Addressing The Growing Disconnection Between C-Suite And The Frontline
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In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with HR consultancy CEO Morgan Williams on addressing the growing disconnection between the C-Suite and the frontline.
A few reasons why she is awesome — she is the co-founder and CEO of PeakHR, a cohort-based training program for the next generation of progressive HR practitioners. She is the Founder and Fractional People Partner behind MW HR Consulting, helping business leaders with tools to leverage employee connection, and she’s a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Couple all that with her degrees in Psychology and Masters in dispute resolution and conflict management
Connect with, and learn more about Morgan on her…
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“The C-suite is not tapping into the feelings, the emotions. It’s a lot of talk speak, and we hear you want this, but next thing we’re mandating you to do this as if you have no life, no decisions.”
Morgan Williams
Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Morgan Williams. And here is why she is awesome. She’s the co founder and CEO of Peak HR, a cohort based training program for the next generation of progressive HR practitioners. She’s the founder and fractional people partner behind MWHR Consulting, helping business leaders with tools to leverage employee connection.
And, and there’s a few ands and she’s a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council. Couple of that with her degrees in psychology and Masters in dispute resolution and conflict management and she’s got a few things to talk about that I’m thrilled to dig into. Hello, Morgan.
Morgan Williams: Hello, looking forward to it.
Russel Lolacher: So today we’re going to talk about connection specifically about connecting executive to employees, which to be honest, continues to be a growing, growing gap for a lot of organizations.
So I’m super curious about this, but first Morgan, I got to ask you the question, which I ask all of my guests, which is what is your best or worst employee experience?
Morgan Williams: I will definitely go with my best. It truly has transformed me as a leader. What I would say is that when I first started at HP, my boss, Linda Beveren… I’ll never forget, but she asked me on my first day, what did I want to do next? And I was terrified because I, I knew, I knew exactly what I wanted to do next, but it’s like you sell people on these jobs that you want this whole time to say on your first day, you want to do something next.
And I went with the mindset of, if you ask the question, you better be ready for an answer. And so that’s what I went with. I told her. But what’s so transformative about that is that day, she connected me with somebody in employee relations Sherry Bowman, which began my mentor to help me on the employee relations journey.
And so it was just wonderful because I’d already had an external mentor, but that day she set me up with an internal mentor to kind of really put me on a trajectory for my next role. I know a lot of managers are scared for people to leave, but it was because she had that faith in me that I had such a loyalist attitude towards her and like everything that she was doing, I just knew she wanted best for me.
I knew that from the very first day I started, so it just opened up this whole transparency lens that I just confident, just felt comfortable immediately right then and there without being scared. So, yeah.
Russel Lolacher: It’s, it’s frightening to me that that leaders don’t do that. Leaders are immediately thinking about the onboarding and then what are you going to do for me? And great, less work for me. I’ve got a new body in the house, so now I can, but without thinking of the bigger picture, because I mean, keep in mind, the name of this podcast is Relationships at Work and the former of what I described was not a relationship.
What you’ve described is the building of an amazing relationship because she’s looked at you as a person that has hopes and goals and dreams and plans, and she wants to be a part of that. So I just, it breaks my heart that is not a more normal thing.
Morgan Williams: Yeah. Same. It just, it opened up such a window of transparency and trust. That was the first building block. I had to trust her enough to answer and she had to trust me enough to really ask the question. And so I just think that it transformed my whole relationship there at the company.
Russel Lolacher: Now, speaking of, these are direct reports, but I’m going to talk more of the, C suite as it were to a larger organization. We’re going to, we’re going to, we’re going to get away from that direct report structure and look at the larger organization in our conversation today. So the first question I have to ask is we have to figure out what the problem is first.
So what is, do you feel the disconnect right now between executive and employees?
Morgan Williams: I think that look, COVID really did a number on all of us, and I think one, we collectively have not healed from that trauma. We have collectively not really addressed it. We just keep trying to go on. But the thing that employers or CEOs, C suite, things like that, that they’re not thinking about is a lot of these people were on furlough for a long time.
For a little gives you time to think if you’ve been laid off multiple times, it gives you time to think and so people that wanted to do this job that never had a chance to or whatever you gave them the opportunity to train for it or ask questions or understand. And also people that were such loyalists to their jobs and saw them like being laid off very quickly for essentially, no reason or stock price.
Now people are really starting to understand, you don’t care about me. So why do I care about you and the things that you’re going from? And I think that’s really the disconnect where employees are really focused much more on themselves, their well being, and their family. And they’re putting that first. They’re prioritizing that in a way we really haven’t seen in a very long time, if ever. And I would say, the thing with CEOs, they’re constantly thinking about how can we do better? How can we make more money? How can we change this? But they’re not necessarily thinking about flexibility, the employee experience, and they’re still in the ways of treating employees like children.
You know what I’m saying? I think that’s the easiest answer. And people aren’t going to deal with that anymore. People have realized they have other priorities in life. And at the end of the day, if you don’t care about me, like you say you do actions speak louder than words. And people have seen a lot of actions.
