Recorded Webinar

Transcript

[00:00:00] Laura Mastrorocco: Hello and welcome. My name is Laura Mastarocco, and I am your producer for today's session. Allow me to make some introductions. I'd like to share with you a little bit about our speakers. Ben Brooks is a former SVP of HR at a Fortune 500 company. He's an executive coach and an HR executive top 100 HR tech influencer. Now Ben is not your ordinary leader. Ben served on the board of directors for Outserve SLDN, the organization that spearheaded the successful effort to end the Department of Defense's discriminatory Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.

[00:00:44] Laura Mastrorocco: Ten years ago, Ben unexpectedly let go of his long held aspirations to climb the corporate ladder, and instead he chose to fly his own plane. Welcome Ben.

[00:00:57] Ben Brooks: Glad to be here.

[00:00:58] Laura Mastrorocco: Ben is now the sole [00:01:00] founder and CEO of PILOT, which was created to help everyone feel powerful at work. Inspired by his successful business and executive coaching practice, Ben saw an opportunity to democratize executive coaching, and he founded PILOT. Ben wanted to take his experience as an executive coach and make it accessible to the early and mid career employees where he could have the biggest impact on people's careers and on the companies they work for. PILOT takes the best part of an executive coaching relationship and makes it available to employees in a live virtual group coaching setting. PILOT works with companies of all sizes and is a long time partner with S&P Global. They've helped develop hundreds of their employees. PILOT has had the pleasure of hosting some of their executive leaders, like their presidents Adam Kanzler and Martina Chung, [00:02:00] as fireside chat executives in our program.

[00:02:03] Laura Mastrorocco: Now, speaking of S&P Global, it's time to introduce you to the one and only Dr. Stephanie Fritz. Stephanie Fritz is passionate about developing leaders with the capabilities to navigate their teams through today's dynamic world. As S&P Global's development lead, Stephanie and her team are responsible for growing and advancing the future leadership pipeline.

[00:02:31] Laura Mastrorocco: Their portfolio includes leadership development programs for leaders at various levels and team development for leadership teams. Previously, Stephanie had worked on a global level to develop managers and further global learning agendas. As a reminder, S&P Global is an international leader empowering the markets of the future.

[00:02:56] Laura Mastrorocco: The world's leading organizations rely on S&P [00:03:00] Global for the essential intelligence they need to make confident decisions about the road ahead. With over 30, 000 employees worldwide, their team is driven by curiosity and a shared belief that essential intelligence can help build a more prosperous future for all.

[00:03:18] Laura Mastrorocco: S&P Global So welcome, Stephanie. We have two very powerful speakers with us today, both from successful and driven organizations. And with that, Ben, I'm going to turn the mic over to you.

[00:03:34] Ben Brooks: Excellent. Thanks, Laura, for warming us up in such a great way. And thank you, Stephanie, for your partnership and for being here and sharing all that you've seen, both as a practitioner, but also in your, Research and academic study in getting your PhD.

[00:03:46] Ben Brooks: I think that part of the reason, Stephanie, that we were so excited to have you join us is that so much of our audience with PILOT is senior leadership development, learning, talent, folks, and everyone right now is thinking about annual planning and [00:04:00] in particular, the expectations are increasing, right?

[00:04:03] Ben Brooks: On the employee experience. Retaining, dealing with, Gen Z and millennial colleagues, remote and hybrid work, et cetera. I'm curious, can you give the audience a sense of when you think about leadership development and learning general some examples of some of the projects or initiatives that your colleagues are working on that might be inspiration for others or relatable to others?

[00:04:27] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah. So when I think about what we're what we're working on in the development space at S&P it is a lot about the employee experience, participant experience. How do we reach people at scale? And then how do we, it's like that, that warm up question around in person or virtual.

[00:04:44] Stephanie Fritz: So if you want scale, global virtual programming, that'll get you there. And then if you want, so like. real, time for connection, keep people in a bubble for a couple of days. Have them experience something together, very tactile, [00:05:00] very emotional than you want, that, that in person.

[00:05:02] Stephanie Fritz: So we're balancing all of what are the needs, how much money do we have? Where do we want to invest? Like, how do we prioritize where that money goes? And so we're looking across all the different programs to really think about what is, what's, how can we meet the greatest amount of need, maximize the value with the resources that we have, right? Because we're also a very lean team.

[00:05:24] Stephanie Fritz: Like my team and leadership development, there's only six of us for a 37, 000 person organization. So we are very tiny.

[00:05:31] Ben Brooks: I didn't, I don't even know if I knew that. That, yeah, so you're Small but mighty. And when you think about leadership that you're, do you think that everybody at 37, 000 needs some version of leadership? Or is this just for senior executives? What kind of, how do you think of your scope in that?

[00:05:47] Stephanie Fritz: That's a great question. Yeah. When we think about leaders and talent at S&P we have a philosophy that everyone can be top talent. And it's really about. Yeah. Where is their career aspiration?

[00:05:58] Stephanie Fritz: What are their skills? How do [00:06:00] people leaders help them figure out what their skills are? Are people in the right roles given what their skill set is? And so for us, we really do try to look at leadership. At scale, scale as much as possible. And then we also do have pipelining programs. So for our, mid-career professionals, your rising stars, emerging leaders, whatever, , whatever different companies call them.

[00:06:20] Stephanie Fritz: We have a pipeline, uh, development program that we run twice a year. It's a virtual program because of the scale, we try to have 50 people per year in it, or a hundred people per year, but 50 people per cohort. That's for developing. Executives that could take or developing leaders that could take over maybe two to three layers deep from the CEO.

[00:06:40] Stephanie Fritz: And then we have another program that develops senior executives. So people that could replace our executive leaders, for example. So the direct reports of the CEO or people that report to the direct reports of the CEO. So we have the pipeline and then we also have, how do we, think about leadership at scale, which is where programs like PILOT come [00:07:00] in for us.

