Recorded Webinar

Transcript

[00:00:00] Ben Brooks: Good evening, based upon where you may be in the world. I'm Ben Brooks, the founder and CEO of PILOT. PILOT's a career development company. We'll talk more about, but want to thank Paychex, our sponsor today for helping to host and produce this. As well as HR Executive Magazine. It's currently the HR technology conference in Las Vegas right now.

[00:00:20] Ben Brooks: I'm a monthly columnist for the for the organization as well. I have a coaches corner column and and pilot our company for being partners and all of this. Our focus today is this idea of the secret to better managers. is probably better employees. And we know that management or weak management or management that you need to make more capable is a big topic for companies.

[00:00:43] Ben Brooks: It's causing a lot of people to leave their job and be unhappy. And we're going to talk all about that today. I want to let you know a little bit about PILOT for context. You're like, who's Ben? Who's this company? We are a company that's designed to make career development and growth inclusive and [00:01:00] easy for everyone.

[00:01:01] Ben Brooks: We won HR Tech's PitchFest award. Last time that happened, named the number one startup of the year to watch last year on a top HR product of the year, et cetera, and we really help companies retain talent, develop future leaders. Address engagement challenges that they find and deliver on promises around diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:01:20] Ben Brooks: We've got tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of hours of experience with our great customers along the way. And as I talk to you today, just know that we really believe that you gotta wrap around the employee to cause employees success. It really requires, to not just give something to the employees to maybe do if they have time or if they're interested, like a course online, but really a holistic approach.

[00:01:45] Ben Brooks: Kind of, it takes a village and that's HR doing program management, change management, analytics, right? Rolling it out powerfully, selecting the right people, employees, reflecting, looking inward. The world's leading expert on each person's career is themselves. And yet employees [00:02:00] often look outside of themselves.

[00:02:01] Ben Brooks: And we're going to talk a lot about that today. Managers giving useful future focused and developmental feedback, communities of employees coming together, peer communities, have people feel a sense of belonging. And that's why they stay at organizations, external coaches that provide group coaching and facilitate great dialogue and, executive fireside mentoring chats.

[00:02:22] Ben Brooks: And that's a big part of our model and methodology. And I'll talk to you today. How you can do some of these things at your own organization. Now Amy from our team has already modeled the chat is live. You know, a lot of webinars, right? People trying to show off that they're really smart and it's out there, this crazy research.

[00:02:39] Ben Brooks: This is meant to be practical. This is meant to be applied. We've got a resource that we're going to send an e book for those of you who are here. And other resources we're going to drop in that chat throughout this hour, so stay tuned. You know, webinars, sometimes I'll do this. I'll multitask and do those different things.

[00:02:53] Ben Brooks: I encourage you to give yourself this hour. I promise you I'll make good use of your time. So let's take in the context, right?

[00:02:59] Ben Brooks: I [00:03:00] live in New York City. Here's me on Franklin Street down in Tribeca.

[00:03:02] Ben Brooks: There's an urgent case for HR, for management, executive teams to make change in how we create better managers and employees. The great resignation is real. It's real. It was talked a lot about in Q1 and Q2, but organizations are now seeing waves of employees resign, some employees that have never even been to offices.

[00:03:23] Ben Brooks: They were, they started remote in the pandemic, and then they FedEx their laptop back to the organization you know, the war for talent to backfill those people. Is truly a war. Compensation is outta control. The labor market is really hard. People are getting 5, 6, 7 offers as well as burnout and fatigue.

[00:03:41] Ben Brooks: Now, I'd, I imagine, I'll tell you, I've definitely got some. We thought we'd be past a lot of this, right? We thought that vaccines would end this thing sooner, right?

[00:03:48] Ben Brooks: We thought we'd be back in offices and at conferences and all this, right? If we're feeling that as HR professionals, so are our employees. And so are our managers. Now, of course, remote and [00:04:00] hybrid has been hard. Of course, people have gotten laptops and VPN and teams and Slack. But they, in Zoom, but they haven't necessarily learned how to manage their schedules and stay motivated and ask for help.

[00:04:12] Ben Brooks: Right? . We spent a decade building employee experiences, but we built them around the office.

[00:04:17] Ben Brooks: You know, iced coffee fountains or ping pong tables or volunteer days, right? And, we now have to figure out what's the employee experience when it's virtual. If any of you are parents, right? Big transition. You're excited to have kids back to school, but you're still worried about their health and well being, right? Got a lot of stuff going on in the country, in the world, that's really challenging. Storms, fires, floods, all sorts of challenges, right? So we have to take in the context, you know?

[00:04:43] Ben Brooks: The context is life is kind of hard for a lot of us right now. And it's hard for employees. And so it's not like business as usual in people's jobs or in their careers, right? So, this is a time that we have to think differently.

[00:04:57] Ben Brooks: And we have to act differently because [00:05:00] we're under pressure. Managers are under pressure, employees, and yet we still have to perform. We still have to deliver whether you're, a for profit corporation, a nonprofit government entity. You still have performance. You have to deliver people and customers.

[00:05:11] Ben Brooks: You have to support. So, let's talk about managers. What we're doing to set up managers for success, right? Think of frontline supervisors and middle management and organizations.

[00:05:22] Ben Brooks: Look at our engagement data. I look at engagement data from dozens, hundreds of companies. It's almost always the same, no matter what the geography of the industry is, right? Employees are saying, I don't get support. I don't get direction. My well being is not, I, I don't have a close relationship, you know, look, people at the top of the pyramid, the executives, are often bemoaning middle managers. They don't trust them or don't think that they're competent. Even if you look at succession planning, if you've got talent management, right, do you have a bench of people? Do you have future leaders? A lot of organizations say no.

[00:05:55] Ben Brooks: They're worried about, a retirement cliff and the people at the top [00:06:00] leaving and really no one in their footsteps to fill in, right? Also, the idea of being a manager, in past generations, it was a very aspirational, sexy thing, a corner office and a team and a certain title. It's become a lot less sexy, a lot, and a lot of people, including top talent, including, minority of women and all the women we've lost in the workforce.

[00:06:20] Ben Brooks: Wall Street Journal and McKinsey had some great research this week about extra burnout for women and how employees are leaning on women more as managers than men. It's not nearly as glamorous or rewarding of jobs. It used to be. And then when you look at change initiatives, rolling out new software, right?

