Redefining Work in a Post-Pandemic World with Laura Martin

Laura
Can you design work? Can you design a team culture where there's freedom to experiment, where there's freedom to code? Maybe collaborate in a way that you hadn't thought of? The best ideas aren't going to come from your senior leaders in any given organization. The best ideas are going to come from your experts in the work. Create the space for them to share them.

Gillian
Welcome to Future Works. This is a podcast dedicated to the conversation around innovation within the workspace. So here on this podcast we're sharing research inspiration together, we'll be diving into conversations with leaders, scrutinizing case studies, nerding out on theories and psychology, all around kind of what it takes to reinvent solutions within the workforce industry. So I'm Gillian.

Michelle
And my name is Michelle, and I could not be more excited to do this conversation.

Gillian
I'm so excited to talk. I'm so excited to co-host with you. I'm really looking forward to leading our listeners through a candid conversation around what's happening in the world of work with Laura, our guest here, who will introduce in a second. We're going to talk about work culture and how it can be better and why it's different.

We're going to acknowledge the fact that the world of work is changing. The way people work looks different, but expectations have increased somehow. Pressures have as well. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to unpack that. Laura is here today to kind of unpack, what's changed in organizational culture, and how we can lift up the people that are keeping our businesses thriving and influencing our day-to-day in the workplace.

We're going to dive into defining factors of organizational culture. We're going to talk about how to activate and improve culture and why that is so important. This is something that we strive for on this podcast, leaving people with actionable ways to make a difference in their organizations, starting immediately. So no matter where you sit in the company, you're going to leave this conversation with something to bring to the table.

That can make a difference not only to your team and your organization, but also to your job. So with that said, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Laura Martin, who's joining us today. And then we're going to let her talk about herself because she's got an incredible background. Laura is a human centric leader. She's paved the path for many companies and the people that are holding those companies together. As an HR exec with 25 years of experience building teams and igniting internal culture. She's currently a consultant. Her diverse professional background stems from finance to ops to HR. And that's allowed her to really dive deeper into finding that sweet spot between what keeps people and teams going and businesses thriving.

So, Laura, thank you for being here.

Laura
Thank you, Gillian.

Michelle
Can I say one of the things that I love about you before you introduce yourself is that you are so good. I think what makes you so unique is not only have you done 'the thing', you paid attention while you did 'the thing', and now you share 'the thing' with everyone. Like you are not gatekeeping. You are so unselfish with your knowledge and I love that you took your experience and now you're helping folks kind of start from ahead.

Laura
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for that great intro, Gillian. Thank you so much, Michelle. That means a lot to me. Early in my career, a mentor said to me, "never let a peer make the same mistake that you did." And I just I carried that with me just throughout my career. So it brings me great joy to share what I've learned so that others can can make new mistakes. But thank you so much for the great intro. I have been really fortunate to have had a very nontraditional career background. I like to call it my 'Choose Your Own Adventure" career. I started at Target Corporation right out of college, and I ended up spending 17 years there, which, if you had told me at 22 that I would spend 17 years in retail, I would have you know about you and you amount of money, that would not be the case.

But in that time I did 11 really completely distinct roles. And so as you shared, Gillian, I was in and out of in and out of the HR. I did some stints in finance, I worked in operations, I did a stint in corporate, which was certainly a learning experience and just really had a wonderful opportunity to chase interesting work, work for leaders who inspired me.

And it really just gave me the flexibility and the freedom to really just round out my skill set and and frankly, take on opportunities, where on paper I really wasn't qualified at all. Something that was unique about my time at Target is after my probably late 20s, every role I took didn't exist before I stepped into the position.

And so that's something that I've carried forward in my career is really stepping into new roles with all the new problems, which is really, really invigorating. So when I did leave Target, I was really the opposite direction. After a short sabbatical, I joined a very small leader development company, and I believe I was about the 50th employee to join that company.

So I went from my little corner of the world at Target, leading a team about 80 to joining a company that was smaller than my departments. And so that was such an eye opening experience, I loved it. I started doing a little bit of a combination of product consulting, as well as client work. Over my six years there, I ultimately built a client success organization and set up operations. By the time I left, I was also running product content creation and the coaching functions. So really all of the teams that went into creating and delivering the services we offered to our clients, it was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I took so much from that.

