Tech and Transparency
Episode Details
Transcript
In this episode, I have a wide-ranging conversation with a busy and successful tech executive. We talk about the importance of transparency, the challenges of returning to the workforce as a parent, and the changing nature of the tech industry.
Maria's company: https://synd.io/
Speaker 2
00:00
I think that's what a lot of the incoming folks want. They want Purpose Driven work, and when people talk about gen Z in this capacity, I find it fascinating because to me it's not just gen Z. It is now everyone coming out of a post covid environment. We really did look deeply at our commitments and where we spend our time and how we want to live our lives and I think that is a Bic Witness. It's across humans.
Speaker 1
00:37
I am Jim Hustler and this is path forward, real conversations about leadership in every episode. We're having real conversations with real people about real issues about the Journey. About the challenges about the joys. One thing leaders believe, is that no matter what the circumstances and matter what the challenges, no matter how confusing or difficult, Things are, there's always a path forward leadership is a very creative process if you're doing it. Well, for the past 21 years, we have been teaching leadership primarily through the process of great conversations. I am talking today with Maria called Curcio, she's the CEO of Cindy 0 Solutions. Cindy oh helps companies analyze and resolve, pay and opportunity, gaps. So Maria, your company Works directly with clients who need to address these issues.
Speaker 2
01:35
Our company helps other companies typically big companies, Fortune, 2000, companies, analyze and resolve, pay and opportunity gaps that are due to something like gender race or the city. T. So it's it is obviously an Enterprise business to business software company where vc-backed meaning it's a for-profit company, but it also has a mission that's deeply personal for me. And I think for many of our employees.
Speaker 1
02:00
Why is the mission deeply personal for you?
Speaker 2
02:03
Yeah, it's interesting. My career has been very nonlinear and I think that's similar to a lot of folks that I know, but that you don't hear about often. I think we tend to read about pretty linear. Career paths. Yet there's a bunch of folks, sort of embedded into the culture of tech and other industries that have taken a very different path. And that was certainly me. I graduated with a degree in history. I spent time in d.c. Working at the Smithsonian at the national museum of American history and really ended up in Tech by chance. It was a random meeting at a dinner party. Where a woman said, you really gotta move to the Bay Area. It was during the tech boom, and I was fresh out of college and that sounded like a fun experience. So I did I moved to the Bay Area and started working at an Israeli backed startup where I learned just a tremendous amount. Most Israelis are former military because they have a requirement there to serve and that really embeds upon the culture, this sense of team of herself and that has been really a consistent in my career from there and then fast-forward. You know many years working at Starbucks HQ I worked on the veterans, hiring initiative, and those folks certainly had the same Mantra in just how they work and how they lived. And its really, really made a big impact on me from a leadership perspective. So from there, I spent time and startups. I worked at Microsoft, I co-founded smartsheet which went public in 2018. And for much of that portion of my career, I was one of the few women in Tech because this is sort of.com era and post, meaning through the bust and Beyond and went through a divorce. Horse and had to kind of reinvent myself. I would say personally and professionally, I had taken some time off to spend at home with my five young kids at the time and re-entering. The workforce had a big impact on me because I thought wrongly that I would have no problem coming back in but I did have a tough time and folks wanted to understand what the Gap was on my resume and I think in overcoming that and ultimately landing at Starbucks HQ and learning. Women are perceived after they have kids and research shows that were perceived as less devoted to our work by men and women and just looking at them. The impact that has on wages. It caused me to really start thinking about the pay Gap and what the pay Gap means and what it is, and how we can overcome it using things like Innovation and Technology.
Speaker 1
04:36
What was the part of the process of coming back into the workforce? That was the most challenging for.