And the last few years. And I would say that’s the biggest disconnect is that the C suite is not tapping into the feelings, the emotions. It’s a lot of talk speak, and we hear you want this, but next thing we’re mandating you to do this as if you have no life, no decisions. Make a decision in three days, whether you’re going to stay with this company or you have to relocate.
What are you talking about? I have a life, I have kids. I like people with families and all of these other different things. And it’s I’m not going to take this from my employer anymore. And I think employers forgot, even though this market might be, might be tough, at the same time what are you going to do, fire them?
It comes with a cost. So they haven’t had performance or they haven’t had all of that. People are willing to do that. That’s why those mandates also have not worked because people are saying, I’m just not going to do it because what are you going to do about it? And I think we’re coming to that period to where you can’t just talk crazy to people anymore.
You can’t just tell people what to do. People want an explanation. They want to know why. They want context. A decision is just no longer enough. And that has worked in Corporate America for so long, just because I say so. Just because I believe. And nobody’s ever really questioned that. Maybe in private circles, but never really collectively out loud.
And I think now we’re seeing the unification of employees, one, come together and talk, also fight this together, decide collectively, we’re all not doing this because what can they do? Fire all of us? And I think that’s what we are seeing in a different type of way. And employers just don’t know how to deal with that on an individual level, but for sure not a collective level.
Russel Lolacher: Well I mean we just saw this not too recently with Dell trying to bring everybody back and everybody going, Nope.
Morgan Williams: Yeah. Well, you won’t get promotions anymore. You won’t… that’s fine. And I think it’s all of the things that they thought they could pull the levers on and to control. People were just like, okay, and…? Cause what are you going to do? Just not promote anybody in your workforce? That’s a terrible culture, but if you want to do that, okay, go ahead and do it.
And that did not incentivize people to come back. Even the color scheme, it was very childlike of how many times that you’re batching in and checking and it’s like we have real world problems going on here and y’all are just checking the monitors like I’m a person, like I have feelings, I have different things that are going on and until you can really address that and treat me like that, like I don’t care about this little child system that you have going on here and I think they were not prepared for that.
I am sure they thought that they were going to see a lot of redundancies, going to be able to get through some layoffs, everything else. A lot of people did not resign. They just decided to stay remote and okay, cool. I just won’t get a promotion ever again. That’s fine. And that’s hard to fight back with from, from an executive level.
Russel Lolacher: Do you feel like the definition of leadership has changed too? Because obviously, before the pandemic, Executives, what they thought was leadership was working. They, they could mandate, they could threaten, they could… you fix a problem, I’ll promote you. But then the definition that employees are feeling what leadership is, isn’t showing up in the same way.
Morgan Williams: 100%. I definitely feel that it’s changed. That’s why I really started this off with COVID. When you go through that collective moment, there’s trauma, there’s healing. I think more than anything, a lot of the employees had time to really tap into their EQ and that’s your emotional intelligence.
Really think about their own feelings. Think about how they were treated, everything else like that. I think we’ve seen this with some tech companies or whatever to, employ this EQ method and talk about how powerful it is. But traditionally the leader was seen as one much more masculine, a lot of masculine energy, a lot of mandates.
You do this, like it was basically what I say it goes. And there was just a loyalist attitude all the way through that. So I think they’re also having trouble connecting one with their emotions. But on top of that I’ve studied EQ a lot. And one of the things that most people may not realize is employees have much higher levels of EQ.
In fact, the quote unquote lower you get out on the totem pole, the more EQ the employee has, the higher you go up, the less likely they’re to have it. And also more likely than not, CEOs actually have a high rate of psychopathy, you know what I’m saying? And so, like, when you really think about all of those and think about these people, one, connecting with their emotions, and other people having a hard time really connecting with their emotions, I think that explains what people are really going through.
So when they’re trying to act on these more powerful, types of… it’s just not hitting. It’s that’s not powerful to me. Like you’re, you’re just flexing your chest. That’s not really doing anything. I need you to talk to me, not me as a company employee. Me. And I think that’s what people are seeing.
They’re really thinking about everything differently. And their life. And if you can’t talk about your own emotions and or how you feel, it’s going to be very hard to have an emotional appeal on employees and talk to them and connect with them on this level to say, Hey, we felt heard and seen you when it’s no, you didn’t.
Cause you keep doing all this stuff. So you’re like clearly showing me every day, how farther and further apart we are.
Russel Lolacher: But this isn’t professional to show your emotions and be vulnerable. This is not how these executives were trained. It’s not how they got to be successful. So, I mean, as much as I… seeing all these surveys that continually should get a wider and wider gap between what executive thinks and what employees know, like this seems that these gaps seem to get bigger and bigger, but then I feel kind of bad for the leadership and executive too, because their whole, what made them successful isn’t the same anymore and they don’t have the tools or adaptability or resiliency or leadership styles to pivot.