[00:06:37] Ben Brooks: I saw Josh person said yesterday, 42 percent of HR tech rollouts fail. Almost 1 in 2. Crazy. Change in general, new strategies, new rollouts, new programs, they fail. And it's often that middle management where the challenge is. But my question is is that is it their fault? Right? I don't know if they really should be taking the blame.

[00:06:58] Ben Brooks: I'm not sure if we've really thought [00:07:00] about this properly and you heard that stuff rolls downhill or a different S word, you know, I'm not sure if that's the best approach for us to work with going forward. And that's why I want to talk to you more about what we can do. So, question from Michael about why they fail, right?

[00:07:16] Ben Brooks: Great question. And there's a bunch of, consulting firms and studies and things. But a lot of it is, resistance, lack of alignment, lack of authority, right? Confusion, competing priorities. So we're going to talk more about that, Michael. And that's a great question.

[00:07:30] Ben Brooks: But what's it like to be a manager? Our point of view is it's a pretty hard job, right? People, get promoted because they're often good at something like they're a good salesperson and a sales manager, but they don't necessarily know how to manage part. Okay. We often, think that, every function, finance, HR, compliance, IT, marketing, sales, everybody wants something from managers.

[00:07:52] Ben Brooks: It's like managers have all these different bosses and they're all the functions that I'll ask. Angela says, gosh, it's been so much harder. Melody says it's [00:08:00] a nuisance. Jody's talking about the exact thing I'm speaking to, pulled in many directions, right? Like Charles, one person taking on the world, especially in small business, extremely difficult, Heidi, right?

[00:08:12] Ben Brooks: A lot of people, again, there's like potential, right? Amy, you never can get ahead. And so, again, seldom are managers really set up for success. We ask managers to do things, but have we trained them or enabled them? Have we given the authority for them to do it, right?

[00:08:26] Ben Brooks: Think about how hard it is for a manager to let someone go sometimes, or to get a budget approval, or to make a change, right? Prioritization, right? Now, the problem also is employees. So managers have a team and an employee thinks, who's the person at a company of a hundred or a thousand or a hundred thousand that can help me with this, fill in the blank this.

[00:08:46] Ben Brooks: They go to their manager, they have an IT problem, they go to their manager. They have a finance question, they go to their manager. They have a direction question, they go to their manager. They have an employee conflict, they go to their manager. Everything goes to the manager. So the manager is now 9 1 [00:09:00] 1 and 3 1 1 for everybody.

[00:09:03] Ben Brooks: And yet they're getting some managers getting in from both sides from top down. All the functions are trying to get a piece of them pulled in a million directions like Jody said. And from the bottom up, employees expect the world of their managers and to be their switchboard for everything, right?

[00:09:17] Ben Brooks: And just like I did there. So, now look, also the spans of controls. We get flatter organizations. That's a big trend. But that just means you went from managing six people to managing nine. Right? So instead of six people asking you for everything, you got nine people asking for everything. And then on the top, when they say, oh, go do this, create a development plan, do this thing.

[00:09:37] Ben Brooks: Instead of doing it six times, you got to do it nine times and then matrix organizations where you've got multiple bosses and multiple teams. Talk about a migraine, right?

[00:09:46] Ben Brooks: Now, again, we put the weight of the world on managers, right? We think, oh, we set up a competency matrix for managers or we set expectations. We sent out a memo. We posted to the intranet. We [00:10:00] think that that's enough. Right. Be like if any of you have kids and you tell a kid that they gotta go to bed at nine o'clock, is that enough?

[00:10:06] Ben Brooks: I bet most of your parents say, heck no. Pretending that cascading is effective. Oh, if this team has a meeting and they just, forward on the email that that team will do it and they'll forward it on and that team will do it generally doesn't work too well. Again, there's a sense that I've heard in many meetings, we pay them to manage.

[00:10:23] Ben Brooks: But oftentimes people are only making 5 or 10, 15 percent more to manage, and yet it's twice the work. So are we really paying them? And again, no one's really looking out for managers like a talent agent, you know. If you're Lady Gaga, Lady Gaga doesn't get booked for three concerts in a night, right? She's got someone at CAA or UTA or WME that's looking out for her.

[00:10:45] Ben Brooks: But as managers, we don't have someone that's saying, Hey, this is too much. We can't do all this in the same week or month or day, right? Think of the times when you've had a deadline for performance management and for finance and things all in the same day, right? And we haven't put enough [00:11:00] investment into their development, right?

[00:11:03] Ben Brooks: So again, it's many hats, of course, that they wear, right? But again, are we paying and setting them up to succeed with all of it?

[00:11:09] Ben Brooks: It takes a whole different level of skills. So this is sort of sticking up for managers here, right? Hopefully that resonates that, managers are not the bad gals or guys. The other thing is employees, right? We've got this learned helplessness with employees and if you think a head count in the average organization, 15 to 20% of your head count typically depends on the industry, but typically is in management.

[00:11:33] Ben Brooks: It means about 80%, four out of five people are not a manager. So in these meetings we talk about all the managers, the managers, managers do this. Imagine if you just had meetings, you talked about your customers, you only talked about one out of five customers and you just ignored the other four.

[00:11:49] Ben Brooks: Well, that's sort of what we do in organizations, right? And so then employees are just sitting there waiting and they're passive. They don't know their next move. They don't know the next assignment. If they need help, they don't ask for it. They want [00:12:00] feedback. They just tell us in a survey that they're pissed off.

[00:12:02] Ben Brooks: They don't get it. Right? So then they wait to be managed or even micromanaged, right? Elizabeth relates to that, right? They resist accountability and yet they don't direct themselves. So that's a struggle, right? You say, Hey, I need to know an update or report. Right? They're not pushing status again.

[00:12:19] Ben Brooks: Managers become a single point of failure. They have an IT question. They don't call IT. They call the manager first, then the manager has to reroute them to IT. It's a pain in the butt. They lack empathy for their manager's challenges. So, managers, as we discussed, have a lot going on.

[00:12:33] Ben Brooks: Managers have a manager. Managers are pulled in a lot of different ways. They typically have their arms crossed and they're thinking, well, what have you done for me lately? Right? And they don't even know their manager's career goals. What their, what is their manager trying to do? This will stop employees in the tracks.

[00:12:46] Ben Brooks: We asked them this at PILOT. What are your manager's career goals? What's their next move? What are they up against with their boss? What are their true top priorities? By the way, what's their preferences for communicating? Are they a morning person and evening person? Do [00:13:00] they like to talk it out? Do they like it in writing?

