either if we have the policies out there, we are sort of not really giving the guidelines or the support in order to effectuate the skill development that we need, or we're just not saying anything. I don't want to switch topics, but I have another really good myth too in a second.

Speaker 2: 8:01

Okay, I will hold that thought in a second. Okay, I will hold that thought. What's changing for real in 2025? That will actually affect the way people work. So what's what's a change you think is going to go full effect in 2025?

Speaker 3: 8:14

Well, I will say I will start with AI powered hiring and AI powered like employment reviews.

Speaker 3: 8:23

And we're already seeing this on LinkedIn and you know we're seeing with LinkedIn not only helping with our profile, but you're also seeing on LinkedIn offering with AI to help recruiters find people.

Speaker 3: 8:36

And we're also hearing about you know and know and Tracy you may know more than I do on this, but being used in the recruiting process to sort through and I mean, I know not every company is as big as a Microsoft. There's a lot out there, but you know we could get a thousand resumes for a role right, or companies, even for smaller companies. They're seeing that and so I think it's important to understand how to use AI. And so I think it's important to understand how to use AI, understand what that impact is there, and then also we use it and it's being used, even if, just like I use AI and my employee reviews and again, yes, I use it myself, but I have a great team and we do these connects. You know I have a great team and you know we do these connects and then I use that content from them. And then also, you know, and how I'm looking at evaluating things, you know, using Copilot internally with our own tools. So yeah, yeah, interesting.

Speaker 1: 9:39

Yeah, I would say one of the things that leaders really should be honing in on is, even though we are a lot of companies that we're seeing come out with sort of focused solutions In 2025, I do think we're going to start to see, faster than in the past, consolidation of some of these really unique tools being acquired, incorporated, the tools that we have used in the past.

Speaker 1: 10:12

Our systems are going to have a lot more front forward AI capabilities versus kind of in the back end, where we don't really see or touch it or feel it so much. It's going to become much more in our face, which is why I think this education, this focus on not only the organizations themselves but the partners and the vendors and the teams that are coming in and providing these solutions, making sure that there's not only a skill growth opportunity but there's real enthusiasm around like let's get everybody on your team up to speed, let's get them using it, share your case studies so to show the dynamic nature of it, getting people past some of the baseline what I call sort of a toe in the water. Utilization of AI.

Speaker 4: 11:02

Can I ask a follow-up question on that? Yeah, because I feel like there's a lot of everyone on this call has been through some sort of like technology implementation, whether it's Oracle or SAP or Workday right, or we're bringing in SharePoint, we're bringing in. I mean, I'm 45. It's been like I've been through every single technological thing here at work. I'm curious about, of everything both of you mentioned for employees, what's one thing where you're like we're actually going to solve this problem for employees this year with AI, like there's this coming and it's going to make your life super easy. Is it going to do that?

Speaker 1: 11:40

I can speak to specifically in the world of HR. I absolutely see and predict a year end where functional tasks that do need to be completed so things like the automation of communication, taking processes and being able to streamline the entire process instead of just pieces I do see that for some companies who are already in the water, I see that being executed by the end of the year. The automation is just going to become so fast People are going to recognize that they don't need complicated skills in order to do some of these things. Which takes me back to my other hot take, and so I do think for HR leaders, we're going to see some of that and it's going to be really exciting.

Speaker 4: 12:29

Yeah, normal manual pulling from LinkedIn to fill up people's talent management profiles.

Speaker 1: 12:35

Oh my gosh, would that be something if you never had to fill in multiple applications Again. That would be a game changer for applicants for sure.

Speaker 2: 12:50

I actually wonder too like do you, do you both think that because I used to work in a lot in like the tech stack for the L&D space, right? And how do you streamline all of the technology? Because we have all of these tools, or you're building a Franken tool that connects all of these tools together to operate, right? Do you see this potentially really simplifying our tech stacks going forward in order to support business, to make work just a little bit easier? There's not a million applications to go to at some point.

Speaker 3: 13:12

Yeah, I mean, I do have the benefit, you know, being at Microsoft and again, this is not necessarily a plug for Microsoft, even though I think we're doing a great job at this. This is just, you know. Also, my lived experience is, you know, we have co-pilot and it's primarily on open AI, but we have 1600 different language models, so I can't say a hundred percent what's behind everything. But and initially, once you learn how to prompt, like every different application now that we have, and then we have this, these connectors into other companies and as as other partners and in ERP systems, Right. So it's like anything I go into, there's a little co-pilot symbol there and it's like oh, you need this. Now it's a chat bot. Oh, you need. Before, when you had to call or you had to click, you just ask a question and it does it. Now I don't know.

Speaker 3: 14:05

I know some of this is in other tools, but, like in meetings, now we don't even ask like, hey, can we record this? It's like, why take notes? But? And then the notes and the action items and how that flow. I think I know this may sound simple, but it's very time consuming Note taking, follow up, administration, email. I mean, the amount of. It's just been a game changer. And then you miss a meeting. You go in there. I can multitask. I'm invited to a call. I can't go to that call because I'm on, I'm invited to like four calls, but I can actually keep up and say what was said about this customer, that customer. So you know, and you say the tech stack. I think there's going to be a few things that kind of sit across. I think a lot of these smaller bespoke tools are primarily used in, like smaller businesses, like maybe they can't afford some of these larger ones, but I think where you have, but you are having these layers that sit on top of a lot of the different technologies.

Speaker 2: 15:09

Okay, I want to get back to your myth, teresa.

Speaker 3: 15:14

My last question, for both of you in this area?

Speaker 2: 15:19

What are the biggest misconceptions about AI in the workplace?

Speaker 1: 15:26

Mine's not necessarily a myth about AI, oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 15:30

Mine is more a myth yeah, mine is more a myth around who knows what and who has expertise and who might not. I think that for a lot of leaders that are non-technical, they make the assumption that the technical team is sort of the knowledge keepers on AI and what's happening. And, through my own exploration working with leaders, working with organizations, we shouldn't be held back from inserting ourselves into the process, into the conversation, into the strategy around cascading these tools out because we're afraid that we don't know enough or that we're not informed. My very own brother, who's incredibly smart, has been in computer science since he was 17 years old. I had him as a guest on my. I have a free session that I run once a month called AI Quick Clinics. I had him as a guest and it was a real eye-opening experience what I thought he would know about it and what he actually did know. And I think there's a perception that I might not know enough to jump into the conversation or to ask how this is going to affect our organizations. Don't believe that hype.

Speaker 2: 16:42

It's not always true. I love that. Don't put yourself in a box right, right away, just be curious.

Speaker 3: 16:48

I want to give a plug for the liberal arts majors out there. One of the myths is you have to be practical and shout out to my bff I'm not going to say her name on here top platinum club winner a couple years ago, english major and if you follow me on linkedin, I'm like generative ai. The people that are thriving in it are those that know how to communicate, know how to write, know how to reason, and I. We have a lot. There's a lot of people in liberal arts that are in technical sales and different things, and so I just want to say, like, if people think Gen AI is technical, the beauty is it's AI for the general public and this is why, even though I am very technical, like I do have a liberal arts brain and in which I think complements it, but I'm like, I'm just like power, power to the liberal arts.

Speaker 2: 17:50

We'll take it. We'll take it. Well, it helps us tap into those human capabilities. I think it comes naturally to our liberal arts folks. I'm going to hand it over to you, Francesca. On going to take your job or not, let's talk about it.

Speaker 4: 18:02

Yeah, I mean it is. I think for all of the scary conversations about AI, I don't think people do realize that it can be. Honestly, there's a great equalizer here in the sense that we're all learning about it now and we can interact with it in different ways and come from different backgrounds.

Speaker 4: 18:16

You don't just have to be the technical, you could be the liberal arts major, which cracks me up, because the last time I heard you could be a liberal arts major and get a job at Microsoft, it was like 2000. And this girl was a tuba major and she's like but I'm a liberal arts major and Anderson Consulting just picked me up. I'm like what? So it's like everything. Everything kind of comes around full circle. Yeah, All right, I do want to. I do want to address the elephant in the room. We did this a little bit earlier. But AI taking jobs.

Speaker 4: 18:47

I, you know, World Economic Forum just came out with their latest on what's going to happen in the next five years with AI. Carol, to your very good point, we're seeing that there's some jobs that are going to go away. There's some job creation as well. That's going to happen, right, so it's, and actually there's a lot of predictions that it's going to create more jobs than it's going to take away. That's the latest data. But I'm curious, from both of your perspectives 2025, what are the job markets that you're seeing really get disrupted by AI?

Speaker 3: 19:20

Yeah, I'll just kick off with. I do think in the area of customer service and customer support, and especially either online or even, you know, calling in, and I know sometimes we get really frustrated Sometimes you know how it's like you're hitting zero, you want to talk to somebody, but it's getting so much better when it comes to that and also being able to upskill people faster because we actually have bots that are. What's really cool is, let's say you're a customer service person, it can actually evaluate what the person is saying and then it can prompt the agent on what to say. If they are speaking, they can tell, like, say, you're an insurance company and you get a call you know somebody's had an accident, it'll prompt you to say are you safe, are you okay? And then, based on what they say, and so we're really seeing in that industry and a lot of things like that, that can be automated.

Speaker 3: 20:22

But we also have to remember like the workforce is shrinking. Yes, I don't want to minimize that. We have that. There are challenges finding jobs, but there are not as many people with a lot of the jobs that we have. So I think it's kind of a balance. But I see that and a lot of you know more self-checkout, ai, powered payments, things like that where where we have that. And then also, I think there's going to be a lot of just consolidation of roles or a person can do more. We jokingly say, you know, it's like, okay, do more with less, and we're like, yeah, you're actually doing less with less, but I do think you will be able to have access to do more, you know, in what you're doing if you have the right AI tools.

Speaker 4: 21:15

Teresa, what do you think?

Speaker 1: 21:17

I would mirror Carol's sentiment that a lot of customer service. One of the places I spent some time in commercial real estate, one of the places I'm seeing a lot of value pickup, is the use of assistance in the middle of inopportune or non-traditional times, right. So the times that you want to find an apartment or you're looking for an office space might not be coincide with the times when people or agents are technically available. So I think in that way it's a little bit of an augmentation, less a loss. But I do think that one of the things that would be actually quite phenomenal Carol mentioned before that you know she's invited to four meetings. She can attend one because we've got these tools and these transcripts that help guide us through that. It would be really lovely to ideate around.

Speaker 1: 22:14

What do we want to lose, like, what do we want to do less of in the work that we're in? I'm sort of. And then on the whole scope of like there's a quote that I won't repeat because it's literally my least favorite quote in the world around AI and the impact it's going to have. My position is this If we can get people enthused and excited and curious about the ways AI can reinforce what they need to do. Save them some of their needed time so they can focus on the things that are more important. It becomes less around you know, I'm learning because I'm afraid I'm going to lose my job and more around gosh, what is what could be the art of the possible right, and that's that's really exciting. So I'm not a huge fan and it's just my style of like digging into the like where the loss is going to be and like what's the massacre. Much more like let's figure out how to support people in leveraging, and there is going to be natural attrition there's been.

Speaker 1: 23:14

I always tell this story when I present to groups that at one point there was a job called a computer. That was a job that a human person did, and now there are thousands of jobs to take the place of that person, so to speak. So I think it's and I also, just to kind of cap this a little bit of a meandering thought is that I earnestly believe that no matter who's putting their predictions out there aside from, you know, those that are in it, microsoft and a lot of these amazing companies like we have no idea. Like we have no idea what's going to come in the next six months. I mean, the past three weeks have been phenomenal in terms of just growth and development and availability, so it's like what's going to happen in five years, who knows, like. I think what we need to learn about is how do we get comfortable with the idea that five years from now our lives are going to be very, very different and get okay with that and like, enjoy the ride.

Speaker 2: 24:12

I love that sentiment. Teresa HBR just put out a really nice decision matrix that can be used with teams to have a fun conversation about this. Right, how do you make this work for your team? How do you want it to work for your team? So I feel like, if you're doing nothing else, especially if you're a team leader you should at least use this matrix like this and make it a fun conversation with your team so people aren't so afraid, but they're leaning into the possibility of how this can help them right, make their lives a little easier at work. What do they want to focus their time on? It's such a rich conversation.

Speaker 1: 24:47

Yeah, I've seen. I think the most amazing thing I saw last year was I had the opportunity to go work with the HR team the full team for Mazda North America out in California, and in the front row the most amazing woman was sitting there. I want to say her name was Dolly, but I may get that wrong.

Speaker 1: 25:07

She'd been with Mazda for over 40 years working in their compliance and benefits department and like she was right in the front wanting to learn, she was so excited about logging in and asking questions and seeing what it could do. And like that energy I just want everybody to take in their soul when it comes to embracing what's new, because when you've been in a job for 40 years, you know your shit, but you also have been doing that for a long time. I love that embracing of like let's make it fun, let's make it interesting.

Speaker 2: 25:40

Lead with curiosity and not judgment on this.

Speaker 4: 25:43

Yes.

Speaker 2: 25:44

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 25:44

Both of you talked about this idea of like, enhancing, and I kind of think about the super worker, if you will. How can AI enhance? Not replace necessarily, but I'd like to go down this, I'd like to go down the enhance route for a hot second. Carol, you mentioned earlier things like Copilot can, or Otterai there's other tools too but especially Copilot because, let's be frank, microsoft is embedded in most enterprise organizations as well, right, but it can take notes for you, right, you can pull it in there and it can pull out themes and that sort of thing. What are some of the, I think maybe I would like to ask this, either from the easiest ways or the most effective ways that you've seen employees enhance their jobs with AI?

Speaker 3: 26:26

Yeah. So I'll give a couple of examples, because a lot of times and I've been such an early adopter, like from the very beginning, chat GBT I literally spent hours like on it and learning it and stuff. So like if it's new or whatever, I'm like, okay, let's try. And I also I'm like, okay, is it true, right. So I do want to mention the note taking because even though some people may oh yeah, I can take notes, but the way it has changed our culture at Microsoft and Microsoft Teams, so you can do a transcript or you can, like you know, do a video, but that notes being in the record, and you think, ok, well, I'll get the notes, but I'll make sure they're accurate, or the detail, and they have levels of detail. It even takes the action items afterwards. So then, like it's like, ok, you have those and then you can follow up on those. But just the idea that you can pay attention in a meeting and not have to take the notes and you may take one or two, that has been huge. So the engagement has gone up. But also it's become a cultural expectation, I mean, unless you're having a sensitive HR related conversation or you're trying to have a conversation where you want to one. Maybe you want to have something open. It's now become an expectation. I'm like, why would I take notes Right now?

Speaker 3: 27:46

The other thing I just want to quickly mention is at microsoft, we have an like an award culture. We have a lot of things that we have to do write-ups for people. I just had something like two days ago. My boss sent me this message and said hey, I want to nominate somebody for this, can you write it up? Well, that normally would have taken me an hour, but I I already had a write up on this person. I literally copied the questions, copied the write up, popped it in Copilot, looked at the answers, barely had to tweak it. It literally took me like three minutes to write because, like, you have this body of content, like your resume or like we do connects, and so, oh, you want to write up this award instead of me having to go do that. Like I can just go to that or I'll go to people and say, hey, can I talk to you for five minutes and ask you these five questions, and then I take the notes and I use it for something. So I'll pause there, but I will just say that in and of itself on that topic. And then I do want to introduce one other topic and we can pull the thread on it if we have time is I talked about using it also for empowerment and using it as a coach?

Speaker 3: 29:02

I've used it in difficult HR situations where I'm like, hey, I want to have this conversation, I want to be professional. This is going to be tough, you know. Sometimes. You know, extroverted people can be too wordy. Help me do this Like, help me make it shorter. Or it's like, hey, I want to coach or give somebody feedback and I've even taught you know people in my world of like, hey, you're in this conversation, somebody speaking over you. You can have AI go in and say, hey, I want to simulate this conversation and I want to go back and forth three times and I want you to challenge me, to like step up there. So I just think the idea I love what you're saying of the enhanced worker that is the best way is to make yourself better in what you're doing and that's going to prepare you to be flexible for what comes.

Speaker 4: 29:55

Yeah, I. One of the things that I've always thought about, too, with AI is like what are those ways that you can enhance it? And also, on the flip of it to your earlier point, to what are those things that we can? If we didn't want to do, we could offshoot it, so it gives us more time to do those things that we want to do as well, too, so we can be in the conversation like note-taking. It's awesome.

Speaker 1: 30:16

It's awesome, yeah, and just to kind of yeah, I was just going to jump in. I I think that. So I, I've lived in a Microsoft world for a lot of my career. I still use Microsoft, but I also venture out and use a lot of other tools, and I think that I, you know, I appreciate what, what Microsoft can do, but I also appreciate that there are other tools that do certain things better. And so, you know, I think, when it comes down to, I want to be very specific. I always I'm very practical person, so, like, what can I actually take away and look up Right? So I think, when it comes to, what are the things that, as an HR leader, say I spend a lot of time doing? I'll start with. I have three examples of different things, but the first one I'll use is employee engagement.

Speaker 1: 31:02

One of the most time consuming processes and projects that any company takes on is evaluating feedback from employees and I think what the history of the process has led us to do all of these Likert scale questions that don't really give us a deep understanding of what's happening. But with AI and natural language processing and tools, there's a company called Inca I-N-Q-Q-A. For those that are listening. It does phenomenal work at breaking down long form question commentary question, complex questions in native languages and different approaches. What would take me months and I know I've talked to thousands and thousands of HR leaders it takes us months to do, to do the work what would take months now gets boiled down and is explainable, which is a whole concept if we have time we should talk about, but is explainable in a matter of minutes. So when you talk about like, how does this actually help me be more productive, instead of either sitting at home, when I should be enjoying my time with my family, sitting on the couch working through spreadsheets of commentary and trying to come up with my own bias views of what those comments mean, using tools and systems like Inca to actually get me the most important part, which is the meaningful feedback, the meaningful insights, so then I can turn that around in a month's time instead of six months and actually take action on those things, I think another space that we're going to start to see real exciting change.

Speaker 1: 32:39

Because if you've been like a manager sitting in the middle of performance reviews, sure, I'm sure a ton of people in 24 and their year end reviews were like using chat, but I think, when you look at, there are tools. There's an organization called Opry, based out of Nashville, female founder, is doing some amazing things with sort of contextualizing performance feedback using the tools and the communications that are already happening natively. So it changes from you know. Imagine not having to sit there and remember a year or six months or you know, a quarter's worth of work, but being able to get reports in that help you guide the performance conversation. So there are these tools that just it's just very different. It's a different way that we will be able to work and use data to actually have the conversation and build culture. Which, to me, is certainly one of my primary focuses throughout my career as an HR leader is to how do we really speak directly to and create environments that support employee experience and employee sentiment?

Speaker 4: 33:52

Yeah, you know that's such an interesting question. I've been having a lot of conversations lately about organizations trying to fit AI into their processes versus building AI first processes, if you will and I think a lot of what we're talking about is how it's making these existing processes even better. Is, even when you think about the performance review like you kind of married Carol, what you talked about with, like note-taking, and then Teresa, what you talked about with the performance review AI is actually gonna force us to change even the way we think about performance. Potentially and I actually think it's gonna change it for the better because, if we think about it, if you can in like, in a way, have AI on a weekly basis, you're just giving examples about what your employees are doing or how you're feeling about their performance, and AI is logging that all along, and then the PM comes in at the year end to aggregate all of that. It's actually forcing better talent processes as opposed to what we have now, which is basically let me remember this at the year end and we never do.

Speaker 1: 34:55

Well, not only that, francesca, it's doing it in a bespoke, curated way for the needs of that you as an individual. It's now taking mass processes and boiling it down to what are the needs that Mel has. What is unique to Francesca in her background, her experience, the way she's operating, her communication style, you know? I think it's its ability to take in so much insight, and certainly not without some bias and some you know some of the negatives, but do a pretty damn amazing job at getting us insights that we can then act on for one another. Or to carol's point about using it as sort of a culture guide, like use it for ourselves, for our own growth. That's just fantastic that's exciting.

Speaker 3: 35:50

I do think there's a little bit related to, though, like this human element and and again, I know I, I know I'm going to tell them myself a little bit working for Microsoft, but, like we know, we are customer zero right. Everything at Microsoft is measured. You know these work, trends, reports and what people are doing and stuff. So we, you know it's our joke is like Microsoft is always listening, so there are conversations instead of having them on teams.

Speaker 3: 36:24

It's like I just laugh at the number of things that like we text or we talk on our phones and again, it's not that we're hiding anything as much as it is.

Speaker 3: 36:33

It's like you know, and so, but I do also think there's going to be an element of, especially with AI powered insights, of people being more thoughtful of how am I going to be measured? Oh, what is going in here, how is this going to look right? And I do think it's good to have some transparency. I mean, obviously not everybody knows the secret sauce behind the curtains of HR, but I do think, over time, as there start being more measurement consequences and I'll give an example. So we did we have, like this training platform to help us, coach us on, like security selling. Okay, and you know Microsoft's piloting it, it's one that's out there, and so when they rolled it out, you know they were like, hey, we want you to do this, but it's not going to impact your performance review, like we're not going to have you do this. And then we're going to, like behind the scenes, be like, oh, this person doesn't know how to talk about security.

Speaker 3: 37:34

But I thought that was really interesting. It's like are people willing to use these tools? I mean, I will admit like and they asked me to help test it, which I thought was cool, and I gave feedback because I was technically right in what I said and it rated me high on some things and low on some things, and I'm like, oh, it just gave it, kind of gave up. So my only point in this is I do think, as a human, we need to be thoughtful, we need to be aware, we need to be willing to ask questions, and so, as much as I am a champion of AI, I do have a lot of issues with it.

Speaker 2: 38:11

So yeah, I think it's healthy skepticism, you know it's good to have. It's good to have but I'm sold, teresa, like you add, cutting synthesis on employee engagement and culture down to three minutes where, and something that can be continuously measured, so you have real insights in real time that you can take action on, like that's just super powerful.

Speaker 1: 38:29

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:29

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 38:31

I mean, just think back to, like your starting days in HR or in, you know, in your as a manager.

Speaker 2: 38:36

As you know, like sticky notes and one thought on each one.

Speaker 1: 38:41

I laugh and I say, like I, I it was actually. It was actually after seeing the initial demo of Inca. This was back in the beginning of of end of 23. And I had this thought that like, oh my gosh, I'm going to turn into my father. So, side story, I grew up in Milwaukee, wisconsin, and I moved at 13. But before then I never got a day off of school. I don't remember us ever getting like a snow day. My mom was four, nine, like snow above her head a lot of the time, no snow days. And my dad used to tell this joke right about how he would walk uphill both ways to get to school with no shoes, that whole thing.

Speaker 1: 39:19

And that's how I feel about future HR leaders. They're never going to know the pain that I had to go through for engagement surveys or to do performance reviews at a major enterprise company using Excel spreadsheets or like, and there's something so wonderful about there about that. But I do agree for sure with Carol that you know just because and that's another sort of myth that I had thought about just because it can doesn't mean it should. And so making sure that human in the loop, always reviewing your output, the last, I use a metric that is, 40% of people use AI outputs exactly as they're delivered, and that's terrifying. It is terrifying.

Speaker 4: 40:09

Well, half your LinkedIn page is people with the Zoom rocket. You know like it's all chat to be content.

Speaker 1: 40:16

Does anyone?

Speaker 3: 40:16

have an original content I can. So yeah, I laugh because I do feel like it's all chat-shippy content Does anyone have an original thought, I can.

Speaker 1: 40:19

Yeah, I laugh because I do feel like it's important. There's a lot on LinkedIn also about like criticism of people that use Gen AI posts and my response is pretty much the same, which is these are I assume these are people that are just dipping their toe, they're just starting and we have to encourage that exploration, even if it means I've got to look at a lot of like green check marks and rocket ships.

Speaker 2: 40:44

I, by the way, I actually physically put those in myself, but now I'm like I definitely was not using it. All right, you're going to stop that. I prefer to show people Like a weird millennial with my icons, okay, well, I wonder if we can pivot over to how you can stay ahead, and we've talked a little bit about this. Right, be curious, not judgmental. Play. Get out there, start the conversation. What skills should employees really focus on to stay relevant in an AI driven workplace?

Speaker 3: 41:11

Yeah. So I know we talked about this and you were like, yeah, this seems obvious. But first of all, I would say, how much have you used it? Like look at the last day, week, month, because, yes, I have Copilot at work and sometimes I use it more than others. I mean, I use Teams every day, I use ChatGPT all the time and, yes, I know how to prompt, I spend a lot of time on it. But I would say, do you know the basics? And if not, and they're like, well, where do I start? Because I was going to say this at the beginning like AI is kind of like Google.

Speaker 3: 41:51

People are like, oh well, ai will transform the world. Well, what can it do? It's kind of like Google. It's like, well, what does it say? You have to have ideas, right, but I would say, just learning how. And if you prompt, like focus on more complex prompts, focus on asking it questions, ask it how to help you to solve something like that.

Speaker 3: 42:10

And then, if you have tools at work that have been introduced, use them that have been introduced, use them. And a lot of it is like any skill building and to stay ahead. The other is and this is going to sound obvious and I know we're all on LinkedIn but I follow people on it and then when something's out there, I just try it, and so I know I speak on it and I work for Microsoft. But people have asked me you know, how do you know all this stuff? Like Microsoft didn't say, oh, ai is coming, here's the training. This is what they do, you know, because they have to keep everything quiet. It comes out there, then we figure it out and the training comes later. So I just learned it because I wanted to right. So it's just, if you, it's that curiosity and the access to the tools. Copilot's free.

Speaker 3: 43:05

The basic version of chat GPT is free, and so I would say that's, that's the start, and I will just give one quick example of how I got started at the very beginning and how I use it now. So you know, deloitte, mckinsey, all these companies we've worked with or know about they produce these really long PDFs and I'm like I'm sorry I don't have time to read. You know, 57 pages on CEO research. But what I do is I upload it into ChatGPT and I'll say summarize it and give me the key points, and then I'll say make it an executive one hour webinar and then I'll say turn it into a training program, because you know we've all done, you know, training together. It's like turning it into a training program.

Speaker 3: 43:54

So I'll take content and play with it and in different ways to kind of learn how to use it. But instead of saying like, what do I do? Think of something that is long and tedious to do and just start there, but now it's kind of fun, like I'll get an article and then I'll say summarize this and I'll be like okay, this piece, and then I'll go into that article and so I can consume a lot of research by putting it in there. And then I try to say how would I present this on a podcast? How would I present this to an executive? You know, if I'm new to this, anyway, I'll pause there, but that's how I've learned is like just take a document, take your resume or something, and just play around. So it seems simple, but that's how I still learn that way.

Speaker 1: 44:46

And there's so much happening and so many tools and resources a lot of them that provide free kind of initial trial, kind of initial trial. So there's actually a great tool called Oasis that will do sort of what Carol mentioned, but it gives you a few different prompts so you might not be somebody who thinks about like, oh, what would I do as an executive summary for this? And it will give you some of those prompts so you could think about, like, what if I wanted to turn XYZ into ABC, if you will Like, what if I wanted to turn XYZ into ABC, if you will. The other thing and this is just a personal tip there's so much private information that we have online. If you are clicking off the terms of service without copying and pasting them into ChatGPT and asking it what you need to be aware of, that's like just a little that one's for free. I'll give you that tip for free.

Speaker 2: 45:35

Check every EULA.

Speaker 1: 45:37

Yeah yeah exactly. Oh my gosh, please, I never do that, I never do that.

Speaker 4: 45:43

Who does you should?

Speaker 2: 45:46

You're going to do it now.

Speaker 1: 45:53

I love that. The other thing I would say, I think, in terms of when we talk about real skill building, is recognize that you can tell that it's wrong, that if you have a skill, if you have a knowledge in something, using your critical thinking and challenging it, that is incredibly helpful for training these models, giving feedback. So in your own learning, making sure you're giving that feedback and then, like, rally some of that adaptability in terms of skill building. We all became a ton more adaptable during COVID, right.

Speaker 1: 46:27

Like what I thought I would be doing in 2020, in January, is most certainly not what I'm doing in 2025, but we all learned adaptability and that is what we're going to have to hone into. You know, if you have a, if you have said to yourself in the past two years but that's not how we do, it really get like put the rubber band on your arm and snap it every time. You think you have that instinct Because it's like we are. If we continue to think about the way things used to be, it's really just going to hold us back versus embracing this idea of what could be. So in terms of skills, I think this like get literate to Carol's point, understand the terminology, use it, but also challenge it. You can tell it it's doing a bad job. You can tell it it was biased in its information. You should tell it all these things and don't just take what it says as unfaithful.

Speaker 3: 47:27

Yeah, and then there's a lot of tools out there.

Speaker 3: 47:31

Like I was just playing or it had been a while. So and I'm already spending so much on tools I upgraded to the $200 version of chat GPT to try it out. I, like I got even though I'm at Microsoft got rid of perplexity. I want to know everything that's out there. I have the meta AI glasses I should have. I should have had them here. I'd put them on and show them to you.

Speaker 3: 47:53

But, like I like to experiment, there's a lot of stuff that has free stuff, and so I tried that app where you could like turn yourself into an avatar or it was like an AI generated picture and and then, of course, my kids were like really creeped out by that. They're like don't do that. And then 11 labs like they have a free version and you can go in and it's really cool. You can put in text and then it'll do different voices, so and you can learn how, like voice Synthesia. Like they have a free. It's like the avatars and what I would love to do. I haven't. I'm, I don't really have a justification to spend the money, but you can actually. I think it's Synthesia where you can actually go and record yourself and then they would turn like you into an avatar. So think about, like when we were at Deloitte and stuff, you know they could have Kathy Engelbert in there like be her own avatar or whatever.

Speaker 3: 48:52

But yeah, I'm not quite ready to like spend my money on that yet as a as an experiment, but I don't know. It's like it's scary, but it also helps me know, like what could be done. You know so, but there's there's a lot of stuff. If you truly want to learn, just go look for free trials of AI tools. There's video. There's voice to text. There's turn yourself into. It was fun. There's voice to text. There's turn yourself into. It was fun. It was like I had a lot of fun with like turning myself into. You know different versions of my face and different things.

Speaker 2: 49:26

So but that's what.

Speaker 3: 49:28

I learned from all of that there's a really good.

Speaker 2: 49:31

I'm sure you both know it and I'd love to pivot into this question for you both. I know for me, even with the testing and learning, carol, like you I think, I spend a couple hours each week on there's an AI for that just exploring what new.

Speaker 2: 49:44

AI tools are out there, because you just never know. I'm like what's this? Okay, let's see what this is all about. So I love that concept. I'd love to hear from both of you. It looks like, carol, we may have lost your visual, so I'll start with you, teresa first, on what tools are you testing with and or who are you reading and listening to right now to, to stay ahead of this evolving landscape?

Speaker 1: 50:07

So I'm not sure what I'm looking at there on Carol's, but I'm going to try not to be distracted.

Speaker 3: 50:14

I'm not sure either. I went to the wrong camera, so I'm trying to turn this off. My apologies on that. No worries, carol, okay all good.

Speaker 1: 50:25

So, similar to Carol, I also just recently purchased the pro version, so it's an expensive investment. Obviously, it's what I do for my business, so being able to leverage the automation and the capabilities and just really learn about agent AI and how it's working in real time is really interesting. I have some of the tools that I consistently go to. I think you know a cloud is really great. Some of the functionality that has come out over the past year has really been amazing in terms of you know, I've created for clients interactive total compensation summary tools within Claude and then I'm able to share them even if they don't have a paid version. What's really great about that is, even though a lot of companies benefits providers, things like that have those tools, they very rarely take in everything that an HR team can provide, so this is a really comprehensive tool for employees. So I really love this like dynamic nature in which things are coming out. I really love Notebook LM. I use it a lot.

Speaker 1: 51:28

I you know you talk about uploading one article into ChatGPT. I uploaded 50 of the last recent articles and I've provided that to my AI and business students as a sort of whole repository for learning and querying, and it's just been really interesting to see how they use that dynamically and to be able to build stuff like that. I'm a huge Canva user so I go back and forth on the AI capabilities in a tool like Canva, but I really think this year it's going to be people learning. I call it tool stacking, so I may go from ChatGPT to Canva, to Perplexity for Research, to Claude, because it just has a better humanistic approach to communication, less bias and things like that. So I kind of do this tool stacking and work my way around to get to the solution that it's kind of a blend of all different solutions.

Speaker 2: 52:26

And who are you reading, listening to? To stay ahead.

Speaker 1: 52:34

I don't even feel like I have like a person or two people. I listen to a lot of AI podcasts. I kind of jockey it around because I think every, every different podcast is focusing on something different. I do get like the AI tool report, which I think is really helpful just to stay on top of which tools are out there. Connor Grennan there's a few that kind of seem to. You know, in his role he really has his finger on the pulse of what's happening. You know he's the one that I follow that always has access to these things early, so it's really nice to just kind of get my eye on him. And then there are some HR leaders that I really that are starting to lean in.

Speaker 1: 53:15

I didn't ask them if I could mention them, so I'm not going to, but a few HR leaders that I'll give credit to in the follow-up of this when this is launched that are really trying and experimenting and integrating AI in awesome ways and that's been really fun to watch. So I have the clients I work with, but to see what other people are doing has been really amazing. And Amanda Halle she has an awesome newsletter that really focuses in on HR leaders using AI, which I follow.

Speaker 3: 53:42

Okay, and can you guys hear me? Yeah, okay, perfect, perfect. And so my unfortunately, my Microsoft Surface laptop has let me down, so I'm on my video here. So reality here. But no, I really like Lori Mazur. She wrote a book called Temperature and the Age of AI and I got to meet Lori in person and it's really about understanding the type of creative person you are, the type of person you are and how you show up and engage with AI and instead of being like, oh, you're this kind of worker, that kind of worker AI and instead of being like, oh, you're this kind of worker, that kind of worker, looking at yourself from a creative lens.

Speaker 3: 54:22

And, of course, I know a lot of people follow Allie Miller and Allie and I worked at AWS at the same time, but I wanted to just pivot here a little bit of. You know, we work in tech and we think of consulting. My middle daughter is a fashion design major and I will admit, admit like when AI first came out, I was like, oh my gosh, is this like going to obliterate that industry and the creative industry? And so I've been following a lot in like industry magazines. So instead of just following like AI people and this goes back to like in our days of being industry focused, I think it's important that we look at different industries. Yes, there's a lot in robotics and aerospace, but in fashion, I really love the way AI has been like integrated into fashion. But then I'm also seeing a little bit I wouldn't call it a backlash, but it's like valuing that this was created by a human right, and I don't think there's been a lot of love of like commercials that are like all AI right, like we really like, and not that there's not AI elements right and so.

Speaker 3: 55:31

But when you're talking about who to follow, I would follow industries that you care about to follow, I would follow industries that you care about. And also law Law is being massively disrupted. We have customers I'm not going to say their names, but we have customers that have legal journals and all this different type of stuff, and obviously stuff has to be double-checked in certain areas. But I actually think that industry and the fashion industry we're going to see a lot of change and then there's going to have to be a lot of adaptability. So that doesn't mean there won't be a human. That doesn't mean that all fashion design is going to be done that way.

Speaker 3: 56:13

But if you're. Again, it goes back to if you're in that industry or you're thinking about industries around you, like how are you going to have to interact differently? And you know the more, the faster you learn it or you at least pay attention. There are some industries. I mean, I can't know everything, obviously, but I'm keeping my eye on it and I I'm like, oh I, when this matures to a certain point, I'm probably going to have to pay more attention here. So I'll pause there.

Speaker 1: 56:46

I have one more. If, if you're in HR and you're looking to to find somebody to follow, follow me. Yeah, I'm writing a book. I'm getting ready to launch it in a month and a half, but I wrote a kind of a working playbook for HR leaders on how to integrate. There are so many of us out there that are just trying to figure it out and be a part of the change we want to see and have the conversations and talk about it. I do that every single day. I'm very blessed to be able to have this as my career in my life now, so it's awesome.

Speaker 4: 57:27

I can ask a technical question. I just want to go back to something really quickly because I genuinely have this question. I genuinely have this question. You both are paying the $200 a month for the pro version of chat GPT. Did I hear that correctly?

Speaker 3: 57:41

Yeah. So let me tell you why and I haven't decided if I'm going to keep it because all of these AI tools like I speak on AI, I'm a global AI speaker for Microsoft I like I can't just focus on their tools and also I'm interested in it. I and I speak on things like this. So I want to know what's going on. So when I watched the video, when they were showing agents and things like that, I want to be like does this really work? And so I have to. This is going to be like a month to month thing, but I mean I did have.

Speaker 3: 58:16

I do pay for like five different tools and but when I use the $200 version on agents, I'm working on my own branded website on Squarespace. So the agent actually I was practicing with it it actually went in and updated the titles, changed the pictures, changed the stuff, like it did it, and I was just using the agents and stuff. So you know, because we use agents at Microsoft, but I'm like can the average person? I mean I know I have above average AI skills, but can I get it to do anything meaningful? And the answer was yes, but I'm not. I might just use it and then wait and see like it may go back and forth, but yes, I am paying for it.

Speaker 4: 59:03

And so you're using it for agents which are like, basically the equivalent is pushing it to be more of an assistant, where it can do tasks on its own without having you having to prompt it right. That's what an agent is.

Speaker 3: 59:13

Yes, but basically what it does is it goes in and takes over, when it doesn't take over your computer but like the website and and you can watch it as it does it, it does it for you. But agents I mean I know a lot about agents and how we're doing at Microsoft. I was trying to look at it more on the consumer side and see because I will say this to the audience learn about agents, because everything is way far farther ahead than you think it is. Learn I'm not saying you have to know how to build them or whatever, but that it would be a great area because this is the year of more agents coming out. So, teresa, anything you want to add.

