Episode 75 : Creating a Career Pathing Program

Dear Corner Office

I want to welcome Christina, on to the virtual summit today, Christina, how are you doing?
I am doing great. Michelle, I'm so excited. You're doing this. This is just, it's fantastic. Because you know, we need to come together and have these conversations so we can network, we can figure out what's working with other people who resources can be like, I've got Gil in my back pocket now. I can't wait to reach out to him. So this is great. I love it. Love it.
Yes. And people often ask me, I need to find somebody who does like Yeah, I had somebody that interviewed in my Summit. And I was like, here you go check them out. And I was like, Yo, can you do an introduction? I do a lot of intraday introductions throughout the week for people in this space, and continued to do the podcast and live LinkedIn lives and virtual summits. So people in industry and other consultants as well in the space, know, and have each other's resources.
So I'm glad you can join us. So Christina, how did you get started in learning and development? Because that's where you started your your career? Oh, my gosh, that I'm so excited that you ask that question. I'm going to be excited about every question you ask. I'm just so actually, you know, I did my undergraduate work in speech pathology. I knew in my second year that that was not where I was going to spend the rest of my life. And I worked in the field for six years, and then decided I really wanted to do something different. I decided at the age of 13, that I wanted to go into speech pathology, and I just rolled through it. I thought it would be that easy to transition. And it wasn't, it took me a really long time to figure out, where do I really want to be. And I ended up taking a job near my home because my kids were little at the time, I wanted to be close to my home. So if something happened, and I needed to get to them quickly, I could. So I took a job as an administrative assistant, and anybody who knows me know, that is like, the last thing I should be doing, I will come home in tears every day, sobbing about how much I hated my job, I was not good at it. I didn't like the people I work with. They didn't like me. And that is not normal. For me, I usually love everybody. And I connect well with people usually. So I started thinking, I'm stuck. I'm stuck in this, I don't know where to go next. And I heard a voice while your voice is on sound, but her voice one time that said, your prayers being answered, your prayer is you're stuck. And so I put a pause on that and said, I need to rethink this, what can I put in the place Hall as a placeholder in my head until I get to where I need to go. And I came up with this Michelle, and I'm telling people write this down. It's a miracle worker. My thought was, I am moving in the direction of my greatest dreams. I am moving in the direction of my greatest dreams. And somehow when I made that statement, I'm moving in the direction of my greatest dreams, even though I didn't know what that was. It got me out of the cycle of thinking, I'm stuck. And I felt great joy. I felt so excited in this joyful thing that I am going to move into that even though I don't know what that is long story short. I said, Okay. What do you want to do? What do you think you're good at? And there are two things I think I'm really good at. I love doing research. I love to read. I'm an avid reader, and I love sharing information with people. And I thought, okay, who does that? I said people in training and development. And so I said that's what I want to be I want to be a trainer. And then my next thought was, but you can't afford to go back to school right now you need to work. You don't know anybody who does this. So you can't be mentored by them. And I said, Nope, that's it. Do you know I transferred jobs. A couple of months later, when I transferred to this particular company, they did not have a training department. I went in had done some human resources. Within two months, they decided they needed to open up a training department. I interviewed with somebody else got the job and then they paid for me to go all over the country to learn how to be a trainer. So what what did I learn from that? Stay focused on your desired outcome. Don't worry so much initially about how you're going to get there just know where you want to go. It was huge. It was transformational to have that experience
I love it, I love it changing that, that that voice in your head to be positive is so powerful. And I found that I write, I started probably about 10 years ago, writing things in first person, you know how you go to a conference or you're at a virtual Summit, and they're taking notes. And you should do and you're right, you should, and I started chanting you too, I, or the lead person, I changed. I asked the lead person, I will do what it literally changed how I moved and how I showed up. And so that self language, whether it's written, or we're saying it out loud, or in our head really does make an impact. So yes, mindset. Absolutely. Mindset is what controls your outcomes and perspectives in on life? Absolutely, absolutely. agree with that. So now you're in learning and development, you are a trainer, you're a trainer, I want to dig into your topic more about Creek ating. Learning and development that is more inclusive, that really helps retain talent, right? What does that let's take a journey down. What do you look at first, when you hear from a hiring manager, somebody we need to provide training to employees?