Morgan Williams: Yes. And no. The one thing I will say is that a lot of executives have coaches. And whether you choose to use them or not, you have a coach, and so to say that maybe this isn’t the natural response to you, but this is the way that it is. We all collectively had to get used to COVID working inside our homes.
That’s not saying we all had the emotions for it, but we all had to collectively do it. And I think this is one of the things, if you’re the helm of the company, you’re going to have to do it. It may not be natural to you. HR is a great example. All of a sudden we became chief medical officers in our own offices.
Most people had never dealt with any type of medical… people didn’t know HIPAA, they didn’t like all of these things. But all of a sudden we’re taking all this paperwork and talking about vaccines and wait this is not our job. Like we’ve all had to adapt in these last few years. And I think to certain extent, they thought they were exempt from that.
And everybody has adapted once again through COVID and not seeing this happen with them. I think everybody just kind of wants to get back to the old way. I also think that look, if we’re going to be very real with this, they’re losing power. That’s ego. You know what I’m saying? There’s a lot of things that feel uncharted and to not kind of have this earned respect that they had, and it’s vanishing overnight or to see people publicly saying things or like even Gen Z just recording their layoffs and It’s a scary world for a lot of executives and CEOs in a way where you could make a decision. It felt like it was in a bubble and it was protected where now people are like, you’re not going to treat me like this. And I’m going to tell everybody about it. And so my whole thing is you better change, you know what I’m saying? You’re going to have to change, if you want to have a true relationship with your employees.
If you want to figure out what’s going to work, you’re going to have to lean into the things and understand their everyday struggles. Child care that this very huge and so like people can’t afford to get to work or right now in every single state in America, it costs more for two kids in child care than it does for rent.
Like these are real life problems that maybe CEOs aren’t dealing with because yeah, maybe you have to live in nanny or maybe you have a stipend or something else like that to cover it. But if you don’t, this is taking away from your bottom line. And then you didn’t get the raise from COVID cause it was COVID, right?
And so really you’re losing money through COLA and everything else like that, because inflation. And so you mean to tell me I’m showing up to work every day. I’m losing money. And then I’m having to pay more for my groceries, my goods, my things for my family. And then you’re telling me just to come in because it’s a better culture here.
What does that even mean to you? Where are you at? In the Hamptons? You know what I’m saying? It’s very hard for people to stand for this anymore because they don’t see you there. And then we have… Salesforce is a great example. CEO saying, I’m mandating everybody come back into office, but I’m not going to come back because I don’t work that best, the way. Well, what about me? I don’t work the best that way either! You know what I’m saying? And it’s like, where’s the choice in this or to understand what’s going on? You just pick that for yourself because it’s privileged. It’s entitlement. You can do that. A lot of other people cannot do that. And that’s why people are trying to take control in the ways that they can.
Accommodations are flying off the shelves and people asking for them. And I think people think, Oh, these people they don’t have these illnesses or a lot of people just never admitted it before because it was scary. You know what I’m saying? Like you never knew what was going to happen. And now we’re in a space to where it’s I’m going to show up.
I’m going to be me. You know what I’m saying? This is who I am. Accommodate me. This is how I do my work best. I’m not ashamed of me. You know what I’m saying? In a whole other different way that I don’t think employers also are ready for and they’re challenging it and they’re losing. And so that should just say something in the grand scheme of everything.
Russel Lolacher: So if you’re someone in the C suite and executive and so forth, how do you find out how big of a disconnect you have in the organization? And I don’t mean by mandating and then finding out that nobody wants to come back. That’s a pretty big red flag, but we hope we can find this out and figure this out before it gets to that point.
So what could we do as executives to at least get an understanding?
Morgan Williams: Yeah. Look, I think that there’s a few things. And I think a lot of times when people join organizations, they do a lot of these things. The problem is we collectively as people change, organizations change. And so sometimes you have to redo some of these things that we don’t think about at the beginning.
And so one thing, for instance, whenever I’m usually first in an organization, I like to understand what the culture is for employees. I like to understand, what are, what we saying outside, the same thing is inside or is it different? Because if so, that’s the first disconnect, right? This is how we’re publishing and branding ourselves.
And we’re probably attracting talent this way. But then they’re joining us and they’re probably going to leave because we’re not like this on the inside. So that’s one way that I like to understand. I like to understand if they could change something, what would it be? These are easy fixes that you can either put on your to, to do list, your roadmap, whatever the case may be. That makes employees feel felt, heard, and seen, right? I’m, I’m literally asking them and going along. Also saying look, just because you say something does not mean that I’m going to do it. I want to be very clear in that, but at the same time I am pulling, I’m trying to understand and what I can see for a mass consensus, I would like to put it on a roadmap. It’s also asking them the questions what would you like to change or what’s, what’s happening here? Or what do you like? What do you not like? Having a conversation. And I think we’ve gotten so far away from that. We just tell people what to do.