[00:07:01] Ben Brooks: And so you have this sort of stratified thing based on your hierarchy that different populations, it sounds like, have different offerings that, like you said, you have to balance the budget, the size of the population, their learning needs, right? Maybe their even ability for time, how much time they could dedicate to something.

[00:07:18] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, we call that engagement. So yeah, we use the the Gartner model of engagement ability and aspiration. And so when we think about who's right for a virtual program, like some people are not like me where they say it depends. Some people are very much I only want to do in person and that's the only way I'll do it.

[00:07:35] Stephanie Fritz: And so from an engagement perspective, like that person's not the right fit for a virtual program then. And we don't want, we don't want anyone to feel like they're in a hostage situation being in a development program. So you want somebody who's excited about the opportunity.

[00:07:48] Ben Brooks: Yeah. That's, sometimes I think development people get ball and told like, Oh, you're going to do this thing.

[00:07:53] Ben Brooks: And then, Oh, versus to your point, they're excited for people that are not familiar with the Gartner model and those two principles. Could you explain that? Just [00:08:00] cause that may be something that not everybody knows about.

[00:08:02] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah. It's the, it's a Venn diagram and it's. It is ability, aspiration and engagement and so ability is what is the skill of this person.

[00:08:11] Stephanie Fritz: Aspiration is what are their goals and engagement is, are they engaged in the company and also will they be engaged in a program. So somebody who's when we look at, for example, the selection for the Emergent Leader Program. it runs from January through June and then June through December. And so if somebody is in a particular role where all through the first two quarters of the year they're just like heads down,

[00:08:37] Stephanie Fritz: they're probably not the right fit for that cohort.

[00:08:39] Stephanie Fritz: Maybe we would select them for the next cohort that happens in maybe a slightly less busier time for them. So you want to think about All of those things when you're doing selection. One other thing I feel like I should mention about S&P is that my group focused specifically on leadership development and we have the stratified model of some of it's at scale, some of it's, some of it's [00:09:00] not.

[00:09:01] Stephanie Fritz: We also have learning for all. And so the learning group. So at S&P, the L and the D are separate. Our learning group is different. They do manager development for all 7, 000 managers. So that's a scaled program. And then we also have workshops that are offered around our performance model called Thrive, which helps people develop careers, ask the right questions, get feedback, those types of things.

[00:09:26] Stephanie Fritz: So we do have several different options. Some of them are more open to everyone. Some of them are like our programs are more selection based. .

[00:09:34] Ben Brooks: And I'd be curious, just as you, you mentioned, you, y'all had a merger a couple years ago and we've gotten to meet some of your business executives like Martina, who's, credible and Adam's incredible and others, have you seen 'cause S&P is known for being a very data-driven company.

[00:09:52] Ben Brooks: It's part of the what you sell in the market, right? You have all these insights and data around what's going on in the economy and the world and everything else [00:10:00] when it comes to these. programs, like what's the expectation from those business leaders when they say because I know we're going a little off script, but hopefully this is okay.

[00:10:09] Ben Brooks: Because I just, I'm just wondering, you've got this stratified model and for people in this audience, right, we're all HR stands and fans and in some way, shape, or form. But for maybe people in the business, or if they're in maybe government or non profit, the executive teams, how do they look at the money you're spending and the people you're reaching?

[00:10:29] Ben Brooks: Kind of where, how does the business view some of this? Because sometimes in the past, remember when I first got into HR, learning was the first thing that would get cut in downturns, but it seems like that's not as much the case lately. And how is that looked at just in terms of the value prop in the business case internally.

[00:10:46] Stephanie Fritz: It's such a good question. I've been an L and D for 15 years, so I'm very aware that these are like luxury positions. They, in a downturn that it is the first to go. So the way, one thing, one [00:11:00] thing to think about as whether you're learning or development or both or talent is thinking about how do you connect whatever you're trying to do within your, strategy to the company's strategy to the company's culture.

[00:11:12] Stephanie Fritz: Because if you anchor it within something that like the broader company is trying to do so for example, this manager development program that I mentioned that the learning group runs a few years ago, I was in a different role and I helped build out that program. And one of the things that we did was we anchored the manager development, not in manager skills necessarily, because those change.

[00:11:34] Stephanie Fritz: very often depending on sort of outside influences, anchored it into behaviors within our culture that we wanted all of our, we call our managers, people leaders at SMP. We wanted all of our people leaders to embody these certain qualities. And so we created the program around that. Now, the risk of that is it doesn't meet like the manager requirement that some people feel like they need to have, but what it does is it gives us an [00:12:00] anchor into the culture that makes us a little bit harder to shove out the door when we're on the, when we're on the downturn, we think about leadership development, S&P we took a little break for a couple of years, right?

[00:12:11] Stephanie Fritz: The pandemic made it really hard to do any type of development. And then within, because we just had this large merger with another financial services data provider, We also had to wait until the new company culture was built. We had to wait until all everything was settled because how do you develop leaders?

[00:12:31] Stephanie Fritz: If you don't have a culture or agreed upon values or the executive team's not placed, you don't know who's supporting all of these different groups for a selection process, for example. So we really have had a desert of development at S&P for the last four years. And so this was the first year since 2019 that we were able to launch All of our development programs and relaunch them, and we crafted them in a way where they're more hybrid and they're more scalable for this [00:13:00] company that from 22, 000 people to 37, 000 people, so that we can have more people go through it. We can't have everybody go through it because of the size of our group and our budget. But we try to, balance all of those things in terms of what are the executive leaders want from us?

[00:13:15] Stephanie Fritz: We make them part of. Experiences. So they will come and they'll have fireside chats with our leadership participants. They'll sponsor the programs in terms of sending out the notifications to participants. We make them part of the experience. So it doesn't feel like it's a separate thing. It's all related to driving our cultural experience, driving our people experience, and investing in our people.

[00:13:39] Ben Brooks: Yeah we found with a bunch of our customers that we, bring executives in and we had 1 customer in particular that the CFO was very skeptical about talent investments and then we involved this person. Our customer involved this person in the programs. and now he defends the budget because [00:14:00] he had a good experience himself.