Speaker 2
04:41
You. I think it was the interview process honestly, because I had so many experiences and skills and quite frankly skills, I had also learned at home in raising kids and learning how to emotionally coach them and being able to balance so many different things and prioritize, and all of that. And certainly those things were not taken into account. It was really a demerit to have spent that time at home, but even all of the experience prior to that, it almost felt like it was discounted. It almost felt like, oh well, you did all that. That's fine and good but you took this time off? So now you're going to have to overcome the fact that you took this time off and everything. You did before, that is seen at a discount. So when I had left, I had co-founded smartsheet. I was a VP of marketing. I had led marketing at earlier. Stage startups had worked at Microsoft, and I realized that in order to get back in, I was going to have to go back in at a much lower level and then work my way back up and luckily I found a really open-minded Hiring manager at Starbucks who saw some of the things that I had to offer. Him was willing to quote, take a chance on me and that's really what he was doing and I think it was eye-opening to realize that someone was having to take a chance on me. I felt like, at that point I had been proven but I hadn't, I really had to reprove that. I had the skills and capabilities to succeed in a Fortune 500 organization. What this speaks to.
Speaker 1
06:16
Me is the value of mentorship and it's at any point or all the points in your career, not that you needed mentorship in terms of your skill development but that you needed someone to advocate for you and recognize your value after you had this break in your employment history. What happened after you were?
Speaker 2
06:36
Hired? Once I got in, I think it started to get a lot better because of the organization I selected. So again, Starbucks is a very Progressive organization. They're Very aware of some of these topics they're super transparent. One of the biggest projects I worked on was our very first announcement of pay equity and it was Howard Schultz last annual meeting prior to Kevin Johnson taking over, and we were committing to release the summary results of our pay Equity analysis before any other companies were doing that. So I think in that scenario, I ended up landing at a very, very good company for women for moms for parents for caregivers, but the process in which I got there was very eye-opening.
Speaker 1
07:20
So what do we do about that? How do we make that better? Is it, is it really just up to the kind of awareness and character of the people running the businesses? Is there a what else can we do other than try to raise awareness about this?
Speaker 2
07:35
Yeah, one of the things we can do I think is happening as an aftereffect of covid. In that there's more flexibility in the workplace. People are more able to work. Flowers or sometimes from home, I think that's very beneficial, it's also taxing. So there's a hidden tax to that as well, but I do think that provided flexibility gives folks more opportunity. The other thing I have thought a lot about is much like Starbucks had this incredible program to hire veterans and help them transition into the corporate Workforce, giving them credit for skills and experiences that they had in a very different environment on the field of Duty. Could we do that for other types of experiences as well? It's not typical for a growth stage, startup to enable people to do part-time work, and we have allowed several employees to flex between part-time and full-time. As you know, they have different responsibilities or caregiving status for a parent or for a kid.
Speaker 1
08:36
A you're working from home as we talk as your company operating mostly remotely. At this point.
Speaker 2
08:43
We are we're 100% remote, and we do have team Gatherings that are really important. So every other year we do an all hands with the entire company and every year we let the functional teams get together once or twice a year for a couple of days and I think that's, that's really critical. There's a bunch of other things that we do. And part of that, I really think someone's focus on culture is why we have a 94 percent retention rate in 2021 and 93 percent retention rate in through 2022.
Speaker 1
09:15
Graduations.
Speaker 2
09:16
But thank you and some of its test and learn. Like we started these free, think Fridays and all employees commit to a day with fewer meetings, and they use that time to connect. So we booked office spaces across the country where we have hubs and people 5 or more and it's one Friday a month, and we encourage them to come in, and we get them lunch, and we try to make sure that there're no zooms on that day. So they really can sort of ad hoc just cross-functionally. Great. We actually have someone in h.r. In her whole job is remote engagement. I think there's a lot there that we invest in. We shut the company down for two weeks, a year between Christmas and New Year's and then the July 4th week because we have flexible vacation policy. But what we found was for some personalities, and I am one of these, I can't take time off because it gives me more stress and anxiety knowing things are piling up. So as the CEO, you know, I am always kind of staying on Top of it. But what I realized is it's not just me, I have a bunch of employees that have that same mindset. So the shutdown's were really a way to say, take a breather nothing's going to be piling up. You can all just take a breath and spend time with your families and recharge and that has been tremendously successful.
