Recorded Webinar

Transcript

[00:00:00] Dana Regan: Before we introduce our incredible powerhouse panelists, I just want to introduce myself. My name is Dana Regan. I will be your host today. I work with PILOT, and I am calling in from Hudson Valley, New York.

[00:00:11] Dana Regan: And so before we get started, we've just got a couple of housekeeping that we're going to head over with Laura, our incredible producer.

[00:00:20] Laura Mastrorocco: Thanks so much, Dana. Hello and welcome from the producer chair. I'm Laura Mastarocco, and my role is to ensure that things run smoothly.

[00:00:27] Dana Regan: I'd love to introduce our incredible panelist, Zahra Choudhury.

[00:00:33] Dana Regan: Zahra is a global DEIB impact manager at Power to Fly. She prides herself on being a passionate disruptor, an experienced change maker. She prioritizes the interruption of harmful systems Creating and facilitating brave spaces for individuals to explore their intersectional identities and empowering every individual to bring their whole self to work.

[00:00:57] Dana Regan: She keeps a focused eye on the long term [00:01:00] mission and ensures she infuses humor in everything she does along the way. We love this, when not disrupting harmful systems, Zara can be found happily eating donuts while roaming around Brooklyn. Welcome Zara, so excited to be here with you today. And kick us off with why is this topic today important to you?

[00:01:20] Zara Chaudary: Thank you so much, Dana, and I'm very excited to be here, everyone. It's true. I am usually happily eating donuts while I roam around. So this is a very important topic for me. We know that a lot of times when folks are leaving their job or their position, it's not the company they're necessarily leaving, it's their manager.

[00:01:37] Zara Chaudary: And so as our world continues to become even more global We really have to make sure that we're equipping our leaders with the skill sets and knowledge to not only manage their folks, but really empower their folks really nurturing and cultivating a culture where people feel welcomed and valued where they feel like they belong.

[00:01:52] Zara Chaudary: So you'll hear me talk about that a lot today throughout the different questions. And I really can't stress the importance enough about this topic and I [00:02:00] will never get tired of speaking about it. So I'm very excited to be here. Thank you, everyone. Yes,

[00:02:04] Dana Regan: Welcome. Now I'd love to introduce the one and only Ben Brooks, who I have the pleasure of working with at PILOT. Ben is inspired by his successful business and executive coaching practice. He saw an opportunity to democratize executive coaching and founded PILOT. Among other leadership and management roles, Ben has served on the board of directors for Outserve.

[00:02:28] Dana Regan: SLDN, the organization that spearheaded the successful effort to end the Department of Defense's discriminatory Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, and he co founded the LGBT Employee Resource Group at his management consulting firm. He unexpectedly let go of his long held aspirations to climb the corporate ladder and instead has chosen to fly his own plane.

[00:02:51] Dana Regan: Welcome, Ben. And we kick it back to you. Why is this topic important to you?

[00:02:59] Ben Brooks: Well, I think [00:03:00] the big thing is that what happens at work affects often five days a week of how we answer how was today at our dinner tables and our lives. There's a lot of research that after you go to maybe the university or you're out of primary and secondary school that most relationships you have in your life are with your colleagues.

[00:03:19] Ben Brooks: Beyond your core family or your romantic relationships or maybe faith communities. And it's fundamental that we create environments that are not only productive for shareholders or stakeholders in organizations, but that are also functional and help people become better versions of themselves and say, I had a great day today.

[00:03:39] Ben Brooks: Because that environment, when people have a bad day at work, they're not as empowered to be great parents, or they're not as empowered to be great community members, or family members, or friends, or lovers, etc. So for me, there's a big societal impact on people's well being, on people's mindset, mental health, etc.

[00:03:55] Ben Brooks: in creating stellar workplaces. And I have [00:04:00] Corey Ann is using emojis and Lori as well. So if you're not used to doing emojis on a webinar chat, it's fun. And what I would ask is we're talking about the current state of your teams. I would love to get an emoji. Pick any emoji. Where are you at with your teams?

[00:04:17] Ben Brooks: We're going to do a poll in a second, but just Where are you at with your teams? What are your teams like at your organization? Just give us a sense. It helps Zara and I and Dana and Laura get a sense of where things are at. Where, how are teams, your team overall? Very interesting. Okay, Dana, we'll back to you.

[00:04:32] Dana Regan: Yeah. We have a lot of different emotions and emojis coming through. Before we dive into the meat and potatoes of the conversation today, if you will, we want to take a poll to learn a little bit more about you. So here's the question. I'm going to ask you to submit your answer in just a moment.

[00:04:48] Dana Regan: How equipped do you feel your managers are to empower their teams? Please choose one. Yikes! We've got some emojis that reflect that already. Getting there. We're in pretty good shape nailing it. So [00:05:00] please click one, submit your answer. And we will see where we're at.

[00:05:08] Ben Brooks: This helps Zara and I, of course, shape this conversation cause we always want to calibrate. To the community that we're speaking with. You know where you're at and and it gives us some good data. And also, you may not feel alone if you're in one of these categories and you think you're the only organization.

[00:05:22] Ben Brooks: You may find out you're in a big subgroup of people that are in the same spot, which is always nice to not feel alone.

[00:05:29] Laura Mastrorocco: Dana, we'd love to hear from everyone. So we'll leave the poll open for about five more seconds. If you haven't already clicked submit, please do so at this time.

[00:05:38] Dana Regan: The results are in, so we are leading Zara and Ben and everyone here on this webinar with getting there at 51% coming in strong.

[00:05:47] Dana Regan: And second is yikes at 28 percent and 20 percent we're in pretty good shape. So no one so far is nailing it. Hopefully we can move that conversation forward today with that. Thank you all so much for your [00:06:00] participation. So we are now going to jump right in with our panelists. And the first question is what's the difference between managing a team and empowering one?

[00:06:13] Dana Regan: So Ben, are you going to kick us off there?

[00:06:15] Ben Brooks: That'd be perfect. Yes. So just as Zara and I are sharing, feel free to drop your own thoughts. Zara and I have perspectives. Zara's are probably even better than mine, but I bet you have some interesting ideas too. You might agree or disagree with us. That's okay.

[00:06:28] Ben Brooks: You may have something to add to. So let's tap into the collective wisdom of the hundreds of people that are on this session today and feel free to to put your comments and ideas in the chat as well. In terms of the difference between managing a team and empowering one. I think management gets a bad rap, right?