And the only reason I left is because I got a call from a CEO looking to hire, his first Chief People Officer at a growing, local company here in Minneapolis, and that was a role I had always been interested in pursuing. My resume certainly didn't say this is the traditional Chief People Officer candidate, so it was just an opportunity I couldn't say no to. And it was just as much fun as I hoped it would be. I loved leading the People function. I from there I moved into a larger global organization as head of HR for the US. So, I really have loved both my consulting work as well as my practitioner experiences.

Gillian
I think it would benefit all of us to hear from Laura around how you define work culture. Trying to emphasize kind of the core components so we can all sort of gut check our meanings of this and levels that before we dive in.

Laura
Yeah, absolutely. It's it's one of those big words that everybody has their own definition for. And so I think we've all heard the phrases, you know, "culture eats strategy for breakfast" or "culture is the way things actually get done around here." Like we've all heard those for years. You know, I've spent so many years working with large global organizations to realize that they're just there is no one company culture.

And so I really think about culture is more what the experience feels like for those in that particular context of work. And so that can really vary location by location, team by team. And so when I think of Culture with a Capital C, I really do think about like, what does it feel like to be a colleague, to be an employee in this particular work context?

And even, again, in 11 different roles at Target, there are some things that were macro culture, but those experiences were wildly different. Even within the same organization.

Gillian
And who who is behind building and developing culture within an organization? I mean, your role, Chief of People, was that the role.

Laura
Chief People Officer, Chief HR Office, yeah.

Gillian
Well, it's a cool sounding title, but what does it mean? And what does it look like in other organizations?

Laura
Yeah, I think it's it depends on the, on the layer. Right. So certainly there are components of culture that are set at the top. There are what is important to the organization. One thing that I don't think gets enough attention, true attention is company values. And I don't just mean like what's on the website, you know, or everybody can trot out a deck with mission, vision, purpose, values.

But if every single employee can't quickly articulate the company values, they're not actually shared values. But where that when that's done well and in an organization from the top is explicit about the behaviors that matter here, the thing is, it will be rewarded. The things that are expected that can really have an outsized, you know, influence on culture.

But the reality is every single one of us can shape the culture of our teams, whether you're a leader or, you know, an individual contributor in the context of a team, every single one of us has the opportunity to influence what it feels like to work at that team. Early in my career, I heard every interaction you have with someone, you have the opportunity to leave them a little bit more or a little bit less engaged in what they're doing. And if we all take that truth seriously, every single one of us has the opportunity to influence what it feels like to be on our team.

Michelle
I think my experience in a few different organizations, I worked in one department, and then we'd have to go do something cross-functional in another department, if I was in a healthy culture, you know, you, like, go over to another department and you're so happy to come back home to my team.

And if your culture is unhealthy you're like, oh man, this team has a total different feel. What do you feel like contributes to that feeling in a larger organization?

Laura
I think so much of it is dependent on the leader. And so not to put all the pressure on leaders, you know, we have we have really hard jobs, we have our day jobs as well as the leading people apart. But the truth is, the leader has an outsized influence on what it feels like to be on their team.

I think a lot of it, though, is that it comes into how the organization, what they pay attention to, both from a, correcting behavior as well as what gets rewarded. You know, change follows the focus of our attention. And so it's really important as an organization to think about, what are you what are you paying attention to, regardless of what you say in your cascading goals or what's on your website, what do you actually pay attention to? What gets rewarded? What gets noticed? What gets people promoted? Those things, whether you're intentional about them or not, directly influence the culture of the team as well as where decisions get made. Do you allow decisions to be made at the point where the knowledge is most closely held, or did things always have to run up the chain and then back down?

And because of what it feels like to be on a team where you might be told you're empowered, but if you can only approve something to a very small degree. Otherwise you have to take it up and wait for the meeting or the next quarterly review before you could actually move things forward. There's a dissonance between what you're told you're expected to do and what you're actually free to do. And so the smartest organizations are incredibly intentional in designing reporting structures, in deciding where decisions can get made. Again, I won't harp too much on the values, but if you do have shared values, you really don't need as many policies, you don't need as many procedures and best practices.

I'll use one example that I just really love from from a previous life I worked the leader development company that I worked for had four values, four core values, and one of those was "clients tump prospects." Let me think about that. That is a bold statement because in that company, I swear I received my first Vice President position.