Speaker 1
10:31
The tech industry is famous for putting in long hours it just it has that reputation. I have always wondered how much of that is actually necessary to run those businesses affected. Lovely. As how much is? Just a cultural norm? That's been.
Speaker 2
10:47
Established. I have mixed feelings on this. I think it's a requirement and our industry. Is that good? I don't.
Speaker 1
10:54
Know. Is it sustainable?
Speaker 2
10:56
Is it sustainable? I don't know, but I know the pace at which our industry moves with competition with Innovation, with making sure your products, keeping Pace making sure your go to market is constantly changing with the environment. I would say the most important. Take for someone to succeed in our business is adaptability, can you be adoptable? Can you check? And adjust, can you realize, that's how things were the last six months? But the next six months are going to be very different, and we're going to change, we're going to be adaptable, it's crucial if you're going to work in, not only Tech, but I would say in a start-up and a growth stage startup, you have got to be able to roll with it.
Speaker 1
11:39
Let us see. You have a work environment in which some people are working in the office or some people. To the alphas more frequently and other people are home almost a hundred percent of the time. If you have any concerns about people being able to build the networks and the visibility and things they need to do to advance in the company if they're being compared with someone who's spending more time in the office than they are because your router percent remote. So I did at levels that out but it's something I am concerned about.
Speaker 2
12:09
There was a time right before Omicron, I Think that we were considering signing a sublease for Seattle because we have about 40 employees here. We have got employees in New York, and then we have employees, sort of all over the country and in Europe. And one of the things that came up from my CTO who's out of New York and has been with the company longer than I have, and he's very strategic. And I would say if you ever had a CT, oh, who could actually step into the role of CHR? Oh, it would be this human. He's just very, very in tune with culture and the it Fact that culture has on people and also very in tune with things around principles of fairness and access and opportunity creation. And he said, how is that going to feel for folks? Knowing that 3/4 of the leadership team is in Seattle and there's a handful of employees that will get access to those people every single day in person. Yes. And they will get access to those drive-bys the lunches the you know, the after work stuff, and he said it just Not feel like it matches the mission and values of our company, and so we didn't do it and that's not to say we're never going to put offices back in the mix but it's definitely something you have to think about and you have to have a strategy and an approach to ensure you're keeping pulse on opportunities and who has access to.
Speaker 1
13:36
Opportunities, how goes working remotely impact opportunities for advancement or just communication in.
Speaker 2
13:42
General? We have been investing in management training and Leadership training. We have a whole level of Next, Level leaders of our company and are doing the types of training to help with this, is that in a remote and online World sometimes. And I think you have probably experienced this, I have certainly experienced this, you have a tough feedback to give someone right, and in person that conversation would absolutely occur. But when you're on a zoom call, it's so easy to punt. It's so easy to say, well, You know we will just figure it out next time or it's a tough conversation. It's so awkward to have it over to zoom. And, so I think what's happening is we have got this whole incoming layer of first-time managers, and we're not training them or giving them the skills to give that tough feedback over. Zoom. So what happens is they get to the point where they need to put a performance Improvement plan in place or you know, something like that and you ask the question which is the best question to ask is the person going to be surprised, right? And They say yes and part of that I think goes back to you have to train and Empower, your team's to learn how to give that tough feedback in a hybrid and remote.