Speaker 1: 59:52

Yeah. So I just made the decision, like on Friday, to I have a friend who posted about it and I was like, if you're willing to join me on a every Friday conversation and like do this together. And he was like 100%. And then my friend, amanda Halle, who I'm very close friends with as well, she's like I'm in, I want to do it too. And so I believe my mindset today is the same as Carol's, which is like I feel like based on my business, I need to understand it.

Speaker 1: 1:00:23

Would I recommend that the average Jane go out there and spend $200? No, I don't even know that I would recommend the average Jane has to spend the $20. I think it really depends on what your use is, and for me, part of it is because I am a solopreneur and figuring out how some of that automation works and how it can work for me is really important. But I also want to be part of the leadership saying, hey, everybody, here's what's coming and here's what it looks like and here's why you don't need to be afraid of it. And I can't do that in the same way that I talk with leaders and say, look, you can't be a part of the strategy to support the launch of AI if you don't use it and you don't understand the vernacular.

Speaker 1: 1:01:07

I have to educate myself, just like I would expect those people that are still standing in the seagrass waiting to jump into the water about AI. They've got to start exploring it and that's what I'm doing, but I wouldn't recommend it to anybody, and I think that there are to the point earlier. There's a lot of tools out there. They're going to come fast and furious this year. You know the fact that a tool like that, a launch like that, didn't even have like a here's the launch party for it. It's just like quietly on a Thursday. They're like, okay, we have pro version now. And then you know Claude comes and then perplexity is like we have it too, like it's just happening so fast, and that's where you know staying on top of it is so important.

Speaker 4: 1:01:51

All right. No, I appreciate it, I just wanted to know. I need to know if I need to make space in the budget. Do I need to make space in the budget this?

Speaker 1: 1:01:57

is what I'm doing, not now.

Speaker 4: 1:02:00

Read up on agents. Make sure we know what they are, I understand. Noted Noted.

Speaker 1: 1:02:04

And understand the term agent is used a lot. There's the way that I sort of describe it is there's sort of assistance, which you know, the word chatbot or custom GPT or assistance. They're all this like kind of interchangeable vernacular. In some ways. Agents are very specifically focused on being able to take action, not just regurgitate information but actually do take action. So they do kind of take over your computer Right, right, right, yeah Awesome.

Speaker 2: 1:02:33

Mel. Well, we're going to transfer over to you, francesca, for listener Q&A and our bold predictions, so we can close out this live with you guys. How does that sound? Yeah?

Speaker 4: 1:02:43

I'm just going to ask one of the bold predictions, because we're already, we're at time.

Speaker 1: 1:02:47

Sorry guys, no, no no, no, no.

Speaker 4: 1:02:50

I'm going to do an employee-centric question just to wrap it. It could be something you've already said, but if there's one thing an employee should start doing today to future-proof their career, what is it?

Speaker 1: 1:03:03

Download a generative AI tool of your choice to your phone.

Speaker 3: 1:03:11

And every morning when you wake it up, have a conversation with it. Nice, I would echo that. And on the iPhone, there's a quick action button on the top left and that's where I have my chat GPT app, yep. And so I agree. And I would say pick one thing and just go do it. Like, don't, you know, break it down into parts. You can feel overwhelmed. Think of something you need to do, something you need to read, you need to update your resume, you're going on a trip, doesn't matter what it is, just pick one thing and do it and don't give up.

Speaker 3: 1:03:48

I always say and people say this seems simple to me, but they're like this really helped me think of ai as a conversation. A lot of people give up too fast. Oh, I put in this prompt and didn't get the answer. You're having a conversation and and you can like, oh, in your mind, if you're thinking that wasn't specific enough, type it out. That wasn't specific enough. Oh, I didn't like that answer, I really wanted something that was funnier. Oh, that like whatever you're thinking in your head, stream of consciousness, type it in, and you have to have the patience to play with it and tell it what you think and ask it and it's also fun, like once you get going. But that's what I would say.

Speaker 2: 1:04:32

All right. Well, friends, you can find Teresa Fesinstine and Carol Scott on LinkedIn, so please do follow them, as they mentioned LinkedIn. So please do follow them, as they mentioned. We will also tag them on our post for the podcast and you can listen to the playback on your Work Friends. And your Work Friends podcast also has a community on LinkedIn. Join us over there, where we post weekly episodes with special guest experts like Teresa and Carol on various topics. So please join us over there and you can find us on every social media platform. So go out and find us, and we're on Spotify and Apple, and thank you for joining us this evening for the conversation. Thank you, friends.

Speaker 1: 1:05:13

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 1:05:15

And it's been so fun Thank you.

Speaker 3: 1:05:17

Thank you, sorry about the video, but this has been awesome. Thank you so much.

Belonging & Unhiding at Work

Your Work Friends Podcast: Belonging & Unhiding at Work with Dr. Beth Kaplan & Ruth Rathblott

At work, we tweak our tone, filter our stories, and sideline parts of ourselves to fit in—and it’s exhausting. In this live episode, we’re joined by Ruth Rathblott, TEDx speaker and bestselling author, and Dr. Beth Kaplan, researcher and author of Braving the Workplace, to talk about the hidden labor of self-editing and why it’s costing us more than we think.

We dig into the emotional toll of always managing perceptions, the difference between fitting in and belonging, and what it takes to create workplaces where people can show up without shrinking and hiding. Whether you’re leading teams or just trying to feel like yourself from 9 to 5, this conversation will hit home.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Most of us are hiding something about ourselves and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.

Speaker 2: 0:23

Hello friends, I am Mel and this is your Work, friends, and with me is my co-host, francesca.

Speaker 3: 0:32

Hello.

Speaker 2: 0:34

Okay, great introduction. And today we are so lucky to have two amazing experts with us and we're talking about belonging and unhiding at work. We're going to dive into what belonging and unhiding mean, what they look like in action, why people hide, the true costs of hiding, how to incorporate strategies to nurture belonging and unhiding in the workplace, especially in this climate. And we're going to leave some room for some listener Q&A, and our experts are going to give us their bold predictions on the way out. So let me introduce these lovely folks. With us is Ruth Rothblatt. She is my mentor through the National Speakers Association, but she is also an esteemed TEDx speaker, executive coach, consultant, bestselling, author of three books Single-Handedly Learning to Unhide and Embrace Connection and Unhide and Seek Live your Best Life, do your Best Work. She also was published in Time everybody, so check that out. She's acknowledged for her expertise in unlocking individual and team potential and just all around rad human being.

Speaker 2: 1:42

And also with us is Dr Beth Kaplan. She is the author of Braving the Workplace, which officially launched today. Get this book, it's amazing. She has also been recognized as a must read by the Next Big Idea Club. She's a researcher, writer, thought leader. She's worked with organizations like Salesforce, the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania, georgetown University and the Carnegie Foundation. She's also developing a groundbreaking belonging tool with the University of Pennsylvania which will measure belonging and propensity to thrive. Welcome to you both and thanks for joining us today. Thank you, great to be with you.

Speaker 1: 2:19

Yeah, thanks for having this. I'm excited for this conversation.

Speaker 2: 2:23

Yes, Very awesome. I'd love to jump in right away and just learning more about your personal stories, how you got started in this work, what inspired you to start this work. So tell me a little bit more about you guys. Beth, I'll start with you.

Speaker 4: 2:38

Sure so excited to be with all of you today. And, yes, it is launch day, so how exciting is that? Thank you so much for cheering me on. So, believe it or not, I didn't set out to study belonging. However, like most researchers who studied their own trauma, I set out to understand why so many people, myself included, felt like they had to prove their worth just to exist in certain spaces, and the more I researched, the clearer it became belonging. It's always about belonging, and belonging is so complex and everyone has their own definition. So, for me, my exciting gift to the world was redefining and being able to give new tools and a language to something that's a little bit more complex than most of us understand. So, to me, I look at belonging as the innate desire to be part of something larger than ourselves, without sacrificing who we are.

Speaker 2: 3:30

I like it. I like the. Let's not sacrifice ourselves for the greater good? Oh, absolutely. How about you, Ruth?

Speaker 1: 3:36

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in terms of what Beth was just saying that resonates so deeply. I also did not start out to talk about unhiding in my life. I probably was the furthest from wanting to do that, as someone who hid for 25 years a big part of myself. I actually started in the nonprofit space. I was a nonprofit leader and CEO who was focused on young people and helping them express themselves, helping them think about college access and college success, mentoring and education, and it wasn't until I was in a conversation about actually DEI that I started to realize I had been hiding a huge part of myself and I had not shared that with the world. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been.

Speaker 1: 4:26

I was born with a disability. I hadn't shared it with myself, so I had been. I was born with a disability. I was born with a limb difference and for your listeners that means I was born missing my left hand, part of my left hand, and when I was 13, I started tucking it in my pocket. When you go off to a new high school, I think some of us have those flashes of what high school can feel like, where it's oh, I have to fit in. Do I make friends? Am I going to get along with people? Who am I going to sit with at lunch? Like all those feelings of high school. And I started hiding at that time and didn't realize the impact it was having on how I was showing up, how I was connecting with people, and didn't even know there was a tool or a conversation or word that could help unhide.

Speaker 1: 5:10

And so that's where I've spent the last few years really delving into that research, delving into what was the process of unhiding and then finding out honestly, beth and Mel and Francesca, that most of us are hiding something about ourselves, and it's exhausting and it's lonely and we come up with a narrative that we think we're the only ones.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yeah, I don't think we are. I think that's, ruth I, why I love what you're doing so much, because you can't have belonging without unhiding yourself too. So I'm so excited to talk about how these things align together. And yeah, I think we've all can relate to that feeling of not belonging through high school for sure, but some I used to joke often that corporate environments can often feel like high school, where there are certainly cliques or in groups and out groups and navigating political landmines and then, for various reasons, to fit into those groups, you change yourself. I tried to hide my New England accent, but someone called out the R that I add on idea, just little things like that. I think we all do things to try to hide who we are. But today is the purpose of today is like how do we get people comfortable with thinking about belonging differently and what that could look like and how to unhide themselves? So I appreciate it. I'm going to hand it over to Francesca. She's going to dive into how we define it. So thanks.

Speaker 3: 6:30

I think both of these topics are so important in and of themselves, and I know, beth, you started by talking about how belonging is this innate desire to be something or to be part of something bigger than ourselves, without sacrificing ourselves, yes, which I think is your contribution there is there without sacrificing ourselves, which is critical, right. And then I think the unhiding piece, too, I'm curious about just to ground ourselves on how both of these things show up at work, the belonging piece and the unhiding piece. And, beth, I guess we're taking your definition. Is there anything in addition to your core definition about how this shows up at work?

Speaker 4: 7:09

Yeah, there's a lot to say here, and what's really most interesting and probably most confusing to people is they think the opposite of belonging is exclusion. That's one of the biggest misconceptions in the workplace, when in reality, the opposite of belonging is fitting in. Misconceptions in the workplace when in reality the opposite of belonging is fitting in. And why I believe that with so much passion is because fitting in means giving up a part of yourself to be part of something else. Where belonging doesn't require you to give up who you are, it means being who you are right.

Speaker 4: 7:40

A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide. A lot of us in the workplace in particular will hide, as we know, different parts. They may mask or they may cover or flat out just hide, and we think it's going to make us feel like we belong harder, and that's just not true. It never ends well. I think Ruth's story is so brilliant and so powerful because, a it's real, b all of us can relate to something. And C we understand it right. So I'm sure, ruth, for you all of this is advanced common sense, because you've been living with it forever. And for listeners out there, there's probably something that you feel that you're hiding as well, or you're trying so hard to fit in that you're sacrificing what makes you, and that's going to take a toll. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 8:30

Ruth, are you seeing that too, as you're looking at like on hiding at work too? How are you seeing this come to fruition for people?

Speaker 1: 8:36

Yeah, I think it's what and, beth, you started it so perfectly in terms of that sacrificing yourself part, because that's where it shows up. And I think the other piece that, francesca, you were intimating also is that need to be in corporate. And how is it, how are you fitting in? Because that's a piece that we're told often like we want you to be a good culture fit, we want you to fit in. So that means sometimes sacrificing a piece of yourself, right, or downplaying a piece of yourself or covering a piece of yourself, and for some it actually means to what you said, beth. It means hiding part of yourself, and that comes from we all have a need to want to be accepted right. There's the acceptance piece to this, and I think about it in terms of why I look at.

Speaker 1: 9:22

What's the underlying piece of that? It comes from a fear of rejection, a fear of judgment, a fear of Really. I had a friend recently who said to me I haven't shared part of my health diagnosis out loud because I'm afraid of being pitied. So there's that fear there too. A lot of this is wrapped up in shame, this idea of if I share this part of myself, someone will reject me, someone will judge me. Someone won't give me a promotion because of it. I won't be seen as a leader. I've had women even in 2025, who don't share that they have kids at work because they're afraid of someone saying they're into their motherhood, they care more about their kids. They're not really on track for promotion. So I'm not going to share that part. And that's sacrificing yourself. That is absolutely sacrificing yourself to fit in, to go home. So I do. I think about it, how it shows up.

Speaker 1: 10:18

I think the other piece I would add on is in the workplace. Many of us were taught a very old school mentality around leadership and a framework around leadership. We were taught that you're not supposed to share things about yourself. You're supposed to keep people at arm's length. You're supposed to be, not be vulnerable and not share challenges. You're supposed to be strong, and the definition of strong was the idea of a mask of armor around yourself. And so that plays in, because then that's how our employees see us. So then they can't make mistakes, either because they're afraid oh, I'm going to be, I'm going to upset them or I'm not going to. I need to be perfect. There's a full affection piece to unhiding yeah, oh go ahead, beth, sorry, no, I was just thinking about you.

Speaker 4: 11:03

made me think, ruth, about duck syndrome. Right, that's when you start to see certain things evolve like duck syndrome, where people make it look so effortless and then they're peddling their little feet so hard to keep up in the name of resilience at times or fitting in or all the things, and we're all hardwired for deep human connection, but there's something about us that makes us feel unworthy of it. That seems to feel like the universal work experience these days.

Speaker 3: 11:30

Which is totally nuts, because I think about the archetype of leadership, ruth, that you were talking about, and what it takes to get there, beth, in terms of the duck syndrome, and it feels like we've all grown up in this archetype of the sports leader, the coach or the war hero. Right, you have to be Shackleton or you have to be the freaking coach from Miracle on Ice. It's one of these two.

Speaker 3: 11:52

And when you unpack any of those things. Yes, they demonstrated these certain behaviors, but then, behind the scenes, they were masking shit too, and so this is all built on a farce from Get.

Speaker 4: 12:04

Yeah, absolutely. And the thing is you said something that caught my attention. We would like to mirror these performance coaches, but here's the thing Performance coaches are invested in their athletes' health and their well-being. Where they'll stop you if you're overdoing it or you're going to burn yourself out. Workplace rewards it. The more sweat and tears you put into it, you're getting promoted, girl. And the thing is it makes us want to work harder and we also think that our sacrifice will make us belong harder, and that's why sacrificial belonging makes sense to most people. It's giving up a part of yourself, consciously or subconsciously, for the greater good and, spoiler alert, it never works. Never. It doesn't make you feel any better.

Speaker 1: 12:48

No. And to add on to that too, I think there's a piece around. A symptom of it is also overachieving right or overcompensating. This need to keep the duck feet going, or sometimes even to loud yourself with in terms of this is how much I'm doing Like this is how much I'm constantly overachieving or overcompensating so that I get ahead, so that nobody will look at that other part of myself that I'm hiding in some ways, and also then I don't have to share it with anyone, I can overcompensate for it and it's exhausting when you think about psychological safety and its role in nurturing belonging or creating spaces where people can unhide.

Speaker 2: 13:43

What does that? What does good psychological safety look like in the workplace?

Speaker 4: 13:47

to support it it's a good question. I think psychological safety is the feeling of being safe, no matter what environment you are to be able to speak up to speak your truth, to speak truth to power, and I think it's all the things. The interesting thing is, in order to have a strong sense of belonging, psychological safety needs to be table stakes. It doesn't mean you'll necessarily have that sense of belonging or maybe this aspirational sense of belonging that you may be searching for, but you really can't go through the workplace feeling that belonging uncertainty, for example which is the silent killer and feel safe at the same time. Those thoughts don't exist together and most psychological safety is based on a positive. So when you're starting with a negative and you're trying to combat it with negative forces, like sacrifice or any thwarted feelings in general, it's going to end badly, yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:44

It's funny when I speak, I often ask people, the organizer, I say what does success look like? When I finish the speech, what will?

Speaker 4: 14:53

it look like.

Speaker 1: 14:53

They say oh, there's an awareness raised that people will feel like they're digging into themselves but also their coworkers. And then one organizer said to me it would be great if everyone could unhide something. And I said absolutely not. And she said what do you mean? I said I'm not trying to create a Jerry Springer viral moment here with people. That's not the goal. I want people to feel safe. I said the only way that I will even consider doing this is if the leader, the CEO, goes first. And the organizer said that's never going to happen.

Speaker 1: 15:31

I said I know, so why would we expect others to unhide if it's not safe? Because I really spend a lot of time in my space thinking about how was I as a leader, when did I create that psychological safety for others? When did I model it myself in terms of creating that space? Because it is about leaders going first in terms of creating psychological safety, being vulnerable, creating that safe place. And I think the thing that I sorry I would just add on to this is the idea of sometimes we hide and it keeps people feeling comfortable and safe. Also, there is a payoff to hiding in terms of creating safety and psychological safety for others, sometimes because maybe it's too much, and so I think about it on both ends. Why do we hide? And then, how are those around us? How are we creating that safe, comfortable space for them?

Speaker 4: 16:25

Absolutely. I'm going to chime in because we do those things on purpose, because the hiding sometimes feels better than facing something head on that may feel really uncomfortable. I talk about this a lot in the book about the different disorders that are related to the workplace, and one of them happens to be avoidance disorder, and I would raise my hand and tell you that I'm amongst the worst, in fact, in a way that makes every leader that I've ever had feel better about me. There's sometimes when I've had leaders in the past I haven't maybe talked to them for a month or so and a one-on-one will come up and I'm like there's just too much to say and they're so busy. So I'll go to them and I'll cancel and I'll be like I don't have that much and you're busy, they love it. It's almost like it's addictive. The last leader I had that I said that and I did that with said to me you, just you're the best.

Speaker 4: 17:14

I can't understand how I got so lucky and, truthfully, what I had to force myself to the next time was to let her know that I was avoiding her and it was incredibly uncomfortable because she did nothing to warrant it. I need to also make that very clear it was on me. It was a story I was telling myself that she was too busy, that I wasn't as important, that she had bigger fish to fry. I could keep going and going, but the reality of the situation is that I was not comfortable communicating with her because so much time kept passing. So I'm sure there's other people out there that are listening. That may get that very well and, like I said, it's often rewarded because you're giving time back in someone's mind.

Speaker 2: 18:00

I think we've all been there, right when we're like, I just don't want to bother them, so I'm not going to ask. I'll suffer in silence over here it's fine, but death by a million, it's fine where the hell am I going with this Is where is the line Like?

Speaker 3: 18:26

if it's psychological safety, like a bell curve right when you want to create as much safety for people to feel like they're comfortable, but not too much safety where they're too comfortable. Does this make sense?

Speaker 4: 18:36

Yes, it does, because there's comfort, and then there's also self-awareness. A lot of times people ask me that all the time, is it safe to bring your authentic self to work? Yes, but you should not be in spots that you shouldn't be loyal, in spots that your brain can't get you out of. And it's the same thing with psychological safety. Knowing and being self-aware has to accompany it. It really does. There's things that are just not appropriate, and those are typically not necessarily related to your identity.

Speaker 2: 19:07

Or necessarily right for the workplace. That's right, yeah, when you think about a professional environment versus a personal environment.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Ruth, do you feel like you could bring your authentic self to work?

Speaker 1: 19:18

No, and I you know what. I don't even actually always advise it quite yet, because I think that we're not totally set up for it. I think that sometimes in the workplace we don't have the coaches and the supports and the leaders who are willing to go first and the support that it requires, because what it may mean to bring my authentic self to work if I'm someone and maybe it's one of your listeners as well is bringing my depression forward right.

Speaker 1: 19:44

That authentic self. It may mean the caretaking responsibilities that I have at home, that I'm afraid to tell somebody that because somebody is going to say, oh, you know what, you're more interested in taking care of your child or your parent or your child or somebody in your life, and so I'm not totally convinced that we're there yet. I would love that to be the North Star, where we could bring our best selves to work, because that's what I'm invested in is how do we bring our best selves to work? I will say, even with that though there's a caveat to me in terms of my work that I talk about strategic hiding that sometimes feels okay to hide part of yourself because it's not advantageous to whether you're in a lawsuit or you're in a negotiation or you're in something that bringing your authentic self would damage or hurt you in terms of that space. So I think about it as strategic hiding. How do we allow for ourselves to discern when we unhide, when we create that space for ourselves? Is it a safe environment?

Speaker 1: 20:48

I was at a speed dating thing recently and I was thinking about my hand and did it feel safe to share it with people in a seven minute cycle where you're going around and checking in. Did it feel safe in that moment? It's about having agency, about when do we choose to unhide, when do we choose to hide. So I get the choice of when do I share that out? And I think that's the same with any aspect, whether it's we hide parts of our past, whether it's we hide parts of our present, or even I've had people share that they hide parts of their dreams and aspirations. So it's that when do we share it so that we can feel supported? That's when I think about spreading, and how is it holding us back? What are some of?

Speaker 2: 21:30

the like signals that someone can look for or kind of pay attention for to or for in order to make those split decision thing, split decisions around whether it's safe to unhide, or what does that look like for both of you?

Speaker 4: 21:50

That's a really great question. So I, through the conversation, I was thinking about one of the types of belonging which is called dissimulated belonging, and it's confusing to people. Truthfully, dissimulated belonging is when you do feel a sense of belonging, but maybe not in the context you're in. Let's just say that Ruth is a phenomenal employee, but she's just not the corporate cheerleader and, by the way, she doesn't want to be and she's happy. But we all know the workplace wants corporate cheerleaders. We want everyone rolling out the drink cart for happy hour and we want everyone to be able to go after work. After you've just spent nine hours with your nearest and dearest and spend another five hours with them, and there's some people that get their purpose outside of work, which sounds blasphemous to some of us. So dissimulated belonging is a great example of people that are very happy with their sense of belonging, right, and they may just need to get out of there because why not? But it's never acceptable to say that right.

Speaker 4: 22:45

I hear time and time again there was a work event and I need to go work out after work, but I lied and I said I have to get home because my commute is too long and I'm going to pick up work when I get home and then everyone's like oh, that makes sense.

Speaker 4: 22:58

And why should we have to hide the fact that we don't necessarily want to be a workhorse, because that's what gets us promoted, or to be seen better in people's eyes. It's really sad when the state of the world is that that is a factor in promotion. I know you both know this very well. I think what we used to say in the early 2000s which makes me cringe every time is we would be at the promotion table with I don't know, it might've been like a 50 bucks. Then now it's two bucks or four bucks and we'd be like can you get a drink with him? Guys, remember that one or dissimulated belongers. They have a sense of belonging. It's just not in your workplace and, by the way, they don't feel bad about it. It's usually everyone around them and that's yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:46

I've also had the. They're accused of not really being in it. If they don't go to the happy hour, or it's like this. It's a, and then it becomes a culture fit issue. Oh, they don't really want it.

Speaker 4: 23:55

Some people also don't want to hang with their boss after work. Yeah, boss is not. It's never the most comfortable situation and it doesn't matter how close you are, because sometimes that's even harder in that right. So I think that's one great example of hiding that takes place. That's appropriate, because we're not all built the same and we all get different motivations, and most of us don't like to share when it's not work that it's their motivating factor.

Speaker 1: 24:23

Yeah, sometimes bosses don't want to go to the happy hour. Oh yeah, so I totally understand that, and sometimes they do, and then they're like nobody wants me here. But, I think the other piece to some of this is, as leaders and managers, we focus a lot on performance.

Speaker 1: 24:40

We focus on productivity and sometimes we forget about people Right, and we make a lot of assumptions about behavior rather than checking in, and so I'm a big proponent of what do those pause check-ins look like, right, when you first sit down with someone with your full agenda, how do you create space to find out how they are, how you can support them? How do you slow it down a little bit? Because I think again, I sometimes I own my leadership style for years. How do we slow it down a little bit so that we can have the conversation about how are you doing? How can I support you? What's going on?

Speaker 1: 25:16

I'm noticing some things in your work, just so people have a space, a safe space, to be able to talk about it, and that it's consistent, because there's definitely research out there. That's talking about consistency, and there's also research about I think I guess the first piece to all of this Francesca and Mel and Beth is naming it right. So we have to be able to name that. Hiding is universal. Most of us are doing it at some point.

Speaker 1: 25:39

What does it look like? How is it holding you back? Deloitte did a study 60% of people are hiding. Randstadt, the HR survey, did a survey recently that said that 68% of Gen Z the ones that have all the apps and all the social media that we think oh, they're out there all the time they talk about 68% of them are hiding and they don't trust their leaders to unhide too, so they just keep their noses down in their work and they're like I'll get through it. That is not existence, that is not freedom, that is not joy, that is not belonging.

Speaker 2: 26:10

It's got to be really bad for business too, when you think about it, right, because what are you missing out on by not nurturing these types of environments? I'm going to hand it over to Francesca to talk about that, because I'd love to hear about the cost.

Speaker 3: 26:24

Yeah, I'm going to start, I'm going to try to say I want to separate these two because I'm curious if there is a difference in the cost. And I'm going to start, ruth, with you, without a hiding piece of it what is the cost of hiding at work? And you can take that from the employee, from the org, from the manager. What's the cost?

Speaker 1: 26:39

Yeah, I think there's a personal cost and I think there's a professional cost. I like to split them. The personal cost is it's exhausting. It takes a toll on our mental and our physical health. That is a big piece of it. It is lonely in terms of you think you're the only one, so you sit there and you're like, oh, nobody's going to understand this. So there's this loneliness, isolation piece to it. And then there's also feeling disconnected. That's that belonging piece that I think Beth talks about and I want to even hear more and dig into that piece. So there's that personal piece.

Speaker 1: 27:10

And then from a professional piece, when we're hiding, we don't feel as engaged right Our company, even as leaders, we're not as engaged. We don't feel the same sense of loyalty to the company that we're working for. The retention suffers. That's a big piece of when you're hiding.

Speaker 1: 27:26

And then the last piece, which I think is probably one of the most critical pieces in terms of the bottom line of any business, is innovation. Innovation suffers when you are so sitting there worried about how much if somebody finds out this thing about me, or wow, I didn't go to the right school, or my education's not high enough, or my finances aren't what they're supposed to be, or my relationship status. It is preoccupying your mind that you don't get a chance to be as innovative and as creative as you need to be, and I can tell you, as someone who was born with a difference, I spent my life being creative, but when I hid that, that got taken away because I was so spent so much time in that other space of hiding, and so that retention, that engagement and that innovation are lacking, and even our leadership then lacks because we don't feel connected to our teams.

Speaker 3: 28:20

Yeah, and those are big costs and all things that are absolutely needed, right, yeah?

Speaker 4: 28:26

So I can tell you that employee engagement costs the US anywhere between $450 and $550 billion annually. That's pretty sad and crazy. And if we want to dive a little deeper, when it's loneliness driven or stress related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually are stress-related in particular, it costs $154 billion annually. That's just unbelievable. It feels like the things we're putting in place are really killing a fly with a hammer. There's nothing more to that, and a lot of the times these things could be fixed with just simple care. That's what's scary.

Speaker 4: 29:00

Employees that feel excluded are 50% more likely to leave than those who feel a strong sense of belonging. Okay, so we think about this. We think of belonging uncertainty, which I always call the silent killer, which leads to presenteeism, where employees are physically present, they're all mentally checked out, and there's so many varieties of disengagement when care costs us very little and I always say to people that feel like unhiding or belonging is a bit hokier because it has anything to do with emotions Then if you don't want to, if you want to look at it in a bottom lines numbers kind of game, then look at the disengagement and look how much it's costing you. We used to say something like it costs one to two times a person's salary and now they're estimating it's four times. Oh wow, because it goes beyond the onboarding and the retention, the recruiting and the different efforts. It cycles back to the top level vision and problems the company's face.

Speaker 3: 29:56

All those like the 2x, the 3x, the 4x numbers. I think what's interesting about those is one is that scales right. It scales from individual contributor up to exact right and I believe me, I've met disengaged C-level folks. This isn't just a manager or a frontline person, this is all the way to the top, which is massive. The other thing I'm curious about, too, is especially when you have a leader who's disengaged, a leader that doesn't feel like they belong, like that's got to cast a shadow in an organization. I just I can't. I cannot believe that you could have a disengaged leader or someone that doesn't feel like they belong or someone that feels like they're hiding, yet they're creating an organization that has that.

Speaker 4: 30:38

Do you see that? Yeah, it's in the research that I've done. What happens to the leader, and I will say this. So psychological safety does focus around the fact that the leader needs to build that safety, but what happens when the leader needs to build it for themselves?

Speaker 4: 30:52

I often feel like the workplace demands so much of leaders, and what about their safety? That being said, I know that the leaders are mostly causing the harm, so I'm not naive in that sense. But when leaders themselves don't feel a sense of belonging, it permeates in so many different ways, including a lot of armchair therapy. That happens with your subordinates who don't know what they're doing. And since people look to their leaders in times of change, yes, it's killing the innovation that Ruth talked about but it's also can be really soul crushing because, unfortunately, people think their leaders are better than them. They look to their leaders to know more than them, and that's just not always the case.

Speaker 4: 31:31

That's why, in truthfulness, we talked about leadership training. But I'll tell you, I'm one of those people that never received leadership training until I was like 10 to 15 years. In. Leaders are typically made, not born, that way, and so most of us were promoted because we were just really good at our jobs. So there's this unfair standard, and now, especially, most workplaces expect their leaders to have an element of psychology that we've never been trained for.

Speaker 3: 31:59

Yeah, nor do we have time for right. It's Mel and I are pulling the longitudinal data on, like the amount of direct reports managers have right now has almost doubled Like you have more to do. You have more resources or more direct reports, more on your plate, and now, all of a sudden, you need to be a therapist and maybe you went through manager training and you're not getting leadership training until you're a VP or an SVP or an EVP, so everyone in between is like fighting for themselves, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 32:29

And the workforce is changing too.

Speaker 1: 32:32

In terms of newer to the workforce, there is a level of transparency that they're demanding from leadership in a very interesting and intense way, really political correct here. That's a piece of it. And then also, you have, for the first time, one of the blessings of what came out of COVID is the opportunity to talk about mental health for the first time, especially as leaders, and honestly even owning it for themselves, right, and being able to talk about it. And yet how? To your point, leaders are required to do a lot right now and employees are demanding, and yet we have this old, this way that we were trained, if we did get training, or even if we just watched leaders ahead of us. In terms of that osmosis, training of this is the way leaders are supposed to be, and it hasn't caught up in terms of how and that's why, where I spend my time, even like you, beth, thinking about graduate schools, right, or even where that college is thinking about what do leaders need and what are they going to need in terms of this work?

Speaker 3: 33:33

And organizationally, how do we set up systems that they can actually operate within too? It's like the two different components of it for sure, right.

Speaker 4: 33:40

Think about all the return to work, all the things that leaders have to deal with. If you're a leader who works from home and then you have because you're in a remote office, then you have to enforce other people Right After. You've just talked about the fact of how great it is to have no commute or the things that you can get done or how you're supplementing that time with things that are healthy for you, and then you have to take that away from others.

Speaker 2: 34:03

It's pretty taxing things that are healthy for you and then you have to take that away from others.

Speaker 2: 34:07

It's pretty taxing. It's funny when we were coming out of COVID we had a friend share a story with us like the catalyst, as we started to talk about building this podcast, which the first episode idea officially was something like Gucci sweaters and lake house dreams, because I think our friend mentioned they were in an all handshands meeting about returning to office while the leader was in their second lake house talking about being at their lake house wearing a very expensive Gucci sweater and just not thinking about the impact on folks with what that does for their team. Love to hear what you can do as an individual, if, if you're a leader, or really what orgs should be doing. So we talked a little bit about individual right and what it means to bring your authentic self and how you can evaluate that. But what other advice would you give to individuals here who are struggling with hiding or struggling with belonging? What advice would you give or strategies to those individuals? Ruth, you want to go first.

Speaker 1: 35:29

No, you can go first. I definitely have a framework, so I'm ready for that.

Speaker 4: 35:33

So if we're talking about individuals, I like to say that you control the narrative. So everyone wants one-on-one time with their leaders. Build the agenda, make sure that you're taking control of that. I often say the exact same thing to leaders is that's your employees' time with you. So, while you may come into the meeting with at least like 15 checklist items you need to do because you need to report to someone else that's their time with you. Your job in that meeting is to meet them where they're at.

Speaker 4: 36:04

The number one thing that our employees want from leaders is care. Right, it's not, I wish. Every single time I hear this, people are like oh trust, oh respect, and it's always care. And care has a really large spectrum thoughtfulness, candor, advocacy. There's so many components to it. And when you tell, when you as an individual go to your manager and you're able to have a conversation with them about what it means to be successful in role, it also is a wake-up call for them to say what is successful as a leader, right, how are people going to want to follow me?

Speaker 4: 36:40

So I always say to individuals is to build the agenda and to make sure that your leaders are sticking with it. At the same time, leaders, when you're opening up your calls with people, the first thing on your mouth should be what can I do for you? What interference can I remove? And as you walk through that agenda with them, start to also remember what's important to that person. You need to get to know them outside of this little Zoom box here and you need to be able to know what's important. And that may be. You may be thinking to yourself I don't know what they do on the weekends and I don't know what's important to them, but that's not what I mean. What values do they have? What do they like about their jobs? And make sure at all costs that you do something that helps light them up.

Speaker 3: 37:23

Really huge.

Speaker 4: 37:24

You want to always make sure that you're doing things that show them that you know who they are, and that's really one of the biggest things that helps change our sense of longing in the workplace.

Speaker 1: 37:36

Ruth, yeah, and I think where Beth and I definitely overlap is that it's a choice, right. It's a powerful choice that you get to make, and I think that holds true with unhiding as well. And for me there's a four-step framework that I created in whether it's an individual, or I was just meeting with someone who inherited a really toxic quote, unquote team and I said try this framework. And so the first step is acknowledging it, right Only, like creating a space of awareness, like whether it's again as an individual or whether it's a leader or whether it's managing a team. It's the idea of acknowledge what's happening, like create awareness, and I, you can do that through journaling, you can do that through therapy, through meditation, through just taking a silent moment to be a little bit what I call self-centered, right, like centering on yourself and think about that space. The second piece to it is inviting someone in, and I imagine when I say that second step, somebody immediately comes to your mind, right, somebody, whether it's an HR leader, whether it's your manager, whether it's a coworker, whether it's a friend, to say, hey, here's what's happening. When that person came to me with a toxic work environment, I said what's beautiful about what you're doing is you're inviting each person in one-on-one, not making this a group, collective thing, but starting to talk about individual behavior, talking about inviting them in. Here's what I'm seeing, same with hiding how am I showing up? What am I holding back? How is hiding, holding me back and inviting that one person in that you can share that with? I imagine the people I think about as the cheat sheet is somebody who shows empathy, somebody who asks questions with kindness and curiosity, someone who's willing to reveal a little bit about themselves and share their own journey with you, someone who asks questions. That's the person I'd be looking for in that second step.

Speaker 1: 39:34

The third step, after you've acknowledged it and you've invited someone in, is about how do you then build community? And we've all seen those employee resource groups or business resource groups. They actually can If you step back. They have a lot of power because there's a shared experience in terms of people who have gone through them. There you can find meetups and community organizations, finding spaces where you don't feel so alone in this. These steps are small, but they're powerful.

Speaker 1: 40:04

And then the fourth step is scaring out your own journey so that somebody else can see themselves in you and they can start on their own journey of unhiding. They can start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment, start on their own journey. That same leader who said I have this toxic work environment. I said, once you've gotten through a lot of it and gotten your team to the place they need to be, I can imagine and I would probably bet money on this, and I don't bet money easily but that there is another team within the organization that could use what you just did to their benefit in terms of creating their team and improving their team. So, sharing out that story so that somebody else can learn and start their own journey, and mapping it out, that's where I think about unhiding.

Speaker 2: 40:46

I think that's really powerful. And what you were just sharing actually made me think of Beth One identifying the one person to share it with. So I love Ruth like that. How do you identify that person? What are the markers? But then, beth, it made me think of your story with your boss. What, just bringing it back to that personal story, what gave you the courage to finally share, what made it safe for you the avoidance.

Speaker 4: 41:11

For me, what made it safe was probably less to do about her and more to do about me. I was just going, I was going out of my mind. I I'm so tired of being so nervous before every one-on-one, and I did wind up telling her that and she was like me. I'm the one who makes you nervous, and we had a great conversation around it. I'm like you make everyone nervous. She's like you've got thick skin and at the same time, maybe I didn't.

Speaker 4: 41:39

When it comes to her, and what she had told me which was really wonderful and showed me care, maybe not in the direction she was meaning it was that she sees me as a person that she wants to build thicker, even thicker skin with. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. So every single time I go to hide, she's going to stop me. And it's not because she wants to control me. It's because she really wants me to be a better version of myself, because I told her I need to be a better version. So she's not controlling me or making me be something I'm not. She's, in fact, bringing out a better part of me and let's be honest, isn't that why we all got into leadership?