[00:06:45] Ben Brooks: Because management is pretty fundamental, and it's the baseline. Who's doing what, what are the deadlines, what are the expectations, how are we allocating the resources, what are the roles, who's in control, etc. [00:07:00] Really important. But I look at that as the foundation, almost like it's a two layer cake.

[00:07:04] Ben Brooks: You've got that base layer, but the beautiful part of the cake is off at the top. How you decorate it, what's the frosting, etc. And so that's the empowerment part that you want to build, in my opinion, off of good fundamental management and supervision, which is this idea of people not needing to just be directed, but people being more self directed.

[00:07:26] Ben Brooks: people, using their critical thinking, their ingenuity, their creativity, their being engaged and really supporting people. There's a feeling you've ever heard someone say, Oh, he or she, or they've got my back. That's the sense that they don't actually, they're really not covering your back, but there's this sense of protection.

[00:07:45] Ben Brooks: You're not alone. You're not on a limb. You've got some air cover. Empowering is often having people's back. Empowering is, they saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. Empowering is, let's do this together. Empowering is, it's okay [00:08:00] if we make a mistake. Empowering is, sure, I'll take your recommendation.

[00:08:05] Ben Brooks: Why don't we try that? Empowering. That's a great point. Wow. Thanks for that feedback. We can improve that. So I think for me, they play, you know, it's a little like peanut butter and jelly that they play together, managing and empowering. But really, if you had just a jelly sandwich or just a peanut butter sandwich, you'd be missing a lot when you put them together.

[00:08:24] Ben Brooks: It's a pretty powerful combination. Zara, how do you see it?

[00:08:27] Zara Chaudary: First of all, I love all the like food references.

[00:08:30] Ben Brooks: I didn't use a donut when I figured I'm not going to stay off your lawn a little bit. Okay. So

[00:08:35] Zara Chaudary: cake is close enough. But yeah, no I totally agree. I often think about management in these layers as well.

[00:08:41] Zara Chaudary: Because a lot of times, we know what typical management includes, right? Making sure your team is performing their duties, completing their tasks answering questions, maybe providing feedback, both critical and positive supporting them when they're needed, right? These are like the more baseline management expectations.

[00:08:56] Zara Chaudary: But that next layer, right? What you're talking about. That's really where that [00:09:00] empowerment piece comes in. And I also love Brittany's comment in the chat around managing is kind of controlling chaos, whereas empowering is controlling your employees. I love that, right? And I think that's spot on because really where that empowerment piece comes in is where people start feeling autonomous in their role, right?

[00:09:16] Zara Chaudary: Because anyone can complete the tasks and do what they're supposed to do, but that autonomy piece is oftentimes missing. And that's where this empowerment really helps folks. They feel autonomous in their role, they feel trusted to not only do their jobs, but also to make decisions, right?

[00:09:30] Zara Chaudary: And that's a big piece of feeling really autonomous. They feel like they can raise concerns, they can push back in a really supportive environment. And something that I'm really big on, and I'll talk about a lot today, is making sure that we are creating an environment that really centers psychological safety for folks and so we'll talk today, I'll talk a lot about psychological safety because I think a lot of Your team's experience and employee experience in general really does center around psychological safety.

[00:09:56] Zara Chaudary: And the reality is we can never guarantee someone's safety, right? So all we [00:10:00] can do is really work towards building an environment that centers people's safety as much as we can. Because again, it's hard to really feel empowered if you don't even feel safe at work, right? So these things build off of one another.

[00:10:10] Zara Chaudary: So you'll hear me talk about them throughout today. So really, when we're talking about an empowering manager, that's one who is focused on building trust. on that psychological safety, right, for their teams so that people do feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, advocating for things, sharing their concerns, and making mistakes, right?

[00:10:29] Zara Chaudary: All of these pieces are a part of psychological safety. So that team culture is really going to be crucial to people feeling empowered and that's what really needs and deserves intentional focus.

[00:10:41] Ben Brooks: And I'll just add one quick thing on the psychological safety is also I think managers foster psychological strength and resilience.

[00:10:48] Ben Brooks: You know, there's plenty of times we've all been in a meeting at work and, the manager may be doing their best to say, hey, so and so, yeah, share your idea about this thing. And then someone else that's been there, maybe a long time says, oh, crap, we tried that 5 years [00:11:00] ago. It didn't work. And you could say, is that a psychologically unsafe environment because someone shoots down an idea?

[00:11:06] Ben Brooks: It is a little bit, right? It's not exactly an open minded, warm environment, but that's going to happen. Right? And so as long as it's not toxic or taking away someone's dignity or harassing or bullying, that's un, you know, you can't tolerate that at all, but also it's saying, hey, like, you're going to maybe face a little resilient resistance, you know, prepare to have to bring this up a few times, prepare for a little bit of blowback because from the change management part of it, if you're trying to drive change or innovate, you're going to get some pushback and to make sure that people are prepared if they're in any kind of change roles.

[00:11:39] Ben Brooks: for that resilience, which doesn't mean tolerating toxicity or harassment or poor treatment, but it is sort of dealing with humanity, which is people generally reject and resist anything that's new, even if it's good for them.

[00:11:51] Dana Regan: Right. Absolutely. for that. Yeah. Thank you so much, Zahra and Ben. This is such an inspiring conversation.

[00:11:57] Dana Regan: I really can't take my notes fast enough. So we've [00:12:00] got some plus ones really coming into the chat. Keep it coming here and moving it right along into Zahra, if you could kick us off with how have expectations changed for managers and leadership during the past few years?

[00:12:14] Zara Chaudary: Yeah, this is a great question because we know that a lot of things have really shifted these past few years have seen some like really major changes happening within the workplace globally.

[00:12:24] Zara Chaudary: And I'm going to talk about this at the end but we're also seeing some more shifts happening again more recently so we know with COVID we saw a lot of offices and companies go remote rapid changes were being made to ensure that people's physical health was as protected as possible. so much. So this resulted in a lot of people who are only used to really working face to face to now moving into that remote environment and learning how to do that there, while also navigating a lot of technology.

[00:12:50] Zara Chaudary: We saw a lot of people using different technological tools to make sure that they can remain connected to their teams. And then outside of COVID itself, we saw a huge shift in work [00:13:00] conversations happening, especially within the US after the murder of George Floyd. So There was increased focus around systemic inequities supporting folks from marginalized backgrounds, other important DEIV topics, within a space where these conversations typically were not happening, which is the workplace.

