People at Work

Leaders have always struggled with being out of touch with people in their organization. That’s worse now. All sorts of new barriers, like the digital divide, disparities during COVID, and muted interpersonal signals, are making leaders more invisible than ever.

Derek Newberry chats with me on People at Work about how leaders can move from invisible to visible. As a cultural anthropologist, Derek sees similarities between tribes and groups of people who gather in organizations. In both cases, leaders have to work harder to bring people together to work in harmony and be productive.

But in today’s work context, where people are face to face less often, leaders must be more intentional about presence. This starts with deep listening, followed by what Derek calls strategic vulnerability, where you arrive without all the answers. Both of these require interest, curiosity, and humility.

Visibility stands to benefit everyone in our teams and organizations. Not to mention the impact present leadership will have on the tone and experience of workplace culture everywhere. If you do one thing today to up your leadership presence, listen and act via Derek’s take.

About our guest:

Derek Newberry is an organizational development consultant who specializes in helping leaders build great cultures and drive transformational change. He’s co-author of a new book “The Culture Puzzle: Harnessing the Forces that Drive Your Organization’s Success”. Adam Grant called it “a stimulating, sensible guide to understanding—and improving—the values and norms of your workplace.”

You can connect with Derek on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/derekonewberry.

Resources:

The Culture Puzzle is available on Amazon or wherever you get your books.

Over at Voodle, there’s excitement about how short videos can create micro-connections for people who don’t work face to face. But that’s not all.

Voodle’s Chief Customer Officer, Rachel Lanham, is excited about the possibilities the new work landscape presents. She’s also curious about how to prepare for the transition to hybrid work.

So, the Voodle team asked 800 US technology workers what they’re thinking about. The result is a comprehensive “Hybrid Workplace Report” that details five big challenges in the transition to hybrid. All of these challenges relate to people and how they’re connected to each other.

Turns out maximizing an employee’s experience in the new normal means being open to new ideas about what culture is, how people are included, and the opportunities for new connection habits.

Tune it to hear Rachel speak on People at Work about what this research means for all of us. She also shares how she’s interpreting the data and implementing solutions for Voodle’s own people and culture. As Rachel says, employees are loose in the socket and ready to plug in somewhere else. Let’s listen and understand how to keep them.

About our guest:

Rachel has dedicated her career to solving big business problems with digital innovation and is currently obsessed with the promise of the future of work - a more flexible, inclusive, distributed, and human experience. Her home base is Seattle, WA but, born and raised in Southern California, she reserves the right to complain about the weather anyway.

You can connect with Rachel on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/lanhamrachel and on Twitter @RachelLanham8.

Resources:

Hybrid Workplace Report

Virtual Onboarding Toolkit

Even if you sit right beside your manager, there’s no way they have complete visibility into your work. Now that many of us are working from home, this visibility is decreased even more. Add on a flexible work schedule and more distractions at home and it’s a recipe for your manager to accidentally overload you with work.

Which is why it’s ok to push back.

Ben Brearley gives some tips on questions you can ask to get the conversation started when you feel like you have too many competing priorities. It really does come down to prioritization and trust. Otherwise you run the risk of setting a precedent that you’ll just accept all work that is thrown your way even if you’re drowning in it.

About our guest:

Ben Brearley is a certified leadership coach, MBA and consultant who helps thoughtful leaders to manage the tricky balancing act of leadership and helping them to lead with confidence.

You can connect with Ben on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/benbrearley.

Ask 100 people what happiness is, and you’ll likely get 100 different answers. But, as Becky Morrison tells us on this episode of People at Work, joy is the root of happiness for us all.

Your recipe for happiness relies on where your joy comes from. We maximize happiness when we do more of this, and less of the rest.

It’s not quite that simple though. Which is why Becky has created a framework to help tune into what matters, and then find that joy in every part of your life.

In the context of work, employees and employers alike have something to learn from this conversation. If we build more joy into our workplaces, we create environments that welcome choice, diversity, and authenticity.

Hear Becky’s thoughts on how to make joy a priority. Just imagine what this would look like if it works.

About our guest:

Meet Becky Morrison. Lawyer turned Happiness Coach, book author, international speaker, and mom to two. Becky also comes from a basketball family – her husband is a basketball coach and both her kids play as well.

You can connect with Becky on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/beckymorrisonbfs, on Facebook at facebook.com/untanglehappiness, and on Instagram @the.butterfly.society.

Resources:

Book: The Happiness Recipe: A Powerful Guide to Living What Matters

Things are happening quickly at Dooly. With a recent $80 million Series B raise, they’re scaling most things in their business, not least of which their culture.

Candace Bajgoric is Head of People and Culture at Dooly, with a background of building and scaling companies and their workplace cultures in the tech space. This is complex work under normal circumstances. Throw in a global pandemic with forced remote work for all, and everything from hiring to onboarding to doing productive work together, becomes more challenging.

At Dooly, the key is being human-centric. Candace joined the People at Work podcast recently to talk about how they’re achieving this, even when they’re not face-to-face. She talks about:

Regardless of where you are in your culture-building journey, there’s a ton we can learn from Candace and her team of Dooligans. With additional pressures arriving due to the pandemic, such as greater demands for flexibility and more mobility in the workforce, companies like Dooly are showing how to keep ahead of change while looking after their people.

About our guest:

Candace is a down-to-earth, people-focused leader who has spent the past eight years working with emerging and growing companies in the tech space. In 2019/2020 she took a different (but also super fulfilling) people and culture role, spending the year traveling in Europe with her young family.

You can connect with Candace on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/cbajgoric

Andrew moved from the UK out to San Francisco to open up a new office and hire rapidly. That’s hard enough to do.