Yeah, so there's a lot that goes into that. And one is, regardless of who the person or the group of people that are being trained, you really have to understand that people do have different styles of learning, of taking in information. We know that some people are visual learners. Some people are auditory learners, they learn through hearing. Some people are kinesthetic, or they have to do it with their hands. And then I look at cultural differences. Like what I really want to know what are people's past experiences with learning? If people went through school and they had a bad experience in school, coming into a learning environment might.
Likely last Christina for just a moment, she'll show her internet up, pop back in. So let's give her a second. If not, if, if you have questions for Christina, around learning and development, go ahead and let us know what those are. And that way when she does pop back in, we will have that set up. But Christina is really focused on sharing with us. How do you create learning and development programs to retain talent? Yeah, so maybe she has, she has to do a system reboot? And what does that look like in your organization? So oftentimes, especially since the murder of George Floyd, a lot of organizations have been focused on recruitment, and we're seeing a lot of layoffs as well. But that's a different discussion. But what happens once you you have diversified your workforce? How do you retain underrepresented employees in your organization? A lot of organizations haven't given thought their assumption is we will do it the same way for everybody. But what they probably have found in their recruitment efforts, their recruitment process, change, to reach different people, different demographics, of input of candidates, to employees. And so the assumption or the approach that in order to retain talent is not going to necessarily be the same. So so that's really what Christina is going to is focusing on, is how do you determine what works best? What does it look like to retain talent? Because they focus so much on diversifying their workforce? But how do you retain that underrepresented talent? So Christina, you are in the midst of sharing something really phenomenal?
So I'm gonna turn
Yeah, so so it really is. We can't treat everyone the same. We know, and I'm sure a lot of people have seen the diversity graphic, where there are these three or four people walking along a fence and on the other side of the fence is a baseball game. And these people want to see the baseball game but there are varying heights. And we talk about a quality is and that was the that was the word we use for the longest time. Everybody gets to same box, everybody's treated the same? Well, what retains employees is when we recognize what their needs are. And so you have to give different size boxes to people. Because you, first of all, we have to identify what are we trying to accomplish here, if we're trying to accomplish, that everyone can see the baseball game, then absolutely, people need different size boxes, depending on their height, in order to be able to see. So we need to know about people's experiences we need to know about their skills and talents. And not only that, you know, Michelle, I had a conversation with a colleague the other day, and she was saying in her organization, she's a white female. In her organization, they had a mandate that they had to promote more women and people of color, she was promoted to fill the box, because her boss was going to get incentivized, if he did this, but when she came to the table, to have to present her ideas, she was talked over, or someone else would pick up on her idea. And say it and she wouldn't get acknowledged for saying that. So the idea is, it's it's about treating people equitably, not equally, but equitably. What, what does that person need to be successful? And not and really knowing why you're doing what you're doing. You're right, favorite favoritism doesn't doesn't, doesn't fit well, in here. It's like how do we ensure that every person is successful?
Absolutely, and long story short, she might have been called the diversity hire or, or the affirmative action hire things along that lines, which is why I named my company positive hire, right? And to reframe the negative, right, you speak in positive affirmations ever, like we still have, we still reach you have to change the language of what has been spoken. And sometimes you do it literally inside. I did it literally, with naming of a company. And people that are often treated as less than in an organization, understand positive hire, and I get so much pushback from white men. Well, it sounds like this like, because it's not for you. Right? So it's really understanding. And so the people that see positive hires, see that I'm bringing equity, the things that worked for them, that they may not be getting inside an organization, because they're looking at equality. They're looking at equality and not equity. And so how do we show up? And how do we position ourselves is really, really important to what we provide to each of our employees. And the same thing like access, if you're handicapping an organization, like hey, I need a different type of desk or chair and, and things and the run around this disabled people get an organization like, well, that costs too much just posted, make reasonable accommodations. And so that's, that's really important to do that as well. So I want to get back into whatever you're looking at the demographics, or if you're the data you look at to determine what how to create these training programs. Where are you getting it from? Or how do you come about grabbing are creating points, or what I want to say forms, or collection points for this type of data?