[00:13:16] Zara Chaudary: And so expectations there have shifted as well, to not only wanting managers and leaders who are equipped to manage, but also to really address systemic inequities. Inequities advocate for change and be intentional around employee growth. So we're seeing a lot of these expectations shifting. And then of course, not to mention this is all within a remote environment.

[00:13:35] Zara Chaudary: And I did mention earlier that things are shifting again, and so we're now seeing an increased call for return to work happening for a lot of different companies. Especially advocating for a hybrid environment. And we're seeing companies really building out that return to work policy. And so needless to say, there has been a really increased need for those who are within leadership and within management to really be nimble and be adaptable [00:14:00] because these larger workplace expectations are continuously shifting.

[00:14:03] Zara Chaudary: So we've seen a lot of shifts and. Even up until today, we're continuing to see them shift. Ben, what about you? What have you noticed?

[00:14:11] Ben Brooks: Yeah, and it looks like we've got some great comments coming in, so we're going to go through those comments after I share. So if you haven't shared what you've seen, because different, if you're in different parts of the world, or different parts of the United States, it may be different industries, different types of labor may be very different, and so we want to have an inclusive conversation to hear what you all are seeing as well, so please share.

[00:14:30] Ben Brooks: What I've seen to add to everything that Zahra shared is, look, hybrid and remote is, since the advent of probably personal computers and the internet, we have not had a more disruptive structural change to employment than hybrid and remote work. Huge change. And, The thing is, is that employees, managers, and executives, you know, people like it because they don't have to commute.

[00:14:53] Ben Brooks: You know, we founded PILOT. It's a remote first company since 2015. People thought we were freaking nuts when we did this. They're like, you never gonna recruit [00:15:00] anyone. You don't have a culture. You never get anything done. And now everyone's like, how are you doing it? How are you making this work? But it's a huge change.

[00:15:06] Ben Brooks: You've got, millennials are now the majority demographic in the workforce. So it used to be, oh, those crazy millennials are killing mayonnaise and all the crazy stories we see. And now you've got 42, 43 years old who are now in senior management roles, majority demographic, Gen Z's expectations are very different.

[00:15:23] Ben Brooks: Certainly the rise of DEI, which is not a new topic, but it's got increased and deserved energy around it. But also we're now getting some backlash and the culture wars around it. Some disappointment from people from underrepresented demographics and allies that have not seen the progress aligned to the commitments that were made in 2020 and beyond.

[00:15:43] Ben Brooks: And, I think that we're also seeing a big shift in where does work fit in our lives? It used to be we'd go to the big corporate campuses and work was our thing and everything had to align around it. Our, what we did in our personal lives. And now we're walking dogs on our lunch break and we're going, you know, a lot of people had their, my nephews [00:16:00] had their first day of school, some of our colleagues, my colleague Jeff had his kid went to kindergarten and the expectation is you would go be a part of that.

[00:16:06] Ben Brooks: And he came late to a sales meeting today, which was amazing because he got to be with his kid and we still had a successful meeting. And so the idea around flexibility and where work fits in, it used to be, it was like rock, paper, scissors. Work was all three. It crushed everything else. And now we're in this place where people are kind of recalibrating.

[00:16:26] Ben Brooks: Hey, I want to do a good job and be a good professional, but I also have dependents. I take care of elderly. I'm involved in my community, my faith. I coach a sports team. I have a personal hobby or habit. I, I got whatever I'm doing in my life. And so it seems like that's resonating with a lot of people as well.

[00:16:42] Ben Brooks: And so the expectations that's the context, right? I just shared. I didn't even share the expectations. What does it take to manage in that environment? Is going to shift whatever your manager competencies or your leadership or executive competencies might look like. Five years ago, my guess is they need some updating.

[00:16:59] Ben Brooks: You know, there [00:17:00] was some research that lean in, uh, had done in some other orgs that showed that women were actually shouldering, uh, women managers were shouldering far more emotional labor during the pandemic than men. And that employees were saying, Hey, you're. You know, I may have had people die in my life, have people sick.

[00:17:16] Ben Brooks: I don't know how to handle things. I'm doing remote learning from home, which is a disaster and all these things and they were leaning on. So managers are hearing a lot more about people's personal problems in their lives. They're seeing the spouse run through the background and the cat and the dog run up.

[00:17:30] Ben Brooks: And so we all of a sudden have a lot more sense of this, but it's going to require a ton more judgment, sensitivity, emotional intelligence, boundaries. Right? Because flexibility is also a two way street, and sometimes the pendulum's thrown too far, and that's part of this return to office is a bit of a power struggle that's happening on both sides.

[00:17:52] Zara Chaudary: I just wanted to call out Heidi's comment in the chat earlier about we are less task focused and more people focused now, and I think that that's a [00:18:00] statement for how managers expectations are really shifting.

[00:18:04] Dana Regan: Yeah, so many incredible chats are coming through Ben and Zara here. So the desire for managers to be more empathetic to their team needs beyond the workplace again, just continuing to see some of these themes coming through about being stretched thin, needing the adaptability and the flexibility manager.

[00:18:23] Dana Regan: Whereas that managers are relating to employees so much more now than ever before. Here we are with a lot to manage and a lot that has shifted over the past few years and expectations. So shifting into, keep that chat going, everyone alive, we'd love to have this multi directional conversation with all of you.

[00:18:42] Dana Regan: Ben, what are we currently finding are the biggest challenges to the employee experience?

[00:18:47] Ben Brooks: So we just were at a conference last week with a bunch of Fortune 500 executives talking to them about their employees, all different industries, everything from [00:19:00] pharma and energy to social services, nonprofit, financial services, manufacturing, beverage, food, et cetera.

[00:19:07] Ben Brooks: And, you know, people are pretty worried that their employees are pretty disconnected from their organization. That's part of the return to office. They were like, that was our sticky experience, which I'm not sure if it ever really was, but that they're like, Hey, we, we hire people that were motor hybrid, we FedEx them a laptop, they could quit tomorrow.

[00:19:28] Ben Brooks: They're just not that focused on their jobs or that connected to the business or sometimes we've got really great people, but they don't know who to talk to in our organization. When they need help, how to, you know, most organizations, the bigger the organization, the more your network internally as a function of how you get things done and your career opportunities, and people are not growing their internal networks, or they're struggling for visibility that would open up career opportunities for them.

[00:19:54] Ben Brooks: So they're seeing. Turnover of valued employees, people from underrepresented demographics, they spend [00:20:00] a heck of a lot of time trying to recruit and cultivate, they're seeing lower productivity, they're seeing lack of engagement overall, seeing quality issues, customer churn, and I think that some of it in the tech sector in particular, there's a lot of headlines about layoffs.