[00:13:02] Ben Brooks: Do they want to meet in person? Do they want to be virtual? Most people don't even know. And yet, a manager has budget and headcount and has chosen an employee so really it should be treated like a customer. So employees are really not playing their part, right? Anna says, the old saying, we teach you how to treat us.

[00:13:16] Ben Brooks: Amen, Anna. That is absolutely true. And often as managers, we have taught in organizations It's sort of okay for employees to really just not be that useful or helpful to the manager's success. But what if there was a better way? By the way, if you have questions or comments, throw 'em in the chat.

[00:13:34] Ben Brooks: If there was a better way, what if the solution to all of this was hidden in plain sight? What if it was right in front of us? Because the challenges so far, it seems like I haven't heard in the chat of anyone saying any of this is not resonating, right? That we're under a lot of pressure, right? A lot of stress, a lot of burnout, a lot of resignation, a lot of work for talent.

[00:13:55] Ben Brooks: We are disappointed with our managers and their performance. We haven't [00:14:00] set them up for success. It's a tough job, right? We put too much on them, and then employees are kind of passive, right? That's where we are. Does everyone agree with that, right? That's the current state, right?

[00:14:10] Ben Brooks: So what do we do? Because HR people can't, get into the field, right? Janet, Kent, Jennifer, I bet you're in the field to make a difference.

[00:14:17] Ben Brooks: I bet you're in the field to help people. I bet you're in the field to, to have people have great experiences at work and be proud of their employers and go home at the end of a long day and say, I had a great day at work, right? Well, that's all possible. So the possibility for HR, right? And Jill says definitely is that every employee feels powerful at work.

[00:14:39] Ben Brooks: Every employee. That's actually PILOT's mission statement. I founded PILOT with my life savings. I'm the sole funder. I believe in this so much. And the idea is the same idea that you can do at your firm. You want employees to be more self directed, right? The thing we know for sure about change is we have more of it than ever.

[00:14:59] Ben Brooks: And right now [00:15:00] it's going as slow as it'll ever go into the future. It's only going to become more changing faster. So we can't always tell employees exactly what to do. They got to figure it out. It's gonna be self directed, right? Entrepreneurial, right? They also have to take ownership for the relationship with their manager.

[00:15:16] Ben Brooks: Employees will complain and moan in surveys and to HR and to their colleagues about their manager, but they never really step up to play their part. They never step up and say, what can I do to have better communication, clear direction, get the feedback that I need, show the respect and care and the personal touch that I want to have, right?

[00:15:39] And how do employees get what they need to be successful and satisfied? We talk a lot about success, not as much about satisfaction. Success, we often think, and that's where HR gets driven nuts. That's titles, and it's confidence, it's the vertical advancement.

[00:15:55] Ben Brooks: But sometimes satisfaction is fulfillment, meaning, [00:16:00] belonging, purpose, right? Sense of accomplishment, confidence, mastery, excellence. That's often success and that's often what's missing. So employees will want a promotion or more money because they're not getting this. But if they got that, that's often after a certain minimum level of income to meet their core kind of Maslow's needs at the bottom of the hierarchy.

[00:16:23] Ben Brooks: The difference that makes the difference is more of the things in the satisfaction realm, and less of the things in just the success realm. And, Sheila asked about, what about the fear that the manager not being mature enough to take the criticism well and not retaliate?

[00:16:36] Ben Brooks: Absolutely. And that, fundamentally is a lack of trust between two people. Maybe not assuming good intent or motivations, and that's some work that employees and managers have to do together. To say, Hey, I wanna have a radically candid conversation. I wanna have a crucial conversation. Right?

[00:16:53] Ben Brooks: But then are they really figuring out a way to do that in a safe space? That's a thing that both employees and [00:17:00] managers need to figure out together. And if you think about it, whether you have a hundred, a thousand, 10,000 or a hundred thousand or employees, if an employee is not successful or satisfied, what happens to the organization?

[00:17:14] Ben Brooks: When 20, 30, 40, 50 percent of your employees are not successful and are not satisfied, the organization isn't successful, and the organization isn't satisfied, and the culture declines, becomes a terrible place to work, right? People, run off like rats on a sinking ship. It's the last thing that we want.

[00:17:35] Ben Brooks: So let's go to the next slide. And again, there's a comment, Elizabeth, about bad reviews in Glassdoor. Exactly, right? That your employer brand is reduced, your reputation spent so much time on, right? Engagement goes down, right? That affects performance, customer success and satisfaction. Gallup did a book called Human Sigma.

[00:17:52] Ben Brooks: They found the most satisfied employees produced the most satisfied customer service and customer experiences. And the least [00:18:00] satisfied employees produced the worst customer service. It started to make sense, kind of like duh, right? But the data proved it. So when employees are successful they take great care, right?

[00:18:11] Ben Brooks: The companies I love to give my money to and spend business with have typically the best and the happiest employee set up for success, and the ones where employees and managers are not doing well, I'm not doing very well as a customer. But that's your experience as well. So, again, we're talking about delegation right?

[00:18:27] Ben Brooks: Redundancy, which costs money, there's miscommunication, all those different things. When we talk about being self directed, it's a nice, high level, Oh, self direction, that sounds great. What's that really mean? Well, we think of it as verbs, right? actions, observable behaviors, right?

[00:18:46] Ben Brooks: Employees need to look inward. They need to reflect, to be self aware, to be situationally aware, right? They need to slow down and be thoughtful, to plan, to anticipate. Employees are scrambling, they're busy, and they're going from Slack to email to this, to a Zoom call, [00:19:00] and this, and they're on their phone, and they're on social media, ESPN, and fantasy football, and they're, buying crypto, they're all over the place.

[00:19:07] Ben Brooks: And they're not slowing down and saying, How am I doing? What do I need? Where am I at? Where am I going? That alone, breakthrough. If managers had employees that were reflective, oh my gosh, managers would have to carry a lot less of the thinking, right? Number two, employees need to solicit and ask for feedback.

[00:19:27] Ben Brooks: The best feedback you give is when you're asked for it. That's the safe space. It gets to the permission. Employees will complain, I don't get enough feedback. But then you ask employees, and we do in PILOT, we say, when's the last time you asked for it? Asked for feedback? What do you mean? What do you mean, asked for feedback?

[00:19:46] Ben Brooks: What we mean is Did you say, I'd like to know where I stand? How can I be better? What about that would you like more of or less of? Right? Simple but powerful questions that help pull the feedback to them. And [00:20:00] by the way, not just from their manager, because you know who else gives good feedback? Everybody!

