Good morning. Good afternoon and welcome to today’s Workforce Webinar. My name is Alex and as always, I’m here today to help answer any of your general or technical questions that may come up. But before we get started, I’m going to cover a couple of things that you should know about the session today. There’s no dial in number for attendees, so all audio will be streamed to you through your computer, speakers or headphones. Please adjust your volume there accordingly. If you’re hearing me now, you should be good.
You can submit questions, and we do encourage you to do that at any point during today’s presentation by clicking on the Q and a icon which should be located on the right hand side of your screen. Click there, type your question in, and click Submit. If it’s content related, there should be some time for questions towards the end of today’s webinar. And if it’s a technical question, I’ll have an answer for you that should appear on your screen shortly after you submit. If you want, you can feel free to familiarize yourself with the Q amp a tool by letting us know where you’re joining in from. We already have someone doing so down from Dallas. Welcome to you.
Like I said, if you feel like it, you can familiarize yourself with that Q and a tool by clicking on it. And let us letting us know where you’re joining in from. You can download a PDF of the deck today to follow along and take notes if you’d like. By clicking on the handout icon, which should also be appearing on the right hand side of your screen, you can see what that looks like here on the slot. Just click there and you can pull down that PDF to take notes. If you’d like, this webinar is being recorded. You’re going to receive a link to the recording about 24 hours after this webinar ends today.
In that same email, you’ll have a link to the slides and your HRCI and SEM certification codes for today’s event. Like I said, that will come about 24 hours after this webinar ends today. It will come from HCM events, and please always be sure to check spam. Sometimes they do get sent into there, so if you don’t receive it within 24 to 30 hours, you can reach out to me directly. My email is on the webinar page on the website. All right, so we’re going to get started here. And first things first, I’m going to pass things over to Alyssa Conley, the director of the Coach community at Lingo Live, to kind of get things started and let us know what we’re going to be hearing about today.
Alyssa, great. Thank you, Alex. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us and thanks for letting us know where you’re joining us from. Hi, Michelle from Los Angeles. Jamie from Kansas. Don we said Hello to you.
We are really looking forward to this conversation with Jade Hanley from Slack. We are talking about how to fix the leadership development gap. Obviously, this is something that you care a lot about or you wouldn’t be here. So today’s agenda, we’re going to be talking about how we identify who should be a leader in the first place, the difference between leadership and management, which is a topic that you’ve probably touched on a lot in your land or HR careers. We’re going to take a little bit of a different angle on that today, talking about management and leadership tracks. And is there an opportunity for leadership on leadership tracks at your organization? We’re going to be discussing the problem with leadership development today and then some solutions for bridging that gap. We invite you to please please send your questions to the Q and A.
We will take your questions at the end of today’s session. And we are so looking forward to hearing what you’re interested in so that we can either address it today or create more valuable content for you to join us for in the future. So with that, I will pass it over to Jade to introduce herself. So, Jade, please let the attendees know who you are. Absolutely. Hi, Alyssa. And Hi, everyone on the line.
Thank you. So my name is Jade Haley. I am a learning and development partner and read. I focus on leadership development here at Flat and I primarily have had a career that is focused on the HR space as well as research and best practice consulting has moved me along into what I now like to focus on, which is really thinking about our leadership development programs. What does that look like to have the succession planning and the bench and that future state of leadership. So very excited to be here with all of you today and excited to hear what all of you are thinking about as well. Lisa, I will pass it back to you.
Thanks. And my name is Alyssa Conley. As Alex said, I am the Director of Coach Community at Lingo Live. Lingo Live is a skills based coaching company that helps employees gain the skills they need to contribute their unique potential in the workplace with the ultimate goal of improving team performance, bottom line results, and, of course, the individuals experience at work, which is what creates company culture. I have I currently direct a global community of coaches. We have over 130 coaches. More than 20 nationalities are represented in our coaching community. I also have experience managing a globally distributed remote team with team members in Asia and Europe and in the United States.
Prior to Lingo Live, I was mostly in teaching and coaching and then getting into Lingo Live and moving into management. I can relate to a lot of the topics we’re discussing today in terms of what do you do for people who may have solid based skills but really don’t have that management experience. So new managers, new leaders and developing them within the organization. So I’m interested in hearing from those of you who are attending today. Please use the Q and A to tell us what your biggest issue or problem in leadership development programs are today, and this will help us direct the conversation. Spend more time where you, the audience is interested in having more information. So find your Q amp A and let us know what’s the biggest issue you’re having with leader development programs.
And as those responses start coming in, I’ll read them out.
Welcome. Mindy from Charlotte. Hi from Toronto.
Yeah. Finding good micro learning programs says less micro learning.
We’re going to touch a little bit on sort of the 70 2010 idea today where part of a big part of development is experience and those micro learning programs just in time learning, making sure that there are opportunities for on the job development, other issues you have with developing your leaders, your managers adoption from Melissa, adoption of the program, getting people in.