[00:20:15] Ben Brooks: The bigger story is really that, the tech sector is way up on employment in aggregate over the last three or four years. You have organizations add 200, 000 jobs and then lay off 15, 000 and they're still up 185, 000, but the 15, 000 makes the headline and not to minimize layoffs in anyone personally, but there's a lot more people in these various sectors, but it's been a pretty chaotic boom time that people are having a bit of a hangover from the great resignation and the hiring spree that went on.

[00:20:42] Ben Brooks: Sometimes the lower quality standards that people took to bring labor in again, people that started at organizations in the pandemic and never met colleagues and are off to a slower start on their kind of onboarding, et cetera. So, a lot of different challenges, and in particular, people are pretty [00:21:00] worried.

[00:21:00] Ben Brooks: that they have a workforce that is essentially not very engaged or loyal which I don't think is necessarily true, but there is that fear or that anxiety. Zara, what are you seeing?

[00:21:11] Zara Chaudary: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, plus one to a lot of what you said. I also just want to call out a few things that people dropped in the chat, which I think are Super valid and I wanna make sure I pull in which someone named the navigating multiple generations within the workplace.

[00:21:23] Zara Chaudary: That is definitely a challenge because we know that there might be generational differences in approach to work and what work should look like or is supposed to look like and those expectations as well. So that is definitely a challenge that we are seeing folks navigate. I also wanted to build off of something you said, Ben, around increasing diversity within the workplace and really making sure that we're recruiting folks from underrepresented backgrounds.

[00:21:43] Zara Chaudary: I do wanna just call out that. The shift and the ask for coming back into the office or building hybrid policies from remote. I do want to name that a lot of folks from underrepresented backgrounds actually were able to really thrive during this remote time [00:22:00] because we were dealing with less microaggressions than we would deal with if we were working face to face with folks.

[00:22:05] Zara Chaudary: So I did want to just name that there's a lot of different sort of and I did want to just name that different identities were able to experience working remotely different. So I did want to bring that into this conversation as well. And we do know, of course, that folks from underrepresented backgrounds, a lot of times we are ending up education, educating other folks.

[00:22:22] Zara Chaudary: So Emotional tax and a lot of emotional labor around that as well. That is not experienced as much working in a remote environment. I just wanted to add in those pieces, but in terms of the question, in terms of what the biggest challenges are some of the more common ones that we see, low pay and just, of course, we can't not just mention the layoffs that have been happening as well across multiple different industries, right. Especially as the cost of living continues to rise. So that's definitely a challenge that we've been seeing happen a lot. And then, of course, with the layoffs, we have people feel very uncertain about their companies and then there's also survivor's guilt for those folks that are still employed at their company, so just navigating all of these [00:23:00] big org wide changes.

[00:23:01] Zara Chaudary: Another challenge is also not feeling really supported in your career growth by your company or by your manager. Because a lot of folks not all, but a lot of folks do seek growth opportunities wherever they can. And so having that kind of really outlined and clearly delineated by your company is a great way to really make your folks feel supported.

[00:23:21] Zara Chaudary: And if you're not offering that, that's definitely a challenge that some employees are experiencing. Also, I mentioned earlier, just having a bad or unsupportive manager is another really big challenge for people's experience because no one really wants to work with someone who They feel doesn't trust them or doesn't empower them, right, as we were talking about earlier, and potentially even just disrespects them, right?

[00:23:40] Zara Chaudary: No one wants that sort of experience. And a lot of times people are seeking to be a part of something bigger than themselves, right? Seeking that purpose. And what we're seeing is that a lot of companies, a lot of teams, even a lot of managers, they're not really focusing on that. And I get it, right? People are busy during the day, you're doing a lot of things, and so it's hard to carve out time to [00:24:00] really connect to that bigger picture, but we're seeing when we're not creating that time proactively, people feel really disconnected, they don't feel like what they're doing matters and they don't see where they fit into the larger picture, and so we have to be able to build those spaces proactively so that people do feel engaged and that they feel like they belong, right?

[00:24:18] Zara Chaudary: Because again, back to that piece around belonging, around psychological safety, without those key pieces, a lot of people really don't enjoy their job and eventually they will leave, right? And so we do need to be talking about these things.

[00:24:29] Ben Brooks: Some more great comments came in, Cheryl mentioned career growth or how does, work life integration work, employee expectations around pay or advancement or growth opportunities.

[00:24:38] Ben Brooks: And Katie, on that one, we always try to separate out growth from advancement or promotion. Those are separate but related things, and people typically collapse them. The, manager training seems to be a big need. Again, expectations along the way. And I'll tell you a brief story of a friend of mine this week, works at an organization.

[00:24:56] Ben Brooks: They have a hybrid work environment here in New York City, and his [00:25:00] manager came to him last week and said, and he's a fairly new to the organization, high performer, they're really happy with his work and said, hey, we're noticing that your productivity is on Friday is a little bit lower. And, it you wind up on a report and we're just concerned about it.

[00:25:14] Ben Brooks: And he's like, well, is any of my work getting, not getting done? Or is there a quality issues or deadlines? And it was a no. And he's in the creative space and he literally uses different equipment than his core computer. And the company's monitoring how much time someone's on the keyboard. This is a salaried management professional.

[00:25:31] Ben Brooks: And he's going to leave. He's like, you know what, if that's the way that this is going to be, I am done. And it is like, you know, and he is just completely over a place that 2 months ago he was quite excited about because of some of these things of not feeling trusted. I mentioned the trust word a few times already today.

[00:25:50] Ben Brooks: Not feeling trusted. And so some of these things on the employee experiences, you do these things where, the CEO of this organization is all about efficiency and the year of productivity, but what it's [00:26:00] becoming is the year of, aggression, the year of Big Brother, the year of micromanagement for people that are doing a great job and talk about a way to irritate your high performers and drive them out the door.

[00:26:10] Ben Brooks: Unintended consequences of those efforts.

[00:26:13] Dana Regan: Yeah. Thank you so much everyone for all of this engagement. And we are seeing just the too much micromanagement. People need to be trusted unless they give a reason to not be like not hitting goals and deadlines. And so we're going to continue this conversation with our second poll and then move it into a little bit more of an actionable steps.

[00:26:30] Dana Regan: So how well does your organization support your managers? Please choose one choice. It's pretty minimal, not fully, but. There's some support. We're doing pretty well. We have this down. So please submit your answers and we will take this poll, get the results and Let's see.