Speaker 1
14:55
Environment. Yeah, they mean, boy, there's a lot to unpack there. First of all, a lot of companies are just simply even questioning the performance review process, generally. It's companies that have actually eliminated it, and I am okay with that, as long as the discipline Within In the management group is so strong about giving real-time feedback. I mean feedback in the moment and observational feedback let us talk about that conversation that I just heard you have with a customer or let us talk about the presentation. You just made it the management meeting and the problem again this is a structural problem, right? I think it because we pack feedback into this kind of formal process and the person gets their nerves all steeled for that, they get very defensive going into those Conversations. And you know what? I found over the years is the best time to give feedback is its just right there, right then? And there in the moment, I guess a way to say it is, I think it's a healthy organization when feedback isn't a big deal. It's How We Roll. It's just what we do with each other every day and then it becomes a cultural norm rather than a structural requirement from the HR.
Speaker 2
16:08
Department. I agree with that 100%. So first you have to educate that ongoing feedback is really important documenting that ongoing feedback is important acknowledging. When someone takes the feedback and actually learns from it and shows that they have made progress against it also acknowledge, when they're not taking the feedback, a lot of times what I see in early managers is they will give the tough feedback, but then they really have a hard time following up the next time something occurs to have to tell the person again. N because then it gets uncomfortable. You also at the top, you have got to have a culture that sees failure, as an opportunity to learn and sees perfect as not a thing. Like there's no perfect. There's only building confidence in learning when you fail and getting better and doing that over and over again. So that when you succeed you have the confidence that you know, how you got there. And so if you start to build that then people can be more okay with Getting feedback here and there. That's not positive because they understand the culture is we're going to help you learn from this and get better.
Speaker 1
17:17
Again, we move from the structural question into the cultural question my wife and I just celebrated our 46th wedding anniversary. And I have described are 46 years together, as one very long conversation, and we learned a long time ago, not the store stuff behind the dam and then have the damn brake Marcus Buckingham who wrote the book, nine lives. Lies about work, says that employees, don't want feedback, they want to be noticed. They want somebody to sit with them and treat them as a human being and show interest in them. And that's that in many ways is more important than giving them. Feedback is noticing what they want to be in the world. But they want to try to accomplish and helping them. Do that. Instead of just saying, I am your boss. Here's what I have observed, here's where you're screwing up and you need to get better all this time. Into a cultural question. And one of the aspects of culture is how we communicate with our employees and how transparent we are with them decennial, have any official policies about transparency.
Speaker 2
18:25
We have a pretty strong commitment to transparency, so we have been posting salary ranges for every job. Probably a year before the first legislation even was on the table. We adjust ranges in internal salaries yearly we Report on our median, pay Gap and pay Equity to Cindy, oh, employees. And we post that not only internally, but both publicly as well.
Speaker 1
18:49
Do you ever find yourself in situations, where you're unable to be fully?
Speaker 2
18:53
Transparent? So, we have kind of Arsenio Mission and values and behaviors, and we try to keep those pretty active. So, in every single all-hands meetings, we start by, by posting the mission and values and talking them.
Speaker 1
19:07
Through. It's a good practice. So I kept.
Speaker 2
19:09
Then alive and Continuously be working on what are the behaviors that aligned to those? We have them in performance conversations and feedback. We use them as much as we can. So in the early days, one of the mission or values, if you will was transparency and trust and during covid-19 got hit, I had to do a small layoff. I mean at the time, it was about seven people but it was, you know, we were only 25 people. So it was a pretty good chunk of our population and what I realized is that I couldn't live up to the value of transparency because I was the CEO and there were people impacted that felt. They should have like ultimate transparency as to the plans. And in order to do a layoff with empathy, you have to time it to the minute. You have to ensure that the people impacted now immediately upon anyone else knowing that so that it doesn't leak, and they don't find out and there's all these things to make it an experience that Do with the utmost Integrity, even though it's a horrible experience, and so we changed the value. I actually said, I can't have the word be transparency because there are times in the business, you know, maybe conversations, I have with the board or maybe conversations we have about that the comp committee has suggestions or requirements for us. I can't be 100% transparent all the time with everyone, so we changed it to Candor and so now it's the Candor trust Loop which is what we talked about be candid, be direct be as clear as you can. Don't hide the ball if you can't say, Something just say I can't share this with you, but it was really important to me that we got the words, right? I didn't feel like I could keep the promise of transparency. I feel like I can keep the promise of Candor.