[00:20:05] Ben Brooks: Vendors, colleagues, customers, matrix bosses, subordinates. Everybody can give feedback. Third thing to advocate for oneself, right? So that's to speak up. Satisfaction in a career is a function of the degree to which an employee advocates for themselves. And they often advocate, they don't think of what they can advocate for.

[00:20:29] Ben Brooks: In PILOT, we talk about this periodic table of advocacy, all the things. It's not just a title change or a raise. It's a schedule that allows them to succeed outside of work and inside of work. It's the tools or resources they need. It's access to data or a certain meeting or group. It's to change the work they're on so they're not bored.

[00:20:46] Ben Brooks: It's to get clear direction and expectations. These are the things that they can advocate for. These are not just work skills. These are life skills. Imagine if people did this in their marriages, in their communities, [00:21:00] right? With their finances, with their wellbeing, with their faith and spirituality, it make a huge difference. And then taking action, right? It's wonderful to know something.

[00:21:11] Ben Brooks: It's powerful to do something. There is a Grand Canyon between knowing and doing. I know I need seven hours of sleep to be at my best. Do I do that? That's what makes the difference. Knowing alone is cheap, right? Doing makes the difference. For employees, they may know that they should be prepared for a manager one on one.

[00:21:32] Ben Brooks: They may know that they should solicit feedback. They may know that they should ask for help. But do they do it? That's the accountability, the push, the nudge, right? Because this is an activated, self directed individual then. That's powerful. So that's all about taking action. Again, hopefully this is resonating, right?

[00:21:53] Ben Brooks: And Sheila says, every single action is better than a thousand groans. What a, Sheila, genius, [00:22:00] right? Think about all the complaining, right? Turn that complaint into an action. Powerful coaching question. Someone's in your office, complaining, no matter who they are, or they're on Zoom or email.

[00:22:09] Ben Brooks: You simply ask, what do you want to do about that? Right? What are you going to do about that? What could you do about that? Powerful question to frame from passive victimhood. To active enablement and action.

[00:22:25] Ben Brooks: People can just ask, right. They can have conversations. They can talk to people. So, are these things you wish every employee at your company did or your organization?

[00:22:34] Ben Brooks: Would this make a difference, if every employee showed up like this and had these capabilities? Would you pay a premium for employees that have this? You could hire an employee or an employee that was self directed, would you pay 10 percent more, 20 percent more, right? for listening.

[00:22:51] Ben Brooks: This is the difference. Think about the number of ER issues that would go down, HR issues and tickets that would go down, right? Fiery [00:23:00] resignations that go down, right? This is the difference that can make the difference. Now, PILOT has a point of view, a shared development plan. Now, of course, every employee is different and unique.

[00:23:11] Ben Brooks: But different and unique doesn't scale. Different and unique doesn't create a culture or a shared language. And as a coach, I was the Senior Vice President of HR at a Fortune 250 company. I've had an executive coaching practice working with renowned people from around the world, different industries, different walks of life, from landscape designers to art dealers to dog geneticists to real estate folks to hedge fund people, fashion designers.

[00:23:37] Ben Brooks: People need to work on the same things. And if you're in HR and you've had a lot of experience, you notice how you end up answering the same questions. You notice how the same problems come up, right? The same needs. That's the case, right? You've noticed that. Put a plus one in that chat. Here's PILOT's point of view.

[00:23:55] Ben Brooks: Everybody needs to take ownership of their career. Your career is [00:24:00] your job. And that's a message employees need to hear. They think their career is their manager's job, that their manager should tap them, right? They think their career is their HR person, generalist, or business partner's job. It's not. You can lead from every seat, right?

[00:24:12] Ben Brooks: We've all seen people in senior executive positions that we would unequivocally call not a leader, right? We've also seen people in non people supervision positions. I've seen receptionists, I've seen custodians and janitors that are absolute leaders that you can lead from any seat or any spot, And that's an important mindset that every person should feel empowered to do something about their circumstances.

[00:24:40] Ben Brooks: Employee have to work efficiently, right? The studies show on average an employee gets three hours of productive work done every day. Three on average, that someone's, in front of their desk or computer about nine hours a day, one in three hours is productive. The other two, they're not. It's not like they're goofing off.

[00:24:54] Ben Brooks: This is just being unfocused on organized, not prioritizing, context switch. [00:25:00] And that's why people feel burned out. You ever have those days where you log off or you go home and you think, I got nothing done and yet I am exhausted. I need to have a beer. Right? That's often too much context switching. Right?

[00:25:11] Ben Brooks: You want resources on context switching email us after this presentation. We'll send you some great resources. Getting your needs met key part of psychology. Every 1 of us has different needs. We need to know what they are. We need to give voice to them. And we need to feel worthy about taking action and do something.

[00:25:29] Ben Brooks: So maybe my need is I have a kid I need to pick up at four o'clock on Tuesdays, right? Maybe no one else on the team has a kid. Okay, great. What are you going to do about that? Well, you're going to say, Hey, I need to leave at four. I'll make up the time later tonight. Right? You make that happen. Employees will leave companies for unmet needs that they never spoke up about.

[00:25:48] Ben Brooks: They never did anything about. Their unmet need may be that they're lonely, that they're sick of working alone. They want to be a part of a team or, take a trip, business trip, right?

[00:25:57] Ben Brooks: The next is partnering with managers. That's this whole [00:26:00] conversation today, right? It's a relationship. If any of you are married, if you have a roommate you live with somebody, it takes two to tango, right? If you were to think only one person's responsible for your romantic relationship, that'd be pretty lopsided.

[00:26:17] Ben Brooks: Each party has a part to play. There may be different parts! It may have different goal, different gifts, different talents. It's okay. That's where one plus one, it can equal three. But employees need to realize that they have an active part to play your inclusion. How do you describe how you like to work?

[00:26:32] Ben Brooks: Who you are? What's happened to you in the life, right? How you've wound up a certain way, what's your gifts are? If you're just an email signature with a title that says, account executive, you know, finance director. We don't know who you are. Tell us more about you as a human. So that's the thing, part of building strong relationships, right?

[00:26:50] Ben Brooks: And this is why often people will go out for a drink or lunch or something like that, a coffee. And they get to know each other. How do we do that consistently and virtually in this [00:27:00] context, and then realizing that, growth is a lifelong goal. We are never done. We often confuse formal education like university with learning.

