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Mitch Simon 0:10
Welcome to another episode of team anywhere where CEOs, leaders and experts are building teams, companies, organizations, and amazing cultures
Ginnie Bianca-Mathis 0:21
share how to lead from anywhere in the world. I’m your co host on the East Coast, Judy Bianca Mathis,
Mitch Simon 0:28
and I’m your co host on the West Coast. Mitch Simon. And we invite you to join us team anywhere.
Welcome to Team anywhere. On today’s podcast, we interview Suzy Japs, Managing Director of we Django, one of our amazing sponsors. This episode is action packed with million dollar ideas spread throughout. I’ve known Suzy for years and know her to be brilliant, creative and intentional. Susie explores how to attract, interview hire onboard and retain top talent from anywhere. Your goal as a leader, as a manager as a CEO is to create a virtual culture that is purpose driven, that supports specific behaviors that gets people involved in important causes. When hiring and retaining, you must be absolutely intentional that all activities align with your purpose. Here are three of the million dollar ideas. Idea number one. When reaching out to new prospects, find your best talent to create customized videos and send those videos as well as emails or videos from your CEO to these prospects. Number two, this one might be worth several million dollars. When doing your engagement surveys create a set of criteria for your a players and make sure you get separate features back from the a player group. As a result, you will isolate a player feedback you will then be able to implement ideas that will focus on attracting and retaining. That’s right, a player’s God. I wish I would have thought of that. Number three, to create greater connectivity with your team. Each week ask, what did you learn? Or did you make a mistake? And where do you need help? Now I could go on forever, but let’s get to the podcast so Susie can share her amazing practices to help you strengthen your team from anywhere. Hello, everybody. This is Mitch Simon and Ginny Mathis with another episode of team anywhere. And today I am so excited to have on the podcast the amazing Suzy Japs who is the managing director of we Django here in San Diego. So Susie, how are you doing today?
Susie Japs 2:59
I’m fabulous. Thank you.
Mitch Simon 3:01
Okay, great. One of the things I want to do first, as Suzy is to thank you for being our first sponsor, we have three sponsors, and you’re one of the three. You’re our west coast sponsor. And before we begin with the questions, can you explain a little bit about we Junga? What do you do? Because, you know, I’ve known you for like, I think four or five years, I think your approach to supporting businesses is unique. It’s brilliant. And I know that everyone I’ve sent you to their company has just skyrocketed.
Susie Japs 3:32
Awesome. That means a lot to me. Thank you. Yeah, just a quick overview. So we are a bowtique management consulting firm, but we have a really specific niche. So it’s all around people, processes and people strategy. So if you think recruiting, hiring, interviewing, onboarding, retention, even succession planning, we come in and we actually help build the strategy and process behind what the goals are for those efforts. And then we actually help implement them. So that’s a big piece of it is making sure we teach companies how to fish. We don’t want to do it for them, but we definitely will do it alongside of them, which is why we are called we Django stands for we joined together
Mitch Simon 4:14
never knew that we join together. That’s great. So um, you know, we’re, we’re really, really interested in how people are doing this virtually obviously, today, most people are completely virtual or pretty close to it. And so I was wondering, with our first question is, is, you know, how does a business owner today, now describe his or her company, the culture? Like, how does he describe it? Well, since in many cases, they’re not even in a building anymore to attract talent these days, when everyone in the company is mostly working from their homes.