Just as he started doing that, the pandemic hit. The in-person interviews weren’t possible anymore. So he had to adapt to virtual interviews. Instead of thinking about how to connect two offices, he now had to think about how to connect everyone remotely.

That’s a whole lot of change and a whole lot of learning so I was excited to pick his brain a bit. We chatted about the pros and cons of virtual hiring, how to maintain your culture when rapidly hiring and switching to remote work, and what he plans to do with the two offices once things go back to “normal.”

About our guest:

Andrew Butt is the Co-founder & CEO of Enable, a modern, cloud-based B2B software solution for rebate management. Distributors, wholesalers and manufacturers across over 50 industries now have an easy, seamless solution to execute and track their full range of trading programs. Andrew and his co-founder met twenty years ago while learning to fly helicopters and have launched three businesses together since.

You can connect with Andrew on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/awbutt

Workplace culture is like an octopus on roller skates. There are many moving parts, and if we don’t move those parts in the same direction, chaos ensues.

That’s why this week’s guest on People at Work, Gina DeLapa, believes that the future of workplace culture rests on shared purpose. As we’ve shifted (a bit awkwardly like invertebrates on roller skates too) into overnight remote work, our physical spaces are now far less important for building our cultures than rallying everyone around a common goal.

But vibrant and engaging workplace cultures go beyond shared purpose. They also require more self-aware leaders who understand why human-centric environments are best for people who work there. In addition, collaboration, openness, and inclusion are now minimum viable elements for any organization and its culture.

Listen in for more about Gina’s look into the future of workplace culture and her call to action for all of us at work. Workplace culture is up to all of us, and there’s much we can influence for good if we choose to do that.

About our guest:

Gina DeLapa helps company leaders transform their culture so employees engage, drama disappears, and company culture becomes a competitive advantage.

Gina has been collecting great quotations for more than half her life. They often inspire her writing and speaking. Here's one from Ed McMahon, as he was wrapping up his time on The Tonight Show: "Play your role — to the very end."

You can connect with Gina on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/ginadelapa, on Twitter @GinaDeLapa, on Facebook at facebook.com/ginadelapa, and on Instagram @ginadelapa.

Resources:

50 Traits of Exceptional Leaders: info.ginadelapa.com/50-traits-of-exceptional-leaders

There are things that get in the way of achieving goals. Often, we have ourselves to blame. It’s not usually a lack of aspiration or dreams, but the belief that we can actually set a goal and see it to completion.

Kristin Burke feels there are four obstacles that put roadblocks in our way. Perfection, fear, perceived shortage of time, and lack of self-promotion. These are all internal factors that we can control on our goal setting and achieving journey (also known as life).

Kristin talks through each of these obstacles in this episode of People at Work. She provides sassy yet helpful responses to the usual excuses we use to get ourselves off the hook. After all, if we’re not taking our goals seriously, who will?

About our guest:

Kristin is a goal achievement coach who collaborates with women, entrepreneurs, and leaders to accomplish breakout performances. She launched her coaching practice after advancing in her corporate career from an intern to a senior level director. Kristin is married to her high-school sweetheart, Joe, and they have a vivacious 6-year-old, Scarlett. In her free time, she enjoys finding flow through her hot yoga practice, running, and reading.

You can connect with Kristin on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/burkekristin and on Instagram @meetkristinburke.

Resources:

Hear more from Kristin at kristinburke.com/podcast.

If you’re a recovering perfectionist like me, you’ll know that failure and making mistakes don’t sit well. Where in the past I focused on the perfect score in any endeavor, I’ve now come to value the jagged edges of things unfinished, unsolved, and never meant to be.

Shani Magosky brings the idea of embracing failure into focus. She believes there are types of failure that can help us grow, innovate, adapt, and improve. Most of these don’t even get us into a lot of trouble (except for the mistakes around law-breaking, which are generally not encouraged).

But why then do we shy away from not getting things right the first time or at all? Shani talks through the psyche around mistake making and how humans can learn to accept and even welcome failure as a prerequisite for success.

According to Shani, we’re never done failing because there really is no such thing as perfection. So, get messy and make mistakes—it’s good for you (and everyone around you!).

About our guest:

Shani Magosky founded The Leadershift Project based on years of experience working with leaders of all levels and a desire to change organizations by helping people become better leaders- of others and themselves.

In her free time, you can find Shani rock climbing, mid-vinyasa at her favorite yoga studio, hurtling down black diamond slopes, riding her Harley, or kicking back to watch some college football.

You can connect with Shani on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/shanimagosky, on Twitter @leadershiftproj, and on Instagram @theleadershiftproject.

Resources:

Check out The LeaderShift Project website for free resources and book recommendations by Shani at theleadershiftproject.com.

As companies grow their company culture also grows and evolves. When that happens there are two common reactions:

Both of these reactions often make things worse.

So what do you do if you’re leading a high-growth company and want to make sure you have a vibrant culture and the right mix of processes and freedom? That’s the exact question I kicked around with Andrew Bartlow on today’s episode.

What it boils down to is awareness, critical thinking, and intentionality.

You need an awareness that the changes you’re experiencing are a natural evolution for a high-growth company. Then think critically about what might work for your specific company. Don’t just blindly copy an approach from a company you admire. Finally, be intentional with your changes. Don’t make them for the sake of making them. Really think through what your intended outcome is.

Simple, right? But definitely not easy.

About our guest:

Andrew Bartlow is a Human Resources and Talent Management expert and the co-author of Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High Growth Organizations. He leads Series B Consulting, which focuses on rapid growth, and the People Leader Accelerator, the preeminent development program for startup HR leaders. He’s worked with clients like Masterclass and many others to help them overcome obstacles in a hyper-growth phase.

You can connect with Andrew on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/bartlow.

Resources:

Who Should Founders Listen to For Advice

Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow