Recorded Webinar

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kylie Bradbury: My name's Kylie Bradbury, I'm the webinar specialist at Bonusly and I'll just be facilitating the conversation today. But the real stars of the show are gonna be our speakers, so I'll introduce them here in just a second.

[00:00:12] Kylie Bradbury: I do have a couple of housekeeping items for everyone. First. This webinar is eligible for recertification credits through SHRM and HRCI. We're going to include those codes in a slide toward the end of the presentation, so be sure to stick around if you want to grab those. And also, we are recording today's session.

[00:00:31] Kylie Bradbury: We'll send an email with the recording out at the end, so to all registrants. So you will get that.

[00:00:38] Kylie Bradbury: Without further ado, I'm very excited to introduce our panel, our speakers today, Vicki and Ben. I'm going to let them introduce themselves and we'll, then we'll go ahead and get into the conversation. Let's go ahead and start with you, Vicki.

[00:00:53] Vicki Yang: Hi everyone, excited to be here. My name is Vicky Yang. I'm the head of people operations at Bonusly.

[00:00:58] Vicki Yang: Been in HR for about 20 [00:01:00] years and just really love the space of helping people figure out the things that they need to figure out from the HR people standpoint. So really excited to talk about our managers and how we can help support them today.

[00:01:16] Kylie Bradbury: Awesome. And then Ben, I'll let you go ahead. I am just going to let everyone know I just launched a poll.

[00:01:21] Kylie Bradbury: You can see that on the slide. Just to gauge where the conversation is going to go today, we're interested to know how effective would you rate your current management manager development programs and efforts. So, fill that out. And then Ben, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself.

[00:01:37] Ben Brooks: Great. And as you fill that out, if you marked very effective or decent, we'd love to know in the comments throughout what you're working on and what works for you because Vicki and I are here to learn as well and Kylie as well. So, I'm Ben Brooks, the founder and CEO of PILOT. I'm based here in New York City.

[00:01:51] Ben Brooks: And started my day with some hot yoga. So I'm, I'm feeling limber. We're like, knuckles are cracked. We're ready to go. PILOT is an award winning [00:02:00] employee development company and product. And we're really about people feeling powerful at work and managers are a critical element. If you've been in HR, put a plus 1 in the chat.

[00:02:08] Ben Brooks: If you've ever heard the phrase, employees join companies and they leave managers. Is that familiar? Have you heard that one before? All right. So that's why this is so important to Vicki and I were so passionate to discuss this topic. We're going to talk a lot. Look at these, the plus ones. I like that.

[00:02:24] Ben Brooks: Okay. Great. So yeah, Kylie, I'm just glad to be here and I'm excited to see the results of this poll.

[00:02:29] Kylie Bradbury: Yes, I'm actually going to share those results right now. So you can see on your screen there a big chunk of our respondents said that their manager development programs and efforts are at least below average, the big chunk of it.

[00:02:46] Kylie Bradbury: That's unfortunate and also great for us because that's what we're going to be talking about today. So I'm really excited to jump into this conversation and hopefully we're all able to. Learn something new. And yeah, [00:03:00] before we do that, though, I know that Ben and Vicki both had a little fact that they wanted to share about BONUSLY and PILOT.

[00:03:07] Kylie Bradbury: So I thought that we would just warm things up a little bit. Ben, why don't you share your fun fact first?

[00:03:13] Ben Brooks: Fun fact. Our first customer ever for PILOT. Our first employer was Cadillac, you might not think a Cadillac is being the most, the one that would take a bet on a new HR tech startup back in 2016, but, when you have innovative managers and leaders, like they had in the marketing function, Melody Lee was our customer there.

[00:03:34] Ben Brooks: She wanted to invest in her team and she knew that there was limits to her own exposure and capability. She's now the CMO of Herman Miller the chair and furniture company. And we've gotten to support companies and learn about their industries from fashion designers at Gap to, people that work in transportation, public health, education, financial services, et cetera.

[00:03:54] Ben Brooks: One of the great things about our program is we get to learn about so many cool industries and we started with auto. How about you, Vicky? [00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Vicki Yang: Yeah, that's a good story. I don't think my fun fact is as great but one thing about working at Bonusly is because we're a recognition and engagement platform, it feels very meta to work here, and it's like, okay, if we tell people that our platform helps make their workplaces, great places to work, we better be one too.

[00:04:19] Vicki Yang: So I was just looking through our data and we have we're on three different best places to work lists and the longest one running, we just recently got awarded for is now five years long. So, that makes me feel good that we're doing what we say we do. And just yeah, proud fact.

[00:04:37] Ben Brooks: Amazing.

[00:04:39] Kylie Bradbury: Awesome. I'm just going to go ahead and jump into our key themes for today's conversation. I think that most people here I can tell from chat know how important this conversation is going to be for 2023 and I'm sure far beyond that but some of the key things we're going to be talking about today are Why manager [00:05:00] training is or should be a top priority for HR and people teams in 2023.

[00:05:05] Kylie Bradbury: How strong leaders can build and support more resilient teams. As most of you have probably recognized, we're in this era of uncertainty. I don't know about you all, but I've noticed lots of layoffs and things like that going on on my LinkedIn feed. And so there's a little bit of uncertainty among employees, even the ones who are retained.

[00:05:26] Kylie Bradbury: This is a great topic for building resilience and how managers can contribute to that. And then. We're also just going to share some simple resources and tips for how to get started with training your managers and to help make them more effective. I did find a really interesting stat related to this from McLean.

[00:05:45] Kylie Bradbury: The McLean survey indicated that more than 50 percent of their respondents, so their HR people indicated that their people manager segment of their organization has the largest skill and competency gap of any other segment in [00:06:00] their organization, which I just found really fascinating. And it's kind of what inspired the idea for the topic of this conversation altogether, because it just goes to show how truly important it is.

[00:06:13] Kylie Bradbury: Another thing that I read was that and this was a Gallup poll and I can share this one in chat with you. It said that the role of the manager is the dominant factor in the employee experience and accounts for 70 percent of the variance in team engagement, which is just a pretty shocking number, I think, because it just goes to show you, you may love your job, you may love what you do, but if your manager is inadequate or not trained or not supportive, you're probably not going to be successful in your role.

[00:06:47] Kylie Bradbury: Vicki, I'd love to hear some more thoughts from you on why are managers important and why we're here today.

[00:06:52] Vicki Yang: Yeah, absolutely. I think managers have one of the hardest jobs ever. Partially also because [00:07:00] It's a whole different job, right? Like maybe you've been doing your role as an IC for a long time.

[00:07:04] Vicki Yang: I think some people think becoming a manager is oh, that next level, that next step or a promotion. I often tell people, no, it's a whole different job. And I would suggest if you are thinking about exploring, do you want to do this is to really truly look at what you have to do inside that role.

[00:07:20] Vicki Yang: And when you think about, what somebody wants from their work, right? We want a sense of purpose, progress, and belonging. And managers roles are to help provide all of that. And, it sounds simple, but it's so complicated when we think about how each person's needs, what gives them purpose, what motivates them, how do they grow?

[00:07:40] Vicki Yang: And then, how do they find meaning in their work? It's all different. And as a manager, it's understanding all those pieces, making sure we're like clearing the path for them, making sure we're guiding them. And especially as an HR person, managers are so important because this is how we scale companies.

[00:07:56] Vicki Yang: This is how we grow. And without [00:08:00] managers and their ability to lead teams, we can't get anything done. I think those are the biggest reasons why they're important. Although I could go on and on and list a whole bunch more.

[00:08:11] Ben Brooks: I'll just add, I read a book Clay Christensen, which he wrote The Innovator's Dilemma.

[00:08:15] Ben Brooks: He's a Harvard business professor, did a lot of pioneering things. He had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and he survived his first round and he wrote a book. He actually did a Harvard seminar at Harvard Business School, the most popular seminar and class at Harvard Business School called How Will You Measure Your Life?

[00:08:31] Ben Brooks: And he actually talked about managers being one of the most noble professions in the world. And really elevating the prominence of a manager. So if someone from the pilot team can drop a link to how we measure your life from Amazon and the chat would be great. He said that managers are, is a noble profession because you really affect how somebody's day is.

[00:08:51] Ben Brooks: You affect how they're weak as you think about the amount of time and in the social connections we have at work and the amount of time we spend at work at the dinner table at night with your [00:09:00] spouse or your children or parents or roommates or whomever you might live with or speak to on FaceTime or something at night.

[00:09:07] Ben Brooks: People say, how was your day today? As a manager, you actually affect the answer to that question. Kylie's point about 70 percent of the employee experience for Gallup is based on this single person, right? So, you really can have an effect on people feeling good about themselves, taking care of their health and their well being, being socially connected.

[00:09:28] Ben Brooks: Advancing their careers, making more money, learning things, getting exposure, building their confidence. I'd love to have a plus one. If you ever had a manager that really invested, a manager that really risked some, sponsor, you took some reputational capital, cared about you, supported you, helped you with a personal matter, learned the name of your kids, you know, those sort of things that, changed my life.

[00:09:50] Ben Brooks: Right? This is why managers are important. It's not just to organize the assignments, right? To bark the orders, to get the TPS reports done, right? Office Space reference for those of [00:10:00] you that are fans. You actually get to shape people. I had a friend of mine that I worked in management consulting.

[00:10:05] Ben Brooks: He talked about a good manager. is a gem cutter. I loved that. A gem cutter. You're shaping this precious stone. Talent people are this precious and they're cutting and shaping you in ideally a beautiful way. Polishing, taking care of. And this is the fulfillment of potential. And this is, again, that their realization.

[00:10:27] Ben Brooks: Think about when you have a great day at work, when you get recognized, when you get supported, when you solve a problem, when you achieved a goal, when you learn something, This is for me why managers are important because there's a real humanistic side. And oh, by the way, we want to put on our CFO or COO hat or shareholder hat for a second.

[00:10:46] Ben Brooks: When people are feeling good about themselves and power, you know, PILOT's mission is for everyone to feel powerful at work. When people feel powerful at work, Turns out they produce a lot, right? They're highly productive. They provide great [00:11:00] customer service. They, provide better, care if they're in health care.

[00:11:03] Ben Brooks: They're more patient with one another. They're clever, they're creative, they're efficient. And so we really have to figure out this engagement piece where people want to do a good job, not that we force them to, and managers are really the most important vehicle.

[00:11:18] Vicki Yang: Yeah, and I think something else to add is I don't know anyone who's born a good manager. There's so much that goes into, managers themselves having to learn how to manage, and I think that often gets overlooked, and going back to your stat, Kylie, about that gap of are managers ready for this?

[00:11:37] Vicki Yang: I remember when I first managed someone, I had no idea what I was doing to, to this day. I saw those days where I'm like, Oh my gosh, I don't know. I'm going to tackle that one. And it's so important to early on give people, I think, skills to do that and really think about, even for, especially I think for those who like,[00:12:00]

[00:12:02] Vicki Yang: What I found myself doing was mimicking what my manager did with me. And not really always understanding like, why we do this. What's the goal of having my one-on-ones? What is the goal of giving feedback, right? How do I give feedback? So thinking through just, what are some of those basic skill sets that we need, and then what does that look like for each individual?

[00:12:25] Ben Brooks: When you think about how we grow up, right? Many of us, you grow up and you have maybe one or two parents in the household and they're they shape you, right? They help make sure you got hopefully two socks on when you leave the house and, get your homework done and you have a lot of supervision, right?

[00:12:38] Ben Brooks: As a young person. And then we go, potentially we go off to university or people join the military. There's a lot of different paths people can do after going through high school in the United States. But then after that, you might have professors and RAs and we always have somebody who's like a little bit ahead of us or a lot ahead of us who sort of looking out for us and calling an [00:13:00] audible and can give us a pep talk or a hug or bail us out.

[00:13:03] Ben Brooks: And then we just wind up, boom, in a company, an employer, looking around like a mime in a box, trying to figure out where the hell we are and what we're supposed to do. And that's the manager. The manager ends up being our Sherpa, our wayfinder, if they're good, right? And I'd love to know in the chat, if you put a percentage, what percentage of your managers would you say are good?

[00:13:27] Ben Brooks: Good or better? What percentage, whether you assess this, with a robust assessment or you have a gut feeling, what percentage of managers at your organization you define as good? And good, right? I'm not saying like world class should write a book on management. I'm saying just do a, better than average job, a good job.

[00:13:50] Vicki Yang: Those are some surprising numbers coming in. Yeah, and if you think about how many good managers you've had in your life, right? That's[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Kylie Bradbury: Absolutely Ben. I know, I don't know if you saw this in chat, but I just wanted to point it out before we move to the next slide. We did get another metaphor for the manager. Laura says that the manager is the gardener and people are the plants. Managers provide the calibrated sunlight, water temperature and environment to foster growth to thrive. So I just thought that was a really cool metaphor and wanted to make sure that you saw it because I know you asked for that.

[00:14:25] Ben Brooks: I'm a plant dad. So I'm all about, but like the love that, that, think about blossoming, think about cultivation, right?

[00:14:32] Ben Brooks: Vicky, look at her, she's a plant mama there, right? Clearly. And Kyla, you got to get your green game up here. Okay. Next webinar. Okay. I'm going to want to see a green thumb but you think about, but what does it take to grow a plant, to cultivate a plant? You have to know what it needs, right?

[00:14:46] Ben Brooks: You have to take care of it, right? You have to pay attention to it, right? You can also kill a plant by overwatering it, right? So you could, okay. mother it with too much management or supervision. So it's a pretty good analogy to think about when you leave it alone, [00:15:00] fertilizing it, pruning it, that's like challenging, developing, et cetera.

[00:15:03] Ben Brooks: Great analogy.

[00:15:07] Kylie Bradbury: And we have really talked about all of this. I feel like in the last, 15 minutes already. But Ben why don't you elaborate a little bit on the benefits that there are to really training and investing in training and developing your people leaders. And then on the opposite side, what are the risks of putting people into leadership, management positions without training them.

[00:15:33] Ben Brooks: It's a great question. Liz, my colleague at PILOT, found a stat earlier that said that 60 percent of people that supervise people have not been trained on being a manager. 60%, 6-0. Crazy. The, the blind leading the blind, that's, there's a duplication effect.

[00:15:53] Ben Brooks: When we don't support our managers in setting a standard, enabling them to [00:16:00] meet the standard, holding them accountable when they don't, giving them feedback. McKinsey has a thing they call the law of crappy people. Has anyone ever heard the McKinsey law of crappy people? It's simply this. A players hire A players. And B players, hire C players, right? And so the worse somebody is, it's like the fish when you play poker. If you don't know who the fish is, you're it, you're the weakest player. And so you don't actually know what talent is. You end up hiring people that are not good. You give performance ratings or you say, Oh, this person did a great job.

[00:16:35] Ben Brooks: They didn't do a great job. You think they're a future leader in a succession or talent review. They're not that good. So you gotta have people that are looking out for the future of the organization, they have taste. You want to have them, a palette for talent, I often call it. And so when you develop those people to, train and develop their own people, you start to build capability in an organization, high performers are shown sometimes to be as much as 10 [00:17:00] X more valuable to an organization is an average performer.

[00:17:04] Ben Brooks: And, when you don't train managers, they tend to duplicate bad habits. They don't call things out. You have toxic workplace issues. You hear stuff in the newspapers and the New York Post and on social media about, crazy things that happen in the workplace.

[00:17:19] Ben Brooks: Well, a lot of times it's like managers didn't do a very good job of hiring, didn't do a very good job of training or onboarding, and they certainly let things get out of control in terms of employee behavior or lack of accountability. And that's where you end up in like fiery, issues and litigation and employee relations issues, etc.

[00:17:37] Ben Brooks: And so, these managers have a multiplier effect. The American Management Association defined management as simply the achievement of results through others. Management is the achievement of results through others. So that's leverage, right? You think about leverage like scale and technology, or leverage reach and media, or leverage, compounding [00:18:00] and financial instruments.

[00:18:01] Ben Brooks: People are leveraged as well. So a manager is trying to get more done through a group of people. And the multiplier on their performance, including their satisfaction, their health and well being, if they're going to stay, is the x factor is that manager. And you're going to have depressed results with poor managers and you're going to have increased results with better managers.

[00:18:25] Ben Brooks: And ultimately, whatever logo is on your email signature and your business card, people will first say, Oh, I work for Bonusday. I work for PILOT. Great. I work for Ford Motor Company. I work for Lockheed Martin. Fine. But ultimately it's like, I work for Maria, right? I work for Liz, right?

[00:18:42] Ben Brooks: And that ultimately affects their perception of the brand and their pride in their workplace.

[00:18:51] Vicki Yang: Yeah when I think about, like, why companies, or why if a company is struggling, or if an employee is struggling, it's often due [00:19:00] to, they don't understand the vision of what the company is doing, or they don't have clarity in their role, maybe they're not feeling appreciated. And it's, the seemingly simple things, right?

[00:19:10] Vicki Yang: But as managers, we're, bent to your earlier point. We're the ones that help bring that clarity to people. And how we do that and how to do that, I think is just, it's not just something that's ingrained or you learn you might learn it by watching because you've got a great manager you had a great leader who was able to do that.

[00:19:28] Vicki Yang: But that building of habits that learning to see it over and over again is so important. And I think it's funny when you say you know, did you do get how did you get training right did I'd love to see like when how far in your career as a manager. Did you finally get manager training? And I saw a question in the chat around how do we convince other people, especially people not in HR, that this is important?

[00:19:53] Vicki Yang: And I'm going to drop a link to this Greenhouse article around employee lifetime value. Not a huge fan of the way [00:20:00] that's put, but it's a visual graph that actually explains. And I think for a CFO, especially super helpful. And if we want going back to who's responsible for helping teams stay engaged, who's responsible for helping teams get stuff done.

[00:20:12] Vicki Yang: And that's the manager. And so if we don't teach them how to do these things, then they're they're out of disservice. Whereas if we can, training's not enough, right? I think that's the other piece is like how, again, after we've taught them how to do coaching or how to give feedback or how to make sure there's clarity around someone's role, the impact that they're making, then are we building in that habit to do more of that?

[00:20:34] Vicki Yang: And also not just build the habit, but measuring how well they're doing at it, right? Because I think we can say, yeah, I'm doing that as a manager, but if you go and ask my team does Vicky give me actual feedback on a regular basis? And they say no, and I think I am, there's a mismatch there too.

[00:20:49] Vicki Yang: So how are we measuring like the effectiveness of that and making sure that I'm practicing that constantly?

[00:20:57] Kylie Bradbury: Those are all really great points and I also just want [00:21:00] to thank everyone who is sharing thoughts in chat. This has been an amazing conversation already, and I do just want to say a reminder we'll have a little bit of time toward the end of the webinar. For questions, if you've got one for Vicki or Ben drop those questions in the Q& A module.

[00:21:18] Kylie Bradbury: And like I said, we'll do our best to answer as many of them as we can toward the end of the session. The next thing that I want to get to, and Vicki, I'll go ahead and let you go first on this one, but I know that obviously most of economic uncertainty. the threat of a recession job security in general is really on the top of a lot of folks minds right now.

[00:21:38] Kylie Bradbury: And I don't know if you've all had the same experience, but for me, I've seen all these layoffs, after layoffs on LinkedIn. And even for folks who have secure jobs, who aren't necessarily losing their roles, it can still be a challenge. cause some shakiness in your own mental and psychological safety.

[00:21:55] Kylie Bradbury: And managers play a big role in this aspect, both [00:22:00] for employees who are affected by job cuts and layoffs, and also folks who aren't, who are retained in order to help them be more resilient and you push their way through this uncertainty. So Vicky take it away. But the question is, how is strong leadership tied to that resilience that we really need in employees, especially in this environment?

[00:22:23] Vicki Yang: Yeah, that's a great question. And I think it's like, okay, we had a guy came in two or three years now, like pandemic, social unrest, environmental factors right now, too, right? Fires, floods, massive snowfall. And now a recession and it's like, Oh my gosh. And I saw this kind of like in Q4, just this kind of weariness in people, we've been talking about wellbeing and I think part of the whole idea around wellbeing is also resiliency.

[00:22:52] Vicki Yang: And, for the first time ever Gallup's report on engagement. said engagement has gone down. First time in [00:23:00] like I think 12 years or something like that, engagement has gone down. And that's massive. And so if we think about the role managers play again, going back to Ben's earlier point, like we can make or break someone's day in, in ways we don't even realize.

[00:23:13] Vicki Yang: Like I said something in passing to one of my team members and she said it stuck with her and it's helped her understand sometimes when we terminate someone, why. Not to sit there and feel so bad for this individual that just got fired. And it's, there's a lot of, there's a lot that we're going through.

[00:23:30] Vicki Yang: So I think when we think about the role that we play as a manager, how can we help maybe build some of that resiliency? There's a, you, the University of Pennsylvania did a study around well being, and I'll try and find the link for y'all later, that talks about like how you can do some of these things to little activities that you can do yourself, right?

[00:23:52] Vicki Yang: Things like, feeling a sense of accomplishment. So filling out a crossword puzzle in the morning doing, maybe a Duolingo. [00:24:00] Session, like that tiny little thing that maybe you spent two minutes doing can actually help as a habit if you do it over and over again, can help you build resiliency feeling connected to people feeling a sense of engagement with your work, right?

[00:24:14] Vicki Yang: And so there's ways to build resiliency through doing small activities like this. But you've got to figure out what they are and you've got to do them. And I think that's the hardest part. Like maybe it's having your cup of coffee in the morning in a minute without, turning anything on first.

[00:24:28] Vicki Yang: And then as a manager, then I think it is, how do you maybe build in some of that with your team, right? Do you, I know the marketing team does this really fun activity once a week of someone, somebody creates a question, you get a chance to learn about each other. We do that through donut app, right?

[00:24:43] Vicki Yang: Like What's your favorite pasta? And it generates all sorts of interesting conversation and recipes and whatnot. And so just those little moments of connection can also help build resiliency. And that is something managers can control, right? So looking at what are those little building blocks to, to [00:25:00] build that, to build wellbeing and to create space for it.

[00:25:02] Vicki Yang: And then as a manager, then how do we thinking about how you build those spaces into your teams, especially if you're a remote team, because so much, we could be just sitting behind our computers and never see each other. And forget to even ask that question, right? And I have to make sure that I'm being mindful of how was your weekend?

[00:25:19] Vicki Yang: And actually my one on ones, if I think we're in the office, would probably be shorter. They're an hour long and we spend probably the first 15, 20 minutes just talking about stuff that has nothing to do with work. So I think we do have an opportunity to help create space for building resiliency.

[00:25:35] Vicki Yang: Ultimately, that is up to the person, right? To go and do those things too. But as managers, we do have that opportunity.

[00:25:42] Ben Brooks: Well, I just added in the chat the definition of resiliency, right? The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness, or the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, elasticity.

[00:25:55] Ben Brooks: So some companies are dealing with layoffs and cuts, a lot in tech, we see that in the media. There's a lot of [00:26:00] companies that are having no cuts, but they're having mergers, they're having CEO changes, they're changing the territories, they're changing a product, they're doing a digital transformation, they're implementing frickin Workday or something.

[00:26:12] Ben Brooks: And they're, these are all things that can require resigns. They have, people that have, quit, right? They had the great resignation and they had to, hire new people. These are all things that can require resilience. And so there's been a number of questions about what do you do to foster that resilience?

[00:26:26] Ben Brooks: You think about resilience and it can be perspective. This is where managers can help people get some perspective, Oh, we lost that sales deal and you're in the dumps and you think your career's over. You pull up, this is an in of one, right, it's like that sort of thing, that's often we're in the compare and despair when we're in a really small, points of managers can help people see the bigger picture to talk about when they've had challenges and that they've gotten through it to provide support, but also managers can help with resilience by in a preventative maintenance basis.

[00:26:54] Ben Brooks: Have you ever seen a UPS truck broken down on the side of the road? Because I never have, because [00:27:00] they measure the mean time between failure on every part on a UPS truck, and they know when the alternator or this or that goes out on the truck, and they maintain and repair those things in advance.

[00:27:12] Ben Brooks: Because a broken down truck means 10, 000 people didn't get their package on time. And so we have to think about resilience also in the preventative sense, right? So are we making sure that our employees are taking care of their well being, right? If they have vacation- we at PILOT, I think unlimited PTO is a scam personally.

[00:27:30] Ben Brooks: And so we're really big on people using their PTO and we're really big on not having people carry over a lot of it because we want people to actually take time off. And by the way, when they take time off, we want them to not be on their phones on Slack and Asana and email, want them to be off. So that's also a part of it is we can be more, we can bounce back when we're rested, when we take care of ourselves and we take care of our loved ones.

[00:27:51] Ben Brooks: Encouraging people to use their medical benefits to see a therapist and things like that. That can be a big part of it. I had therapy earlier this morning, right? It's a part that [00:28:00] I just build into my, to my work week to talk about it openly, especially men talking about therapy. It's very important.

[00:28:07] Ben Brooks: If that's the thing you might do there's just a lot of things, but it's about taking care of yourself is a part of it and seeing the bigger picture.

[00:28:19] Kylie Bradbury: I also just want to add I know this is a conversation that I've had with my own manager even with Vicki. Vicki's really great at promoting this within our whole organization is been, you said, in building resiliency in a preventative sense. I guess this kind of ties into that as well.