I was the Vice President of Client Success. Can you imagine how fun it is to be the VP of Client Success in an organization that says clients trust prospects? Like it was amazing. And but that could have just been the thing that one of the slide or one on the website. But here's where it actually came to life. Our sales team would drop anything to come with me to talk to an existing client. They weren't just chasing new logos. Nobody was asking me, well, what's the upside? What's the revenue associated with this conversation? If this was a client, I could get anybody's attention. When we looked at product roadmap, we weren't building features for the next big logo that we were hoping to hook.

We were listening to our existing clients. We were building features for them. When we had all team meetings, we weren't showing the pipeline and drooling over the next logo that we were thinking about. We were celebrating stories from our existing clients, and so everything we did was designed around that actual shared value, and it meant I had amazing client retention and had an amazing NPS score.

Our clients would drop everything to do reference calls for us, which ultimately is a sales tool. But it's just like when it when you design your workplace and your rewards and your priorities around an articulated shared value, it's really you can just see unbelievable outcomes from that.

Gillian
So I actually want to ask you more about the values, because those can be done in so many different ways. They can be written and shared. They can hold meaning or not. They can be endorsed by teams or not. I mean, we've all seen it all. All which ways? There's also one of your references, but there's often external facing values and internal values.

But I'm curious how from where are you sat in various positions? How often does the team get to participate in the creation of these values versus them coming from just a conference table of leadership, buttoning them up on a deck and handing them over?

Laura
Yeah, that's a great question. I think some of it depends on organizational size. You know, the larger you get, the more likely it's going to come out of a conference room with a bit of a think tank or frankly, more likely a third party consultant. Yes, I think I think, you know, leaders come up with their values. The smaller the organization, the earlier stages, right?

I think the more, the easier it is to really solicit input. But I think that in any organization there's you can have listening mechanisms to really to hear from the teams. What are you experiencing? Where are you seeing dissonance in what we say, our values and what actually gets done around here. And having a listening system set up to really give your team an opportunity to share their actual lived experience is so important.

And ultimately that feedback should help shape that culture and values. And it's also that you want to be changing all of the time, right? I mean, as organizations grow, there are natural evolution points where you might say, it's time for a refresh. Like we might have said, "we are entrepreneurial." Entrepreneurial is one of our core values, and you may reach a size where you actually can't have every colleague making independent business decisions as though they were an owner, simply because you might be tripping over, you know, a different strategy in a different part of the organization.

So there are natural growth growth points where you might want to refresh the values, but it's not something that should change on an annual basis because it really should shape decisions. Again, how can it shape allowing people to make the best decisions in their particular context without having to plan for, or have a standard operating procedure for every, you know, possible scenario?

Michelle
Ooh, I feel like this listening mechanism that is like maybe the first time I've heard that talked about as like a needed step. Can you do maybe not a deep dive, but like, you know, A33 meter dive into that?

Laura
Yeah. The absolute limit is.

Gillian
What does that look like?

Laura
I mean, the classic is the employee survey is right. And now there's, there's a there's a million flavors of that. Oh that's for my consulting days. I would say most of those questions don't yield meaningful insights. You really do need either a partner or someone internally who understands how to construct one question. That's asking one thing that doesn't give you muddy, muddy data.

So the traditional way, as this survey is, you know, a better way is making sure that leaders are talking to their people every week and just checking in and asking the right questions. So this is where I'm a huge believer in coaching. I spent a lot of years deeply steeped in the strengths based coaching approach. I, I'm I'll die on that hill.

Like that is the way that you unlock, you know, human performance and potential. So equipping your leaders to ask the right questions, listen for the right things and create a safe, safe mechanism for feedback to be gathered and and shared. I do I really believe that, we're going to see, a surge in smart technology that will help in a confidential way, get at employee sentiment.

I think what's what exists today is is not fit for purpose. But I know there's innovation happening in that space. I think as we all get smarter about leveraging generative AI, there will be, not monitoring tools, not surveillance tools. The those are those are being built as well. I'm not I'm not proposing those, but actual listening and you know, and it's sharing up.

Here's something to think about. This, this this might be a concern. Here are some questions you might want to ask to delve into. What's really going on here. I do think technology can be a helper in that. Again, not surveillance, not monitoring, not big brother. That's not what I'm talking about.

Gillian
Well and I mean with remote work there's just so much less real time feedback being shared in the conversation. And exchanges are so focused so project and deliverable, deliverable focused. There's not a lot of reading the room in terms of energy. So I love to hear about tech that's being built, around getting a pulse on how people are feeling, without being able to, to look at them and walk, you know, walk around with them and see what's going on.