We tell them what we would like and we expect them to do it in this way or how they’ve done it before. We don’t ask them how, what’s best for them or how they can show up or how we can support what can we be doing better in work? And I think that’s a big disconnect. I think people think about that when they first start, probably because people want to be liked, you know what I’m saying to some degree.
And it’s trying to appease and come in here and make it seem like you’re not this like overarching ruler, but at the same time, we should be continuously asking these questions. Think about how much you’ve changed at a job when you first started there and then when you left and if somebody only asked you when you first started, your ambitions were likely very different by the time that you left.
And so if we can kind of engage in this, and I’m not even just saying in a one to one fashion, but taking the time doing skip levels, like making sure that they understand what are the business objectives that we’re even trying to like, gain here because sometimes people are so disconnected from the top.
They’re just doing something and they have no idea how it even contributes to the company as a whole. And so it’s answering some of those little questions, making employees see where they fit in this big piece of the pie and what their contributions are at the end of the day, most people, they want purpose.
And I’m not saying people are coming to work for that purpose. People can have purpose in all different aspects of their lives, but the more that we can say, this is how you’re directly contributing. People like that. People like to be felt, heard, and seen. They want to hear that from their leaders and also to know that their leaders can make that connection that the reason this is that way is because of me. Like, that’s a contribution.
A lot of people don’t get that. It’s a good job after the whole project is done, and so this is an opportunity to tap into that a lot earlier. I would also say, listen and stop doing surveys just to do them. Like survey fatigue is a thing, but more than anything in action, fatigue is a thing. If people, if you keep asking people. They keep telling you, you keep ignoring it. People are going to stop answering you because you don’t really want to know. You’re just on autopilot doing these surveys without really looking at the results and doing things. And once again, this is a way that employees start to check out. So if you want to start somewhere a second place, taking a look at that once the last time somebody has answered that sometimes your answers are already in there for what you need to do next.
And don’t ask questions, that you know you’re not going to change. You know what I’m saying? I think also be realistic with that. Because if you’re going to ask all these things and be like, Oh, we want to hear your answers, and then it’s ‘great, file that in the back. We’re never looking at it again.’
Who wants to do a survey again? You know what I’m saying? Again, we have to think about that. These are people. This is their time. They put their time into telling you how they feel. Only for you to not read it. It just feels disrespectful at a certain point. And once again, it’s going on. That’s a feelings radar that we’re talking about here.
And I think when we can constantly kind of connect some of these actions that we’ve been doing historically at work for a very long time to yeah, this is why people feel this way. It really makes sense when you think about it. Yeah, I think the other thing is just employees I think so long we’ve just expected employees to do this because you work here and this is your job, but what does this get to me? What does that mean to me? I need to understand and not just say a good job that you’ve done this, but how am I incentivized? We saw the Pandora CEO or Panera Bread, excuse me, Panera Bread CEO talk about he went to therapy literally to understand why the employees in the stores weren’t excited about the share price.
Did they get incentivized for that? No, so why would they care about that? Like to me, it’s very easy connectable stuff. It just we’ve gotten so far away from these things. Would you care about it? Yeah, that’s why you cared about it because you got a raise and you got significant cash and stuff now.
So of course you care about it. But if you want people to share in that pride and that joy, you should really think about like profit sharing. You should think about different things of once we get to this measure within the stock price or whatever, if we can get here, the team gets this. That’s a shared joy. That’s a shared goal. Most people will work towards stuff like that because they want it, but if you don’t have anything like that and it’s once I get here, I make 500 million and then we’re going to have to lay off people after this? Well, wait, what do you mean? What am I, why am I helping you get there?
What am I being incentivized with? And then maybe I get a severance package at this point because you already done so many layoffs. No, people need to feel that they are a part of this team.
Russel Lolacher: First thing I want to mention is I’ve heard survey fatigue before and I’ve heard email fatigue before. The only way I kind of challenged that and you did mention this is No, I’m not tired of emails. I’m tired of crappy emails. I’m not tired of surveys. I’m tired of crappy surveys that you don’t do anything about.
If you do a survey that I know is meaningful, that’s listened to, that’s actioned, that’s followed up, I’ll take a survey every day all the time. I’m good if it improves my world, but that’s nearly never the case.
Morgan Williams: Yeah. Like a lot of times people want to sweep under the rug things that they don’t like. And that’s, that they don’t like are the things employees are mentioning, which I think they’re failing to realize. They’re bringing this up, they want to hear it. They want to see a resolution to it.
Russel Lolacher: Well, the attachment to cost is such a big part of it too because executive is, is focusing on shareholder value. Is focusing on let’s make the most money possible and they can’t seem to wrap their brain around that happier, more engaged more productive employees, that you build a relationship with will actually help that in the long run as well. But it’s just short term thinking not long term thinking.
Morgan Williams: 100%.
Russel Lolacher: I’m curious too, from an HR perspective. So executive is having a disconnect with employees. And yet, when we’re talking about the things we’re talking about, it’s not the executive that does it. They’re using proxies like HR or middle management. So they’re like, why don’t they like us? I’m like, when have you talked to them? Because you’re using HR to talk to them or middle management to be your messenger.