[00:14:01] Ben Brooks: And so when you're familiar and you involve people, they feel like co owners and sponsors of the thing. And they're less likely to criticize or want to go in the spreadsheet and say, let's take this item out, which seems like it makes a really big difference. And then the chat question is, I'd love for you all, did your organization take a bit of a break during the pandemic?

[00:14:21] Ben Brooks: Kind of a yes, no, maybe on development? Did things get paused or maybe not completely? That's what could be a maybe reduced. So we'd love to just see some answers in the chat around the question. Did your organization take a development break? Because, there's a certain momentum you have to, it looks like Elsa says yes.

[00:14:38] Ben Brooks: Robin as well. Cheryl. Interesting. Jack's saying they actually grew very quickly and needed to pivot customize to fit the remote workforce. Yep.

[00:14:48] Stephanie Fritz: I've heard that as well. There's, I think there's one of two things that happened. Either you reel it back because everybody was heads down in survival mode during sometimes literally, unfortunately, in survival [00:15:00] mode.

[00:15:00] Stephanie Fritz: During the pandemic, so some companies were like, okay, everybody is like taxed. So we're not going to try to do development. However, if you're expanding, if you're growing, you're bringing, you're onboarding people and things like that, then you have to figure something out to bring development back in.

[00:15:16] Ben Brooks: And I'm curious on virtual. So I think that, people that have been in the industry a while, training became e learning. And it generally wasn't very good. The first couple versions of it, right? Like pretty bad, like design and interface and just really pretty rough to consume.

[00:15:36] Stephanie Fritz: The canned performance videos that watch people do.

[00:15:39] Ben Brooks: And you have your anti corruption, compliance training and these things. And some of that's gotten a lot better, but sometimes, I think before the pandemic, some people just thought virtual had to be not good virtual was going to be a substitute. That was a kind of a crappy one.

[00:15:57] Ben Brooks: As you think about these programs, I'm just curious from the [00:16:00] virtual thing, because adapting these programs, as Jack said, for remote work and some other comments we've seen. Have you seen that these programs virtually can be effective and compelling?

[00:16:09] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, and I have seen that. I still see the bad ones all the time.

[00:16:14] Stephanie Fritz: Where I see them to be really compelling is when you do try to make them as experiential as possible. So I have a large group recommending using breakout spaces, have people go in, connect in the smaller breakout spaces, do an activity together, come back, share in the larger space. That's a really good way for people to start to get to know each other, be a little bit more comfortable.

[00:16:36] Stephanie Fritz: Also, it's what is the session about? So if it's a topic that people really care about, they're going to show up and they're going to be engaged. Right? I'm looking at this. I see so many people in the chat here that seem like they're very engaged and they showed up for a reason. And so let's give the people what they want.

[00:16:53] Ben Brooks: Yes. And we actually did some work with MetLife with some of their customers. They actually brought [00:17:00] PILOT to some customers, particularly women. In the benefits business and we were surprised because it's pretty in person kind of company and industry insurance and we actually had more participation and higher satisfaction in the virtual and we didn't guess we wouldn't get.

[00:17:15] Ben Brooks: But I think 1 of the, we saw some research, right? We talk a lot about inclusion from a DEI perspective. But really often the front door to inclusion is flexibility and technology allows for more flexibility, which then allows for more inclusion, right? So I think all of these things tie together and I'm curious, Stephanie, when you think about the influence that and the impact, right?

[00:17:39] Ben Brooks: That L&D, leadership development, learning and develop all kind of talent programs can have on an organization. How do you see it at S&P? Because you said tie it back to business strategy, like You become part of an active ingredient in the success of the business. How are you positioning that?

[00:17:59] Ben Brooks: How is that [00:18:00] working? How should other people maybe consider it for their organizations?

[00:18:04] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah. So the way that, that we've started to position it, and again, remember like we just relaunched everything. So we're still like in test modes of this executive development program that I had mentioned.

[00:18:13] Stephanie Fritz: We're still in the first cohort that we've had since 2019. I'm still in like the test and learn phase with that. The the emerging leader development program, we're at the second cohort of it. We're still learning everything along the way. I don't think that we've like quite nailed it yet.

[00:18:29] Stephanie Fritz: But what we did do was we created a leadership profile that connects into our strategy. And what the leadership profile does is it gives behaviors and qualities that we're looking for in our leaders. And we design our programs around that. And so if we can justify like this specific session, we'll do these three things that connect into the strategy, It gives us a little bit more of a value add.

[00:18:55] Stephanie Fritz: The other thing is to your point about who's the sponsor and who's involved, the [00:19:00] CEO is the executive sponsor of the executive development program. So it's actually not in the HR budget, that program comes out of his leadership.

[00:19:09] Ben Brooks: Oh, wow. That's rare.

[00:19:10] Stephanie Fritz: Yes. And so we meet with him.

[00:19:13] Stephanie Fritz: So he's involved in so that program is our only hybrid program where we have some in person sessions and the rest is virtual or like individual kind of one to one coaching. He is involved in any of the in-person events that we do. We meet with him for several months leading up to it so that he can weigh in on the agenda.

[00:19:33] Stephanie Fritz: He can, let us know if there's certain people in a particular location that we're going to, that he thinks that we should meet with. So he's really actively involved in it. And I think that's the piece. If we could do that with every single one of our programs and have an executive sponsor who's also paying for it and actively like helping it shape it.

[00:19:51] Stephanie Fritz: That's the dream because that really makes it invaluable to the organization in the event that you don't have that. We don't have that either with the rest of our [00:20:00] programs. It is about how do you connect it into the larger strategy so that you're showing that yes, skill building is important, but it's bigger than just skills like we're building.

[00:20:08] Stephanie Fritz: We're using these programs to build a culture of development of learning of people that actively care about other people that are courageous and making bold decisions and sharing their ideas. Thank you. And that they're compassionate towards other humans, as well as asking, curious questions.

