Hey, everyone, this is Chris from Hacking Your Leadership and on today's guest
interview. We're joined by Jill Katz. She's the founder of Assemble HR,
a growing human resources consulting from specializing in culture change, communication and conflict.
Welcome Joe, say hi to our audience. Hello, good afternoon, good
morning. Nice to see you and glad to be with you. Chris,
it's a pleasure having you on the show. I want to start by asking
you what does a company that specializes in culture change, communication and conflict do.
We build relationships, We build trust quickly, and we have four main
services that we offer to our clients. We do breakthrough leadership off sites,
we do learning programs, we do fractional HR work, and we do coaching.
When I think of the concept of culture change, communication and conflict,
you know they're broad and they can be applied to a lot of different areas.
If you think about kind of what the cult zeitgeist is in the moment.
When I hear culture change, communication and conflict, I hear, okay,
we're talking about the debate between in office work from home hybrid. If
I put the same four words to whatever is going on in the moment three
years ago, four years ago, I'm thinking diversity, equity, and inclusion.
What are other kind of broader topics that are affecting a lot of people?
Could you apply those things too, Like, what are the things that
people that you've seen over the years when a company is having issues and wants
to help, you know, with change management and culture and communication and conflict.
What are some of the broader things companies have dealt with over the years.
Absolutely everything, And that's exactly why we work in change, communication,
conflict, and culture, and so we believe that those four components are the
components that touch the lives of every team that is awake and working today in
today's world and has been for the past who knows one hundred years. You
don't have a team if those four things aren't happening every day. So it
touches accountability, it touches trust, it touches results, it touches productivity,
it touches the way that people build relationships, and then whatever's happening it quite
frankly, it touches an organization. When there are things happening politically in the
world. If you think about what we've all gone through through Q four of
this past year, a lot of things were happening that were important there and
a lot of ways. I think that also touches DEIB. But it can
be the hot topics like the hybrid work, and it can also be as
important as the way that teams function and interact with one another. I'm going
to ask you kind of a little bit of a loaded question here, make
an argument for why working in the office is important, and then I'm going
to ask you to make another argument for why working from home is important.
If you want to engage and retain your top talent, the most important certain
thing you can do for your people is empower them. And the way that
you empower employees is to give them the opportunity to make as many choices for
themselves in their world of work as possible. Your best bet is not telling
people what they should do. They're grown ups. What people should do is
get their work done and be highly productive and highly collaborative, and if they're
capable of doing that in an office or remotely, that's what they should do.
The relationship building in person is really hard to match any other way.
The checking in on people, all that stuff I think is complete BS.
It is useless, it causes anger, it causes resentment. It's what you
do when you're in third grade, when they take attendance. There's no benefit
to that whatsoever. I think a lot of leaders want to do what's right
by their peace people. They also want to do it's right by their business
and they're struggling to figure out what that is. So this idea of putting
more power in the hands of the employees is a good thing. Some of
the employees want to be in the office and maybe not every day, but
you know, at least on a scheduled periodic basis, because they feel like
they get more done that way. It's tough to put power in the hands
of the employees and also say each employee can do whatever's right for them,
right. I really believe that giving people more ability to make decisions gives people
more ability to show up and be accountable and impress you. And that's where
you see your best talent float to the top. When you say to people,
show us your best, do your best, that's where you see people
step up and impress you. And I think you made such a good point,
which is you do see some people saying I want to be in the
office. I prefer to be in the office, or we have the opportunity
to go in X days a week, and I choose to go. But
there is a real emotional piece too. It's a power to say I choose
to go versus I'm forced to go. And I think it is so critical
to not miss the conversation about how the return to office conversation has disproportionately impacted
women working women, particularly women that are taking care of children or men that
are taking care of children. That has been a massive shift in the workforce
and you've lost a lot of women who were unable to go back into the
workforce that could be significant leaders in organizations today. So it's being in your
car and wasting time. It's all the extra time in your calendar. But
then there's an entire conversation about people that have childcare, elder care, pet
care, medical issues and can be amazing parts of teams from their home office.
And so I just think that it is really important for us to remember
that there is an ability for many, not all, but many people to
be highly productive contributors to their organizations in lots and lots of different ways.