You still have that disconnect because you’re too busy. No, No, you just don’t find it important enough. So I kind of want to know whose responsibility is this? Cause it sure doesn’t look like executive is treating it like it is theirs.
Morgan Williams: I’m 100 percent with you. I mean, I will say even for me in an HR realm, world, whatever you want to call it. Whenever I’m thinking about decisions, I try to think about the things employees have already told me. I don’t do these jobs day to day. You know what I’m saying? These are somebody like, in a sense, they’re an expert in their job.
Like, why don’t we lean on to them to think about what are the fixes to this? Or what would you do differently about this? And I think for me, I like to lead with buy in particularly with my employee groups and to ask them different questions of, do you like this? Or what would you change about it? Because when they help it or shape it or feel like I took their opinion into account, you know what they do? They help me roll it out. They’re advocates for it. And it’s little things like that, that work for me because our plan it gets over there, but also it’s a better plan.
Like it’s better than me trying to roll it out. And then as soon as I get there, there’s pushback from them or like, why did you do this? It doesn’t work. Or, I mean, I think we all have that story of this new executive coming into your job and all of a sudden they are changing all the processes and it’s everything’s a million times harder. It doesn’t make any sense. Cause they’ve never seen the people do the work. And that’s the thing, right? Like to me, that is the executive job to do the skip level meetings, to understand what are the real problems even with management. What are the problems with people that are below management?
Also not everybody wants a traditional career path anymore. They may not want to be managers so understanding that, like, how are we still incentivizing these people that maybe have realized I’m a better individual contributor. I don’t want the job to be a manager. It’s stressful. I got enough stress on my plate, but I do love what I’m doing and I do want to provide for this.
Like, how are they incentivized? Because traditionally has had to be if you want to get higher up or to get paid more, you’ve had to be a manager. And let’s be real. We’ve all had enough bad managers in here. Like not everybody should be a manager. And so we’re going to have to look at different career tracking.
We’re going to have to look at how incentivizing employees is different, but also getting their feedback. And they’re the ones that are doing it day in, day out. They can tell you of trying to do this as I can work with a system or it’s really stupid or yeah, you can put it in here and it streamlines it, but it doesn’t feed to this system.
So that’s great over here. But now I have to do all this stuff manually. Or sounds great, implementation is horrible. There’s so many different things and ways that you can put them in or even create like a super team of people from, a few people from each level to kind of give feedback and insight or a round table before you do a rollout or to understand what you may want to even roll out by getting collective feedback.
That’s that buy in, that’s that power. And that’s when people feel like, okay, you do care. Like you’re not just like telling us to adapt to whatever. You do actually care. And I think in that type of space, it’s helpful. And that’s when people are like, you know what, Hey, I do want to work with you. Or, you know what, I’m going to show up a little bit harder or whatever the case may be.
Should we expect that from people? No, absolutely not. We should expect people to just do the job. Like that’s, that’s it. Like all of this expecting them to act like they own this company or it’s, it’s not, they don’t own the company. It’s not theirs. They know that. They’re not stupid. We’re not going to have the same incentives as somebody who is a CEO or an owner. But at the same time, we do want to relax at work. We do want a place where we feel valued. And doing these small steps is a way for you to get there.
Russel Lolacher: How do we get consistent and make this more of a long term cultural thing as opposed to like you’ve given some great suggestions on things we can do tomorrow, next week, next month. So, which I wholeheartedly, we have to start somewhere. We have to go down that path. But again, these things trail off. They become a…
Morgan Williams: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: something in the strategic plan that we can do for this next quarter. And then it drops off and they’re like, yeah, that’s not a priority anymore. And then we go back to where we always were. How do we get this to be part of the DNA of the organization?
Morgan Williams: I think it has to become a part of our strategy. How we look and to put different things and roadmaps in there, or different check ins or surveys for HR, whatever the case may be. We have to implement and add these types of strategies, calendar blockers, all the way through. We have to insert parts of these to our own one ,one on ones, you know what I’m saying? So it’s not just effective or what did you do last weekend? Like I think a lot of one on ones have really gone awry To just like conversations that have nothing to do about the growth or development or anything else like that but we can add these factors that are in there.
But one of my favorite things to do, if you get you know through onboarding, which is where I think it can change culturally, Is this thing called a personal user manual. People storying, shout out to Rachel, like she has that down pat and I love it because it goes in there and I think it’s wonderful if you can start at the beginning because it goes in there of What is your your name? What are things you like if somebody what’s something that people misconstrue about you? What’s the best way to book time on your calendar? Like it answers all these things before you get a conflict. And so I like it because even as a manager, sometimes people don’t realize this, but like sometimes managers really struggle to address conflict and this says this is the best way to address conflict with me is X, Y, and Z or I’m this type of learner and the person puts this all out.