Yeah, that’s a battle, too, because people have so much that they feel like they need to get done just to do their day to day work. How do you get them into your programs to develop, to become more efficient at their day to day work? Jamie, looking for more general information.
Great. This is a great place to start, Michelle, connecting content to business objectives and sort of battling that culture of checking the box. Right? It’s not done just because it’s done, but did people actually achieve the outcomes the business is looking for from that content? Thanks, Michelle. Kelly managers not using a training system or training for having difficult conversations in a timely manner. That’s really relevant, I think tough conversations. I mean, it’s such a skill set. It takes development, and every time you have to have one of those, it challenges you as a human and your emotional perspective and your connection to the people around you. So helping people feel good and confident about managing those definitely Kelly leaders who aren’t willing to make the time for development.
Echoing that same sort of that same sort of piece of making sure that people are doing it beyond just checking the box. Thanks.
Mindy on behavior change, application of learning, post a learning experience. Again, touching on getting those business outcomes to happen. David, content to generic, not competency based. Are you able to do the thing that we’re trying to get you to do? It? Is it clear, Lisa, leaders having time to dedicate to these programs? Michelle, aligning culture and values and everything. Rosela, how do you provide guidance to individuals who don’t have the depth of experience necessary to draw from? That’s a great question.
Hi, again, they think it’s not important. Don’t see the value. Yeah. So touching on a lot of themes here. Ronnie also bringing a comment in about leaders finding the time for learning, but not just to do the learning, but to stop and think. And then I think that goes back to that point of applying the knowledge and really growing the competencies later.
Yeah. Great responses from everyone. Thank you. My colleague Kelly will be synthesizing some of those answers into sort of the top three point. And as we go through today, we will make sure that we spend a little bit more time on what it seems like you are all struggling with. So with that, obviously, you’re here because you care about these types of things and in the land world, and the numbers show that you should. It’s alarming. But 15% of employees leave a job to get away from their manager, to get away from someone.
82% of people don’t trust their boss to tell them the truth. And 30% of variability and team performance is directly attributable to the team leaders, self awareness, EQ and integrity. So I commend you all for your investment and these types of initiatives because it’s clear that when you don’t have learning and development solutions or HR solutions for leadership and management, it causes real business issues for you. So let’s turn it over here and start our interview with Jade, who slack is just booming right now. They are growing globally. They’re building teams in Dublin and in Japan and in La and all over the place. So I know that you are talking about these topics day in and day out, so I’m so excited to have your expertise here.
So first of all, how do you identify who should be a manager? Yeah.
That is such a great question.
Just as you were saying, Alissa Black is a collaboration company. It’s the one that really infuses into everything that we do, our values, our mission. Our mission is actually to make people’s lives more simple, more pleasant and productive. And we infuse that into pretty much everything that we do here, even including how are we making every employee’s life more simple, more pleasant, productive with all of our programs? And the way we think about identifying people managers, especially those who are growing up with the company, is we have a few different avenues. We have some of the more traditional operational style avenues, like collaboration type focus in calibration meetings and performance reviews and feedback cycles. But really we focus also on making sure that every manager is having really consistent and a very kind of ongoing cadence of Ford looking career conversations. And in those career conversations, we really think about how do you identify what somebody’s motivations are, especially for leadership.
So when we are talking to our managers and helping click them for these career conversations, a lot of it is about tapping into motivation. So why does somebody want to be a people manager? Is it because they want to grow and develop other people or to have greater impact or to understand and be able to connect the dots? We look for a lot of folks especially who have the mindset in body that growth mindset have really deep listening and potential for coaching skills, as well as really have just true authenticity and vulnerability and the way they work, as well as a very high level of self awareness.
Right. So those are some of the initial traits that you’re talking about, their self awareness, listening, coaching skills, mindset, growth mindset. Are there other things that you’re specifically looking for in terms of their performance or their interaction with their colleagues? Yeah. I think especially because we are again, really focused on collaboration. And what does that look like in practice, especially those who have really strong trust building capability in cross cross functional organizations as well as within their teams, those who can look up and kind of higher above and be able to connect the dots, as well as people who just are very true to having those types of tough, clear conversations, like feedback conversations. The other traits that we look for in people managers, especially those who can really understand how to make an impact on the business. It kind of goes back to also, when we identify people managers, there has to be as well as kind of that motivation behind why you want to be a people manager. Also, that business need and being able to connect from there.
Other traits that we really look for in particular are especially because we’re a globally distributed company ability to tap into that self awareness, to build trust across different time zones, locations, but also to be very flexible. So to understand how to really just change and flex and adjust. Given all of the different things that are going on across the org with their teams, they are different team members. We talk about the concept of situational leadership and really understanding. How do I tap into different things based on the different needs of my team? Yeah. Can you take in a little bit more to the idea of situational leadership and what that means? Yeah. So the way we talk about it at Slack is that situational leadership is essentially an understanding that every single person, a company comes to the team with different perspectives, different experience, different backgrounds, different working styles.