[00:20:27] Ben Brooks: Yeah, because I think sometimes there's a view from business executives that are more like the numbers and the performance, the operate, think that they essentially outsource development to the HR team, right? You handle that, go develop them or send them to the Carnegie course or do a Hogan or do a whatever, right?

[00:20:49] Ben Brooks: But what have you seen in the benefits? Obviously getting monies from your CEO and outside of the HR budget is clearly one. What are the other benefits when you [00:21:00] get that executive sponsorship? And then I want to go to a question we got in the chat about emerging leaders in a second. But what do you see?

[00:21:05] Ben Brooks: Cause that it's clearly for, I think, change initiatives in any corporate function, marketing, sales, tech, whatever executive sponsorship is always this sort of best practice specific to learning development. It sounds like they're not your CEOs and just paying the bill. It sounds like he's more involved.

[00:21:24] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, it was up at the in person events he meets with years in the program. He really like shows that he's invested, and it's a really important part of that program it's also a huge benefit for those 26 to 30. Senior leaders that get selected each year to go through this, like highly specialized, like the Cadillac of the programs that we have, like it is, it's really special for them and it creates this level of commitment from the participants, but that's the idea with the executive sponsorship.

[00:21:54] Stephanie Fritz: When you involve them, it leads to commitment. And so do we, and any sort of [00:22:00] change activity that you're doing, involvement leads to commitment should just be like the mantra that you have. That's always where we start is who needs to be involved in the planning of this so that they are committed to the outcome of it.

[00:22:13] Stephanie Fritz: And it's not just about tearing it down and finding out what's not working. It's actually like they are committed to helping it succeed.

[00:22:20] Ben Brooks: And it sounds like for your CEO, his most precious currency is not budget, it's his time.

[00:22:25] Stephanie Fritz: Mm hmm.

[00:22:27] Ben Brooks: Was the idea for him to be more involved his idea or yours and second part of that question is the things sometimes an executive will be involved, but they get involved in the wrong thing or a thing, so how do you is a program strategist and designer figure out the right part to play the insertion point to involve them?

[00:22:49] Ben Brooks: Yeah, so we are such a good question. We are. When we have these meetings with him, we create a package of materials for him to look at. We try to [00:23:00] keep it as high level as possible and within like cover page of the package we asked for like here's our three decision points that we're trying to get out of this meeting.

[00:23:08] Ben Brooks: So we try to focus him on these couple of things that we really want to get out of it. Every now and then he like throws us a curveball and we, we veer off for a little bit, but. He is really focused. He's really invested in terms of whose idea was it? I'm not sure because even before I started at S&P six years ago, there was a version of this program.

[00:23:29] Ben Brooks: It was called the CEO circle. And so he was still the CEO at the time. And there are people that had gone through it in 2019, my predecessor in leadership development, redesigned that program to something called Propel. So I, when I had met with her. to, to transition. One of the things that she had said was that, he was incredibly involved.

[00:23:51] Ben Brooks: And so we want to try to keep that spirit. Like he cares a lot about leadership development, which might, it might be unique to him. But it's [00:24:00] something that's very near and dear to his heart. And so he wants to be involved to the extent possible. So we try to find ways to involve him without weighing him down with every single, logistical decision.

[00:24:11] Ben Brooks: Yeah. We sometimes at PILOT call that low input, high impact.

[00:24:15] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, that's a good one.

[00:24:17] Ben Brooks: Right. You think about the multiplier on Martina's time to come to a fireside chat that she does brief prep and comes for an hour, but then gets to reach 30 people in geographies that she may not fly to or be in person at for some time.

[00:24:33] Ben Brooks: Versus, if she were to take one person to lunch or something like that. I put another question in the chat. I'd love to get as many people to answer this question around C suite executive sponsorship. Do you have it for your learning and leadership programs? Do you not have it?

[00:24:47] Ben Brooks: Yes, no, or kind of, if it's a little bit mixed. Jack looks like yes. Amanda is saying no. Sharon's saying yes. Charlie, no. Right? Oh, yes. Okay. And so again, there's a range on [00:25:00] this and earlier we had a question from Damien around emerging leaders because so often the focus I kind of use, we're pilots.

[00:25:08] Ben Brooks: I use the airplane analogies, but. You get on a plane and there's the first couple seats of the plane on a premium airline that have like first or business class seats, right? And they're cushy. They're nice. They got warm, snacks and drinks and food and beds and all that stuff.

[00:25:23] Ben Brooks: But then there's everybody else in the rest of the plane. How do you think about emerging leaders? Because so often all the dollars and the focus goes on people that are with the bigger titles, making more money, et cetera. But sometimes those talent programs are getting to people when they're 30 years into their career, versus earlier, where it could have an impact now and ready them, and also from DEI impact implications.

[00:25:47] Ben Brooks: How do you get people up to those senior levels and create those internal pipelines? How do you think strategically about emerging leaderships? I feel like it's something that everyone wishes they were doing, but not that many organizations are actually doing.

[00:25:59] Stephanie Fritz: [00:26:00] Yeah. So we take a portfolio approach to it.

[00:26:03] Stephanie Fritz: When you're a company that, we don't do performance ratings. Because everyone has the, ability to be top talent, everyone has the ability to be a leader. When we look at our, what we call them our mid-level leaders because they might not be emerging, because they might be somebody at the mid-level who's been in that role for 25 years.

[00:26:20] Stephanie Fritz: Okay. Because of the size of our company, like we have a lot of stories like that. So when we call them emerging, it makes it seem like they're brand new, but what they are is they're mid-level leaders. who, deserve to have some care in their development. And so what we look at three different programs that we have.

[00:26:35] Stephanie Fritz: PILOT is one of them that we use for our mid level leaders. And we use that for people who are looking specifically for that more like career development, coaching, that, The people that are looking for some type of change and transition in their career, and we really try to give them that pilot experience.

[00:26:54] Stephanie Fritz: We have another mid level experience that's just for women, so it's creating cohorts of women [00:27:00] leaders who are talking about specific challenges that are women face within a corporate environment. And then we have our pipeline program which is the one that I was referring to earlier. And so that one is for people that we think have the potential to go into larger jobs.

