Stuart:
All right, everybody ready? All right, Solver Studio. What are you supposed to do? This is why I'm not an actor. Let's put the problem in the middle of the table and let's all bring our strengths and our backgrounds and our experiences to solve it.
Mary:
What worked, what didn't work. What can I do differently next time?
Christian :
The quality of life that we can improve for everybody. That's where we're getting better.
Stuart:
Welcome to Solver Studio, and here we go. Today we're lucky to have Kathleen Valenti, our director of learning and development, and Mary Rafter, our manager of leadership development with us today to just talk about L&D, the department, but more importantly, how is this department aligning to the organization. The amount of changes that are going on in our company and how do we support our people as we continue to evolve? Thank you both for being here and appreciate it. I'm going to give you a super easy question to get this started. But speaking of learning, what was your favorite class in school? What was that class that got you out of bed and got you excited?
Mary:
Oh, I was a big nerd. I loved school, but I liked anything that had to do with storytelling or people, so history, language arts, sociology, psychology, all that stuff.
Stuart:
Ll those classes I failed. Perfect. Good. How about you, Kathleen?
Kathleen:
Not surprisingly, as I'm learning. Mary and I have a lot in common. But I also liked learning about people, psychology. I loved languages and just learning about different cultures. Those were my favorite things.
Stuart:
Yeah, I think mine's probably pretty obvious. It was gym. Yeah, gym class was the class that I certainly, it was an outlet for me more than anything. That question brings up a great conversation just around learning environments. For me as a young child, the classroom setting was not the most ideal state for me. If I could have been more hands on, I think that's why science I probably leaned to, because I was able to do the experiments. Then gym was an opportunity to be active and be outside. History, some of those classes, it was hard for me to connect with it. How is learning for you all in the different settings and how things have evolved to today, how do you see learning now in the environments that people are best equipped to learn?
Kathleen:
Yeah, I think for me, I wanted to be able to think about things and apply it to different scenarios and be able to ask questions and try things out and experiment through and apply it to life and think about how does that play into your own life? That's what I think about learning today. I think people don't want to just read through and absorb information and be given facts and just be expected to remember those. I think it's a lot about quick hits and how do you apply it, and it's more about doing than memorizing.
Stuart:
I love that.
Kathleen:
That's how we're approaching learning here at Aston Carter.
Stuart:
That's great. I love that. How about you, Mary?
Mary:
Yeah, I feel the same way. I was always somebody who needed outlets too in order to be able to process, so I dominated gym class too. I probably would've knocked you out in dodgeball, no doubt. But no, I think things are happening so fast now that there's learning moments and everything. When I was a kid, my parents always really pushed us to just be curious and go find learning. If you were interested in something, then lean into it.
I think in an attempt over the years for both kids and adults, we've swung the pendulum. Because there was a lot of students like you back in the day that were just forced to sit behind a desk and memorize, and you got lost in the shuffle. The ownership of creating better learning environments that would impact all students got put on the teacher. But now we've almost taken away the responsibility of the learner to be disciplined to learn. I think for us, it's really finding that balance of how much is too much for us to structure versus just creating the learning environment and allowing people to lean into curiosity and find the things that they need when they need it.
Stuart:
It really brings you back to that question of, what is the preferred learning method for not just us, but for the people that we lead? I think it's an important question to ask because the assumption that everybody learns the same is a major assumption. That immersive training to be able to experience it, to do the work, but also learn the knowledge seems to be the way that we have structured our training in the past. But I can also see it's starting to evolve much quicker, especially around creating your own journey of training. Being at your own pace, at your own prioritization on where your gaps are. What's the best way for you to learn? Is it through that classroom setting, that at your own pace learning or a combination of both? Just over the years, how have you best learned here?
Mary:
I think mine has evolved. I think if you would've asked me a few years ago, I was just books, consuming books and then figuring out ways to apply it on my own. Now, there's so many different learning modalities from how we consume it, but also how we then apply it. For me, I've leaned a lot more into short forms like short podcasts, video casts, and then those things usually allow me to go dig deeper on the things I want to dig deeper on. From how I intake information and learn, for me, that's where it's at right now.