And so as a leader or manager, being able to actually have those deep conversations really get to the root of how do you like to receive feedback? How do we set that cadence for problem solving and retrospectives, or coming back to having more courageous conversations, really understanding what each person on their team needs? And so that, I think is something that actually pretty much we hire for all across the board, these real skill sets of leadership, to be able to have those conversations and make sure that you’re making connections across different teams. And a lot of it also comes down to just really being a good listener. Situational leadership really takes being able to listen, being able to flex. And so a lot of our practice as well as we look for those traits of within people. But we also do a ton of training around even just that really core skill of listening.
Great. Thank you. It’s really great to hear in your answer sort of two different paths here. You’re talking about conversations with individuals where they’re articulating their motivations, their career goals, their career experiences. But then you’re also talking about how people are showing up at work and their day to day actions. And one of the things I talk about a lot with people that I coach is this idea of who you are, these qualifiers or adjectives that our team members give us a great leader or great collaborator. Those are not actually actions. You have to do things to get people to give you those types of titles.
So things like listening when your colleague is speaking to you, connecting a project idea back to business impact, being able to have a tough conversation and deliver tough feedback. And I know Slack is all about the feedback, culture and feedback environment. And so it’s really great to hear that you’re trying to take these two perspectives. Not just can you articulate what your approach is to people and your motivation to work with people is, but also what are people actually doing day to day? The actions they’re taking that build those perspectives of being a great leader or collaborator that are actually titles that your colleagues gift to you. They’re not something that you just say. I’m a collaborator. Someone else has to see what you do and give that to you.
So it’s great to hear that. And I’m interested. Now, what about traits that are red flags? What are things that you see? And you’re like, wow, we hired this person. We’re looking for leadership skills. But now this thing is happening and they’re not really a great leader, and they’re definitely not going to be cut out for management. Yeah, this one is interesting because again, when we hire Black, we really do think about do they embody and actually a lot of our hiring processes around our values and making sure that they are a culture ad and really fitting with what we’re all about here. However, I would say one of the biggest traits that’s a red flag and is something that comes up.
I can imagine it comes up in all of our world is especially seeing when somebody comes in with a different mindset. And maybe that’s a mindset of I already have all the answers, or I am already the best, highest performing individual contributor on my team. And so therefore, I should be a people manager. That’s obviously my next step. I think those are the flags that we tend to raise, especially as we are having these types of conversations as managers are having these conversations with their direct reports to really understand. Okay, that if that’s the mindset of that’s a mentality, maybe the one is probably a lack of self awareness there. And so really focusing more on the reflection piece and digging deeper, but then also understanding if this is someone that’s already presenting with some of those traits, how are they going to be when they receive tough feedback, or how will they be in creating that trust and psychological safety on their team? They already believe that they have all the answers.
Flip side of that is especially going back to the traits that really make someone cut out for people management. Is that ability to show up every day and always think about there’s always something more for me to learn from all the people in my ecosystem. Yeah. So really touching on pieces of, like, fixed mindset, fixed mindset versus that growth mindset. And if you find that someone maybe spoke very eloquently to growth mindset through the interview process, but then they get into the work environment, are showing something else, then taking a step back and focusing on reflection first. Yeah, absolutely.
Great. Well, let’s take a moment and talk just a little bit about the difference between leadership and management. As I said at the beginning of the webinar, this conversation is not new. The idea that leadership is a certain set of skills and management is a certain set of skills is something that HR professionals have been talking about for a long time. One of the ways I like to think about it is that people management is about people management skills, and leadership is about people influencing skills. I want to ask, what do you do? Let’s move to this idea of not what the difference? Maybe you want to touch a little bit on how you think about leadership versus management, but I really want to focus on the tactical pieces here. What do you do with great employees who aren’t people managers, people with leadership potential, but just don’t have those people management skills? Yeah.
So that’s one that we talk about a lot, actually, and especially in our programs, do oftentimes interchange that term of leaders and managers. However, to your point, Alyssa, there’s really a pretty big distinction in some areas in some places, I would say, especially for those who maybe are exhibiting the core leadership skills and who aren’t people managers. There’s still so many different ways and pasting avenues that they can take. I will say one of the things again, going back to even that first step of hiring and bringing people into the companies. All of our programs really are built around the idea that everyone is a leader in their own right. There are some very core meta skills that should be developed across all of the company at first being actually that’s really powerful, being able to give and receive and request feedback really effectively. Such a key leadership skill, as well as being able to really tap into some of those collaboration strategies that are so vital, like being able to really build trust on a project team quickly, or cross time zones, or make sure that you’re having that regular cadence and call back.