People travel and they're highly productive when they're traveling. There's no difference from being
in a hotel room. I work with lots of clients they're traveling all over
the world. That's considered in office. When they're calling in from Mexico and
there's spotty Wi FI, no one's questioning if they're hybrid at that moment because
they're traveling for business. It is a really, really interesting topic, and
I wonder if it'll ever get wrestled to the ground, or if we will
be talking about this for years and years. We will be talking about it
for years and years. There's just there's no way around it, you know.
There's I think a lot of what drives the arguments and the conversation in
whatever direction it's going, is just simply where the power lies in terms of
the job market. Right, So, if if unemployment is incredibly low and
companies are struggling to find talent, the employees have more power and the likelihood
that an organization will be open to whatever working model works for each employee is
significantly higher. And if you have six percent unemployment, and if you have
you know, if it was a situation like two thousand and eight, two
thousand and nine, there are people who were who would volunteer commute two hours
a day, every single day, just because they needed a job. Good
luck getting employers to even you know, consider a working model that works for
the employee whatever whatever that happens to be. So you know, there there's
this There almost needs to be a meeting in the middle, a symbiotic relationship
that says that, hey, there is no we need you more than you
need us. It's we both need each other, like people need jobs and
companies need talent, and and I think that that an imbalance of that power
can lead to making the wrong decisions. Like if you if about if the
power balance is too far in one direction to the other, it's really difficult
to not wield that in a negative way as a workforce as a whole.
It's easy for a person to not, but it's really difficult to you just
see it happening, You see the decisions being made. You know. It's
it's like when when unemployment is really high, then you see applicants always saying,
oh this this organization ghosted me. You know, they they stopped it,
they stopped replying to my emails. I followed up on interviews. No
one's following up and then they get mad, and then all of a sudden,
the power switches back to the employees or the applicants, and then they
start going companies and they're like, well, they did that to us,
you know, five years ago, when it was the other directions. At
some point, people need to just start treating other people correctly, with with
kindness and compassion, because that's just the right thing to do, and just
trusting that that things will work well if you just do that long enough,
as opposed to just kind of like, you know, I want I want
my I want my uh my piece of cake too, now that I see
that you got yours a few years back. I don't think that your listeners
can see this right now, Chris, but I'm harding. I'm harding you
and harding you and harding you. I appreciate that. No, we're not,
we're not recording video. But uh but I saw I saw that in
the in the video chat. So I've noticed an unfortunate decline in the conversations
related to diversity, equity and inclusion over the last maybe year. I think
I think that the the the murder of George Floyd four years ago, uh
took it to from from the back burner or no burner in a lot of
organizations to the most important thing in the world for them. But it seems
to have lost some momentum recently. I'm wondering if if you have any idea
as to why you think that is, or if you're if you're seeing anything
from organizations coming to you to say we need we need help with this,
because I feel like we had some momentum and we've lost it. I think
you're right. I think that there has been some change in momentum. There's
been a little bit of conversation lately that DEI is dying. There was an
article recently about the fact that DEI could be dangerous for organizations. I think
that post George Floyd there was a big sort of burst and focus on the
topic. We're really fortunate in my organization we have a head of de E
and I Zamino Ledac, who is pretty well known. You may know her,
and she is one of the best in the business. And I wish
she was here for this question because I learn from her every day and I
do not in any way claim to be an expert on the topic. From
my perspective, I think that people have become afraid. I think that the
topics around DEE and I, particularly post October seventh, have become so so
sensitive that inside of organizations, leaders are afraid. We are afraid of saying
the wrong thing, or afraid of not saying enough, We're afraid of saying
too much. There's just so much fear. We're afraid that what we're sharing
in terms of learning is insufficient, or that investing in it and having the
training go awry is dangerous. And so I think that much of what is
happening surrounding the topic of DEIV has been defined lately as shrouded in fear,
and so sadly, just kind of letting it go and letting it be quiet
seems to some people like a safer choice. I think you're right. At
the beginning of my career, it was just diversity. And then I remember
when the I was added, you know, diversity and inclusion in terms of
how people felt included, not just that the number was represented on a spreadsheet.