Speaker 4: 42:15

Because you want to coach and grow people? I did for the money, yeah, because you love filling out a million forms. That's right. It just does it for you, but that's it, and I think what was really fascinating is that changed our entire dynamic. It really did. I think that most people weren't very honest with her and they were just yesing her and I think, out of everyone I've ever met, she's the last person you do that with and most of our leaders don't want to be. Yes, they really do want honesty from people, but her entire conversation that's just not always easy to do. Yeah, Scary.

Speaker 3: 42:51

The one thing I have always thought about as a leader is it's really those one-on-ones are so important and when you start moving them or canceling them, or if somebody starts canceling them with me, that's like a non-negotiable Like we are. This is your time, this is sacred time, Because I think that in and of itself shows care just to keep those consistent and keep those on the calendar. So it's meaningful to you as the leader as well.

Speaker 4: 43:20

Oh yeah, consistency is care. That's absolutely true. Honestly, one of my best and brightest I've ever had the fortune of leading said that to me. He said you give me such anxiety because you move meetings. And I know that you have valid reasons and I thought to myself oh my goodness, an excuse, no matter how many, how valid, is a bad book. And I've never moved that person's one-on-one, and it's been years and years and, by the way, we still talk about it. He still can't believe what the impact had and as a leader, I had no idea. So, leaders, if you're out there listening, don't change your one-on-one times as much as you can keep them consistent.

Speaker 1: 44:06

It means the world to people, yeah, and if you put your hand up to say I just need five minutes, go find the person after the five minutes so that they can know that you do want to see them and care about find them. Yeah, because I think we also. I think what you're also touching on, beth, is especially in the example you gave is sometimes we have that unreliable narrator in our head right that tells us that this person is this or I'm this to them, or like we don't, and we don't pause to check it out. We don't stop and get the actual this is a tough one actual, accurate information. Yes, I didn't add another A on there, but that's a piece of it is this unreliable narrator who is giving us false information, sometimes trying to keep us safe because, oh, maybe that boss was super scary at times or maybe you know what you weren't ready for a meeting, but it's the idea of yeah, how do we check out that unreliable narrator?

Speaker 2: 44:56

I always ask my coaching clients to ask themselves what evidence do I have to show this is true? What evidence do you have? And often when they pause to think about that, they're like you know what? I really don't have evidence to prove that. So it's such a just even that one question can help with that. I'd love to move to like organization-wide, because leaders will wait for the the last because they get dumped on everything. So, from an org standpoint because I do think it starts at the org level, they set the tone right. When you think about how organizations can implement either strategies or policy, workplace policies around, how we work around here, what are some things that they can do to better foster environments where people have greater belonging or can feel safe to unhide. What does that look like? Or what have you seen? That's good.

Speaker 4: 45:48

I would take a look at taking all the unwritten rules and writing them down. It's one of the first things I say. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO. It's the easiest low-hanging fruit Things like PTO, which is meant to de-stress people, stresses them out terribly. Oh, my goodness, I had three weeks before, but the second I take more than one week. Someone jumps all over me. There's so many things that just need a bit of clarification, because clear is kind. So all the unwritten rules and all the social contracts start breaking them and writing them down.

Speaker 1: 46:20

And I think I would add on to it unwritten rules and all the social contracts, start breaking them and writing them down, and I think I would add on to it, I guess, the thing that as you're talking about like organizations, though, are people right. So it's like leader. I do look at leaders and I do think about leadership, and I think it's a two-way street. If leaders are willing, if we're asking leaders to be vulnerable and do all these things, employees have to meet us also halfway, right, like it has to be. It's a two way street, and I do. I think that there's a space around training.

Speaker 1: 46:48

I do think that there's a space, like it's the dirty little secret that even most CEOs I know have executive coaches. Right, there's a reason for it, and yet they don't talk about it, because it's like the idea that, oh, you're weak if you have that, or you don't know what you're doing, and yet why is it such a dirty little secret? Why are people hiding it? Like it's that space of this is. Actually it's like people who go to therapy being like, oh, I don't want to talk about going to therapy, it actually makes you stronger. So we can start to normalize leadership, executive coaching and training and what those pieces and starting with people. That's why going back to colleges and education around leadership is so important, because that's that informs the organization, because an organization is just as a typically just a spreadsheet or a what do you call it A hierarchy and or building. It's actually who's in there and are they thinking about these topics that we're bringing up today?

Speaker 2: 47:42

Because they're critical. They really are. I agree with you. I think recently I think it was Culture Amp they put out an article, that famous quote oh, people don't leave organizations, they leave their direct managers. They did further research on that and found that even if you had the worst manager or the best manager in the world, you're more likely to leave if senior leadership doesn't model the behavior that supports leaders. So, like, when I think of like organization wide, I think of that like C-suite senior leadership team, that really it starts with them from the top. And I couldn't agree with you more, Ruth, about I wish coaching just started from the day you join through the day you leave as an alumni, Like it's just like therapy, like it just supports you to be better and to be better with other people.

Speaker 1: 48:27

And then sometimes isn't seen as it shouldn't be seen as a punishment, like you're not punished because you actually see an executive coach, or we recommend that. It's the idea of yeah, and I'm even I don't know if I'm totally even convinced that it's always about senior leadership. Sometimes it is. It's the training about how do we value the space. Yeah, I think there's a lot here to unpack.

Speaker 3: 48:49

I actually feel like, given what is going on in the world right now, I would arm every C-level executive with a coach, with a therapist, if they were ready for it and if they wanted it. But I do not understand how you can go through and lead an organization in these times and not need both of those services at least every three to six months. I really don't. Yeah, thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Speaker 2: 49:25

Okay, we have a few listener Q&As and we have about nine minutes left. We'll get to that and then we'll close off on some bold predictions. How does that sound? Love it.

Speaker 3: 49:30

All right, francesca, I am great. We have four questions that came in. I will do my best to read them and then whoever would like to answer them. Fantastic, here we go. I've been told to bring my full self to work, but when I speak up or show more personality, I sometimes feel like it backfires. I worry about being judged or seen as unprofessional. How can I balance authenticity with workplace expectations?

Speaker 1: 49:52

I can try this one.

Speaker 1: 49:54

This is where I spend time. I do. I think it's about finding a culture fit in terms of your authentic self. Where will they value that space of you? And if they're not valuing it, I'm not saying you have to leave every job, but are there spaces within that organization that you can be your best self? Because I don't even know if it's.

Speaker 1: 50:12

Again, authentic is the right word. I think it's how do you bring your best self where you get the support you need? And if you're not getting it from a manager or your coworkers, are there other opportunities to find it? And have you asked? Have you gone through the process of asking?

Speaker 1: 50:26

And again, it's not trying to make it a viral moment, it's about trying to think about taking those small steps. So how can you get the support you need around that best self or where you need support? So it's I think about it as small steps and thinking about where are those safe environments where you can be vulnerable or where others are modeling that? And then leaning into those employee resource groups, leaning into the spaces or coworkers where you can and, if all else fails, find a new job. And I'm not saying that lightly, I am serious when I say it is find a culture fit where they do appreciate the different perspectives and different experiences that you bring, because that's the work. The North Star here is how do we create workplaces where they do value different experiences and different perspectives?

Speaker 3: 51:15

I also love that you said about asking too, because I think a lot of times people think it's just going to show up or arrive or be obvious, and so much of the time you have to do a little digging before you start looking. Potentially too, beth, anything to add to that?

Speaker 4: 51:30

I always say that if you're worried about the way you're coming across or the way you're showing up, ask advice or ask someone, one person that you trust, whether that's your leader or it's a trusted friend how am I showing up? Because I'm getting a little anxious when I say X, y or Z, do a little gut check, never hurts, yeah.

Speaker 3: 51:47

Yeah, love it. These are small, very doable things that can really have a very big impact. I love that. All right, I'm going to pull this over to you, beth, for the first one, because we're talking about belonging. My company talks a lot about belonging, but in practice it feels like only certain types of people truly fit in. I'm not sure if I'm being too sensitive or if there's a real issue. How can employees tell if a workplace genuinely supports authenticity, and what should they do if they don't feel safe being themselves? I'll start with you, beth.

Speaker 4: 52:16

Been there, done that. So I always like to say, when I talk about it a lot in the book, what does alignment look like, or misalignment? If a company is telling you that their biggest values are trust, respect and the color purple right, there's so many different things Are they wearing purple? Do they trust one another and they're respecting? So when it becomes lip service, that's when we all have that deep disconnect. So you have to really determine whether or not you feel that pull or you feel aligned to it.

Speaker 4: 52:47

If you're not feeling it there, then you really have some things to think about. Whether you're, you know, like when you become in an impasse, our first instinct is to quit. Right, but livelihood is tied to our jobs. That's not realistic for everyone and here's the problem If we don't resolve it within the last place we left, it's going to come with us to every other job.

Speaker 4: 53:08

Okay, so I talk a lot about some nasty bosses I've had in the past and I've talked about the fact that one still follows me. They do, he does, and I can't help it, and I've even made strides to reach out to him and it feels like I was kind to someone that punched me in the face, if that makes sense. So there's ways to do it that you feel that you are going with your gut and you're trusting yourself, but quitting is not one of them, unfortunately. In this situation, I would do a little bit more of a deeper analysis around what the fit looks like against your values and then, if it's not a fit, then I would slowly start to look, because if it's eroding your sense of self or your worth or your identity or your sense of mattering, those are all triggers that it is time to leave. You just need to do it in a time and a space that's going to make your life easier.

Speaker 3: 53:59

All right, I'm going to do one last question just for the sake of time here. Sure, let's get into politics. Just kidding, okay. With the current political climate and companies pulling back on DEI efforts which we know, sometimes belonging and hiding is lumped in there with DEI sometimes I've noticed a shift in how belonging and inclusion are talked about, or not talked about, at work. How should employees and leaders navigate these changes while still advocating for workplaces where everyone feels valued?

Speaker 4: 54:28

So my first bet is to stop shifting to belonging and I know that's really funny from a belonging researcher. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. But when we impose belonging, there's a whole lot of performance belonging that starts to happen. Right, and, by the way, corporations are not that creative. If I hear one more you belong here slogan as the theme of 2025, because the thing is, it's not that easy and belonging is not something that others decide for you. That's inclusion.

Speaker 4: 54:54

So if you want to make it a more inclusive environment, I welcome it. If you want to tell people they belong, I caution you, because that is a beautiful sentiment, but it's not always the case. And then employees feel really bad or like it's just them or something's wrong with them and that's not the outcome we want for them, right? I don't think companies set out to ruin people's lives I don't but at the same time, those are the outcomes. So I personally think and I do have research that really pulls them apart from one another Diversity, equity, inclusion, equality they're all so important. Don't lump them together and don't call them belonging just because you want to really substitute for something that is being unfortunately torn away from people.

Speaker 3: 55:37

Yeah, that's a brilliant point, ruth. What would you add there?

Speaker 1: 55:41

Yeah, I would recognize that this is happening. I think that's a so I'm glad you asked the question because if it hadn't come up, I think that it impacts both the work that Beth and I do and also the work that you are doing, mel and Francesca. In terms of DEI specifically and I think that's it's funny I was on a panel a year ago and it was before a lot of this real serious backlash. There was beginning backlash that we've been feeling and people feeling excluded in some ways. What DEI didn't do well is it had some people feeling excluded from the conversation and there was a really powerful speaker that I was on the panel with and he said you know what?

Speaker 1: 56:17

I'm going to start calling it a humanity practice, because nobody can start to argue with that, and I thought that was really beautiful because we are all about humanity. We're about different. How do we start to again value those different perspectives and those different experiences from employees and to leaders and to the organization? How do we start to really create space for that? Because that is going to drive business, that is going to be the impact on innovation and creativity, that impacts retention and engagement. Those differences that we bring are actually the gifts that we have. So I know that DEI, quote, unquote is going away and this kind of falls into the last my bold prediction. But I'm going to these bold predictions.

Speaker 2: 57:22

I have some targeted questions first. So, ruth, I don't know if we'll get to it right away, but I want to save it, so we have to make time for that. Five years from now, guys are workplaces getting this right. What do you think?

Speaker 1: 57:39

Think about 2020 to 2025, right. What do you think? Think about 2020 to 2025, right, that's a five-year segment, right. What did we get right and what did we not? Based on a huge pandemic. So I think about culture that way too.

Speaker 4: 57:51

What are we going?

Speaker 1: 57:51

to oh, that's a tough one. I don't know. I don't. I think if you had asked me yeah, if you had asked us a month ago, maybe six weeks ago.

Speaker 1: 58:06

I'd be different. Maybe I don't. I think that there's going to be a. I think we are going to get it right, because I yeah, I'm going to be positive on this one, I'm going to own it, because I think there are enough of us that are upset and seeing what's happening and we've had a taste of what it can look like to value difference and what it can be like to feel like we are included. And I'm scared to say, beth, but we have a taste of it, right, so we can't go back. When you see something, you can't unsee it, and so we've seen a taste of what it is. And I think that there are enough of us that keep pushing the envelope and don't get scared, because that fear is real, even not wanting to sign up for a website and putting a fake address. I've been doing that lately because I'm scared of that, but I'm like, no, that's not the way we push forward. So I'm going to say, yes, we're on the road to getting it right.

Speaker 2: 58:57

I'm going to contact you in five years. No, what do you think?

Speaker 4: 59:02

Seth, I think it's going to require a lot of bravery, and I think bravery in the workplace is being yourself every day in a world that tells you to be someone else or something different. So I am one of the most positive people you're going to meet. It hurts me deeply to say that. I think it might get a little worse before it gets better, and what I hope that happens to Ruth's point is we all kick our own asses a little bit out there to make sure that we are the change. I'm not really a cliche person. It's all coming out in cliches, but the thing is. In order for us to really achieve that bravery, we have to stand in our own truth and we have to be able to pull together, because the thing is, we need to also acknowledge that we're in it together.

Speaker 4: 59:42

Yeah that's it. It does not win whether, when you, until you stop sacrificing who you are and you help the other people around you, do just the same thing.

Speaker 1: 59:51

Yeah, and that's really the goal of unhiding right Is standing in truth. That is truly it, because you can't really. We say we want to get to know people and accept them, but unless you fully know me, you can't accept me. That's part of the journey.

Speaker 2: 1:00:05

There's this sign in Key West. I saw it everywhere. It was like one humankind or something like that. But going back to your humanity point, ruth, it's yes. At the end of the day, we're all human beings, so how do we can just support each other at that level as like human beings? Okay, this is my second bold prediction question for you both. What's one radical change If you could wave a magic wand tomorrow? What's one radical change that you would have companies make? No small tweaks, only a bold move. What would that one thing be?

Speaker 4: 1:00:38

I'm going to say valuing diversity of thought.

Speaker 1: 1:00:42

Okay, I'm going to say having an unhiding manifesto that every organization, just like we did with other lenses of diversity, that we put up manifestos, that this one actually believes in the idea of valuing difference and allowing for that space and naming it, because, again, we can say all the things we want, unless we name it, it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2: 1:01:04

Okay, I want to now get back to Ruth. What's your bold prediction that you wanted to share?

Speaker 1: 1:01:12

I absolutely believe, given return to office, given the backlash with DEI, given where we are in terms of this conversation around belonging and inclusion and we have a workforce that's coming in demanding transparency I absolutely believe there is a new model of leadership that is right there, that we can grab onto and that we are building, because I don't think the leadership of yesterday works anymore and the one for the future is almost too far for us. What do we need right now? And to me, that's unhidden leadership. That is a new model of leadership and it's different than authentic leadership. It's different than bold leadership and all of the terms. It's the idea of how do you create space for others to be themselves, to be their best selves.

Speaker 2: 1:02:00

I like it.

Speaker 4: 1:02:01

Beth, what about you? What's your final bold? I wrote down, I wrote human-centric leadership.

Speaker 2: 1:02:04

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 1:02:05

We're on the same wavelength and I think it's because here's the thing. I do believe we are in a trauma-informed workplace. That's what the state of the workplace looks like, and for so long it's been so taboo. And talking about the trauma that people feel is just not enough. They feel like their trauma is less than, and that's just not the truth. And is it appropriate always to discuss all the trauma? No, not at all. But human centric leadership that is able to balance productivity with human need is really. Where is the prediction I think we're going to get to?

Speaker 2: 1:02:46

I hope we all start to just demand it more. So let's get there together. I appreciate you both so much. Thank you for joining us today. This was super helpful. We're going to sign off, but listen, I'm going to share our socials. You can find us on yourworkfriendscom. Also on this YouTube channel if you subscribe. We have a LinkedIn community If you're over on the professional side and you want to join the conversation over there. But you can also find us on Instagram and TikTok. You should definitely check out Ruth's books and you should definitely check out Dr Beth Kaplan's new book. They are awesome. You can follow them on LinkedIn and also on Instagram. We're tagging them and everything. So please go find them and follow them for more great advice in this area. And just thank you for joining us tonight and with that, francesca. Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Speaker 3: 1:03:33

Just Beth and Ruth had a big publishing week. Beth, your book went out. Ruth, you went into time this week. This is big. We will post both of these, as Mel said, in our show notes. Read them. Required reading.

Speaker 4: 1:03:47

Thank you. Thank you both so much, and Ruth, you're brilliant, so thank you.

Speaker 1: 1:03:51

We're on the same page. I can't wait. We're in it together.

Speaker 4: 1:03:54

That's right.

The Courage Gap

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Courage Gap with Dr. Margie Warrell

Women are still being told to “lean in,” “speak up,” and “prove it”—but what if the real power lies in owning your value from the start? In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Margie Warrell—global authority on courageous leadership and author of The Courage Gap—to talk about how women can stop shrinking, start leading, and close the gap between fear and action.

From micro-challenges that build your courage muscle to leading with authenticity, Margie brings 25+ years of real talk, bold strategies, and personal insight to help women thrive in today's corporate landscape—without waiting to feel ready.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

And that is this courage gap I talk about. It's the gap between who we are and who we could be if we risked being brave and backed ourselves more often. What's going on, mel? Not much. You remember that movie, field of?

Speaker 2: 0:14

Dreams? Yes, oh, mel, not much. You remember that movie. Field of Dreams? Yes, oh, I love that movie. It's such a good movie, yeah, and I rewatched it, balled my eyes out.

Speaker 3: 0:36

It gets you in the feels. It gets you in the feels. It's such a great movie. It's a great movie, it's an inspirational movie, it's a very inspirational movie. Different feeling when you watched it the first time to now.

Speaker 2: 0:52

I think I watched a movie like every 10 years randomly and every year I feel like I've taken something completely different from it. This time I got super repped when the doctor crossed the line to help the kid and then Ray Liotta's character was like hey, kid, you were good kid. And then Ray Liotta's character was like hey, kid, you were good. I fucking lost it. Jeff and I were like, and Enzo's like where's he going?

Speaker 3: 1:11

Like it's just, yeah, it's so good. I love that you're showing all these classics to Enzo too, all right, well, hey, friends, this week we had the pleasure of sitting down with Dr Margie Worrell, a leadership advisor and executive coach, a keynote speaker, a bestselling author. She wrote the Courage Gap, which is out now, and also You've Got this. She's the host of Live Brave podcast, guest lecturer at Georgetown University, and a courage catalyst is what she likes to say. And we were introduced to Dr Margie through her recent article in Forbes letting women know, as DEI is canceled, more women need to own their worth and not prove it. And the courage gap talks about five different steps that you can take to take braver action in your life, and that's what we talked about. Francesca, what did you love about this episode?

Speaker 2: 2:08

I feel like, for all the strides women have made and women before us, women before them we still have a lot of gaps that we're trying to close. From CEO titles, VP titles, pay you name it we're still on this journey. Some of that journey comes down to big changes like policy, but a lot of it comes down to these daily interactions or these daily moves that you make for yourself. That can be really courageous, and so I was really interested in talking with her about it and I loved what she had shared with us.

Speaker 3: 2:39

One of the biggest takeaways for me in the discussion was we all have these goals and things that we're aspiring to do, and it's hard to dream sometimes or express your dreams, and my favorite quote from her was be selective in who you share your dreams with, because some people might throw a cold bucket of water on it and you don't want that to happen.

Speaker 2: 3:01

I also love that she shared the five key things to have more courage for women and for men. They're very hyper practical. I'm not going to I'm not going to spoil it for folks. You have to listen to the episode. There are things that we can all be doing now to have more courage, especially at work. Right, it can feel very hard to speak up Sometimes. It can feel hard to stand up for yourself or to dream big, like you talked about, and those are those exact moments when you should.

Speaker 3: 3:30

You should. That's what I loved about her article and that's what I loved about this episode. It's really getting us through, overcoming our fear. When we make fear-based decisions, and especially as women, we probably feel like Ooh, we're, we just took 20 steps backwards, so now we need to work even harder. But that's not what we should be doing. According to Margie, we need to own what we already bring to the table. So with that, here's Dr Margie, good to be with you, good to have you with us. Recently, you wrote an article in Forbes noting that, as DEI is getting canceled everywhere, women need to own their worth and stop proving it. So we'd love to hear from you why it's more critical than ever to discuss this topic.

Speaker 1: 4:27

Oh, I wrote that article because I have always believed that, as women, we are our own greatest source of strength and elevation, even when the systems around us aren't supporting us. And as we've seen the kind of the firing or the cancellation of DEI in many spheres, I think that women are finding themselves feeling a little disheartened and demoralized and some feel like they're having to prove themselves all over again. So we can't wait for systems or other people to elevate us. We have to elevate ourselves. And yeah, we could point fingers and we can lay blame and we can complain about it, but I think, at the end of the day, the most effective thing we can do is starting with ourselves and backing ourselves and operating from a place of owning our value fully.

Speaker 3: 5:17

Yeah, yeah. I was just reading another article today in Inc Magazine I don't know if you've seen that one yet where someone just recently did a deep dive of Google searches. So what people do in the privacy of their own home when they're researching male CEOs versus female CEOs. And for male CEOs, it's all about compensation all the keywords that come up and for female CEOs, compensation is one keyword, but the remaining keywords by 1,650% is related to who is their husband, who is their family? Are they a mother? Which I found really interesting. What do you think about that?

Speaker 1: 5:53

I just think it shows that there's a long way to go until there's a genuinely level playing field. I think another one is when we get to the day when we don't blink for a man to be the caregiver at home and that's not anything to be. Oh, she's got a house husband. That's actually something that we raise our eyebrows about, and I was just with someone the other day and she is out in America from Australia, taryn Bromfitt and she was saying how her husband is at home with their four teenagers, and we sat there as women having dinner this is two nights ago saying good for him, that's great, how's he going? How's he managing at all? And she's going. Good job.

Speaker 1: 6:33

And I had four children too, and whenever my husband was left with four children, we would go good for him, he's managing. Okay, that's great. But never in the history of ever did anyone ever say to a man whose wife was at home with four kids going oh, how is she managing? That's good that she lets you go away, that's great. So there's just such this double standard and so, yes, when it's a woman, we're like oh, what's her situation? Does she have children? And I just think it speaks to the double standards, but also our own curiosity of how women who rise to senior ranks manage to do Do they have children, do they have a husband at home? And just recognizing that we all bring some level of sometimes our own bias and fascination with that, because I think we've just got a long way to go until that's just not something that's of any more interest.

Speaker 3: 7:30

Yeah, I can't wait for the day. Dei is just under a microscope right now, unfortunately. How do you feel this is specifically impacting women in the workplace you touched a little bit on. Now I feel like I have to prove myself all over again. I can relate to that. I'm sure we all can. How else is this impacting women in the future?

Speaker 1: 7:50

Look, there's some women who say and some responded to my Forbes column saying I don't feel I have to prove myself and I'm good and I don't honestly feel this has affected me. So I want to just say that out the front. But I also know, because I get to work with a lot of women in my work, who are saying, yeah, like there's been a shift in the winds, even unspoken, as there's this shift in the winds and there is a little bit of did you get to this place because you're a woman? How much of that was because of your gender? And if you're a woman of color, even more so. Are you only here because? And if you're a woman of color who is LBGTQ, even more so oh, is that why you are where you are?

Speaker 1: 8:33

And so I think any woman who already has a little self-doubt, whoever has a little imposter syndrome and I rarely meet a woman who doesn't have moments of that I think it just adds like water onto the seeds of doubt. Am I here because of that? Now, I'm not saying everyone feels that. I don't feel that at all. I have never thought I've got anywhere because I'm a woman. But I know there are some that do feel a little bit like they have to prove themselves to be more than worthy of that spot. They have to work extra hard and do an extra good job. And, let's face it, there are real biases. We know women are judged more harshly on performance and when women make a mistake it costs them more than when men make a mistake. So it's not like this is all just made up and in our minds. There is realities there too. It has left some women feeling like they do have to prove themselves and maybe they're doubting themselves a little more too. Okay.

Speaker 2: 9:34

Your article struck me. I consider myself a relatively confident person and honestly, it's a very interesting to feel like 45 and I'm still feeling this sense of am I worthy? I have to continually prove myself constantly. You're only as good as your last success and I am curious about why you think women feel this way.

Speaker 1: 9:55

I think there's multiple factors that contribute to women feeling that way. But I think, if we just go all the way back to our childhoods and where we were raised, when I did my PhD dissertation, I did it on women who had reached the C-suite in multinational corporations and so I did a lot of interviews with women who had reached these positions of significant positional power and authority and influence. And what was really interesting and I was looking at, what are the defining features, what are the defining characteristics and mindsets of women who've reached that spot and there was a host of them reach that spot and there was a host of them. But often they came from an environment where they had someone who believed in them and said you've got what it takes. A lot of them said they never, ever vaguely thought about being in the C-suite. That wasn't on their horizon, but they also had someone who they had. Experiences that helped to build like a little bit of grit and resilience up in them and they didn't let what other people said be overly defining of them, like when people would say, oh, you're just there because you're pretty or whatever. Like they were very, pretty resilient and what I would call anti-fragile. But I think we've got to recognize not everyone grows up in some environment where they do feel empowered and they're emboldened and they develop real grit and resilience and anti-fragility.

Speaker 1: 11:26

And a lot of women grow up environments with a lack of female role models, without people who are championing them, saying absolutely, you can do anything you want. You're 45. I'm 10 years on you. I grew up without any female role models, without anyone saying you can do anything you want. You're 45. I'm 10 years on you. I grew up without any female role models, without anyone saying you can do anything you want. And so I was way in my 30s and even 40s where I'm like, oh, I'm just as capable as these people over here, with that lack of belief.

Speaker 1: 11:51

And so I think we don't always grow up with the same surrounded and immersed in the same belief systems that we can do and be anything we want. We may intellectually know it's not true. We may intellectually know that we are just as capable and just as clever, but there's often these little lingering doubts in the back of our head that are going who do you think you are? And when are people going to realize you're not that good? And that's not to say that men don't also sometimes experience that, but it's more pervasive among women.

Speaker 1: 12:30

And while I'd like to think the needle has changed in the last 30, 40 years, I have a daughter who's 25. She has entered the workforce at a time that's really different to when I entered the workforce, but I still sometimes see it like oh, I don't know if I should do that. I'm thinking, why not? Of course you can, and I find myself saying that. Mind you, I sometimes still say that to my sons as well. So I'm not sure that she's got more doubt than my sons, but I still see women sometimes holding themselves back more than the barriers around them.

Speaker 2: 13:04

Yeah, those tapes that we have, those are hard ones to take out, especially the voices in your head. I am curious, if you don't have somebody that's saying you do have what it takes, or having a mentor that brings you along, that sees something in you, what can somebody do on their own to start feeling that they can own it or they do have value, that they shut off those tapes? What are some things that really help?

Speaker 1: 13:28

I would say seek out people who inspire you. Whether you get a book and read about Madeleine Albright, get a book and read about. Whether you get a book and read about Madeleine Albright, get a book and read about. Insert some woman that you find just fascinating and inspiring, whoever that may be, whether that's Angela Merkel or Oprah or whatever, because when we read those stories we can see a little of ourselves in their story and, man, they overcame that Like gee, yeah, they've got strengths and gifts that maybe are different to yours.

Speaker 1: 14:00

But I think just that one seek out in person the kind of women that you'd like to get to know better. Surround yourself, go out and go to a conference where you're going to meet those people and connect with those people. Join an organization where you get to meet those people people and connect with those people. Join an organization where you get to meet those people. I have to say myself time and time again it has been the example of other women who go oh honey, you got this, or like they'll say stuff and they don't have to know me really well, but I'm like I love what they see and they may be 15 or 20 years ahead of me or maybe they're 10 years younger than me, but it's still affirming. I would also say to be really intentional about the relationships that you invest in, but also those that you don't invest in, those that may be playing you small and sometimes that can be friends.

Speaker 1: 14:52

It can be our frenemies, it can be our family and you might not just be able to cut yourself off from family, and I'm not suggesting for a moment that you should. I've got family members who I'm like you know what. I don't even tell them about some of the things I'm up to because I know they will just pour a big bucket of cold water on it. They are only going to feed my doubts. When I told my family I was writing my first book, which is quite a few years ago, and I was nervous about doing it because my family is in Australia, there's something called the tall poppy syndrome and it's this cultural phenomena where, if you aspire to raise too far above your current level, you run a significant risk of being cut down like a tall poppy that's standing out from all the rest and the culture I grew up in in rural Australia was strong with this, and I remember sharing with my family.

Speaker 1: 15:46

It was Christmas and I said to everybody what's something everyone wants to do in the next 12 months? And one sister said I want to go into South America and my brother wanted to do his MBA and my mother said she'd like to volunteer more For her. That was a big, bold thing, I'd like to volunteer more. And then I got around all my siblings there were six siblings and parents and they said what do you want to do in the next 12 months? And I said I'd like to write the outline for a book. I didn't even say I wanted to write a book, I just like to write the outline. I had four kids, six and under at the time, and my brother. I have three, so I'm not going to name which one.

Speaker 1: 16:30

He immediately said what are you going to write a book about? And it was just like I didn't need that, like I did, I already had that going in my head. Who am I to write a book? And I didn't need him to go what are you going to write a book about? And I said, oh, like how to be, how to like be more confident and to go after what we really want to go after in our lives. And I could just see him like going, oh, okay.

Speaker 1: 16:54

And the conversation moved on, and so I would just say it could be family that you need to set some rails on. Don't share with them your little seedlings of ambition if you think they're going to jump all over them. And it could be your mother and it could be actually your best friend, because maybe that's threatening to her because she's not doing it. So just be careful who you share your aspirations with, particularly in the early days, when it's just a little tiny seedling that's still germinating and you're like you've got so much doubt yourself. You don't know yourself whether or not you have what it takes. So the last thing you need is someone else to jump on that wagon and go. But how are you going to do that? That could be really hard. 60% of small business owners fail. Like how are you going to manage that? That could be really hard. 60% of small business owners fail. How are you going to manage that with three young children or whatever it is?

Speaker 1: 17:42

As I said, I have four children. I remember thinking about having a fourth child and how can I ever have a fourth child and pursue a career? I did not know one woman who had four children in a career. It just speaks to that. I had a pretty limited environment and I didn't know anyone. And I had one girlfriend who said you can totally do it. I know a woman has four children. And then she started like finding examples for me of others and I clung to those examples oh, it can be done. And to give myself permission not to know exactly how I do it, but to figure it out as I went along. That was very empowering for me to go okay, I'm along. That was very empowering for me to go okay. I'm going to now allow the possibility for it to happen, which to me actually was an act of courage, because I was a little terrified that I would not manage the juggling act.

Speaker 2: 18:29

Yeah, I love that. It's an act of courage to move forward and keep on moving forward. I also like the inverse of that is the friend or the person that's going to be like yeah, go, you can do this, you've got this. Listening to those stories, especially from women, that are telling you to go and keep going is huge.

Speaker 1: 18:45

Yeah, yeah, no, yes, and I think sometimes we give away our power to the opinions of others too quickly, too readily, too often, and when I say give away our power, we let what other people might think matter way more than is serving us. Do you think this is a good idea? Do you think I can do this? What will people think if I try this? Maybe they'll think I'm a little crazy. Who am I to do it?

Speaker 1: 19:17

And I say hold your own opinion in higher esteem than you hold the opinion of others. That doesn't mean you shouldn't seek out counsel and you shouldn't seek out other people's perspectives, but don't let anyone else's opinion override your own opinion. They've got their opinions and maybe there's some value in them and maybe they have some things that will broaden what you're considering and help you think about things a little more rigorously or consider things you mightn't have considered. But at the end of the day, you've got to trust yourself and trust your gut and trust your own intuition. Just be careful how much power you give to what other people think you should and shouldn't do.

Speaker 3: 20:19

What I'd love to talk about are the unique strengths women do bring to business, because I think there are unique strengths we bring, like intuitiveness. It's not to say men don't have that, but I feel like women might have that unique strength. One of the organizations Francesca and I follow is Pink Chip, which follows the success of female CEOs and how they're significantly outperforming male CEOs in terms of business success, for varying reasons. So when you think about the leadership strengths or the unique leadership strengths women bring to business success, what are those unique strengths that we bring?

Speaker 1: 20:46

Women obviously have a strong our brains are wide this way but just to be able to empathize with what's going on for others, not just intellectually understand what they think, but to be able to really sense and feel what they feel.

Speaker 1: 21:00

And we know that emotions drive action, not logic. And I think women bring a real gift and strength and some more than others, obviously at being able to empathize with what's going on for others so they can form really authentic connection with people at that deeper level, really authentic connection with people at that deeper level. I think women often aren't as settled with a sense of needing to prove their strength and be tough I'm generalizing but so there's less ego often running the show. It's what is it that it feels like the right thing to do here versus what's going to make me look strong and look tough. I think women are naturally good at building bridges and gaining collaboration and because I think we're less captive to an ego that has to prove how good we are and how strong we are, we're able to get around defensiveness at times and get underneath it and to connect with people at a meaningful, in an authentic way that sometimes men can't, because there's a little more posturing and proving, and I call it pissing competitions, without getting too crude.

Speaker 2: 22:09

I'm bigger than you.

Speaker 1: 22:10

My shoe is bigger than your shoe and I'm like, seriously, what's the outcome you're trying to achieve here and how can you go about working together to get a better outcome, versus making it about you and your big ego and needing to prove that you're trying to achieve here? And how can you go about working together to get a better outcome versus making it about you and your big ego and needing to prove that you're better than that person? I think on multiple different ways, women bring a great many strengths. Another in the research shows yes, men tend at times to be more willing to wing it, so they can be quicker to sometimes just jump in and take a risk. But they also can do more dumb, stupid things faster as well. And so women tend to be a little more considered, a little more thoughtful about is this a good? It doesn't mean women won't take risks, but they'll go about it a little more thoughtfully. They won't jump in. Test the water with two feet. They'll go. Okay, let's test the depth of the water with one foot before we jump in with two feet, and so on multiple different areas. The study that came out of Harvard of the 19 key strengths of leadership, women were stronger on 17. So I'm not going to list 17, but there is many ways that women bring those strengths to the table, and that's not to say that men don't bring a lot of strengths too.

Speaker 1: 23:23

To me, this isn't about women are better than men. I feel really strongly about that. I don't like the saying the future is female. I hope not. I really hope not.

Speaker 1: 23:28

I hope that the future is just more collaborative of men and women on an equal playing field, partnering to make better decisions and get better outcomes, because we need the strengths the feminine leadership strengths, masculine leadership strengths and we need them to be in collaboration together, and so I think it's important that that gets recognized, and this isn't about one or the other one. Better than worse than I do think there's situations where men's strengths may be more suited for that specific situation. Maybe that company in this industry in this moment in time, but yes, as you're talking about pink chip companies, obviously women are exceptionally good at what they do and make excellent leaders and can produce excellent outcomes and really good at being inclusive and, I think, harnessing the diversity within teams and diversity on all measures. Diversity isn't just about gender and it's not just about race. It is on all measures. Women are really good at being able to harness that value of diversity in all forms in the teams that they are leading, that they're part of.

Speaker 3: 24:34

Yeah, it sounds. Ideal state the future is balanced across it all.

Speaker 2: 24:39

I get your opinion on this, because this is not a political statement. I'm going on objective reporting here. There's a lot of talk in ether around masculine energy and I'm curious about when it feels like in a lot of corporate America the masculine energy is taking over. What's your point of view on how women operate now in corporate America? What's the move?

Speaker 1: 25:05

Stand your ground, stand tall in your power and your worth and, given there may be a sense that the winds are shifting a little bit, don't let people play you small. We teach people how to treat us and I think at times that means we need to push back and call things out, and that may not be natural. I know for myself. My natural state is not combative, it's not argumentative. It tends to be very accommodating and maybe a little bit too acquiescent to other people's, what other people would like, et cetera. But I know at times when I've been in a situation where I feel like someone is trying to dominate here, they're trying to claim an idea that's mine, they're trying to maybe take advantage of my agreeableness that sometimes I need to lean in and speak up and act in ways that aren't my natural. It's not my default and go sorry, excuse me, I haven't finished what I was saying. If you would just give me a moment, we can go over to you once I finished and like, versus just letting someone cut in right or someone's taking your idea going, I just want to just step back a bit for a moment. I actually suggested that yesterday and not doing it in a way that's derogatory, but we stand firm in our own power and our own value and our worth, and we make sure people know that we won't be pushed over, because I think we do get what we tolerate. And sometimes we tolerate things to avoid conflict, to avoid an awkward, difficult moment, to avoid coming across as being God, she's hard work or she's sensitive, and yet over time you're like okay, people will take advantage of that. As I wrote about in this book, the Courage Gap, how do we cultivate our capacity to take brave action? Fear constricts our actions that we take and courage expands the actions that we take, and it's about expanding your behavioral repertoire.