So if you can add that one into their onboarding, it’s great. Anytime they transfer to a new team, they should have to redo that. And on top of that, the manager should be doing it as well and sharing it with them. That way, if they need to mention something to their manager, they know how to mention something to their manager and we’re cross sharing this.
So if there’s a promotion or they move to a new team, this is something we’re just looking at. Hey, like what’s your user manual? Here’s mine. We can add in their effective things for one on one. If we can add in there things about the survey, what we think, going over the survey results and kind of keeping this quarterly thing going as well as skip level check ins and doing it consistently. Not just when you feel like it. You may not be in the mood, but they may be really like cherishing this time. And I think that’s something executive leaders Forget when they cancel meetings or do different things like that, since they don’t have that same reach or connection to you. A lot of times they over prepare for these meetings.
They’re waiting. It’s on their calendar because this is a time with an executive. So understand that while you may not be feeling it, so to speak, this may be everything for them. This may be everything in their week to really just connect and spend some time with you. They may have solutions to your problems you’re already looking into.
They just want somebody to ask, and so understanding how important this time is and when you can build some of those things in. It starts just becoming something that it’s just on auto repeat. You don’t have to think about it so much. You don’t have to operate in this type of way because imagine if every time you transferred, your manager knew everything about like how you like to be treated and you knew everything about how your manager would like to be treated and how to raise things like, that would resolve so much conflict in itself. That it can be very, very helpful, as well as like misconceptions or I don’t think they’re online working or doing they’ve already said this whatever about themselves in here and it just could resolve so many problems.
And so that’s one of the reasons I really like that, because as you evolve, even after you come back from a leave, maternity leave, whatever the case may be, it may be a good time to be like, Hey, this was all stuff that happened before, but now that I have a baby and everything, I’m completely changed, put everything on my calendar.
People go through changes. And so I think it’s a really good opportunity to do that as well as even from a medical type of way. If people have gone from a leave and things like that, yes, maybe their accommodations are over, but maybe the way that they are right now is different.
And so they want to make sure that that is known. So yeah, this is how it was before. There’s no problem here. But this is just how I’d like to be treated. We evolve and so I think we have to make space for them.
Russel Lolacher: I love that because it treats the employee like it’s an employee journey as opposed to just, Hey, we’re going to do onboarding. We’re going to talk to you for a little while, and then we’re going to talk to you again when you leave. Maybe. There’s no, no connection to all the promises we made on those first couple of days. The values we spouted about.
Well, yeah, we’ll talk to you again later about that. It’s understanding that people morph and change within their employee journey. Their values may change. Their motivations may change. When they first got in there, they might’ve I’m here for the paycheck or later I’m here for work life balance. If you don’t do this exact exercise, you’ll never know and you’ll keep treating them like they’re the same person.
Like we’re nine still and not 27. Like it’s, we’re again, back to your thing about treating people like children is we grow up, we change as human beings. And if you’re lucky enough for somebody to stay with you within that organization that long, then they will change within that. You want them to change. You want to be a part of that journey.
Morgan Williams: Yeah, and most likely they want to be a part of the journey with the company as well. There’s a reason that they’re staying on there too. But if people can’t understand that, a lot of times people will give companies a lot more chances than they should. But people are waiting or maybe, maybe they’ll see that I’m showing ,up in this type of way.
And sometimes leaders are just too busy. And so this is the opportunity that provides it. I don’t think that being too busy is right.
Russel Lolacher: Oh yeah. Yeah. No, I do. It’s such an excuse. That’s all.
Morgan Williams: They often say and this is a way to kind of nip that in the bud, get out of that habit and to build it into a system, systemic function, excuse me.
Russel Lolacher: And I love your idea of making it operational. Like I used to do one on ones with my teams and they were in the calendar. It was sacred space. This was not something that I moved. It was, I moved things around it because I knew it was important to them. It was important for me to show up to do them. I remember even trying to cancel it a few times and the death stares they got on me was like, no, no, no, we love this time.
This is the time I’m like, Oh, you find it that valuable. The problem is there’s a lot of executives that won’t look at operationally, they’ll look at it as your example was, is blessing you with my time and my presence. Like you’re lucky, I can carve off enough time in my very important calendar to even talk to you for 15 minutes.
I’ll try again to do it in another six months. Like they just, it’s not a priority. It is something like a checkbox exercise as opposed to no, this is how relationships are formed.
Morgan Williams: Yeah.
Russel Lolacher: So, where is accountability in all this? Cause we talk about responsibility lots, but no accountability. So if your team is not wanting to come back in, or you’re getting bad leaders that are festering within the employee atmosphere and leaders that are not doing anything about it.
We don’t do any accountability across the board of we’re just, it’s business as usual. Gee, maybe we should fire somebody. I guess we should give them training. Like where do you see the accountability gap here as well that’s contributing to this?
Morgan Williams: See it 100 percent all across the board. I see it even from the employee level, I do think, look, I’m, I will say I’m very much a person. I speak up, you know what I’m saying? If something is not going away, I speak up. Is that everybody’s way? Absolutely not. You know what I’m saying? But to me, I take that on top of something that I can own.