So when you're, when you're trying to convince leadership to invest in culture, what are you telling them? In terms of the impact it would have on their business and on their, on, you know, performance, engagement on numbers, how are you justifying this and making a case for investing in culture?

Laura
Yeah, I think the, the, the phrase that I, that I've used over the last several years is and there's been a just a renaissance of this is employee experience. Right. And that's different from culture. But I think that's been the doorway that I've been able to walk through in terms of it within my own organizations, where I've been head of H.R.

As well as well as with organizations that I've consulted with, is like really thinking through delivering a compelling employee experience. And I don't mean like being pong tables and sacks in the office and I'll, I'll and I like those things. I mean, my, my the leader of all my company, we had dogs in the office and I mean, that was probably the biggest thing I talked about for my first six months there.

I thought that was just the best thing ever. But that's not what I'm talking about. That's like, what employee experience. Nobody's really recognizing. And I've said this for years, especially in my IT days, people aren't widgets. So yes, we talk about human resources, but our folks are not interchangeable. And so if you really want not just performance in engagements, but discretionary effort and outcomes, you have to create the conditions in which people can use their brains, figure out how to tap into their strengths, find the intrinsic motivation to contribute not and and the more prescriptive you are, the less you're leaving room for folks to find their best way to deliver outcomes.

And I'm not saying throw your processes out the window. But I am saying really question does everyone with this job title need to do this the exact same way? Or if they're clear on the outcomes, can you design work? Can you design a team culture where there's freedom to experiment, where there's freedom to maybe collaborate, you know, in a way that you hadn't thought of the best ideas aren't going to come from your senior leaders in any given organization.

The best ideas are going to come from your experts in the work. Create the space for them to share them and love that.

Michelle
That's like a bar right there. I know.

Gillian
Yeah, we need to be hearing that more often. And that's that's the point, right? Creating a platform for leadership to be able to celebrate their teams and acknowledge how crucial they are to what's happening.

Laura
Oh, absolutely. We we hire smart, amazing people. And then in too many contexts, just like give them like here's here's what you do and just, you know, everybody does the same way and shut your brain off. And it we're just we're leaving a lot of potential. We're leaving a lot of contribution. We're leaving a lot of discretionary effort.

And business outcomes on the table. We don't create the space for our teams to, to find meaning and, and find their own way of doing their work. And some of that is my own. Like I have made up most of the jobs that I have done. And so I realize that I'm an anomaly there. But even in very, you know, like even in roles where I wasn't the only or I wasn't the first, there are ways to, be creative and, and take control of how you spend your workdays.

01:36:47:08 - 01:37:08:09
Gillian
Definitely. So I'd love to dive a little bit deeper into your experiences. I'm curious, about what cultural problems you've kind of been forced to address, even though you didn't want to, when it got really hard? You know, one of the the challenges that you've been faced with in your job.

Yeah, I think, you know, I'll go I'll go back to my target days that I like and truly nothing but glowing, you know, memories of my time at target. But at least at the time, in the years that I was there, target was known for being extremely collaborative to the point of being a very, very consensus driven.

And so that meant that really decisions were made in the meetings, the decisions were made in the meetings before the meetings, and the meetings were more designed to ratify and document the decision. And for a long period of time, I struggled with that. And then I finally rose. I could like it or not like it. The one thing I couldn't do, even as a fairly senior leader, was change.

That. And so I got over myself, and I learned to do the meetings before the meetings, and I would board around with the PowerPoints and I would, and it took longer. However, I was so much more effective as once I sort of just realized, like, listen, I choose to be here. This is the way, this is the way it works around here.

And so that, you know, I was much more effective and much and much happier when I was like, this is this is the way that it is. And I don't have to like it or dislike it. But this is this is the context in which I'm operate night and day from the next company, which was where I discovered I really love small companies and just the I'm addicted to the pace at which decisions get made in a smaller organization.

It doesn't make it better, it just makes it a better fit for me. You know, other examples. It might have been my first chief people officer role. We had a leader who will, by all metrics, was wildly successful. Clients loved this person. The revenue was was growing. The quality, the quality of the work the clients were receiving was very, very high.