Susie Japs 4:49
And that’s a really great question, and I get that one a lot. You know, culture in the eyes of employees has always been more than the office space. But the interesting thing that I always Find is when I work with CEO CEOs kind of the key leadership of a business. They really believe that that’s what they need to offer. Employees are snazzy offices, perks like free food, they feel like that’s what really matters a lot to people when you’re attracting them and retaining them. But we at jungo know, from working with many companies over the last 10 years that that’s really not true. So in a time of COVID, where office space is not really being utilized, and free food and buffets, and getting all together as groups is really not seen as attractive right now. You know, people are avoiding that. The question to your point is, what should companies do to focus on attracting talent? And I always remind people that, you know, the reality is, is that by 2025, which is in less than five years, 75% of the global workforce will be millennials, and that’s probably not new to people nowadays, they know that, but that means that we really need to look at what do millennials want, and over the past four or five years have been many, many studies out there that report that the majority of millennials about 80% say that learning and culture is more important to them than pay, or these other perks, which means that they’ll actually leave a job to go somewhere else for less money if they believe they’re learning. And they have a good culture. So when we work with companies, and we talk about culture, what does that mean to a millennial? That’s, you know, there’s a couple components and one is brand purpose, like, why are you in business? How is what you do as a company? How does that make a difference? How does an individual position at your company make a difference, really being able to sell that story to your employees, and share that so I think the more that other employees can understand someone’s story of why they’re at that company that just engages you and compels you into wanting to be part of that. So we always say, you know, create a purpose sheet, a brand purpose sheet, it’s just a one sheet, but you can use that in recruiting. You can use that while you’re interviewing. You can even use that when you’re onboarding people. to really give them a really nice visual of what they’re walking into, what is the culture? What are the learning opportunities? What are the benefits that they’re getting?
Mitch Simon 7:10
Great in? How are How are business owners selling their culture? Once the people are in the door? How are they telling their story? How are they connecting this millennial workforce to the purpose of the company?
Susie Japs 7:22
Yeah, so that’s where I think a lot of companies do struggle, they’re not quite sure, because before COVID, if you’re all together, they’re saying, oh, we’ll just do little events. And we’ll get everybody together to make them feel like they’re, you know, a part of a team. But now with with COVID, what does that really mean? So, a lot consulted on virtually so we always say, you know, figure out what initiatives you want to have as a company, maybe part of it is community focused. Maybe one is to be innovative. So create those committees allow employees to be part of that. And just make sure if you’re going to do that, then you actually act on those ideas that come out of those committees, so that you can show that there’s a purpose behind that, but that’s where we’re able to help companies really figure out the core brand purpose and what do you Who are you? Why are you here? And what do you want to accomplish? And then you create committees around it or you create activities, and they can still be virtual and still be very engaging.
Mitch Simon 8:17
Great, did you be able to share with us one of your brand purpose statements?
Susie Japs 8:23
Yeah, so there is an organization that we are working with, and they have a lot of different entities. So it’s not just one company. But the one thing that the the family who owns the business their vision is, is it’s a really unique one. It’s really cool. It’s called, they say, pursuing parody. And the idea of parody is actually I think, really new, like if you go and Google it, the way they’re talking about it is not there, that definition is not there. So they’re really trying to be that forefront of talking about equality, diversity and saying it’s not just about the color of your skin. It’s about it. Education, it’s about creating opportunities. It’s about supporting your businesses in the community. So the whole purpose of why they are in business is to pursue parity. And they do that through their employees through opportunities they offer, they do that through some nonprofits that they’ve started. But that’s why they are in business. They said, We are in business to make money so that we can use that money to create parody to pursue parody. And to make that an experience that people have where they get more chances than maybe they would normally in life. And I think that is a purpose. That’s something you can attach to.
Mitch Simon 9:36
Yeah, we’re, we’re, we’re hearing a lot of that through through the podcast as well and
Ginnie Bianca-Mathis 9:41
like to ask a question. Um, so once they have their brand, and they know the kinds of things they would like to emphasize or stand for in their culture, then you’re going to help them see take them down a path of how can how are you going to do this in brick and mortar And how to do this virtually. We’re hearing that when it comes to now, how might you do this? virtually? You get some pushback. How are you enticing? How are you helping leaders manager see Bono there are way. Yeah, I
Susie Japs 10:22
think it’s baby steps, right? So it’s always much easier if you can take baby steps. And so if you always kind of presented as, hey, let’s try this and let’s pilot it and let’s learn from it and know that when we try it, we’re going to tell people that we’re trying it. So it’s not like no one’s going to fail here. It’s about us just trying it out getting their feedback, and we’re going to make it better. And I think business leaders are a lot more comfortable with that when when they’re saying Okay, so it’s not a change for sure. Let’s just try it.