Speaker 1: 27:05

No, I'm not a naturally combative person, but can I be combative if I need to be? Can I be strident and really assert myself into something? Yeah, you bet I can, and I don't want to do that all the time, but I can lean in and do that when I need to, or ask for my worth or make sure my voice is heard and speak with the authority that's needed. And so practicing that and I do think it takes practice. If you're someone who tends to be a little bit more diminutive, you don't need your voice heard. You're happy not to say anything in a meeting unless you have something compelling to say. I would say no. Practice injecting your voice into that meeting. Practice speaking up with a little more volume or a little more depth. Practice standing a little taller. Practice you being first to ask a question or to put forward an idea, even though you're not 100% sure how it's going to land. Practice that it's a muscle that you build and you've got to put in those reps.

Speaker 2: 28:01

Yeah, Very true, very true, and I love it's those moments where you need to stand your ground.

Speaker 1: 28:06

And I actually think, in these times when you could rationalize why, oh, pull your head in and don't do it, I believe it is in times like this, when we can find the most reasons to be a little timid, a little cautious, to play it safe, that our voice is most needed and we are most called to step up, speak up and really claim our place. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 28:39

Yes, absolutely yeah. We've talked a lot about this, but when you say bet on yourself, like in one sentence, what does that truly mean? You could do two sentences. I don't want to give you limits.

Speaker 1: 28:58

Act in ways that affirm that you have everything it takes to achieve your wildest vision of success.

Speaker 3: 29:11

Okay, I want to put that on a mug. No.

Speaker 1: 29:15

When I say back yourself, like back yourself and not your doubts. Act in ways that show that you expect good things to come your way and that you're going to do your part. If the universe is conspiring for you, are you doing 100% of your part to set yourself up for those great things to happen? Like? You've got to do your part, you've got to be putting yourself out there. You've got to be taking the risks. You can't expect amazing things to happen while you're playing it safe. You've got to take the risk, take the chance and make that bet on yourself. I had curiosity.

Speaker 2: 29:54

Do you feel like most people need to be grounded in, like knowing that you have a higher self or knowing that you're here to do something? Is there a higher purpose thing going on here?

Speaker 1: 30:03

as well. You're saying does belief in something that's bigger than ourselves help us show up in the world as more of who it is, who we can be? I think that's something.

Speaker 2: 30:21

Much more articulately, steve. Yes, thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Look, I get it. There's some people who go I don't believe in God, I'm not religious, I'm not spiritual whatever. And I would just say this If you ever say, oh, I believe in karma, then you're believing in some force that's bigger than yourself. If you say the universe, you're believing in some force that's bigger than yourself. If you believe in what goes around, comes around, you're believing in something that's bigger than yourself. I actually am a Christian, so I absolutely believe in something that's bigger than myself.

Speaker 1: 30:53

But regardless of whether you have any religious belief at all, you can still believe that who you are is more than the body that you're in and more than the brains that you've got, and more than your current emotional state.

Speaker 1: 31:08

And, yes, I believe that we are all here to fulfill a purpose that leaves the world a little bit better off, because we lived, walked on it for 80, 90 years. I believe that. Does that compel me to be brave at times when I really don't want to be? Yes, it does. But even if you don't believe that, there is something that is immensely empowering to believe that you are innately worthy by the virtue of the fact that you are in the world, and that you have innate worth to bring to others around you, and you cannot bring that in all its force and all its glory if you are second guessing yourself, because when you doubt yourself, you don't only do yourself a disservice, you shortchange, I believe, the whole world, but you certainly shortchange all those people around you of who it is you can be. And that is this courage gap I talk about. It's the gap between who we are and who we could be if we risked being brave and backed ourselves more often.

Speaker 2: 32:28

How can we enable people to close that courage gap, especially women? What can we be doing as bosses, as peers, I think organizationally. What would you say to that?

Speaker 1: 32:33

When I look at leadership and I think of it as three domains of the either we and the it, personal leadership, interpersonal leadership and enterprise leadership, our organization, our business, our team, et cetera, you know what can we be doing? I just wrote a book on that, so find my book Courage Gap Shameless plug. But hey if you're going to do it.

Speaker 1: 32:52

That's what I wrote the book about. Number one I'm just going to really quickly just say five quick things. Number Number one I'm just going to really quickly just say five quick things. Number one focus on what it is that you want. What's the outcome you want for yourself? What's the outcome you want for others? What's the outcome you want for your team, your organization? Get really clear about that. And what are the values that underpin who you need to be, how you need to show up to move toward that vision of what you want? Because your vision for what you want, your commitment to that, has to be bigger than the vision of what you want. Because your vision for what you want, your commitment to that, has to be bigger than the fears of what you don't want. Otherwise, fear is going to govern.

Speaker 1: 33:24

Number two challenge the story that you're telling yourself. Our beliefs are the software of behavior and so often we're operating from a narrative oh, I don't think I've got what it takes. Oh, I'm not sure I'm ready. Oh, I need to have a bit more skill, knowledge. Oh, what will people know? What is the belief that you need to operate from for you to achieve what it is you want to achieve? To become the woman that you know you have it within you to become. What is the belief system? So re-script, what's keeping you stuck or stressed or having you living a little too safely?

Speaker 1: 33:57

Number three embody courage. Take a breath, stand tall, put your shoulders back, like how we hold ourselves physically matters. In fact, there was a study out of Kellogg Business School that found that how we hold ourselves physically shifts our perception of our own power and agency, but it also shifts how others see us. When you walk in a room like you own that room and you sit down like you absolutely belong there, it shifts how other people perceive you, but it starts with how you perceive yourself. Number four make friends with discomfort, and if you can't make friends with it, at least make a truce with it that you are going to get uncomfortable as often as need be because you cannot become who you want to be and do what you want to do and create a psychologically safe environment around you.

Speaker 1: 34:45

If you're only ever being comfortable yourself, you've got to be willing to do the very awkward things, and from a management and leadership perspective, when it comes to fostering what I call a culture of courage and I have spoken to Amy Edmondson, who coined the term psychological safety on my Live Brave podcast a few times. The two go hand in hand. They're the two sides of the same coin. We cannot foster a psychological safety if we're not willing to be vulnerable, if we're not willing to say I messed up, I don't know, or what might I have got wrong here, or invite feedback. So you've got to be role modeling that.

Speaker 1: 35:21

But start with making friends with that discomfort and doing the very things that scare you Every day. Do a little thing. I'm going to do something every day. That's a little uncomfortable, and the more often we do that, we build that muscle.

Speaker 1: 35:33

And number five be a little kinder to yourself when you mess up, because you're human.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Because you're human, you're human.

Speaker 1: 35:42

And without knowing you really well, mel or Francesca, I'm going to guess that today you were not as brilliant and brave and wonderful and organized and disciplined and patient with your children or whatever, as you'd love to be.

Speaker 1: 35:59

And that is the human condition. We are never going to be all things all the time. But when we can be a little kinder to ourselves and extend a little more grace inward, when we either try something and we balls it up or when we hold back and we're like, oh shit, I know I should reach out and have that conversation. When we hold back and we're like, oh shit, I know I should reach out and have that conversation, but oh God, I can't, I just can't, I'm just not doing it today, like when our inner chicken little gets the better of us, just be kind to yourself and go. Okay, because we're not going to risk being brave if we beat up on ourselves every time we fall and we are a lot braver and we show up as a bigger version of ourselves when we can embrace that we are fallible and we are flawed and we are not always going to be fearless.

Speaker 2: 36:46

That's a good vibe though. Yeah, that's a good vibe.

Speaker 3: 36:49

All right, all right, we are closing things out with rapid round. So, margie, this is what we like to just get to know you a little bit better one-on-one, get your thoughts outside of just this topic. Are you game for us to dive right in? Yeah, go for it. Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

Speaker 1: 37:09

I think we're going to see more fluid, purpose-driven work environments. I think the need that really was underscored during the pandemic that people are looking for meaning. They want to work for organizations that reflect their values. I think we're going to see more and more of that people prioritizing purpose and meaning over titles, that also value flexibility over formality. I think we're going to see more of that and a greater desire for real authenticity, as distinct from that sort of posturing and looking good, that people really want to see people being really human. As technology and gen AI takes on a bigger role, that human touch is going to be even more sought after and valued.

Speaker 3: 37:53

Okay. Totally agree, yes, we're on the same page. What, what music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 38:00

oh, my goodness, I have a fairly broad repertoire. I I have to listen to just 80s classics. Yeah, yes, I go back. I still love john denver and neil diamond, but I also I love ederan and I love Pink, so I just got this broad one. I love Lauren Daigle. I just there's a lot of people I like listening to. I love Kelly Clarkson, so needless to say, I'm broad.

Speaker 3: 38:27

What are you reading right now? Or listening to podcasts yourself?

Speaker 1: 38:33

Ah, podcasts. I really like Ezra Klein. I listen to him, but I actually listen to a broad spectrum of people on podcasts. I like 10% Happier. I feel like this is a weird one to say Joe Rogan I listen to Joe Rogan. I find him really interesting, though I do often fast forward through it and I do little bursts of Mel Robbins.

Speaker 3: 38:51

Okay, all right. Who do you really admire?

Speaker 1: 38:58

Who do you really admire? Who do I really admire? I did admire my mom, who passed away 18 months ago, because she had such a beautiful, humble gentle, serene way about her. She was all about service and never about ego. So I'm just going to stop there.

Speaker 3: 39:13

Okay. What's one piece of advice you want everyone to know oh, do not wait until you feel brave to do the brave thing. I love it. Thank you for being here, dr margie. We really appreciate it and we do want to plug the courage gap five steps to bra Action because that just came out. So please do check it out. And, margie, how can our listeners connect with you for ongoing insights and resources on this topic?

Speaker 1: 39:50

Oh, thank you. They can find me on social media, LinkedIn, anywhere though I'm not very active on TikTok, but Insta I am there. They can go to my website, margieworrellcom, and take my courage quiz on the book page, sign up for my newsletter, and I also have my own Live Brave podcast. That is everywhere you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 3: 40:04

Yes, we are following it, by the way. So thank you, thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you being here.

Speaker 1: 40:14

It was awesome to speak with you both and I just want you two to just keep backing yourselves because you're doing great work in the world. To just keep backing yourselves because you're doing great work in the world.

Speaker 3: 40:19

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends, bye friends.

The Ego Equation for Leadership Success

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Ego Equation with Dan Springer

Impact over ego, thats the mantra for true leadership success.

What if the key to great leadership isn't confidence or charisma, but checking your ego? Former DocuSign CEO Dan Springer shares his Ego Equation and how humility, hard work, and self-awareness drive results that actually last.

So, what makes great leaders different—and how do you measure it?

(Skills ÷ Ego) ^ Work = Success.

Dan shares leadership lessons from decades in tech, including how ego almost derailed his career and what changed after a layoff turned into a leadership awakening.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I try to define ego as

Speaker 2: 0:02

High ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first, and low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals or family. It could be. Any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.

Speaker 1: 0:32

We brought Dan Springer on to talk about leadership and ego, and he's probably one of the best people to talk about this with, because this guy has ran mega organizations as a CEO, as a board member. He's genuinely a really nice guy and, more than that, he knows how to get returns in a business and really create these workplaces that people love to work at. If you ask anybody who's worked under Dan Springer, they loved where they were working, and so we wanted to figure out what was it that made him who he is and what did he attribute to his leadership success? And what he talked about was ego.

Speaker 3: 1:12

Yeah, he was such a great example of somebody who can focus on the human in the workplace while also having very successful business results, and how those two things went hand in hand together. Yeah, there is some secret sauce that he shared with us. That's pretty awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:30

Totally agree. Dan Springer is the former CEO of DocuSign. He's also still on the board. He's an incredibly seasoned tech leader with decades of experience scaling some of the biggest names in SaaS like Responsys, teleo, nextcard, and. He began his career at McKinsey was a partner there. He's led billion-dollar exits, built high-growth teams and knows firsthand how ego can make or break great leadership. And you're right, mel. He brought this refreshingly honest take on what it really takes to lead well.

Speaker 3: 1:59

I think this is one of my favorite episodes so far and one of my favorite guests. The insights he brought were really valuable and others will get value out of this too.

Speaker 1: 2:07

It wasn't his Dave Matthews story.

Speaker 3: 2:10

I did love Dave Matthews as a fellow DMV. The fun fact in Connecticut I was at the Meadows with my friend for a DMV when there was an entire flipping of the cars and arson back in the 90s what the hell? At a Dave Matthews concert. It got out of control. I don't know what happened and we parked in a McDonald's parking lot. This is just a side story you can take out, but it got towed and we hitchhiked with some randos to go find our car at the Impel lot.

Speaker 1: 2:41

Listen my favorite Dave Matthews story, can I tell you, yeah. So there is something I celebrate every year, which is the anniversary of the Dave Matthews Band tour bus. Oh, the bridges in Chicago. And if you don't know this story, Mel, can I tell this story? Yes.

Speaker 3: 2:56

They're probably like please not again, just when we're not brought up, so I've never been in Chicago.

Speaker 1: 3:02

There's the river in Chicago and then it dumps out into the lake and over the river are a series of bridges that are grated and they can lift up and down so tall boats can go through to the lake Keyword grated. The other thing I want everyone to know about Chicago is it's a massive architecture town, so they have these wonderful architectural cruises. If you ever go to Chicago you have to go on them. They're fantastic and you can see all of the different buildings and the stories behind them, etc. They are typically open boats, so think about massive kind of pontoon boats looking up and admiring all the skyscrapers.

Speaker 1: 3:37

On this very warm summer day there was an architectural boat cruise cruising down the river looking at all the skyscrapers and at the same time the Dave Matthews Band tour bus was going over one of these graded bridges and the bus driver accidentally decided to dump the toilet out and it dumped all over this architectural horror boat. So it is one of the most disgusting stories, but also one of the funniest stories on the planet. I love to tell it just because it's so man dave matthews, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 3: 4:11

If you were on that boat, the universe was just like f you, in particular today. What like?

Speaker 1: 4:18

but you've got some explaining. I love talking with dan, not only about the dave matthews story, but about his experience and how he's really looked at ego in this equation. If you don't know, dan, he's also a mathematician back liberal arts major, which I love, but he has this idea of how do you manage ego with skills and hard work. How do you pull that into balance to really set yourself up for success and to set your team up for success as well?

Speaker 3: 4:42

And you can do this equation yourself tomorrow to gut check your own ego. Yep, good tool, right away, great tool, and with that here's Dan Dan.

Speaker 1: 5:04

how are you today?

Speaker 2: 5:05

I'm doing great Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 5:06

Great, absolutely All right. I want to get you right into this. We're here to talk about ego and leadership and your background. I'm so excited for it.

Speaker 3: 5:14

All right, we want to start in understanding your origin story around the whole concept of so and ego and the role ego has played, and so I'd love to understand how your own relationship with your own ego evolved throughout your professional career.

Speaker 2: 5:29

I've been called by many, particularly as a young man, to have prodigious ego, so I guess this is a good topic. The simplest construct around that I try to define ego is high ego is putting yourself as the primary, putting yourself first in the context. It could be your family, it could be your office, it could be your company, it could be your sports team, whatever it is. And low ego, which is preferred in this context, is someone that puts the organization or the greater goals. Or, again, it could be family, it could be any type of organization you're involved with puts that first.

Speaker 2: 6:01

And my own origin story, I think, is a good, healthy, I mean growing up with the world being presented to me.

Speaker 2: 6:10

In a certain way. It was when I was growing up I was pretty egocentric. I think I was pretty focused on Dan, and although I had wonderful role models like my mom, my hero, who demonstrated to me by putting me first, been really dedicated to whichever life to me, I probably should have seen that sooner, but I was a little slow on the uptake and somewhere, probably in my late 20s, I at least became aware of the fact that I was a little bit of a selfish person or a selfish SOB, maybe it would be more accurate. And then professionally I started to figure that out a little bit in leading people. But it wasn't until I had my first son that I think I really figured out that it wasn't about me. And once you have that ability to love someone more than you love yourself, it opens up your ability to just be much less egocentric in everything you do. So that was probably my. So I was. I'm embarrassed to say that now, but early thirties before I probably got to a reasonably evolved sense of ego.

Speaker 3: 7:13

Yeah, that makes sense, right, our brains aren't even fully formed until we're about 24, I think so to make good decisions and things like that. So it's totally understandable. We're in the non-judgment zone, by the way.

Speaker 2: 7:22

All right.

Speaker 3: 7:22

So having your son obviously major pivotal moment. What other kind of pivotal moments did you have that really transformed your understanding of ego, especially in leadership?

Speaker 2: 7:33

Yeah, so two, actually One before I had my son in my first job managing people. So I worked for the phone company. I was a forecaster, a econometrician, I did modeling and I showed up and they didn't have sophistication at Pacific Valley at that time. So I quickly got promoted less than a year in my first job as a college and I was now managing people. My parents' age that had been professional forecasters but didn't have some of the technical skills I had, and I quickly realized how bad I was at the job.

Speaker 2: 7:59

But I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. I couldn't figure out for the longest time why. And it was because I was a little jerk. And who's this little jerk telling me he's experienced and good people with probably a condescending ear if we want to be honest about it. But I eventually got that feedback so I did get a snippet. Being a jerk is not the best archetype of manager that you probably want to have. Then I think fast forward to probably having a son. But the it was one period that I think was really powerful for me, where I started to respect how wonderful some of the people we work with are and I ran a company you've never heard of called Tellio. It was my first time as the CEO and I ran it into the ground.

Speaker 2: 8:38

we sold it for 50 bucks to our Donnelly maybe a little more, not very much money, and so that's why you've never heard of it and I will bury the details of the company. It's important to me but it won't be to your audience. But something happened is right after I joined. It was like it was a dire situation and we had to do a slight restructuring. It was a small company but we had to do a layoff and I had never done that in a role, in a manager role, in a manager role. I've been a consultant at McKinsey, so I've been around a little bit of cost cutting. And that night after the layoff I was in my office late and four of the guys that had been laid off were standing outside the doors like a glass door looking in and they knocked and they came in and for a minute I had this thought are they telling you to beat the crap out of?

Speaker 2: 9:19

me, I can figure out why they don't want to stay around and these four guys sat down and they just asked to check in on how I was doing and they said they could tell how difficult it had been for me to go through the layoff their layoff, not my layoff, their layoff that they were worried about me and I'll tell you for the next couple of years.

Speaker 2: 9:40

That was this incredible strong feeling.

Speaker 2: 9:42

Every time I thought about it it made me feel worse, obviously, because these are the greatest human beings that could get laid off and they're worried about the guy that just came in to be their boss, that had to carry out the action.

Speaker 2: 9:53

And two, it just made me realize how wonderful people can be and it's just always stuck with me as a message that we have a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, a responsibility when we lead an organization for those people, and I vowed I would never it hasn't happened yet, but it could never have a layoff of people who were doing their job well and were losing their opportunity because leadership in this case me failed to provide the opportunity. So don't overhire, don't get into that situation and when you have it. It's a painful lesson, but it was hugely eye-opening for me against the quality of people and the really serious responsibility we have as leaders for the people that work for us, and not everyone feels that way. I think it's really important If you're not feeling that way, not caring that much about your people, what are you doing in management?

Speaker 3: 10:40

Yeah, you have to think about the whole person and get down to humanity. At the end of the day, we are bigger than our jobs, so life is bigger than that.

Speaker 1: 10:48

Yeah. So Mel and I didn't go to math school. Dan, we did not go to math school. I know you did. I know you were being a jerk to the Yellow Pages people. Let's talk about how you were a jerk, dan. No, I'm just kidding. I was sitting there thinking like you were 30. I think I was like 35 before I got that that lesson around. Don't be a total asshole to people. But one of the things that I love about what you've come up with is an ego equation or an equation how to think about ego, because we have all these stories around. It's about how smart you are, it is about your strategy and you're playing five degree chess over here. Or maybe it's about the fact that you work your ass off. I'm wondering if you can talk about the mathy equation. You have to think about ego and work and skills as it relates to success.

Speaker 2: 11:39

It's a little bit geeky. Sure, it's only geeky when you put numbers to it. Conceptually, even liberal arts majors like myself even though I was a math and liberal arts college people we can really grasp these concepts. The simple expression which I've used in this so like sewing needle and thread is you have your skills that are usually highly correlated to the fortune you were given with your smarts and your ability to build skills. And then you have your ego.

Speaker 2: 12:04

As I mentioned earlier is your ability to control your focus on yourself versus to the broader organization, and then, as you said, how hard you work. And the equation for the geeks out there like myself is you take those skills that you have, the S, you divide it by your ego, so you want to have less ego, obviously. Then you take that and you raise it to the power of how hard you work. And if you do play around with little numbers I generally use one to five and you assess yourself. I'll give you my own self-assessment, so yeah, and then we're, we're on this spectrum think of this bell curve spectrum, not a one to five.

Speaker 2: 12:38

When it comes to skills that have been built, I think I'm a four. Most of my life asserted I was a five, but we can get to the ego point. I just had a lot of good fortunes. It's not so much that I'm smarter than other people or more skill, I just showed up in some really good situations that made me look good. So I've had a lot of serendipity. And then the ego. And again I don't think I was ever a five.

Speaker 2: 13:02

On the ego, Maybe I was a four. There's a distribution curve and there's other people out there that could be pretty condescending, jerk like two, but I was probably in the four zone. I'm down to about a two in my self-assessment. So I'm pretty good not the best, but I'm pretty good at trying to really put the organization first and get out of my own ego and then on how hard I work. It's four or five. I've been a five at times. Sustaining five is very difficult but I think I'm a good, solid four.

Speaker 2: 13:27

So if you use the four, two, four, you say four divided by two is two. You raise that to the power of four and you get two, four, eight, 16. And that's pretty good. And, of course, when you're a competitive person, like I am, you play this game and you go. Okay, what I really want to do is be a five over a one. Raise it to the it. Just, it really probably doesn't happen very often and, quite frankly, if you have people operating with a high ego, you do the math. If you're around a one, it doesn't matter how hard you work. You're not going to get the number any better. If you're below one, it's effective. A person working really hard has all focused on themselves could actually be a detriment to an organization. So that's how I think about the formula and have to chat about each of the elements more, but I use that in evaluating people and thinking about how effective they can be in our organization.

Speaker 1: 14:17

Let me ask you this so you're 16 and you're so score. Is there a range? Let's say you're building out a C-suite, for example, or you're building out whatever and you're trying to gauge where people are at what's considered like a good score.

Speaker 2: 14:32

16 is good and again, it's my form. I'm not going to create a system that I have a terrible outcome in.

Speaker 2: 14:38

And you're like, wow, I really need work, I have to change the model. But 16 is good, have to change the model there. The 16 is good and the real challenge is it's the most of us, of course, most situation. I'm talking about me as a software exec to 16. Um, by the way, the only place I've ever been better is actually in in in sports, and the reason is and this is that you're really fortunate if you have this makeup my whole life, life I played sports all through college, division III college, but still some of my college soccer and lacrosse teams.

Speaker 2: 15:09

But all through school, all through every team I ever played on, I don't think I was ever the most skilled player on my team and I had just enough self-knowledge to know. I think sometimes I was one of the better players I knew. I was never the most skilled player on any, whether it was football, soccer, basketball, cross, whatever but nobody worked harder.

Speaker 2: 15:31

I don't believe anyone on any team I was ever on. I know it was a pretty aggressive statement to make, but I can't. How are you going to know? How are you going to refute it?

Speaker 3: 15:38

anyway, Ever Sounds a little like. Ego Sounds a little like ego.

Speaker 2: 15:43

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way. Can you have ego about how hard you work? Maybe, and I do think if you look at the stats score you'll always see not as many points but a lot of assists from Dan's work, and that was the joy I had as being a playmaker and trying to make other people score and succeed. So in sports it's the only time I've ever been ever better than I have as a profession. But I would just clearly say 16 is taking me a career to get to. I was realistically a one-two, probably most of my career because of the ego that suppresses the ratio of the smarts, and so if you had a team of 16s, that would be a killer team.

Speaker 2: 16:22

Everyone could get their egos down. Some people might get it by a five and a three. You're playing the different modes, but yeah, it's all about getting that balance right.

Speaker 1: 16:30

Is there ever a situation where you need to have hot ego?

Speaker 2: 16:34

Yeah, and again, the problem with the definition of the word ego in general. There could be a lot of different nuances and interpretations of that, and I think they can be healthy ego for sure, in the construct that I'm defining. I don't think so. I think it's optimal is to be a team player, because not only does it help the team's output, but then it forces other people, because of that behavior you exhibit, to do the same. People want to be drawn, I think, to something bigger than themselves, and if other people lead that way, it makes it easier. So you have a knockoff effect on other people when you bring down your ego and some cultures can get to the place where that happens. But just to be clear, there's high-performing cultures that have high ego.

Speaker 2: 17:12

I worked at McKinsey. There are investment banks, I would tell you. Most of them is a model where people are fighting, particularly in banks, for their compensation. It's a big thing, it's a let me show you how great I was and the deals I got done. Therefore, I deserve more compensation in that model. By definition, I think you should answer your question. That's supposed to be a high ego place. Now, over time, that can have become destructive, and yeah, but I think that's the balance. Leadership and that kind of organization has to figure out a way to maintain that competitiveness around individual performance and at the same time still figure out how do we have some collegial nature that we can build a firm together.

Speaker 1: 17:53

You've taken your career where it is based on this model. You see it and evaluate your teams based on this model. We doubled down on ego, but I would love to understand what do you think about skills? And when you think about hard work, what would you recommend people consider when they're looking at upping those potentially? Just to balance out the equation.

Speaker 2: 18:14

One thing I tell you about the skills side, the hardest part about skills, it's the one I think we can do the least Now it doesn't mean you can't take classes and get training things, but core thing that drives and in fact you didn't ask if I stole this idea. There's no SEW, quite like the way I do it. But this construct of these sort of three forces in determining how effective people are in their work was stolen from a guy I worked with at McKinsey years ago, an Australian guy, clemenger, and he actually initially his thinking was it wasn't skills, it was smarts. It's also smarts are trainable. It's a very McKinsey way to think about it. Right, and he'd been a career McKinsey Was we just want smart people, because smart people will figure out problems, but they'll also figure out how to learn and grow To some extent your clock speed.

Speaker 2: 18:59

You can work on it. You're born with what you got. Thank or don't thank your parents, but you got what you got. So that one is much harder for people to control. And I would tell you the best thing you can do to either quote unquote improve your smarts or your skills it's the learning you get, it's taking wisdom from your experiences. So what makes you smarter, effectively or more skilled is the fact that you have ability to take feedback and say, oh, I got to move a little bit over this way, so that's probably the most important piece, except that a lot of it is going to be.

Speaker 2: 19:28

You're given processing capability and then the one is applying yourself, and if you just do more and you're active, it goes back to the work. How hard you work. If you take on opportunities. Every time you have a chance to do something new and different, you do it and then you listen and learn about how you did. That's the best thing I think you can do to improve your sort of smart skills and on work, that's probably the least complex, right?

Speaker 2: 19:51

And it's just how will you apply yourself? It's definitely about working smarter, not just harder, although I sometimes think we use the excuse of working smart, not hard, to not fully deploy ourselves and really invest ourselves in the things we're working on. But that could be personal, professional, across the board. We often know when we're just showing up and there's days sometimes where that's all you can muster, just showing up. But if you find yourself only just showing up a lot of the time, you're probably not in the right place, because you just don't have that enthusiasm for your work to allow you to get up to a four or maybe even a five on how hard you work.

Speaker 1: 20:29

Yeah, it's interesting when you have those where you. Is it context you know what I'm saying Like when you're in a situation I know when you were at DocuSign or Responsys, for example, too, it felt like that was like these magical times, right, these magical cultures where you wanted to show up, right, it's the context of it, or is it the individual that's always going to have that lens, or is it a combination of both? I think it could be situational, right.

Speaker 2: 20:52

Yeah, but your point about the magical times what makes people remember times as magical is because they work really hard with a group of people they respect and care for and built a great album, and when you do that, it bonds people. I think we were chatting the other day and I told you that there was this 10-year reunion of people from when we sold Responses to Oracle and I thought the whole idea was a little wacky in the first place, to be completely honest with you, and then, when hundreds of people showed up and said it was a really special way for them to be back with people, it felt more like a college reunion than a company had been part of. You had something special and that culture that you were part of will always be important to you.

Speaker 1: 21:37

It's the power of when you have this in masses, right, when everybody is pulling in their weight or has a high SO score, right. That's the power of that too. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever had a magical work experience where I phoned it in or where I was very egocentric, or like I was the smartest person in the freaking room, like that never, ever happened. I think that's common.

Speaker 2: 21:58

I think that experience you're describing is probably common and I would say there are times, particularly in technology industry, where you get on a wave and you probably could continue to have great success with phoning it in a little bit, although be careful, because when you're riding that kind of wave it's going to crash at some point. But I would tell you, I bet it's not a magical experience. I think it's very difficult, if you didn't really work hard at something, to truly enjoy the success and the outcome, because it's not as important, it's not as special to you as if you know that you really applied yourself fully.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Yeah, you got to be invested.

Speaker 3: 22:46

Something that really resonates with me with what you said, because, as another former athlete but I will say I was D1. Just rubbing it in a little, just a little, but I was a rower, so it doesn't really count as a former athlete, throughout my life, one of the things that I heard time and time again from my coaches and like you, I was never the best, but what I always got was the heart award. Because when you're the one giving heart and in my mind, when I keep hearing you say hard work, that's what I keep hearing.

Speaker 3: 23:12

Oh, the people who give heart, like you have the heart in it. Is that what you mean when you say hard work absolutely?

Speaker 2: 23:18

and in fact it's funny. I was thinking about your point about crew. It actually is a great example because, if you think about again, I never rode crew in any close to semblance of a real way, but oddly enough, I went to a strange high school in Seattle that happened to have crew, which is unusual, particularly unusual. Then on the West Coast, I'm going to start and for the next six, about six minutes, I'm going to get increasingly uncomfortable to the point that my body's going to hate what I'm doing and I'm going to collapse in exhaustion and you go and that's what we do every time and that's our form, and there's probably some track and field things that are like that a little bit, and it's the only one you do in unison, depending on three other, seven other I guess, four and eight if you count. But what a crazy bond that people must have with the team when you go through that.

Speaker 2: 24:17

You've probably seen it, but you see the boys in the boat. There's a movie from the book the Boys in the Boat. The book was better than the movie. Usually Not always, but usually it's the University of Washington men's crew that won the Olympic gold medal in 1936. No-transcript.

Speaker 3: 24:53

Oh, I loved crew. By the way, I think when I talked to any of my teammates, most of us did it so we could watch the sunrise before class, because it was just a fun experience at 5 am.

Speaker 3: 25:03

I wanted to go back to those high-performance work cultures, because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We work cultures because we've all worked in them, right, like I worked in big law. We've worked in the big four, all of those things. Do you think something has to happen in terms of, like performance management? Performance management set up in a way to be egocentric or to build ego, because there's always this kind of back and forth? Do you brag about the work you've done and that impacts your potential bonus and your raise or your opportunities for growth, but none of us get our work done, necessarily as individual contributors. Even when you're an individual contributor, you still need others to complete your work, and so do you think there's an opportunity for organizations to think differently about performance management and how you brag about the things you've done while also bringing along everyone else who helped you get there?

Speaker 2: 25:50

I think so. Yeah, and I'll tell you the first thing. There's certain things in business life that are close to universally. True. There's probably none that are quite, but there's two I want to talk to One related to your question, but first I'll do the other one.

Speaker 2: 26:03

It's amazing how what we learned in kindergarten is so important for what we do in life. Saying please, saying thank you and saying I'm sorry when appropriate is the simplest thing to do, and when we don't do it oftentimes it leads to fairly significant conflict and problems. I'm not saying it always solves everything, but at least creates the opportunity and the space to be successful. And one of the things that I think is really corollary to that is about teams that you described. And if you say we instead of I, first of all people know.

Speaker 2: 26:40

So if you're so worried that you have to be clear that you did something, the detraction that you're going to get from your colleague to everyone else I need you to point out that it was you Way swaps, any extra benefit you might get in bonus time or what you're just got, is my opinion.

Speaker 2: 26:55

But if you do that chest beating and you do it around a wee, it's amazing how everyone gives you license to brag all you want because it's about wee, and if you figure out a way to try to give the credit in a credible way to other people, because we've all seen the bullshit, the fake oh, thank the little people, because it wasn't me and you just look and you're like, okay, that not only gets you the credit for having delivered the great results that your team's done, but, more importantly, that we language makes everyone else feel great and it sets us up for another success, because now everyone wants to do it again. So you're also building followership from teams. So I think that's the answer to the question is just be a we oriented and get away from needing to point out what people probably already know when you've done something great.

Speaker 1: 27:55

Yeah, I'll tell you too, where I've seen people be really successful is with that we language and that authentic we language like you talked about, with their team, and also cross-functionally as well. When you can be we, when you're reaching across the aisle with finance and HR and marketing and you're going at it we as one, that is hugely powerful, especially as you're going up in the ranks.

Speaker 2: 28:17

And I would also tell you I think it's powerful when you're the hardest grader on yourself. A lot of people say they're the hardest grader on themselves, they're toughest on themselves. I don't always find that to be the case and I find if you can do that and get a reputation amongst your colleagues for being tougher on yourself than you are on them, it's a really exponentially improving opportunity. I'll give you one sort of dumb example. But at Responsys I had this thing where I tried to change the way we thought about performance reviews. So we did everything out of 100. It's just just like a hundred. But a hundred was perfect Pretty hard to be perfect and I was CEO for 10 years at Responsys. I had twice a year had a review and I would submit my self-assessment, just like I would have all my managers first submit a self-assessment, and I never had a hundred. I never got above low nineties and we had a couple of quarters that led to a half year performance that you would say those were pretty good and I had a board that would push back and say come on, this has got to be a hundred percent and I'm like a hundred, how can you get a hundred? But what would happen is I'd come in and say, yeah, I think I had an 82. And they'd be this is crazy. You at least have a 90. We have to argue this up to a 90. Think about that.

Speaker 2: 29:28

Normally my experiences before that was the other way around. I think I'm about 115. And then someone else has to say, god, we really think he's about a 90, but now we've got to say he's an 80 to try to compromise. So it just totally changes that. Every single executive my direct reports at responses but one and I'll get to the one in a second Over time grasped that and said this is the way I want it to be.

Speaker 2: 29:54

I want to be in a situation when I come in tougher on myself and my manager was me says no, I think better than that. Those conversations are so rewarding and I did. One executive who was very talented and a great executive and he had grown up in a sense of I'm above 100%, everything I do is above 100%, and the math major in me says there is no above 100%. It's impossible to be above 100% Asymptomically. Approaching 100% on most things is almost impossible, and so that mentality to get out of that I got all Ben Antonio, but I got everyone else there and it was I think it was a big part of our culture that then went down and trickled down wherever what it was saying like. Let me be tougher on myself.

Speaker 1: 30:39

Let me ask you this In those moments, did you want to rate yourself 100? In the back of your mind, were you like I actually was 100, but I'm going to put it in myself at a 91? Or were you like, no, I was genuinely in 91, you wasn't you can't what's truth I think there's times where I thought I was pretty damn good.

Speaker 2: 30:56

Yeah, we had a lot of challenges too, but the early parts of the company was a complete turnaround. There was some, I think. You know I often talk I'll give you a. Let me answer your question, then I'll give you them. Yeah, there were times when I thought I was great, but because I defined it it as 100%. It's just yeah, you can't.

Speaker 2: 31:12

One of my pet peeves when people say I gave 110%, you don't have 110. There is no 110. And I appreciate what the construct they're trying to say pushing yourself. No, it's like the crew thing, like my 100% is to get us there in six minutes. I got us in five minutes and 55 seconds. I did more than a hundred percent. Well, you just reset. What a hundred percent is? That's new love.

Speaker 2: 31:32

But but that concept, yes, there are probably some times when I might've been a little bit I don't know too cute by half about saying no, the IPO was great, it just wasn't really the accomplishment I wanted for the company. I think we could have done better. Or my last time I sold the company at the highest multiple SaaS offer company I'd ever had. That was a pretty good outcome. Ceo should feel good, the whole team should feel good about that. But there were some things that just weren't quite optimized in those periods and I think it's important to always tell yourself that the grade you would give yourself is lower than the grade you'd give the company If you're the CEO or general manager for your business, because telling people I'm better than you are and I'm pulling us up, it's a hugely odd message to send, and you and I have talked about this before.

Speaker 2: 32:21

I think the leadership model I try to think about is the inverted pyramid. Instead of a CEO at the top and then all these people coming down, I say the job of a leader is to make everyone else on the team successful. So you should think about it as an inverted leadership model. And the simple example is that if you think about a company, particularly if it gets to scale, even if you have a lot of self-confidence, managed ego I have a lot of self-confidence. The best I could be at a company of scale let's say there's a thousand employees maybe I could be as good as three or four people. I would have to just be in my A game constantly. Best case, I could be as good as three or four actually, but if I could make each of those thousand people 10% better, that's like hundreds of people you've added of good work, so it just swamps it, and so if you get your mindset to think like that versus to think top, down ones, so it just swamps it.

Speaker 2: 33:09

And so if you get your mindset to think like that, versus to think top down, I think it helps you to achieve.

Speaker 3: 33:15

I like the we, not me, concept over there. Yeah, when you think about how leaders can accurately assess where they fall on this scale, can they accurately self-assess, or does it require some external measurements? I'm the only one that can self-assess.