But I've also really leaned into some social learning. I don't know if everybody's familiar with things like Clubhouse or Twitter. Has Twitter spaces now, which is audio learning. It takes podcasts and adds the audience participation level. It's a little bit like talk radio used to be. You're bringing in not just the experts, but also the peers that are in the weeds doing it and learning from that. LinkedIn is actually piloting their version of it, which I think will be a game changer for us in L&D, but also our organization.
But bringing it back to your original question, it's also about our instructional designers are very in tune with the different types of learners. Every learning environment that we create, even if it's an e-learning or an instructor led, we are accounting for the visual learners, the audio learners. We're pulling a lot more audiovisual into our coursework and making it just quick hit so people can grab it.
Stuart:
That's great. How about you, Kathleen?
Kathleen:
Yeah, something that I really like in terms of a format or a modality is, we just launched a skills and competency library and degreed, where our team has built out a pathway for each of the top eight right now competencies. We're continuing to build on that from a Korn Ferry perspective with competencies there, the top eight that have been searched most by our people. There's all different types of media there that you can click through. It's curated content, there's videos, there's articles, there's all different ways that people can learn and build on those specific competencies based on the way that people like to learn in the varied methods for us to put information out there.
Stuart:
Companies are trying to figure out how to be effective and efficient to meet their people where they are at the timeline that they need to be met. That's got to create an incredibly challenging and dynamic environment for you all to be proactive in development. But also to make sure that you don't get distracted with too many things and really focus on the core skills that are necessary. This world just seems to be moving so quickly. How does L&D stay either aligned to the changes that are happening? Or is it even possible to get ahead of it? Which will bring me into Aston Carter in the last couple of years of what we've felt. But just curious, the world is moving quick. How does L&D stay on path or get ahead of it?
Kathleen:
We talk about this a lot. We talk about it a lot. How do you curate content quick enough to get it out in front of people before it's antiquated? We were talking the other day about the idea of people sharing best practices and pulling together subject matter experts. Even the phrase best practices is almost antiquated because there is no one best way to do things anymore. As soon as you say, this is the way, that's old news and there are better ways.
Mary and one of our instructional design manager have built out a really exciting series for us that is called Ask and Learn. It's a leadership series where we are pulling together some of our subject matter experts who have proven experience in certain core functions of the leadership job. Allowing for those leaders to talk through how they approach certain things and invite attendees to the series to ask questions and talk through things in the moment.
Where we can have a learning moment in the moment for people, but also use that time to analyze some gaps in where we might need to provide additional content and opportunities for people to learn. We can take that, build out curated content around some of the gaps that we've recognized that we can fill in. But allowing for learning in the moment and doing a continuous series so that as we have new tools and new resources and the world continues to change, we can keep up with those times.
Stuart:
Yeah, I wrote down a note just as you were talking, and maybe Mary can add some context here. It's about the information getting back to you all in regards to what's needed. What's that vehicle to be able to hear from the masses in regards to where our gaps are? How does a company create that two-way communication train that usually, it's a top down initiative within L&D. Organizations pick some strategic initiatives and you build content around it. What I'm hearing you say is, how do we reach that recruiter or that new hire or that seller that just started selling? How do we understand where their gaps are based on their development up to that point? How do we get that information back to us in an effective way?
Mary:
That's something that we're still trying to work out. We're experimenting with a lot of things. The Ask and Learn series is one of them. But we're also trying to help our offices create their own learning communities. We've been thinking about putting together a learning council. Because to your point, it used to be, here's the gap. We got it from leadership. We would do our analysis. We'd go shadow some recruiters and sales managers or whoever and try to really pick apart.
Then we'd work for a couple months to put out a instructor led training that covered all those gaps and shared all those best practices. If we try to do things that way now, we're already behind. What we know now through adult learning theory is that 70% of the learning has to come from on the job. Well, as a facilitator, I don't sit on the job with you. My job now is to help you be more self-aware. Help you be more self-reflective to understand for yourself what's working for me, what's not working for me, and to share those effective practices within your own communities and then filter it up through us.
Stuart:
Share learning and peer to peer learning and more that authentic engagement versus a forced engagement.