[00:27:16] Stephanie Fritz: Like maybe they're, their boss's successor or something like that. So look at it again, like this portfolio approach.

[00:27:23] Stephanie Fritz: We also work in partnership with our HR business partners, our DEI partners to really think about. We've been trying to hone this process. We have a pool of about 10, 000 people that are eligible for these programs.

[00:27:39] Stephanie Fritz: So PILOT is our most scalable because we can take 180 at a time and do six cohorts. We have our Elevate program, which is our mid level leader program for pipeline development that takes 50 people at a time. And then we have a program called Cogiton. It's a similar relationship with PILOT where it's an external vendor, but we help manage it [00:28:00] internally.

[00:28:01] Stephanie Fritz: And that takes 40 people at a time. So when you think, when you do that math against 10, 000 people, we really have to be careful about what we're thinking about. So we do use the Gartner model that I was talking about before, ability, aspiration, engagement. To help our HR business partners and our people leaders think about who's right for these types of programs.

[00:28:21] Stephanie Fritz: A development program is not the right intervention, so to speak, for any given individual. It has to feel right for that person. And so what you want to think about is. How what are you, what is the criteria and the ideal profile for each one of these programs? And so we've gotten much better.

[00:28:38] Stephanie Fritz: So the first round was a little bit of a hot mess because we did it. And we also weren't, we didn't have a consistent process. So we were selecting for these programs at different times throughout the year. And our HR business partners were like, please don't do this to us.

[00:28:51] Ben Brooks: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:28:52] Stephanie Fritz: Okay. Let's try to, let's try to like.

[00:28:54] Stephanie Fritz: Work on our timelines and get it all together. Even if it means we're selecting for some [00:29:00] programs way in advance. Frankly, I would rather have, I'd rather have the list settled three months before we launched than three weeks. So let's, that's also fine, but I think you really have to be clear about what's the ideal profile for each of the programs and cause that helps with selection and then also figure out what are you trying to do with your portfolio of programs?

[00:29:23] Ben Brooks: And when you work with, you got these 10, 000 people that are eligible, you got maybe programs that could take 500 or 1, 000 per year. And then to your point, different people, different programs and solutions. But yeah, often, organizations are like, Oh, we have top talent. I want to keep her or him or We got to keep them engaged or, worry about losing them.

[00:29:43] Ben Brooks: There's a lot of this sort of nervousness. And again, your people, partners, your HR business partners have a lot of good on the ground Intel, right. From each of those areas, when you describe the profile is there like a tool you've built or how do you help them say, I've got, I've got one [00:30:00] and I'm not sure, I know one is someone that we want to invest in.

[00:30:04] Ben Brooks: And we think has future potential. Which one of these things is for Juan? Like, how do they know?

[00:30:10] Stephanie Fritz: It's a little bit more of an art than it is a science for this kind of thing. Because it will always depend on what is Juan actually looking for.

[00:30:19] Ben Brooks: Okay.

[00:30:20] Stephanie Fritz: What is his career? What are his career goals?

[00:30:22] Stephanie Fritz: Where are the gaps that we see for him? What level of engagement can he have? What's his time that he has available for a particular type of program? And so we, we think about all of these things. And so a lot of times what we do is when people, partners are looking at, or HR business partners are looking at the selection process.

[00:30:43] Stephanie Fritz: We invite them to have conversations with us. So if you do have a specific person, you're like, I'm not sure exactly which program. This is their profile. Where would you recommend? So we do try to make ourselves available to our partners to help them think it through. Because it's [00:31:00] not it's not just like data that you can put into a system and it pops out and it says, this is the right program for one.

[00:31:05] Stephanie Fritz: We don't know that. There's so many factors and considerations that you need to have and you want to, because we have limited seats, we want people to be as thoughtful as possible throughout the process. And so we are willing to have those, engage in those conversations, try to help bring more clarity to it.

[00:31:21] Ben Brooks: Which I think is so important because I think, there's a lot of a lot of blabber about AI lately and that it's going to do all these things. And you talk about the judgment that senior HR executives have. They've been there. They've done that. They've seen a lot of that. And so the dialogue and the conversation, you Calibrates it in a way.

[00:31:38] Ben Brooks: It's not go down to the basement of a building and I've got recycling. I got paper and I've got plastic, right? And I got aluminum and it's just boom, boom, boom. It's pretty obvious, even though some of my neighbors seem to struggle with even that system.

[00:31:49] Stephanie Fritz: All of our neighbors, I think, struggle with it.

[00:31:51] Ben Brooks: Yeah. For some reason, I don't know what New Yorkers have a real, like, it's just

[00:31:54] Stephanie Fritz: a problem. Yeah,

[00:31:55] Ben Brooks: yeah, exactly. But if but it's, I think that's a really important point that probably doesn't get discussed [00:32:00] enough is that. There's a collaborative discussion sometimes between the center of expertise, in this case, leadership development and the people partners, HR business partner, because I think sometimes those groups can be a little bit disconnected or it's just a one way flow from the COE at corporate to the HR VP, but it sounds like you're really wanting to have a pretty dynamic conversation.

[00:32:24] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, because every individual has different needs, has different things that they're looking for. Like I said, we don't want people to feel like they're in a hostage situation because they get volatile to be part of a program. And they're just like, I don't want to do this. We also give people, if they really don't want to do it, it's fine to opt out.

[00:32:40] Stephanie Fritz: We prefer they opt out at the beginning so that we can offer their seat to somebody else versus halfway through when you can't offer their seat to somebody else. We don't want people to feel like they have to do it, but yeah, we do like those types of conversations are the things that give us our job security when we think about AI, right? It [00:33:00] is because there's so much of this process that is an art versus. Versus a science. And so that dialogue and that discussion, that open partnership, Crucial to the success of a good selection process. And like I said, we are not there yet. We are still working towards it, but we are getting closer every round that we do.

