Have you ever wondered about the balance between empowering employees and maintaining control as a leader? Get your answers as we have an enlightening conversation with Kristen Hadeed, author of Permission to Screw Up and Leadership Thought Leader. Kristen takes us on her leadership journey, a journey that began when she was 21 and saw 45 of her employees walk out on her, a pivotal event that reshaped her leadership approach. She shares how this experience transformed her into an advocate for fostering an environment of trust, empowerment, and psychological safety.
What if your team could solve problems without micromanagement? Would it be more effective? Kristen takes a deep dive into these questions and unravels the delicate balance between supporting employees and giving them ownership of their work. She also shares her insights on how to avoid micromanagement and the impact it can have on your team’s morale and your own wellbeing. At the heart of her message is the importance of cultivating a culture of trust that encourages constructive feedback.
Can vulnerability be a game-changer in the workplace? Let's find out from Kristen's personal experience. She unveils how her honesty and vulnerability with her team not only led them to trust her but also gave her a second chance. Listen in as she passionately talks about the value of fostering an environment of vulnerability in the workplace. You'll learn the importance of striking a balance between guiding and supporting employees and giving them ownership of their work. It's time to explore the creation of human workplaces where vulnerability is embraced. This episode is loaded with wisdom, practical advice and a fresh perspective on leadership. Don't miss out!
GET KRISTEN'S BOOK: Permission To Screw Up
Have you ever wondered about the balance between empowering employees and maintaining control as a leader? Get your answers as we have an enlightening conversation with Kristen Hadeed, author of Permission to Screw Up and Leadership Thought Leader. Kristen takes us on her leadership journey, a journey that began when she was 21 and saw 45 of her employees walk out on her, a pivotal event that reshaped her leadership approach. She shares how this experience transformed her into an advocate for fostering an environment of trust, empowerment, and psychological safety.
What if your team could solve problems without micromanagement? Would it be more effective? Kristen takes a deep dive into these questions and unravels the delicate balance between supporting employees and giving them ownership of their work. She also shares her insights on how to avoid micromanagement and the impact it can have on your team’s morale and your own wellbeing. At the heart of her message is the importance of cultivating a culture of trust that encourages constructive feedback.
Can vulnerability be a game-changer in the workplace? Let's find out from Kristen's personal experience. She unveils how her honesty and vulnerability with her team not only led them to trust her but also gave her a second chance. Listen in as she passionately talks about the value of fostering an environment of vulnerability in the workplace. You'll learn the importance of striking a balance between guiding and supporting employees and giving them ownership of their work. It's time to explore the creation of human workplaces where vulnerability is embraced. This episode is loaded with wisdom, practical advice and a fresh perspective on leadership. Don't miss out!
GET KRISTEN'S BOOK: Permission To Screw Up
What lessons can you learn when 45 employees walk out on you all at once? We'll find out on this episode of Shift Shapers.
Speaker 2:This is the Shift Shapers podcast, connecting benefits advisors with thought leaders and entrepreneurs who are shaping the shifts in the industry. And now here's your host, David Saltzman.
Speaker 1:We are at the NABIP convention in New Orleans and we're talking to one of our great keynote speakers, Kristen Hadeed, author of the book Permission to Screw Up and leadership thought leader. Welcome, Kristen.
Speaker 2:Hi David, so thanks, so grateful to be here and hi everyone listening.
Speaker 1:Thank you, we're glad to have you here. So let's start with that story, because that's kind of your origin story, right? Tell us what exactly happened, because I've run a bunch of companies and I've had people get really annoyed with me, but I haven't had 45 and walk out all at once. So what happened?
Speaker 2:It was the worst day of my leadership journey. The 45 people. So at the time I was 21 and I was cleaning houses as a way to make money while going through school, and I got a contract to clean 800 empty university apartments. So I hired 60 of my peers we were all students and, of course, I had no clue what I was doing. I mean, I was 21, leading a 60 person team and, long story short, 45 of the 60 walked off the job and quit three days in because the work was hard. I was not a good leader and, as I share it today in my keynote, that was really the moment that changed my whole trajectory, because it's what inspired my obsession with leadership and really with wanting to learn how to build a company where people really wanted to be. So turned down, a job in finance grew that company for the next decade plus, and today I work with teams and leaders all over the world to help them create more human workplaces.
Speaker 1:And the book is a really good read and we'll link to it in the show notes. But the first, one of the first things that you talk about is empowering employees to solve problems rather than, I guess, waiting for other people to solve them for them. How does that work practically? Yeah.