[00:26:56] Laura Mastrorocco: Again, we'll just go about five more seconds. If you [00:27:00] haven't responded yet, please do so and click submit. We'd love to hear from everyone. Allow your voice to be heard.

[00:27:12] Dana Regan: And as you are submitting your answer, I just want to read that Richard Branson quote, train people well enough so they can leave, but treat them well enough. That they don't want to leave. So thank you so much for that fire. All right. So we are coming in with a strong 42 percent on not fully, but there's some support.

[00:27:31] Dana Regan: So again, a lot of middle road in this collective and we're coming in 37%. We're doing pretty well. And 16%, it's pretty minimal and 5 percent we have this down. So. Thank you all so much for your engagement with this poll. We're going to move this conversation forward, like I said, into a couple more actionable steps, so stick around.

[00:27:52] Dana Regan: Zara, if you can lead us with this, how can managers effectively address diverse [00:28:00] needs and equity concerns in their conversation with team members?

[00:28:04] Zara Chaudary: Yes, I love this question and I wish more people would talk about this to be honest. So before I even answer the question, I just want to share my top tip to all managers and leaders, which is just to be curious and to be open.

[00:28:18] Zara Chaudary: We don't know what we don't know. And so we have to really start getting to know our folks to learn more about them, but also to know what support looks like for them. And so if we're not asking those questions, if we're not having those conversations, it's hard to gather that information, right?

[00:28:31] Zara Chaudary: And so. Don't wait either because I know I mentioned this earlier, but it's a lot to ask of folks to advocate for themselves for their needs. It's a lot. It's asking that people feel safe enough to do so. It's asking that people feel comfortable enough to do so. And so instead of waiting for folks to come to you to advocate for what they need, I think it's building those spaces proactively and having those conversations proactively.

[00:28:53] Zara Chaudary: Talk to your team around what people's needs are, right? Making sure that we are actually having a forum where I can [00:29:00] hear from folks. What are the concerns that they may have and what their needs might be? But I will also name that people are different and people feel comfortable in different venues, and so verbal conversation might not be the way to go for some folks, so maybe also making sure that you're sending out surveys so that we can maybe gather written feedback as well, but making sure that If you're going to do surveys, seeing if there's a way to do it anonymously, so that folks feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts.

[00:29:25] Zara Chaudary: But again, keeping in mind that a lot of times when we are operating within the workplace, we're operating off of, this is the right way to do it. And so a lot of times it's verbal conversations and a team meeting. That's the right way to do it. But what are other venues that we're leveraging, right?

[00:29:39] Zara Chaudary: Perhaps it's making sure that we're like sending out surveys that people can fill it out that way. And making sure that we have those, different sort of collection methods in place is going to be really crucial. And then something else that I found that's actually really harmful in the workplace, but also in the larger world is when people just assume things.

[00:29:56] Zara Chaudary: And so this is where that being curious piece really comes in is instead of [00:30:00] assuming that, what people need or what people want, asking them, right? Being curious. And then once you have that information, also making sure you're doing something about it. Because I've seen a lot that this happens in a lot of companies and a lot of teams where there's a lot of thoughtful intention around, okay, we're going to gather this information and then it doesn't go anywhere.

[00:30:18] Zara Chaudary: And so that's like a very quick way to lose your team's trust. If they feel like their thoughts and their concerns are just going into some void somewhere without. So making sure that once you do have this information, you're actually creating an action plan and a timeline right on responding to what's being shared with you and where you can adjust things yourself.

[00:30:37] Zara Chaudary: So for example, if someone on your team says, Hey, I'd really appreciate it. If you sent out the team meeting agendas beforehand, because it takes me a little bit of time to review, right? That's something that you can change right now. It's something that you have control over that you can do right now.

[00:30:49] Zara Chaudary: Great, make that change, but if something is being asked that you might need to get other people involved, so for example, if someone says, hey, these reports are not being sent out in a timely manner from another [00:31:00] team creating a plan around, okay, here's what I'm going to do, here's who I'm going to loop in, here's the timeline, I'm letting you all know that, so that you know that I'm doing something about it.

[00:31:08] Zara Chaudary: Because those updates, not only is it nice for the team to know that you actually care about what they're saying, that's also how you maintain accountability for yourself as well as the manager of a team, right? So making sure that you're gathering this data, you're gathering this information, and you're actually doing something about it.

[00:31:23] Zara Chaudary: That's how you really make sure that you are effectively addressing the needs of your folks. Ben, what about you? What are you thinking?

[00:31:30] Ben Brooks: I mean, you just hand you a mop, you clean up there. That's, I mean, that's, I agree with all of that. And what I would say is to support your point on, if you ask, you better do something.

[00:31:40] Ben Brooks: Mercer did some research years ago that said, if you do employee engagement surveys. And you don't do something to respond to the feedback, it actually lowers engagement. It is better to not do a survey. To do a survey and not do anything. So it's really important that you think about the action. The other part [00:32:00] of this is to make sure that you share the load and the responsibility, and part of that to what Zara was pointing to is, what's movable and what isn't.

[00:32:07] Ben Brooks: I once worked with a boss and I had a bunch of complaints about the organization and she was our head of HR and she said, I want you to write two columns. What is something you think we can change? And what is something that's probably we're not going to change? Well, there's certain things and, we're in a certain industry, financial service, and she's like, well, it's probably going to be conservative culture.

[00:32:22] Ben Brooks: That's just like, you're not going to change that 25, 000 people across the 100 countries. Okay. But this thing we could change this vendor that we use we could swap out or what your who owns this project we could change so really thinking about because we, you know, there's a sense we get frustrated by a lot of things, or we have desires to change or get a lot of things we have to be very selective and what those are because there's very few things we're going to be able to actually move, so we have to move the things that there's feasibility to move, and that would be impactful to our employees.

[00:32:51] Ben Brooks: It would matter to them. personally. And what I would add is to also give the employee a part to play. Too often, a big breakdown in HR [00:33:00] efforts, including DEI and learning and talent, et cetera, is that it's this idea that employees communicate something and then some magical team of people is there, this private concierge team behind the scenes, is there to curate all of this for each person.

[00:33:14] Ben Brooks: And most organizations, if you look at their HR teams and budgets are pretty short staffed. They can't make bespoke employee experiences for every person. Managers have wide spans of control with a lot of people to support. And they are largely going to focus on doing things that are scalable.

