Explore the connection between human behavior, collaboration, and business success in our latest episode with leadership consultant Jennifer Nash. Learn why putting employees first is the key to a thriving, supportive work culture that drives sustainable growth.
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Show Notes | Transcript“The only way that we will succeed going forward is if we work together. And to work together, we have to share and we have to collaborate and we have to communicate.” – Jennifer Nash
How can leaders create a thriving business environment? Join us as we sit down with Jennifer Nash, the award-winning author of “Be Human, Lead Human: How to Connect People and Performance” to uncover the secrets behind putting employees first. Jennifer shares invaluable insights on how employers need to view their employees, crafting a supportive work culture, and the pivotal role of defining and holding employees accountable for desirable behaviors. Together, we break down actionable strategies to cultivate an environment that boosts engagement and retention, highlighting why some leaders hesitate to adopt these essential practices. Jennifer also shares her first-hand experience as an employee of a failing company whose CEO instilled a culture shift rooted in “working together.” You’ll hear the undeniable benefits of prioritizing people, and the practical steps you can implement in your own organization.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The concept of putting employees first for business success
- Why it’s important to view employees as whole human beings
- The challenge of creating environments where employees thrive
- The significant benefits of prioritizing employees
- Actionable steps for leaders to gather qualitative data from employees and customers
- Importance of self-leadership and managing emotional intelligence
- Role modeling desired behaviors and maintaining consistency
- The shift in employee autonomy post-COVID and the AI-driven job market
Connect with Jennifer:
Website: drjennifernash.com
Take the Human Leader Assessment: drjennifernash.com/hli
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Join the Soulful Women’s Network
Send Gloria Grace a message
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LinkedIn: Gloria Grace Rand
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Namaste. Do you think putting customers first is a no brainer? That’s likely because you don’t have any employees in your business yet. But if hiring plans are in your future or you already have a team, stick around because you’re going to want to hear from today’s guest. She is a leadership consultant who transforms workplaces by putting people first. But before I bring her on, I want to welcome any of you who are new to the podcast. I am Gloria Grace, and I help female entrepreneurs release negative thought patterns like self doubt and poor self worth so you can attract more clients with calm, clarity, and confidence. And joining us today is Jennifer Nash. She is the founder and CEO of a global leadership advisory and consulting firm that connects people and performance to deliver exceptional results.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
And she is also the author of the 2023 award winning book Be Human lead Human, how to connect people and performance. And I’m going to bring her right on now without any further ado. And let’s welcome you, Jennifer, to live. Love, engage.
Jennifer Nash :
Thank you. Gloria Grace. I’m excited to be here today.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Well, I’m looking forward to this because I want to learn more about being a good leader. I don’t have any employees in my business at the moment. I have had some in the past, and I know eventually I will again. So I thought we’d actually start just kind of dive right in and talk about why is it important for employers to, I guess, put employees first as opposed to the customers.
Jennifer Nash
Well, you know, a couple years ago, the business roundtable signed an agreement with 181 companies that essentially said, you know, all stakeholders are important. And so when we put all of our stakeholders first, we can actually do what’s right by them and what’s right for the world as a whole. So when we think about putting employees first in the equation, it’s about what can we do to create an environment that allows them to flourish and grow, and then in turn, our businesses flourish and grow and the world is a better place.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Well, that makes sense. And I think it seems to be a challenge, though, yet for a lot of companies out there. I know we’ve definitely heard a lot about that the last…
Jennifer Nash
I can understand, Gloria Grace.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah. So let’s say that you are an employer out there, or again, if you’re maybe a solopreneur and you’re looking to start expanding your team, you’re at that place where you’re ready to start hiring. So how can you actually create an environment that is going to be one that employees are going to want to stay, be they’re they’re going to want to show up every day for work. Let’s put it that way. So how can companies go about doing that?