[00:28:39] Kylie Bradbury: And that is through upskilling your employees, making them better, giving them more experience. In the unfortunate chance that something were to come along and they were impacted by position elimination or something along those lines. You know that you have done your best and your part in preparing your employees to go out and [00:29:00] find their next opportunity and be successful in whatever comes next.

[00:29:03] Kylie Bradbury: And I think that's something that has really resonated with me as an employee. And something that I really value at Bonusly is the efforts that we take in upskilling and training helping learn new things. So we're not just focused on what we're doing today, but thinking also about what we're going to be doing five, 10 years from now.

[00:29:23] Ben Brooks: Couldn't agree more on one of the ways that managers can do that. You may have training and development programs you can send people to, but based on the poll, a lot of you don't, but your managers. Challenge employees. Give them critical feedback. Let them struggle. You heard about the term like snowplow parenting, right?

[00:29:41] Ben Brooks: Where parents get all the obstacles out of the way, a pity the person has never faced adversity. Right? They have a breakdown in escrow coming if they haven't faced adversity. Adversity builds that strength in that character. So sometimes you're going to have someone struggle and spin on something and Hey, give this another try or say, Hey, this isn't [00:30:00] at all what I wanted on this assignment, maybe the expectation, or I want another version of this, mark something up.

[00:30:05] Ben Brooks: Expectation science says that people's performance is highly correlated to the expectation that is set for them. And so part of resilience is not always telling every employee they did a great job all the time because they didn't do a great job.

[00:30:20] Ben Brooks: You need to let them know. Now you need to make that, depersonalize that so it's not like Vicky, you're a bad person, you're a worthless woman like that's that's a very personal nasty attack that takes away someone's dignity and respect. But it's to say, Hey, Vicky, we're trying to achieve X objective, you did this work, it's different than what we talked about from expectations and it didn't have the performance.

[00:30:39] Ben Brooks: Here's some thoughts around how we can make this better. I'd love to see another version. Right. Because then we're working on something together. And so that's a part of how you also build resilience is you don't coddle people, I know a lot of managers are so worried about retaining people and things like that.

[00:30:55] Ben Brooks: And then the problem is if a high performer, we often hear high performers say I never get [00:31:00] feedback, I get recognition or praise. But then they feel like they're at a dead end and then they hit the job bankruptcy button and they change companies rather than the best thing you can do for a high performer is to challenge them and you challenge them by raising the bar.

[00:31:16] Ben Brooks: Hey, that was a great meeting. Here's what would take it to the next level. You don't have to say it was a bad meeting. You say it was great, but give them a bonus. One of the things I'll say to an employee, here's a bonus opportunity. It's just person wants that. Part of resilience is stretching and growing people and allowing that, if employees advocate to you and they don't get what they want, that's an important thing, right?

[00:31:37] Ben Brooks: Because you shouldn't have a hundred percent batting average, otherwise you're not asking enough or asking for enough, asking often enough. So part of the resilience is having people get used to, this is one of the great things, salespeople, some of the most resilient professionals, in the workforce, right?

[00:31:53] Ben Brooks: Because it's a low odds game and they don't take a single call or [00:32:00] email overly personally because it's a broader thing and they're getting better over time. And so that's also a part of it is just giving people exposure to more opportunities, more at bats to experience not succeeding, succeeding, partially succeeding, and that's all a part of building that perspective that they need to be resilient.

[00:32:19] Vicki Yang: Yeah and I would add like we don't want to be that snow plow, but you also don't just want to dump them into a snow drift either. And it's, as managers, I think one of my engineering managers was telling me how he went through and it's like, all right, so I'm going to have you work on this.

[00:32:35] Vicki Yang: It is going to be hard. You are going to get frustrated, but at the end of the day, or after this process, you have learned how to do X. And just that level setting of an acknowledging, hey, this is going to happen. So let's prepare for that ahead of time, help that individual get through that frustration, learn a brand new skill.

[00:32:53] Vicki Yang: That person is now way more engaged, loves his manager. And it's like, Hey I'm here for life right now at this point, right? Who else is going to teach [00:33:00] me how to do this? No one's ever words out of this person's mouth has given me this opportunity to do this before. And that's the power of a manager being able to develop resiliency and employee too.

[00:33:11] Vicki Yang: It's like, how do we help them grow that skill that they want?

[00:33:15] Ben Brooks: And if you haven't checked out the chat, there's a lot of great things in here. Just a reminder, some of you are still putting hosts and panelists, which means the only Vicki and Kylie and I can see your brilliant comments and questions and thoughts.

[00:33:26] Ben Brooks: So make sure it's everyone because I want everyone to see how smart you are and what generous contributions you have. So drop that down to everybody. Alyssa just put, one of the best quotes she has on a post on her desk says, managers light a fire under you, leaders light a fire in you.

[00:33:39] Ben Brooks: And that activating the employee can be really powerful. I see a question, Vicki, that came in that says, How often do you have one on ones? Vicki, what's your perspective?

[00:33:51] Vicki Yang: I do them every week. My team is also not, I understand that some teams are really big and generally speaking, we try to keep our manager ratio to a seven to [00:34:00] one at most.

[00:34:01] Vicki Yang: But yeah, every single week. And when I miss a week, it feels like it's been, especially cause we're virtual and maybe that's another part of it is I don't see them all the time. And if I don't have that time with them, then there's stuff I'm missing out on their signals. I'm not getting. So yeah, once a week.

[00:34:16] Ben Brooks: And we tend to do them weekly as well. Again, it depends on the manager and the level. Sometimes, you get into executive ranks and it can be different because you have different business reviews and cadences. So you want to think about also the difference between a one on one and the purpose of a one on one and the agenda of a one on one and the roles and clarity of a one on one versus a different kind of meeting.

[00:34:44] Ben Brooks: So it may be that, you have a departmental marketing meeting, and then you have one on ones, and you don't really want to spend, do one on one stuff in a meeting go around the horn, everyone, what you're working on, disaster of a meeting like, no, you want to do that more in a [00:35:00] one on one, but you also want to make sure that those one on ones, that the employee takes greater ownership of those.

[00:35:05] Ben Brooks: They prepare an agenda. They respect the time of the manager, right? Because you want the employees to meet the manager halfway. And PILOT, we help develop employees and managers alike. And we really talk about employees needing to manage up a little bit, right? To own more of their supervision. The more that they're self directed and supervised, the less the manager needs.