That is a part of my employee journey. Like the least I can do is speak up, is kind of how I think about it. Now can speaking up potentially get people to lose their jobs? Of course. You know what I’m saying? That is also a real reality. But at the same time, I know I can’t sit in discomfort like that.
So, for me, that is a part of my own power that I collectively take for myself of at least advancing the narrative. How I feel, what’s going on, and to try to propose solutions, so that’s the accountability that I take. One as an employee and as an executive. I would say from an executive, if you are seeing this disconnect, have you ever had a chance to connect with them on a human level?
What’s really going on in their lives? And this is not a time to gossip or get around there. But what is important to them? We were talking about this before in regards to goals. Is it money? Is it title? Is it, you know what I’m saying, security or the benefits here? Understand what’s their motivation. Because when you can understand that, you can incentivize that by continuously keeping that stable for them and different types of ways or giving them this type of work that allows them, maybe it’s I don’t want to be a manager. I’m curious of what that looks like. So be cool. Maybe you can shadow.
And do some things. I’m feeding that interest of yours. Have we given you the title? No, but you could see to make a decision on whether you want to do this or not instead of saying I see you as a manager, so you’re going to be a manager and you’re going to do it today. I think a lot of times that’s how a lot of this stuff goes and it’s well, hey, I didn’t even say I wanted this.
I wanted the money from it, but I didn’t say I wanted to be the manager, but it seems like this is the only way that I can be and so really listening and like focusing on what is incentivizing people, what do they want, how are they showing up and, and what do they want from you? I think too often from a managerial standpoint, you’re always trying to think about what they can do for you.
What can the employees do for you? Hardly any manager that I know actually asks, what can the manager do for them? And that is a very rare question that employees get. A lot of times it almost freaks them out because they haven’t even been asked the question, but like, how can you show up and be of service to them?
That can create trust that can create bonding. That can also create, Hey, I feel felt heard and seen here. So now I may actually tell you some things going into my life. If you’ve never asked me about anything like this, and now you’re asking me. I’m probably going to be scared because like, why are you here now?
Do you know, like, why is this such an interest to you now? Am I on some type of list or something like what’s going on? But when you can show these small little measures of faith and connection and like attempt of trying, a lot of people will give you a chance if they see that it is genuine, that you are trying but the thing is, You can’t just start and stop.
It has to be a continuous thing. They have to see this, and you need to be genuine in it. You need to provide space. You have to understand that right now the world is crazy. People’s jobs are crazy. What they’re dealing with at home, they may not even be telling you, and they likely aren’t. And so it’s not just what they’re dealing with at work.
There’s multiple things that are going on. We see inflation skyrocketing. We see people literally needing food and facing evictions. And you’re asking why this assignment wasn’t turned in five minutes earlier. Like people have real world problems going on. So how can I help you? And if you really realize it when you’re helping them, they’re usually helping you.
When it comes back. And so it feels much more genuine, reciprocal, and it can go on. But I think the accountability kind of just kind of going back a little bit. Falls on everybody. We all have to ask ourselves one, how can we show up better for work? How can we show up better for the people that are around us?
What can I give to people? What do I not have in me to give and being honest about that. If you can’t do it, be honest about it. Don’t promise me the sky and the moon. Like, we’re in this era where there’s so much trust that needs to be repaired. So if you’re not able to do that right now, be honest about it.
People will respect you so much more than sitting up there saying, I want to hear everything you have to say. And then all of a sudden you’re like, okay, well, that was enough. I have to go. And we’ll talk about this again, like whenever I feel like it, it feels disingenuine so how are we going to face that?
And honestly, we have to move away from even talking about like EQ with soft skills and things like that. These are real skills right now. The realest skills that you can show up with is really understanding somebody in this type of way. Because when you can see their emotional intelligence, you can understand how to motivate them.
You can understand that they’re able to see and read people better. Meaning you in the team as well, customers, consumers, like there’s so many things that go into this. And so I would say if you’re struggling, start, start trying to get some EQ and coaching therapy, things like that, that are going to help open you up vulnerably to speak.
Because if you can’t speak to your own population in a vulnerable type of way to find some type of connections, we’re all people. So there’s multitudes of connections that we have. I just think sometimes some C suite people need to remember, there’s still people too like we’re not, as far disconnected as people think when it comes down to just like our skin cells, atoms, all of that kind of stuff.
Like we have more things in common than we actually don’t have. We have to just remember that and act like it though.
Russel Lolacher: I think one of the biggest things a lot of leaders can do to bridge that gap is to lead with curiosity and stop leading with assumption, which seems to be such in the DNA of, I know better, even if they do it subconsciously and they’re not doing it on purpose. Which leads me to my next question, which is, everything you’ve talked about and everything you’ve shared for me, it works in house or remote or flexible. And yet, and yet there’ll be so many leaders or executives going, Oh, in this remote world I mean, that sounds all good, but how can I do that when they’re not in the office two feet for me? Like I don’t know how to do this over a computer screen.