Ginnie Bianca-Mathis 10:51
Wonderful. Yeah, we’ve heard a lot of pilots going. Yeah, no,
Mitch Simon 10:54
I love that. I love that. Business owners are getting very, very clear on on, on their, what their purpose is. Making sure that the purpose is live through experiments and bringing in people from the entire company and that is the culture. Love that. So Suzy, how do you find talent these days? And I was just wondering, like, we know that when we were at the office, you might get a phone call, which you couldn’t take. Today, everyone is at home. So I’m wondering, you know, how are you finding people through calling them now at home? Are there other means that you’re using? How do you find talent these days? And, and what would have somebody decided they would want to take your call and consider making the move?
Susie Japs 11:39
Sure. Well, that’s really the number one question that we are getting. You’d think that with unemployment at an all time high, that would not be the case. But what we have to remind our clients is that if you are in certain industries, let’s say construction, manufacturing, medical device, maybe life science or technology, many of those industries are still booming and thriving. And therefore the war on talent is really still relevant to them. It just because you’re seeing high employment rates that’s in certain industries. And so over the last decade, you know, you’ve got tools like LinkedIn, and everybody is accessible through LinkedIn. So it’s very easy to find people. But the hard part is, you know, once you find them, how do you get them engaged? How do you get people to want to call you back to share the opportunity that you have? professionals are getting inundated with in mails and canned recruiting messages, like I have the perfect job for you call me back. And people are really getting sick of getting those and are starting to just completely ignore that type of outreach. So to your point, like how do you attract talent? How do you access them? You want to get in front of the best in the market. So there’s a couple ways. One is actually something to not do so do not solely focus on job ads, because only active job seekers are going to go to job boards so you’re really only attracting a small piece of the market. If you use job ads as your only source, now, if you do use job ads, I always tell companies, I want you to look at your job and then read it from the perspective of the candidate, what’s in it for me as the candidate. And they’re usually really surprised to see that when they read it, it’s actually from the perspective of them the company, like I want you to have this, you need to have that, here’s my requirements, here’s who we are, we’re so great. But it’s really not speaking to the candidate and engaging them. So if you are going to use job ads, it’s really making sure that it’s speaking to the candidate to the ideal candidate you want. The second one is I would say, if you want to access working professionals who are really passive and likely, like the really great workers out there, you just need to get really creative in your outreach. So customize your message, have the hiring managers, not maybe internal HR reach out to the people. I know for sure that I’ve heard from professionals that hey, if I get an email from the CEO or the VP, I’m very much more going to respond to them then If I get a recruiter message, so get a little creative, have your hiring managers be part of that recruiting process, you can always help them come to the messages. We also have recently helped a company where they’ve targeted certain people in the IT space because that’s where they are. And now we’re helping them customize these just really small 15 to 32nd videos that they can send as kind of just a recruiting outreach to a person but it’s completely customized. So it’s not going to be a canned template, it’s a message specifically to that person to engage them into a conversation. So I think that really speaks volumes.
Ginnie Bianca-Mathis 14:36
That’s fabulous. Love that.
Mitch Simon 14:39
Less so Suzy Are you having to train people on how to be in front of a camera so they they actually look enticing?
Susie Japs 14:47
Yeah, yeah. So it’s it’s not Yeah, it’s not as easy as just like put on your camera and record you have to you have to be able to present well, and so it’s it’s also looking within the company of like, Who is that person who’s the person that can really present well, who’s comforting In front of a camera, it’s got to be quality. It can’t look like you’re just videotaping something in your bedroom. So it does take a little bit of effort, but it goes a long way is super unique and creative. Like they, they for sure the only company in their space that’s doing that.
Mitch Simon 15:14
Wow. That’s brilliant. Yeah, it just, you know, one of the, one of the outcomes of COVID right now is so much creativity in in all parts of, of the company, especially now in the hiring area. So that is great. How do you how do you create a talent acquisition strategy in the absence of offices? And another way to ask that is, did did you basically once COVID started, did you now say to your entire company, we need to throw away the old talent acquisition strategy and start a new one. Or was it just putting some tweaks into your old old strategy?