[00:35:23] Ben Brooks: So then employees don't feel micromanaged. But then the manager has new capacity to actually develop and coach employees. and support that person because they're not having to be so hands on. And so part of the one on one frequency is you also want one on ones that not just frequent, but that are effective, right?

[00:35:40] Ben Brooks: That are people going what a great use of time versus awkwardly using the space. You'll have a manager come in really hot and he uses the therapy session to have a committed person to just listen to them. And it's not to just, have your manager bitch about this to this person.

[00:35:54] Ben Brooks: So there's a lot of good hygiene and best practices. You don't necessarily need an IT system for it. IT systems can [00:36:00] help with that. Software can help with that. But it's really about the motion and the ritual and some simple best practices you can put on an index card that can make those a lot more effective.

[00:36:13] Kylie Bradbury: Absolutely. And this has just been a great conversation. I want to make sure that we do have time at the end for questions because we've had a couple of great ones come through. But we do have a couple more questions that I want to make sure that we can continue the conversation with. And the first one actually ties into a question that was just dropped into our Q& A module.

[00:36:34] Kylie Bradbury: And Ben, I'm just curious to hear from you, especially coming from PILOT, when you're looking at effective managers, we've talked a lot about how one can be an effective manager, good manager versus bad manager. What skills do you need to be an effective manager?

[00:36:51] Ben Brooks: It's a lot more elephant than hippo, right?

[00:36:53] Ben Brooks: Hippo, big mouth, elephant, big ears. Can I also quote my, one of my clients, coaching clients on that one, the ears part, [00:37:00] the listening, that's what PILOT, even in our developmental model for development conversations, the acronym is EARS, establish, assess, review, and shake. And managers need to actually shut up a little bit.

[00:37:12] Ben Brooks: To pause, to let the employee think, to let them get a word in edgewise. You think about, large and in charge, holding the clipboard, barking orders, et cetera, leading the meeting. A lot of directive supervision, right? We are commanding field director kind of presence, but a lot of managers to be effective have to ask the right questions and listen.

[00:37:33] Ben Brooks: They also have to have emotional intelligence, EQ, which we hardly ever use as a criteria to promote somebody into management, but management is a people management, right? It's not process management, resource management, financial management. You're organizing people. You're the conductor of the symphony and you need the cello and you need the flute and the oboe and the harp and [00:38:00] everything to come together.

[00:38:01] Ben Brooks: And you need to understand what's going on with people because people will come to you. And increasingly, we've seen research in the Wall Street Journal and lean into some research about the emotional labor that managers are carrying. Disproportionately female managers, partially because often have more emotional intelligence that are a warmer, safer space to engage, but employees are bringing challenges they're having at home with their well being, with their spouses, with their animals, with their financial situation, everything.

[00:38:28] Ben Brooks: So I think part of the EQ isn't that the managers have to solve, and have a role clarity boundary, but to say, hey, we have an employee assistance program, or have you tried this, or let me give you some time off, or let's change the deadline, or let me give you some resource, that's a part of it is where you can be you know, helping them to problem solve, but you have to have the EQ and the listening to even get to what the problems are because there's a lot of perfectionism that employees like to masquerade to the manager.

[00:38:55] Ben Brooks: Everything's great. Everything's fine. There are no problems. I want to keep my [00:39:00] job. I want to be happy, and so we have this performative thing. where it's a real information asymmetry because what the reality is for that employee is not that. So we have to figure out the space that allows them to open up, but then conversely not just be someone that just like listens and is well that sucks, but that we like then help them move beyond.

[00:39:18] Ben Brooks: So we hear it, and then we challenge and support for them to do something about it. Vicky, what are your thoughts on what ideal skills for a manager?

[00:39:27] Vicki Yang: Oh, yeah. And I think someone mentioned this earlier too. It's like, a lot of the stuff Ben and I are talking about, it's hard to do if there's no trust, if there's no psychological safety with the manager.

[00:39:36] Vicki Yang: And studies have shown like that is the foundation. And oftentimes you need so much more of that before you can even get to anything else. And I strongly believe that too. If you don't feel safe and my team tells me I create a really safe space. At the same time, they still really struggle to tell me when they need help because back to that, like, no, I got it.

[00:39:56] Vicki Yang: I got it. I got it. Until they, it's not that they don't have it, but until [00:40:00] they're really frustrated. Right. And then it's like, all right, Vicki, I'm like, I worked, 60, 70 hours a week the last six weeks. I'm like, whoa, hold on. Okay, let's rewind and pull that back and figure out what we're going to do here, right?

[00:40:13] Vicki Yang: And it's just, it's so important to figure out how to build that. And I think a lot of it is through connection, especially now, and it's through, it is through all that listening. And that leads me to, I think, a skill that like, not just managers, but if everyone were to learn how to coach, and I don't mean mentor, I don't mean give advice, like truly coach, it would change So much because coaching is really about listening.

[00:40:37] Vicki Yang: It's about holding space and it is about helping people have that space to figure out what it is they're trying to figure out. And if you're able to do, I think those two things that can really help you, you get further and, building that psychological safety means you can have like difficult conversations, right?

[00:40:56] Vicki Yang: And so really the psychological safety is so it's, I [00:41:00] know it's probably an overused word at this point, but it's. It's super important. It takes time to do. It is re it could be easy to break, right? And so I think tips around how to do that is listening. It's being clear and saying, Hey, here's what's going on.

[00:41:20] Vicki Yang: It's admitting your own vulnerabilities to, what's happening and the things that you're trying to learn in this process of being a manager or in your role or whatever it is. But yeah, super, super important.

[00:41:31] Ben Brooks: And I think you need to have an exit ramp for managers that got into management and don't want to be managers.

[00:41:35] Ben Brooks: Make that safe. Not some fall from grace and, oh, they used to be a manager and now they're not, or they were defrocked from their parking space or their, whatever. I think that you want to figure out a way is that people are like, you know what, turns out I thought I wanted this. I don't want to do this.

[00:41:50] Ben Brooks: Like, make that okay. Put them to be, in a thought leadership position. Have them be a lead, a mentor, a role model for others, but not in the people's supervision. And I think a [00:42:00] lot of what Vicky's saying as well is you have to pay attention. Hey, if Vicky usually is a particular way and I noticed that she's a different way, right, maybe she's really calm and patient usually and all of a sudden she seems really agitated or really stressed out.