But the team reported to this person, it was just a revolving door of tears. And this leader was just really unbelievably difficult to work for. And I had a conversation with the CEO, ultimately the executive committee and I, and I just said, we have a decision to make. Are we going to be an organization that tolerates talented bullies and different organizations make different choices about that?

I have an opinion, but this is the decision that we need to make and stick to. Will we be an organization that tolerates talented bullies? And we realized no, we are not. And so this leader was removed from leadership, and it was a difficult decision. And it was led to difficult conversations with the client. And it was the right decision.

And but that was a that was an example where our, our stated values in what we were tolerating were we're not alliance. And we brought that into alignment.

Gillian
Well, that gives my younger self hope because of the past bully boss bully experiences that I've had. You know, I'll, you know, along various points in my personal career. It's it's such a shame. So I'm so happy to hear that people are really making a stance there, especially when they have the metrics to show for their place in the room.

And that snow often overshadows in our personal experiences.

Laura
Yeah.

Michelle
I wonder, as someone who in my career most often kind of sits in the view from the cheap seats and not in like, the C-suite. I feel like I experience that usually on a peer level. And I have man talented bully is like that is like such a lovely phrase to use. Now I have sat in organizations, watched my peers work for that talented bully, and felt absolutely helpless.

So where, you know, in this like creation of culture and and pushing those, you know, shared values, how does someone who sits in the cheap seats kind of influence, like, hey, this this has to stop happening, especially when it doesn't feel like you have a choice. Like, I need this job, I need to stay here and I can't make the choice to do something.

Gillian
And it's yeah, it's scary. It's a scary thing. The boys.

Laura
At will. You're vulnerable, right? Especially if this person is your direct leader. And so, you know, I would like to say, having been in HR about half of my career, talk to HR. But the reality is that that isn't always a winning answer. And I and I completely understand that. So I think, you know, a couple of paths that everyone should feel empowered to take is one, what can you control in the situation, and how can you try to create, expectations in terms of what interactions should look like, always in the context of like, this is what I'm contributing, and then this is what I need from you as my leader.

And so what I would always advise people is don't focus on the feelings, which I, I hate to say, but if you're working for a talented bully, that's probably not going to be a successful approach. And so focus on the outcomes like I can. Here's what I know that I need. And sometimes said to leaders myself, something I know to be true about me, I need context.

If you asked me to do something and I don't know the story behind it, I will. I will not feel confident that I'm delivering precisely what you actually need. If I don't have additional context into what's behind the request. It's not that I don't trust you. So this is a thing. A thing that I know to be true about me.

And so I always encourage people to find what are those things, you know, to be true about you that you can articulate to your boss that will help them get the best out of you? And most of us can at least have that conversation. Hey, when you send me revisions and it's just criticism, it sends me into a headspace of of feeling a little bit paralyzed on how to move forward.

It would be really helpful if you could highlight yes to this, this and this note of that, that and that, you know, so like this. There are likely ways that you can convey to your leader in ways that they can get a better contribution from you if they adjust their approach. The other the other advice I always find your advocates within the organization, you know, are their leaders.

You respect leaders you admire, that you could ask to be a mentor, to be an advocate, to be a sponsor. The worst that they can say is no or I don't have time and you're and you've lost nothing. And so whether or not your organization has a formal mentoring program, the best mentors I've had in my life who are not matched through a mentoring software, they were just mostly women that I deeply admired, that I got up the courage to ask if they would have a coffee with me.

And ultimately, you know, they became advocates and sponsors and so everyone can, you know, if you're an introvert, I'm an introvert, I'm a social introvert. But I have to, you know, gear up for conversations like that. Everyone can reach out to someone in the organization that they respect and ask for a connection and see if there's an opportunity for that person who's potentially in a different power dynamic with that leader to help to influence move.

There's no risk in that.

Gillian
Yeah, he open. And I think back to what you were saying earlier about, having those conversations around communication and preferences for how you're receiving or giving feedback. Those types of conversations are so beneficial to have at the start of the job. Yes. That also shows a level of empathy and kind of confidence and control that will set an incredible tone for the work that you're about to.

So I love that. I want to switch gears a little bit. Acknowledge the changes of the world of work that have presented themselves over the years. I want to know more about I think you were already in your people, your head of people, chief people, officer kind of position back then. Correct?