[00:33:22] Stephanie Fritz: We are getting closer to what's going to be like the right process for. And for us to make sure that we've got a good engaged cohort and programs.

[00:33:33] Ben Brooks: The, you're learning, right? And I think that's part of, you've got to have more cycles of this. And there's a benefit of just, there's virtue in the volume of this because each time there's new insights or you experiment or you try things.

[00:33:44] Ben Brooks: I was curious, on the Gartner model where we've got the ability, the aspiration, the engagement, engagement, you probably have a decent sense from like a data driven perspective. Are they in a area that's low engagement with the company or have they participated or not in last [00:34:00] programs, like from your LMS, there's like some things like ability, you probably have some assessment like talent review or performance or other assessments and skills.

[00:34:08] Ben Brooks: How do you get the aspiration? Cause that's typically not like in workday. Right? Like, where's the workday field that says Juan's aspiration? How do you get a sense of that?

[00:34:18] Stephanie Fritz: So we really rely, and this is a bit of a risk, we rely on our people leaders to have really good conversations with their people throughout the year to understand what the aspirations are.

[00:34:31] Stephanie Fritz: For the executive program, it's a little bit easier because we have executive succession as part of leadership development as part of what my group runs. And so we, we have, we do this exercise every year where each of our division presidents and our functional leads meet with the CEO and our head of HR, one on one, and they go through their succession.

[00:34:55] Stephanie Fritz: They talk about their leaders. They're expected to know what the aspirations are. They're also expected to [00:35:00] talk to each other about potential successors that could go across the different divisions or go across different functions. And so those conversations are taking place because we force the exercise.

[00:35:11] Stephanie Fritz: We trust that there are deeper conversations happening depending on the HR business partner, if they're running talent processes within their groups, and that they are talking to people, leaders who have. Conversations and development conversations with their people. Again, I don't think that's a hundred percent there.

[00:35:28] Ben Brooks: Sure, yeah. You get people involved is gonna be imperfect.

[00:35:31] Stephanie Fritz: Right. Exactly.

[00:35:32] Ben Brooks: You, it's one of the trade offs is because people are involved, you get data that a computer couldn't do. Right. And judgment, but you also get some inconsistency based upon capacity and all sorts of other things. Yeah. With that, but it sounds very thoughtful.

[00:35:45] Ben Brooks: I've got a couple more questions, but I wanna have the opportunity for people to drop in the chat. I'd love to know so far in this conversation. What's something that is an aha, or an insight, or it confirms something, or you feel less alone about something? I'm just gonna, I'll write the question out for people [00:36:00] like me that are visual learners and say, what did he just say?

[00:36:02] Ben Brooks: Oh, Laura's helping me. Laura's a step ahead, as always. But, an insight, an aha, something that confirms something, something that you're now curious about. It's just helpful for Stephanie and Laura and I to see it along the way. And it'll guide us to some open Q& A we'll ask you all in a bit.

[00:36:18] Ben Brooks: Thanks. What questions you have, but Stephanie, I was also on the voluntold thing. I'm really curious. There can be a lot of pressure, right? So let's say I'm Juan, and I work at, I don't know who Juan is, that doesn't get globalized, just a fictitious character, but I'm Juan, and, the HRBP and the COE had thoughtfully, identified, and there's a program, but Juan may be, Doesn't, it's not good timing or maybe one's expecting a kid right now or something's going on or is managing a medical issue or a

[00:36:45] Stephanie Fritz: lot of that actually this past round in the selection process, a lot of people declined the program because they were on parental leave because we have a very, we've about six months parental leave.

[00:36:57] Stephanie Fritz: So yeah, that's definitely not the right time for a [00:37:00] program.

[00:37:00] Ben Brooks: And, but there may be other things that are even a little bit hard probably just obvious, right? You're like, okay I'm having a child, but there may be other things that they don't even want. I mean, maybe they're working on their sobriety or something like that, that they haven't even disclosed to the organization that they're in recovery or all these human factors.

[00:37:19] Ben Brooks: How do you create a psychologically safe environment for people to say no or not right now in a way that doesn't have them? Because I think employees, we talk about them and say if I say no, they're going to think I don't want to be here or I am not grateful or maybe it's my only shot and we're going to go on pause again with learning programs in the future like we did in the pandemic.

[00:37:40] Ben Brooks: Like, what's the communication to the employees that are invited about the safety that it truly is a choice? Because most people don't feel that invitations from an organization, especially from on high, are choices. So, how do you create that context?

[00:37:57] Stephanie Fritz: So it doesn't, it's [00:38:00] not just in our team. So that's my short answer is that that has to be an organizational approach that it's okay for people to opt out.

[00:38:08] Stephanie Fritz: So our team in the way that we accept the opt out. we provide us a psychologically safe way in which we do that. So there is no penalizing that we might have a conversation with the person to better understand so that we understand, what's going on for them how else we might be able to be helpful, right?

[00:38:27] Stephanie Fritz: So maybe it's not an internal program that the person wants. Maybe they're just about to get promoted and this isn't the right program for them because it means that they're right at the cusp of being eligible for the next program. So maybe if they're getting promoted and they need skill development, maybe we point them to an external program and they use our education reimbursement benefit.

[00:38:46] Stephanie Fritz: S&P is incredibly generous with their education reimbursement. I used it for my doctoral program. And so there's different ways that people can get what they need. And so again, to me, it is It's a bit of a high touch approach sometimes, but I think [00:39:00] conversation goes a long way with people. The woman that manages our mid level development programs, the whole portfolio, she is a coach herself.

[00:39:08] Stephanie Fritz: And so she approaches everything in the vein of psychological safety and creating an environment where people can tell her, what's really on their mind and that they're not penalized for it. Now, how does that happen more broadly? We have to work with our people leaders to make sure that they understand that.

[00:39:25] Stephanie Fritz: Nobody does get penalized if they say no to a program. We work with our people partners to really have those engagement conversations with the people leaders early on to say, what do we know about Juan? What's, what's his personal situation? Is he attending an extra? Is he like, like I was for the last four years, attending a program?