[00:27:11] Ben Brooks: We may be done with formal education, which is only 10 percent of adult brain development is formal education. 70 percent is informal, social, and on the job. We learn by doing. We learn by that stretch assignment. We learn by failure. We learn by being too stressed and having to prioritize, right? We learn by a tough incident.

[00:27:29] Ben Brooks: Someone having a conflict with us. We often learn that way. You get someone that joins and then all of a sudden they're like upset, right? That can happen. People, you know, I've heard of stories, people don't show up to work or someone that's new quits within, you know, 10 days, 20 days, 30 days. And you just have no idea, right? That can happen as well.

[00:27:45] Ben Brooks: We want to avoid those things. It's very painful and costly to organizations. But then there's the question, right? So we're like, okay, here I am, like, we're talking a lot about employees. Okay, manager said, it's tough environment. We don't set them up to succeed. We expect the world to them.

[00:27:58] Ben Brooks: It's not working out. [00:28:00] Great. There's a lot for employees to do. But if I bet you're sitting there, right? Put a plus 1 if this is on your mind, but don't we need to do a little bit more for managers? Isn't there something managers can do? Are we letting managers off the hook here, Ben? Is it all just on the employees?

[00:28:15] Ben Brooks: Right? Fair question. And I agree. We believe at PILOT, managers have a part to play too, beyond what they do, but they need to have the same feeling of being powerful, getting their needs met, asking for feedback, advocating, the same things employees need to do,

[00:28:33] Ben Brooks: managers need to do. It makes a tremendous difference. Managers are employees too. Amen. Right? Managers have their own unmet needs, right? Mary says, managers, need to equip them to empower their employees.

[00:28:47] Ben Brooks: A hundred percent, right? Sheila's talking about LinkedIn Learning and other different resources, you know. Sheila, offer them PILOT. I promise we'll make you look like a hero, you know, so many great ideas here and let's keep throwing. If you've got [00:29:00] ideas to help managers or employees, throw them in the chat.

[00:29:03] Ben Brooks: You got resources, you got a book you love, you got a podcast you listen to. Let's be generous to each other, right? A bunch of great things. We're reading a great book right now. I'm going to ask the PILOT team to put a link in called Crucial Conversations. Unbelievable book about how to have hard conversations, about how to, you know, be vulnerable.

[00:29:24] Ben Brooks: Great resource. Now, for managers we've got to shift their focus, right? Saying, and it was Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, one of those guys, said, The main thing is to keep the main thing. The main thing? Love that. Not mine, but I love using it. The main thing for a lot of managers is supervision, right? Did people do the thing?

[00:29:45] Ben Brooks: Radical Candor is another great book Charles put in there, right? And Elizabeth said, Whatever managers do for their career employees in a lawsuit, it duplicates out absolutely, right? So if managers are supervising does he, she, them do their job? [00:30:00] Did they do this on time? Right?

[00:30:02] Ben Brooks: Accountability, direction, do this, do that, get with the program, right? Supervision. Guess what we find out from managers? What they hate about their job being managers? They hate supervising. Guess what on the other side of it employees hate? They hate being supervised, right? But when they're not self directed, they're not accountable, they don't speak up, and they go, they hate supervision, right?

[00:30:22] Ben Brooks: And when managers have ill equipped teams, they need to be really hands on. But here we have a thing, probably like if any of you are parents, right? It's like disciplining your kids. You're in line at the grocery store and they want, the, the candy bar, right? And they're in tears and you're yelling at them and it's that dysfunction, except it's adults inside of a workplace, right?

[00:30:41] Ben Brooks: The shift is to focus on development. Supervision turns out is like building a lane of freeway in Los Angeles. The more lanes of freeway, the more traffic it just expands. The more you supervise, the more you have to supervise. The more you develop though, the [00:31:00] less you have to supervise. More capable employees through development means managers can be a bit more hands off.

[00:31:07] Ben Brooks: They can be more of a coach and an empowerer and a cheerleader than an enforcer and a supervisor and someone that keeps them highly accountable because the employee holds more of that accountability. It's a huge difference, right? I talked to you, I'm talking about mentors is key, right? And managers need guidance too.

[00:31:24] Ben Brooks: And Tatiana, we built mentors right into our program. I agree a hundred percent. Who's got the monkey from John? That's a classic. The most read Harvard business review article ever, by the way, a great one. I use all the time. Transforming your workplace podcast from Jennifer. Some really great resources coming in.

[00:31:39] Ben Brooks: Y'all are so wonderful leadership and self deception. Managers, tools, APP and website. Great. Crucial conversations, right? And so this is the message we need to get to managers, right? You can spend all day being hands on, picking up the work when an employee drops it, checking in on them all the time, breathing down their neck.

[00:31:59] Ben Brooks: But at the end of the day, you're [00:32:00] probably not going to be very happy and you're not going to, people will be as small as you treat them, right? So Reed Hastings at the company before Netflix, you know, co founder of Netflix, before Netflix, he talked about dummy proofing the place. He's like, turns out the only people who wanted to work there were dummies.

[00:32:14] Ben Brooks: Okay, so if we just supervise, that's all we're going to get if we develop, then we got people that are like, showing up to you and say, hey, boss or a manager or a colleague and partner. I was thinking ahead, right? I wanted to prepare for this meeting. I was, I figured you might want to see this in advance.

[00:32:31] Ben Brooks: Right? I'm wondering if we could go the extra mile on this. I had some ideas to do this. I went ahead and took the initiative to book this. I'm going to take this off your desk. Okay. Wouldn't those be like love language kind of words in a workplace appropriate context to hear from an employee, right? Plus one from Elizabeth and wouldn't you love to hear an employee say, I thought of something and I took action.

[00:32:56] Ben Brooks: I had a problem and here's what I'm going to try. I [00:33:00] had a conflict with this person and I picked up the phone and we worked it out. I just wanted to give you a heads up that I took you off this meeting because I'm going to handle it so I freed up an hour of your time. I know you've got that meeting with your manager in a week and I wanted to get a deck prepared in advance so you can show her all of the data that we're succeeding.

[00:33:20] Ben Brooks: Can you imagine what that would do to a relationship if employees were doing that? But that's what's possible. So we develop people with PILOT. That's what other solutions are doing as well, right? It's not all about PILOT. It's not meant to be when I say that, but this is what we live and breathe every day.

[00:33:34] Ben Brooks: And this is what's possible as a framework. So how do we also get this done for managers? Well, when managers think of developing employees, you know what they usually think of? Charity. They think, Oh, that'd be nice. Wouldn't it be good for my employees to get some development?