Susie Japs 15:54
Yeah, so I think that’s a great question. I would say from the perspective of companies Where, where they’re having their talent acquisition, acquisition strategy or recruiting looked at to say, hey, do we need to do this any different or better? I would say that there are slight tweaks, there are things that you’re you have to get creative about using video a little bit more than maybe you’d want to. So doing zoom interviews, we’ve actually had companies shift to doing work exercises doing that virtual versus in person, we always recommend that you create real life work exercises that would happen in that job in any interview, whether it’s an entry level, or it’s a senior level and have them go through that and create conversation off of that. So you now have to do that kind of through zoom, if you will, or through other online platforms. So yeah, you have to get a little creative, but there isn’t actually a lot that would change in the process.
Mitch Simon 16:55
Okay, great. Yeah. Let me just ask you this, this question. In the In the old days, right, I would interview you. And then I would say, Gosh, like you, I love you. So I’m gonna bring you into my company, I’m gonna pay you some money, and then you’re gonna go sit over there. Today, that’s not the case. So how does it how do you bring someone to quote unquote, enter your company when that person is, in fact not physically moving anywhere?
Susie Japs 17:22
Mm hmm. Right? Well, I mean, part of that talent acquisition strategy is actually onboarding. So I don’t see that as separate. I think that is a big piece of considering thoughtful onboarding. And I think part of that is you’re going to say, Okay, now they’re not going to be able to come in and they’re not going to physically be able to meet all of their colleagues. They’re not going to be able to go out to lunch and to just kind of build rapport the way that you would naturally in person. So you want to try to recreate those opportunities online. So we will if we create like a onboarding program for a client We’re going to include job shadowing and the first couple of weeks where they’re going to do that we actually include where they formally have to schedule informational interviews with people on their team and also other departments that they would interact with frequently so they can get to know people. And a lot of those questions on those templates that we give them are actually more personal questions and work questions so that they can start to build those relationships quicker. And then we even on those now have twice a week zoom lunches. So they’ll have to schedule with people that they’re going to work with a one hour lunch where they both have their lunches in their separate areas. But there’s getting to know each other, they’re talking about the company, what’s your experience, a lot of it is self directed. So that’s the great part is the employee now has a roadmap of how to help onboard themselves. But the pieces that they have that roadmap, a lot of companies don’t do that. And then the employee feels very siloed and alone because they really don’t have any interaction. Okay, great. Let’s let’s talk about interview. Viewing In fact, I just got off a call with a with a colleague who works on Amex. And he said that the last interviews that he’s done over the last year have been actually phone interviews, not even any video. And I’m just wondering, what is interviewing, like Suzy these days when you, you can’t be physically in the space with that with with another person? And then how do you know if that person is in fact, the right fit? Yeah, so I definitely would recommend if at all possible, at least throughout somewhere in the process having the video because I think there’s a lot that you can see just behaviorally and that interaction that you just can’t read on a phone call. It’s always fine starting out from a screening perspective to do a phone interview. But I have a couple tips that the funny part is that I would use pre COVID or during COVID. So if you’re, whether you’re meeting people in person or not, these are really important tips for interviewing and that’s what really allows you to be effective. So the first to really take the time to identify the core behavior. So we were just talking about that the behaviors that make someone successful in your culture and also in the team. So there’s an overall company culture, but then there’s also subcultures. So like that it company that I was talking about, they are outsourced it. So every person they hire goes into a different client environment. But there’s also an overall fit to with their company. So identifying what those core behaviors are, and then making sure that your interview questions are aligning to pull that out to predict the culture fit the EQ that’s needed, and the behaviors. That’s my first tip. The second is one that I always get big shocked responses on is to throw out the resume. So in the interview, don’t focus on the resume and use that as a guide. That’s what I see almost 100% when I go shadow hiring managers is they bring in a candidates resume and they truly interview based off the information In that, so instead, I always say don’t allow the interview to be guided by only what’s in a candidates resume, the candidate is the one who wrote it, right? So instead, I want you to create a list of those behaviors, or dues like what does success look like in this role, and then I want you to interview based off that criteria, you can absolutely refer to the resume, just don’t use that as the guide. That’s a second tip. And then just the third one is the types of questions. So the most common type of question that I see from an interviewing perspective, or what I call open ended, behavioral questions. Those are definitely the most popular. If you go into Google right now, when you type top behavioral questions, you’re going to come up with like a list of 100. And those are the ones that companies are using. Those are also the ones that candidates can find online. The biggest piece of why don’t like these questions is that when you receive the answer from a candidate, it’s going to focus on how they did something at a different company in a different culture under different expectations than your company. So we help clients actually focus on their company situations, write questions based off those, and then ask those almost like situational questions so that they can get a better prediction of how that person will perform in their environment.