[00:39:44] Stephanie Fritz: At a university and going for a degree of some sort. I would not be an ideal candidate, correct?

[00:39:50] Ben Brooks: Yeah, you're full up on development and learning. Yeah.

[00:39:53] Stephanie Fritz: That's, we want to understand. We want our people partners to really be having these conversations [00:40:00] with the leaders of the people that they're trying to nominate for the programs to make sure that it is the right type of engagement.

[00:40:06] Stephanie Fritz: And we're not like, we're not fully there yet, but we, that's what we encourage. Yeah.

[00:40:10] Ben Brooks: Yep, and I would just add that obviously different organizations will have different cultures and structures and maturity of business partners versus some people have, business partners have been eliminated and they have a shared service center where you call into stuff.

[00:40:22] Ben Brooks: And so I think you have to adapt to your structure, but it sounds like S&P has really invested in the field teams in HR that are pretty critical in that regard.

[00:40:32] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, one of our philosophies at S&P as part of our culture is people first. And so that doesn't always mean like individual first, it means we think about the right kind of environment that we're creating for our people and allowing people to opt out after being voluntold is part of a people first mindset.

[00:40:51] Stephanie Fritz: And we don't want people to feel penalized. When you mentioned the thing about we haven't had development programs for years, there is this sort of anxiety around the scarcity of [00:41:00] it. And I can tell when somebody is anxious about saying no in the way that they write the email in terms of I know this is a great opportunity and blah, blah.

[00:41:08] Stephanie Fritz: And so we usually, we try to make it easier for that person to allow themselves the space that they need to opt out.

[00:41:16] Ben Brooks: Yep, that's great. And I know some of our organizations that also do programs on the sort of recurring basis and so they can almost slot them into the next one because they say, oh, we do that twice a year or four times a year and those sort of things.

[00:41:27] Ben Brooks: Laura's going to has an announcement about some upcoming thought leadership we're going to be sharing. And then what I want to do is while Laura's sharing, If you've got questions for Stephanie or I, drop them in the chat. We're going to have some time to get into some questions and we'll have some final words of wisdom.

[00:41:42] Ben Brooks: So drop questions you have in the chat right now. And Laura, what do we have coming up?

[00:41:47] Laura Mastrorocco: Yeah, I wanted to share with you a future webinar that's on the calendar for yeah, November 1st is just around the corner. And it is budget time. So I'm just dropping a link in the [00:42:00] chat for the November 1st webinar.

[00:42:02] Laura Mastrorocco: You can also utilize the QR code on the screen with your cell phone if you prefer. And so this webinar is all about ensuring that you get the budget approved that you need for your L&D plan. Please join Jen Fox, who is the founder of Org Savvy Coaching and Consulting, and former JustWorks People in Culture Director, along with Ben Brooks, as the CEO and founder of PILOT, to strategize your 2024 L&D plan.

[00:42:30] Laura Mastrorocco: And as I mentioned, you can either click on that link in the chat to register, or scan the code on the screen. And what questions do we have for Stephanie or Ben? You can feel free to drop those in the chat.

[00:42:47] Ben Brooks: And I got one that came in direct message to me. You can also do that as well.

[00:42:51] Ben Brooks: If you prefer Stephanie specifically related to DEI. How do you factor in DEI and people from [00:43:00] underrepresented demographics in some of the selection and supporting people because we've had some experience where people get invited and they self select out, they feel almost impossible to say, I'm not ready, or this isn't for me, or this is a fluke.

[00:43:12] Ben Brooks: Like, how do you think about that? And looks like we got a question from Jack we'll get to next.

[00:43:16] Stephanie Fritz: Great. Yeah. So we aim to be as inclusive as possible. We do encourage people partners during the selection process to really think about, especially in their U S based seats. We, so for example, if we give you 10 seats across your business for a 50 person program, what we encourage people to the people partners to think about is how many of those seats would you give to our APAC colleagues?

[00:43:42] Stephanie Fritz: How many would you give to EMEA, LATAM? So in the countries where people self select ethnicity or self report ethnicity, we encourage people, partners to use that data in the selection process and try to get at least half of the cohort, half of their nominations in [00:44:00] the U. S. to be self reported diverse people of color in some diverse way.

[00:44:05] Stephanie Fritz: The other areas where we wouldn't necessarily have data on it if people, we have a lot of we call them people resource groups, other organizations call them employee resource groups, but a lot of advocates within those groups. And so again, with creating the type of psychological safety for people to be able to opt out or to.

[00:44:25] Stephanie Fritz: Express what their needs are so that we can better support them. There's a variety of things that SMP has given us in terms of tools to support people with various needs that we can incorporate into the programs, whether they are virtual or in person, especially with the in person events. We always ask questions around, accommodations that people might need.

[00:44:46] Stephanie Fritz: With a virtual, there's things that we can do, but there's also some things that are obviously a little bit harder. We do everything that we can to include everyone and make it an enriching experience.

[00:44:59] Ben Brooks: And [00:45:00] Jack asked a question about addressing the objection from employees that I'm too busy to do this program, even if the person sees value and wants to do it, but claims they don't have the time to engage.

[00:45:10] Ben Brooks: How do you think about address, both the, how do you address the objection, but also how do you pick programs that maybe are a little less time intensive?

[00:45:18] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah. So especially for these virtual programs that we do we do try to keep them what, first of all, condensed to a specific time period.

[00:45:26] Stephanie Fritz: So we don't like to go much longer than six months. We prefer that the learning sessions associated. So when we do these global workshops, no more than two hours. And even then that's a little, that can be a little bit tight. It's two hours if we're doing a lot of breakouts because people need more time in the breakouts.

[00:45:42] Stephanie Fritz: But if it's really just more of a panel or a fireside chat. That's 60 minutes max. And so we really try to think about the time that we are asking people to step away. We also encourage people who really do want to engage in the program but don't have time. we would coach them on how to have a conversation with their [00:46:00] manager about prioritizing different pieces of work.