[00:33:51] Ben Brooks: They don't usually think of a very important two letter word. M. E. Me. Right? But that's what we need to have them think about. [00:34:00] Humans are self interested. We need to lean into that. Instead of it being the Laffy Taffy machine, what Anna said, or whoever it was earlier, of stretching the managers in one more direction.

[00:34:10] Ben Brooks: If the managers said, Wait a second. There's something in it for me if I develop them, if I make the important idea of employee development an urgent priority in my day, week, and month, right? I could be more strategic, right? Managers always want to be more strategic. They want to be looking ahead. They don't want to be surprised.

[00:34:36] Ben Brooks: They want to plan, right? Managers hate being on their back foot. They want to be on their front foot. They want to play offense, right? I could succeed outside of work, right? I could see my spouse again. I could go to my kids thing. I could be involved in that community board, right? I could go to the fricking gym, right?

[00:34:54] Ben Brooks: And get on my Peloton, you know? Also, right? And you want to buy, by the way, getting into home [00:35:00] fitness over the pandemic, Peloton. I've got a mirror, fitness mirrors. I've got one weights, all that stuff. That's the thing that you got to free up some time, right? Roller blades. Oh my gosh. Make sure you wear your helmet.

[00:35:10] Ben Brooks: Buy a Fend helmet, by the way. Great helmets, collapsible helmets, F E N D. Right? You want to ensure that the manager themselves is growing as well. Because what we don't want is the manager, to be the shoemaker's children that have no shoes, right? So the manager needs to make sure that they're having time to get feedback and to develop and to grow and to learn and to network and to have challenge.

[00:35:34] Ben Brooks: We want to reduce their stress, their burnout, right? If you've got an unhealthy manager, you have an unhealthy team. Tell me I'm wrong. If you've got an unhealthy manager, you've got an unhealthy team. Gotta have managers be taken care of because it cascades out, it reverberates out, right? And also, you gotta delegate more, get more done, right?

[00:35:55] Ben Brooks: Management, the American Management Association had a definition of management. It said, management is the [00:36:00] achievement of results through others. Management is the achievement of results through others.

[00:36:09] Ben Brooks: So, management needs to pull up, right? We can't just be hand to hand combat in the trenches. Frazzled, scrambling, overwhelmed, tired, short tempered, right? Got to pull up to be our best selves, right? Got to be large and in charge in an empowering way. So that's what's really key, right?

[00:36:31] Ben Brooks: But the thing for managers, they got to realize, and that's the reframe, is if I develop, I get better. I develop my team and I make that a priority rather than, oh crap, I have to fill out this development plan. Oh crap, I have to have a, performance conversation. What if it was like, heck yes, I get to make better team, people that can do more things for me.

[00:36:53] Ben Brooks: So I can do more things that I want to do.

[00:36:58] Ben Brooks: Okay. Oh, [00:37:00] Brianna makes a very good point. I'm going to folks real quick again. This is so wonderful. Y'all are so wonderful. I got to say, I just, I'm loving this conversation is that delegation does not mean it's done at 100 percent how you do it. My coach and advisor says 70 percent is your goal when you delegate.

[00:37:17] Ben Brooks: If I did a deck and I gave it delegated and someone did it at 70 percent as good as me, that's great. Of course, we want to get to 75 eventually and then 80 and 85. That's development, right? But oftentimes when you initially delegate, You don't have them doing it your standard. They lead a meeting, they're not going to be as good as you.

[00:37:36] Ben Brooks: They do the analysis, they may not do it as thoroughly. They may miss something. It's okay, that's an opportunity. That 30 percent between 70 and 100, that's the development gap. And you work on that. But the thing is, if it frees an hour of your calendar from doing the deck, the development may only take 10 or 15 minutes to give the feedback.

[00:37:53] Ben Brooks: Or to give a little pep talk. You have 45 new minutes in your day. You're a new man or a woman. That's a fantastic [00:38:00] thing. Now behold, right? The employee manager partnership. This is the thing. If your onboarding talks about this, I will be shocked, right? If your performance management talks about this, I'm shocked.

[00:38:14] Ben Brooks: We do not set up the thing that says, Welcome to working at X company. You are in charge of a partnership. It's called your manager relationship. We don't even talk about this, right? But again, we have employees cleaning up their side of the street. When we talked to heads of HR and chief people officers, VPs of HR, they said, we want employees to meet managers halfway right now.

[00:38:39] Ben Brooks: They're far apart. And the expectation is the manager goes all the way to the employee, right? It's like, who's working for who here? The idea is they both move towards one another and they meet in the middle, right? That's the partnership. That's the mindset, right? Second thing. Okay. Employees understand that their job is to make their manager successful, treat them like a customer.

[00:38:59] Ben Brooks: [00:39:00] I once had a very good head of HR that I worked with at Oliver Wyman, a management consulting firm, say, the psychological contract between an employee and a manager should be that the employee takes care of the manager, and then the manager takes care of the employee. Oftentimes, employees have the order of operations turned around.

[00:39:16] Ben Brooks: They say, do something for me and I'll do something for you. No, the thing they already did for you is they gave you a job. They kept you on your team, right? You do something for them, they're going to show up for you with more, right? That's a win win partnership. Okay. Great comments above, by the way Elizabeth, right?

[00:39:33] Ben Brooks: About delegation, right? And again, Ellen makes a great point. Other ideas, they may do something better, right? So it's not always 70 percent. They may do it 120 percent of what you do. That's what happens on my team. I got people more capable than me in a thousand ways. I give it to somebody else and I'm impressed.

[00:39:47] Ben Brooks: I'm like, wow, never would have thought of that, right? But that's when you need eight players higher, eight players, you get better results. Employees get more self directed, right? Lessening the burden of supervision. When employees answer their own questions, like, imagine if an employee just Googled [00:40:00] something before they came to a manager.

[00:40:02] Ben Brooks: Put a plus one if you'd love employees to try Google every once in a while, or your internal search, or your internal helpdesk, or your intranet, your wiki, right? How frustrating is it, right? Brain busting, as Amy said. How frustrating when they haven't even tried their, ask Alexa, ask Siri, right?

[00:40:19] Ben Brooks: Again, employees play an active part in owning and improving the relationship. If they feel disconnected from their manager. Instead of being pouty, they reach out and they say, can we get together? Can we have a Zoom? Can we have a coffee? Managers are also better supported in leverage and they feel healthy pressure to elevate their game.