Speaker 1
20:50
It's an interesting distinction. Thank you for that. Yeah. What, what's your biggest challenge in the next couple of years is the CEO of your company?
Speaker 2
20:58
I don't mean to sound generic, but the goalposts really changed in Tech over the past eight months. And so, if you think about being a post series, C star, Up. It was all about growth and now that has changed in a good way. I think we are being required to think about efficient growth to think about affordability and profitability in your path to profitability. So for us what that means is looking at you, how much does it cost us to acquire a customer and is that too much? And where's the duplication in our business? And how do we grow more efficiently and have we gotten to swim Laney? I mean, I know that's not A word but, you know, as you ruin scale, you sort of create these tiny little boxes of specificity and rolls. And I think what's happening is, we're realizing, you know, we got to go back to being a little more broad where people can work cross-functionally can be a more little more agile and adaptable and that's not to say, like dump two jobs on a person, but I do think you have got to step back a little bit from that specificity around. You know, your job, it gets smaller and take that to be a little more Broad in the name of efficiency and the name of efficient growth and a path to.
Speaker 1
22:16
Profitability. I have done a lot of work with manufacturing businesses, especially Aerospace here in Seattle. And I have also done quite a bit of work with Professional Service firms and tech companies. And the emphasis that you see on productivity in a manufacturing plant is not typically matched with an emphasis on productivity and a white color. Setting. It's an interesting distinction because somebody's operating a piece of equipment, we know exactly the dollar value of everything that was produced off of that machine or that process and in a Professional Services firm or Tech firm. It's more difficult, I think to filter through those issues, of waste and inefficiency and things like, but you need to even if you're not manufacturing, a physical product, you need to know where value is being generated. And at what rate? Its and is that, is that sustainable? So that's a real challenge for somebody running a tech company. How are we really making money?
Speaker 2
23:16
And how much is it costing us to make that money?
Speaker 1
23:19
Right? Yeah. Do you find your VC Partners getting more adamant about producing a bottom line? Is that what you're seeing happen? And that's why we're starting to see some of these layoffs that we're seeing is, we don't really need to be doing that, that's not necessary for our mission.
Speaker 2
23:36
I think across the board. And you see it in the public stock valuations. You know, they're now being graded on not growth, but efficient growth, and I think it's the right call. Honestly, you.
Speaker 1
23:48
Know, it's a maturing of the industry really. Is what it is. We couldn't continue on the path that we were on forever. I am alarmed. Anytime I see, you know, no news of ten, fifteen thousand, people, whatever, you know, hundreds over 100,000 people in the tech sector now, recently, you're concerned about that. But on the other hand, it makes perfect sense. I guess to me, in some ways that this has happened, Inning.
Speaker 2
24:10
And you have to balance it with, you know, the companies that were smart during covid. For example, Apple, they grew at a much more conservative pace, and they're not doing thousands of layoffs. So, I think we just have to make sure we don't swing the pendulum too far in the direction of fear. If we're doing it because we're afraid, and we're not doing it because we really are finding efficiencies in the business and ways to grow smarter. That's a problem because now you're just as bad as when you were, you know, in the front Three times. Just assuming that we were always going to have free money and zero interest.
Speaker 1
24:43
Rates. And other thing that I see is often a person who's very entrepreneurial very, very growth-oriented has difficulty making the transition into more of the management phase, which is how we now go to stabilize this business. How we go to make money in it, how we go to make it sustainable? Is that an issue for you at all? Moving from a more entrepreneurial phase? Is to okay. Now we're going to look more at how we make nickels and dimes, rather than how we make millions. Our original cofounders of eigen. When I joined as CEO, he was doing everything and so slowly. But surely he had to scale into the role of a founder and that meant giving away thing after thing. And so luckily, he's been very good at it, and we have had a great partnership as we started to incorporate.