Speaker 2: 33:32

You're the only one Awesome, sorry, sorry. Of course, everyone can do your own self-assessment. In fact, doing a self-assessment is great. More valuable for most of us probably two is to ask the people you work with, ask your colleagues, ask the team you manage, ask your manager hey, how do you think about me? In this format, and that would be the fun exercise. If you're doing it as a management team, I should do this actually my next gig. You should actually just ask everyone to do that assessment for everyone on the team and then you give people the sense of here's what you said about you and here's what the rest of us said about you.

Speaker 2: 34:04

In each of these dimensions, I think it could be really powerful way, and I'll tell you that the hard part about it is assessing. You try to think about assessing people when you don't have a lot of data. Most people, if you work with colleagues and you ask people oh yeah, francesca, usually people have a pretty similar view. The hard part is like when you're interviewing someone and you meet them and you say, hey, should we hire this person? You're trying to assess how successful they'll be. It's much harder to figure out some of these things. There's some things that are typically around the smarts and skills. People have degrees and things, or people have a track record where they've delivered tremendous performance. So you see some areas where you can get that.

Speaker 2: 34:41

The ego one, of course, is the hardest one, although the work one is interesting because a lot of people tout how hard they work and again they're just about working hard. It's about working smart. Sometimes you can't completely rock that. You get a better sense from other people, but the ego one is the hardest one and the way I'll give you my fun interview question. I love to ask people. If it were you, mel, I would say hey. So, mel, if I had in the room everyone that you've been working with for the last five years, but you weren't there and I said to them what's really great about what Mel does? What would they say? And then you answered that question and then, when I'm finished, I said, hey, if I asked that same group, what are the things Mel should be working on? What are some areas where you know Mel could be a little more effective?

Speaker 2: 35:27

What would they say to that? And of course, everyone loves the first question. First of all, they'd say I'm the smartest person. They give you, as they should. You're giving them a softball to say what's great about you, yeah. But the second question is interesting because there's basically three buckets of answers and some people are in tune with issues that they're working on and they've gotten feedback in the past. Maybe they've made some improvement, they know there's more, and that's a really thoughtful and great answer. Another answer is I don't think they have anything to say. Look, that would be it.

Speaker 3: 36:01

Look at what we're saying. Such a weird response.

Speaker 2: 36:02

Really they just have. No, they actually just they've never dawned on them that people might not think they're perfect and they may be great but just like. That's an indication that we ought to be probing further how effective they are in teams if it's never sort of done. But the worst answer of all is what I call the faux answer. And the faux answer is let me tell you what they'd say Now. First of all, they say I work too hard and carrying the load of the whole team makes everyone feel terrible because I do so much more than everyone else, and that's a real problem for people.

Speaker 2: 36:38

And they give two or three things that you're like the most ridiculous fake critique of all time. Then you actually realize this person's smart. They probably have some awareness of things that they could work on and be better, but they're manipulative and they're full of shit and they're basically going to say let me tell you how I can smooth that. That's actually indicative to me. They could be skilled and there might be certain roles where that sort of ability to communicate and feel if they're going to be an actor or something you might say that's a great skill, to be able to have right To improvise that answer. But to be a colleague, that's a person that's I'm going to be wary, I'm going to be wary. Can they really dedicate themselves to a mission to work with other people? So that's a great question to ask.

Speaker 3: 37:17

I love that question, Someone who worked in talent acquisition. I think it's such a smart question to ask because I've heard also those rehearsed answers and you're like, oh OK, yeah, I don't know about that. What are some ways? I guess, when you think about warning signs Because I would see that as a warning sign, just as you did but when someone's in the job, what are some of the warning signs that indicate ego might be creeping up or interfering with their leadership effectiveness?

Speaker 2: 37:43

Core issue of where an ego is a problem is usually not in someone's self-led efforts around their interactions with the team, and so I think where we see people who are less effective team members and aren't able to the company or the team first, that's where you see it and you see it from their colleagues. And what do I be careful about? I'm a big believer in things like 360 feedback. I'm not actually a huge believer in massive programmatic you have your talent, background, sort of solutions but I think the discipline of getting feedback in a thoughtful, targeted way, as opposed to just lots of forms that people start filling out in a shitty way, is not, honestly, the key to success. It is in a thoughtful way, given the person and the individual. You as a manager do work, but getting that feedback from folks is great. One thing to be careful about is just because other people are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. Are unhappy with someone or complain about someone doesn't mean they're the problem. A lot of times we ask someone to carry some pretty heavy water and drive some pretty aggressive performance and some people might not like that and they might say that's a bad person. A lot of times. Let's get this at.

Speaker 2: 38:45

Docusign or CPL would say they're not living the DocuSign values. They were very important. We had this really strong set of values. Docu DocSend's an amazing company and it's got some things that are really strong. By the way, we've had some challenges last couple of years. Some of those values have allowed us, I think, to maintain more success. But it's really easy to pull the values card and say I don't like the way Mel's doing that and so I'm going to say throw the value set. I'd be really careful that the person that's willing to throw that might not just be doing well, they might be actually saying the scrutiny and management I'm getting is making me uncomfortable. And the person is trying to give me aggressive feedback and somehow I missed the memo that said feedback is a gift and since I didn't think feedback was a gift, I think the person's riding me really hard, but actually they're trying to make me better. So get feedback but make sure you're triangulating and then get observations yourself. That's how I'd propose attacking that role.

Speaker 1: 39:41

Okay, here's a question. I feel like we have a lot of representations of ego in the extreme. I've seen very high up leaders, board members, ceos, it could be even a manager. I've seen individual contributors and they're so egocentric they're bordering on narcissistic or maybe they are or just a straight psycho. We've all worked for them. What do you like? Some of those environments incent that, incent that behavior, reward that behavior. If you're in an organization that you feel like that's happening, or you're walking into a culture where that day that's happening, how do you start to advocate for more of this balance? How do you operate as yourself? If you're someone that isn't that way and likes to operate with more of the balance, do you go? What do you do? What's the play there?

Speaker 2: 40:29

So, the first thing is why? Why do you want to do what you're describing you want to do? Do you diagnose that there's a problem in the company? You see a performance challenge happening at some point, or we have a nutrition problem because we have some people's behaviors driving good people out. I'd like to try to understand what the thing I'm trying to fix is before I take my remedy. But in general, I'm a big believer in we motivate people with incentive structures. Some of those are financial incentive structures, some of the praise, all sorts of levels that we have for incentives for people. And so if you're driving behavior and you're seeing it not just one individual, but you're seeing it more creep into your business in a way that you think it's not healthy, I'd look at your incentive structure.

Speaker 2: 41:08

And so one of the phenomenas is you might say we have a lot of individual achievement awards. Let's go to a team award and a company could take a bonus approach and say it's subjectively based on each individual's performance. Or you could say we're going to have a total team outcome. These are our top three goals, and if we achieve them we all win in that award, and if we don't, that's one lever. But I think that kind of concept is thinking about what you've put in place in your organization to drive the behavior you're driving. And the other one and this is one that I don't understand why more people don't do it other than you know. I have some conflict avoidance in my own nature, so I understand it's a human phenomenon. We often avoid conflict, francesca, less you than the rest of us. You're so nice.

Speaker 2: 41:52

You spiked on that in a good way, but the answer is talk about it. I don't know. We have this thing where everyone's in a closed room secretly saying, oh, Billy's doing this and Susie's doing this. Hey, Billy, Susie, people think you're being a jerk and I don't know why. That's not who I think you are. So let's go show them that's wrong and what are the things we're going to do together to have it? And I think, same thing Not everyone accepts feedback as a gift at the beginning, but you have to explain to them.

Speaker 2: 42:18

You want to be successful here. You're going to work with me in addressing this feedback and I think you would find most people 90%-ish people if they know that you care about them and they know that you respect them, they will take that feedback and they will want to be better. And there's some people who just can't take it or see it feels too personal and they have to say it's not me, it's the person that's complaining. Understand that there's a cycle. You go through that process. Past that, I think most people can say you know what? I want to be better, I want to be more effective, so I want to work on it.

Speaker 1: 42:52

Yeah, Mel and I are. We're writing a book and we just came out of research and that's the number one thing around being feeling like you're being respected and valued. You cannot have feedback, trust, development, conversation, anything without that. That is the base, for you have to have that mutual respect and that mutual value, and I think it's something that we overlook or we assume it's just there yeah, right and we've never had a goddamn conversation about it.

Speaker 2: 43:20

Yeah, and I'll, yeah. Um, and you have data. And so what happens when you have data? You sometimes that ad is just nobody cares what you know until they know that you care. And so if you're there, you say I got all this information, make you better. I'm like, are you trying to make better? If you're there and you say I got all this information to make you better, I'm like are you trying to make better? Are you setting me up for failure? Like when I understand that you're. When you show up to tell me something, it's because you care about me and you care about the success of what we're building together. Yeah, then I really do want to know, I want to understand, I care about this feedback that's going to make me better.

Speaker 1: 43:49

Yeah, I think starting with care is such a huge thing. Starting with care might be your answer to my next question, which is I'm dead. It's a little crazy out there these days, but it's a little uncertain. Yeah, hashtag tariffs, speaking of incentive structures as opposed to sticks. I am curious, though if you're a leader, especially if you're a C-level executive, and you have the entire company on your shoulders and you're trying to navigate uncertainty it could be now, it could be in the future, I don't care, but I am curious about how you protect that balance of your ego as you're going through that, because I have to believe that it might be up and down, depending on what situation you're in, what win you have, what punch you just took in the phase. How do you maintain and balance that ego when you are just in a blitzkrieg of bullshit?

Speaker 2: 44:40

Yeah, two things. One, it was harder for me to insightfully answer that question today because I'm at a place where I've had so much good fortune in my career and I've gotten a lot of boost. That makes me feel good about myself professionally, and not that I don't have things I'm constantly working on, for sure, but I've been so fortunate that I don't walk around with a chip on my shoulder that I, you know, because of this crisis or some other, I either need to prove myself. I do feel like I need to prove myself every day, but I don't feel like I'm coming from a defensive way of doing that and proving myself. So that makes it easier. But if I go back a couple IPOs ago, yeah, I think it's a real challenge.

Speaker 2: 45:20

I think what you're describing is absolutely a challenge, and the more that the market gets crazy your market, whatever that is it's easy to feel like it's unfair and lashing out and attacking, and then sometimes even the people that are close to you. You should be pulling together. Some people are critical of them. We're blaming. You know the blame game. If you just sold more, we wouldn't have this problem. So it's your fault.

Speaker 2: 45:42

Sales is fault, which has been a huge issue, by the way, in enterprise software the last couple of years, the number of companies, because I spent a lot of time talking to people about running more software companies that say a company is great, the only problem is our sales team. If we just had a new head of sales, it's going to be great. I'm like really, because every software company is saying the same thing. Is it really just the sales leaders? I don't think so, and so I do think the hard thing when everything is going crazy like that is to just go back and say what can I control and what can I not? I can't control tariffs, I can't control any of these things. I have to make decisions based on the fact that some externalities are there and those external factors are happening. But I have to go back to our team and say I don't know what the outcome is. I just can't tell you what the outcome is going to be, but I can tell you what the inputs are and we're going our very best at doing it in the way we believe and at the quality that we believe we can deliver for our customers, for employees, whatever. And let's just do that, because that's what we can control, and I know it's the same thing like stock price is a phenomenon.

Speaker 2: 46:41

Companies go public and every CEO gives the same speech, or pretty much every CEO. Guys, we can't control the stock price. You shouldn't be spending time looking at the stock price. That response is early on. I made this thing. I said I'm not going to look at the stock price except for Friday afternoon every week. I will not look at the stock If you ask me about it. I don't want to know. I don't care. I don't want to know what the stock price is. What am I going to do on any given day? How are you.

Speaker 1: 47:06

This is a backward.

Speaker 2: 47:07

This isn't that. Leaving is a backward indicator. We got to be focused on our business and getting people out of that mindset. Actually, one thing we did response is we had the IPO and we didn't go ring the bell in New York. We did the IPO. We came back to the office and we were with the office and the people and the day after IPO we said let's play Sales to do. We got product to build. We got customers to take care of. We said what happened to go public yesterday? It's fun and Our customers take care of it. What happened to go public yesterday? It was fun and we should all feel good about it. It was a nice accomplishment. Back to work, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter in the context of what we have to do every day. I'm sure we care about it and create liquidity for people. Lots of wonderful things that happen. I'm not against celebrating. I'm all about celebrating. Why do we have the opportunity to celebrate?

Speaker 3: 48:03

Because, because we did these other things really well for the last several years, so let's keep doing those things. Looking back at your younger self and what you know now, what do you wish you could tell your younger self?

Speaker 2: 48:10

I think probably a couple things. One is I didn't have a lot of patience, I was in a hurry and I think it's okay to be moving fast, but I think I would tell myself as part of that smell the roses, enjoy the time, enjoy the experiences you're having, and I sometimes skip things to get on to the next, and sometimes I think that's a mistake a lot of us make. And life it's not the end, it's the journey and really making sure you enjoy the journey. And that probably is mostly then around investing in relationships, and not necessarily just like your most important relationship, but the people you know that are just wonderful. It could be colleagues, could be friends, any number of places. Really take advantage of those personal relationships. That is what life is fun to do. So that'd be number one.

Speaker 2: 48:59

Number two, and there's no question, after the practice speech I gave you on this topic earlier, I would tell myself to chill, cool my jets a little bit about then and realize that the joy I was going to get in life, the real joy I have, comes from seeing other people being successful, and I had to accumulate a certain amount of professional success and personal success before I could start to do that. So I missed a lot of years of a lot of joy I could have had. I think I had little snippets of it. I'm not a total jerk. I did care about the people I worked with but it was all in the lens of they could be successful to make me more successful. And if I think I could have just appreciated them more for them and been better for them, starting that sooner I would get a lot more joy. So those would probably be the two things. There's probably a lot of things I would tell myself, but those would be the. Those would be the.

Speaker 3: 49:52

I like it. The second one, especially when you think of giving their best advice to emerging leaders, that's like a big takeaway that they can start today. Okay.

Speaker 1: 49:59

Rapid round questions. You can answer these with one word or a sentence, or however long you want. Sometimes these are our most interesting questions. Are you ready to play? I'm ready to play. Okay, it is 2030. What does work look like? Work will be very similar to what it is today in the post-COVID world Very similar.

Speaker 2: 50:25

All right, interesting. No, I should elaborate. I thought I was supposed to do rapid fire.

Speaker 1: 50:28

Wait, now, I want to know the answer. Wait, why do you think it's going to be similar? Why do you think it's going to be similar?

Speaker 2: 50:35

I think we've had a lot of transformational change going into and coming out of COVID and I think the amount of change in the way we work, assimilate is limited. We're humans and we have our patterns and we have our trends. So I think we've gotten to this place. I don't think it's exactly equilibrium, but in terms of our people going to be in the office, are they going to be remote, I think we're getting to that zone of where we're going to be. I would add, I think artificial intelligence will change the way we work, but I think it's going to be less impact. It'll be massively impactful on business, less impactful on people than I think we realize, because we're adaptable and the things that get automated and then we do things as humans that can't be automated. So I don't think that will change as much as some people are forecasting in the next five years.

Speaker 2: 51:15

Are you an AI optimist? I'm an optimist, for sure. Yeah, I definitely. I have my I call it terminator awareness of what's happening. I just don't see it. I really don't. Maybe it's my. I'm an optimist. I'm also. My faith in humanity is pretty high. Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic.

Speaker 1: 51:31

That's good. There's a lot of really awesome possibility there. I'm stoked for it. I'm stoked for it. Yeah, what music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 2: 51:39

I've been listening to Dave Matthews almost nonstop the last 10 days. Nothing wrong with a little DMV. We had Dave come to an event. Jane Goodall introduced him to me. We did an event at DocuSign. He is the funniest person I've ever been on stage with. If he was an actor, I don't know if you know this before he became a musician he was an actor.

Speaker 2: 51:59

He's been in a number of films since he's become famous, but he is just the funniest. He has the driest, quick-witted sense of humor that I never would have fully understood, even though I've been a fan for years and then joined C&M on stage, so Dave was the bomb Best session ever. At any event, Get out. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 52:18

I always read him as like either really awkward to talk to or making like really uncomfortable jokes period.

Speaker 3: 52:26

Yeah, I got the impression. He seems like a good call.

Speaker 2: 52:29

So he roasted me in front. He had the DocuSign employee base and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that the docuside employee based and customers and he was constantly making fun of me in a way that, of course, that audience love oh sure so you know he knew his audience.

Speaker 2: 52:40

Um, yeah, he's a musical genius. So you're right, sometimes there's oddities with people who are creative geniuses. Uh, there's some of that awkwardness. He's so genuine. I'll just say one little snippet. We should move past dave matthews, but he moved to seattle from charlottesville where they really got going. So he lives in in the seattle area and up until this is about five years ago, he just moved out of a one bathroom house with his three children and his wife and he was just like, yeah, and driving his 1970 something volvo, he's just a guy, that's like.

Speaker 2: 53:13

I don't have any heirs. He's just the same person that I think he wanted to be ever since he was probably 20 or something like that. Yeah, he's a treasure.

Speaker 1: 53:22

See that story restores my faith in humanity. Honestly Like that's it. Okay, what are you reading? What are you reading?

Speaker 2: 53:29

So I just finished reading something I half read. It was embarrassing Principles by Ray Dalio, which is a tome of a big book. But the exciting thing that I just started reading again and I think I read it before. But I'm embarrassed. I can remember his Profiles in Courage. It was a Pulitzer Prize winning, jfk wrote it and it's one of those books that everyone knows about, but then you just maybe never read. And anyway, jillian got it for me and I saw it at a bookstore. He's a bookstore and I'm reading it and he's a gifted writer, in addition to being such a special politician.

Speaker 1: 54:05

It's also interesting to go back, even if you have read something way back, to go back and reread it. All right, here's my last question for you. What piece of advice would you give someone? What's your best piece of advice for them?

Speaker 2: 54:15

Oh, if it's mildly professional advice I suppose there's other realms, but I guess this would fit more broadly is in life the key is to find I used to be a consultant, so I like to do everything in two by two matrices. It is to find the combination of the things that you're good at and the things you like doing and get into that upper right corner. And I think the biggest thing that people sometimes forget is the things you like, and I think we're naturally drawn to. We get positive feedback on the things we're good at, but finding that intersection of the things you really love doing, that's the thing that you need to focus on.

Speaker 1: 54:48

It makes it really enjoyable, right? I look forward to it.

Speaker 3: 54:50

Cool, love it. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2: 54:53

Me as well. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3: 55:00

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials. And if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends. Thank you.

Open Talent

Your Work Friends Podcast: Open Talent with John Winsor

Rigid roles are out, and fluid talent is in. John Winsor breaks down the open talent revolution—and why your next big opportunity won’t come from climbing a ladder, but from thinking like a portfolio builder.

In this episode, we sit down with John Winsor, Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School’s Digital, Design, and Data (D³) Institute, Open Assembly Founder and Author of many books including Open Talent: Leveraging a Global Workforce to Solve Your Biggest Challenges,

We dug into how the open talent revolution is transforming how we work. John unpacks why both companies and workers are shifting to portfolio careers, and reveals why "we own employees" is a dying concept being replaced by "I'm gonna make it so sexy and attractive that I'm gonna attract you into it." Adopting an abundance mindset can unlock new career growth.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

One of the things I could never figure out is like leaders, where did the concept of we own employees ever come from? It's such a crazy concept, right? It's all my people. I do the work that I am demanding they do. What the fuck? That's so crazy. Hey guys, I've got a cool project over here. I'm going to make it so sexy and so attractive that I'm going to attract you into it, and then I'm going to take you into it, and then I'm going to take really good care of you, and that always seems to work out better, right.

Speaker 2: 0:43

Welcome to your Work friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We are breaking work down, so you get ahead, Mel.

Speaker 3: 0:52

How are you doing? I am doing excellent. Thank you very much. It is like 70 degrees, I can't complain. How about you Listen?

Speaker 2: 1:00

it's good, Mel. Do you know where your water meter is?

Speaker 3: 1:05

No, I have no freaking clue. It's somewhere outside of my house, but I just get those ads all the time about buying insurance in case the water pipe breaks from the street to your house.

Speaker 2: 1:14

Yeah, I came home from dropping off Enzo and the city was outside, they're flushing the fire hydrants, but they couldn't find our water meter, and so I was like, do you know where your water meter is?

Speaker 3: 1:24

And I'm like if the city can't find it, what does that mean for you?

Speaker 2: 1:28

You're just shit out of luck. Yeah, not stealing a lot of confidence from our friends? Are you guys billing me? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 1:35

Yeah Well, we had such an amazing conversation and just fun conversation with John Windsor. Conversation and just fun conversation with John Windsor, the author of Open Talent. For those of you who don't know John, he's an entrepreneur, he's a thought leader and he's a global authority figure on the future of work. He's currently the executive in residence at Harvard Business School's Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard Lish. Founder and chairman of Open Assembly and, among many. First, john founded Victor and Spoils in 2009, the world's first ad agency that sourced from the crowd. He is the co-author of Open Talent and also the author of Flipped Spark Beyond the Brand and the co-author of Baked In Just an all-around rad person doing pretty amazing things. How do you feel about this conversation?

Speaker 2: 2:28

Listen, john's one of those guys you just want to. Can I just talk to you about life in general?

Speaker 3: 2:33

The insights from this episode awesome, and we've been talking about open talent for years.

Speaker 2: 2:40

If you don't know what open talent is in general, it's basically that organizations will move to having contract or gig like work, either sourcing those gigs either internally in their organization so you can move around and do more projects, as opposed to being decked to one team and one boss for years and years and years. Right, you're going to move around to different projects based on your skills, or they're going to get that talent externally. You and I have been working in this way, mel, for the last 10 years with Deloitte. We worked with this all the time.

Speaker 3: 3:13

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

You. We had what was called adaptive organizations, where you had a core of full-time folks that were really geared towards strat and relationship and we hired out right when we needed to for the projects. We did this all the time. This is something that's going to become more and more the norm, especially with AI, especially as organizations are getting really focused on only having full-time workers that serve their core competence or, quite honestly, it makes sense financially for them to carry full time. It has massive benefits to an organization. It has really interesting benefits to employees that want to live a portfolio type of life.

Speaker 3: 3:54

It's also a huge retention play for that core group if they can get it right internally.

Speaker 2: 4:00

Listen, if you're going to learn about this topic from anyone, you're going to want to learn about it from John. Not only has he lived this with Victor and Spoils, with Open Assembly and with Harvard, he sees this all the time. Plus, he just gets life Great person to learn from.

Speaker 3: 4:15

With you on that. Listen, get the book. Get the book, go to his website. We'll include all the socials here so you can follow him, because you absolutely should and with that here's Jon Windsor.

Speaker 2: 4:43

All right, jon, we're here to talk about open talent.

Speaker 1: 4:45

Yeah, which is very exciting.

Speaker 2: 4:48

I loved reading this book. It actually brought me back to my Deloitte days because and you mentioned Deloitte in the book- multiple times. Yeah, yeah, and you've lived this life with Victor and Spoils and Open Assembly. This has been your world.

Speaker 1: 5:02

It has been how would you define open talent.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Open talent is just an operating system. Where you have it depends on the side of the situation, though. From a company perspective, it's really relying on variable costs. Talent right From an individual side, it's having a portfolio career and having the confidence to do that. It's hard because I think we've all been taught at work there are all these rules and regulations and you can't step over the line and you might have to do something that breaks some kind of unsaid cultural rule or legal rule, whereas when you're on your own, you got to pay attention to everything. You've got to be way more optimistic and way more aggressive, and that's a huge shift for a lot of people. It's really been difficult for people to shift.

Speaker 1: 5:44

So for us I use the term because I was trying to figure out a term that certainly born out of open source software. That, to me, was the first thing, but secondly, it's like how do you think about open talent externally, building external talent clouds and internally, like how do I create a system that allows everybody in the company to participate in a way that helps the company get to the outcomes they need but yet gives the freedom to people for them to explore and be a part of advancing their career. It could be a software engineer going. This stuff sucks. I want to be in marketing. What's the opportunity? Most people have to leave the organization to do that and how do we create an internal talent marketplace that allow for that exploration.

Speaker 1: 6:26

And then my history is more around the idea of crowdsourcing ideas and we built a bunch of stuff at Harvard with NASA, around the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation to solve really hard problems. And over again we see that crowds always trump experts and it's because of the adjacent knowledge and the ability to not be encumbered by tried and true ways of doing things that are very linear. It's very much throwing caution to the wind and trying new things. So those are the three legs to the Open Talents Tool and I tried to use a term that built off some history, played to the idea of open and then laid some groundwork that you can use it anywhere.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Organizations. In my experience, they'll start with the external marketplace. Oh, we're going to start hiring folks from open assembly or Upwork or something like that. They'll do an external marketplace where they're trying to bring in folks to do project-based work or at the most basic level. One of the things that's been so interesting to me is, to your very good point, I find most organizations lag on the internal marketplace. My entire career has been in talent development and it's so interesting that most organizations are sitting on such raw talent that career development is the number one thing people want, more than pay your rear, and that mobility internally is such a key thing. Have you found the same thing that most people feel like it's easier to go external than it is to queue that up internal? Do they do it at the same time and why? Yeah, I love compound questions.

Speaker 1: 8:01

No, it's great. I think that the issue really is the managerial level and it's really talent hoarding. If you've got a really great team, you're like, oh, I can't have them, instead of going hey, you guys, in the context of my team, you guys are all hired guns, like you're working here because you want to on this team. You're working here because I need you. If I do something wrong, you might want to jump off the team. So need you. If I do something wrong, you might want to jump off the team. So why not start from the basis of just hey, come if you want, leave if you want, if you need some help doing something else, totally fine. But if you're not passionate about it, you're like life's way too short. But I think it's that change in the leadership and the bureaucracy and the allowing. One of the things I could never figure out is like leaders. Where did the concept of we own employees ever come from? It's such a crazy concept. Right, it's all my people. I do the work that I am demanding they do. What the fuck? That's so crazy. Hey guys, I've got a cool project over here. I'm going to make it so sexy and so attractive that I'm going to attract you into it and then I'm going to take really good care of you and that always seems to work out better, right? If you can say it's an honor to work with you guys, come be a part of it. I'll make it really important for your career, for you as an individual, instead of saying you got to be here at this time and these are the requirements and blah, blah, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1: 9:23

I think it's the old white man issue in culture, right? I think that's what happened over COVID and I think that's why there's been some push to return to office. Is that, like old white guys sit in a corner office all by themselves, they've judged their importance and their identity on how many people were in the cubicles outside their office and, sorry, it doesn't work that way anymore. People do great work all over the world and you just want the best talent. So that's a shift, right? Do I want to control the talent? Because if you want to control the talent, you are not going to get the best talent. Or do I want to work with the best talent and like, how do I do that? How can I be curious? How can I get people engaged?

Speaker 2: 10:09

Yeah, it also reminds me of something that I read in the book. Mel and I both sorry Mel, not to out you. It's fine, we're both a bunch of woo-woos and one of the things that you talked about in the book was abundance and this idea of abundance. It's so funny because more and more I'm just like oh shit, it's everywhere. Woo-woo is everywhere.

Speaker 1: 10:19

As in Vine's new book, right, yes, I mean which is fantastic, and I agree.

Speaker 2: 10:25

I feel like there's been this model of scarcity. This is mine, this is my piece of the pie. I'm going to piss through everything, so I protect my territory. No, you can't have this talent, even if it's in the same company versus.

Speaker 3: 10:41

Even if they aren't doing anything right now. It's so selfish.

Speaker 2: 10:48

It's so selfish, it's so selfish it is. It is, and moving into that kind of abundance mindset is a really interesting flip around. There's enough great work to go around. There's enough currency from a leadership perspective to go around. The other thing that I was always so surprised by as someone running a team there are always times where it's way cheaper to contract that out or bring in somebody for a smaller period of time, or you can be the best planner and still have these oh shit moments. We need staff, aug here, or we need someone to take this on. It's so interesting that even in the most numbers-driven organizations that they don't get the efficiency play and a budget play. It's a slam dunk Totally. I think you a slam dunk Totally.

Speaker 1: 11:25

I think you're really hitting into something. It is a scarcity mindset, but I can't. Maybe I'm trying to defend the old white guys, being an old white guy.

Speaker 1: 11:33

But I think what's happened is the whole world was set up for white guys to be managers, right, you go to Harvard Business School, where I work, and you get your degree and you have a system and you have a process. And then you go to a big company like a Deloitte and then they have a process and a system and anything that's variance outside that system just doesn't work. But one of the problems so many companies are having is that mindset is a vestige of an industrial age and truly you think about Drucker's work or even more modern thinkers like Jim Collins work. The philosophy is a scarce philosophy because the raw materials, the talent it was scarce. He didn't know where to get it. Education was really scarce, but I have to hire from an Ivy league school because that Ivy league business school education is way better than anything else and not so much. It was like I, I gotta get this raw material from somewhere because there's only one place in the world to get it and it's really limited. Probably not that way anymore and now that we're in this digital age where there's much, much more abundance, I think we're going to see that completely accelerate. With ai, yeah is that we don't have to think that way anymore, but it's's a vestige.

Speaker 1: 12:43

One of the things we talked for a second about the Ezra Klein book and one of the things I found so interesting is he really takes on kind of democratic cities that have created scarcity through bureaucracy around housing, and I noticed it here in Boulder. One of the things that's really interesting is, yeah, boulder's become way bigger than it was and it's a bummer for all of us. You guys live in Portland, right? One of the problems is we've had this kind of let's shut the gate after we're here, and so one of the things that's happened, which I didn't really understand and I really resonated with that Ezra Klein abundance idea, was that boulders become outrageously expensive. There's still a three-story limit to buildings, and if you could take a building and build a five-story building instead of a three-story building, all of a sudden it makes economic sense to do low-income housing, but at a three-story building you can't cost it out to do that, and so by having this, we've got to make the place beautiful. We've got to make sure this is a scarce resource. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that there's not enough pie to go around. I think that same thing applies inside companies that over decades have had this kind of scarce commodity Even in the beginning of the digital age.

Speaker 1: 14:07

I still have this vestige of I got to get rid of some of the photos on my phone because there's just so much shitty. I took a picture to send to my wife on a piece of pizza. Do I really want that as a memory? But then I think about like in the IFD of abundance is like. It doesn't cost me anything, it doesn't. I shouldn't worry about. Like. Why would I worry about that? Why would I sit around for two hours and select the photos on my phone that I need to throw out?

Speaker 1: 14:36

The reason we do that is because at one time there was only so much room on our computer or our phones to do it, and so we needed to continually manage our resources, and so I think we're just seeing this kind of natural evolution towards abundance.

Speaker 2: 14:47

Yeah, I think there needs to be that switch right and there's that opportunity for that switch towards abundance in corporations. I'm wondering what your perspective is on folks that are working right now, because I feel like there is also a scarcity feel. Consumer sentiment is in the tank, hustling employers is in the tank. There is a fear that AI is going to take my job, absolutely. What's the abundance lens for employees, or is there one?

Speaker 1: 15:14

Yeah, I think there is. I think, first of all, that you got to dissuade the scarce mindset of living beyond your means. I don't know about you guys, but the happiest people I know doesn't matter where they are on the economic scale If they are somehow having more income than they spend. It could be some dude living on a beach. He gets, catches tons of fish and he does the whole like coconuts and he's totally happy, right, yeah, so I think that's the thing, right, that the kind of abundant mindset. There's more tomorrow, that. And I find that interestingly in places like mexico or indonesia or even japan. I was just in japan skiing and I just so surprised how people are just so gentle and so thoughtful, and I think it's because they have this abundance they don't have to be on that bus or even though the bus is small, there's abundant space to put another two or three people in. So it's just this really beautiful sense of it's all going to be okay. But it's hard if you've got a huge mortgage and you're stressed and you buy into all this stress. I don't know. I think that's part of it is refactoring things.

Speaker 1: 16:19

I'm teaching some stuff at Harvard, but I'm teaching a class at Denver University and on freelance and what? My assumption is that we're all going to have portfolio jobs. You guys do, I do. That's just the future, right, it's just what we do. But how do we train these kids to do it? And so it's like a one-day sprint. But one of my really odd takeaways is there are all these rules and regulations around AI. So I decided it's going to be a class about using AI to create a class about AI, and the kids are going to be in charge of designing a class with AI about the best way to teach kids about AI. Does that make sense?

Speaker 3: 16:59

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:00

So I only want to do it because I want to poke the bear. There's lots of 20-year-old professors that have been there for 20 years. They use the same syllabus and I want the kids to so rock new kinds of syllabuses and say, oh, this took me 10 minutes to do, oh, I can bring this out in a half an hour.

Speaker 1: 17:16

And I want to be open about it. I want to be like the next time a professor tells you not to use AI. Use AI, Sure to use AI, Because this is the future. This is what we need to learn. We all need to learn this. It's a new skill we've got to learn and we've got to look at it abundantly. Try to be creative about it.

Speaker 3: 17:43

I love where this is going because I'm a huge believer in open talent concept. I think as someone who's worked in talent my whole career and then worked in talent acquisition, and you see the talent that comes into an organization. You also see when it leaves and you're like what happened to that guy? He was awesome and I think a lot of it is like that lack of opportunity, as you said, like things can get stale or they might have a leader who's holding on to them for dear life Right but they're not really thinking about the employee and what they need to feel purpose and meaning in the work that they do. So I love this concept and really believe in it. I also think there's a huge opportunity to unbreak innovation within an organization, because what keeps me up at night is how much innovation is lost because we don't have this type of model.

Speaker 1: 18:26

When you think about who didn't we tap into to find, like hot Cheetos no it's funny because I just was on a conversation yesterday with a consulting company that won't be named.

Speaker 2: 18:37

Does it rhyme with Beloit? Yeah, just joking.

Speaker 1: 18:41

That's a good guess but I can't confirm or deny. And there was a new senior person and we were having a conversation and I was like how's it going?

Speaker 2: 18:50

And I don't know.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I'm like how's it going? He's on board. He's been like six weeks and I'm getting there and I got another five weeks and I'll talk to you in six or seven weeks about this project that we were supposed to start like eight months ago and I was like I don't know if I'll be around then, but try my phone and if I'm up for something then great. But good luck with that onboarding. I'm glad you're going. Everything about the family history of the organization and what they were doing back in the 1800s.

Speaker 3: 19:15

Exciting stuff. Exciting stuff, exciting stuff.

Speaker 1: 19:17

Really relevant to how you do your job.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Yeah, oh man, I'm really excited about where your work is headed. One of the things that you talked about was moving away from hierarchies to networks. I love that because I think about the silos and all the dollars lost on redundant work that happens across organizations. But you have those organizations that are just holding on to this so tight, like this is how it works. How do organizations who are so used to this hierarchical structure, how do they even start to begin to make that shift so this works for them?

Speaker 1: 19:49

If you figure that out, will you let me know?

Speaker 3: 19:53

Yeah, what's one small step they can take to test and learn.

Speaker 1: 19:57

It starts with an open dialogue, right, and, unfortunately, the things that I see. I don't know if you guys see it, but the bottom's just begging for this, right, like Z folks trying to be more flexible, and the very top is really focused on the outcomes and it goes beyond the C-level and gets dropped into some bureaucracy and everybody starts following the rules and it's just crazy. It's just really crazy, I think, especially with ai, for those leaders that are more curious.

Speaker 1: 20:26

They're just going to go around the bureaucracy, right, they're just going to go yeah I'm going to take some smart people, give them some ai tools, go build, build something. Blow up the bureaucracy. We did a case study recently on Coursera and they have a really amazing CEO and he's trying to figure out how to push things with AI and one of the examples he used his team came up with and one of the examples was when you have a course and you want to translate it into 20 different languages right, so 20 courses, 20 different languages. It was 12 weeks and $10,000 per translation, and so that's $4 million. Somebody on his team said I think I can do this in chat, gpt, and now the system costs him $40 per translation and takes about three hours to do with that, with the fact checking and somebody leaning into it. So I, so it's saved them.

Speaker 1: 21:22

What is that? Eight hundred dollars or something like that. It's such a radical shift in cost. But to me, the really magical thing is that was a huge friction point. Certainly some people who are translators lost their jobs and that's a real bummer. But but for the rest of the organization sitting around waiting 12 weeks for a translation, it just kills the organization. Like I got a new course. Is it in Spanish? Damn, it's not in Spanish. It won't be in Spanish for 12 weeks. I'm off to the next thing.

Speaker 3: 21:50

But it's also like thinking about those translators and how do you continue to use them to be that human checkpoint for AI, right? Like how do you take that group of people and use them elsewhere?

Speaker 1: 22:00

I think some of it has to be mandated.

Speaker 2: 22:02

I was at this.

Speaker 1: 22:02

Eric Von Hippel is this crazy, really amazing guy that in his eighties at MIT works on user innovation, and Charlie Shee's guy from Harvard. We had this round table and we're talking about innovation. So charlie told the story which just totally blew my mind. The port of la, the biggest port in america, 10 000 workers, all union longshoremen, just had a strike last year. What they didn't resolve in the strike was automation. That's still on the table. They're still arguing about it. It takes five minutes to load a container. Once the truck pulls up a container onto a ship, right. So 10,000 people, five minutes to get the work done, organized, but very disorganized. Then he showed a picture of a port in Shenzhen in China, four times as big. It takes 10 seconds not five minutes, but 10 seconds to put a container on a ship Four times as big. Guess how many employees works at the dock 200.

Speaker 1: 23:05

Zero, oh yeah, really, yeah. Zero. It's all automated, it's all powered by hydro. There are like 25 people sitting in a control tower oh sure, yeah, the core crew yeah, but nobody is down near the ships, it's all automated.