Laura
I actually was still doing that when sort of like everything changed, right? And in 2020, I was still the leader development company and that's that. That's actually it is probably what led me to make the change back into a practitioner role. We were so lucky at this company. We were already a remote first team. We were already living and breathing and a world of Slack and WebEx, and I, I ran, you know, products, client services, coaching from right here in my office in Minnesota.

And this was a Los Angeles based company. And so when everything shut down and everybody, not everybody, of course, many, many, many workers still went into work. But when when knowledge worker and when the office workers stayed home, it was business as usual for us. And so we were able to really help our clients through some of that transition.

01:45:35:08 - 01:46:00:01
Laura
Because we had been operating this way for for years. It was that was just the strategy of the company. We found that we could hire incredible caliber talent by saying, this position can sit anywhere within the United States. Like that was that was rare ten years ago. Now it's not such a competitive advantage, but, so incredibly lucky that I had already learned to do this and to lead remote teams.

But I do think this the overnight flip and how difficult. So many organizations found it, it really didn't create, in my opinion, the same. Maybe it didn't create new problems. It exposed existing problems in how work was designed. I personally think it was a gift that we were invited into our each other's homes and and people.

You didn't have a choice to talk about your children with your colleagues because they were right there behind you and you were trying to be their teacher. And I mean, like, you know, you met everyone's pets. And so it was, it exposed that we all have lives outside of work and equating time in the office at your desk with your contributions and your value to the company has always been a mistake, in my opinion.

And I'm not a mom myself, but most of the women I have worked with over my career are and, you know, celebrating the folks. You can do the long lunches and make it every happy hour and, you know, be the first in and the last out was never the right benchmark of who was actually contributing the most to the company, into the bottom line, into the team and of the culture.

So in many ways, I think it just exposes a lot of ways that work wasn't working. That's actually both part of my draw to move into the chief HR chief people officer role is I'm not, you know, things like payroll and benefits and employee handbook. So those are all very important. That's not my jam. That's not why I got back.

01:47:29:03 - 01:47:52:19
Laura
It's There's a sea change in culture, a sea change in how organizations need to think about making work, work for everyone. That was really appealing to me to come back into a practitioner role, to be part of that solution and to freely experiment on my own, you know, and I've had many, lively, spirited conversations with CEOs, you know, who simply want everyone back.

And I, I have a little bit of an allergy when anybody talks about, like, back to anything, because the thing before wasn't amazing for everyone. So let's look forward to what we want work to be next. And let's stop yearning for how things were five years ago, because it wasn't amazing for everyone.

Michelle
I think, you know, as a mom myself, I think I underestimated how flexible I really needed my schedule to be. And and then, you know, I, like my parents are aging. I think there's that as well to consider that like, I don't know, like, I, I love being able to like, my sister called with this huge medical emergency, and it was such a gift to be able to say, I will come work with you from your hospital bed.

Like she didn't need me to do anything. She just, you know, being able to say, like, I could literally sit next to you and get done what I need to like. That felt like such a great change from, like my previous job where it was like, nope, like, I've got to be here. I've got to be in person.

Like from, you know, Tuesday to Sunday, like that's that's my, you know, I've got to be there and there's no way I could just like, drop everything and come like that feels like such a good gift.

Gillian
Absolutely. I know I, I think about I became a mother in the pandemic, and I often think about these women that I used to work with in the office that I knew were moms, but I never saw them be moms. And I still to this day don't understand. I actually didn't realize that daycare usually ended at 4 p.m. because nobody told me, because these mothers were pulling it off.

And so what a change it's been and what an exposure. Like we've got, like saying into the reality of what's happening in our lives. I also just love that it resets what's important in the workplace. I'm curious, stepping into kind of the tool actionable thinking here. So I'd love to hear more around kind of great enablers for building culture.

Whether it's tools, meetings that should be scheduled quarterly, people that should be hired, I'd love to hear more around kind of what people can really be putting into action. Small. Big. Aspirational. Attainable.

Laura
Yeah. I'll start I'll start with what I think every leader should do. And I know this is a for the doers, which I love. And so we'll talk about what every one of us can do. But as leaders that the single most important thing, the single most important thing you can do pay attention to your people. It's your most valuable currency.

Talk to your people. Listen to me. Check in with them regularly. You don't have to be the most eloquent, inspirational leader to just check in with your folks. And if you've got too many people reporting to you to do that, that's a that's a conversation to have with your leader and that is it her that it's time to bring in HR to talk to people.