[00:33:30] Ben Brooks: Things that can be done for groups of people or entire organizations. So we need the employees and the managers together to figure out what are the bespoke individual things. Because it may be there's 10 people on a team and one person has an elderly person to take care of the dialysis on Tuesdays.

[00:33:46] Ben Brooks: You don't need to create a elder care program for the whole company or team. That one person needs schedule flexibility. So that's where you want to divide. What are structural systemic changes to improve the employee experience? [00:34:00] And what are the bespoke unique one off individual things?

[00:34:03] Ben Brooks: And for the one off individual things, you have to have the employee carry some of the water on that. Again, you have their back, you empower them, you support, you break down barriers. But it can't just be everyone's like, you know, imagine if you had a in a conference room, you walked in and you're a manager, he says, what does everyone need?

[00:34:20] Ben Brooks: And you just walk out of there with 50 sticky notes stuck to your body of all these actions to take. It's got to be like, what are we going to figure out what to do together? Cause it's not, Screw you, employee. Do it on your own. And it's also not the manager or the organization is going to solve everything.

[00:34:33] Ben Brooks: It's some in between of shared ownership and support that also doesn't put undue burden, in particular, on people of underrepresented backgrounds that says, you already have structural disadvantage and let's add more. to that. We don't want to do that. What we want to do is empower and support and say, Hey, I probably don't know what you need.

[00:34:50] Ben Brooks: You probably know you better than I know you. So let's facilitate and foster that in a way that's the best communication medium. But let's also figure out a way to [00:35:00] partner on that rather than have it be solely in my chair or solely in your chair.

[00:35:05] Zara Chaudary: Yeah, I think Ben, just something I really wanted to highlight about what you're saying that I think is crucial is that piece around when someone names something, it's not just expecting the manager to do everything right, but also figuring out how do we collaborate on this, right?

[00:35:17] Zara Chaudary: Making sure that people feel heard. I think that's so important. And I really love that piece that you made because again, folks might be asking for things that are unrealistic or that can't be changed. Or if everyone is asking for something, it can be a lot, right? So I really think that point around collaborating and really supporting on building out solutions.

[00:35:40] Dana Regan: Powerful. Packing it in today and we've got a lot of shared ownership coming through plus ones plus one to that collaboration piece that you both are really doubling down on here. So Ben, kick us off with moving this into that practical, actionable what are some practical [00:36:00] ways to start building a culture that promotes trust and belonging across the organization?

[00:36:05] Ben Brooks: So I just put up my virtual background this is one of five values we have at PILOT, we call the VITOS. The T is thoughtful, and we say that we are kind and compassionate, and that includes anticipating what people actually need, creating unexpected and welcome joy, and showing care by being forthright and asking for feedback.

[00:36:23] Ben Brooks: So the reason I put this value up is I think this is a way you can build a culture that promotes belonging, is being thoughtful, right? I think sometimes we think of belonging as representation, Right? Oh, we have a woman on the panel. Oh, we have X percentage of people of color, right? Which is important.

[00:36:44] Ben Brooks: But that's not the inclusion or the belonging part. That is just, a metrics part, which is an important leading part of it. So all five of the, by the way, if you want the PILOT vetoes values, we have a whole beautiful design sheet of all them. If you email my colleague, Layton, I'll have him put his email address in.

[00:36:59] Ben Brooks: [00:37:00] [email protected]. He'll send you a copy of all of them. If they're useful to you, we want to get those out in the world. So Layton, if you can drop your email in and just [email protected], he'll send you those today and all the collateral and all the things, but this is really about leading by example.

[00:37:15] Ben Brooks: If you want to create, a trust and belonging. Trust and belonging includes showing up when you're supposed to have a one on one. It includes asking how they're doing. It includes making sure that their growth and development are a priority. It includes making sure when they speak up in a meeting that you don't cut them off or people are piling on to their idea and they're getting resistance that you call an audible and say, Hey, wait a second. We're just brainstorming here. Let's not shoot down ideas. So that's part of the thoughtfulness. If people are having a personal struggle, maybe they had a loss, death or in their family, or, they're struggling and they're not asking for flexibility, but you know, that they've got a family member in the hospital offering them that flexibility.

[00:37:54] Ben Brooks: Hey, how about I take over that meeting or that pitch or. Let's move the deadline on this thing. Those are [00:38:00] thoughtful, right? That's sort of the unexpected and welcome joy. It's like, oh wow, my boss moved my deadline for something without me even needing to ask. That's a really beautiful thing. So that's what I would just say is a lot of times we think of this as big structural programs and HR policies and new benefits and changes, and it can be, but so much of that employee experience and what the answer at the dinner table of night at the night was just how was work today is a function of the employee manager relationship and the interface between them really is humans, not just vacuum cameras. worker robots, and supervisors behind a bureau desk And I think that's really bringing that thoughtful piece in. Again, Layton has all of the five values. We've got vibrant, as Laura mentioned earlier inventive, thoughtful, ownership, and striving. Which again, may give your managers some thinking and some inspiration around their own individual behaviors.

[00:38:54] Ben Brooks: even if you don't change a thing. In your organization with new programs or strategies or platforms, [00:39:00] they can make a difference today in their own behavior. Zara,

[00:39:04] Zara Chaudary: yeah, plus 1000. I also just wanted to build on what you're talking about belonging. I think a lot of times. folks do things that target diversity and inclusion and equity.

[00:39:15] Zara Chaudary: But the reason why I love belonging so much is because it's almost like DEI 2. 0, right? Because a lot of the DEI pieces that are happening are coming from the employer side of things, right? You're making sure that you have enough diverse representation. You're making sure that you have policies that are really inclusive.

[00:39:29] Zara Chaudary: You're looking at your practices and making sure that they are equitable. But how all of that lands is where that belonging piece comes in, right? So it's from the employee perspective. Do you actually feel like these pieces are helping you belong? Do you actually, so it's interesting because companies might do all the right things when it comes to DEI and their employees may still not feel like they belong.

[00:39:47] Zara Chaudary: So what's the missing piece here, right? So I wanted to just build on that definition as well and make sure that when we're thinking about belonging, it's from the employee perspective. It's not from the employer perspective, right? So making sure that we're. involving our folks. Tell me, what [00:40:00] could we be doing better to make you feel like you actually belong here?

[00:40:04] Zara Chaudary: And so, back to the actual question in terms of, how we can really start building that culture. I've said it quite a few times and I just feel like a broken record at this point, but communication is key, right? Lots of trust is lost because things are happening in the shadows. And so we need to be able to actually openly discuss and Things wherever possible, especially from leadership.