[00:46:02] Stephanie Fritz: Or maybe they have a team meeting every week at the same time, and it happens to fall during the exact same times of these global workshops that we run. And so how do we, how does that person get permission to miss the meeting? Maybe they send a delegate, maybe somebody takes notes and meets up with them after.

[00:46:18] Stephanie Fritz: There's a variety of different ways that we can get people to engage when they really don't have time. I find, and maybe I'm biased that when people say I don't have time, it's a, they actually don't want to be engaged in the program. It's just an easy out. But they, if they really do want to be involved, and there's a variety of options we can explore with people.

[00:46:37] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I'm a daily meditator and there's a saying in meditation. If you don't have time to meditate, you really need to meditate. And I think there's a look alike to learning and leadership, is that. Yeah. What would, would the, like some of it can, the coach in me says to also challenge the person say would you like to figure out how to have time?

[00:46:54] Ben Brooks: Would that be an outcome, prioritizing yourself rather than just, grinding out [00:47:00] performance? And so that can be also part of what they work on in that program is having a better command of their time in general. I want to mention really quickly, Laura dropped in the chat. The HRCI and the SHRM credits.

[00:47:13] Ben Brooks: So HRCI and SHRM credits the codes are in the chat. So you can grab those and then, what we're going to do, Stephanie, is I will, we'll give last words, and advice. So I'll start and you'll have the final word because you're our featured guest. This has been a great conversation.

[00:47:28] Ben Brooks: It's gone a little different than we even had planned and I run a show, but. I feel like we've really gotten into so many specifics that it's hopefully been very helpful drop a plus 1, by the way, in the chat. If you're enjoying this conversation, right? Getting things out of this, et cetera. I will mention a lot of plus 1s coming in.

[00:47:46] Ben Brooks: I will mention in terms of final words of advice on doing these things. You have to figure out, you can't be too perfectionist about this. Stephanie mentioned hot mess earlier. S&P Global is a pretty strict, conservative, well run it's not a [00:48:00] place that things are loose, generally.

[00:48:01] Ben Brooks: But, I think that you all are a great example of that learning mindset, that growth mindset as an organization, as HR team. Of giving yourself the permission to try something and to make it better and to adjust and modify. So I think that'd be my word of advice. I think sometimes in HR, we take the perfection that we need for compliance and employee relations and payroll and union collective bargaining things that you need perfection and all that.

[00:48:27] Ben Brooks: Right? But in the space of development and leadership, you don't need perfection. You need thoughtfulness. You need responsibility, attention, ownership, et cetera and but I think that would be my piece of advice is don't be too perfectionist because what that does is it delays and slows down taking action and your employees and management don't care about all of the secret conference room and Microsoft Teams meetings behind the scene to design the perfect thing and the perfect program.

[00:48:56] Ben Brooks: They care what they see in the experience. And it's a big part of [00:49:00] perception and intent to stay. And, does the company invest in me? Those sorts of things, I think, really manage down the perfection impulses that I think a lot of us have in the function. And have the courage to experiment and to learn.

[00:49:12] Ben Brooks: Because we want our talent to learn. We need to be able to learn as HR professionals. Stephanie, what are your final words of wisdom? And again, everyone, we've got the HRCI and this SHRM codes in the chat.

[00:49:23] Stephanie Fritz: Yeah, so then I couldn't agree more on that as a recovering perfectionist. I had a manager many years ago say to me, don't let the, don't let the perfect get in the way of the good enough.

[00:49:34] Stephanie Fritz: And so that, that really has stuck with me. I think, we've covered so many different things in this in this webinar, I think for me, the one thing that I want to highlight is, when you think about creating the psychological safety, when you think about the experimentation that Ben said that, we do it, we are very risk averse, we're a very conservative organization, but, within our development team, because [00:50:00] everything we are rebuilding, we are relaunching everything, every one of us, including myself is new in the role that we're playing within the development team.

[00:50:10] Stephanie Fritz: And I mentioned, I have, we're a six person team. So I have fat five fabulous women that work on my team and all of them are incredibly thoughtful and really thinking about solutions in a different type of way. The other thing that's really interesting about our team is that. Besides myself, most of them do not have typical learning and development experience.

[00:50:30] Stephanie Fritz: They come in from various parts of HR, whether it's recruiting, whether it's culture, whether, it's project management, early careers development, things that are really interesting about this team is they bring in different types of ideas, which allows us to experiment. So when you think about experimentation and psychological safety and what you're trying to drive in the organization, start with your team and create that environment within your team.

[00:50:56] Stephanie Fritz: Because when you have a strong team [00:51:00] dynamic, there's nothing that you can't do together. And when you fail, you fail together. And when you win, you win together and everybody can support each other throughout that process.

[00:51:11] Ben Brooks: I think We're going to send out the recording. I'd encourage everyone to re listen to that last two minutes of what Stephanie said, because she packed about 30 minutes worth of wisdom into that.

[00:51:19] Ben Brooks: And there's just so much. And again, I think we always are trying to change organizations. 37, 000 people, but starting with a team of six magnanimous women that are getting it done with diversity of perspective and safety, I think is a great model of leadership, right? Start with what you can control, what you can do now and today.

[00:51:37] Ben Brooks: Stephanie, thank you for being a great guest. Thank you for being a thought leader. Thank you for doing research in this space with your PhD. Thank you for being a great customer and partner in our award winning partnership that we have with you all. We've got a lot of great props in the chat.

[00:51:50] Ben Brooks: And thanks to everyone for joining today. This is a great conversation. We're going to have more of these with people that are at Stephanie's caliber. that we all can learn from. I learned a lot. I wasn't [00:52:00] familiar fully with the Gartner model. That's one of my takeaways too. Thanks everyone for joining.

[00:52:03] Ben Brooks: Have a great rest of your week. Don't be a perfectionist. Go do something. Get that budget. Bring, involve the business, find the champions, go cats, go dogs, right? All the good things. All right. Thanks everyone.