Speaker 2:So in my book Permission to Screw Up one of the well, really the whole idea of the book is I learned how to be a leader by learning how to not be a leader, and it's really a story of all the mistakes that I made. And one of the things that was really hard for me to learn was how to give up control, how to empower people, how to not micromanage people, and I think it's a natural fear that maybe we have as leaders that we want to control the outcome and make sure we get to the best solution, and sometimes when we do that, we actually miss out on a chance for people to grow and to learn. And I actually had a situation happen early in the business this is in the book one of our very first interns. I taught her how to use our payroll software. She was studying HR and wanted some HR experience and she overpaid 27 of our team members by $40,000 and she made this huge mistake and she learned from it. She recovered from it, we got the money back and I remember watching her confidence grow, her ability to be a problem solver, to figure it out, and that really changed the way I viewed empowering people.
Speaker 2:I think we need to trust people with enormous responsibilities. We need to acknowledge that failure can happen. When we do that, and then when people do fall down, I think we guide people, we support people. We don't jump in and save them. We're alongside them. But if we can do that, then we give people the chance to actually grow in their leadership ability and in their confidence.
Speaker 1:So the role of the leaders, to create that environment where those things are possible without employees fearing retribution.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think it's important that when we have values in our organization for example, we say I've got your back. As long as you are keeping the values in mind as you're making decisions, as long as everything is coming from a place of our values, you don't have to worry about losing your job. If you make a decision that doesn't have the outcome that you're hoping for, we'll figure it out together. We'll learn from it, and that was something I did a lot in the business, because we had team members that weren't supervised. They were in homes, cleaning homes. No one was watching over them, and so we really had to have a culture of trust and really our values are what allowed us to do that, and really I think that leads to psychological safety.
Speaker 1:It's interesting, though, that that can't be an open-ended invitation. Can it Tell me more? The ability to be in an environment where you can make mistakes. At some point as a leader, you do have to draw a line and say, okay, enough mistakes, you're not learning from them. And what do you do at that point? Do you then look again for a way to help that employee, or do you just say, look, maybe this isn't the right place for you?
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, I think it takes to. In this scenario, it takes the leader willing to give this person the tools to do their job, the training, the support, being willing to empower them. And it also takes this person willing to learn. And I believe that if someone makes a mistake and then they learn from that and do it differently next time, that's not a failure, that's growing. But if someone makes a mistake and then repeats the same exact behavior next time, to me that's when we're talking about something else.
Speaker 2:This is you didn't grow from it, you didn't change from it, and I think we do need to hold people accountable. So in our company, we really promoted the learning part of failing and, like you said, if there were times where people weren't learning, then it's a different conversation of is this the place that you want to be, you know? If so, here's what we're going to need to see in order to make that happen. And sometimes it turns out that it's not the right place and it's better for that person and for the organization to have them go on. You know a different path and I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Speaker 1:In order to create that kind of an environment, I would guess that you have to start, as a leader, being very clear with employees in terms of expectations and the amount of latitude and whatnot. How do you create that kind of clarity with your team?
Speaker 2:Yeah, clarity is so important and I think it's how we communicate and when we are expecting someone to do something, what are our expectations? I think for a long time I got that part wrong. I thought people could read my mind, you know, and then we would do something. And I think, well, this is very far off from what I was thinking, but I realized I had never articulated that.
Speaker 2:So in our company we do a lot of beginning of anything, of just making sure we're on the same page and painting that vision together and making sure that it's really clear and identifying the touch points that we'll have along the way. I think sometimes you can do that and still you can end up in a very different place, and it's an opportunity for both parties to reflect on what happened here. How did we get so far off of where we said we would be? At the same time, I think that we don't want to paint too much of the vision where we're taking away someone's creativity and ownership, and so that's been a tough line for me. How do I guide and support but not take too much of that ownership, so that the person on the other side actually feels like they're getting to create and they're really growing from the experience.
Speaker 1:Well, and that's tough, especially among entrepreneurs, because they birthed this thing, they built it from square one and the tendency for entrepreneurs is to micromanage, which seems to be the exact opposite of what you're talking about. If your proclivity is to micromanage, what kind of self-talk do you need to have to stop yourself from doing that and allow your employees to have that kind of latitude?