Mitch Simon 22:18
You’re Yeah, you’re really you’re really spending a lot of time, a lot of time with a lot of intentionality focused on questions about how that candidate would in fact, fit into this organization.
Susie Japs 22:31
Right, right. Yeah, I mean, in there, there’s a lot of work exercises to you could create on to to see how they presented they don’t have to get it perfect. That’s the goal. That’s the thing to keep in mind. They may not have the perfect answer because they don’t work at your company yet. But you can now see, how do they think how would they react? What questions are they asking you What’s their approach and it’s really going to give you an idea of their of their fit.
Mitch Simon 22:56
Is it now is it today where where Employees are pretty much scattered, they’re at their houses. Is it easier to have a candidate have more interviews with, with different employees in the company? Or is it now harder to take the candidate from person to person to make sure that they meet the respective amount of people they should meet for an interview process?
Susie Japs 23:20
Yeah, I’ve seen it, I’ve seen actually has been easier because now people aren’t having to travel at all. Everything can be virtual on on video. So I’ve actually seen it being much more effective and productive. Now with that being said, you do lose, you do lose a little bit even on video that you’re not going to see or feel with someone that you would in person.
Mitch Simon 23:43
Okay, great. Let’s talk a little bit about retention. I know that you focus as well on retention. You’ve got the candidate in the door, the candidate has been on boarded like what are some of the things that you’re seeing the companies that you work for do to retain their employees So that they don’t have to go through this interview process over and over again.
Susie Japs 24:05
Yeah, so, um, so we do a lot of work with retention. And one of the first questions we always ask companies is, what does retention mean to you? Or what efforts Do you think you’re putting into to contribute towards retaining your best people? And they always bring up the annual engagement survey? Well, we do an annual survey. But, you know, that brings me to a story of a client that we had worked with about three years ago. And every year prior for five years, they had done an annual engagement survey and the CEO, the CEO told me each year, we make significant changes based off this feedback. But every year we’re losing our eight players. I have no idea why like I’m surveying people, I’m I’m making changes and we’re still losing our best people. And then I asked him, Are you separating those survey results, or are you are you separately surveying your top performers And he said, No. And I said, What if you did that you can survey everybody, but also survey your top performers separately and see if there’s a difference in the feedback. And what happened is there was actually a significant difference in the feedback of the majority versus his best people of what they wanted more of what their feedback was, what issues they felt was in the company. And by focusing on that, he started retaining his best people and also starting to weed out the people that were really not in alignment with with the top performers. And he started being able to attract more because he was creating now a new workforce or new culture around the feedback from your best people. So I think that’s a huge piece of our attention. But it’s also knowing that it’s not just about getting everybody’s opinion, because in reality, not all employees are created equal.
Ginnie Bianca-Mathis 25:50
That was was
Mitch Simon 25:54
a million dollars. Wow. I mean, I want to dig deeper in that. So Susie, What did that business owner use for the definition of the best people?
Susie Japs 26:08
Yeah, so great question. So we had actually done work with them prior to create what we call talent profiles, but they’re really just a snapshot of the role that the people are in, and what success looks like what makes a really successful person. So we created that with him for every position that he had in his company. And then we compared the people he had in the positions to those talent profiles, we always tell companies focus on the position that your company needs, and then we can look at the people who are in it, I don’t want you to focus on the people first. Because what happens is then you start to create or more of a position to fit that person’s abilities or non abilities or weaknesses and then you don’t actually have what you need for that business to execute your your business goals. So that’s what we did with him. And that’s how he determined the eight players and luckily for them, and I say luckily 23% of their workforce were a player’s which is actually quite high. A lot of companies have less than that when you really have to measure quality.
Unknown Speaker 27:10
Wow.
Mitch Simon 27:12
I’m stunned. That is so clever. Well, I’m going to I’m going to call all my clients and I swear I am going to do that right after the call and tell them what to do. I’m going to tell him to hire Suzy.