So what we do with great employees who aren’t people managers, we think about there’s so many different places and ways that they can go. And at Slack, we do have the luxury of really thinking about how do you help envision what the different path would look like? That’s not just the people management laddering path. So we really think about this idea that you can be a very, very senior independent contributor and really have an impact on your team and in different ways and roles as a mentor or as a thought partner or all those different pieces, and you don’t have to be a piece of manager. However, what I would say is that especially with those employees who aren’t people managers, it’s the same thing. It’s really dialing into. You’re still a leader. You’re still someone that people are looking up to to emulate.
You’re still somebody that is expected to communicate with clarity, to inspire on your team, to think about. How do we drive continuous improvement within the organization? All right.
Thank you, Jade. I’m going to just iterate a couple of those great points you made. So everyone is a leader and looking for meta skills. So if you’re taking notes, the two that Jade mentioned there are giving, receiving, requesting feedback effectively and tapping into collaboration strategies. And then another point you made that. Wow. I would love to see more companies taking thoughtful approaches to what you do with independent contributors.
And some of two of the things you mentioned there are mentorship and thought partnership. And so thinking about at your company, how you can split, like a slack, how they’ve split sort of people management versus independent contributors as leaders. So how can you build tracks for people to become mentors or thought partners in those independent contributor positions? Those are some great takeaways for our audience today, Jade.
So let’s talk a little bit about this concept of leaders, and Slack looks to hire leaders from the outset. We’ve talked a lot about some of those main competencies that you’ve listed. But what about when you find someone who isn’t quite the leader that you’re looking for? So in the same way that you would offer non management tracks for leaders, would you consider offering non leadership tracks for employees, people who are maybe better tactical executors, who don’t step into the limelight, who aren’t interested in being mentors or thought leaders to other people? I would say that we still expect that everybody is going to again have those deeper leadership capabilities and really believe that everything can be developed.
Yes, there are some traits that maybe somebody has more strengthen or able to Hone in a little bit further. But there’s always these opportunities to really grow and develop in these ways. And so actually, it’s like we have two different programs that we’ve built out over the past few years. The first is called Exploring Leadership as an individual contributor, independent contributor, and that is really focused on especially that non management tracks the leaders. What are, again, a really poor skills that you need to be able to build through any level or at any point in your career. And it focuses in on particularly health do advocate. What does it look like to advocate and influence? To really make sure that you’re dialing into advocating for your ideas for your team, for the things that we’re working on, then going back into what I was saying before the collaboration strategies.
So what does that actually look like? To build a much deeper skill set around the core concepts of collaboration that takes the feedback and the clear communication and setting of expectations and really understanding how different people work, and then also presenting and communicating ideas in clear, thoughtful ways.
That’s a whole practice, even in public speaking, as well as a deeper dive into understanding how to really synthesize and create these ideas and presentations for anything that you do across the org. So that is a program that is open to everyone. It is wholly a program dedicated to those who aren’t interested in people management. And I would say on the flip side, we also have a program called Exploring Leadership as a Manager, and that is really focused on folks who are currently independent contributors who are interested in people manager. But maybe we don’t have a sense of am I fully interested in am I ready to be a manager? So that’s really, again, tapping into those much more deep skill sets of how do you think about your deeper motivations for management? How do you think about delegating work and creating alignment on your team and having those feedback exchanges, as well as setting team norms or communication norms? So we do offer both of those tracks to all employees. And I really do fully believe that second question, that’s on the slide, there is so much value in keeping people on board. We maybe don’t demonstrate those leadership qualities from the get go because there’s always that ability to develop them.
We really do again, think about embodying that growth mindset in every program that we put forward or create. And it’s really about what are those things that everyone is going to need to know and be able to tap into and be able to apply throughout their career? Thank you, Jade.
I know I, for one, will be going back to the recording and taking down a full list of all of these competencies you’ve just mentioned. I think they’re really practical, sort of high level ways to think about what are we really trying to build in either a leader or in a manager? Some of the things you mentioned for those of you taking notes now are for leaders, advocacy, influence, collaboration strategies, emotional quotient, or understanding how people work and communication skills, and then for management, those baseline leadership skills, but also things such as delegation alignment, creating team norms. And I think that this speaks back to what our audience gave the information our audience gave to us in the first poll about their interest in helping people see the value in learning and development programs. And I think that slack is really on to something here, because when you recognize that not everyone wants to take the same path into people management necessarily, or that people need really clear motivations to take that path into people management, then you’re starting to speak to something that’s more in interior and internal to the person that you’re working with in terms of who are you and then how do these programs benefit you and who you want to be in the workplace? So you start to encourage people to see the value because you’re not just saying you need to develop into this fixed mold that we believe you need to be.
You’re saying there are all sorts of ways to use these types of skills in the workplace, whether or not you want to be a manager or whether or not you just want to be really efficient, effective and leading influencing collaborator on your team. And I think that when you start to recognize that people have different intrinsic motivations for finding value in work and connections to their colleagues, as then you start to get at that root of that value piece and making those programs relevant. And when those programs are relevant, then people see the value and going because they’re not just checking that box. And so I think for those of you who sent comments earlier in the poll, I would really take note of this as an opportunity for development in your own companies to start thinking about, what do you do with people who aren’t just fitting that mold? How do you really bring personalization into those programs and get to the root of how people identify themselves and want to be identified by their colleagues? So I don’t know, Jade, if you want to add anything there no, I would say actually list you just wrap that up so beautifully in a bow.