You know, really, for me, one of the best ways to do this is through focus groups. You know, I love sitting and talking to people to fight because you know what? As human beings, we make a lot of assumptions about other people about what we think they need, you know, and it's really extraordinary when you sit and talk to people and just ask them, What do you need? What would it take for you to be able to bring your full authentic self to work? And for you, your assets to shine? What would that take? You know, I do a lot of retreats with companies. Some of them are team building retreat, some of them they're getting ready to launch a diversity initiative, and they want to go away and really talk about it for a day or two and, and build on that. And one of the things I do whenever I do something like this is I interview every employee who's going to be part of the retreat. I'm not just showing up and coming up with my because I'm a really creative person. I can put the whole thing together by myself without even thinking about it. But I If I interview each person and say, what would it take for you to walk away and say this was tremendously successful, and people always have ideas and thoughts. And so from that, I take it and build it. And some of the things that people come up with, I would have never thought of. So I love it. For me, the most important thing is human to human contact. Asking people their thoughts and feelings, what do you need? It's amazing. It's very, it can be depending on the size of the organization, it can be time consuming, but I have a team of people and we so we can spread out. So you know, it's not me just trying to interview 500 people. But that works. That to me is, you know, the biggest thing. And we will look back at Have you done something like this before? Have you done a retreat before? Have you done a team building activity before? And if so, what worked? What didn't work? It's, it is the thing that I think is really pretty powerful.
Do you find that you have to sometimes go and do multiple types of events? Because they, they attract different people in the organization?
Yeah, you know, one of the things that we're, I'm so glad I started in training and development, because I learned so much about interacting with people who are like me and people who are different from me. And you know, one of the things that we found this out, even on LinkedIn, even on Zoom, we're having all these zoom meetings, whether it's zoom or in person, there are some people who really want to come and observe, they just want to take the information in, they're not inclined to necessarily share right away. And so understanding that people are different have different needs. And when we can make room for people being different, then that's really, really powerful. So it's going into these things, understanding that some people are going to be really extroverted and want to are gonna want to share a lot, and other people are going to want to hang back. But Michelle, let me tell you one thing that I find so bad, fascinating. Oftentimes, those people and we all know this, those people who are hanging back and not talking constantly, are the ones who have, in some cases, the most profound things to share. And I always make room, even if it's towards the middle, or the end of the session to say there's some people we haven't heard from yet. Is there anyone who wants to contribute? And Michelle the stuff they have to share? I'm like, Wow, I'm so glad I asked that question, because we would have missed that. That's a jump. What you just said is, uh, Jim, thank you so much for sharing.
I love it. So what if you found, through your experience with learning and development that as work as you even look at generations, it when it comes are? Are there certain things that work by different generations when it came to learning and development? And if so, can you share what those are?
Yeah, you know, it's really fascinating. When I was in training and development, it was really interesting. So I'm going to digress for two seconds. I'm sure a lot of people have heard the story of Colonel Sanders, that he didn't start his fried chicken business until the day he received his first social security check. And he looked at that check and said, Oh, no, I can't make it off this. This is not gonna work. So he literally after he retired, started frying chicken and driving it around restaurants and asking people if they would sell his chicken and he did this over 100 times. Before somebody actually said, Yes, I will sell your chicken. I'll never forget, for the longest time in the cable business. In Yes, I was in the cable business. For the longest time, what would happen is we would get people coming in right out of high school right out of college, and this was their very first job. And some of them didn't know. Some of them had really good work ethics, because of you know, what they learned in school or from their families. Some really thought, Well, my job is the place I come when I don't have other things to do. So that was really interesting. And then we started getting people who were like Colonel Sanders, they had retired, they'd gotten their first check, and they're like, No, I need a part time job and so they would come and work with us. And so we would interview these people. When they came in, like, what made you decide to come here? And so on and so forth? And yes, there were two things that really stood out. This is generally speaking, so I'm not putting anyone down. This is generally speaking, we found that the people who were older, were really committed to coming to work every day. But they were not as quick with the technology. So it was a lot harder to train them in some cases, because they just weren't used to working so much on a computer so much with the technology. And many of them we were training to be technical troubleshooters. And that was, yeah, that was that was challenging. So Well, Michelle, what we used to tell them is, if you get on a phone and you get stuck, trying to talk to an older person, and again, I'm not putting anybody down because I'm older. So I get it. But literally, we would say do you have a four year old or five year old grandkid in the house, tell put them on the phone and you know, that kid could troubleshoot. They could they could do the computer stuff. And the younger people who came in, like I said, they would come to work but not every day. But they were masters at the technology. And we used to laugh and say if we could cut both of them in half and meld them, we'd have the perfect employ.