We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, Marymount University, Arlington, Virginia School of Business and Technology, innovative solutions upskilling for the what’s next economy@marymount.edu and oyster organizational development dedicated to higher performance, business success and leveraging teams that can be found at oyster od.com. And finally, we Django designing customized talent. acquisition solutions at we j un geo.com. Today, Suzy, how virtual is your company? Are you still going to the office? Or is it pretty much everyone working from home?
Susie Japs 28:13
Yeah, great question Is everyone working from home prior to COVID? We had where we would meet twice a month as a team. But other than that people were virtual. So for us, there was really not a big transition.
Mitch Simon 28:27
And so what, what has been the your successes right now? What would you say? You are proud that your company’s doing very, very well?
Susie Japs 28:38
Sure. So, um, I think that’s a really excellent question, because that’s one that about early April I got from a lot of clients who weren’t virtual and who knew that we had been and they said, Hey, can you share some of your secrets of what makes you guys already productive and successful that hopefully we can just copy if you will. So I created what I call them that app, it’s the foundation of building an effective virtual workforce. And map M stands for meetings. A stands for accountability. And P stands for performance. So it’s map. So I actually created a document is called a map. But the first tip with with the M the meetings is to set clear expectations for everyone. So whether that’s at meetings, whether that’s in the role or a project, it does take a little bit more time on the forefront of just having the clarity conversations. But then that that takes away from any of the back and forth, clarifying questions later that might need to happen, that were maybe easier in person where someone could quickly just walk down to your office and say, Hey, I don’t really get this. Can we talk real quick, which gets really frustrating from a virtual perspective to be honest on for both parties, if they feel they have to do that too much. So So we say, you know, set standard and clear expectations a lot is with that talent profile. So a lot of our clients have converted to having those even though they may I have before. The other one is to really find opportunities to encourage engagement and collaboration. So the one thing that we did do differently and which we encourage clients to do, since COVID happened is a lot of the projects that I might have only assigned one consultant on, I’m now purposely assigning to, because I want to create more opportunities for them to engage and collaborate and interact, because they don’t get that on a daily basis as much. And so I tell clients, if you can find any opportunity to split up work more, do it get people to have to work together, get them to interact more. So that’s the the M for like the meetings and how to be effective. The a for accountability is just being able to figure out how to manage the results and not the time, a lot of our clients came to us and said, Hey, we need to figure out people are productive. And so we figure we’re just going to have them like track their time. But again, that’s more about quantity than quality. So we He said, hey, let’s figure out other metrics that you can come up with to measure the results and not the time. Because Are you really that upset if it takes somebody, you know, only 30 minutes to complete something, but it’s amazing. Would you have rather known that, you know, it took two hours? And do you think they aren’t a hard worker if it only takes them 30 minutes? So we wanted to really have them focus on the deliverables. And of course, if people can’t meet those deliverables in a normal work week, that’s where you need to start focusing on the time, where are you not being efficient? And then lastly, is the performance. So just how do you inspire people to want to perform on their own without you having to constantly motivate them? I think a big piece is to create more touch points within the team. So we instead of holding our two times a month, we actually now are doing shorter team meetings, but we’re doing it weekly. And it really drives people’s performance because they now feel like they’re in the loop. They’re collaborating and and they know what’s going on and they can ask for help quicker because that’s another thing as employees when they’re remote Sometimes they they feel like they can’t ask for help, even if you told them, hey, give me a call. Anytime you have a question, there’s still that disconnect with them a feeling like I don’t want to bother someone if I have to now, you know, pick up the phone or email. So if you can create instances where they can ask for help and support, and it’s just an expected part of the conversation, then you can get a much more effective workforce.
Mitch Simon 32:21
How have you been encouraging people to, to reach out and ask for help? It’s one of the things I’ve been working on with my teams as well.
Susie Japs 32:29
Yeah, so as part of our weekly meeting, there is a actually scheduled section there, that’s called learnings, mistakes and support. So that’s where everyone needs to bring one of each at least so you need to bring what’s a learning that you had this week that you can share with everybody else? What’s a mistake you made, that we can learn from as well? And then where where do you need help? And and the expectation is that you actually have at least an answer or answer for each
Mitch Simon 33:00
Wow, gosh,
Ginnie Bianca-Mathis 33:02
constant continuous improvement is built in for both the individual manager and the organization. That’s beautiful.