And then I remember when the E was added, when equity was added,
and now we're talking about belonging. It's it seems like a lot of
organizations in an effort to kind of separate themselves and to say that, oh,
when we say diversity and inclusion, don't roll your eyes, we mean
it differently because we're talking about equity too. When you say D and I,
don't roll your eyes at us, we mean belonging too. It's it's
it's that they're growing the letters in order to say, hey, we're on
the forefront of the vernacular. But the practices that they're doing aren't really changing
much. It's just really about how do we keep our head above water here
and and and not do the wrong thing. And that's it's unfortunate because all
that does is it leads to the growing of the letters without the growing of
the outcomes you're looking for. Right, It is a very very sensitive topic.
I had a client reach out to me recently because they are looking at
whether or not it makes sense to start an ERG for Jewish employees in their
organization post October seventh, right, and they asked me to do an amount
of research for them to see how many other organizations have such an ERG.
And it's an interesting question because it's interesting to understand how many organizations have an
ERG for Jewish employees that in and of itself is an interesting conversation, but
it's also interesting that an organization would need or want to know that information before
starting an ERG for a group of employees. I love it. I love
that. Yes, keep going. I mean that in and of itself is
a conversation. Yes. So we're just we are literally scared of our own
shadow at any given time, and we don't want to just do what once
again, it sort of returns us to our earlier part of the conversation,
Chris, which is empowering our employees and saying to them, your grown ups
and what you want to do, obviously well within reason, is the right
thing for you. And if there's an affinity group that you want to create
because there are things that are important to you, go for it. Yeah.
People have an inherent desire to feel like they are part of a group
that is bigger than them that they can find in commonality with. And when
there is a lack of visible commonality, people will look for other things that
they can find in common with people. And I think in a lot of
cases, some of the strongest relationships that are not based on the outward appearance
of somebody. You have to dig to find commonality with some people. But
in the times when you do that, oftentimes those end up being the deepest
and most profound relationships because they're rooted in something other than what you happen to
be born like or with or you know. These you know, immutable characteristics
that you really have no control over. Those are are more superficial, but
they're easier to form because they're easy to kind of look around the room and
say, Okay, that person looks like me, let's go talk to them.
Especially if you're looking around the room and there are very few people who
look like you, then it can be very easy to do that. I
think it's incumbon to on leaders to put their people in situations where they have
to work at it, because that's a muscle that has to be flexed and
exercised otherwise you lose it. You don't it's not something you just inherently have,
but the need to feel like you're a part of something bigger will drive
you to work that muscle. If you don't look around the room and inherently
see people that like, the easy way out is to find the people that
look like you. And so if you can't do that, you will work
at it, and then that leads to you know, I think better outcomes.
I don't know why more leaders don't don't do that. It's it's so
much easier to kind of let the chips fall where they may. It takes
a lot of confidence to do that, and a lot of releasing of the
fear of what could go wrong. And I think that watching so many people
be canceled, this whole cancel culture, has given people a decent amount of
valid excuses to not put themselves out there, to just let things chill out
and not make a big deal of things and not go into the hard conversations
because they don't want to get canceled. They don't want to see people around
them get canceled. And so I think we've seen some really important topics not
be brought up. I think for leaders, if you are making decisions that
are rooted in values every day and I mean little decisions, if your people
can see you making those decisions daily and they can and they can look at
those decisions and think, Okay, I know where my boss, I know
where my direct leader's values are and what they are, then you get a
lot of grace when it can't necessarily be obviously tied to whatever that why a
decision was made. You get leaders who will make a decision and the person
will go, I don't know why they made that decision, but I know
the last hundred that I saw them make. We're rooted in values and their
values that I agree with and I like that. So I'm going to give
them the benefit of the doubt until I find out what the reason was,
and I'm going to ask, because it's still important to ask. And then
oftentimes, because there's one hundred examples of good decision making, the explanation of
why the decision was made will let that person go, Okay, I get
it. Now, you know. And when a leader is making decisions that
I don't want to say that aren't necessarily agreeable with you, but rooted in
a consistent set of values, even when you disagree with the decision, that
is more important than just making decisions that you agree with. It's making decisions
that you can say, I know where this decision came from, and it's
the same set of values that the last ten were made from. So you
become a predictable leader. You become someone who I know the next thing that
happens I know how they're going to act in advance because this is what they
did the last ten times. And I know I'm not gonna like what they're
gonna do, but you know what, I'm okay with that because I know
where they're coming from and I know why they're going to do it, and
it might not work well for me at this moment, but I like the
times where it does work well for me, and that that actually became more
important than just a leader who makes decisions you happen to agree with every time
I agree. So I recently had one of the executives from the Gallop Organization
on the podcast, Jim Hard, and he said that one of the most
maybe the most indicative element of whether or not an employee is engaged. Were
an employee with self report as being engaged in their work, is the frequency
and rhythm of one on one, well done one on one conversations between them
and their direct leader. I don't know that that would have been the answer
fifteen years ago as the single biggest thing, but it has become that.