Jennifer Nash
Yeah, so I think first and foremost, there’s the element of seeing the employee as not just an employee, but seeing them as a whole human being. Right. So, for example, I live in a state where they currently passed legislation to deny people who are working outside building things water breaks. That makes no sense to me. So when you start off from that perspective and you’re not giving people what they need from a human rights perspective, you know, you’re not in a good place to create an environment where not only people don’t want to stay, but the people that are there aren’t going to be engaged and really want to give their all to the company.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, I heard about that. And it’s just, really just boggles the mind because, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, you know, if Mama ain’t happy, nobody else is happy. I would, I would think that if your employees aren’t happy, then how can your customers then be happy, you know? Right. Because I’ve been in situations where you could clearly tell that somebody was really not happy to be there, and it shows in how they treat you as a customer. Yeah. So is there anything, I guess, you know, what can be done besides, you know, giving people their basic, you know, needs, you know, fulfilling their needs, like, you know, food and water to really start, I guess, creating this environment. And it’s, and it’s really actually add attitude. That’s the word I’m looking for, really, this attitude that’s got to start from, from the top down.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
So what can be done, I guess, to do that? And is there anything even that employees can do themselves to be able to stick up for themselves, short of going on strike or something like that? We’ve also experienced a lot of that over the last few years as well.
Jennifer Nash
Yes, exactly. Well, I think one of the first things that employers can do is to understand what kind of culture do they want to have in their organization. For example, I was just working with a client last week, and they were telling me how there were people in the organization who didn’t want to work together, and they refused to work together, actually. But because of the jobs that they were doing, they needed to work together to deliver this product that they were working on. We talked about how this leader can create behaviors that are expected in the organization. What does that look like? And then holding people accountable to abide by those behaviors. And if they choose not to that’s okay. We still love you, but we think you’re going to be happier elsewhere.
Jennifer Nash
So first and foremost, I think, is understanding what kind of culture you want to create in the organization and then designing the desired behaviors around that culture.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
And, yeah, so that makes perfect sense to be able to do that. What would actually maybe. Let me ask it this way. Why do you think some companies, some leaders are so reluctant to be able to put this emphasis, to really be able to focus? Is it? And I’m thinking, not even necessarily. I know public companies get in all into having to be able to please the shareholders and things like that, but I’m sure this happens a lot in private companies as well. Why do you think there is a reluctance to focus their attention on their employees?
Jennifer Nash
So I think this goes back to Taylor. Taylor was a mechanical engineer. He’s known as the father of scientific management. He was one of the first management consultants. And Taylor was someone who wanted to design processes to be optimized. And so he ran time in motion studies to help people figure out what was the fastest way to do their job. And prior to Taylor coming on the scene, workers had figured out the processes that worked best for them, the tools that worked best for them, the timing of their work that worked well to get the work done. So they had employee essentially voice and choice and autonomy.
Jennifer Nash
And then Taylor came on the scene, redesigned everything, optimized all the processes, and all of a sudden, he’s telling people, okay, at this time, you pick up this amount of pig iron, you take x number of steps, and then you set it down, and then you take a break for 20 seconds, and then you get up and you did it all over again. And he’s walking around with a stopwatch, you know, sort of micromanaging this person as they go through, you know, this, this time in motion study. And I think as an outcome of that, we got into this space where, you know, managers and leaders became more micro managers and telling people what to do, rather than trusting their employees to do the work in the way that worked best for them so they could optimize their efforts and produce most effectively for the company. So I think that’s one of the things that gets in the way now of us designing these organizations where employees can thrive, because we still have this outdated thinking around managers and leaders and what their role actually is in the organization.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah. As you were talking, trust was definitely coming to mind, is thinking that that seems to be that key ingredient. And I know that I’ve talked with other entrepreneurs over the years on the podcast as well. And that, and I can remember one interview in particular where this was a young man who started an app and was building this company, and he wanted to make sure that he hired people that were smarter than he is in some key areas because he wanted to be able to know that he could delegate responsibility to them and trust them to be able to do that. And I know for me, too, because I don’t pretend to know everything, and I don’t necessarily want to know everything. And I would love to be able to have someone that I could is my right hand man, so to speak, to be able to trust them, to be able to get the job done.
Jennifer Nash
Right. Right. I think that’s the second element here that is often missing. Right. It tends to be the elephant in the room that leaders or managers aren’t trusting their people. And so that always makes me just. I don’t quite understand that. Because if you trusted the person enough to hire them, then why don’t you trust them enough to do their job? That makes no sense to me.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense to me either. It’s very counterintuitive. I guess. Maybe it’s that some people just really want to be in control, I guess, all the time, I suppose. Right?
Jennifer Nash
Yeah, I think that’s probably the third element here that we’re talking about. Traditionally, managers and leaders are people that have had the control, they have the power, and for some people, they’re not comfortable giving up the power, if you will. And they feel that if they give their power away, that they won’t have any. But the converse is actually true. When you give your power away, you actually get more power. And so thinking about how the role of a leader and a manager has shifted to be more of a coach and a facilitator these days is a very uncomfortable identity for a lot of leaders and managers because they didn’t grow up with that. It wasn’t role modeled to them, and they don’t quite know how to step into that and be that way in that role. So we have also an identity shift happening for leaders and managers today, and it’s one that, quite honestly, a lot of them aren’t comfortable with.