Speaker 1: 23:22

And and charlie's point is a really good point we're sitting here fighting about people holding on to legacy jobs, saying my grandfather was a longshoreman, my dad was longshoreman, I deserve to be a longshoreman, my dad was a longshoreman, I deserve to be a longshoreman. And in China their point is sorry, technology replaced that. Here's three training modules or three different training paths you can do, but you don't have a job as a longshoreman. That is no longer a job that you have. And I know that we get into this weird place, especially in the US, on like self-determination and choice and things like that, but unfortunately we can decide to change the type of employment that we have and mandate it, or the market's going to decide for us, and I would suggest that the turn of the last century. There are probably a lot of buggy whip manufacturers and people that made buggy whips that were really good, but I don't know too many buggy whip manufacturers anymore that are around and a lot of people got displaced, but that's just the way it goes.

Speaker 3: 24:18

What are those folks that used to walk around to light the lanterns or to wake people up in the morning? That job went away too. I feel like in every generation there's that shift. It's great that legacy existed in some of these jobs with your family, and there's something really special about that when you think about it. But at the same time it's did you want to do this job because of that or because it's what you really wanted? If, now that you have the opportunity to think about something else, you could maybe do, what does that look like for you?

Speaker 1: 24:43

What do you need to pay attention to, right? Do you guys remember? In the book there are all horses in one car and then, 10 years later, in 1913, there were all cars and one horse in 10 years. We're thinking that our progress is up going through the roof and we're changing so fast, but that would mean that our streets were all horses in 2015. And that there would be cars now. That would be like saying, oh, we had cars and now we have flying right autonomous and if you consider that tesla's been going since 2003, like this transition is not that fast.

Speaker 1: 25:29

And you could say that, oh, isn't it sad for all the people that took care of the horses and the stables and the people that picked up the shit on streets, and Some of those jobs weren't really great, but they needed to change. Sorry, we don't need your services for shoveling shit.

Speaker 2: 25:45

Here's my thing on that, though. China, for example, is offering retraining opportunities for people. So here are the three paths you can go on. I'm looking at organizations, and there are only 18% of organizations that are actively reskilling their people for new jobs.

Speaker 1: 26:02

And then, beyond that, what skills are human skills and what skills are synthetic skills? Right, a thousand percent.

Speaker 2: 26:08

Or hybrid or hybrid. My concern comes from whose responsibility is that to retrain those people? Is it government? Is it corporations? Because I don't see anyone taking up the reins there.

Speaker 1: 26:23

I know it's an irresponsibility right. Unfortunately, our unfettered capitalism is all about maximizing profits or shareholder return in the very short run and you can't think beyond the next quarter. So AI is a hot thing. Let's get rid of all these people and hire a bunch of AI people and not oh, that's's going. Let's retrain a bunch of people. They've already committed to the company. It's going to save us a ton of money. Here are the people that can really do that. It challenges the core western philosophy of self-determination. Right, you should have trained yourself on ai six months ago. We're going to hire somebody that has six months worth of experience.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 27:07

And I think we just need a little bit more of a collective mentality. There are pockets of companies that get it and usually, in my mind, they're usually singularly owned. They're owned by some maverick who doesn't really care that much. Yeah, I want to make more money, I want to do this, but I like Judy down in shipping, I'm going to take care of her. It's interesting, right, because I would say because Patagonia is always a really interesting case for me.

Speaker 1: 27:26

There are a lot of people at Patagonia that were there way too long, but they just so added to the culture. He answered the phones way after you needed a receptionist, but his name was Chipper Bro, and Chipper Bro remembered everybody's name. He remembered everything. You didn't go on hold. You talked to Chipper Bro. He's like where are you going on your next surf trip, dude? Oh yeah, I'd go here. It made Patagonia who they are, just that human connection.

Speaker 1: 27:56

But I think what happens is, if you have that kind of feeling, then, in the same breath, yvonne walked in one day, and long time ago, and 10% of the revenue was non-organic t-shirts, and he didn't like that idea. So he cut the t-shirt line and said let's put the money that we're going to make here into subsidizing farmers to grow organic cotton and then in five years we can buy that back and start t-shirts again, and that's really bold. But if you're secure, knowing that you're going to have employment, you're part of it. Even if you get let go in an honest, thoughtful way, then you're fine with it. But it's these kind of dark room, black box oh, this division has to go, no rhyme or reason. It sometimes feels. Oh, the CEO is not going to make his bonus unless he lops off a thousand employees.

Speaker 3: 28:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 28:44

And it just doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 28:45

Agree, you mentioned we have a very short window to start to get this right. So, when you think about this, if you test this tomorrow I'm thinking of the renegade we were just talking about that's not going to pay attention to the rules. And just let me try this out. For the renegade leaders out there who are like, yeah, I'm going to try this open talent model and how that lines up with AI too and what we need to look at, what would you advise for them to do to dip their toe in this?

Speaker 1: 29:11

I think first you have to have a mental model right. So you've got to have a thesis and you got to get agreement on the thesis. So, francesca, like you said, going from scarcity to abundance I think that's the first thing is saying the world's abundant. We have so many opportunities and we have to figure out how do we get to the opportunities we need to grow or to do whatever we want to accomplish. Above that, most companies even struggle with the idea of purpose, like why are you even in business, besides making a few people rich? So, understanding what your purpose is, understanding that it's really an abundant mindset. But then, after that, I think it's really getting focused on outcomes. What are the outcomes I need?

Speaker 1: 29:46

And then let's what are the tasks we need to do to get to those outcomes? And then what are the skills we need? And we know that right now, in the next few years, it's going to be AI 24 seven. So how do we retrain people? How do we get people up to speed? How do we get the right talent in place?

Speaker 1: 30:02

What I've noticed in leaders that get it, it's not that sensitivity and wavy grave, it's also even a more radical, I wouldn't say brutality, but at least honesty. So I was in a meeting in New York last week and we had this big kind of ai training for this large company and that so the head person, that's, the editor, and all her staff. They literally just blew off the owner ceo to request to be there and they flew to a concert and it's because they had to cover it for the magazine and they've refused to adopt ai and refuse to do anything like. That's cheating. Can't have AI write our articles. So we spent five hours working through some of this stuff and the CEO looks around the room and looks like he won't have a job on Monday, meaning the editor that decided to take her staff and do something else. To me that was not a brutal move, but it was more of an acknowledgement that, hey, this is scary times.

Speaker 1: 31:05

Thank you so much for committing your time and being here at my request. If you don't want to be here, it's totally fine, I get it. I don't have time to babysit, sorry. We've got a lot of great things to do and we're going to use technology and we need to satisfy our customers and our customers have a lot of friction in their lives and we got to solve for that. And if're going to use technology and we need to satisfy our customers and our customers have a lot of friction in their lives and we got to solve for that. And if you want to not do what's best by our customers, then that's great. There's a lot of other great things to do in the world and I love that. I love the kind of just like certainty because, as much as it's a bummer for a few people, it shows the rest of the organization like whoa. We're going for it.

Speaker 1: 31:42

And there's not some like clandestine non-talked about conversation in a non-transparent way, but if it's very transparent and very open. So that's the third part of the stool. What's my purpose? The abundant mindset and then the ability to move fast and make great decisions.

Speaker 3: 31:58

And that story is so poignant because you hear that all the time when change happens, where someone really just is like fighting versus how can I lean into it? How can you reframe your mindset right now, maybe be open to what's possible? It might have a positive effect for your experience here.

Speaker 1: 32:15

Yeah, it's almost like we could never have an AI aggregate comments on our website, because somebody has to take the time and understand the nuance. Good luck with that.

Speaker 3: 32:25

I've done a lot of synthesis and I will tell you I am so glad AI exists to help with that. How can someone listening today, who's in that traditional space of wherever they are, start to really think about how they can? What would they be as a freelancer, even while they're still within this assigned job? How can they start to test that for themselves of what that might look like, so that when things do change, they're ready for it?

Speaker 1: 32:51

Yeah, definitely do some side gigs. Yeah, like Moonlight. Start right away. Doesn't even matter, right, like the cost of failure is so low. Start a podcast. I don't mean to set up a bunch of people. You guys are already wrong. Sorry, you guys have already pierced through the stratosphere. Just go try some shit. Right, like? I think that's the sad thing, right? It's like when we're kids the world's our oyster. We have so many possibilities and somewhere along the way we forget we have to do all these things we have to do, and that's just total bullshit we don't have to do them we have these mental models that we feel so obligated to do things.

Speaker 1: 33:29

And then for most people we've had a lot of tragedy and we've gotten stung on some things. But I think back to our opening comments. This is the time for optimism. I think everybody has to grow into an optimist. I think pessimists are going to have a really difficult time because the world's not paid to be the same.

Speaker 3: 34:00

All right, we're going to jump right in with some rapid round questions for you. Typically one word answers are okay, we're not going to judge if you do that, but if you'd like to elaborate, please do. How's that sound?

Speaker 1: 34:11

Yeah, for sure, all right Perfect.

Speaker 3: 34:14

All right, it's 2030. What is work looking like?

Speaker 1: 34:28

looking like. Oh man, it's looking somewhere in Indonesia with your phone and waiting for the next set to come in as your agents do all the work for you.

Speaker 3: 34:34

Sounds nice, actually, sign me up. What's one thing about corporate culture that you'd like to just see die already?

Speaker 1: 34:41

Bureaucracy.

Speaker 3: 34:43

Sometimes it's like turning a cruise ship to get things done.

Speaker 1: 34:46

Oh my God, it's horrible.

Speaker 3: 34:48

What's the greatest opportunity most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 1: 34:53

Tapping to the people's passion, or not just their people's passion, but the passion of the culture, and what I mean by that is like the larger culture of customers and suppliers, and it just that's so sad that there's like us against them inside, outside all that stuff. It doesn't work.

Speaker 3: 35:09

Yeah, I like that. Okay, all right, now we're going to get personal Are you ready yeah. Okay, what music are you listening to right now? What's on repeat on your playlist?

Speaker 1: 35:18

I'm a discover weekly guy, oh okay, and I love that because I love so much music. But the idea of just sitting down every Monday morning going, oh my God, a whole new playlist Some weeks it's awesome, some weeks it sucks. And the thing that kind of has been turning me out lately are these two guys, hermanos Gutierrez, these guitar players. Okay, and they would be a funky Spanish flamingo kind of thing Anyway.

Speaker 3: 35:44

Oh, that's so nice, that's awesome.

Speaker 1: 35:46

Yeah, top of mind, okay, Expecting, like Katy Perry or something.

Speaker 3: 35:50

No, I had no expectations. I do this because one I'm interested. Like you, I like music from everywhere and I love that DJ feature that they have on Spotify. Have you tried your personal DJ yet?

Speaker 1: 36:01

No.

Speaker 3: 36:02

They haven't, I gotta do it, okay, yeah, I'm old school Okay. They throw in some of your favorites and some new stuff into the mix. Good for road trips. Yeah, what are you reading right now?

Speaker 1: 36:17

Reading could also be listening to a book. I was just talking about an amazing book the other day that I've read a couple times and I just love it. It's called Perfume and it's got the subtitle something creepy the smell of death. It's all like 1400 or 1600s in France about a super smeller. Unfortunately, right now I'm like totally absorbed. There's too much going on in the world, although I have to tell you guys, somebody just sent me this great podcast. My wife and I both listened to it. It's called fierce intimacy. It's really good. I was like, yeah, it's like in. The old concept is like you have to fiercely fight for the relationship and you've got to give each other space about it. You got to likecely fight for your relationship and you've got to give each other space about it.

Speaker 3: 37:04

You've got to like total transparency. I like that. Yeah, just get in. Be in it.

Speaker 1: 37:06

You're in it, be in it. Yeah, don't avoid it.

Speaker 3: 37:09

I love that. Okay, the perfume one is so interesting to me. Francesca and I talked about this when we went to Tuscany. You recommended the Santa Maria Novella perfumery place. It's just such an interesting history with perfume, yeah.

Speaker 1: 37:21

And the whole super smeller thing and the people that they used to hire do that, and oh, it's so crazy, that's so cool. What a cool history. Who do you admire most? Oh my God, that's a good question. My dad, for sure. My dad's still alive. He's a modern day Ernest Hemingway. Such a stud, I would say. There's a collection of people right. I think that there are lots of people that inspire me for different reasons. Tinker certainly one of them. Good friend, like we talked about, Francesca.

Speaker 1: 37:49

My wife Emily she's definitely kept me going, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 37:56

Good stuff. We like to hear it. What's a piece of advice you would love to give to others because you didn't have it for yourself a long time ago?

Speaker 1: 38:05

The guy told me this and my wife at the time, bridget, and I we just adopted two kids from Russia and we always hung out at this coffee shop and this guy kind of looks like Albert Einstein. I used to have a one man, albert Einstein show, len, and he didn't have any kids Kind of looked at our kids and they were like two or three and looked at us and looked at the kids and he's I have some parenting advice for you. She was like oh no, lynn, I don't know if you want to hear it, and he said that some mother had told him this said most parents when kids do things that are outside the norm, they always say be careful.

Speaker 1: 38:51

But be careful creates all this fear. It's like be careful, you might hurt yourself. Be careful, that's too high, be careful, that's too fast. So instead just always say pay attention. And so if your son or daughter says I'm going to climb that tree, if you say be careful, it's should I or shouldn't I climb the tree, instead of saying pay attention, meaning go as high as you want, but pay attention to your inner feeling and how you're willing to explore, and when you're not feeling comfortable, come back down, it's all about you.

Speaker 1: 39:19

And so that's something that was really magical for me as a dad to allow my sons to explore. But it's also, I think, a really good thing to think about in work, right, and it's like there's so much fear, especially around this new world of AI, and like how do we be less careful and pay more attention?

Speaker 3: 39:38

I really love that shift in thinking.

Speaker 1: 39:41

It's crazy, just to pay attention.

Speaker 3: 39:42

Yeah, what a shift, and it totally eliminates the fear out of things.

Speaker 1: 39:46

I know right it does.

Speaker 1: 39:48

One of the things I just love about AI is back to Einstein. It's that Einstein quote that says if you gave me a problem and an hour to solve it, I spend 55 minutes on the problem or the question, five minutes on the solution. And I think somehow in the industrial age we got so focused on the execution and the solution right and solving the problem properly. And what's so great is now the cost of execution is going to zero. But it's really the value of what's the problem you're trying to solve. How do you really define that in an interesting way? It's an exciting time, it is. There's a lot to look forward to solve. How do you really define that in an interesting way?

Speaker 3: 40:20

It's an exciting time, it is. There's a lot to look forward to. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 40:23

A time to pay attention.

Speaker 3: 40:25

A time to pay attention. For sure, we loved having you here. We love the book Open Talent, everybody. We appreciate you being with us today. Thanks for joining us.

Speaker 1: 40:36

Me as well. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 3: 40:41

It's been such an honor. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

Managerial Sabotage

Your Work Friends Podcast: Managerial Sabotage with Davide Rice, People Managing People

Today’s managers are feeling the squeeze from above, below, and all sides. In this episode, David Rice, Executive Editor at People Managing People, joins us to share what it really feels like to be a modern day manager. From the lack of formal training to the growing expectations from executives and teams, we talk about why the role is harder than ever and what can actually help.

Whether you're deep in the middle or just stepping into the manager role, you’ll find practical ways to build connection, navigate pressure, and move forward with more clarity and confidence in a rapidly changing world.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

The thing that disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, essentially, at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged. It's almost a betrayal in some ways.

Speaker 2: 0:31

Welcome to your Work Friends. I'm Francesca and I'm Mel. We're breaking down work, so you get ahead, Mel. You and I talk a lot about the state of the workplace. Actually, every single day we're talking about what's happening with work, what's happening with jobs, and one of the things that we just keep coming back to is what the hell is going on with the manager and the manager role.

Speaker 3: 0:51

We've covered it several times in New Week New Headlines First of all. Managers are in the sandwich, the classic corporate sandwich between executive leadership and then their employees, and they're getting dumped on every which way. We covered an article several months back talking about this is the crisis year of the manager, because we see orgs ripping them out, which we both have expressed as a dumb move for many reasons. And the other piece there is the younger people don't want the gig because it's a thinkless job right now being a manager.

Speaker 2: 1:28

It's hard, right, it's hard and to your very good point, that's getting attacked from all sides and we wanted to bring in somebody that hears about what the hell is really going on Real street conversation with the manager. So we brought in David Rice. David is the executive editor of People Managing People, where he's looking at the stories that are happening in the workplace specifically around management, and he's really trying to get at, with people managing people, the heart of the issues that are faced not only by HR professionals but by employees too. So we thought, because he's getting this great overview of what's going on in the ether, he can be a very good person to get the very real street, very raw, very honest perspective on what's going on with managers.

Speaker 3: 2:12

Yeah, a lot of insightful conversation. I also, side note, love all of his videos, so if you're not following David on LinkedIn, you should be and check out his weekly videos.

Speaker 2: 2:23

David is very dry, he is very no bullshit, but he's spot on, so we hope you enjoy this conversation with that. Here's David.

Speaker 3: 2:44

David, it's so good to see you. All right, David.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Again, thanks so much for joining us today. We're super stoked to talk about the state of managers In our part of the world. Mel and I are hearing from managers. We're reading the news about managers. They're getting it from all sides. We're flattening, we're taking managers out. Apparently, ai is now coming for your job all this good jazz. Like it's a. It's a crazy time to be a manager, and especially in your role as the executive editor at People Managing People. What are you hearing? What are you seeing? What is the world of the manager looking like right now? And I'm curious what's keeping you up at night?

Speaker 1: 3:20

as it relates to managers these days, I think the thing that, like disturbs me and keeps me up at night is the fact that, like, essentially at this point, ascending into management ranks is an experience akin to being sabotaged, right, like it's almost a betrayal in some ways, like if you think about the fact that 82% of managers received no formal training. So it's just here, go do this really difficult thing. I'm not going to help you do it. And even the whole way that you were successful, you got into this because you were, in theory, good at something. So is this how we're going to reward success and high performance? Is here's this new challenge that I'm just not going to help you with. And I don't care. I guess I don't care if you're good at it or not.

Speaker 1: 4:09

As somebody who spends a lot of time talking about leadership and how to create success and how to innovate and inspire people to do new things, how can we do that to managers? It's just disturbing, right? It would be like trying to train your pets to go to the bathroom outside but never open the door. What do you want them to do? I don't understand. So what are we doing? There's a lot in this world that I'm like what are we doing? But when I think about business, that's the thing that I just. It blows my mind and makes me want to pull my hair out.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah I mean to your point is we're not setting them up for success at all. If there's a development piece, 82% of people aren't even getting trained. Mel and I absolutely know that to be true. Very few organizations are doing that and even if they are, it's not necessarily that they're developing them the right way, because managing is a very different skill than individual contributor. It's a completely different turn. We know it's one of the hardest roles to step into. If you ask most people in their career ladder, that flip up into manager was way harder than that flip up into executive.

Speaker 1: 5:19

Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Because it's just so different and I love your analogy. So we're basically saying, yeah, this is what you need to do, but we're not allowing you to do it or we're not setting you up for success to do it, ie opening the door. Is there anything that gives you hope? Because we absolutely agree on that reality. But is there anything where you're like? But this is interesting.

Speaker 1: 5:37

Yeah, I think the thing that gives me hope is there's a lot of people coming together around common experiences right now, common goals, desires. I think 2025, when we look back on it in a couple of years will be like a pivotal year for community building. That's my hope, that's one of the things that I really wanted to see from this year and for changing the way we think about traditional dynamics. So, whether that's how we use something like LinkedIn or how we approach going to a conference or interacting with each other online which obviously I think could use an overhaul but I'm seeing a lot of people agree on what they see Like we all agree that this is happening to managers, right, and we know what we want to change.

Speaker 1: 6:16

I think there's not as much difference in philosophy or the spectrum of thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build thought around this. There is about a bunch of other issues, right. So I think it's a little different in that we want to build community around this, and that's a skill that we need to learn in and of itself, and so I think it's going to be good for us to come together on that stuff and identify the things that we want. We've all been sold a lot of well, I'll say this bullshit narratives about either management or what it means to be a leader. There's a lot of this like alpha talk and I have no time for it, but it's one of those things that like pervades the leadership space. I just think it's going to be short-lived and we're all going to come together and identify some things. The need for managers maybe we'll get into this as we go, but I don't think that the need for managers is going to disappear.

Speaker 2: 7:10

I want to talk about that community piece real quick. Community Are you seeing community inside organizations or are you seeing people actually going outside organizations to find that community because it's the only place they're getting it?

Speaker 1: 7:24

I think both. I think it's cool to see community within organizations because people are. We talk about, we always talk about like peer-to-peer learning, but I think more and more people are realizing like I can go to this person and get some kind of value, especially around AI, right, I think that people are seeing the things that their coworkers are doing with it and they're going whoa, I didn't know you could do that. Teach me how to do that. So they're learning a lot of things from each other and that, in and of itself, is building internal community.

Speaker 1: 7:51

But I also think, with all these layoffs and the things that you see, trust is low. In some ways there's loyalty, but in other ways people are like whoa, they ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? They ain't going to be loyal to me, so why should I be loyal to them? And they want to go out and build their communities outside of it. So they're going to the thing they're trying to build their networks. They're going to people that they have common visions with and engaging more.

Speaker 1: 8:13

We're seeing that activity that even you see in slack communities, right, there's more and more of that popping up and there's a lot more groups out there identifying that and going, hey, I think we can create this community. The facilitation of that is increasing as well, so there's more options and there's more desire to take advantage of it. It just gets infused into sort of the culture and the way that we all think I've got to be part of one of these things so that I can continue to grow, because the organization's not going to help me do it necessarily. I think that is a thing that's coming out now, but I ultimately think that it's a good thing. It's something that we all need to do anyways.

Speaker 2: 8:51

There's this overall sentiment for managers right now that, like I'm on my own and so I gotta figure this out, either through community or internally or externally, because my faith that my company is gonna be doing it for me or my leader is going to be doing it for me is nil. Am I reading that right? Is that what you're hearing and feeling?

Speaker 1: 9:25

who's above you to help you. It's generally like either director, like VPs or executives who have no time or desire to help you figure out your challenges and problems right. They're just not going to step in and help you. And so who are you going to turn? Yeah, you have to go to other people that are having a common experience and build some sort of rapport or understanding. You have to find out what tools are you using to understand these problems better. Where are you getting your advice from that kind of thing? And that's one of the things that we see, partially because we seek to be the thing that you would go to. Naturally, when we are successful, we find that people are gaining value from what we're doing. That is part of what's driving. It is like amongst managers. And then you see, like the flattening of organizations right, they're firing managers left and right, so it's. I don't even think they care if I succeed or not.

Speaker 2: 10:11

If I don't, they'll just use it as a reason to cut my salary from the books and, I guess, get ai to do it yeah, yeah, which is funny the deloitte human capital trends just came out, which a lot of times is thought of as one of the key indicators for where human performance, human capital consulting, is going right in all these organizations. And they just were like psych should be on, you shouldn't be taking this manager layer and I'm like no shit Sherlock.

Speaker 1: 10:40

Let's not, yeah, so it's figure.

Speaker 2: 10:42

Yeah, having 67 direct reports as a VP didn't work. I'm shocked.

Speaker 1: 10:48

I'm sure.

Speaker 3: 10:49

Yeah, it's painful, we just covered a few weeks back that, like Gen Z, has no interest in even moving into the management role, and there's obviously a much better way that people can be preparing people to be in this role. Ideally, from the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you. From the time you step in the door as a junior level employee, you're gaining this training before you even make it to that step. Right, so it isn't this big surprise or big shift. You cover so many different organizations, so you see excellent use cases and really bad use cases. What do you see being done really well?

Speaker 1: 11:17

It's tough to say, because I'd probably say so-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now they flatten half the thing. So-and-so is doing it right now, and then two weeks from now, they flattened half the.

Speaker 3: 11:26

Thing.

Speaker 1: 11:26

Yeah, it's tough to say who's getting it right and who's getting it wrong. If you're looking at it like okay, no-transcript, and you're actually giving them tools to do that, then you're doing it right. One thing I've always said is, from the pandemic time, nobody ever adjusted. Nobody ever adjusted what they were doing to manage differently. Right, we went to remote. They didn't know how to do that. That's part of the reasons why there's a lot of reasons why they want to force people back into offices that are not great, but one of them is they never learned how to do this any other way, still doing things by the idea of butts in seats. And then you realize, oh, the increase in things like employee monitoring software. We talk about that all the time because it's one of the things we do reviews on our website but you see the increase in that and you're like, is that healthy? Is that any better than just looking at butts in seats? No, it's not a gauge of productivity. They got these like mouse jigglers and all these weird gadgets you can buy to fake productivity, if that's how you're going to measure productivity.

Speaker 1: 12:29

And so the ones that are doing it right, I think, are like look, you got to shift to like measuring output reasonably, measuring outcomes responsibly. Those are like two of the key things. Don't get lost on a goal. You can create this really big inflated expectation and think that's reasonable or responsible. It's not. It's about figuring out. Okay, what does productivity actually look like? Meaningful productivity, not just like completing tasks or creating a huge volume of work, because you can create a huge volume of work. But if it all sucks, what's the difference? It's not going to move the needle. We've got all these traditional quotas and traditional ways of thinking about things like productivity, things like business impact. We've got to get away from it being so role-specific, it being quota specific. I would say in a lot of cases, a lot of it is like volume of what people are doing rather than the velocity or the value of what they're doing. So the ones that are thinking ahead and trying to change that are doing it right.

Speaker 3: 13:35

Yeah, thinking about more meaningful impact than just like checking the box. And we hear it all the time, francesca and I get people reaching out to us. They're feeling the squeeze at the top from the executives that they're reporting up to, or they're a manager, their senior manager, who's getting it from the executive right.

Speaker 3: 13:53

And then they're also dealing with the emotions of their own team and the things that they're experiencing in the day to day. So they're just what's that song Stuck in the Middle with you? They're just really all stuck in this kind of hellish landscape of the middle being pulled in a million directions but also not feeling cared for in either way. If someone's in that space right now, what advice do you have for them if they're in the squeeze?

Speaker 1: 14:19

Yeah, it's tough right, because we're in this period where executive demands are just so out of touch with the experience and the reality of the lives people are living. They could use this moment to gain trust and instead they've used it to put in RTO orders and talk about 60-hour work weeks. A lot of what we're seeing, especially when they start yapping in the media, just erodes people's image of what leadership is right. So if you're in that space, I think the thing that you got to do is basically do whatever you can to increase transparency about what's going on in the org, what's going on with roles and I know transparency is one of those words that gets overused to the point that it means something different to everybody but just try to be real with people about what's happening. Respect them as adults. Okay, what's going on with their roles? What skills do they need? Just be human about it. Be real.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Everybody's terrified that a layoff is coming all the time. Now they're responding to what they see out in the world and what they want to see is you being a human being with them. They can't trust you more than the AI. If you feel like some soulless corporate suit, right, they might as well just listen to the all-knowing robot overlord that's going to own their future. That's why Gen Z wants to go to the AI instead of their manager. So you've got to find a way to establish good faith. You've got an find a way to establish like good faith. You've got an employee population right now that has no faith in leadership, and then you end up, if you don't do this right, you end up looking like a shill for people who are out there saying all these things in the media, or people who are just maybe not understanding the basics of their existence essentially, and it damages your ability to establish a relationship or trust with them.

Speaker 2: 16:08

Why do you think people don't do this? Mel and I, in our research, we talk a lot about the boss-employee-boss relationship, because it is a relationship I'm curious about. Why don't you think managers show up as a human? What's going on there?

Speaker 1: 16:22

I think there's a couple of reasons. One is the manager is expected to deliver certain things from the business, certain outcomes, and so it gets a little bit like it's not like they have any shortage of meetings and work to do themselves, so they're already bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results bogged down and they've got a lot of pressure from the business to deliver results. On top of that, you're talking about a couple of generations that have been, I would say, systematically weaponized against each other by media narratives. Right, everything is Gen Z this, but for a long time it was millennials and their damn avocado toast. Right, everything's just.

Speaker 1: 17:07

Oh, this group is awful, awful, and what you end up with is like a group of people. They kind of look at each other weird to begin with, and then you've got really big shifts that happen because of technology. Right, like millennials and gen z, they don't like phone calls, they don't even want to go to meetings. Yeah, we were talking about somebody on the phone. Just text me, or couldn't this meeting have been an email? How many times have you heard that? But it's an old fashioned way to get together. Talk about it, just settle it, and so you're not communicating to people how they want to be communicated to.

Speaker 1: 17:34

In a lot of cases, you're not understanding their culture, essentially because there's age differences or different ways of doing things that you grew up with. Because when you grew up, that didn't exist, like when I entered the workforce, slack wasn't a thing, it just didn't exist. We did everything by email. But you combine all that together and you've got a place where people just don't understand each other.

Speaker 1: 17:57

I feel like and managers, if they are typically a little bit more advanced in their career right now you're probably talking about somebody in their mid-30s to late-40s, let's say, a 24-year-old those experiences are wildly different, right, and their expectations are wildly different. You interpret things at work differently, and now they're being polarized by everything. Oh, I don't understand them and their pronouns and those like that. It's constantly one thing after another to highlight our differences, never our commonalities. We never talk about the things that we experience the same way. We never talk about the things that affect us in the same way. So that's why there is no trust For managers. It's going to have to be a conscious effort on your part to sit down, make a lot of eye contact.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Really, you know what I mean Not an awkward amount, but be present with somebody, be in the room with them, see them as a person, learn about things like energy and body language and personal dynamics, what it is that might be sitting between you and somebody that you're finding it difficult to connect with. Those are the things like as a manager. This job is going to become less and less about technical skills, I'm convinced, because a lot of all the technical stuff you'll just be able to do it with AI. The thing that's going to differentiate you as a manager is your ability to connect to another human being and to see within them what it is you can do to help them achieve that. But it's not easy to do and it's inherently awkward for groups that are different like that, I would say.

Speaker 1: 19:36

Easy, but it's simple it doesn't actually require too much technical thought.

Speaker 2: 19:44

It doesn't, and it's so fun because to point out, like commonalities right, there's way more that we have in common.

Speaker 3: 19:48

humans really don't need a lot, they really don't there seems to be a huge missed opportunity we've reported on, like the silver tsunami that's coming in 2030 and all the the knowledge that we should be learning, but is there a huge missed opportunity happening right now for organizations to have more intergenerational connections and community building to help bridge that gap and have that conversation, especially as we're going through these major transitions? Is that a space where companies should really be focusing?

Speaker 1: 20:21

I would say yes. Here's the challenge, though. We're basically like conditioned to distrust each other, right? So, like older folks, they don't want to trust Gen Z because they're entitled or lazy or whatever the stereotypes they peddle about them. And you've got like the OK boomer side to it where it's just oh, here they go, and we spend all this time thinking about our differences. There's not a lot of motivation to go. Okay, maybe he doesn't get this AI thing, but he was in the workforce when the internet came about and that must've been a huge shift. What lessons did he learn from that? They're not motivated to ask that question because inherently, you'd have to be interested in them or see their value, see their humanity, and everything that we do is meant to polarize and tear us apart, but it's hard to create something totally different within the walls of your organization when the broader culture is constantly peppering people with this narrative of difference. It makes it difficult for us to learn from each other unless there's some other connector.

Speaker 1: 21:24

We did a thing at work. We were just messing around with Sora when it came out, and my team and I we were like, what if we did this with it? I said, well, have it, make me the Pope. And then it did and I was like, oh my God, that's hilarious. That looks ridiculous. Now make it, make all of you my cardinals. So I did that and it was ridiculous. And then we were like, okay, now give all the cardinals blowout hairstyles. And the images were so funny. We were all laughing so hard. I can't remember the last time we all laughed this hard together, but it was lovely. It was like we had a great bonding moment out of it that I ended up making this video.

Speaker 1: 22:06

But I thought to myself you could use that, though In terms of management. You can use that to create all kinds of experiences, to change people's narratives about each other. If you got somebody from Gen Z guiding somebody from Gen X or a baby boomer through that experience and they're joking around and working through it together to make the funniest, goofiest, stupidest thing they can make, well, all of a sudden, in that moment, you are just like two human beings having a good time, and that should be okay. At work, us learn from each other and figure out. Okay, I don't agree with them on everything, but maybe Tom over there, maybe he has an idea about how this could work. That's what we need. We need that institutional knowledge to transfer somehow, and it can't just be through SOPs and internal documentation.

Speaker 3: 22:58

Right, like it's going to have to be that conversation.

Speaker 1: 23:00

Yeah, it has to be. That's the only way. That's really the only way people are going to remember it or actually apply it.

Speaker 3: 23:12

We talked a little bit about, organizations are ripping out the middle, and now we also see there's definitely well, let's not do that and it's just a turmoil across the board. What does all of this mean for someone who maybe has invested years of their life so far just to reach the manager level, and now they've made it, and this is the year they're experiencing? What does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place?

Speaker 1: 23:41

does this all mean for them? What advice would you give to someone who's in that place? It's difficult, right? Like you spent 10 years trying to climb the ladder and then now the ladder has been abandoned and about to fall over, with you on it, right?

Speaker 3: 23:51

Yeah, it's like the top rungs are gone, the bottom that you were on are gone and now you're just hanging on.

Speaker 1: 23:57

You're like the whole thing rotted out from under me, yeah, but it does mean that you're going to have to be as flexible as you can when it comes to things like upskilling, showing your skills differently, finding ways to play the game in a different way, showcasing your impact essentially on any project or whatever it is that you're working on, ascend in an organization. I'm looking really hard at how I can showcase my outcomes and basically build narratives about how I've been a driving force behind whatever it is we were trying to do and how I integrate tech into my skillset. So you want to be really flexible around that. I work in an editorial space. Right, we are, I would say, in general, we are, I would say, in general, a curmudgeonly bunch. Anyways, editors are not lighthearted and high-spirited people.

Speaker 1: 24:49

most of the time there's always a lot of resistance to anything.

Speaker 2: 24:52

You guys don't have a fun committee there's no fun committee.

Speaker 1: 25:00

The fun committee is occasionally get together, have a few drinks and have a big bitch session. You're constantly trying to understand things in a different way or look at it in a different way, and a lot of this AI stuff does make you go oh, what is this? Oh God. But one of the things that's been tough for everybody is that, essentially, the job as it was five years ago doesn't exist anymore. The term editor is actually starting to mean something different, and you've got to be comfortable with that. You got to be prepared to integrate tech into it. However, you're going to do it, and this is not just our roles. This is across the spectrum of roles within the workforce, whether it's marketing or you're doing coding. The things that you thought were going to be central or core to your work aren't necessarily that anymore, and you're going to have to figure out how you're going to be flexible and adaptable and learn to use this stuff to do it better, quicker, in different ways than you've ever done it before.

Speaker 3: 25:52

Francesca I think I used to say this to you a long time ago where I was, like everyone needs to start to tap into their inner Madonna, who has painted herself like a million times over the last 40 years Got to tap into that right Reinvention.

Speaker 1: 26:09

Yeah, don't be attached to your title. Be attached to things that matter. Your salary matters, it's how you pay your bills. Your title is not how you pay your bills. I've always said you can call me the head schmuck in charge, I don't care. Call me whatever you want. This is what I want to make. This is what I want my benefits package to look like those concrete things that make my life possible. That's what I'm after. You can call me whatever you want, I don't care.

Speaker 3: 26:38

And don't let work define your self-worth.

Speaker 1: 26:40

You shouldn't even really connect it to your worth at all, like at all. One of the things that we did recently was we did a survey about the TV show Severance. We did a survey asking would you get the procedure?

Speaker 2: 26:54

What is Severance about for those that don't?

Speaker 1: 26:56

know. So, essentially, severance is a dystopian workplace drama, in which this company called Lumen Industries, I think it is has created a way so that you can sever your personality between work and your private life, so when you're at work, you don't remember anything about your private life, and when you're in your private life, you don't remember anything about work. It's called your innie and your outie, right, and so you live these two completely separate lives, not knowing, and you just know that you have to go like here at this time kind of thing. So I asked people would you do it? I had been asked by a UK journalist in response to a UK survey that found that 12% of the UK population would do it. So I was like let's see if we can find out a little bit more about the US and Canada. So we did our own version of it, and, for us, 20% said either definitely or they probably would 20%. Wow, 20%.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Here's the really disturbing part, though. We asked people what would be the amount of money that you would need to consider, and almost 70 gave a price only 30. I wouldn't do it for any amount of money. Almost 70 had an amount in which they were like yeah, I'll do it for that I was like oh man, what does that say say about us, when we're at with work, how we're connected to it? People aren't seeing value between what they learn at work and applying it into their life. Every experience I've had informs who I am as a person. That includes what happened at work, not just the stuff that was outside of it. But I think other people aren't maybe seeing the connection or aren't seeing the value of the connection, and that's a little disturbing and sad, quite frankly.

Speaker 2: 28:41

Let's extrapolate that to the US population that 20% of the population wants to hasa dollar amount figure that they would go for to sever their work. Mind it's actually almost a benefit, yeah, To cause yourself a traumatic brain injury.

Speaker 1: 28:57

It's actually almost a benefit, yeah, to cause yourself a traumatic brain injury. That's essentially what it is, if you think about it.

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yeah, it brings a really interesting question around what's the biggest thing that needs to change? If you could change one thing that would make the role of a manager more palatable right now, or at least not want to have to sever some sort of autonomy. Basically, what would need to change?

Speaker 1: 29:26

This isn't just a workplace thing. This is how we all serve, and I'm not to get too political here, but too much of our lives is now dedicated to serving capitalism. Essentially, that's really what it is. This idea that labor unions are bad was the beginning of the end for reasonable behavior about work. And you think about the way Europe constructs work and what their expectations are for people. It's very pretty reasonable.