But especially to your point, the idea of kind of doing a reset, especially if you are thinking about how could my company really branch into these different tracks? It does take a little bit of a reset as well as really getting that higher level leadership on board. And that’s something that we did take a lot of time up front to make sure that everyone, especially in our senior leadership group, was in the same mindset and the same mentality, especially around that development opportunity across the board.
Great. So I think we have really touched on the idea of training you can give employees to develop as leaders who walked us through the couple of track programs that you have there. So I want to take us back a little bit high level to this idea of the problem with leadership development today, because what we’re talking about is a great way to address making things relevant and making things fit different people’s motivations and what they want to be doing in the workplace. But what is the issue that a lot of these land and HR professionals are running into what could be roadblocks for people stepping back and taking a different approach? And as we were preparing and talking through concepts for this webinar, you touched on for really great points. Jade. So I’d love for you to share those with our audience.
Absolutely. So when we were talking about what are those really big gaps and the things that we continue to see and in fact, continually are challenged with? So we are always thinking about these as we’re developing our programs. The first is that 72,010 problem. The idea that so much of our learning 70% of the time is based off of experience, 20% of the time is through that peer to peer interaction and learning, and then 10% is really the context. However, I feel like the majority of learning programs really focus, of course, on the 10% when 70% of learning experience. And so what we actually try to do is really set up that support system for our new managers, especially those who are emerging managers or just transition from independent contributor to manager and really giving them that support system to say there’s space to make mistakes, there’s space to try things. This is going to be a learning journey. And so so much of what you do is going to be about experience.
And yes, we’re going to give you some initial concepts in practice and some avenues to do that. But really focusing in on that 70% versus the 10%. The other thing is one of the other big apps that really comes up is, of course, distributed teams. And seeing that, especially with our teams growing in so many different parts of the world being spread out has presented real challenges, I would say, for our leadership development and just the idea of what does this look like and especially thinking about tapping into those core skills that are necessary for a leader who’s meeting a distributed team and really honing in on those like, again, going back to that self awareness piece, somebody that also is truly authentic in the way that they work and the way that they communicate with their team, and then also tapping into how do you build resilience through the different changes or really Hone in on being flexible and being able to adjust, especially when things are moving in so many different ways and parts and pieces. The other thing, another gap that does come up a lot is people who truly just are in the wrong role. So we sometimes have folks who go down the management path and who think, okay, maybe this isn’t exactly for me. And so one of the things that we’ve been trying to be really thoughtful about is how do you shift the message from that was a failure you failed as a people manager to instead you’re making a career shift back to maybe being an independent contributor.
That’s just a change that you’re making. So really giving again, that kind of ability to not feel like I just have to go up the same path in this ladder, but really have more options. And then also at the end of the day, it is all about that way of being able to introduce concepts and practice and ideas and exercises in a way that feels personalize and more valuable to those folks who are in the room or on the line. And so the one size fits all truly doesn’t work anymore. So what we focus on, especially, is one how do you customize and make sure that you’re sourcing the stories internally? That really will resonate from our perspective, like the slack perspective, but from your companies as well, and then really helping people understand that. So much of our program is really just about bringing together this community of managers, of leaders so that they can learn from each other so they can tap into each other, going back to again that and versus just the content and training I’m going to grab on to that community idea, because obviously, as the director of Coach, community, community is a big part of what I think about.
And one of the concepts that has been so valuable to us developing our community of coaches is the concept of communities of practice. So for those of you listening today, write that down communities of practice and go read a little bit about that. Because what Jade is talking about here in terms of bringing managers together to share their knowledge and experience, that’s one of the the most efficient and effective ways to get at what is really a challenge and then at what real practical knowledge exists out there to solve those challenges for people. One of the big mistakes that I think we make in Land and HR is creating a program that we think is going to fix these abstract issues or address these abstract needs for the business. But when the program gets deployed, the people who are part of that program aren’t actually seeing what they need in that program to apply to their day to day with the idea of communities of practice. It’s about creating spaces and opportunities in areas where people can come together and discuss common, common successes, common issues, common solutions and common ideas and share those experiences with one another on the baseline idea that those who are living the experience day in and day out are actually the experts on that experience. Someone who’s been through the same issue that you’re going through has real tactical solutions for how you could probably address that issue.
And one of the solutions we have at Linga Live for our globally distributed coaches is actually a slack community for them. And we have different channels where they can share resources, talk about classroom moments, have community discussion, and it really allows that community to grow organically. And so I think that you’ve keyed in on something here, Jade, which to me, really resonates that idea of community building within your organizations and not just thinking about how do we build programs to support our employees from the organization to the employees? But how do we build spaces where employees can support one another? That to me, we hadn’t talked about that in the pre sort of webinar stuff. So hearing you say that is just I’m like over here. So anyway, I love it. It’s great. So one of the things we talked about fixed mindset, growth mindset.