Jennifer Nash
And secondly, they don’t have the tools in their toolbox to lead people. They’re used to leading projects and tasks, and that’s typically what they use to try to lead people. And as you and I both know, it doesn’t work very well.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, definitely. And it really does require a whole different mindset. I think for you, number one, to be able to do that and then, yeah. And then acquiring these different skills and being able to, you know, admit that you don’t know what you sometimes that you don’t know what you don’t know and that definitely you don’t know everything. And so to be able to hand that off to someone else, I’m wondering, do you find, and you’ve worked with a lot of different, I know huge companies even, especially do you find that is it. And I don’t want to necessarily say that we’re banging up on men particular, but I think also a lot of women maybe fall into the same trap as well. Have you seen that in working with different organizations that it doesn’t really matter necessarily? We’re all kind of focused in on them, that, you know, that mindset, this more mechanical mindset, I guess you could say.
Jennifer Nash
So I won’t go down the gender path on this one because I think it applies to people. Maybe not, but I think it applies because as humans, we learn by mimicking, we learn by emulating the behavior that we see around us. As babies, that’s how we learn. And as adults in the workplace, when we’re looking to people around us, we see how they behave and we act in the same way. So thinking about that and thinking about the role models that we’ve had, you know, there’s a tendency for leaders and managers to feel like, oh, they have to have all the answers and, oh, they’ve got to be right, and they have to, you know, they have to have all the power. And, you know, in this volatile, you know, uncertain and complex and ambiguous world we have today, particularly after Covid, nothing could be further from the truth. The only way that we will succeed going forward is if we work together. And to work together, we have to share and we have to collaborate and we have to communicate.
Jennifer Nash
And if we don’t do that, we risk not only becoming redundant and not relevant, but we also risk putting our businesses out of business.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Well, I’m going to flip it around here, and let’s talk about what are some of the really concrete benefits of putting an employee first and having that philosophy in your company?
Jennifer Nash
So I will give you an example of how this worked in a very large organization. And I tell the story of this in my book, be human, lead Human. So there was a CEO that came in to lead a company, and the company wasn’t doing very well. In fact, they were losing $17 billion. And the CEO decided, you know, something obviously needs to change here, we’re not doing very well. So he decided that we were going to have a culture change. And so he created a system called working together, where there were expected behaviors that were required.
Jennifer Nash
Right. And they were put on, like our badges that we would use, you know, to badge into the doors every day. And they were also put on the walls in meeting rooms. And so through this combination of culture change and behavior change and leaders holding their people and their people holding each other and themselves accountable to these new behaviors, going from $17 billion loss to eight years later, when the CEO left office, the stock price had gone up 1837%. So that is one of the most powerful examples that I know of, where when you create a culture change with people working together, you can achieve amazing things for the organization.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
So if someone listening to this wants to start making some changes, what would be the first thing you’d recommend they do?
Jennifer Nash
So I think the first thing that I would recommend they do is go around and ask people what’s one thing that they would change. If they could only change one thing about the organization, what would that be? Right. So, essentially, go around and do your homework. Go around and do due diligence, ask questions. If you can’t get people to talk to you, because often people are a little afraid to talk to the leader or to the CEO, then bring in a third party and have them conduct the interviews or the focus groups or however you want to choose to do that, but ask them what’s one thing they would change. You’re going to see the numbers from where you sit in the organization. You’ll have all of the data that way.
Jennifer Nash
But what you’re missing are the qualitative pieces from the stories of the people that are on the front lines, that are seeing what doesn’t work and what does work. And what if we just shifted just a tiny bit, maybe would have massive implications for outcomes and results. That’s the first thing I would suggest. Gather your data and really understand what it is that you’re dealing with.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, absolutely. And would it be, and I’m thinking here now, for smaller organizations in particular, you know, small businesses that maybe only have a couple employees, perhaps, would it also be a good idea to survey their existing customers as well?
Jennifer Nash
I don’t think it should stay to the internal organization. I think the more stakeholders you can bring in to that conversation, into that dialogue and gathering those data points, the more holistic picture you will have of what is actually going on.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Okay, let’s talk about you a little bit. So I’m curious to know how you got interested in this subject in the first place.