Why do you think that is? Why do you think that that people individual
people have put such a growing value on the individual time The one on one
rhythm, the scheduled, like not just quarterly or once a year, but
whatever works for them, be it weekly or bi weekly or whatever it is.
Why is that become so important in our business? At Assemble, we
show up to our off sites and our learning programs wearing shirts that say it's
all about relationships. That's our mantra in our company. And I think that's
the answer to your question. It's what we believe and it's the foundation of
all the work that we do in our company. I think that your one
on one meetings are where you develop and nurture the one on one meaningful relationship.
And the more time you spend building it, and particularly if it's consistent,
as you said, whether it's weekly or bi weekly or monthly, and
you know you can count on it, it starts to develop into a rhythm.
You start to actually build trust. You start to know you can count
on someone. As you said before in what you were talking about, you
start to know, oh, what you're going to get from that person,
and that one on one relationship is what it's all about. It builds loyalty.
It's where you start to see more retention. It's where someone starts to
be more and more accountable to one another. It's where care is built and
ultimately you really start to trust that person. So that is hands down,
I completely understand where Harder gave you that answer. There's this element of feedback
that I think with a lack of on on ones that are regularly scheduled,
and I mean in most organizations they are regularly scheduled, they're just not often
enough, right, They're just there, you know, quarterly or monthly is
supposed to more often than that. And in the absence of those, the
interactions tend to be about providing feedback to people. And it's just the nature
of the beast is that feedback that is not scheduled is there for a reason.
It came up because something happened, and then now a person needs feedback,
and we just don't do that as often for positive things. We don't
do that as often for someone did something well. And so what happens is
there's the you know, feedback you know, gets stuck with this negative connotation
because it deserves it. It deserves that negative connotation because the last ten times
an employee got feedback from their direct boss, it was because they needed to
change something and it doesn't that we're not talking about like work ending or you
know, like I'm worried about getting fired type of things. It could be
tiny little things just to get feedback on. But if they if it is
critiquing feedback, something needs to change and they're all like that, or the
vast majority is like that. It leads to a general aversion to feedback,
not wanting to receive it because that's what it's going to be or likely to
be. And when you have regular one on one scheduled, then there's this
almost permission to have a time scheduled where if I'm if I have this time
scheduled, now I have nothing to critique this person on, but I have
this time. Let's find out what they're doing right. Let's give them some
good feedback on what they're doing right. You do that often enough, and
you decouple the idea of feedback and critiquing, and it becomes feedback is just
feedback and sometimes it's critiquing and sometimes it's not. And when employees believe that
about feedback, they're more likely to give it and give it well, and
they're more likely to receive it well. You know, when people say nobody
likes getting feedback. It's like, no, that's not true. No one
likes getting a feedback when they know it's going to be negative. That's that's
all. And so I think that's a big, big part of it.
But it takes so much intentional work. And I don't mean hard work,
I mean consistent work. It's not hard. It's just hard to prioritize it
for a lot of people if they're not getting the support from their own boss
to make that a priority too. So it really starts at the top.
You can't have leaders at the top saying this isn't important, or at least
not putting importance on it, and then expect the people below them will place
a higher level of importance on it. I agree with you. In organizations
where you have seen a lack of psychological safety, how have you addressed that?
Because you use assessments in advance, you know what you're getting yourself into
when you meet with teams. Obviously, I'm sure you've seen teams that have
higher levels of psychological safety than others. What are some of the things that
you're saying to leaders if you don't see evidence of high psychological safety amongst the
team we've got specific programs that we put leaders through and we put executive teams
through to help work through lots of these issues. So we've got programs to
help people understand one another's strengths and appreciate one another better. We've got programs
to help people understand their change profiles. We have programs on conflict. But
where there's issues of psychological safety, it's really important to work with the leaders
directly, one on one and help them understand what it is about their own
style that's creating a situation and an environment that's unsafe. And so that's a
really individualized response. Can I get an example like what you don't have to
give me a name of a company, obviously, but something that you if
a leader has come to you, obviously they have a desire to at least
something, for something to be different. Otherwise they wouldn't have reached out to
your organization to begin with. And if they're reaching out, at least it
shows a desire for things to be different, which is a good starting place.