We all need attention at work. That goes a long way in building culture. For the doers. I think, you know, really thinking about what do you what do you want out of your work experience? What do you what do you love doing? Like how are you spending your days when I, when I joined this little development company that I keep talking about, I came in as an individual contributor, which I had not been for many years.

I had been leading leaders and leading leaders of leaders for many years at target. When I came into this role as a, as a, as a, you know, one, one woman show for my, my little department. And I was working with a peer, similarly, she was, you know, solo, solo contributor. We worked for the same us. And there was one day we were just, you know, on slack as we were doing our thing.

And I remember it so badly. I was doing data validation of a client data file. This is not an activity that brings me joy to this day. I have to Google had to do a pivot table every time I have to do a pivot table, like it just doesn't stay in my brain. Okay. And so I was just like, well, I have to do this data validation.

And she pay me back. Oh that's enough. So our boss asked me to write a job description because we've been advocating for more resources, just like, well, data validation is fun. It's like a game. I have to write a job description. That's the worst. And I was, hello, here's an opportunity. I will write that job description. It will take me 20 minutes if you will do this data validation for me.

And that was the day that we began our journey of me running Client Success and her running deployment consulting because, and moving at the direct reports because our boss was like, oh, she's been here longer. The people should report to her. And she was like, I don't want to be a manager. And I was like, I miss.

I miss having a team. And so we didn't ask permission. We just started swapping. We just started like we came together, evaluated the sum total of our of our workloads. And we just started collaborating and, and, and did ask for permission. And ultimately it became like one of the best working relationships I've ever had. We're still dear friends to this day.

So I'm not saying you have that level of like, everyone has that level of autonomy. I respect that, but I bet you no matter what your role is, there's someone in your organization that's wired differently from you that you could this friend and start just thinking about, even if it's just having someone who says, I actually think that kind of fun.

Here's how I look at it. Even if you can't swap the word just to help you get a different perspective, and over time you can turn you again, no matter what your role is or some elements that you can influence into how you spend your days, where you don't just feel like you're stuck in. And for me, like data validation help you put I love.

Michelle
I think that goes so along with what you said earlier essentially about like when you are working for that talented bully, but maybe just across the board, like the best things that we can do are look inward at yourself and your gifts and then look kind of next to you, or even like up next to you before, like, hey, that person is doing this thing that like I just discovered about myself that I love.

I, with my my current boss, I had this come to Jesus moment, essentially that was like, hey, it seems like it's taking you a long time to just like, write this super quick in my brain email that, like, I could just knock that out for you and like, well, I don't know, like, I don't want to. Brittany is like, it is not a burden.

I know it feels like a burden to you, but for me, that is like you were saying, like, that's so fun.

Gillian
You both are so lucky to have been in this situation where you can voice that to yet be comfortable. Who picks it? I'm curious how what what processes are in place or what could people put in place to allow for that to happen? Within companies?

Laura
Yeah, it's a very fair point. I feel like and maybe not every leader, but if you're if you're working in a team where there's a number of folks and it's not the culture that you want, I wouldn't if I you just at least how this conversation with your hey, what if in a team meeting presumably you're having team meetings.

If you're not doing department meetings, at least on some sort of cadence, ask for those. Could we all just share something that's like, weird about us that we really love doing? That's part of this job because it's going to be different things for everyone. Like what leader is going to say, that's a terrible idea. We're not going to do that.

They exist. Then hopefully that's not the norm. Right. And so it doesn't hurt to at like, is there an opportunity to just learn more about each other? We have been I mean, one of my favorite icebreaker questions is, is if if money and talent were no object like a no no, blocker, what would you do for a living?

You learn so much about people, and just like what? What lights them up, what they're interested in. So you asked for permission to at least have this conversation with colleagues. The other thing anybody can do in terms of just organizational culture, a lot of times where there's friction, where there's tension is in between departments. And this is where I think I've been extraordinarily lucky, having moved around so much within the context of one organization, you can't say, oh, it's finance.

Those finance people, they just always throw, you know, slow things out. If you've been one of them, you can't say, like if it's like everything just takes, you know, if you've been one of them. And so you don't have to bounce around and have a weird career, you know, journey like I've done to go make friends in other departments, learn their stories, learn what's what's, learn what's great and what's difficult about their jobs, and just build empathy.