I want to tackle this other amazing visual you brought to the table, which I think everyone can walk away with today about changing the way that they are thinking about. So can you talk specifically to this idea of the latter versus the rock climbing wall? Yes, absolutely. And this is something that I love to talk about, especially to be able to bring this to life for our employees and for managers so that they can infuse this type of concept into their career conversations. They’re one on one the feedback conversations with their teams. But to exactly what your point, Alyssa? That pervasive misconception about growth that continues to pervade every part of of our social ecosystem is this idea that in order to progress in order to be successful in our careers, we have to move up that ladder. We have to move up to that next round, that next step. But in reality, even if that was the traditional path today, it’s all about this concept, actually, of rock climbing what actually is happening, especially as we progress in our careers, especially if the world becomes as distributed and networked and connected as it is, we really are actually moving more in a rock climbing way versus up a ladder.
So the idea here is that there might be a say, it could go further into this analogy. There might be a handhold to the right or to the left or even down in order to move up. So really helping employees understand that their career path can be winding, it might have different opportunities in different ways. We like to also think about the manager as the person who’s on the ground who’s actually helping Belay, which means that as an employee, you’re in charge of your career and your path, but you have that support system around you. You might even have that manager who’s seeing a little further out as well able to say, okay, this is where you want to go. Let’s try to figure out and navigate. You might have to go this way in order to go up, or you might have to go down in order to go up.
But that’s the way that our whole world works today. And so really infusing that into pretty much everything that we do is this idea of it’s no longer the letter. It’s the rock in a I love that visual.
I think it’s so powerful to walk away and think about, okay, where do you go next and even bring that visual into your conversations with your direct reports or with your team members and say, all right, let’s not think about where you’re going up next, but what else do you need to build? What baseline do you need? Are you going to go a little sideways down, left, right. What are you missing to be able to get to where you want to go? But let’s Zoom out and take a look at that full wall. So for those of you who are listening today, maybe try this in a conversation with your managers or with your direct reports and see, does this image resonate with them? And how does that image then translate into what actual tracks or development opportunities you provide? And so thinking about what you’re providing also in a more displayed and expanded way, rather than just you go into this program and then the next development program and the next one and the next one going up, that wrong. But thinking, okay, how do we really I think this speaks to that point of micro learning and just in time, learning, how do we really develop programs that allow people to move laterally down up, depending on what they need? Great. Thank you for sharing that visual. And now I’d like to turn it over to the audience. For those of you who’ve been listening today, we’ve had a lot of different ideas about what we can do with our leadership development programs to address some of the major issues we called out in the first audience poll.
But what have we missed? What are you doing at your company? So please use that Q and A to send your answers. What’s missing? What are you doing? What are you trying? Let us know.
What are you going to try? Maybe there’s something you heard today that really resonates with you that you’d like to take back immediately while you’re thinking and sending in your answers to this question of what have we missed or what else would you like to see or hear us speak to? I would like to move on to speak a little bit more to the idea of bridging the leadership and development gap.
We’ve talked a little bit about how we solve for the 70 2010. So in terms of creating culture, a culture of people being able to make mistakes to learn as they go, not expecting people to just walk away and know something after one development training, understanding that people are working across distributed teams and really looking for people who have cultural awareness and people awareness to be able to work in those environments, building different tracks for people who are in the wrong roles, and understanding that people management isn’t the only next rung in the letter and then personalizing your programs.
So I know that at Slack, you have have really built some great ways to support emerging leaders. And some of those are one of those specific ways Besides the programs that you’ve discussed today, which thank you so much for sharing those details. But you also explore the idea of coaching and mentorship at Slack and this idea of a coaching culture. So Jade, I would love for you to speak to the role of coaching and mentorship at Slack and in careers in general, maybe what you’ve seen in your past.
Absolutely. So something is so interesting about coaching is that it is a craft, and we talk about it a lot as a leadership craft. And so we really focus on especially a lot of our programs for managers and those who are emerging leaders or those new to management to understand all the different elements of coaching. And a lot of it is about, again, that deep practice of listening, that understanding of how to shift your questions from closed ended questions to open ended or high impact questions to be able to unlock something for your team, and also to understand that you don’t have to be the solutions factory or that person that has all the answers. Again, using coaching to be able to really bring out the best in your team members and also protecting yourself to create that real culture of of coaching, of productive as effectiveness of feedback. We also see mentorship in a slightly different way as well. So mentorship is very different from coaching because mentorship maybe that you do have some answers. You do have some insights and expertise that you are sharing that you’re helping to guide.