[00:40:24] Zara Chaudary: So something that I often advocate for are company-wide town hall meetings where folks can anonymously submit questions beforehand and leaders can respond to them in a public setting. So this allows employees to actually feel like their thoughts and concerns matter, but it also allows leaders the opportunity to provide clarity in case there's uncertainty.

[00:40:42] Zara Chaudary: But also show themselves as someone who's approachable and accountable. And I think that that's also really important cause trust goes both ways. Right. And so making sure that we're actually trusting our leaders. And so also continuing on this larger theme of kind of building you know, bringing things to light.

[00:40:58] Zara Chaudary: I'm also a huge fan [00:41:00] of org wide surveys. So I've mentioned surveys earlier as well, in terms of gathering some data on your team. But. How can we possibly as a company plan on where we're going if we don't actually know where we currently are, right? And having employees complete an annual survey that looks at their experience, that ranks their experience, that gathers feedback, that is so crucial in actually establishing a baseline metric that we can revisit every year, right?

[00:41:23] Zara Chaudary: And Making sure, again, a lot of folks have mentioned this, and I mentioned this in my last response as well, that once you have that information from the survey, that there is some kind of follow up, right? That it's not just going into some void so making sure that we're analyzing the data, maybe we're pulling out high level trends, we're bringing that back to our folks, sharing back, hey, this is what our survey found, and here is the action plan for how we're going to actually address things, right?

[00:41:43] Zara Chaudary: So making sure, again, if we're gathering data, that it's not just going to live somewhere, that we're actually doing something with that is going to be super important. And then finally I mentioned earlier employee growth programs. intentionally building out programs as well as opportunities that center employee [00:42:00] growth so that people know exactly how and where they can continue to develop, right?

[00:42:05] Zara Chaudary: Because again, focusing on growth is one of the things that will keep people around, right? Being able to say, hey, my company cares about me and they want me to grow and they're very communicative about that, right? I actually feel supported. I feel like they care about my growth. I want to see that. So we not only want folks to feel safe, we also want them to feel like they're being challenged, like they're being able to, grow in different ways and that they're being supported.

[00:42:26] Zara Chaudary: So these are just some like few things on how we can begin to build this culture of trust and belonging.

[00:42:33] Ben Brooks: And Paulina asked about frequency of surveys, and I just said, essentially, as frequently as you can assess the data and take action. If that's annual, do it annually. If you can do it quarterly, do it quarterly.

[00:42:44] Ben Brooks: Sometimes you can do pulse surveys, where you do around a couple specific questions. And you can do those on a more frequent basis, but you don't want to survey people to death. Or some people do a survey question a week in Teams or the intranet or Slack, and you make it a micro survey. And we'll, I'll add to Zahra's point about [00:43:00] the employee growth and career development opportunities.

[00:43:02] Ben Brooks: McKinsey's research cited about a year ago that the number one reason that high performers were leaving organizations was feeling that they were at a dead end. Lack of career growth. And the engagement surveys align perfectly to this. When you ask questions of, does my manager support my career goals?

[00:43:18] Ben Brooks: Do I get adequate feedback? Do I feel like I can learn? Do I feel like I can grow? Will I be here in two years time? And That data is super important to Zara's point around making a data driven argument in that meeting to advocate for budget or to drive change. It's not just, oh, Ben or Zara think that we should do this or want to do this.

[00:43:35] Ben Brooks: It's like, no, the people have spoken. This is the sentiment or perception. This is the data. And then if you, deploy those things, you're going to want to see those scores change. So it'd be important then to close that loop to say, hey, we made an impact.

[00:43:50] Dana Regan: Thank you, Ben and Zara, loving all this clarity on belonging and communication and really how to shift and shift culture and really center the employee's experience [00:44:00] here.

[00:44:00] Dana Regan: So I'm going to put you in the hot seat here for the sake of time. So I would love for Zara to kick us off with what is one thing, maybe two, but one thing that managers can do right now to center the employee experience on their team.

[00:44:17] Zara Chaudary: Yep, I'm going to go back to what I've been saying, which is increasing your open communication within and across the team.

[00:44:23] Zara Chaudary: And so there's a few things you can do around that, right? Asking your team what they feel the team culture is and what they want the team culture to be and building an action plan as a team for how to get there. Asking your team members, what is your preferred method of feedback? Do you prefer written?

[00:44:36] Zara Chaudary: Do you prefer verbal? Do you prefer in real time? Do you prefer after the fact? A lot of managers don't take that time to actually ask folks, what is your preferred method of feedback? And that also looks different culturally as well. So making sure that we're asking those questions and then also asking your team, Hey, I would love feedback as a manager.

[00:44:51] Zara Chaudary: I know I have areas to grow, right? Making sure that you're showing up as a whole human because how you show up as a manager is what's then normalized for the rest of your team. So [00:45:00] if you can show up as someone who's like, I know I have places to grow. I'm excited to grow there. Please help me grow. And we can work on this together, right?

[00:45:06] Zara Chaudary: That then normalizes. Other folks on your team being like, right. Okay. I might not know everything. I'm, I might also have areas of growth, right? So making sure that you're actually creating these spaces to have these conversations and this open communication is going to be a real game changer on your team.

[00:45:20] Zara Chaudary: What about you, Ben?

[00:45:22] Ben Brooks: Yeah, I changed my background. If you look similar, but ownership is the value, you have to take ownership. We've defined that as being accountable for our work and its impact to take initiative and drive progress. You have to do something. We can attend these webinars and get inspired, but, it's a little like love, right?

[00:45:37] Ben Brooks: It's not just what you think or intend or say, but it's what you do. And one of the things we did at PILOT, we did an engagement survey at PILOT. We learned that people's intent to stay at the company was lower than we thought, and when we dug, but yet the other scores were very high, and when we dug into that, People just didn't know what their opportunities were.

[00:45:56] Ben Brooks: We're a small but growing company. So we developed a very simple thing, [00:46:00] taking ownership, my, my head of people and ops and myself developed a simple six question career conversation structure that we sent to employees to have a meeting and everyone at PILOT that's on my core team had a meeting with me to talk about the future.

[00:46:14] Ben Brooks: If you want those, by the way, I'm happy to give those away. Just email Leighton again. Leighton, drop your, we're giving away, Leighton didn't know he's going to get his email blown up today. I've never, by the way, used these virtual backgrounds on a webinar. It's not like a shtick. I just am being inventive, one of our values and experimenting. But we had six questions in a box where we sat down in 30 minutes. The questions were on the calendar invite. That was it. Simple, simple, simple. Do you have a calendar? Do you have a Zoom account or a Teams account? You probably have both. That's all you need. And time too.