Jennifer Nash
Well, you know, I mentioned that story about the CEO who is changing the culture of the organization. And I was working in the organization at that time, so I was able to see things firsthand, and I really wanted to understand why there weren’t more leaders who had that approach. You know, why weren’t they able to put their ego aside and, you know, focus on what was best for the organization and for the employees and for the stakeholders? And so that prompted me to go back and do my MBA at the University of Michigan. It prompted me to go to case western reserve and work on my PhD there and really start to understand why it is that there aren’t more leaders who lead in that way. And the book, be human, lead human, has a lot of the research results that I found through that work, as well as what we discussed today.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Very cool. I recommend this book. Get it. And I presume it’s available where fine books are sold I presume.
Jennifer Nash
Where people like to prefer to buy their books. It should be there, and if they don’t have it on the shelf, they can order it.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
All right, very good. What is a commonly held belief about leadership that you passionately disagree with?
Jennifer Nash
So, I think a commonly held belief about leadership that I disagree with is that it is all about other people. I believe that to be an effective leader, you have to lead yourself first. And so if you’re not emotionally managing yourself, if you’re not role modeling the behaviors that you expect to see in others, if you’re not demonstrating the type of interactions and collaboration and communication that you want to see from other people, then how do you expect the people around you to do that? So I always say it starts with you, right? You have to manage yourself first. And that includes the emotional intelligence levels. Making sure that you’re not yelling at people, making sure that you’re not having outbursts in a lunch in a busy New York restaurant in the middle of the day where everyone is staring at you, making sure that you have the ability to manage your emotional self so that you can present, you know, an equanimity to the organization so that they don’t catch the emotion. We know that you catch emotions in milliseconds, and so managing that for yourself will help your organizational tenor.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, I agree. It definitely starts within. And you can practice again, just with leading. Not only leading yourself, but I would think even leading your family, how are you interacting with them as well? Because all of these things add up, and so it’s so important. If, you know, if you’re having trouble with your employees, maybe think about, okay, well, how do I manage my children? Maybe there’s some lessons there. I don’t know. What do you think?
Jennifer Nash
Yeah, you know, I often, you know, people often ask me, well, you know, this is only for work. I’m only, I’m only working. I’m only doing coaching because this is for work. And I often like to, you know, invite them to think about the fact that, well, are you a different person at home? Like, do you have different values that you use at home to guide your behavior rather than the values that you’re using at work? If you’re two different people in those two places, we may have other issues and you may need to talk to a therapist. I can’t help you with that, but I often invite people to think about the fact that who they are as a person has everything to do with who they are as a leader. It’s the values that we have and what is important to us and what we prioritize that guides our decision making and whether that’s in the personal realm or whether that’s in the professional realm. It’s all one realm.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, definitely. Oh, I love that. Excellent advice. So I’m going to shift gears a little bit and just talk about, I love to ask our guests this question because I’d love to see the range of answers that we get. So love to know, what are you curious about right now?
Jennifer Nash
Oh, so right now I am very curious about AI. So I’ve been doing some learning about AI and taking a couple classes, and I’m not a software person or a programmer, so the whole like technical part of AI is a little unclear to me. So I wanted to just learn more about AI because it has drastic implications for how it is going to impact our workplaces and the work that we do and how we interact with one another. So that’s something that really interests me right now, not only from a personal level, because I’m super interested in just learning more and I have a natural curiosity about things, but also like how it’s shifting the world of work and what that’s going forward.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, well, I look forward to maybe seeing what you come up with about that because, yeah, you’re right, it’s definitely impacting organizations in lots of ways that we haven’t even, they haven’t even thought of yet. And so, yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see what comes from that. Is there anything else that I should have asked you about that I didn’t. Any other important points that you’d like to share about, you know, employees and their business culture?
Jennifer Nash
You know, I think Covid was, one of the few benefits that came out of COVID is that employees learned that they have voice and choice and autonomy. Right. And they can choose where they want to work. They can choose what that work looks like. And they learned that they don’t have to be stuck in where we were before because now they have other options. Right. And I think the balance of that power shift made a lot of organizational leaders uncertain. Right.
Jennifer Nash
And I would encourage employees to think about right now the fact that you still have options. Right. If you are in a place where you’re not happy with how things are going or you don’t like the culture or it’s just a mismatch. Right. And you’re not happy with the work that you’re doing, there are other opportunities for you to find someplace that you will land that will be a better fit for you, where you can achieve your potential and you will be happier and the organization will be happier. So I think just keeping that in mind because sometimes it’s hard to remember that, especially with everything going on with AI right now.