But when it comes to mentorship, also thinking about how am I doing anything in a way that I’m going to show you something, and then I’m going to have you experience it, and then I’m going to have you teach somebody else. So really thinking about that whole concept, we do a lot in going back to your concept, which I also love. We talk a lot about our communities and our cohorts, but we also have coaching practice circle, basically where we bring some of our managers together, in particular, who focus in on real, deep practice of coaching, whether it’s around to helping another peer manager and coaching them through a change that’s taking place or performance challenge on their team. And we also have, especially for those on the line who want to tap into maybe what this could look like, especially for that coaching practice, having a coach, a speaker, and then an observer. So having a third party who’s also observing that interaction and then able to provide feedback to the coach and to that speaker to say this is what I was seeing. These are the types of questions that I was hearing. This was really powerful here.
This is the body language that I even listening. And you can do that both on a an electronic tool or Zoom or go to meeting or go to Webinar, but also in person. And those are the types of practices that we really, really believe in. And so that role of coaching again, and mentorship, they’re both so valuable, so important, and we take a lot of time in those practices.
Right. And as a coaching company, I think it’s really important to distinguish between coaching versus mentorship. Coaching is very focused on reflective practice. Self awareness. That concept that you’ve brought up so many times here is actually the backbone of everything we do of our programs that Lingo live is building self awareness in the people. And our coaches help the people they’re working with build self awareness to start to articulate even what they want to grow, how they want to grow, what they’re seeing happen around them. And then mentorship is really more about maybe something you would see in those communities of practice type spaces where people who lived through something who’ve had a similar experience in a similar industry or similar role or position, and they have that lived experience that they can bring to the conversation. So they’re not necessarily pushing on people to reflect and grow as much, but they are able to offer very valid and Sage insights.
So really thinking about those as two different things. So coaches versus mentors and what role they can play for people in your organization and where you want to source them. Do you want internal or external coaches or mentorship? There’s so many programs out there that people can choose from to find the right thing that’s going to work for them. So I would like to invite you now, Jade, to just wrap this up for our audience. What are the takeaways and key conclusions from today? And then we’ll open it up to questions. And Alec, I can’t see the questions in my go to Webinar dashboard at this point. So if you can maybe help me figure that out so I can take questions from the audience, so go ahead and give us our key takeaways from today.
Jade, sure. So in conclusion, as we’ve talked through a lot of different concepts, some of the key takeaways that I would like to be able to leave you all with is the first just to really understand what are some of the opportunities that we create can create even at that small moment, micro learning level to help people explore management. And then also to think about what are those core leadership skills that we need and want to build at all levels really goes back to even that concept of practice around listening around, coaching, around building time for self reflection.
Self awareness. I did actually see a note, especially about touching on new manager on boarding. But especially for our more seasons and experienced leaders, we actually really focus on creating opportunities for them to coach each other, for them to create that community of practice so that they don’t feel as alone as oftentimes our most senior leaders do at those levels. The second takeaway is just to think about mindset. And we’ve talked about six mindset. We talked about growth mindset. We talked about that mentality around career paths in general, from the ladder to the rock climbing wall.
And so to be able to really continue to have those types of conversations and infuse that language, large and framing into your learning programs or the way that you’re really discussing with your leadership teams what this could look like. It does take a collective shift of mindset in order to create some of these opportunities that we’ve been talking about. And then lastly, especially to help move beyond that initial training or that one size fits all kind of initial thing that maybe is the best opportunity first initially bring forward is to then create and build some of those support systems beyond that really help to help all people Hone their core leadership skills or competencies things like that communities practice or creating new cohorts or those practice circles really building that support system as well into that day to day tools. What does this look like to practice that even small skill of really deep listening in my next one on one or two, build a little bit more self awareness of the way I’m authentically showing up every day. And how does that actually shape how I’m showing up? Great.
Thank you, Jade, and a couple of suggestions from our audience as well. That from our pole earlier. I want to make sure we get those out there. Since I didn’t share from Ronnie, she said one of the areas we use in coaching leaders is the awareness blending of the brain and the heart. So understanding that most decisions have both elements and you want to motivate. And if you want to motivate and influence others, that means you have to understand that killer combo of the heart and the mind. So that also goes back to that idea.
I think of situational leadership and embody experience and what people are bringing to them with the table. And then Mahi has shared with us the idea of encouraging leaders to build a culture of recognition. That’s great. We didn’t touch too much on that today, but not just feedback and critical conversations, but also a culture of recognizing what people are doing and how they’re doing it and how they’re showing up. So thanks for those answers to the poll, Jade. Thank you for that amazing wrap up and all your phenomenal insights. I want to take a few minutes to address audience questions and see if you have more to share from Jennifer.
She would like to know what success you have found with cohort based leadership development, that’s actually primarily what we have focused on, especially for our manager program.
So creating this sense of community and cohort and cohesion, actually, when we have our manager track and exploring leadership as a manager, for example, that is a cohort.