Speaker 1: 29:59

But in the United States your life is work. Your value to the society is tied to whether or not you have a job and what you do within that job, how much money you make, how much you consume. All of our lives is essentially in some service to capitalism when you really break it down and that would have to change culturally in order for this to get totally better. Because what people are really trying to block out when they answer that question is the way in which they serve it, and they'd almost rather just not remember it than have to deal with all the demands of it and trying to make it match their personal values, Because that's hard. A lot of organizations really don't. How often are you going to find a job that matches your personal values? If you I don't know care about the planet. It's hard Culturally. We just have to shift away from your purpose is to serve the machine, and I don't know if that's going to happen.

Speaker 2: 30:57

I think these Gen B kids are gonna do it.

Speaker 1: 30:59

I have a lot of faith in them. I do? I have a lot they've had a real I'm not gonna put up with this shit kind of attitude and I'm like good for you guys. You know children are our future, yeah we'll see how alpha does when they get there.

Speaker 3: 31:28

We do this thing called wrap it round, where we'll ask you a question. You can respond yes, no or elaborate if you feel so. How do you?

Speaker 1: 31:36

feel All right. Yeah, I'm going to ask anybody I work with. I'm super long-winded all the time, so I'm always going to elaborate.

Speaker 3: 31:43

Let's do that. This is where the juice comes, so we love it. So it's 2030.

Speaker 1: 31:52

What's work going to look like? Well, haven't you heard? We're all going to be wandering around trying to figure out what our purpose is in life. Least you listen to bill gates, right? I do think it'll be very mechanical, like in all respects, like robots will be in the workplace. They've made it to agi the white collar jobs. I don't know if they'll exist or not.

Speaker 1: 32:09

There's this cool thing going around. It's called like ai 2027.com, and somebody ran like a simulation based on all current events and everything, and it was very, I don't know to say, enlightening or disturbing, but it was interesting. Let's just put it that way. I don't know, will white collar jobs exist in five years? Maybe, but this goes all the way up to the ceo, right, because strategy is a skill like it'll do that better, it'll do decision making better, supposedly. Yeah, creative tasks you go right down the list, and they may even do some of the blue collar stuff too, better too. I was saying to somebody recently that old saying plumbers rule the world. They do, I don't, I do, they do. And I don't know if it'll do plumbing as well.

Speaker 3: 32:51

So maybe plumbing is the thing to get into someone who lives in an old house in new england. I don't know if AI is going to be able to navigate it like Joe.

Speaker 1: 33:02

Yeah, because Joe has just been rigging that thing for years.

Speaker 3: 33:06

He's been in every janky house. He knows how to navigate around here. It's so interesting you say that as you respond about Shopify's CEO, who is asking everyone to justify hiring for humans and to showcase what they consider to use AI first before they put in human bodies.

Speaker 2: 33:24

We're always trying to see that. I read that same memo.

Speaker 3: 33:27

Yeah, yeah, okay, let's move on to something a little more fun, a little more personal. What music are you listening to right now? What's hyping you up?

Speaker 1: 33:36

It's spring and I'm going through this like reliving of my college music listening, and I'm listening to a lot of like early to mid 2000s indie hip hop at the moment Indie hip hop. Yeah, what do you?

Speaker 2: 33:47

consider indie hip hop.

Speaker 1: 33:49

Oh God, jedi mind tricks and yeah, like stuff that was like not on the radio at the time, so it was like very, we used to call it underground. Now they just label it indie, same thing as they do with rock music.

Speaker 3: 34:04

What are you reading or listening to right now?

Speaker 1: 34:08

I started this book called the Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. It's about American history. They present it as seasons it's like 80 to 100 year cycles, and it presents the idea that we are currently in a historical winter, which is a very difficult time, and spring will eventually come. But it breaks down the last hundred years as like examples of these seasons. I can't speak too much about it. I've only just started it.

Speaker 3: 34:34

It's interesting. Yeah, it's interesting to see the patterns and maybe what to look out for.

Speaker 1: 34:39

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 34:40

Now I'm curious did you get to the part where are we in winter, Because it feels like we're like Minnesota January.

Speaker 1: 34:47

I think we're all just to that point where it's like the post-Christmas depression.

Speaker 3: 34:54

Like I got bills and I'm on a holiday hangover.

Speaker 1: 34:58

You're just like I don't know. At least the football playoffs are on. I can just eat chicken wings whenever I want.

Speaker 3: 35:07

Who do you really admire?

Speaker 1: 35:09

Former Liverpool FC manager, jurgen Klopp, is one of my favorite people in the world. I look up to him a great deal, not just because I'm a big supporter of the football club itself, but because he's an incredible example of what a leader could be, and he's just an example of how to transform culture and, honestly, just a lovely human being.

Speaker 3: 35:30

Okay, what's a piece of advice you wish everyone knew?

Speaker 1: 35:35

I was once given a really valuable piece of advice that I think is great for leaders and really anyone working with other human beings to remember, and it's that you can't expect something you've learned through experience to be common sense for somebody else. And it's just one of those things like you think why wouldn't they do that? So you didn't know how to do that. Always, like, eventually, you learn that because you broke the thing or you made the mistake, and so don't expect anybody else to just know that because you think it's a thing that you're supposed to know.

Speaker 2: 36:16

All right, David, so awesome to talk with you today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Speaker 1: 36:19

Yeah, yeah, I hope I didn't ramble, too much. No, it's awesome?

Speaker 3: 36:22

Not at all, not at all. And hey, how can our listeners best connect with you Of?

Speaker 1: 36:26

course, you can get in touch with me on LinkedIn. I'm easy enough to find on there. Be sure to check out to the People Managing People podcast. I'm the host on there. If you come over to peoplemanagingpeoplecom, you can get signed up for the newsletter and I'm always sending on a regular basis, a couple of times a week, different messages from us, and then come to one of our events. That's what I really recommend. Our next one is dedicated to RTO mandates. It's on April 24th, but, yeah, give me a follow and don't hesitate to reach out. Awesome, all right, thanks for being here.

Speaker 2: 36:56

Thank you to reach out Awesome.

Speaker 1: 36:56

All right, thanks for being here, thank you.

Speaker 3: 36:59

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

Overcoming the Broken Rung

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Broken Rung with Lareina Yee

The Broken Rung isn’t just a metaphor—it’s the career barrier keeping women from advancing from day one. We sat down with Lareina Yee, Senior Partner at McKinsey and co-author of The Broken Rung, to talk about why fixing this early career promotion gap could close the gender equity gap in a single generation.

We cover the data, the hidden career tax women face, the power of experience capital, and why sponsorship—not mentorship—is the game-changer leaders need to embrace now. Whether you are navigating your own career or leading others, this is a must-listen playbook for how to advance, advocate, and unlock opportunity at every level.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived big law, big four and more than a few broken org charts. I'm Francesca.

Speaker 2: 0:07

I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit.

Speaker 1: 0:11

We host your work, friends. The podcast that breaks work down, so you stay ahead.

Speaker 2: 0:15

We talk work stuff, the human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening stuff. Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight up advice. Hit play. We've got you Ahas and ahas and, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two. We had a really interesting conversation, we did.

Speaker 1: 0:48

We were able to speak with Lorena Yee, one of the co-authors of the Broken Rung. Lorena is a senior partner at McKinsey Company and she advises companies on growth technology and transformation. She also co-founded the Women in the Workplace Study with leaninorg. That's what made us reach out to her, as we were fascinated. We covered that a few months ago in New Week New Headlines and then, obviously, the Broken Rung book came out and in that report they're highlighting all of the challenges that women are facing in corporate America.

Speaker 1: 1:22

Lorena also chairs McKinsey's Technology Council and hosts the podcast At the Edge, where she talks about technology trends. And then, beyond her professional role, she's a mom of three and she serves on the board of San Francisco's Ballet. But this was an awesome episode. She is talking about one of the earliest career barriers that women face, which is this broken rung and ways that we can overcome it together. In this book I think you and I both said it was covered cover to cover with yellow highlighter from all of the stats that we were reading- yeah, I ran out of highlighter while I was reading this book.

Speaker 2: 1:56

The thing for me is we've had the glass ceiling. We know pay parity is not there yet and probably won't be for our lifetime, and what was so interesting was this early career issue that they have really nailed on. Even if you're not early career, even if you're not a woman, the thing about this book is it is a playbook for how to get ahead in your career If you're a woman, if you're a man, if you're gender non-binary. This book is absolutely packed with how do you get ahead when you have everything against you, and it is a must read for anybody, especially in corporate America. We love talking with her. We focus a lot about women here, but I think it can apply to anybody.

Speaker 1: 2:42

One of the things that really stood out to me is this isn't just a playbook. If you're in your early career, it's identifying when this starts, but it is. It does give you information, no matter where you are, whether you're just starting out, you're in the messy middle or if you're like towards the end of in thinking about your next move. She gives you ways that you can think about how to level up. The other thing for me that was so interesting was the concept of if we were able to fix this broken rung at the start of a woman's career, then we could have parity in a generation versus 150 plus years. So that, to me, was super powerful. I'm just going to read a quote from the book Lorena mentioned was this is not just a women's issue, as you point out. It's an issue for our whole society and the global economy. So read the book, listen to the episode. Here's Lorena.

Speaker 2: 3:46

All right, loretta. For those of us that haven't heard about this concept of the broken run, I'm wondering if you can explain it to our listeners, like a five-year-old. What?

Speaker 3: 3:55

is the broken run. You start work, you landed the job and you find that pretty much men and women are pretty equal. When you look around the room, right, 48% women entering the corporate pipeline in the United States, for example, and similarly globally. But guess what? Time for the first promotion. And here's the rub For every 100 men who have the odds of getting that promotion, only 81 women see those same odds of advancement. And that's the broken rung. That very first step on the career ladder is broken and it comes up fast.

Speaker 2: 4:33

What was so interesting to me so much of the time we're thinking about women, advancement, we're thinking about it manager on up, how do we get people to a C-suite or a VP? Because it's happening at this manager level. We're not getting people into these upper echelons. And I thought what's so interesting about your research is that this is happening very early and if you don't nail it early or don't look at it early, it has this kind of compounding effect on your career. What about that keeps you up at night?

Speaker 3: 5:05

your career. What about that keeps you up at night? All of it. By focusing on the broken rung, I wouldn't want to take attention away from the fact that people will call that middle layer, francesca, like the messy middle, the frozen middle, that piece of it or the glass ceiling. Let's be clear that still exists, and whilst we've made progress in corporate America, as an example, when I founded Women in the Workplace, we were 19% women reporting to CEOs at the C-suite. Now we're at 29%, so we're really close to 30. So that's great, but we're all really good at math. That's not parity, that's not 50%, that doesn't represent the population. So we've got challenges across the whole talent pipeline or ladder, however you want to visualize it.

Speaker 3: 5:49

I think the challenge with the middle, though the math, is that you've already lost a lot of women, or they've gotten stuck or they're stalled. It's not entirely clear exactly what happens to all those women, because some of them don't leave the workforce altogether, but let's just say largely stalled and stuck. So you are already in the middle, dealing with probably something around 37% women. You're already dealing with a smaller population, trying to put it in slates, so you're just so many steps behind, and I do think to the early broken rung.

Speaker 3: 6:25

I do think it catches women by surprise and it may even happen and they didn't even realize it, because it's not like an exam where they publish the results. You don't know where you are on the curve and it may have been a delay by a year, six months, two years, or maybe you decided to go somewhere else and so some of these types of things may not be completely perceptible, but I think when you talk to women over the course of 20, 30 years in work and they think back, they're like huh. And when we look at the data year over year, it shows that same phenomenon. Maybe it's 84 women, maybe it's 81, maybe 79. It's bouncing around a little bit, but it's nowhere near parity.

Speaker 2: 7:06

I want to dive into that. Why that first promotion? Why is that so critical for people to really focus on?

Speaker 3: 7:15

There are a lot of things. One, if you just think of a merit-based view, you want to actually be rewarded for the work you do. So there's a simple thing. There's also financially. You're not just working to work for the benefit of society and you may feel very mission oriented, you may feel very purpose filled and you may feel incredible pride for what you do, but you're also there for your economic earnings. And to earn less through differences in promotion is another type of tax on top of a general phenomenon we see in terms of a wage disparity between women and men. It's another form. But the other thing is let's just think about a talented woman who, by and large women graduate at higher rates than men for undergraduate degrees and by and large, with higher GPAs. And so you've got a talented woman. She's doing all the right things and missing maybe by a year, maybe two or three years, that first promotion is missing her ability to reach her full professional potential, and careers in life are long and those delays have almost compound effects over time.

Speaker 2: 8:32

And we haven't even hit motherhood yet. This is the thing that I read in the book the idea of the motherhood tax, where we'll talk about it a little bit longer. But for every kid that someone has, they get taxed. More and more Theirathers get a bonus for having kids. It's phenomenal, it's absolutely phenomenal.

Speaker 3: 8:50

I mean, we've all been in the meeting where the mom is rushing to go to the soccer game and everyone's like okay, fine, maybe even non-event, not even like eyebrow raising. And then the guy is I've got to go. Same thing, I've got to go, I've got to get to the soccer game at 430. And people are like high five, you're amazing. And, by the way, do I think it's amazing that dad is leaving for the soccer game, a hundred percent, I'm just saying that. I equally think it's a high five moment for the woman to leave as well.

Speaker 1: 9:17

Yeah, it is. Eye roll for the woman oh, gotta go again. And then for the guy it's good for you, you're such a good dad. Yeah, you're a leader. You're a leader. I want to talk about experience capital. That was one of my favorite parts of the book because I agree it's totally needed. But can you share with our listeners what is experience capital?

Speaker 3: 9:40

What's that concept?

Speaker 3: 9:41

So the punchline is 50% of your lifetime earnings come from what you gain on the job, and the reason this is important is you look at many women and, as I mentioned earlier, women outperform in school, they graduate at higher rates, particularly in the United States, and oftentimes they're graduating with higher GPAs and so they have done the first part really well.

Speaker 3: 10:06

But when we just look at representation nevermind how the experience feels, which we have a lot of data on as well, it's women are not succeeding to their potential in the workplace, at least if you look at representation, right, and so the idea of experience capital is if you were really great at school, how do you apply what helped you be wonderful at school to managing intentionally your portfolio of experiences that drive both the economic outcomes for you, your livelihood, but also your professional opportunities, and so you think about choosing your major, choosing your classes, getting an A. How do you be purposeful in making those decisions, in accumulating the experiences that matter, not just the job in front of you, which certainly is important, but what is the accumulation of experience over time, and can you get it earlier? Because it pays to get it earlier often, and bigger.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Can you do that in a way that sets you up really well for a lifetime of work? One of the things that you called out that I really love too was, as part of gaining that experience capital, was making sure you gain some of that experience capital, unlike the P&L side of the house and like really being deep into the business. So for anyone listening, p&l, profit and loss, that's one example. But what are some of those examples of like business side? So, say you're, I have a very strong HR background, by the way, but to be in strategic HR, I had to get that experience pretty early. So how can folks who aren't traditionally like on that business side, how can they gain that very important business experience capital and what does that mean? How is it different when you think about the experience capital you do gain? How does that differently set them up financially down the road?

Speaker 3: 12:00

Sure, Well, let's take your career as an example, and I might be getting parts of that wrong, but you have a passion for HR and a lot of women will connect with work to where they feel purpose, where they feel talent and being an aspiring alley, which is a P&L role maybe sales, maybe product, maybe in a business unit. That experience GM. But it is to say that having that experience short long at some point will make you better at whatever you want to do. The other thing is if you aspire to be a CEO to the chip tracker idea, the pink chip one year we looked at it, 95% of the CEOs that year we looked at it all came from P&L. So like virtually impossible, very unlikely, that if you haven't had P&L experience and you realize, understandably, halfway through your career that you aspire to be a CEO, this is going to be a central part. So that's one experience. Another piece of experience capital is entrepreneurship and people think that's just being a founder and yes, that's amazing. Both of you have founded this. That's entrepreneurship. But I bet both of you also were entrepreneurs in the companies that you were in before and it's a huge skill that makes a difference. How do you take initiative, how do you lead? How do you invent Versus? Here's the thing that I was given and I've checked all the boxes, so entrepreneurship is a huge piece.

Speaker 3: 13:50

The other thing that we talk about is skill differentiation. We call that bold moves, and so if you look at one job to a next job and it could be within the same company right, You're doing different roles. Bold moves are where you do a 25% or more skill difference between your former job and your new job, and women who take two, three big bold moves over their career have outsized impact, both economically as well as their ability to progress. So there are more, but just maybe to pause, take a deep breath. There are a lot of things we can do that are super concrete that help us build experience capital. And if you're young in your career gosh, you got to build that early and often. And if you're a little older in your career you know me, or like middle age, think about the experience capital you need to maybe pivot or do something new or to expand even more opportunities. It's a huge piece.

Speaker 1: 14:47

I appreciate that because I think a lot of folks forget that you can have an entrepreneurial experience while you're in an organization. It's like looking for those project opportunities where you can gain that skill set. For somebody who might be more of an introvert I'm an ambivert right, so it takes a lot of effort to reach out for those experiences and that sort of thing. Maybe they don't have a flashy or visible role. What's a way that they can start to advocate for themselves, to begin to build that experience capital?

Speaker 3: 15:19

I think, first of all, you've got to play to your strengths. So you may see someone who's an extrovert, very charismatic, maybe an athlete, so she happens to play golf which tends to be helpful in a male world and you're not in all cases. She's out in the golf course and you're just like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all those strengths. But you're like that's not me and first of all, good for her, she should go with all the strengths, right. But you're like how do I meet other people if I'm different? So I think there's one thing which is to know yourself and build off your strengths.

Speaker 3: 15:54

I remember early in my career being in consulting. My strength was the data and the analysis that I was doing and part of the credibility was really just the work itself. But the work is a basis to have a conversation with others and a basis to build trust. And then you start maybe building a relationship and entrepreneurship is following up. I remember meeting just this amazing executive and I was like you're just so like you're a role model, and I didn't say that. But then I remember just keeping in touch with her over time. Not a ton, I was whatever, maybe 10 levels more junior to her, but I remember when I was leaving Asia, moving back to the US, she was the last person that I had kind of coffee with who was a client, before I left. You've got to do it in your own style, but I think you do need to be purposeful and, for those who are analytic, write it down. Write down who do you work with, who you have a connection and network with, who have you worked with before that you could rekindle. If you're kind of customer or client facing, or if you're supply chain facing, who's outside of your organization and also maybe people from school. So how do you think about building those networks? And just make sure that we know that women tend to have more narrow, more junior networks. Just make sure that over time it's not going to happen overnight, but over time you invest in building some more senior networks.

Speaker 3: 17:28

I know one guy that I talked to joined this nonprofit board and I invested my personal time and I spent time and had lunch with every single board member, all of which were at least a decade more advanced in their career than me, and I built this local network. He said so when you join a board, you join a nonprofit board. This is what you should do, and I was like I didn't even think about that. I'm so busy just trying to get through my day. It didn't occur to me to like schedule lunch with each person on the board, get to know them, build a relationship. And it was true. I looked at the list and I was like I am the most junior person from a professional person on this board, so there are lots of ways you can do it, yeah.

Speaker 1: 18:10

I think it's. Yeah, finding your little avenue is going to be the most important. What works for you. I think folks sometimes can equate being outgoing as the folks who get the opportunity, but you don't have to fit that niche to get the same kind of experience capital you're talking about.

Speaker 3: 18:24

And some really senior people are quite introverted themselves, right? So that's not, you would find a connection.

Speaker 1: 18:34

Yeah, you'll find some kinsmanship in that, for sure. I wanted to talk about the sponsorship versus mentorship because something that really stood out to me in the Women in the Workplace report was that women are overly mentored and we're undersponsored significantly. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Speaker 3: 18:56

Yeah. So one thing is maybe just to define the difference, because sometimes I just feel like we don't have the facts to make the decision. So mentorship is Francesca, you're my mentor, I identify with you. You go to coffee. If I have a bad day or something didn't happen quite right on a project, you empathize and you give me some suggestions on how to think about it. But, mel, if you're my sponsor, you do everything Francesca does. But you also open windows and doors for me and that may be as explicit as you are actually putting me up for promotion, but it could be more everyday actions. Like Mel, you say Lorena, I know you've been working really hard on this. Why don't you come to the meeting and why don't you present? And I remember there's this really amazing sponsor we do a sponsor award at McKinsey and one of the winners.

Speaker 3: 19:54

There's this story that he faked a bloody nose because he knew that the client was like, wanted him to be there. He faked a bloody nose and he wants her to go so that the woman partner who is up for senior partner would present but also be seen as like super senior. It's like he was an actor. Everybody thought he had a bloody nose, medical reason to leave, but no bloody nose. He actually was just creating truly an opportunity for her to shine. By the way, she became one of the co-leaders of the client and all these great things happen.

Speaker 3: 20:29

You can do that on a Tuesday at four, on a Friday at nine. These are not hard things and so when you think about, and if you're senior and you're listening to this, how do you open doors and windows for others? But it can be very subtle things that help and it can be really being there in the moment to say this person should be on the slate and really helping you get promoted or keeping in touch with you and offering you an opportunity somewhere else. Women are just under-sponsored and maybe also it's not as clear how to develop sponsor relationships. But I think it's like women. If you put your mind to it, you can do it.

Speaker 1: 21:07

If you realize this is something that's as important as delivering your quota or whatever your MBOs are or OKRs, and you think about it as something you do a little bit every quarter over time you'll have a really powerful senior network something that stood out to me in the book was and I'm paraphrasing, but it was essentially the biggest issue with this broken rung is, once the first rung is broken, it just has this compounding sort of domino effect, right, because now there's less women at each stage to continue to sponsor other women up. But men can be sponsors too not trying to leave them out of the conversation, right? And the other powerful thing that you said in the book was that if we can repair this first rung, it'll help us repair all of the subsequent rungs, which could help us really fix this issue or bring parity within a generation, which is huge because that within one generation is 10 years versus 150 years. But how important is sponsorship, or what level of does sponsorship play, and the importance of fixing that first rung?

Speaker 3: 22:23

All of the above. So if 70% of the C-suite are men, then it's really important that men are sponsors in your network to percent women at the starting gate. And then we dropped down in the middle and the VP layers down to 38, et cetera, et cetera, and at the top for the SVP layers and the C-suite, we are at 29%. So it's almost like a math thing because you just have fewer women in the talent pool overall. So if I were to say I'd like to see equal men and women on the slate, that's actually something that is a little hard to accomplish because you actually have maybe a third, maybe 40% each level. You have fewer women. And so I think if we sometimes what we talk about for companies that are trying to work on this is you have a funnel, you need to have a pipe. So a really healthy company starts with a percentage of women and you would have that same percentage mirrored across all the talent levels. That would be really healthy.

Speaker 3: 23:47

Many years ago I met a tech company who was like it's just so hard, et cetera, et cetera. The classic we don't have engineers. But one thing we told them that really surprised them. I said you have a top beginning funnel problem. Yeah, you're at something.

Speaker 3: 24:00

I think they were maybe 38, 37% women at the entry, so that's not good, but interestingly enough, they had that pipe. I said so you're doing something right really well, which most of your peers are not, which is you're able to retain them. You do have a bit of a drop off at the top, but that's really amazing. So for you, if you actually could fix the entry level, you clearly have a culture that supports women in a very natural way. You are in great shape and they were like gosh. I thought we were going to have this meeting. You're going to be an awful report card and I said, yeah, I mean you're starting out ranks not so good, but actually there's some really good stuff there. For companies that want to change, you have to just take a look at your data and say, just as you would any kind of business problem, where would be the two or three most important interventions? Where, if I fix this, it would really change in one generation? And I think for companies who are very determined to do this, it's possible.

Speaker 1: 25:02

It's interesting too, speaking of what companies can do, because you mentioned, mckinsey has their sponsorship award, which I love to hear, and we've worked in talent forever, so you always hear about the mentorship program, but rarely do I hear about a formal sponsorship program. What have you seen work really well in terms of programs that support the sponsorship for this kind of success?

Speaker 3: 25:25

I think, a couple things. It's important to say that whilst women tend to feel over-mentored, under-sponsored, there are men who also feel this way. If you de-average it, maybe the men who don't have the classic archetypical attributes or men of color. So there can be, when you de-average, lots of people need this. So a couple of things. One is going from a spiritual agreement that sponsorship is a good idea to actually creating a program. So program means that you actually define mentorship, sponsorship. Program means that you actually track the data. For some you may actually hold them accountable, not like a quota, like you have to have X number of sponsor ease or mentors, but as part of how you think have to have X number of sponsorees or mentors, but as part of how you think of good leadership, as part of the equation. If you have the data, if you have the qualitative and what you value gets measured in some way.

Speaker 3: 26:19

So I'm not suggesting like a one for one. You only get promoted if you're a sponsor. We all know that and you all both know very well. Like when you think about leadership, there's a way that kind of goes into your reviews and potentially your compensation, your feedback, how you're viewed. I think you build it in yeah, you built it in a hundred percent and then you may have some programs that kind of activate it.

Speaker 3: 26:43

But I think you really commit to a culture of sponsorship, which the insane thing to me is it helps. It's like your classic all boats rise, everyone benefits everyone. And if there are women, as the human population will have, who are not good sponsors, it's good. They will, as leaders, learn to be good sponsors. Men will learn to be good sponsors and sometimes for men and I've seen this when they see their data and they realize they don't have a single woman that they sponsor, they will autocorrect that themselves. It's not like they woke up and said how can I not have any women as sponsors? Sometimes data is like an incredible amount of sunlight for people to do the right thing.

Speaker 2: 27:42

I want to talk about motherhood and navigating career transitions with motherhood. You mentioned in the book that motherhood could actually be a boost to your career, and it's not something we typically hear. Can you talk a little bit more about how it can boost your career?

Speaker 3: 27:58

Yeah, so that's not an easy thing. In the chapter we do really spend a bit of time on Claudia Goldman's Nobel Prize economist. We do want to make sure that a lot of the research that she's done gets proper understanding in terms of biases towards women and terms of a motherhood penalty and all of those things. With that said, it is hard. I think part of it was squeezing out and looking at stories where women can succeed inside of it and, for me, also a little bit of a search for the urban legend to see if it's true. So one of the stories that you saw was a woman.

Speaker 3: 28:38

The phrase that I've always used is make sure you pack a round trip ticket, not just to leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Leave to go on parental leave, but also to come back and to come back with intention. Part of that would be building your network and thinking about your skills, moderating your time, all these types of things. And one of the stories in the book is a woman who was a rising star lawyer. As she had her first kid, she made the decision to actually be a full-time mom. She's an amazing mom raised three boys. 14 years into that, she exercised her round trip ticket. She went back and she did a reboarding program. Some companies, not all, offer this, but LinkedIn offered it. She got back into the workforce and is a rising star lawyer at LinkedIn and I just think this concept that we measure it in very zero one ways Okay, I had the baby, I'm having the baby, I take my paid maternity or parental leave, I come back. I think there are variations to make that work for you. So that's one story that I was very inspired by.

Speaker 3: 29:45

The other thing is would you use the policies as ingredients to bake your own cake, would you say? Look, in my company there's the parental leave and I see a lot of mostly dual career couples. We see a lot more of women and men under 40 are dual career, whereas baby boomers tend to be more like a single person leading the household. Let's use the woman and the partner's parental leave to maximize it. How do we, how do we go slow, go fast across that portfolio? Like really sharing with your partner the chutes and ladders of a career? We see also like how do you use some of the part-time? How to use rotations to kickstart your next bold move, like maybe you're like, okay, I'm going to do the thing that I really know how to do in an excellent way and I'm going to do it at 80%, but then actually, when my littlest one is in school, hits three, I'm going to take a bold move and I'm going to do this. Or, by the way, I'm going to actually invest in a bunch of technology skills and pilots and things because I'm going to make a bold move.

Speaker 3: 30:54

And these are just like excessive examples. How do you apply really intentional thinking to that time as opposed to gosh? This is just the discount time. And also back to the network point, I think and I don't think this is as much in the book, but I think having a peer network when you're a young mom at least for me personally I see you nodding, being able to call someone who was working full time, who had kids under 10, like me, and just to say I've had the hardest week in that time. I didn't need a sponsor, I didn't need a mentor, I just needed a friend to say, yeah, it's really hard with you.

Speaker 2: 31:41

Yeah, it's tough, right. I remember this is a little bit maybe TMI, but I always go there is. I remember I was at the point where I was breastfeeding and I was still working and shipping my milk back until it was really great about that, like freezing it and shipping it back home, which is amazing and lovely. But I remember just feeling touched out, vultured because I was getting it at work and I was literally having the call with her while my pump was going and I felt totally okay with it.

Speaker 3: 32:06

But she knew both of my lives and you really do need that, that feeling of someone gets you A little grace Like I think you have to set the pace of your own career versus expect others, and both of you have done that in your careers. But there may be times where you're like I'm going 60 miles an hour and by the way I've structured it and my expectations are that, and then there are times I'm doubling down and going super fast and I'm going to do a bold move and a this and a that, and so I don't. I don't think it's a linear climb and actually when we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just. When we look at men who are very successful underneath it, it wasn't so I just I think it's. We try. Sometimes perfection can be the enemy of progress. That phrase and maybe redefine what perfection is.

Speaker 3: 32:58

At certain moments of your career, I took a really long first parental leave and I was really fortunate to be in a dual career situation so I could afford to. But I was really young, I wasn't even 30 yet and I really I just wanted to learn how to be a mom for a while. I wanted to take nine months off and at that time paid leave was not six weeks, single digits or something like that that's also betting on yourself and taking a risk. It's saying I'm confident that when I'm ready to go back, that job will be there and I may have missed something. But I actually, as a gift not just to my child but also to myself, would like to learn how to be a mom for a bit and enjoy it.

Speaker 2: 33:47

The beautiful thing about the book, though, is it does give you the playbook, for if you're going to make those choices which are totally great to make that there are other moves you can make that won't make that choice, just like a lifelong decision to write. I feel like this idea of these are your options, these are the ways you can put it in sixth gear, pull it down to third gear, make a right turn, make a left turn and create a beautiful career for yourself and a great life too, because I feel like I'm not saying you can balance everything all the time and have everything you want, but you can sure as hell be way more intentional about it and get to where you want to go in a way that maybe was linear to your point.

Speaker 3: 34:34

And some of those basics matter. I remember we talk about negotiation. People always think negotiation is just your pay, by the way, women tend not to negotiate. So, hi, pro tip, do negotiate. But negotiation is also other types of things.

Speaker 3: 34:46

So I remember because we didn't have at the time this was 22 years ago we didn't have the type of programs and I was actually not even in the United States, and so I remember talking to the office manager and saying look, I know that this isn't the typical thing, but I'd really like to take nine months, maybe more off, but I actually am super committed to coming back and I will stay in touch. And when I came back, they were like that's hard and consulting, and you were flying out. And I said, look, just for my first thing, back for my first month, can you just help me do something local so that I just don't get straight on an airplane and whatever that is, I'll do it. Any industry, any team, that would be such a gift and that's part of negotiating how you come back. He said got it, let's do. That Turns out to the entrepreneurship we were working on something that became a huge local client and because I worked on it and worked really hard with all these other folks, some of which I didn't know already.

Speaker 3: 35:54

We actually had all these sort of. I had a year where I didn't get on the airplane, and part of it is a little bit of a little bit of luck, a little bit of negotiating, asking that's. That's a positive negotiation. I will work really hard, but could you help me not reduce travel just for a little bit, and then we'll sort it out. Just give me a sec to rebase. I'm still the person that you loved and valued before. I didn't think at the time. It takes courage to do that, but it does take some courage to have that conversation and you do need to work in an environment where that conversation would be received well, not to make too much of the example, but I do think in the book there are all these women who make it work in spite of, and so there's a lot of data, mel, as you mentioned, but for me I think the stories are just really inspirational about what are the tactical things they did to get from A to B.

Speaker 2: 36:49

Yeah, a lot of great moves. I think it's required reading, quite honestly, to think about how do you really own your career, and own your career as a woman? Just you got to read up.

Speaker 1: 37:00

You got to read up. Keeping it simple for our listeners, especially those who might be like am I already part of the broken rung? Do I need to address this? What's one thing they can do next week to get back on track?

Speaker 3: 37:16

reframe. You're not off track. You are always on track and there's always opportunity in front of you, and betting on yourself is always a good bet. So look ahead and what's your next move? Do you want to go to the power alley? Do you want to exercise entrepreneurship? Do you want to build in the skills that matter for the future, the 12 million occupations that we know will shift by 2030. Do you want to increase your network? Pick one, pick one, just pick one and get started.

Speaker 1: 37:53

I love that. I love that concept that you're never off track. You're never off track. Yeah, we're just all taking fun side quests.

Speaker 3: 38:04

How much you have already. Yeah, I, your portfolio just may look a little different than that guy next door to you, and that's okay. Really, what are you good at? What do you have? Where does that point you? And then start opening the windows and doors yourself. Go get people to help you. Yeah, I love it. You can do it.

Speaker 1: 38:28

What about leaders? If you're a leader leading a team and this is information new and for maybe it's new information for somebody listening today what's something that they can take away or start to do to analyze and make sure that they're being a good sponsor or they're recognizing that they might be holding people back. How can they support not holding them back or pushing them forward?

Speaker 3: 38:54

The first thing is to maybe just mark a couple of like a piece of data or story that that honestly struck you very authentically. Doesn't need to be many, just one or two. And I would go share that with a man and a woman on your team and just say I was reading this since stopped me in my tracks. What do you think? Do you think we have a fair workplace? Do you feel the opportunities are the same? And the man might say I feel over-mentored, under-sponsored. You're like that's good feedback, but pro tip, does any of this resonate with you? I just start with that. Just start locally, in your own community and neighborhood.

Speaker 1: 39:40

Starting the conversation. Let's just have the conversation.

Speaker 3: 39:50

Yeah, and I think the other thing a leader can de-risk what feel like high stakes conversations, and opening to have the conversation, to listen, to learn, is huge. There's a story of a woman who was in the creative arts. She was in performing arts in New York and she had an underlying mindset that if you are creative it's okay to be disorganized, because that kind of comes with being creative. And she didn't even know that this was an underlying mindset. But she was super disorganized and she had her baby a couple months old and for women who remember or who have had babies in that early stage, there's very few windows. If you live in New York City, you can get that baby outside and take the baby for a walk before the baby needs to eat and nap. And so she missed the whole window because she was so disorganized. She was like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window and she was so disorganized she's like, oh my God, where's the diapers? Where's this, where's that? She missed the window. And then the baby's crying and she describes and I've talked to her about this also personally she describes looking at this wonderful child's face and saying, kiddo, this isn't going to work.

Speaker 3: 40:53

So not only that's a point of deep failure, like I think for me.

Speaker 3: 40:57

I'm like, oh my god, I would have been in a ball and tears and like that just sounds awful and we've all been there.

Speaker 3: 41:04

Anyway, the reason I mentioned this is because it's a very relatable moment. But from that moment, not only does she become really good at organizing, she builds a business to organize other executives, both men and women. She writes two New York Times bestseller books or more, and she has this whole career where she actually helps people with their operating models, with their leadership. But it starts with the wedge of what was a point of failure became a point of strength, became a point of building a business, became a point of giving to others and helping others not organize how they get their walks for their babies, but like thinking about how the softer skills help you be a better leader, the full set of softer skills. And she's no longer in performing arts, she's in corporate America and I just I also just wanted to share that sometimes both men and women are so afraid to make a mistake and there's a lot in the zeitgeist about that. But I do think you never know, like, how do you take that in as a pivot point to something else we'll run on.

Speaker 1: 42:26

I'm gonna start with some high-level questions. They can be one word responses, or one sentence, two sentences, whatever you feel most confident with, but the whole point is just to get your immediate reaction to the question. Okay, ready to dive in, ready? Okay, it's 2030. What's work going to look like? It will be AI powered. Okay, what's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good? Bias, thank you. What's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on right now?

Speaker 3: 42:57

Women, young women, even better answer.

Speaker 1: 43:02

What music are you listening to right now?

Speaker 3: 43:05

Oh, I really like Bruno Mars and his collaborations, many of which are women artists, but I do really love the collaborations.

Speaker 1: 43:13

I like his new stuff too. It's like fun, yeah, so good. What are you reading, and that could be physically reading or listening to an audio book right now?

Speaker 3: 43:25

I am obsessed with AI podcasts, so yeah.

Speaker 1: 43:29

What's your favorite AI podcast? What do you recommend?

Speaker 3: 43:32

Oh, I really like no Priors and Training Data from Sequoia and the Possible podcast. And of course, I think everyone in tech listens to Hard Fork. I'd be remiss not to mention Hard Fork, but that's kind of obvious.

Speaker 2: 43:47

Love that.

Speaker 1: 43:50

Perfect, who do?

Speaker 3: 43:54

you really admire the 11% women CEOs of the world Each and every one of them. For everything that they're doing and for being a pioneer Awesome.

Speaker 1: 44:07

We recommend all the time on this podcast that people start to follow. I'm sure you do, but the organization Pink Chip that's tracking all of the global female CEOs and their success. So, yeah, any chance I can to plug it, I like to bring it back up. Good plug. Yeah, what's a piece of advice you want everyone to know?

Speaker 3: 44:26

Build your networks make sure they're powerful networks and people who are going to be your personal board of directors. I love that.

Speaker 1: 44:34

All right. Last thing, where can listeners follow? You stay abreast of all of the goodness and new research that you have coming out on this topic. What's the what's the best? Obviously, read the book. We're going to link to that but how can they continue to stay informed beyond reading the book?