Speaker 2
25:38
Operationalizing the business and at times, you know, he drives them crazy drives me crazy. As early-stage entrepreneurs that things can't get done faster. I think that's where we really have invested in management training in making sure that our people have the skills to grow. As managers management is really difficult. It is a skill, it is a skill that's learned, and practiced and honed. It's a craft. So I think if you are in an entrepreneurial early stage, you can get away without having that. Cuz again, everyone's doing everything. There's good communication. Everyone's one phone call away from the other person, but as you scale, you have got to invest in teaching your folks, how to be good.
Speaker 1
26:25
Leaders. Thank you, thank you. As a person in the leadership development field, you just gave my elevator pitch for me. We always say that people don't invest in leadership development during Phases of their company's development. One is when they're growing, and when is, when they're not growing, it's a there's always an excuse to not invest in leadership development. One is when you too busy too much going on, we can't have people in a classroom and you be Manning the phones and the computers and the others though. Now, we don't have the money for it, right? And, and unfortunately, there're companies that literally never do meaningful leadership development work because they're always in, One of those two mindsets and so, you know, good on you for investing in your people. I believe very strongly that none of us are in business just to make money or to build a widget that we should be in business for a lot of other reasons as well. And one of them is developing the capacity and the character and the competency of the people that work for us, one of my favorite questions. They ask my clients is Would you bet a million dollars that your business will even exist in 50 years? And very few of them would be willing to bet anything close to that because most businesses don't last that long. So I asked them then what will your impact be 50 years from now? If your business no longer exists, what are you doing? Is a business right now that will have a beneficial impact on the world 50 years from now and that changes the conversation that makes people more likely You see focused? And it makes people realize that as we help human beings and families and communities live better lives. That's something that will last have been impact 100 years from now and not just on next quarter's Financial.
Speaker 2
28:21
Reports. And I think that's what a lot of the incoming folks want. They want Purpose Driven shark and I agree when people talk about gen Z in this capacity, I find it fascinating because to me, it's not just gen Z. It is now everyone coming out of a post covid environment. We really did look deeply at our commitments and where we spend our time and how we want to live our lives. And I think that is a big Aqua Des across humans. So this idea that's going to be specific to gen Z or the young folks. I just I think we have come out of this a very, very, with a very different perspective in mindset about what we want out of work.
Speaker 1
29:11
And I am also experiencing the same thing within my circle of friends who are in their 60s and 70s, because we want, we want purpose and meaning as much as anybody, right? So you're right, it's not an H, it's not an age thing. I love the way that covid forces to ask those questions, we need to continue to ask those questions and I think we're conducting an enormous experiment in Social Development as a culture in terms of what is this mean? If more of us are working from home, what does this mean? If we're running more Equitable and diverse organizations? What does it mean? As we strive to gain equity and fairness and everything we do, you know, that's so much more than just drawing a paycheck. So I appreciate that. Your company has that mission, and I am not surprised that you're retaining people. Frankly, they're doing something really meaningful Maria. Before we end our conversation today. Are there any leadership aha moments that you have had recently that you'd like to share?
Speaker 2
30:11
I think the one that's jumping out at me was from a leadership team meeting that we had last Thursday and occasionally, I will ask the team to do ice breakers. Which they all, you know, give me the eye roll. But for this one, in particular, I had a really strong intent and I asked them, what are the two characteristics over the next 12 to 18 months that we must embody as a leadership team to be a high-performance team in what we now know is the presentation of the background macro environment for the next 12 to 18 months. And what are the two characteristics? We should avoid at all costs as a leadership, team over the next. 12 to 18 months because again in that sense of adaptability these change constantly the characteristics that drive you to being a high-performance team in times when everything's great. And on the up-and-up are very different and I think it was a beautiful moment not because the answers were all consistent, but because I found that the leadership team was really looking at one another with curiosity. And it was real curiosity around. Oh, that's so interesting that you said, Do you think one of the characteristics we should avoid at all costs is blame or undermining one another? It was just this enlightening moment where they all got to see, what are the triggers for one another, and how do we all think about success in this environment? And it was, it was cool. It could have been so cheesy and trite and I feel like the way they answered the way they came to the table, and the way they then engaged in conversation was beautiful.