And we create that sense of cohort by first really having a lot of upfront time for everyone in the room and on the line to introduce themselves, get to know each other. We do small things like ice breakers to build community, also using slack initially to get people’s voices into an initial channel and also having that cohort channel so that they can to go back to it and have those conversations, we also talk a lot about creating accountability for each other. So with that cohort understanding that there is a ton of value in staying with that cohort, knowing each other’s stories, really being able to tap back into the challenges that you heard even in that course of that initial workshop, and then coming back to it. Yeah. I would highly recommend any type of cohort based or community based focus. Thanks, Jade. It’s clear you know what you’re talking about, because Jennifer clarified and she said cohort as I’m moving a specific set of individuals through a curriculum together to build cross functional communication and collaboration.
So definitely that’s thinking about that as another opportunity for community people who have similar experiences moving through those programs together. Another question here from Michelle. So we touched a little on new manager onboarding, but what about senior and seasoned leaders? How do we continue to develop them? Yeah.
Especially when it comes to onboarding. We really see all of our onboarding programs for managers is kind of one and the same, especially around new to black leaders. And regardless of your experience, you’re going to go through a global onboarding process. And actually, part of our onboarding is really a sense of what does it look like to be a leader to embody and role model the values of black the really sustained and create that sense of belonging on your team to collaborate really effectively. So even part of our global onboarding program is focused on bringing to life all of our values and living by those values. When it also comes to especially more seasoned and senior leaders, we know that they’re going to be coming right in and having to make a lot of decisions and having to put a lot into place probably, and jumping right into the fire. So the other thing that we do is especially for our more seasoned leaders, is to take some time up front to give them real deep reflection, time and space.
So one of our initial onboarding sessions is actually mostly focused on helping them create and articulate their leadership style, just kind of almost answer document of sorts so that they can really have those discussion points as they move forward with their team. And then a lot of it is really, again, getting that whole community based, so really helping them understand who are their crossfunctional partners, their peers. What does that support system look like? Thank you.
And one final question here from Sara. She said, how do we help with the cross cultural divide that we have in our global companies? What are some of the ways Slack is addressing this expansion? Global super rapid global expansion? Yeah.
Actually, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, too, Alyssa. But one of the things that we’ve really seen, especially as we have way more globally distributed teams, is for managers giving them a lot of that support around.
How do you navigate the different types of communication style, cultural differences that come up, especially when it comes to feedback or receiving feedback? Or how do you set expectations for performance and recognition, as well as making sure that everyone, regardless of where they are, feels like they have an equal voice on the line or in the room for any type of meeting? So a lot of the work that we do and also focusing on in partnership with Lingo Life, really helping establish and make sure that everyone feels like they are all on the same page, kind of a high sense of psychological safety that takes place with that. So really, again, focusing on helping our leaders build trust really quickly from the get go.
Thanks, JD. Yeah. I think self awareness. One of the things that we talk about in my background is sociology and anthropology. So cultural awareness is a big part of that. So not building just self awareness, but cultural awareness. And so for for Michelle who asked this question, I believe it was Michelle.
Sorry, Rosa. For Sara who asked this question, I would look into the concept of cultural awareness training because there are some external concepts there, like the axes of identities. So how people either express themselves directly or indirectly, if they’re more confrontational or less confrontational, if they tend to wear their values on their sleeve or tend to keep them more to themselves. There are a lot of sort of different structures you can use to develop how you’re speaking about culture and thinking about culture. The danger there is that you can get into generalizations. And we know that not every culture, every person and every culture is the same. But if you’re working specifically with a group of people in Japan or a group of people in Dublin and understanding that not only are you working with people situated in the specific culture, but also different cultures who have come together to work those offices in those cultures, it can be really helpful to have some cultural awareness training and give people some frameworks for ways to think about that.
One of the ideas is this iceberg. The culture iceberg. So Google that later, everyone. It’s about how much you see at the top of the water and then how much people are carrying with them that really build their identities and who they are underneath to couple your coaching or mentorship or work related programs also thinking about cultural awareness, not just self awareness, but cultural awareness. So thanks for save or a couple more minutes. I’m going to pass it over to Alex to give you some final wrap up comments. All right.
Yeah. Alyssa and Jade, thank you both. A lot of great information was shared. We had a lot of people on the call with us today and a lot of participation. So thank you, everybody, for joining us today. I also want to thank Lingo Live for sponsoring today’s event. It’s been a pleasure working with them on a couple of events this year, and we truly appreciate their support here at HCM on our Webinar program and beyond. So thank you again to Lingo Love.
All right. So thanks again, everybody. We’ll see you all back here for our next Workforce Webinar, which will be taking place in a couple of weeks on December 12 at 12:00 p.m.. Eastern 09:00 a.m. Pacific titled Future Proof Your Organization Succession Planning and the Skills Economy. So thanks again, everybody. And just as a reminder, this is being recorded.
So you’re going to receive a link to this recording and your HRCI insurance certification codes 24 hours after this webinar closes down. So keep an eye out for that information tomorrow. Thanks again, everybody, and have a great day.