Susie Japs 33:11
Yeah, there’s an expectation that that’s part of the conversation. Yeah.
Mitch Simon 33:15
expectation. I love that. All right, I wanted to ask you, you know, Suzanna, we’ve known we’ve known each other for a while. What what personally has what personally have you have you learned? What is challenged you? What is what is scared you what, what what transformation? Have you gone through over the last five months as, as we’ve all gone through this as a leader?
Susie Japs 33:39
Sure. I think I think the biggest one is, is that you know, I I’m, I’m a business leader. I have a lot of high level clients and I also have my own business that where people look up to me So I think, you know, being in that position, it’s it’s harder to want to show you vulnerability, right? So especially during a time like this, where it’s really been hard on everybody, because there’s just so much unknown, so much changes that I’ve definitely learned that showing that side of vulnerability and even me asking for support or help or telling someone like, Hey, I can’t, I can’t do that meeting today. But I’m gonna tell you the reason why it’s because I am not in the right headspace right now to give you the attention that I know this meeting deserves, because my kid just broke his jaw. You know, those types of conversations and being more real than maybe I would have done before, I’ve learned is very effective. And it’s also creating that space for others to have those conversations and not feel like they’re going to be judged. So also at our team meeting, we have again, a scheduled section where we talk about our personal peace, like what’s going on in our personal lives and like no judgments just sharing, and and then it makes you realize, wow, I’m not the only one. Everybody’s really struggling through this right now.
Mitch Simon 35:00
Love that. I do think that this the there’s such an irony, Susie, in the last five months, everyone has been dispersed. And in great companies like yours, they’ve come closer together, for sure. And I think it’s necessary. I think it’s a big wake up call for all of us.
Susie Japs 35:22
Yeah, I mean, if anything it’s made it’s made us better. So even though I said it wasn’t that much of a transition because we were already virtual, there are things that we are doing now to bring each other closer together and to support each other that we never had in place before. So this for sure has made us a better company, a more compassionate company. For sure.
Mitch Simon 35:42
What is on it end with a final question. You’ve you’ve know, you work with really great companies throughout the country. What is the one thing that you wish that companies would would change given this current situation that that as you as these To business owners is it you know, gosh, it even to be more intentional, you need to you need to be more vulnerable. You need to be more accountable, you need to be more real. What’s the one message that you wish that the business owners that you work with just take up and, and launch inside of their company so that companies can be this great place for purpose of meaning?
Susie Japs 36:23
That’s a big question. I would, I would say what I mean, there’s probably quite a few, one, one that I really do believe what will really help companies right now is communication. And what I mean by that is, I think that a lot of companies do care about their employees. I think they’re doing actually a lot to show that but that doesn’t mean that employees always understand that or that they even see it. And I don’t think it’s boasting to have those conversations with employees for them to understand what you’re doing as a coach. company to help protect them to help support them. I’m very transparent with all my employees of you know how much they’re getting paid, versus how much value they’re bringing, versus how much I’m investing in different little things that I do for them. And it’s, it’s not about me saying I’m doing that. So you should think I’m great. It’s about them really being able to then appreciate and understand the efforts that I put forward for them. And I don’t expect them to appreciate that unless they know about it. So a lot of companies I see missed the mark by not communicating what they’re really trying to do to retain and support their employees. They just don’t talk about it.
Unknown Speaker 37:41
That’s great.
Mitch Simon 37:43
Yeah, no, I love I love sushi, as you pointed out, that you’re doing it to demonstrate how much you appreciate them, and I know how much you want them to grow. Wow, that was
Susie Japs 37:57
well, I had a lot of fun.
Mitch Simon 38:00
Great, great that was that was just Gosh, a glad I’m sitting down because that was so much so much great information, so much deep information. And I really do appreciate our friendship. And I do really appreciate you being on the podcast, and I look forward to maybe bringing you back one day. So thank you so much. And then yeah, thanks, Anthony. And I really enjoyed it during our time and we’ll see you next time on Team anywhere.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