Mary:
We're facing the same thing. Every single clubhouse room I've sat in on leadership development and learning and development, which has been a lot in the last year. Every blog post you read where every company is facing the same challenge, which is, can the pace of learning keep up with the pace of change? It's incredibly difficult. Because of that, every individual employee has to take ownership of their own learning.
It's critical. I read somewhere the other day where somebody said, learning is the new working. If you're not proactively putting time in your calendar to learn to actively go out and get something, whether it's 30 minutes a week, you are doing yourself a disservice. There's no chance that you can keep up with your own job and your own level of expertise. If you're waiting for us to give it to you all the time, then you're already behind. We're falling behind as an L&D team, but our people are also falling behind.
Stuart:
I couldn't agree with you more. I think for companies that are out there, I think culture is just such a big part of this conversation and the type of leaders that you're empowering and the type of certainly atmosphere that our people are learning in. You think about the importance of that learning culture in our local leaders, creating an environment where people have the motivation and the tools to be able to self-direct and self-develop.
But there's a tipping point, in my opinion, when a couple of people start to do that and they start to get their development and they start to progress their career, it's almost like it becomes contagious. That culture now starts to really crave that learning, more importantly, the ability to apply it very quickly. What's curious is, and this has probably been the biggest topic since becoming Aston Carter in a lot of ways.
When we split our three companies up to get much more focused on our industries, one of the things that we didn't, I think take into consideration was just how much our training had been a generalist approach to a large company. Talk about just the responsibility of making that migration. I feel like it's probably one of the most undervalued of all the shifts that we did. I think people maybe underestimate the difficulties that we had in creating that Aston Carter specific learning environment. Give us a bit of just a glimpse of what you've been through. Mary, probably you specifically since you've been the tip of the spear of this shift and have to really carry the responsibility of making sure our people got the development they needed.
Mary:
When we first shifted, it was just like, oh, we'll just brand change everything. It was just like oh-
Stuart:
It was just that easy.
Mary:
... this new logo, our new cool colors. Then very quickly it was like, well, we could spend time just rebranding and putting Aston Carter on all the old legacy training materials. But it became really apparent that if we only did that, it would be a colossal waste of time. We had to really, to your point, tear down our entire structure and our mindset on how we were going to build training. It took us a little bit longer to rebrand because we were rebuilding.
We picked apart every single training that we did from all the instructor led to all the e-learnings. We were focused on a couple of things, which were the building blocks to hopefully help us keep up at least with the pace of change. A couple of things that we focused on was obviously we had to rebrand. But all of our old training, even our self-paced e-learnings and even the structure that we provided leaders in the field to onboard their own people was all base really on very task specific, role-specific training.
Which was great. It got people doing the tasks, but those tasks with the evolution of digital transformation and technology, those tasks are changing every day. What we really had to do was, do a skill assessment and whereas an organization are we lacking skill wise? We need to make sure that when we're building things, even though they're task and role specific, they're really hitting the baseline skill. For example, things like how do we get our people more curious?
Skills like, asking good questions. Being able to ask a question as a recruiter, as a sales manager, as an L&D, as a coach, as a leader, that can evolve with you with your career. We have to get people asking good questions. We have to get people listening better. We have to get people being more proactive. Learning how to be disciplined of planning and prep. Being more self-aware. Every single one of the trainings that we put together, we're trying to build those underlying skills so that if the task itself change or even the roles change, our people still have a baseline to work off of. We had to also set it up so it was based on skill. In the old days, we would build a training and if something changed in that role or a new technology, we'd have to scrap the whole thing and start over.
Stuart:
Not effective.
Mary:
Now we have them broken up into these skills so we can now pick out pieces. As we evolve, as our roles change, we can now as an L&D team just go in and say, okay, well this piece no longer fits and we need to add this piece in. Or we need to re-swizzle things that way. That's all what we've been doing the last few years is really making sure that we're structuring things in a way that we can change quickly.
Stuart:
That takes a lot of time to build out. That's where what I love about going back to culture, is just how our subject matter experts within Aston Carter are so passionate about helping us build these things. The issue isn't getting people in the room, the issue is just probably getting the resources to be able to build it it.
Mary:
Yeah, because there's groups that are doing it. In our east region, they're hosting their own lunch and learns. What I love about them is every time they do something, they're sharing it back with us. We've been able to pick apart, they did a few months ago, a really great lunch and learn with their VP on LinkedIn and effective use of using LinkedIn for recruiting and for building contacts. We picked apart that lunch and learn that they did.