[00:42:13] Ben Brooks: Part of it is I want to stop and say, hey, Vicky, what's going on? Seeking to get more information, or, hey, you're missing deadlines a lot lately, that's not like you. That's the good intent you bring in there. I'm curious what's happening. And it's like, oh my gosh, I have this personal issue or this thing is happening at work, or I'm really upset about this, that, the other.

[00:42:32] Ben Brooks: And I think oftentimes the people that need the most help are the most helpless. And so sometimes you're in over your head is the term we sometimes use. So sometimes a manager is giving an employee permission to change a deadline, to de scope a project, to take a sick day or to take a day off, to handle a personal matter to get some rest.

[00:42:57] Ben Brooks: Like these are important things. And I'm not saying lower the [00:43:00] performance standards, right? But it's to be reasonable and to recalibrate. on things because it goes a long way and employees often are at the worst place to advocate or ask or even know what their needs are when they're in a moment of high need.

[00:43:15] Vicki Yang: Yeah, completely agree. And sometimes you're just so in whatever it is you're doing, you can't even step back to say, Oh, I need help or, Oh, I'm stuck here. Cause we're just trying to get through you know, achieve the end goal or whatever it is. And if we as managers, I think that is part of our job to help them unblock.

[00:43:33] Vicki Yang: And maybe that's just mentally just like, okay, so this is what I'm noticing, right? What do you think is happening here? Or even asking those questions. I think I saw someone else post you asked them what were you most proud of last week? What was frustrating?

[00:43:47] Vicki Yang: Because sometimes those little key we're just, okay, get up morning, do the things I need to do, be done, get going in the morning, do the things I need to do. I don't even realize I'm frustrated about something until my manager's like, Hey, like [00:44:00] Ben said, you look a little off or was there anything that frustrated you?

[00:44:03] Vicki Yang: I want you to name something and you're like, Oh yeah there was that thing. Okay let's just stop and think about it for a minute. What about it caused friction? Because oftentimes if we also do that, then we can get ahead of stuff. Cause there's, and I made the mistake before too.

[00:44:18] Vicki Yang: There's definitely something where sometimes where I'll notice something going on. I don't say anything right away. And then. It blows up is probably an exaggeration, but it gets brought to my attention. I was like, Oh, I noticed it. Why didn't I just say something right away? And that's, those moments of noticing things and having the space for conversations can create more safety and trust, too.

[00:44:40] Ben Brooks: Well, I noticed, Vicky Camilla Parada asked a question, How do we make sure that managers implement what they learn from, during training, right? Which is important, right? Because knowing something and doing something is a Grand Canyon between knowing and doing. We often say in PILOT, and that's a big part of coaching, is we have to know a lot, right?

[00:44:56] Ben Brooks: But do we do it? And part of it is, [00:45:00] In the 40 plus years we've focused on middle management and with management consulting and HR software and all this stuff, that made a lot of progress. And part of that is because we focus on compliance and submission. Make sure everyone has a performance review. I remember I was in Singapore once for work and we had to make sure that managers were getting employees to use salesforce.com. And so the office manager put on everyone's calendar a monthly login task. So everyone would log in and we had 100 percent login stats for the Singapore office.

[00:45:28] Ben Brooks: No one was using the freaking system. We gained the metric. Right? Because that was submission and compliance. So a big part of what we do with PILOT with managers is we help them see what's in it for me with them.

[00:45:40] Ben Brooks: Some of you heard of with them, right? What's in it for me? For the manager, not the employee. Not like, Oh, you got to do this. Here's some more frickin charity. Another thing to add to your plate. We say, you know what? As a manager, Yeah. I bet you'd love some more free time. I bet you'd love to have your employees, pester you less about dumb things.

[00:45:55] Ben Brooks: I bet you'd love to spend more time with your manager and managing up and networking across the [00:46:00] organization and being strategic, going to the gym, getting into therapy, thinking about, planning a vacation for your spouse. So we say what's in it for you and we get them excited about that and we use that, as the reason that they're going to implement these best practices as a manager to benefit themselves.

[00:46:18] Ben Brooks: Humans are essentially self interested, and there's nothing wrong with scratching that self interested itch, because it actually raises all boats. Because if the manager implements the things they learned in the training, the employees are going to have a better employee experience, right? 70 percent of their employee experience is the manager.

[00:46:34] Ben Brooks: They're gonna have a better employee experience. The manager is going to have a more capable employee. More free time, better throughput, right? More stability. Everyone wins, but we make it less about the employees and a moralistic do gooder or obligation or charity and more about the manager advancing their needs because that's what they're most interested in and that's what we found to work at PILOT.

[00:46:58] Vicki Yang: Yeah, definitely makes sense because they're [00:47:00] growing too.

[00:47:02] Kylie Bradbury: Great points. We have one more question to ask before we get into Q& A and we've got a good handful of questions so I want to make sure that we get to those but I want to get to the reason that we're all here, and I know most of our audience is going to come from that HR space, whether you're an HR leader of a large organization or a small organization maybe you're building a manager training program from the ground up or you're starting over you're somewhere in the middle.

[00:47:26] Kylie Bradbury: And so I'm just really curious to know, Vicky, we'll start with you. How can folks as HR teams or leaders support managers and help them be more effective?

[00:47:37] Vicki Yang: Yeah. And I find my role in this there's so many great analogies in chat. I want to download it later and pull them all out. But I think of managers as trail guides and HR is we're like the people prepping the trail guy- that makes a terrible analogy.

[00:47:52] Vicki Yang: Sorry, y'all. But all we can do is we can give training and we can give advice. And I think one of the most important things about my career I've realized is [00:48:00] showing them how something is done and then building the community of managers so that they can get help from each other, because there's so much experience So much creativity, right?

[00:48:11] Vicki Yang: And. Yeah, you can come talk to all the HR people you want, and we will give all the advice you need. But imagine if, we have 20 managers at Bonus Leaf, all of us are talking to each other, someone else has probably seen a situation that maybe I haven't even seen. Or, there's just so much more learning we can do from each other, and I think it's building that space, and then helping give examples for things.

[00:48:33] Vicki Yang: Because we talk about, okay, yeah, you need to give feedback. We do a training on feedback, but. What does that actually look like sometimes in a specific situation, right? And so oftentimes it is about building out those examples and making sure that they have access to getting support from one another.

[00:48:49] Vicki Yang: I think a lot of the times managers are like, I know what I need to do. I just need a little bit of help. I need to know someone's got my back. I need to know HR can help me through this. If I get stuck somewhere because [00:49:00] I'm scared to go in this situation because I've never seen it before. So how do we build.