Speaker 2:First, I think it's acknowledging that micromanaging is exhausting how exhausting to put yourself in a position to manage all of these details and how overwhelming that must feel and how it takes you away from the most important work that you need to be doing. So understanding the cost of micromanagement. Not only that, it's hurting your team. You are not building a team that is growing, that feels like they are growing in their confidence and problem-solving abilities. It's hurting both of you and them. So I think first is understanding that, the why of why we might want to change that behavior.
Speaker 2:Next, I think this is something that you really can't get better at without your team's help. One of my favorite questions that I ask my team and I do this often where do you see me overstepping and where do you see me understepping? What I learn is, in areas where I think I'm being helpful, it turns out I'm overstepping and people feel like I'm completely micromanaging and it's actually not helpful. And then at other times I think I'm empowering or hands off, but the team really needs my support and my guidance there, so they feel that I'm actually understepping. So could you sit down with your team and ask where am I overstepping, where am I understepping and have them help you better understand where to insert yourself and where to not.
Speaker 1:That's really key and the micromanagement thing is a big, big problem. And yet people I've been part of organizations other folks have people will say we hire superstars, we hire great people, Our hiring process is exhaustive because we not only look for smarts, we look for cultural fit and all of those other intangibles, and then they go ahead and micromanage the hell out of them and their turnover reflects it and that turnover is expensive. So is the starting point making sure that all of your employees are on the same page as you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's. You know, what are we all committing to here? What are our values, the things that matter more than anything? When we're working on something, what does success look like? Let's paint that together before we start this.
Speaker 2:And I think when we micromanage, we actually limit the potential of the work, because so many times I have found that the team does it better than I could have ever thought to do it. And something that helps me if you're struggling with this is I ask myself can the team get it to 70%, like I would envision? And if the answer to that is yes, then I, you know, fully empower and step back. And so many times they do it way better than I could have ever done it. So it is hard, and I think maybe even you could have a social contract as a team. You know, maybe there's a code word that you can come up with together when someone is feeling micromanaged, a way to make it so that we can hold each other accountable and come from a place of compassion, you know, but really build the kind of culture that we all want.
Speaker 1:I was part of an organization not too long ago where we had a little horse beanie baby, and when we were in a meeting and someone had over talked what they needed to over talk, we would toss the horse to them and say, okay, dead horse, stop talking. So, but that communication is really really critical, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and I think with communication it's, you know, not so much what is someone saying, but why are they saying it? And maybe underneath the micromanagement is fear. Maybe there's a fear we need to talk about and actually explore that what does happen if this project doesn't land exactly how we are hoping and what would we do if that were to be the case? And I think sometimes we don't acknowledge fear, and oftentimes that's what's underneath that behavior, I think. And so I've learned, like even for me when I'm communicating things to the team. Hey, I want you to be fully empowered with this and I just want to be honest with you about the fears that I have. And I think it's a powerful conversation because now that person knows where I'm coming from and understands the side of the equation that maybe they hadn't considered and can keep that in mind as they move forward.
Speaker 1:So it sounds like an awful lot of this, if I boil it down, is creating a trust environment 100%. Does that facilitate the ability to give feedback and have it received in a way that's constructive, as opposed to feeling like it's being somebody being criticized?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. The more psychological safety we have, the more we're willing to give feedback, receive feedback. It doesn't mean that feedback is easier. I still find it uncomfortable, even though we have this amazing culture that embraces it. But I think when you're in a culture where you don't trust and maybe even you've had a situation where you've given feedback and someone has responded poorly or not implemented it and not talked to you about that it can make you not want to give it again.
Speaker 2:And there was definitely a time in my journey where I avoided feedback. I only told people the great things that they were doing. I hoped that the other stuff would just magically go away, and of course it just got even bigger and worse, and so I had to eventually learn how to confront it. And what I found that was interesting is when I wasn't really confronting feedback. No one else on my team was, and I can remember people resigning and me feeling so sad about this person leaving. And why didn't they tell me they were upset? But of course they weren't telling me because I wasn't being honest with them.
Speaker 2:So the way we changed that culture, I think first I started getting really intentional about feedback. We taught our team the tools, how to give feedback, and when I would give someone feedback, I would say tomorrow, I want you to tell me one thing that I could be doing better, and even if I disagreed with the feedback, I would thank the person for sharing it with me. If we couldn't implement it, I would make sure to share why, and that is how we started to build a culture of real transparency and candor.
Speaker 1:It is difficult for leaders to deal in introspection. I know when I had companies where I was supervising a larger number of employees and someone left. I would kind of go into the men's room, because that's where all the mirrors work, and I'd look myself in the face and I'd ask could I have done something to stop this? Should I have done something better? But I see less and less of that as time goes on. Is that a problem and if it is, how do you address it?