We created a podcast out of it. We have video clips that we use. We created a one-page resource and now it sits in all of our recruiter training. That was something that group did socially on their own to pull in their peer group to say, who's doing it really well? Let's share those practices. Who's getting stuck? Where are you getting stuck? It provided this really great moment for the east region that now we took. We need our people to do more of that to help us get the content to the masses.
Stuart:
If you were Kathleen, as a new leader over this department. Having so much experience in the field and seeing a lot of our gaps. Feeling some of that pressure around the ever-changing industry and certainly the economy and how people buy or use our services. How has that experience helped with this role in setting up a much more dynamic L&D partnership?
Kathleen:
I think that one of the things I loved most about my previous role in working in strategic sales and traveling the country and working with many of our partners within Aston Carter or Legacy, Aerotek. Out in all of our field offices is learning from those people and the way that they do things and the way that our customers, by the way that our talent wants to be engaged. Knowing that we do have so many resources internally, like Mary said.
In being able to say, okay, now let's find a way to collaborate and partner and almost create wiki learning type opportunities where we can pull in those resources to share. We're doing great things like Mary shared in the East region through that LinkedIn lunch and learn. How do we take that information and serve as a conduit within L&D to get that out to all the masses? We are working through a work stream where we are going to pull in all the subject matter experts that are out in the field.
That work in different practices and have experience in different markets to say, how do those customers like to be engaged? What's the right way for us to partner with them? Who within those customers should we be working with to help solve their business pains? Working with those sales teams and with our recruiters who have this historic and inherent knowledge that continues to grow around how our talent wants to be engaged and how we can best partner with them to find them the right opportunity.
Dividing and conquering and pulling in those experts within each practice and then building out that practice based content. That then will continue to evolve and grow in partnership with those experts in the field. I think one of the best things about our culture is that we love to help our people grow. So many of our people are just willing to stop everything and help. Sit down and chair up and talk through an issue that someone's having.
Or talk through where they want to go in their career and then help find resources for them and advocate for them in order to get them there. I say one of the best things that you can do to really own your development is to make connections. To talk to people. To share what you're learning. To share what you think your strengths are and where you need some help. To share what you're seeing in the organization and where you might want to go to ask people about their job and their opportunity and how they got there and how they created a space for themselves.
I'm someone who's been really lucky to have been vocal about what I'd like to do and where I think I can add value and have people give me an opportunity. Create new roles. I've piloted new jobs for the company. To just be able to say, I think I can add some value here. I think that I can help. I think I've got some strengths. I got some opportunities to grow, but help me get there. Everyone has been willing to jump in and help. I say, just open yourself up to relationships and to be vulnerable and share where you need some support. Everyone's willing to help.
Stuart:
Yeah. I heard you say a couple of things there that I think are really important for the audience to really take note of. One of them is, you have to be intentional about your development. It's not going to be through osmosis. You've got to be an active participant in your development and the development of the organization. If career progression and skill progression is something that you're passionate about, you've got to make a contract.
I think a lot of times that contract comes in the form of an individual development plan that you and your leader establish, that identify skill gaps and a plan to evolve them. I think a lot of times as a young employee in this organization, I had a lot of leaders that approached it with very direct leadership tactics and told me where I needed to be developed. But that stopped after a while, and after a while it became my journey to figure out, to be self-aware enough to know where those gaps were and work with my leader to get the appropriate development.
I come back to the word that we tend to use a lot in the DE&I space around advocacy. I think you have to advocate for yourself. You have to put yourself in a position for engagement and for development. I love what you said about there's plenty of people here that are willing to teach. I think that's one of the best parts about our culture is the fact that we care deeply about the community and we want generations to have a better experience than our generation. That is such a powerful cultural component for learning and development. But if you're waiting for it to come to you, I hope I empower the majority of the people that are watching this to understand that it's a contact sport. That you have to get involved with development. All of it's there. It's your ability to learn it and apply it.