[00:46:42] Ben Brooks: And then it was all about me listening to what people wanted, where they wanted to go, et cetera. So that was one thing. The other thing I'll say is run a good operation. You know, that if you have an employee experience, there are things you're not going to be able to change the location of the office or some things like that.[00:47:00]

[00:47:00] Ben Brooks: But you know what, if your staff meetings are a hot mess, right? As I mentioned, the agenda doesn't go out until a minute before, or you don't follow it, we use a time timer on zoom and we have agendas with times. We have people be the timekeeper and we can all see the clock. Little things like that, right?

[00:47:17] Ben Brooks: Having the file structure work where people think, getting people a laptop when it's broken and working on it. Like, run a good operation on your team, because if you get rid of just the friction that creates barriers to people doing a good job day to day, it gets you halfway there. Right? It's the friction when, Oh, I don't have access to this.

[00:47:36] Ben Brooks: And these people are so bad and this doesn't work. And that's when people get these rage moments because you've basically created this gauntlet for them to just do what's expected in their job requirements, which is an infuriating employee experience. So run a good operation, sit down with people, email Leighton, get the questions.

[00:47:54] Ben Brooks: There's six questions. It's so easy. And then invest the time. Mary Kay Ash, who [00:48:00] created the Mary Kay Makeup Company, had a book called Mary Kay on People Management. Harvard Business School required this book in the late 80s. She's, by the way, made more women millionaires than any other employer in the world.

[00:48:11] Ben Brooks: And she said, imagine when you're talking to someone, they have a sign around their, on their chest with a gold chain to it, and it says, Make Me Feel Important. You have to make your staff feel important. Yes, they work for you. Yes, it's your budget. Yes, it's your headcount. Yes, it's your company or organization.

[00:48:27] Ben Brooks: But making them feel important by investing time, attention, showing that you care. Remember that thoughtful value I mentioned, right? Surprising them, stepping in, a kind gesture, a compassionate thing. That's the stickiness that lasts.

[00:48:44] Dana Regan: Thank you so much. Oh, Ben and Zara, this is incredible, powerful, insightful conversation.

[00:48:51] Dana Regan: Way too many gems to even keep keep writing. So here we are and Laura is going to share with us some codes. And so [00:49:00] she's dropping them in the chat right now. You will see them. You're eligible for SHRM and there are the codes in the chat for recertification credit using the following. And so now.

[00:49:12] Dana Regan: We would love to hear from you, Zara, just about your power to fly. How can we take us there?

[00:49:22] Zara Chaudary: Awesome. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone for being so engaged. I love seeing the chat continue to blow up. And thank you If you want to know more about Power2Fly, Power2Fly is a 360 degree DEIB solution.

[00:49:33] Zara Chaudary: So if you're interested in learning more about how Power2Fly can really help you with your hiring, with retention, with DEIB initiatives please request a demo. You can go to our site it's just Power2Fly.com/employers, and I'll drop that link in the chat as well for you all. But diverse teams perform better, so let Power2Fly help you build one.

[00:49:55] Dana Regan: Thank you so much, Zara. And Ben, PILOT, over to you. [00:50:00]

[00:50:00] Ben Brooks: So PILOT is an award winning employee development program. Zara mentioned investing in employee growth. If you want to do that, we've got a solution for you that we can kick off in a couple of weeks that is the Leadership Development Program for Everyone.

[00:50:11] Ben Brooks: So often, we only develop people at the very top of an organization with growth and leadership, and you leave the other 90 percent with very little. Very hard to cultivate internal pipelines of underrepresented talent when you're not teaching them the unwritten rules of work, you're not giving them feedback, you're not getting them visibility, you're not helping them meet network with executives.

[00:50:32] Ben Brooks: There's a way you can help level the playing field from an equity perspective by investing in these programs, which surprisingly are not that expensive. That's part of the reason with PILOT we made an affordable program. And we work with nonprofits and education organizations to reach more people. We've got more information.

[00:50:48] Ben Brooks: Again, Layton, who you heard from, he's helped, book some of these conversations, but, we work with organizations big and small and all over the world. So you may have people in hybrid or remote or distributed where you're used to doing, L and D or talent programs in [00:51:00] office.

[00:51:00] Ben Brooks: We do it 100 percent virtual, but yet it's still engaging because that's accessibility and that's flexibility. And so from an inclusion perspective, we often have exclusive talent programs when we force people to be in the ballroom of a Sheraton or to fly to a facility or to go to headquarters. And so we're really trying to meet your employees where they are.

[00:51:20] Ben Brooks: which is from the comfort of their phone. And that could be anywhere in the world. So we'd love to talk to you more about our award winning program.

[00:51:28] Dana Regan: Thank you all, everyone, for being here. Such an incredible, insightful conversation. You are getting blown up in the chat with so many thank yous.

[00:51:36] Dana Regan: So there's a lot of gratitude coming through. And I just feel like between Power to Fly and PILOT, we're ready to launch, ready to fly, ready to take off. So, we've got our last poll for you here, just so that we can get some data for ourselves. Would you like to learn more about PILOT or Power to Fly?

[00:51:51] Dana Regan: And this is an option that you can select multiple. So please support us here and if you have to hop off or log off, thank you so much for [00:52:00] joining us. Take a moment here.

[00:52:05] Ben Brooks: And we're putting a lot of LinkedIn's in the chat. So if you want to grow your HR network, it doesn't even have to be the czar, although we have pretty amazing bang and LinkedIn action.

[00:52:14] Ben Brooks: But there's a bunch of other people that added a lot of really smart and interesting commentary that was additive to the conversation, distinct preferences. So grow your HR network. You'll see people share great things, great resources, articles, etc. And that's a big part of how you can hack some of this, even with small budgets is getting inspired by others.

[00:52:37] Laura Mastrorocco: Woohoo! Thank you. On behalf of PILOT and Power to Fly, thank you all so much for being here today. Thank you for your vibrancy in the chat panel. Very much appreciate it. And keep an eye out for that recording. I will send it out to you all tomorrow. Have a terrific rest of your day.

[00:52:58] Dana Regan: Thank you, everybody.

[00:52:59] Dana Regan: Great [00:53:00] session. Thank you.

[00:53:02] Ben Brooks: Thanks, y'all.