Speaker 3: 44:53

All of our gender and research. On mckinseycom, you can search under my name or just search under the topics. We have 10 years of women in the workplace, so there's a lot of data in there. And I'm on LinkedIn and I've been trying to be better at posting thoughts and sharing things that are interesting. You all can give me the feedback. You're like, nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more. But I'm focused on LinkedIn me the feedback. You're like nah, it's not really working, but it'd be good if you were more but I'm focused on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: 45:26

This has been so lovely. Lorena, thank you for joining us. Oh, thank you. Both Appreciate you. This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra, and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagrams, so please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.

The Power of Mattering

Your Work Friends Podcast: The Power of Mattering with Zach Mercurio

This episode is for anyone who has ever questioned their worth or forgotten the impact they have on others. We sat down with Zach Mercurio to explore what happens when people truly feel seen, valued, and significant. Whether you are the one needing the reminder or the one in a position to give it, this conversation unpacks why mattering is not soft, it is essential.

From how we lead and collaborate to how we show up for our families and friends, we all rise when people know they count. If you have been feeling invisible or want to create spaces where others feel seen, this is the episode to hit play.

Listen or watch the full episode here

---

Speaker 1: 0:05

I'm Mel Plett, talent strategist coach and someone who survived Big Law, big Four and more than a few broken org charts.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I'm Francesca. I've led people strategy at Nike and Deloitte. I like my advice how I like my coffee strong and no bullshit. We host your work friends, the podcast that breaks work down so you stay ahead. We talk work stuff. The human stuff, the awkward messy, what the f*** is actually happening, stuff Each week we drop new episodes with real talk, smart guests, fresh insights and straight-up advice Hit, play. We've got you, yeah, the occasional F-bomb or two.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hey, this is your Work, friends podcast. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work, so you stay ahead, Francesca. What's going on?

Speaker 3: 0:50

Not much. Summer's full rolling Went to an airplane house.

Speaker 1: 0:53

You sent me those pictures of the airplane house and I'm intrigued. I want to see the inside. Sounds interesting.

Speaker 3: 0:59

Yeah, For those that don't know, in the Portland area there's a guy that. For those that don't know, in the Portland area, there's a guy that I think it's a 727 that he took apart and rebuilt in the woods and you can go up to this airplane that is now his house. My understanding is that he's also going to be building one in Japan as well, but it's actually really cool because he lets anybody on his property you can go and stand on the wing. Would you ever want to live in a plane?

Speaker 1: 1:27

I could see myself living in a plane. If it was gutted and you made it into something really cool, why not? Who?

Speaker 3: 1:31

cares. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like a prefab home yeah.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Yeah, why not I don't know If you could turn a school bus into a home.

Speaker 3: 1:40

There's options here Recycling.

Speaker 1: 1:44

Yes, that is the name of the game. Okay, we sat down with Zach Mercurio, who recently published his book the Power of Mattering, which just blew me away. Zach is a researcher, an author, a speaker, and he specializes in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work and positive org psychology. He wrote the Power of Mattering how Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance, and he also wrote the Invisible Leader Transforming your Life, your Work and your Org, and the Power of Authentic Purpose. And he's worked with hundreds of organizations worldwide, including teams at JP Morgan, delta, marriott International, the National Park Service, the Army and more. And his work, his research on meaningful work, has been awarded by ATD, the Academy of Management and the Academy of Human Resource Development. And I don't know about you, but this book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter right now. This book just blew me away in how much people don't see how they matter.

Speaker 3: 2:45

Right now, I'll tell you, for the majority of the book, I had, like, almost felt like I was going to cry, like I was feeling so emotional about it. And it's because, at the end of the day and what Zach talks about is, even from the very first moments of your life, you want to feel like you matter. You need to know that you matter and, by the way, that does not change ever. Yet there's so many of us walking around feeling like we don't matter at all. You'll hear Zach talk about this, but just so you understand the difference also between belonging and inclusion and mattering belonging is being asked to be a part of the team, inclusion is getting to play the game, and mattering is knowing how you contribute, knowing how you're significant to the team, and that's the difference. It's the knowing of how you offer value, how you're significant and feeling. That's the difference. We've got opportunities to do that every day, all day, for everybody in your life.

Speaker 1: 3:51

For everybody. Yeah, Personally and professionally. And listen, the squishy stuff matters. People don't want to talk about the squish, but the squishy stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit. Stuff is what drives organizations. You need to give a shit and it's different than belonging. It's actually you seeing why you matter. I love the example he also gives about NASA and laddering, and everyone from the janitor up through the astronaut knew how they contributed to getting a man on the moon and it got me thinking how are we doing that for our own teams and our people at work, Even if it's on a project? How are you letting them know how their contribution even if they're doing the design of the deck, like how does that contribute to the overall results and why? It not just how it contributes, but why it matters and why their role in this matters? I would say, on my own reflection, I wish I did more of that. It's something I definitely will be paying a lot more attention to.

Speaker 3: 4:49

Yeah, yeah, I think the I feel like I tried to do this and I feel like I should have done it even more no-transcript, no-transcript, no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 45:17

Okay, these can be one word answers. They could be a sentence. We could dive in further wherever it goes. All right, it's 2030. What's work going to look like?

Speaker 4: 45:26

There's two ways it could go. So one, the bosses are getting the power back right now because the talent market has shifted. You know it was more pro employee, Now it's more in favor of employers right now, and whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of working I, whatever bosses do with this newfound power will change the experience of no-transcript.

Speaker 1: 57:09

Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriendscom, but you can also join us over on LinkedIn. We have a LinkedIn community page and we have the TikToks and Instagram. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye friends.

Employment is Dead

Your Work Friends Podcast: Employment is Dead with Deborah Perry Piscione & Josh Drean

In this episode, we dive into why the traditional nine-to-five no longer cuts it and explore how AI, gig economies, and decentralized organizations are reshaping work as we know it.

We sat down with futurists, innovation thought leaders, and founders of Work3 Institute’s Deborah Perry Piscione and Josh Drean to get into the mindset shift from “I work for you, you pay me” to a future where skills and purpose matter more than a desk and a paycheck. You’ll hear bold predictions about money possibly disappearing, villages re-emerging, and why flexibility, community, and entrepreneurial thinking are now non-negotiables.

If you’re curious about what work—and your role in it—might look like in the next five to ten years, this episode will give you plenty to think about.

Listen or watch the full episode here

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Speaker 1: 0:00

Traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions. Just does not serve us anymore.

Speaker 2: 0:40

Hey, this is your Work Friends. I'm Mel Plett and I'm Francesca Ranieri. We're breaking down work to help you stay ahead.

Speaker 3: 0:48

We're also joined by Lucy, a 60 pound boxer, who is breathing into the mic right now.

Speaker 2: 0:53

How is that a hot breath going for you?

Speaker 3: 0:55

It's like the best dog, but her breath is just. Here's a mint. Here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like here's a mint, here's a mint. I know I gotta get some of those greenies. I'm like I don't want to know.

Speaker 2: 1:08

I don't want to know oh, I mean, here she is just, but this is the panting, is not francesca it?

Speaker 3: 1:12

is not. It is not. It's just like in a brand new, whole new audience base after this episode and in other news we'll do a class for only fans oh my god, a new way of working. A new way of working. Yeah, speaking of a new way of working, we had a mind-blowing conversation the other day we did we met with the authors of employment is dead.

Speaker 2: 1:38

deborah perry piscione is a globally recognized innovation thought leader. She's an architect of improvisational innovation, a New York Times bestselling author the Secrets of Silicon Valley, serial entrepreneur of six companies, a LinkedIn learning author, and she also worked on Capitol Hill. And then Josh Dreen joined us as well. He's the co-author, co-founder and director of employee experience at the Work3 Institute. His work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, forbes, fast Company and the Economist. They both speak globally actually to bring work and tech insights to digital first leaders, but they're very focused on human-centric workplaces as well. Very interesting concept Employment is dead. What I also took away from that conversation is it's mainly how we think about traditional employment. But work is still here to stay. It just might look a little bit different. How about you? Yeah?

Speaker 3: 2:35

One of the things in this whole AI conversation that I think we've been really missing is what could work really look like in the next five to 10 years. Both Josh and Debra brought some very mind-blowing perspectives of how work could feel decentralized and gigged and really exciting Potentially, how we don't even have money anymore. Are we going to return to villages? If you are looking for a futurist's view of what the world of work, what your life might look like, especially on this whole AI trajectory, this is the episode for you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 3:14

Listen, it's a thought piece for sure. Noodle on it. Let us know what you think. With that, here's Debra and Josh. All right, welcome Josh and Deborah. We're so excited to see you both. All right, we're going to set the stage and jump right in, because we're in it. The title Employment is Dead. Really bold statement. What led you both to this conclusion?

Speaker 1: 3:44

Oh yes, employment is dead. Our bold pitch is that traditional models of employment are failing to meet the needs of the evolving workforce. Employment, as it looks from an industrial age kind of model of you work for me, I'll give you X amount of dollars for Y amount of hours, I'm the boss, I tell you exactly what you need to build and exactly what you need to do, and you don't ask questions, just does not serve us anymore. And when Debra said it's dead, we do make the distinction that work and employment are two very different things, and we've just bled it together and don't think too much about it. But in the very first chapter of the book we say employment is this construct that we designed. That doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 4:30

Work, on the other hand, individuals who want to build skills, who want to be a part of a company or a movement bigger than themselves, to belong to a community. That is what is important. So how do we reclaim some of those elements? And we talk more about this and we can get further into it, but I'm curious to have you weigh in on that, debra.

Speaker 4: 4:50

Well, I wanted to give a little bit of another additional nugget on the backstory. Josh and I really thought we'd have a multi-year run rate with this book, and we'll be lucky if we have five months, because this concept of these jobs eroding is happening so quickly. So the world really needs to wake up and, on the one hand, we're going to get back more time so that we can be better citizens, better family members, have more time to do things. We just really have been desiring this European lifestyle for so long. Now we're going to be able to get it, but we do need to look down the road, not only for ourselves, for subsistence, but how do we all collectively work together, which can look quite different from an economic model that we've known for over 150 years?

Speaker 2: 5:38

Yeah, I think everyone's pretty cozy with how it's always been right. That's always hard, but what I gained from the book was traditional jobs are gone, but work is here to stay. So the optimistic realist in me is employment might be dead, but work is here to stay. There's work that's going to happen For the time being. Yeah, for the time being.

Speaker 4: 6:00

I almost got, even though Waymo has been in San Francisco for quite some time I haven't seen it in my Silicon Valley neighborhood until recently and I was waiting to wave at the car, not realizing it was a Waymo, because I smile at people when I they're waiting for me to cross the street. I was like there's nobody in that car so soon. Just as much as AI is evolving, so are robots and humanoids, and so we are getting to, you know, that general AGI, artificial intelligence, where it can rationalize, teach itself and be in concert with robots being able to learn on their own, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well, and so that's happening a lot faster than we anticipated as well.

Speaker 3: 6:45

The evolution of work has changed. A lot of people haven't studied this so deeply, so I'm wondering if you can talk through how expectations of work have changed over the years, just to set the stage.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Yeah, I can jump in here. I spent a lot of time working with HR professionals and when you look at HR in general, that field has just shifted so much. When you look at the beginning of HR, right, it was personnel and I think that it was birthed out of this idea of we have people who work at the company. We need to pay them. They could get into trouble and we could be sued as a company for whatever they say or whatever they do after hours, and so let's get ahead of that. So the traditional model of HR was how can we do the paper things it's paying people PTO and then we got into this era of discretionary effort where it was like people work for us nine to five. It's very contractual, but how can we almost trick them into doing more work, staying later, creeping into some of their personal time? What can we do to make the workplace exciting? To be there at 6 pm, at 7 pm, come in earlier, and so there's the carrot and the stick. Your bonuses are tied to that. And there's also the look we've got snacks in the break room, We've got beer on tap, we have a lot of different things. And that birthed the employee engagement movement which was yeah, we're Apple, we're Google, we want you to have an amazing experience at our organization. So how can we engage you more? And that's where we have hot yoga, or we cater food every single day, or we'll watch your pet. We have a pet daycare on campus right, it's very much this 2000s view and that has shifted into employee experience.

Speaker 1: 8:34

I think is where we are today is how can we design experiences that employees want to have and need to have? The problem is we're still falling behind because we're unwilling to look at the deep and true needs of employees. We actually write about it in the book. We call them the 10 operating principles of work, three, the non-negotiables of the modern workforce. And, just to give you an example, employees want flexibility. That's one of our operating principles. Can we offer them flexibility? And, like we did during the pandemic, we don't really do it now, and so we see a lot of companies who are more. How do we get them back into the office? The RTO mandate over. What if we customized their schedules and individualized it so they can work according to their circadian rhythm? Yes, you can go get your kids at 3 pm, Because we know that you log back on at 7 and you work until midnight type thing, and so there's a lot of flexibility that we can be offering employees. It's just it feels like we're still stuck in that model.

Speaker 3: 9:34

Why do you think that is? Why are we still stuck?

Speaker 4: 9:39

Today's model is based on really Taylorism, which Taylor was an engineer in the early 1900s who came up with the concept and said people do not have emotions. They don't have feelings, they're just cogs on a wheel to get that widget job done. And that was really the creation around middle management as well. We became very consumed with time and for someone like myself, I never understood if I didn't eat lunch on a particular day in my Washington DC Capitol Hill office and my work was done at two o'clock, why do I have to sit there until six? Because our hours were eight to six. And then, if you pulled all-nighters in Washington DC, at least in my generation, you got like a badge of honor. Rather than looking at the output or the productivity behind work, we just got into the concept of time, and so it is really hard if you may be very innovative and I think, sitting here in Silicon Valley around companies like Google who did try to do things very differently Marissa Mayer was very famous at Google for allowing people to tap into their rhythm, as Josh mentioned and just when do you work best? It may not be within that eight to six timeframe, and I had to adopt that engineer model when I first moved to Silicon Valley, because every engineer I worked with was really extraordinary in the middle of the night and that's when they got their work done.

Speaker 4: 11:13

Technology and products and consumerism in foods. But yet our cost of living is at its highest, in part because of premium pricing. So Gen Z has like 82% less buying power than baby boomers did because of all this additional abundance and the fees around it. So if you're always trying to catch up in order to pay your rent or your mortgage, it's just hard to grow beyond. You just don't have time to think about it because you're on that treadmill.

Speaker 3: 11:54

Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because we know that a 30-year-old today is worse off than their parents were. To your very good point right, the buying power in the younger generation is not there, and I think there's a lot of reasons for that too. And then we're also looking at potentially jobs going away, work going away. This idea of job security non-existent definitely now doesn't exist anymore. Technology is going to drive this so much faster, right, we're going to get into these holes so much faster. My biggest concern is this economic wealth gap is going to get even bigger, from the people that have to the people that don't have.

Speaker 3: 12:37

And does technology exacerbate that or does it democratize that?

Speaker 4: 12:41

Yeah, that's such a great question because, as Josh knows, I used to always say AI is going to democratize opportunity, but really what it's coming down to is digital fluency. I sit in the middle of this stuff and trying to keep up with it day to day. I'm like, oh, you haven't heard about Manus, that's going to build out the company for you. That's Reid Hoffman's new startup and Josh and I are very much on the global speaking circuit and I'm lucky of a speech last two weeks. I'm constantly revising it. So there's exhaustion with keeping up and you cannot keep pace with the five or so AI companies. Where they're going to be the winner takes all situation. There was a venture capitalist who made a famous statement as the SaaS kind of model where you would eventually exhaust those sales. In an AI model, you can not only take all the jobs, but you can take all the salaries of the people that used to work for you. It's endless. The money is endless.

Speaker 3: 13:46

Yeah, I was just reading AI 2027, that white paper that's out there too, and it just feels like it all starts to funnel up into three big things at the end of the day, and it's just holy shit, as all the wealth and all of the abundance, if you will, going to ladder into these three conglomerates, whatever we want to call them.

Speaker 2: 14:19

It's fascinating to watch, and the3, because I and Josh. You started to talk about it a little bit, but can you both break down what Work3 is all about for our listeners?

Speaker 1: 14:29

Yeah. So the Work3 Institute is an HR and AI advisory where we help companies marry emerging technologies with workforce strategies. It's hey, we want to use AI. We have no idea how to get started. We want to help our people better use AI and upskill them to be able to 50x productivity, 10x productivity, whatever the promise of AI is going to be. We just don't know how to do that, and a lot of it tends to be.

Speaker 1: 14:57

These forward-thinking human-centric companies who see the change happening don't know how to get on board and we match them with some of this technology. A lot of it, to be honest, is like you've never touched a generative ai tool. Here's a few options. And generative AI tool here's a few options. Here's some homework to start using it today. Just use it in your daily life. We are big on helping reclaim human fulfillment at work and satisfaction. It's something that, especially as companies are being squeezed right now economically, how do we not lose sight of employee satisfaction? How do you continue to do well by your people? Because if you look at the stats, they're not great either. Most employees are burned out. Most employees would take a new job in a heartbeat. Most employees don't trust their companies to do right by them at this time, and so tackling those human-centric projects head on.

Speaker 2: 15:51

You talked about the principles earlier and I loved, debra, what you were saying too. Just, things are changing so quickly and Josh mentioning RTO, right, we swung all the way over here during COVID. Now we're all the way back and something about the traditional model and I know we started to touch on those barriers that actually are gonna get people to the future. Some of it has to do with, like, executive leadership still thinking in that very traditional way, right, like even some of these folks who are really tech forward are still like I need to see your face and I need to see it every day from eight to six, as you mentioned, deborah, and if you're not a butt in a seat, I don't trust you're getting the work done. How do you get them to cut through that old way of thinking to get them to the future?

Speaker 4: 16:38

So the last chapter of our book is on the work three transformation. How do you go from the traditional organization into the era of AI? And a lot of it has to do with communication and, as Josh mentioned, it's about the people. First, the human element. When we wrote this book, we really thought the adoption would come from a lot of the big organizations and the consulting firms. But what happened, with Doge coming out and the geopolitical component of this is, people were losing their jobs so much faster. And then there needed to be a proof point If you were in the hiring business, that you had to prove that AI couldn't do that job.

Speaker 4: 17:21

This book quickly shifted to the individual wanting to know what do I need to do? Because we can't call this unemployment anymore. We need an entirely new economic model in this era of AI, because moving into that next job, it's just not going to be there. But I think, mel, it's more about fear and holding on as long as they can, because they know this is happening. So I don't care if you're Accenture or you're a law firm or whatever you are. You know that AI is going to take over your business. It just is. And so let me hold on to the work element as long as I can, and Josh and I have certainly talked about it. They probably sign these long-term real estate leases. They're just holding on as long as they possibly can, and I know you want to talk about some recent articles where one of the anthropic co-founders has talked about job loss.

Speaker 4: 18:21

That's going to happen at the entry level, but CEOs, boards of directors, can all be taken out by AI, so why not hold on as long as you can and let's work together as long?

Speaker 2: 18:31

as we can. We saw it even two years ago, right when they were testing AI, taking the bar exam or the accounting exam, and they're passing with flying colors Like absolutely it's at all levels, not just entry level, For those types of business leaders or even in professional services that are kind of holding on with fear. How do you move them to the place of opportunity of the portfolio worker in those environments so that everyone can continue to feel?

Speaker 4: 18:58

whole to some degree. What's happening simultaneously is Gen Z coming up. We often talk about various kind of use cases or individuals, young people that have made a tremendous amount of money at 15 years old, generating, creating a game on Roblox, and I think the average Roblox developer, Josh teenager, makes about $65,000 a year. So you know they're not going to want to necessarily come into what traditional work offers when they've had so much control and ownership over being that gain developer. And so you are having this market. Yes, 50% of these entry-level jobs, white-collar jobs, are going to go away in the next one to five years. There's also a lot of interesting things happen on the Web3 side in the metaverse. Josh, you're really the expert here, so you should weigh in.

Speaker 1: 19:58

Yeah, the answer is if you look at the pattern over time, companies who operate in fear, especially large companies who don't take the risks that Debra's talking about and don't push things forward, will risk obsolescence. That's just how it is. And the argument that we make again is that if we are still having the employment conversation and that's exactly what we're having right now which is oh, are you at a nine to five full-time employment with one company or unemployed? Those are the only two options. This doesn't make sense. And the younger generation to Debra's point already has abandoned traditional nine to fives. They are abandoning college right now, they are adopting AI and they are pushing forward in a way that doesn't even make sense to these aging leaders who have been doing this for so long. In a certain way, it's just outside their scope. Mel, you mentioned a DAO or a Decentralized, autonomous Organization. Some of our more progressive clients are piloting DAOs within their organization right now, which sounds like a scary word or a Web3 new thing, but really all it is like we don't need decision makers at the top of one person, a manager making all of the decisions and just telling us exactly what we need to do. You hired me because I have skills and I have a voice and I'm creative and there's a lot more that I can offer to the team. So what if we distributed tokens to them, voting power? Essentially it's you want to make a choice for the team? Get on Snapshot. It's just a Web3 tool that will allow you to vote in real time which direction the company could go, and you can make hundreds of these decisions every week together in an instant. And once the group has decided collectively which direction they need to move, then a smart contract will execute and say all right, that's the direction that we're headed.

Speaker 1: 21:55

And now you have hyper agile teams that don't. They're not bound by the same red tape, their hands aren't as tied as other teams and they're moving quickly and they're producing more results than other teams. And so there are companies that are doing it that way. What I think this large scale global DAO, like a global gig economy, is going to be more so the mainstream than an internal gig economy. Why should I work for you only when I can do my same skills for several companies and several projects? That feels better to employees. And so again, how do you attract Gen Z? A lot of companies can't even answer that question. They just label them as lazy or entitled. And then there are companies who are like oh, let's pilot some DAOs. And then there's, oh, let's operate outside of traditional employment, which feels like I don't even get the value out of the work that I contribute, so pay me more for the work that I'm doing. There's a lot to unpack there, but that's just a teaser.

Speaker 2: 22:58

We know Gen Z is already making up 30% of the workforce. Between Gen Z and millennials, I guess borderline zennials, that's 70% of the workforce already. Right, and Gen Z want to feel like they're co-creating the workplace with you, they're not just showing up and being told what to do. So I actually love that concept of the voting piece that you talked about. Where is this working really well? I know you can't share client names, understood, but where are you seeing this working really well? What are you hearing from feedback where you are testing this out Abroad, abroad, good.

Speaker 4: 23:32

Of course Switzerland, Germany I might ask them out. Josh and I do a lot of global work overall, so yeah, there's definitely forward-thinking individuals overseas.

Speaker 1: 23:52

We share case studies with them. Individuals overseas we share case studies with them.

Speaker 1: 23:58

It just feels like a couple standard deviations away from what they are willing to do, right, Even if this was working really well, like JuiceboxDAO is a great example, right?

Speaker 1: 24:05

This is a vibrant, interoperable community that doesn't employ anyone, and yet they have so many people core contributors, or bounty hunters, as you call it in the Web3 world who are contributing and adding value and getting paid based on the value that they are generating. And so, again, it's very difficult to come into a leadership place and say, hey, work is changing. And they're like give us some answers and it's yeah, but the answers aren't going to be what you're used to and they're going to challenge everything that you know and like AI added to all of that which is moving so rapidly. It's difficult, and that's part of the reason why, with AI, we see a large group of companies who are like oh yeah, AI is going to replace my expensive workforce, and people are tossing around oh yeah, we're just going to be unemployed, Everyone's going to be unemployed. It's guys like broaden your horizons, maximize the skills that you have and you will always be working.

Speaker 3: 25:10

I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? I think that's my question. How are people going to make money? And you've mentioned, like the creator economy with Roblox, right, or, for instance, these DAOs. I find it very lazy when companies go oh, I'm just going to fire everybody, or we're just going to get efficiency gains, or we're just going to dump a bunch of money in AI and throw spaghetti at the wall to try to figure out what's happening, without really thinking about what the art of the possible could be in their organization. And we see this very commonly when technology hits. It's like tech for tech's sake, as opposed to actually enabling your business to be something better than it could be. Yep, like, how are people going to make money? And my secondary sub question of that is do companies really go away?

Speaker 4: 25:54

I'm going to tell you what I think is going to happen in five years, when money goes away. Josh, why don't you do the interim step? Because that's the beauty of our collaboration is Josh is in the thick of things and I am looking more at the economic models of the future.

Speaker 3: 26:09

Can we have both, though, because I'd love to know the now and the future.

Speaker 4: 26:12

if you'd be willing to share, yeah for sure, josh, you want to begin, and then I'll follow up future, if you'd be willing to share.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Yeah, for sure, Josh. You want to begin and then I'll follow up. Yeah, and just to clarify how are individual employees going to make money in kind of a gig economy, space creator economy, or how are companies going to make money knowing that employees are probably going to choose alternative work models?

Speaker 3: 26:32

Let's start with employees like individual people, because I think that's the biggest concern for a lot of folks right now is will jobs exist? Will work exist?

Speaker 1: 26:40

Yeah, it's so funny. So many TikTokers who are like I'm unemployed. I just got laid off for the second time this year, so blow up my TikTok and collectively we can hopefully make some money. Everyone's trying to carve that space out, and I would say the reason why the creator economy has stagnated, the reason why the gig economy isn't hot right now, the reason why Airbnb and Uber is not excelling like they used to, is partially because plenty of reasons right, but from an employee's perspective, if I'm driving for Uber, you have a centralized company. They need massive amounts of cashflow in order to keep the business running, and so where are you going to get that cash? You can go to investors and you're tied down to being more and more profitable, and the employee just gets to a place where this isn't even worth it. I'm not even making enough money.

Speaker 1: 27:33

Too much of it is flowing back to a centralized organization, and so one answer could be decentralized organizations, which is we cut out the middleman. We don't need them. We have technology that exists where you can open an app and get to work. It runs peer to peer, which means I offer my skills and my services outside of an Upwork. Upwork right now is the only way. There's other platforms, sure, but if you want to be a freelancer, the only way you're going to find work is through some of these channels. Again, upwork takes a large cut of that.

Speaker 1: 28:09

So how do you make this make sense? Plus, benefits are tied up into employment. Specifically, there's a lot of challenges that have not materialized yet, and I'm just letting everyone know on this podcast today that smart people are working on this technology and the minute that it becomes viable for the masses, why would an employee work a full-time job when they could have just as much, if not more, money, working on projects that they love with, like passionate individuals, single mothers working three hours a day because that makes sense to them over other options? And Reid Hoffman he has said that traditional jobs will be dead by 2034. And I think a lot of people misinterpret that to be like AI is taking all of your jobs. You'll be done by 2034. What he's really saying is that model, that decentralized gig economy, will be viable by 2034 and everyone will be choosing that.

Speaker 4: 29:02

And Josh, he revised that year in the next two to four years.

Speaker 3: 29:06

Oh Jesus.

Speaker 4: 29:08

Yeah, if you look at his Manus AI, you'll understand why because it can create the company for you. So, francesca, your question is the question I hope that I always get asked and rarely do so in the interim. We're gonna have to be incredibly entrepreneurial, whether you're entrepreneur or not. So you could be driving for Uber right now and you also make these delicious gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that people have been asking you to provide for parties and locally, but now you're giving it to your Uber customers and they're starting to take orders. So what I mean by that is you want multiple revenue streams and getting those revenue streams to work together.

Speaker 4: 29:50

My head is really where are we going to be when money goes away? So I'll give you an example, and this is a geopolitical issue as well we may move back towards communal living. We're seeing a lot of that pop up around the world. We may grow our own food. I think we're going to see much more of the rise of the family-run business, and I don't mean just the mom and pop small storefronts. These can be multi-billion dollar businesses, but we are going to have to be much more reliant on our families and our immediate community.

Speaker 4: 30:30

And then government is going to have to figure out an entirely new support system, a safety net, because you can't just call it unemployment anymore. If President Trump wants to pay women $8,000 to have a baby, which he's asked for because of our birth rates being in decline, then you're going to actually have to pay people to, whether it's mom or dad, to take care of that child on top of it. So you're going to have to pay for childcare or elder care Again. It is going to be so fundamentally different from what we know today, and I'm heading off to Copenhagen and a few other Scandinavian countries next week just to continue to look at some of their ways, of the way they live their life and what can be adopted around the world.

Speaker 4: 31:23

I was just in Mexico City. They certainly have the family-run multi-billion-dollar business nailed down, not that it doesn't come without its challenges, but we are going to move much more towards the village, if you will, almost back in time, because it's not about the big corporation anymore. They say the average company. Big company in the future is going to be 50 to 200 people, and then you're going to have the company of one, the big unicorn, and then you're going to have the company of one, the we going to barter? Are we going to be more providing subsistence to ourselves, our families, our communities? And that is the big unknown question at the moment.

Speaker 2: 32:27

If money goes away, how do you have a multi-billion dollar business?

Speaker 4: 32:30

There'll be a few of those people that do have the digital fluency because you are capturing, as I said earlier, the SaaS or any technological kind of innovation. There was a market that you target to. Now, in an AI economy, as jobs go away, you can capture those jobs and the salaries you are paying people. So there's still going to be services that need to be provided for, but we do have to services or functions. I used to say we'll have the barbell economy where you're either the AI engineer or you're the plumber. Now I say you've got to do both. Really, the generations of the future can have some degree of cognitive functionality before AI completely takes it over. We do need those physical skills in the interim before humanoids are fully developed.

Speaker 3: 33:30

Are you guys freaked out by this, or is this exciting to you, or is this exciting to?

Speaker 4: 33:34

you. It's exciting to me because I think we know, had it not been for COVID, we wouldn't have evolved, We'd still be in the same kind of mindset. And so when we think about the problems of the environment, right, we don't need to drive to work anymore. You go to a place like Copenhagen. Everybody is biking. Things become more localized. So I think we had this great big globalization and if anything the president is doing right now is bringing it back to the US, whatever your politics are manufacturing consumerism, and I think eventually that's going to become more and more localized.

Speaker 3: 34:25

Knowing humans' capacity for change, and this is happening so quickly that will there be in the short term a lot of pain.

Speaker 4: 34:36

No matter what your religious perspectives are, there is a belief that we're coming into the era of the feminine, and in that feminine it is more about the heart rather than the head. We've been chasing capitalism for so long, and the haves and the have-nots, the dichotomy and the spread continues to get larger and larger. And, to your point, has that made us happier, having money, or has it made us more lonely? Because we're always on the chase, even among the world's richest men. It's just a continuous battle. Who's on top? Who cares? How much money do you really need?

Speaker 4: 35:18

And so I do think we will be in a position where we will have more time to give back in ways that families need. Particularly children need. They need that love and support. And there's something very beautiful about that family farm, with those children getting up at 3 am and all working together to contribute to the family wealth. And I think it's scary because, again, we've been in this kind of world of work that we've known for 150 years now. But we will have to evolve. We don't have a choice. With or without the AI hype, it's happening. So we're not going to have a choice, but to evolve at this time.

Speaker 2: 36:02

The beauty of this. It brings us back to a place for why we're all here anyway, which is to live, because I think one thing that I heard as a common theme throughout COVID post-COVID was this mass reflection that took place because people finally had an opportunity to slow down and remove the blinders of the hamster wheel that they were just on and they're like whoa, I didn't realize how much of my life I'm missing on, and so it's interesting. It seems pretty optimistic to me, although I think there's a lot to work through and there may be a lot of scary things too, but at the same time it gives us the opportunity to be just human beings and exist.

Speaker 3: 36:41

What about the people that are like freaked out? We talk to people all the time that are I'm going to lose my job, AI is going to take my job. You've got obviously anthropic guy saying you're not going to have a job. What do you say to those folks?

Speaker 1: 36:56

I would say it's not black or white. I have a job and I don't anymore. If you have skills that you want to develop, if you have things that you're passionate about, start chasing them now and don't worry about the certifications or the college degrees. That stuff is irrelevant. Just build your skills alongside AI and there will be a place for you, whether it's gig economy 3.0, whether it's in a creator economy world. Youtube has shown us that you can make a video on anything and you can find a following and make money off of that. A decentralized gig economy will be more than that. It'll be what skills do you have? Let's apply it. In these ways, ai will be able to match you on projects. You don't have to look for clients. You don't have to beg companies to hire you with your cover letter. It'll be as easy as opening an app and getting started. But definitely hone those skills. God. The death of the cover letter, please go.

Speaker 2: 37:50

I was going to say you just made every employee happy to hear that.

Speaker 4: 37:53

I don't know if you guys are of the generation. I actually had to mail it in the mail.

Speaker 3: 37:57

Oh yeah.

Speaker 4: 37:58

Oh yeah, you didn't have to go through that, but I'm a little bit more draconian.

Speaker 2: 38:12

I am wake the hell up, wrap it round, and this is to get to know you better as human beings and your personal POVs on a couple of things. It's 2030. In one word, or one sentence what's work? Going to look like Dead.

Speaker 1: 38:34

Decentralized.

Speaker 2: 38:36

What's one thing about corporate culture you'd like to see disappear for good?

Speaker 4: 38:41

All of it.

Speaker 1: 38:44

Management.

Speaker 2: 38:46

Interesting. Okay, what's the greatest opportunity that most organizations are missing out on?

Speaker 4: 38:55

Treating their people as human.

Speaker 1: 38:59

AI.

Speaker 4: 39:01

Okay.

Speaker 2: 39:03

What music are you listening to right now? What's on your playlist Keeping you happy?

Speaker 4: 39:08

I'm going to Coldplay tomorrow night. Oh, that's amazing.

Speaker 2: 39:14

Do you have a favorite?

Speaker 4: 39:15

song from their albums oh many.

Speaker 2: 39:17

Just love it. Yeah, okay, how about you, josh?

Speaker 1: 39:22

Yeah, all of my early 2000s punk rock fans. They're all putting out albums now. So we've got some All-American Rejects in there, some Jimmy World. They're keeping me happy by feeding me more music.

Speaker 2: 39:35

Yeah, Listen, Gen X and the millennials and Xennials. Over here we have the best generation of music coming up. In that time Everyone's coming back.

Speaker 1: 39:43

No one can argue that.

Speaker 2: 39:44

No, what are you guys reading right now? It could be audio book too. No judgment.

Speaker 1: 39:53

I'm reading Open Talent right now. It's a book that actually came out Harvard Business Review Press about the same time as ours, very much in the same vein as the work that we wrote about, but it's very much talking about the now of work, which is how do we open up our workforces to a talent marketplace or an internal gig economy.

Speaker 2: 40:15

So it's very fascinating marketplace or an internal gig economy. So it's very fascinating. Yeah, we we had john on the pod recently. It was an awesome book and very in line with also your concepts as well in terms of that portfolio work of the future. So it's really good. Who do you?

Speaker 1: 40:39

I am a work nerd, so I all of the greats the Adam Grants, the Marcus Buckinghams come to mind. There's a lot of great work, social media individuals right now who are doing some great work. So a shout out to Chris Donnelly, there Just changing work, one TikTok at a time.

Speaker 4: 41:00

Yeah, and I hit it more from a historical perspective, of a lot of women who were the first Amelia Earhart, just somebody I admire greatly, even someone like Oprah, who understood the concept of ownership rather than just being a successful broadcaster. So people who really broke the mold and were first and likely told no quite often and just continue to persevere.

Speaker 1: 41:30

Yeah, I like that. And shout out to Debra, who is a modern Amelia Earhart in my mind. She does all the value she puts on conferences in Silicon Valley of these powerful women who are making big waves in the investment space, innovation space, keeping that trend moving forward. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 41:50

So what's one piece of advice you want everyone to know? And it doesn't necessarily we're going to get to the advice you want employees to have at the end. So this could be personal or professional, but if you were talking to someone you care about, what's one piece of advice you would give them today that you'd want them to take away To?

Speaker 4: 42:06

take risks. There are no wrong answers. I was always that person and this is something I do see, quite a dichotomy between men and women, not to generalize. But men will just jump and women will come to the edge of the cliff and it's almost analysis by paralysis, by analysis. At this stage, you got to try a lot of things and figure out what sticks, and there are no wrong answers and there's nothing embarrassing or just by. I don't even want to call it failure, because you learn along the way. The worst thing is to not try.

Speaker 1: 42:44

I love that, debra. The worst thing is to not try. It's so true. I would say and this tends to be aligned with the content that we write about is prioritize skills over experience. I have a younger brother who's considering going to college right now and he's hey man, is it worth it? I'm seeing a lot of stuff about it, and when I was a kid there was no other option. It was like go to college, that's the only way to get skills. But nowadays there are so many other options to learn and grow, and so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper and learn and grow. And so I would say don't worry about the piece of paper. And, yes, college is a great experience. The community side of it is great, but you need to make sure that you are at least graduating with skills that are going to be attractive in the marketplace.

Speaker 3: 43:27

This has been an amazing conversation and super appreciate the glimpse of what's actually going on today and what will be coming and how people can get on the bus for their own benefit. You both are doing work and keeping up to date with this. As it's changing every two weeks, how can our listeners stay?

Speaker 1: 43:45

connected with you. Find us on LinkedIn Debra Perry-Pershoni or Josh Dreen. The Works for the Institute is there as well. We love to chat about any of the challenges that you are facing and love to connect Debra Josh thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 3: 44:00

Thank you for having us.

Speaker 2: 44:02

This episode was produced, edited and all things by us myself, Mel Plett and Francesca Ranieri. Our music is by Pink Zebra and if you loved this conversation and you want to contribute your thoughts with us, please do. You can visit us at yourworkfriends.com, but you can also join us over on linkedin. We have a linkedin community page and we have the tiktoks and instagrams. So please join us in the socials and if you like this and you've benefited from this episode and you think someone else can benefit from this episode, please rate and subscribe. We'd really appreciate it. That helps keep us going. Take care, friends. Bye, friends.