Mary:
Yeah, just to add a little bit of additional practical application advice to what Kathleen said is that, when you come in, there's a very structured onboarding, especially for our core roles. We need our leaders following the onboarding for one that that's outlined. But also each individual learner has to set aside time for that self reflection. I would encourage everybody, all of us, to have those moments throughout the day, whether it's five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, where you're reflecting on, hey, what was my intention today?
What worked? What didn't work? What can I do differently next time? If I don't have an answer for the, what can I do differently next time? Go find a peer, go find a partner. I also think that everybody needs to have a mentor and/or a coach, and everybody should be a mentor and/or a coach. Whether you're a month in on the job or 18 years like I am, find somebody to teach back to. I think that's the quickest way to really solidify skills. I just think we need people being more active in that.
Stuart:
Yeah. You just reminded me when I started with the company many, many moons ago. I remember I got hired and my first week I was sitting in the pit and the president at the time walked by and asked me to assess somebody that had literally been hired two days after me. Wanted to know where I thought their gaps were. I remember saying, "We're in the same boat." They go, "No, you've got two days more experience than they do. What could you have taught them that they need to know?"
That idea that we all have something to offer, regardless of your tenure, you have a lesson to be able to pass down to the next generation. We should be very proud of that. We should be proud of that transfer of information. That's how legacies are built, and that's certainly how companies are built. I love it. When you think about one of the biggest, I think, challenges in the current environment is really around leadership.
The tactical training, I think we have a robust plan on how to get more skilled development training to our people. But in the current world, leadership is probably one of the most challenging responsibilities I think ever. I think it's always been a difficult job, but nowadays, it's harder than I think it's ever been. Not just leading through the change that we have as an organization, but the world and how the world is evolving. How is Aston Carter approaching leadership? Mary, I know this is something that we as a leadership team are extremely excited that you're taking on full-time. Talk to me just a little bit about what is our methodology around leadership and where do you see that going?
Mary:
The foundation of the leadership training is the 3D model. That is the foundation for everything that we're doing. It lands well in the sense that people understand that concept, the holding the space of expert, manager and leader. But when you start to get into the nuance of how to be balanced in that, it gets real tricky. Especially in a world that's telling us every day, we have to be empathetic, which is so important in that compassionate leadership. But then how also do you drive results and have to be, not necessarily the disciplinarian-
Stuart:
But be more accountable.
Mary:
Yeah, hold your people accountable and really be empathetic, but still push them to achieve. That's very difficult and that's where our leaders are getting the most hung up.
Stuart:
The key thing I think to remember is three-dimensional leadership is very much about those three very individual behaviors. But at the end of the day, the art form, what we're striving for is to be a three-dimensional leader in every interaction. To where we're able to impact that expertise. That we're able to drive that personal accountability and all the while continuing to drive people to their why and to their ultimate goal. Those things, I think, it took me a lot of years to be able to get to that place. I think what I love is the way that our training and the way that our leaders are allowing people to evolve into that ideal situation of being three-dimensional.
Kathleen:
We're building that model into every one of our trainings now. It's not just at a leadership level. It's at every stage where we have a learning opportunity with our people, we're talking about that model and what that looks like. How to start thinking that way and really doing some reflection on where was I in that moment? Was I leaning here where I maybe could have been there? We're talking about it so much earlier on with our people so that it starts to feel more natural over time.
Stuart:
The three-dimensional construct applies regardless of title or tenure and regardless of role or function. I think it's a phenomenal baseline for the development that you've been creating. Switch gears just a little bit. Just a couple more questions. But one, I'm hearing a lot throughout Allegis Group and really even outside of Allegis Group, around the importance of continued learning and almost aligning incentives to the learning and the experiences that people want to have.
Any thought around how we align, I guess, performance? How we align development and what the value is to the organization? This is a new concept for our company around potentially compensating people differently based on the course that they've taken or the experiences that they've had. Talked about that infrastructure, more importantly, that philosophy. How do you all find that for Aston Carter? Do you find there to be a match there?
Mary:
I think it makes a lot of sense to incentivize people who are truly up skilling. Truly going out and learning new skills and applying them on the job that are making them better. I think there's a lot of value in that to encourage people to continue their own growth and their own opportunities for career paths. I think it makes a ton of sense. Where I think a lot of us are struggling, is making that connection to truly building skill versus just rewarding additional knowledge.