Speaker 1
31:53
So many management meetings are just a series of technical questions and activities and I think from 21st century leadership skill is facilitation. And I think when you ask a question like that, you're acting in the role of a facilitator, you're creating conversation and that's a wonderful skill for a leader to have because really what one of the things the leader does is they raise, they raise the awareness and even the IQ of their employees by challenging them by asking good questions. That was a good one. We also talked about Vision, right? We think of vision is like looking out five years, but sometimes you have to walk into a meeting with your employees and have a vision for yourself of how you're going to show up At that moment. What is my vision for this meeting? What is my vision for this conversation? What is my vision for this relationship? And I, I like to take vision and kind of Chunk it down into small pieces, because I think if we, if we approach each situation with a desired outcome, Um, in mind, we're better off. So I love that. Keep asking those kinds of questions. Those are, those are great questions. So I want to say before we finish up here that I think your company Cindy do is in very good hands.
Speaker 2
33:07
Thank you. I appreciate that. It is such a team effort, what we're building and, you know, it's a journey. So we just keep learning and improving along the.
Speaker 1
33:16
Way. I took over an organization, it wasn't a big one. I was about 36, 37 employees. I think and the employees did not know that in the 12 months, prior to my arrival on the job, that the company had lost about six hundred thousand dollars in net operating income. And the first thing I did was told them and I did so against the wishes of the owner of the company who felt that employees couldn't handle the truth. They would, they would flee, they would freak out. Now, if they knew that the business was in such Dire Straits and it was fascinating for me how quickly Behavior. Change it literally changed that day in that organization because all of a sudden everybody was taking ownership. So I, you know, partly because of that experience. And a lot of other things I have observed over the years, I am just a big fan of transparency. I think you should be transparent about a lot of things including the company's financial performance including pay Equity issues. People should know what. What the ranges are for their salary, ranges are for their position. They should know what the salary ranges are for the other positions, they might aspire to in the organization, they should know. If the companies considering big changes in structure strategy when people know the truth, they can take more responsibility for addressing the truth in dealing with the truth. You can't create accountability in your organization. If you aren't telling people what they need to know and you can't get Mad at them for not taking more action or more being more assertive. If they don't know what it is, the consequences and the significance of what it is. They're you're asking them to work on and part of transparency, is to get higher levels of performance out of your employees because they will take more ownership if they know more about what's going on. There's a, there's a patriarchal of component to not being transparent. It's it You're dishonoring your employees. When you think they can't handle the truth, you're dishonoring employees. When you don't think they're mature enough or intelligent enough to process even somewhat complex information about the business. I really challenge all of you to think about transparency as a critical value for your business. This is what Maria's companies is helping other companies move towards and I honor that work and ask you all to consider ways to honor your employees by sharing more information with them rather than less Well, thank you for listening to path forward, real conversations about leadership. If you enjoy this episode, really appreciate it. If you let us know, you can rate and review the show on Spotify, and on Apple podcasts, special thanks to all my guests for the level of vulnerability. They took in sharing their stories, if you'd like to be a guest on path forward. Please reach out via the contact form on my website path forward leadership.com That's also where you can learn more about our show, my upcoming book. That's also where you can learn more about our show, my upcoming book. And my leadership services, this episode is produced by large media. And my leadership services, this episode is produced by large media. You can find them at l.a. You can find them at l.a. RJ. RJ. Media.com, as always, thank you for listening. Media.com, as always, thank you for listening. I am Jim Hessler and this is path forward. I am Jim Hessler and this is path forward.