What would you tell that executive?
Morgan Williams: I would tell that executive to put themselves in somebody else’s shoes. There’s different activities that I’ve done before. And I had a friend, she, she went to this health like equity type of conference. And I’m going to explain it very briefly because it was something that was really cool.
And essentially they all got a card and it told them different things about a person. So let’s say, this is Johnny Walker and he is a smoker and he has been… he has lung cancer and he was a felon. So now he can’t get a job. So now he can’t go through these different types of things. And it really put people into their respective look, he wants to get a job, but he can’t keep a job because of his felon record, but he has health issues. So how do you get the parity there? And I think it makes it perplexed. And so they run through some scenarios of he’s interviewing and it’s kind of these yes, no questions that they get an option to choose on. But what I think is really cool about that is it literally puts you in the shoes and understand healthcare is expensive, one.
And then two, it’s not just about showing up and doing your best work. There’s things that come about it about like your life, your things that have happened in the past, the inequities that you are facing of look, I just want to show up and I’ll work my hardest. That doesn’t work for everybody. And I think that’s often how the C suite leads of if you just show up and work. Like, that’s not real for everybody.
And I think when you get to a certain type of entitlement and privilege, it may seem real to you, but that we don’t all have the same equity when we’re first starting out. When we’re trying to figure out some of these things. And we want to understand that people can connect with us on these levels.
And I think, them having to sit outside of their ivory towers, boxes, whatever the case may be, and to get into these types of things to say, Hey, you’re this employee. What would you do? I think they start understanding a lot of the things that they would do are really out of touch and unaffordable and people cannot do those things.
So, yeah, that sounds great, but they can’t do that. So these are the choices. So out of these choices, what would you do? And when you can really start narrowing it down, I think they see as much as they talk about employees have all this choice, they have limited choice. The reality is, you know what I’m saying?
Like they have limited choices. So with those choices, they’re going to think about them a lot more. These choices are big deals to them. They mean something, they matter. And when you can connect and resonate with that and get into that seat and to say, Wow, culture doesn’t have to be in the office.
Who said that anyway? And I mean, you also have to think about even from a woman perspective. I’m more likely to be harassed in the office. I’m more likely to face sexual assault in the office. I’m more likely to face bias in the office. There are some things that don’t work for everybody. And I think when you are a CIS-gendered white man, it can be very different of how you see things, but like you have to kind of put on and be in other people’s shoes to see what some of these things are going to look like and understand the world inevitably is evolving, so some of the things that work before mentorship, like I haven’t met most of my mentors in my life, like in person.
So I don’t want to hear it. Like for me, I’m the worst person to talk about that. I haven’t even met several of my bosses ever in real life. Companies I’ve been at for years. So, it’s really hard for me, like for somebody to talk to me about that cause I’m like, well, I didn’t learn that from… They don’t look like their little Skype picture back in the day or anything else like that. I don’t know what they look like. That’s just the reality. And none of that stuff matters. Linda, same thing with her. She was an excellent manager. Remember her to this day, never met her in person.
And I think there’s so much power in that. And to understand just cause it worked like that for you, where it was modeled like that for you, it’s not the role we’re in. We’re in a flexible, adaptable world and either you work towards it or you will work out of it. Are you meaning like this will not work for you anymore.
Eventually you have to adapt. Survival of the fittest, really, when it comes down to this. And so, I think CEOs, you can mandate this old way of working. You can say these things because you were in office for 20 years, or 30 years, or whatever the case may be. But when it really comes down to it, if you don’t adapt in this cycle, we’re about to have a lot more Gen Z coming in here.
People that expect flexible options, people that have lived in this way through high school, through college, and now through work, and you’re going to try to change it and tell them where they need to be as if they are a child, I don’t think it’s going to go over so well.
Russel Lolacher: Thank you so much for this, Morgan. I appreciate it. So much, ways we can do such a better job, but we are so focused on ourselves at the executive level of our problems, not anybody else’s. I’m going to wrap this all up with the question I ask all of my guests as well, Morgan, which is what’s one simple thing, one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work?
Morgan Williams: I would say… and this isn’t even just relationships at work, if somebody says that they want to talk with you, one simple thing I’ve learned, ask them, do they want a solution or do they, do you just, do they want you to just hear them? It goes a million miles away. I think often too many people want to provide a solution and somebody is I just wanted you to hear me.
I just wanted to vent. But also that’s how you start repairing your relationship. That’s how you start understanding what do you want from me? I know you want to say all of this, but is there something you want after this to feel validated with here? Or you just wanted to say what you wanted to say? Cool. We can do either or, but that’s a respect in that gesture, small gesture, but big meaning.
Russel Lolacher: That is Morgan Williams. She’s the co founder and CEO of Peak HR and the founder and fractional people partner behind MWHR Consulting. Thank you so much for being here today, Morgan.
Morgan Williams: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed it.