It's going to help you. First of all, it's like building empathy is is a worthy goal in and of itself. But it's also going to help you identify where there might be work flow issues. If you're in the context of a team and there's a frustrating thing about your day job, it's probably due to some combination of inputs and how things come into you and outputs and how you move.

Work off your desk it to wherever it goes. Get curious about that bit. The teams on either side where you have a dependency and they have a dependency, and just hear their experience answers. I bet there's probably anyone can find some small way to just make work work better. If you just get curious and look outside your own inbox desk to do list your leaders permission to do that.

Gillian
So be human. Don't leave. Yeah, yeah, a door that doesn't.

Laura
Exist where we're.

Gillian
Okay.

Laura
Something else about one of my a leader that I worked for many years ago used to say, if people are, if there's something that's a point of frustration. Okay. Is this is this a problem that we're going to solve? And if so, let's just like let's stick with it. Let's be a dog with the bone and let's solve it.

Or is this just a thing that we live with? And if it's that, let's not waste any more time and energy talking about it. And so I do think in the, in the toughest, climates I've worked in, it's where people are kind of just grinding on the same frustrations forever. We've been complaining. I literally heard in I won't Name the Company, but I heard someone say, we've been dealing with this problem for 12 years.

Oh my word. Like, that sounds like a new problem. Like how how have you how has if you sat with that for 12 years. So is it a problem truly that needs resolution and then like find find the owner of this at least at least work to escalate it? Or is it just like this is this is one of the things that you know, it's not the way that I would like it to be, but if it's not going to change, like target was not going to stop being consensus driven just because I prefer to move faster.

So then just fix don't worry about it. So don't, don't, don't let that be the thing that you spend the best of your mental energy chewing on. If you're not going to be able to to make a change.

Gillian
How do you read someone's true, you know, connection to values? In an interview? Because when I asked that question in an interview, it's very it's a very important question. But I get the same generic responses. So I'm curious from a hiring standpoint, what question can we be asking in interviews to identify someone who holds really true and important values?

Laura
Yeah. Well, I think there's a there's a difference. And if you're trying to unpack someone's own personal values versus interviewing them against what, what are your shared organizational.

Gillian
Values in the workplace.

Laura
Yeah. So I think, you know, and I'll give credit to this, you know, marketing company where I was the head of HR, we actually had a, a number of employees who were certified to do the values interview. And so that was the first gate even coming to the organization. So there was the values interview. They called it set.

I don't believe in measuring for fit. It was just something you you can go down a hole, you know, bias, you know, rabbit hole. That's real. But it was it was oriented around explaining the organization's values and evaluating if, if that's someone's jam or not. And then it went into the technical interview and the interpersonal interview. And so I really I love that approach.

And so they would ask questions like how would you rate yourself. And the number doesn't matter. The thinking through like if a, if a one of that company values was brave, which I love, it's because you could really hold people accountable for having candid conversations when one of your organizational values is brave. That was one that was fun for me.

02:00:22:16 - 02:00:42:12
Laura
I like, have you talked to the person? No. Well, it's good opportunity to leverage the value, so. But what does that like what is and how would you rate yourself? What does it mean to you? Give us an example in your life where you were brave or whatever other values that you're in, but really listen to their stories, hear how they defined it, hear how they measure themselves.

It, get them the number doesn't matter, but how they explain it is is really insightful.

Gillian
That's so helpful. Thank you. That's great. And brave as a value is one that I've seen very often. So thanks for sharing that.

Laura
This is the only place I've seen it. But I will tell you, I, I talked about it while I was there all of the time, particularly in holding, folks accountable for just addressing their own, their own concerns and addressing, you know, because because we've given them permission. Not just not just permission, but the expectation. And we tell them coming in so that there's no surprises.

It's like you've been here. It's witness your annual reveal, and suddenly you're told you need to be a certain way. Like it's it was very transparent. And it it was meant to both attract the folks. That would be a good like that would win in this particular context as well as detract. Folks who were like, that is not me.

Like, that doesn't sound appealing to me at all, you know? That's okay. It's not that no organization is for everyone. That's okay.

Gillian
Amazing. This was so, so great. It's just wonderful to start out. Our podcast was such a wonderful conversation.

Laura
Well, it was such a pleasure speaking with you ladies. Thank you so much for the invitation and I wish you all the best with this podcast. I think it's such a great, great conversation to carry on.

Gillian
Awesome, Laura, thank you so much and thanks all for listening to future X. Till next time.