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, I think I can like you. I remember whenever someone would leave the company, I would take it very personally and think about what could I have done differently and where do we go wrong here? And one thing I think we an opportunity for all of us today is to not wait until someone's leaving to have that conversation and to be thinking those thoughts. Something we do in our company is called a stay interview, and we ask people what needs to stay the same in order for you to be happy here and what needs to change in order for you to continue to be happy here, and so it's almost like you're proactively having these conversations before someone does make the decision to move on.
Speaker 2:And I think I also had to get more comfortable with the fact that people moving on doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's something to celebrate, and a lot of times people are moving on to follow a passion or a dream that they have, and so it's not a failure. And our mentality became how can we help you with your next step and how can we make it so that you can talk about it openly and not have to hide it and not be afraid that just because you're moving on now, you're going to lose your job immediately. Like, let's create a really smooth transition for you and for us.
Speaker 2:I think what's missing right now, and when we see the great resignation and so much turnover, is just the lack of humanity. You know, and it's talking to people how are you? What's working, what's not? And then, if you're not happy in an organization, doing your part and speaking up about that and sure, if the feedback is we don't care about you, well then, yeah, I would leave too. You know, but I think so often we leave places without giving our leaders the chance to even make it better, because we don't speak up about it.
Speaker 1:Do you think that that's because the culture is such that leaders are not generally welcoming in those organizations of comments?
Speaker 2:I think that that could be for sure, and I also see it a lot in cultures where there is a culture of feedback and there are caring leaders. I just think these conversations are really hard and because they're hard and uncomfortable and potentially could impact the team in a negative way, if we're leaving, it makes it so that we don't want to address it, and so I think if you do have a caring leader and you are in a caring organization, then the most caring thing you could do is to be authentic and honest about what you're feeling and your potential to move on. In organizations where it's toxic and you've seen feedback be completely dismissed and you don't believe that it's going anywhere, I think that's a different story and I think it does make sense to go to a place where your feedback will be heard and it doesn't mean it has to be implemented, you know, but it will be heard and respected.
Speaker 1:One of the things that you dispel in the book is the fact that even millennials want feedback. Yeah, I mean. That goes so counter to the current wisdom, or the alleged current wisdom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we hear all kinds of stuff about the rising generation. Right, we don't want feedback, we're entitled. I really see it as we're all human and we all want to know how can we make an impact, how can we be better. I think the challenges maybe we're not used to that and I know for me, my generation, and I don't want to speak to every millennial, but we were raised in what was called the self-esteem movement, when parents and educators were taught that the best thing they could do was build us up and tell us how amazing we are.
Speaker 2:So now, here we are in our careers and it's the first time that we're maybe getting that really honest feedback of hey, here's where you could be better and we just don't know how to process that or how to handle that because we haven't had that kind of feedback. So I think there's a piece of teaching people how to receive feedback. Teaching people you know how a conversation can go at its best. And I'll also say it's not just millennials. I work with lots of people from lots of different generations and there are plenty of people who are uncomfortable with feedback and don't want to give it, don't want to receive it. So I just think generally as humans. It's something we all need to get better at, because it really is what builds trust and changes our relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're right, but millennials got that tag somehow and it hasn't been erased yet. Maybe it will be now that they're starting to take over companies and things. What the oldest millennials are? What 40 now, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm getting up there.
Speaker 1:So my oldest daughter is 40 and I see the change that's happening and I think in most cases it's a change for the better. It's certainly different than the way my generation did things, but then Things change as we go along, as we progress. That's why we call it progressing. I guess I'm interested in something you talked about in the book called FBI, and you don't mean investigations of political leaders. What is FBI and why is it important?
Speaker 2:Yes, the FBI is one of my favorite feedback tools. It's a sentence that has three components feeling, behavior, impact and you can use it to give someone growth feedback, which is what I call constructive feedback, and you can also use it to recognize someone. So how do you feel, what was the behavior that made you feel that way and what was the impact of that behavior? So I can give you an example of an FBI that someone on my team gave me. I was micromanaging in a meeting over a stepping in an area that I really shouldn't have been stepping into, and someone on the team Monique, I love you. She sent me a message after the meeting and said I need to give you some tough feedback. This is coming from a place of love.