I love it. I love it. Yeah, the partnering with that and just working into generationally. I remember when I was in corporate, we had a gentleman who was in his, like, 80, he turned 80. And he was still working in construction work wearing steel toed boots. And his name was Floyd and like Floyd, what happened is like, look, I can still do the job. It just gonna take me a lot longer to get. Yeah. And so he, he was so bright, and he he so bright, articulate he could, he had never been to college, but he knew how to run construction crews. He knew when they were about to screw up something and he would tell him you don't want to do that. You want to think about it. But he he learned how to number one use a computer and this is a trait he learned how to use a computer. They got him to use a computer, you can play so why are you playing what real cards Solitaire is on your computer? He was like, what if he showed him how to fill up solitaire on his computer. You can do your timesheet on your computer because you know how to play Solitaire is is really easy, isn't it because it's similar. And he showed him how to tie. They started tying different things in because they got him on the computer. Long story short, they gave him a new computer. And it did not have Solitaire. He learned he knew how to call the help desk. And they had to bring somebody on install Solitaire, because that's right, wouldn't go do it. And so long as he had something that kept him engaged on his computer, he would check his email at least once a day. He would do his timesheet once a day. And he would do his reports, construction reports. But it literally started with something that he liked when it came to technology in order for him to consistently do it. But other than that, when he took that solitary off, it took like two or three days for him to find somebody that was willing to put it on there. Like we got to, we had to beg people I love he the best one we got and he at we meet. We were remote, so nobody could come down. Like we literally had to do everything. We're on a construction site. So it really does make a difference in how you train people. So it does feel as though they're included. And you do it in a way that's really important because some things I learned from him and having to be out on site. I can't read a book. It's not in the video. It actually had to be there and him pointing out what the crews were doing correctly, and what they were doing incorrectly to help me better manage what it looked like. So it really does take both perspectives of that. So, Christina, as we wrap up, what, how can people connect with you? Where can they find you?
I'm going to drop in the chat. My we got you. Oh, okay. Yep, LinkedIn. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's where I am. Yeah, absolutely.
Any final thoughts for us? Before you before you leave us today?
Yeah, I just want to say really quickly, you know, diversity craning has been around for 30 plus years. And for the longest time, it was not done right. That's not bashing anybody who did it previously. It's just a lot of people were under the impression that if we give people the information, they will change. Human beings are very complex. And one of the things I read in the Harvard Business Review that I have actually been employing and I am seeing a dramatic difference. In organizations, for people who have traditionally been underrepresented, may need remember how the kids need different size boxes to be able to see over the fence. I'm working right now as a coach with a hospital. And that hospital has decided they want to do the best they can to promote black folks to VT vice president level. These people are already directors, they're high performing. And what the Harvard Business Review said is, in some cases, underrepresented people need a mentor, an executive sponsor, and a coach. And that model is working beautifully. I actually have five people that I'm coaching, to have already been promoted to vice president. And they earned it. It's not just because they're a diversity person trying to be promoted. They have really earned it. So they're the data is out there, of what works. And we have lots, you know, a lot more data and information around how to really help underrepresented folks feel like they're included, make sure that they really experienced belonging, and can do their best work.
Thank you so much, Christina. For that, everybody. Be sure you go connect with Christina on LinkedIn, big Christina for dropping those gems, that is something we've put pull and push here in positive hire, and what are some things that we're working on as well in our technology? So I absolutely agree, because I've seen it work as well. So Christina, have a great day. And I look forward to talking to you, Adam. But is it the birth room?
Yeah, absolutely. Thursdays 1231. Eastern Time, the break room to have conversations about race. Join us. Thank you so much. Talk to you soon. Michelle.
Okay, back, Christina, everybody in the chat. We are dropping a link for you to provide your feedback on the discussion with Christina, we want to know your thoughts as it comes to creating a learning and development program for underrepresented employees. What are your thoughts on on what Christina had to say? I know we did some mindset stuff. And maybe you're like, I don't think it'll work. And maybe now you're having that shift. Maybe I need to do some mindset work. But also what are the positives of doing that?