Jennifer Nash
People are very of losing their jobs to AI, and people are also afraid of losing their jobs to a robot as well.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah.
Jennifer Nash
And historically, what we see is that even though technology will displace jobs, it creates more jobs than it displaces.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, that’s true.
Jennifer Nash
When you think about it that way. There are jobs that will exist that we don’t know about yet, but there are some jobs that are coming into being that, you know, maybe people are interested in, like a prompt engineer. Right. Helping organization figure out how do they interact with AI most effectively to get the most out of it so that they can accelerate the work that is sort of the administrivia kind of work and then spend more of their time on the things that make us more human, like the collaboration and the creativity and the, you know.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, absolutely.
Jennifer Nash
I would encourage people to just remember that there are always more opportunities. It just may require a shift in higher thinking.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
And I’m going to also push back a little bit, and I’m from the employer standpoint, because it is good to know that employees have options. And I know, like, my son is looking for a different job because he’s not totally satisfied with the company he’s working for. But I’ve also heard on the other side of it, I’ve got a good friend who is saying that they keep going through, you know, assistants every week. They’ve got, they just can’t find someone who is willing to stay the course. And so what do you say to, you know, and I’m trusting, you know, I know she is a very open hearted, good hearted person, and I’ve met her husband, and I, you know, I’m sure that they’re not, you know, having, they’re not, they don’t own a sweatshop, and I’m sure they’re providing good, you know, an environment. But still, what do you say to employers like that?
Jennifer Nash
So to employers who are having trouble filling a particular role, I would say take a look at the role itself. What are you asking people to do? And look in particular at the skills that you are asking for people, right? We’re seeing a shift right now in organizations that they’re moving to a skills based model. So rather than hiring for a particular job title or a role, they’re looking to bring in people that have the skills that they can be effective in a particular position and then train them to do the rest of the job. So I don’t know what the situation is exactly with your colleague and their administrative assistant job, but I would venture to guess that perhaps there’s a mismatch there in terms of expectations and skills coming in the door.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, that makes sense. I’ll have to talk to her about it and say, see how everything’s going, so. Or point her to this episode and say, here, check it out. Thank you so much. Yeah. Because that really is good advice. And I know that ultimately I would encourage employers out there to think about, again, why did you go into business in the first place, and what is it that you want to accomplish and how can you best do that? And if you’re not focusing on keeping those employees happy, then it’s going to be a lot harder to be able to accomplish your goals of then keeping your customers happy. So, you know, do some soul searching about that and realize you can be friends and, well, not necessarily friends, but you could be partners.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
You know, think of your employees maybe as more as partners and stakeholders, right?
Jennifer Nash
Yes. You know, one of the things I often recommend is that, you know, understand the people that are coming in the door to share in your business’s success. Right. What is it that motivates them about your company or about your mission or about the work that you do or the impact that you have in the world. Right. Understand who they are as a person. And if you can understand what motivates them and what drives them and then connect that to the work that they will be doing for you. You probably won’t have any other problems.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Yeah, sounds good to me. Good advice. Awesome. Well, if someone has been listening to this today and would like more information about you and maybe get your book, is there a place that people can go to to connect with you?
Jennifer Nash
Sure. So they can go online. My website is drjennifernash.com. that’s D-r Jennifer Nash dot com. and there they’ll find a whole bunch of information about what I do, a lot of different resources that are complimentary. And there’s also, we didn’t talk about this, but there’s the Human Leader index online as well at my website, which is also complimentary. And they can take that, get an assessment of where they fall on the human leader index and then get a personalized report with some recommendations on what they might consider changing going forward.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
Oh, I love that. That’s a very good idea. So be sure and check that out. And for those of you listening, go to the show notes. You will see the link to doctor Jennifer’s web address and you’ll be able to go there and check that information out. So thank you so much again for being with us. I really appreciate you taking time out of your schedule and enlightening us on employer employee relations and how to improve them.
Jennifer Nash
Well, thank you so much for having me, Gloria Grace, it was a pleasure.
Gloria “Grace” Rand
And I do want to thank all of you as well for joining us today and for listening and watching. And if you are not subscribed yet on your favorite podcast platform, please do so. And on Youtube at gloriagracerand. And until next time, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