[00:40:36] Ben Brooks: We hear from managers where people go through PILOT, employees go through PILOT and the managers are involved, right? And they give feedback and we get data from them. We very consistently hear, my better employee has made me better. They put pressure on me from the bottom up to be more organized, to be calmer, to have a better relationship, to give more feedback, to be more explicit, [00:41:00] to give, to challenge them.

[00:41:02] Ben Brooks: So we always try to put the pressure down on the managers, right? Do this, do that, reviews, blah, blah, blah, all this crap. What if the employees like at their heels in a very healthy way? That's a very powerful thing. Great managers surround themselves with colleagues that show their weak areas so they can become better.

[00:41:18] Ben Brooks: Absolutely. But you have to have trust, right? In a partnership, right? Again, recognition goes both ways. It's lonely to be a manager. It's frustrating. It's tireless. It's thankless. Managers have read me emails and notes and texts in tears. They are so moved by their employees saying, I really love working for you. I really respect you. Thank you for doing this.

[00:41:43] Ben Brooks: And this made a huge difference. They share them with people. They're proud. They're touched. That means the world to them.

[00:41:55] Ben Brooks: Now, again, employees join organizations and they leave managers, said every HR person in the world. And so we [00:42:00] think about this employee experience. If you're talking to employee experience to your company, most of the time, it's focused on the 20%. That's everything, but the manager, but the real employee experience is the employee manager relationship.

[00:42:11] Ben Brooks: Nobody's talking about this. I feel like except us and a few others. This is it. It's the fundamentals. It's steak and potatoes. It's the core, right? Sure. Having a, kombucha fountain is cool and ping pong tables and a perks budget where you can expense coffee and, mailing people, a mixed drink kit.

[00:42:29] Ben Brooks: Great employee experience. Okay. Fine. Perk yourself to death, right? But at the end of the day, it's that relationship and that's where it can really make a difference. Think about the test. At the end of the day, someone's having, an employee's having, happy hour with a friend, they're at the dinner table with their family, they're with their roommate, they're on FaceTime with their parents, say, how was work today?

[00:42:52] Ben Brooks: The answer is not the kombucha fountain. It is not the shrimp taco truck. It is not the volunteer day, [00:43:00] unless it's the day of the volunteering, right? The other 200 work days a year, it's their manager relationship, right? That's what makes a great employee experience. Elizabeth's laughing a little bit and says she, she agrees.

[00:43:12] Ben Brooks: I'm glad. I'm hoping that Elizabeth, if I make you laugh a little bit in this, that's an unexpected outcome of a webinar. Is anyone else having a good laugh or a smile on your face? Hopefully today. I really am committed to delight people and entertain a little bit is even though we're talking about serious stuff.

[00:43:28] Ben Brooks: There's no reason we can't have fun and smile a little bit. So Sheila says she is as well. Put some plus ones if you're feeling that good feedback for me. Good ratio, a manager to employee, Brianna asked, I think that, shared it's 50, 50. It's a part, it's a partnership Marie kombucha fountains.

[00:43:43] Ben Brooks: Those are very available right now with the office market down. I'll tell you an employer I know. Had a third of their employees have to get medical care because they were drinking a gallon of kombucha a day. I blank you not that this was happening and they got rashes.

[00:43:57] Ben Brooks: They're over drinking kombucha. Talk about, [00:44:00] a feature becoming a bug. Couple quick points. And then I'm going to give you an action item, right? Because we're almost out of time. So, number one, you want to set expectations, right? With employees that they own the relationship. You want to invest in their development.

[00:44:14] Ben Brooks: If you're not investing in something that gives employees the messages that I gave you today, which by the way, are better given from an outside firm than inside. Inside, employees can go, outside they go, that's a great point. Thanks for thinking of that, right? You want to suggest sources of other support for employees beyond their manager.

[00:44:31] Ben Brooks: Like your wiki, like your helpline, like their fellow colleagues, again, stories of employees that own their management manager relationship, they're self directed. Recognize those people, put them in the newsletter, put them on the intranet, let them speak at the town hall, put them on the recruiting page.

[00:44:45] Ben Brooks: You got a lot of power in HR and internal comms to do that. You want to get curious also for managers. What do you need? If you ever asked a manager, how can I help you? How can I help you be more successful? How can I make your life easier, your job better? Show them some [00:45:00] empathy, right? What you don't want to do is, and by the way, thanks Heidi for the the props and an awesome webinar.

[00:45:05] Ben Brooks: You don't want to blindly cascade more to do's on the desk. Managers need exactly 0 more things to do. Okay, you don't want to throw managers under the bus with seniority. Oh, hey, those managers never knew anything, right? No way, right? You don't want to continue to complicate, overcomplicate performance management.

[00:45:21] Ben Brooks: Your performance management needs to become a lot simpler. A lot more recurring and a lot about development, not assessment, right? And stop coddling employees, right? If they're blaming managers and complaining, ask them what they did. Challenge them. If they cleaned up their side of the street, right? Stop coddling them.

[00:45:36] Ben Brooks: Challenge them instead, right? And again, don't assume someone's playing air traffic control for managers. You may not realize that four of your other corporate functions ask the managers to do the same thing in one week, right? Or something else in that one week, right? Oh, Wendy, great feedback. She said that I say the word right a lot.

[00:45:54] Ben Brooks: That is super helpful, and I will pay attention. See, Wendy just gave me a gift, so [00:46:00] thank you, Wendy. I'll put the, I'm going to put a post it on the screen next time I do it, the word right with a no sign around it. So, thank you, Wendy. Other feedback you have, I welcome. It's like the word like, it's another point that Sheila has.

[00:46:12] Ben Brooks: So thank you for that. Give her the feedback by the way. I love it. So thank you, Wendy. So PILOT's ebook, we're going to send this tomorrow to you. If you want it today, go to our website pilot. coach and click resources on the top. It's there for you right away, but we're going to talk all about retention and how managers and employee relationships are at the cornerstone of retention.

[00:46:36] Ben Brooks: A key thing there. We're going to talk about leadership, job bankruptcy, when someone just quits a job out of nowhere, right? Employees part to play. Managers can, and how they can managers crafting a compelling employee experience by giving great development and less supervision.

[00:46:52] Ben Brooks: Sabrina asked about the copy of the slideshow. So the slides we're not sending out, but the ebook has a ton of this content [00:47:00] in a shareable context, right? And if you have any questions, you can always email us as well. And I got some actions for you. Share what you learned today with colleagues, put it in Slack, put it in Teams.