And if you find that there's low psychological safety, what are some of
the things you tell leaders to do to be able to change that. If
they genuinely want to make a change. What can they do? We work
with teams to help them build trust with people on the team. And so
the best way to help in situations where there is a lack of safety is
to encourage and facilitate really difficult conversations and to help a leader to be open
to hearing what they need to hear, and to help a member of the
team figure out the best way to say what they need to say. And
so facilitating those really hard conversations is part of what we do. And depending
on what the situation is, sometimes multiple people are involved and multiple people feel
the environmental strain, and sometimes it's individual just between a diet or a triad,
and so we figure that out and sometimes it's in a breakout scenario.
Sometimes it's a full room and we facilitate those conversations. But you're talking about
like not role plays specifically, but doing this when it isn't about a specific
issue, it's actually happening. Are you talking about actually working through a real
world thing with leaders and employees in the moment, like where you're in the
room with them one hundred percent? So recently I was working with a team
and a very very difficult topic came up and the team was having a difficult
time admitting something to the leader in the room. And I stopped in the
room and I said, let's all stop right now and recognize what's happening.
It sounds like it's really difficult for you to say to this leader what you
need to say. Is that true? And the person said yes, And
I said can you tell us why? And the person said well, and
the person felt very nervous. We don't really give negative feedback to the leader.
And I said, well, let's all just press pause and talk about
it. And so we opened up a conversation with the CEO in the room
and the entire team and talked about why we don't want to give difficult feedback
to the CEO, what the issue is. And I said, to the
CEO, are you hearing this, what's your feedback to this? How does
it feel to you to hear the team saying that it's hard to give feedback
to you? What is your response? How do you feel about that?
And I facilitated a live in the moment conversation about why it's hard for that
team to share feedback with the CEO. And I facilitated a conversation for the
CEO to respond back about how that person does or doesn't want to hear feedback
from the team. Do you think we're Do you think the majority of times
when situations like that happen, the person is aware but was putting their head
in the sand, or unaware and shocked and really, you know, I
need to change this now. I didn't realize this was the case. You
know, what is it? Where? Do you think it kind of falls
more? I think it's case by case. I've I've seen both. Sometimes
sometimes I see somebody say, I know I've heard this before and I'm working
on it and I don't want people to feel this way. And other times
I see a deer in the headlights and a person responds and says, oh
my gosh, I'm I'm so surprised that you feel that way. It's interesting,
do you is one of those reactions or scenarios easier to fix than the
other. I think what makes something easiest to address is when a person is
interested in being better. It's less about whether or not the person knew it
before and more about how a person receives feedback and whether they care enough to
want to be better. Have you been fortunate enough to work with people who
mostly do that? You know? I mean, how do you have you
Have you ever said to a leader flat out, you hired us to work
with you, things need to change on your end or the results you're expecting
out of us to help you aren't going to happen. This actually needs to
change from your end and have them kind of you know, you come up
with roadblocks where they're just unwilling to change. Rarely because the teams that hire
and bring us in want to be better, So we don't come up against
a lot of people that don't want to be better. They're bringing in a
company like Assemble because it's important to them to elevate their leadership games. So
they're rolling up their sleeves and they're digging in, and they know that they're
going to have some hard conversations. And we tell them in advance what we're
going to do and what their experiences are going to be like. We coach
them, we do fractional work, we do a bunch of other things,
but in our off sites, people are going into these sessions knowing that they're
going to be having really important, meaningful, transformational discussions. I love that.
I think it's very very important work. Give our listeners and ask where
can they go to learn more about your company and what you do In case
you know this work sounds like something that they would like to be more part
of. We can be found on the wonderful world Wide Web at www dot
hr assemble A S, S E, M B L E, and you
can find me on LinkedIn at Jill Katz. Thank you so much for being
with us today, Jill, I appreciate it, and your listeners look at
a lot of the out of the conversation awesome. Thanks for having me.
So glad to be here with you today.