How do we balance giving somebody a true certification that's going to make an impact and the result that that'll have on performance versus just incentivizing people to listen to a podcast. That's where we're balanced. I think it will work for us in certain pockets for sure, both internally and externally with our contractors and talent. But I think there's a lot left to be explored there. But I'm leaning in hard on it because I think it'll matter.
Stuart:
It will, yeah. How about you, Kathleen? Any thoughts?
Kathleen:
Yeah, I think totally agree with Mary that there are the right ways and maybe wrong ways to use those incentives. I think that we want to be able to see people continuously developing themselves, but then applying what they're learning and improving the way they engage with our clients. The way that they solution for our clients. The way that the services that we provide. The way that we engage with our talent. If we're really, truly driving growth and results, those are the behaviors that we want to incentivize.
Mary:
I think there's room in it for both. Because I think the badging and the gamifying it, really encourages and motivates people to learn. I think that there's a place for it even with that. But when you start talking about incentivizing through money or compensation, that's where it's like, okay, we have to go above just motivation and we have to make sure that we're really adopting the right skills and behaviors and it's making a business impact.
Stuart:
Last two questions and then I have a personal question I'll ask you, to wrap this up. Make you a little nervous. The external market. What I've learned over the last two years in this role is that we're incredibly hard on ourselves. Nothing that we do, we feel is significant maybe in the industry or out in the marketplace. I think L&D is probably one of those examples that we've been incredibly hard on our programs and process. We're seeing a lot more customers asking us our abilities to support them in this space.
What are your thoughts around that? One of the ones that has come up a few times is around DE&I and some of the DE&I training that we've done here and how some of our customers are eagerly wanting that. How we onboard people. Maybe some of the three-dimensional leadership things that we're doing. How do you see our internal programs being a conduit to helping our customers solve some of their internal challenges?
Kathleen:
That's a great question. That is definitely a top priority for us is, and we're doing it now. We're doing it now for customers where they've heard about our DE&I training and they've said we need to do the same thing. We have some content, but we don't know what to do with it. It is antiquated. We just got a bunch of stuff on paper and what do we do with it and how do we make it really accessible to our people and engaging? We're doing that for customers now.
I think a lot of the series that we're talking about and the different things like working with customers for the last 18 years and helping them solve business pains and realizing that they are struggling to answer a lot of the same things that we're doing here with how do we keep up with that pace of change? I'm blown away by what this team has been doing. Especially talking about the last two years and all the change that's happened.
I was working with customers through the whole pandemic around how do we rebuild all of our training and make it virtual? How do we take content and deploy that virtually? Then they're realizing this content's not really all that interesting. How do we make it more interesting to engage our people? Because we're losing them because they're at home and they have so many distractions. Hearing and seeing all that this team has done in the last two years in the face of changing technology, the changing world, everything's virtual.
We're rebranding. We're talking practice base. We're talking creating new roles, creating new opportunities. Changing the face of how we do business as a company and all that this team's done to really lead through that. To give better opportunities for our people to learn. We want to do that for our customers. We are today, but we want to continue to build on that. We've got now instructional designers that are, they're sole focus is to build what we're doing for our clients.
Stuart:
I love that. Let me ask you specifically. For those people out in the field that are maybe interacting with customers that are bringing up this topic, any advice on how to engage those customers? Good questions to ask to just validate.
Mary:
Yeah. I don't think it's any different advice than you would give really any of our sellers in front of clients, which is uncovering pain points. The same questions that we're teaching them for that, just lean in here. Which is, hey, what's working? What's not working? What's your biggest struggle? What have you tried before? All of those questions help us better understand the client's need. Then to your point, oftentimes even internally, oftentimes we already have the answer or the thing.
It just needs to be communicated more. Even with our own clients, I think a lot of times they don't have the benefit. We have a huge luxury here to have the L&D team that we have, especially with the instructional design team that we have. A lot of our clients don't have that. They have L&D teams, but maybe not access to instructional designers. A lot of times the clients already have the answers. It's just a matter of us helping them to organize it. They already have it. They just need our expertise to help repackage it. Just asking what do you have? What's working? What's not working? Is probably the easiest place to be for that.