[00:49:04] Vicki Yang: The community for that. How do we get frameworks? Like just the other day with one of my managers, he's like, I know I need to talk to her about this, but I don't even know where to start. There's so much information. I said, okay, here's the job ladder. Tell me which of these things, only three, nothing more than that, that you are frustrated with right now.

[00:49:22] Vicki Yang: Okay. From there, it's what do they need to do? What did they do that didn't work? And literally I wrote out in boxes and they're like, Oh, this is so much easier, right? Because then it's a fill in the blank, it's a fill in the box. So as HR, I'm trying to often create a whole bunch of just resources and like props to help them narrow their thinking so that we're breaking down this big problem that they're scared to tackle with this person right now into smaller bites.

[00:49:49] Ben Brooks: And I'll just add really quickly, to what Vicky said, put your elephant ears on. Listen, ask them, how can we support you as a manager? That's what Vicky helped create this, framework for this person. And [00:50:00] we, in, in workplace safety consulting, there's a mantra that says, make the right thing to do the easiest thing to do.

[00:50:10] Ben Brooks: So you have to simplify, right? If you have a six page performance management feedback crap faucet, right? Give people three or five simple questions, right? We did that at PILOT. Even the manager feedback we built into PILOT was too complex, took too long. We listened, we heard, we reduced it by, I think 60 some percent, the number of questions.

[00:50:30] Ben Brooks: So it's faster to fill out. Clear examples, right? Low friction on the IT, etc. So, listen to what they need and make the right thing to do the easy thing to do.

[00:50:43] Kylie Bradbury: Great point. Throw this one to Ben is, can you recommend a good management training program or platform?

[00:50:51] Ben Brooks: Holy cow, is this a plant? PILOT is one of them.

[00:50:54] Ben Brooks: We have an award winning, top HR project of the year. We do a lot of great things in this, but I post a [00:51:00] lot of other resources. I put in the chat in my LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with everyone on here. Let's connect on LinkedIn because we drip a lot of different resources. Best practices, resources, a lot of free stuff out there, right?

[00:51:11] Ben Brooks: There are certainly out of the box things, there's training seminars. The thing I'd have you think about is for something to stick, to go from knowing to doing. A one off workshop or a one off training typically you know, you retain, you lose about 85 percent of the information within 30 days.

[00:51:30] Ben Brooks: So whatever you design, whatever you buy, you want to think about something that's incremental and consistent, that's done over time. That's how habits form, right? That's how people make something sticky, how they remember it. So that can be a great thing. There, there are great platforms out there, you think of a 15Five or something, that's another one that builds in the enable, makes it easy to set up a one on one makes it easy to give feedback.

[00:51:54] Ben Brooks: There's those sort of programs out there, and leveraging you know again, referrals from other people in here if you've got [00:52:00] a great suggestion by the way anyone that has a answer to the question of what great programs are out there or trainings are out there.

[00:52:05] Ben Brooks: Drop it in the chat. Let's all have a big database of great resources and things out there. But PILOT, we try to make doing the right thing to do, the easy thing to do, and we make it really flexible and really light to do so.

[00:52:19] Kylie Bradbury: Thanks, Ben, and I would love to answer all the rest of these questions, but we're right at the top of the hour so I'm going to ask one more question, and then we will close it out but the question I'm going to ask is, what would you recommend for a healthy manager to direct report ratio in order to make sure that the manager can be effective and personalize the coaching and experience for each person they supervise.

[00:52:44] Kylie Bradbury: And I'll toss that one over to you, Vicki.

[00:52:47] Vicki Yang: Yeah, I think for some reason, the stat of seven to nine, like seven to nine employees to one manager has stopped. And seven is because I think it's enough for you to do one one on one a week or one on one one on one a day. [00:53:00] Honestly, though, I would say if you can keep that lower to like five to one.

[00:53:04] Vicki Yang: That's even better. Especially if it is, if you're a manager of someone of a team that has various different roles, cause it's a little bit hard to do context switching, but that doesn't mean it's super easy. Cause I think some people think that's like, Oh, if you're in customer support, they all do the same job.

[00:53:18] Vicki Yang: So make sure we can probably do, 10 people to one manager. It's not it doesn't work. And so I think, that seven is like a sweet spot, but obviously the less you have, the more attention you can give.

[00:53:31] Kylie Bradbury: Awesome. Thank you. Well, I just want to take a quick second to thank Ben and Vicki for coming on and for this wonderful conversation.

[00:53:39] Kylie Bradbury: It was so good to see you both and to hear from you. And I think that this is a really important topic and it's going to continue to become important over the next year and beyond. So, thank you both so much for all of your input today. And also thank you to our audience. We've had an amazing audience asking some great questions, really active in chat.

[00:53:58] Kylie Bradbury: So thank you all for joining us. We [00:54:00] always appreciate to hear from you and hear from your expertise as well. And yeah, so if anybody has any questions or wants to hear from us, feel free to reach out. Otherwise we will see you next time.

[00:54:13] Ben Brooks: I was mentioning one last thing, Kylie, is that on that poll, it was at a different level, right?

[00:54:17] Ben Brooks: We got nothing, we got a little bit, we got something, we got a lot that there's all sorts of different levels. This is stratified. So wherever you are, the goal is not to go from nothing to world class. right? You want to just think going up one click, one level, right? You, because HR people can tend to stress themselves out by being perfectionist and go, oh my gosh, we don't have a management training and, we need to build an institute, right?

[00:54:39] Ben Brooks: It's yeah, build in a freaking institute slow your roll, start with what's doable and what's feasible, because if you can execute on something, you're going to learn, you're going to create energy. You're going to get feedback and then that becomes a flywheel effect and you'll make something next at the next level and the next and the next.

[00:54:54] Ben Brooks: So think about what you can actually, it may not be that you can reach 100 percent of your managers. You might reach the managers that are in the [00:55:00] functions that have the most need or the managers that are the most willing or the managers of your hypos or whatever it might be. So be practical in what you do so that you can have impact.

[00:55:10] Ben Brooks: Sometimes we think practical means we're diluting our impact. Typically pragmatism actually accelerates our impact. So allow yourself to make some trade offs to check your perfectionism impulses so you can actually make a real world impact.

[00:55:26] Kylie Bradbury: Great input Ben. so much and thanks so much to everyone and have a great rest of your week.

[00:55:33] Ben Brooks: Thanks y'all.

[00:55:34] Vicki Yang: Bye everyone.