[00:47:13] Ben Brooks: Share at the next HR meeting you have. Talk to your manager. If you had an insight, export it. Read the e book we sent. It's engaging. We have a great writer named Audra who's wonderful. I met her on the internet. She's so fantastic. And she does great writing along with me and we put together a great book for you and, connect with me on LinkedIn.

[00:47:35] Ben Brooks: I would love if you got on your phone right now and added, and we'll put links in right now as well to to me on LinkedIn because we push a lot of valuable content on LinkedIn. It's free, it's easy. It'll remind you, it'll inspire you. We've got videos and then follow the PILOT company page.

[00:47:52] Ben Brooks: We're going to give you free resources. You never have to be a customer of PILOT. We're just going to pump out value to our network and our community. And if we ever can be of [00:48:00] service, we're going to be there for you. And again, I know that people are looking forward to taking action, right?

[00:48:05] Ben Brooks: Like I said, insights are awesome, but action is what life rewards. So last slide before we adjourn. A lot of headwinds right now. We're all burnt out. We're tired. We're stressed. Return to office is freaking us out. Retention is freaking us out. War for Town is freaking us out. Life stuff is freaking us out.

[00:48:25] Ben Brooks: Henry Ford, when everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. Let this moment, the pandemic, the insanity, the tragedy, turn into meaning. Let this be a moment for change. Let this be a moment we can all come together and have HR get more budget.

[00:48:44] Ben Brooks: That's my column this month. Get bigger budgets. Buy and try new things. Change cultures. Have people have that aha pop moment. So add me on LinkedIn today. Make me happy. That's my reward. If you got a lot out of this, at least I want a LinkedIn [00:49:00] connection with you because I want to have more friends in HR.

[00:49:02] Ben Brooks: Great conversation. Love any feedback. I'm going to stay on, but we're going to adjourn. Do you have anything else? But Elizabeth is impressed by how valuable this is. Thanks so much. Thanks Donna, right? Become the airplane. Perfect from Michael. Brilliant. Brilliant. Pilot. With a name like PILOT can I get away with not using an aviation analogy?

[00:49:21] Ben Brooks: I'm avoiding saying right. Doing a good job for the next two minutes. So, thanks again everybody. This is really energizing for me. Glad we're connecting already on LinkedIn. Go to the PILOT website. I put my email on my phone. You can call me right now. It'll ring right to my phone. Have my, how often do you get a CEO's phone number?

[00:49:38] Ben Brooks: It's right there. We got Maria and PILOT - Maria and Beth and my PILOT team. Great colleagues. Again, our website's there. I think some people dropped in the LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile in there. If not, I'll put it in there https://www.linkedin.com/in/benbrooksny/. And we're going to change the status quo together.

[00:49:51] Ben Brooks: You can go right to our website right now, PILOT.Coach. And you can download it from the resources page. We're also going to email it to you tomorrow, so if you're busy [00:50:00] today

[00:50:00] Ben Brooks: we'll get it to you tomorrow.

[00:50:01] Ben Brooks: Sheila, so glad you liked it. I'm here to bring a little energy. I'm here to make HR a little more sexy, let a little sizzle to it. And by the way, to have everyone feel powerful at work. That's what this is all about. That's what. So I founded PILOT. That's why we're spending time. There's other things I could do with my hour.

[00:50:19] Ben Brooks: We do this because we believe that everyone deserves to feel powerful at work. We believe that this is what changes workplaces, makes people have great days at work, right? This is meaningful work.

[00:50:30] Ben Brooks: This is the opportunity to soar. Actually it says if you're still around one of one of our members at PILOT said about feeling powerful. I love the phrase feeling powerful. It's not about ego or control. It's about harnessing your best self to get the work done. That is so key. Powerful is not about force.

[00:50:52] Ben Brooks: It's about an inside out glow. A light that doesn't, flicker out. Brianna says, Glad you can put my ideas into words and [00:51:00] express what I've been missing at work. Brianna, we'd love to help you at your company and with your people. We'd love to work with you. We'd love to help. We'd love to inspire, provide free content, be a resource.

[00:51:10] Ben Brooks: Be partners in all of this. That's what we're on a mission to do. And again, actually said that comment about feeling powerful was from an employee. I wasn't a manager that was just an employee at a big corporation. Realizing. Oh, there's something I can do about it. Oh, there's a possibility for me.

[00:51:32] Ben Brooks: That's something that they'll get a new manager one day. They'll be in a new role. They'll get promoted. They'll be a RE ORG. They may even eventually leave the organization. That is something that once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it is hard to put back in. when people realize they have a say in the matter, when they can do something about it, when they're empowered.

[00:51:51] Ben Brooks: That's the intrepreneurial spark. That's hypos being 10X more productive than the average person. That's what we want to cultivate with better employees because better [00:52:00] employees do in fact create better managers from the bottom up. That's what a groundswell. So I think we're going to, we're out of time.

[00:52:07] Ben Brooks: I know some of you adjourned yet to continue next meeting. Let's be in touch. We want to help build a community and thanks to Paychex. Paychex is a great sponsor.

[00:52:16] Ben Brooks: If you email us, we'll make sure you get a recording. Okay. I know you're bummed. You came late. Don't worry about it. We'll get you a recording. Just send me an email. My email's right there at [email protected]. And, Linda says, thank you. I need managers to watch this again. Linda, you want to email us.

[00:52:30] Ben Brooks: We'll get you a copy if you need it.

[00:52:32] Ben Brooks: We are an LGBT company, by the way, just a shout out to fellow LGBT business owners. We're part of supplier diversity for a lot of companies. Really proud of that. And very excited to to have all of you here. Gay pride. Absolutely. Pride month is every month.

[00:52:45] Ben Brooks: And to my team. The PILOT crew is the absolute best, right? Don't you dare try to like, poach them away because they're not going anywhere. They're so good. But they're, they're really here to help others. They want to help people feel powerful at work and they feel [00:53:00] powerful at work by helping others feel powerful at work.

[00:53:02] Ben Brooks: Talk about a dream job. That's why I love working at PILOT. And we're really glad to be here today with HR Executive. And with paychecks, we will do more of these. You got ideas for more, we'd love to do more, let us know, but hopefully you had a great experience and we'll see y'all soon. Have a great Thursday.

[00:53:17] Ben Brooks: Go take some action, go get an ebook, go get on LinkedIn, go reach out. We'll take it from here. Cheers, everybody.