Stuart:
Love it. We've covered a lot. We've given the audience a lot of content, I think to consume. You all have done a great job here. But just anything that may help somebody that's out there that's looking at both of you certainly as role models. But more importantly, how can we impact some people today from a heart standpoint?
Kathleen:
That's a big question.
Stuart:
We didn't prep for it.
Kathleen:
No.
Mary:
For me, I guess created a personal philosophy. God, that's probably going on 10 years now. That's just where I always go back to. It's be kind, stay curious, and have fun. That's where I always go first. Where are those moments where a small act of kindness can change somebody's day? Whether it's a smile or just whatever that looks like. I think even as a leader, it always starts with just being kind and respectful to your people first. Then for me, staying curious. I told you I was a nerd in school. I love learning. But for me, staying curious is more than just going out there and learning. It's also seeking to understand. It's also sometimes just showing up and paying attention. That's the advice I give people a lot is, just shut up and pay attention. Just show up, shut up and pay attention.
Stuart:
People are getting tattoos about that.
Mary:
Then for me, fun. Stu, you and I have talked about this before. I've always been this way, but I'm getting to a point in my life too where I want to be challenged and I want to be pushed out of my comfort zone. But for me, there has to be some element of fun to it. I just think that we need to create more opportunities where we can be a little light and a little more fun. I think that creates an openness to learn and grow. When everything is so tense, it's hard to weed through all the complications and to simplify things when you're just in your head. I think that those moments of levity are important, not just for our own mental health, but also to create an atmosphere where we can learn and grow.
Stuart:
Well you excel and shine on that one. Bring a tremendous amount of fun to my world and to this campus. Thank you. Kathleen?
Kathleen:
I have a sign in my office that is a saying that my grandfather used to say when he would drop us all off to school in the morning. It's have fun, learn a lot, keep smiling, and don't slam the door. It is like a family legacy. That same thing. I think having fun in everything you do and creating a sense of community and an environment where you can be really open and honest and provide feedback, ask for feedback, ask for help.
I talked earlier about how important it is for me to pay it forward to people that are looking for development. Or I get probably every other day a phone call from someone saying, I want to be a leader in this company. I want to do more for the organization. I need some advice on how to get there. Especially from women in the organization. I love taking those calls and talking through, where are you at? Where do you need to grow?
How can we find the right mentors for you? How can you advocate for yourself and also find advocates and coach those advocates on what you need from them. Really telling them what you want them to say when they're in the room and you're not, so that you are represented the way that you want to be and that you're living up to that. Career coaching, career development are things that I'm really passionate about because I had men and women who did that for me my whole career from day one. I just am so appreciative of that. I feel like we've got an opportunity to do that for 1500 people in our organization.
Mary:
Just, again, I can't help myself. But adding just the other piece of advice I would give somebody is just the practical skill. Figuring out ways you can be more proactive. To me, that means getting really good at planning and preparing and getting really good at the backend self reflection and adjustments. That's it. Get disciplined with those two things, and I think so much else will follow after that.
Kathleen:
Yeah.
Stuart:
Love that. For the people, my final words for us all, is that learning and development is optional in many ways. An organization can create these programs and put them in place, but it's really the individual's ability to absorb it and to prioritize it and to make it part of their identity. I didn't graduate from college, and so I had a real big insecurity about whether or not I was going to be enough here. Which worked to my advantage because what it did was it put me in a place of consistently learning and more importantly, taking a lot of personal responsibility on where I was getting that development.
I felt it was my responsibility to learn the industry. The company could provide me the basics, but for me to get a competitive edge internally and externally, it was that work that I did outside of it. I hope that the people that are listening to this want to understand how committed we are as an organization to creating a learning culture and to create a learning environment. To give you access to some of the best tools and resources that are out there.
But I also want to empower all of you to take this personal. To take your development and understand the competitive edge that's created both internally and externally. The obligation we have to each other and the community. To continue to raise this standard of what our base understanding of our industry, certainly our processes, our systems, and ultimately those leadership behaviors that really make this place special. Learning is optional if you allow it. My hope is through conversations like this and the impacts that our training is happening, that people start to lean in a little bit more. Maybe more importantly, take on a personal charter to be the best version of themselves with the tools that we provide and access information outside of here. Thank you very much for your time.
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