Speaker 2:I felt frustrated in the meeting earlier when you took control of this item on the agenda, and the impact is it made me feel like you didn't trust me, and I fear that the team had the same perception and I don't think that you intended to do that. So I just wanted to let you know and, of course, I didn't mean to do that. So it opened up this amazing conversation between her and I, and then I was able to take that conversation and open up to the team and apologize. So yeah, the FBI is great because it gives us a method and if we can commit to it as a team, it makes feedback a lot easier. So on my team we actually say I need to give you an FBI, and we all know what that means.
Speaker 1:That's nice. That's nice. One of the things that you point out and I'm a huge advocate for it and I wish more people did it is the importance of reading. If you talk to a lot of people in this industry, and in every industry, and you ask them what the last book was that they read, they can't tell you, and if you ask them what the last business book they read, it was probably in college. So why is that so important? And do you have a top recommendation or something you're reading now? That's really making an impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love reading and I also have a confession I am the kind of person that orders a ton of books and then they will just sit on my desk and I will have piles that I have not read and it's my intention to read them. But I think sometimes and maybe this is part of why we struggle with reading is after a long day of work and using your mind so much and speaking to people and you're just tired and maybe you don't want to read. And so I have learned that the best time for me to read is in the morning, not to do it at the end of the day, just a few pages maybe on the weekends, and to not always feel the pressure to stick to business books. I've started to kind of venture out of that aisle a bit Interesting and it's been really freeing to just experiment with that. But yeah, I have, at any time, 10 books on my nightstand that I'm alternating between.
Speaker 2:One of the books I'm reading right now is called Self-Compassion. My favorite book, which is memoir, is Shoe Dog and it's the story of Phil Knight and Nike and just this really inspiring story. But do it in a way that works for you. Some people do Audible. Some people like to have the paper copy of the book. I actually took a speed reading class so I could learn how to read quickly, and that's what works for me. And don't give yourself pressure, like if you're in a season where you're just not reading, it's okay, it'll come back and that's what I've learned.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm in the process of rereading Patrick Linceoni's book Five Dysfunctions of a Team, which is all Linceoni's, just great. I always enjoy reading. I always learn something when I read his stuff. The other thing that you talk about we've got three through three minutes left. The other thing that you talk about is the importance of being able to bend the rules. What does that mean? How does that apply practically?
Speaker 2:So I've gotten in some heated debates about this in my company.
Speaker 2:What I mean about bending the rules is, in our organizations we have human beings and sometimes I think the processes that we have, the systems that we have, the accountability structures that we have are so rigid that it doesn't allow for that humanness to happen.
Speaker 2:In particular, for us accountability. We had policies that I thought I don't know if this policy is always fair, you know, and there's times where it would make sense and there's times where maybe it wouldn't. So one of the hardest things we ever did as a team was we looked at our employee handbook, which we now call the guidebook, and we really created a human way to look at accountability and how to take these policies that definitely need to be in place, but to allow for some room to allow people to be human. And I think, just in general that's the thing we can't forget in our organizations that at the end of the day, we have humans. So even when we think about roles that we design for people, the more we can design the role around the person instead of trying to fit the person in the box, I think we'll get the most out of our people. They'll be happy and engaged, and our organization will do better because of that.
Speaker 1:What's the one piece of advice that you most frequently find yourself giving your organizations?
Speaker 2:Let's see the one piece of advice. I think that If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to think about how you can bring more vulnerability to work, but not just any kind of vulnerability vulnerability with purpose. What I see that as is. I need help with this. I'm struggling with this. This thing is happening in my life and it's affecting me, so I want to share this.
Speaker 2:The reason I say that is vulnerability is contagious. When we see someone being vulnerable, we're more inspired to be vulnerable ourselves. I think it leads to us feeling less alone, more connected. We can let people in to help us. We can be more helpful to each other. For me, that was the biggest thing. We started with the story of the 45 people walking out on me. The way that I got the team back was by being vulnerable. I was honest and admitted I didn't know what I was doing. I think they saw me as a human and they were willing to give me another chance. Because of that, I think we need more human workplaces and I think that can exist without vulnerability.
Speaker 1:That is a great place to end our conversation for today. Kristin Hadid, author of the book Permission to Screw Up and Leadership Thought Leader. Kristin, thanks for sharing your expertise with our audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, david, and thank you everyone. The Shift Shapers podcast is a production of Shift Shapers strategies and may not be reproduced or quoted in whole or in part without our express written permission. Copyright 2020, All Rights Reserved.