S1E3 Yakety Yak, Do Talk Back pt. 1

Season 1 | Episode 3

Episode Description

Welcome to Everything Is A People Problem; a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people-centric solution with host Dia Zafer-Joyce.

In this episode, Dia defines the what, why, and how of fostering a culture of open communication. Feedback increases transparency, decreases apathy, and improves the work we do together; part 1 of this two-part episode lays the foundation of this topic so that part 2 can address delivering feedback with cultural, gender, and generation considerations.

Episode Transcript

Hi there. Welcome to Everything is a People Problem, a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people centric solution. I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce. Let's talk about people.

Hello again. I'm Dia, and I'm so glad you're here for Everything is a People Problem. Today's episode is about feedback, and I love feedback. I love giving feedback, I love receiving feedback, and I'm a strong believer that feedback is the basis of a healthy and productive work culture. I have so much that I want to share with you about this topic that this is part one of a two parter.

In this first part, we're going to cover the what, why, and how. What feedback is and is not, why we even care, and how we make the feedback magic happen. And in the second part, that'll be released next week, we're going to explore how to adapt feedback throughout cultures, genders, and generations. I'm pretty sure if somebody took my DNA and put it underneath a microscope, instead of seeing typical nucleotides, they would see the word feedback. So instead of chemical building blocks, it's feedback building blocks. When I was an instructional designer, I wrote a lot of training content on feedback, not just how to deliver it, but also how to receive it. It's the fundamentals of open communication, and it's not just an activity that you check off on your to do list. Now, keep in mind, I was living that instructional designer life about 10 years ago, and so a lot has changed in 10 years. Our society is different. Our work cultures are hybrid. So naturally, fundamentals of feedback might be similar, but the mechanism and the experience and how we execute that has definitely changed.

In 2019, Zenger Folkman conducted a survey about feedback in the workplace. 94 percent of participants reported that well delivered, corrective feedback improved their performance. Not only did they recognize the benefits of a culture of open communication, they craved it for their own personal development. Feedback is critical information. It's real life data that we can use to either reinforce or change behaviors. The critical part of that statistic is that the feedback was delivered skillfully. So how do we deliver effective feedback?

Let's dive in with a definition. Feedback is an intentional conversation, one that's based on an observable behavior and that behavior's corresponding positive or negative impact. Don't worry, we're going to break that down. Feedback is observable. It's based on a behavior that you can see, that you can experience. Feedback is not a feeling. It's not secondhand information. It's evidence. It's fact. Not only is it based on a behavior, but there's an impact to that behavior that's either positive or negative. Why do we talk about an impact and not just the behavior? Because a behavior itself is neutral. Let's take the example of laughing. In one scenario, the behavior of laughing may reflect a positive environment. It could be comic relief and even be relaxing to those who are there and experiencing it firsthand. But in another environment, laughter may be seen as sarcastic. It could reduce the seriousness of a conversation and even communicate disrespect. Behaviors are neutral because they're situational. To deliver effective feedback, you need to observe both the behavior and the situation in which it was displayed.

Okay, delivery time. So, we've seen a behavior, check. We've seen the corresponding impact of that behavior, check check. Now, it's time to have a conversation. There are three things you need to either prepare for or be ready for as you go into this conversation.

Number one, you need to assume that the person who displayed this behavior did not intend that impact. No one goes in to a meeting and laughs with the goal of disrespecting someone. People are not inherently rude and vindictive. It's just the impact of the behavior that occurred.

Number two, get ready to ask questions. This is not a one directional oneversation. This is a two way street; you need to seek to understand before you can come to a conclusion together.

And number three, if you're going to ask questions, you better be ready to listen.

Okay, we're prepped, but now we need to know how to effectively deliver our message. It's really important to get the how of this conversation right, and when I say “right”, I mean put yourself out there and practice because you're not going to nail it the first, the second, the third time you do this. Francesca Gino from the Harvard Business School did some research around why we need feedback. And in the category of “managers providing critical feedback”, 72 percent of the employees she talked to highlighted that type of feedback as important for their career development, but only 5 percent of them believed their managers were providing that type of feedback.

So, so many of them are in need of this in order to become better employees and to do a better job and to stay engaged, but minimal numbers of their managers are engaging in this conversation with them. So going into this conversation, we need to remember feedback is timely, so you don't want it to go too long from when you've observed something to when you talk about it, and it's intentional. Make the time to have this conversation and not just on your time, on their time. That's going to be a good lead in into how we execute this.

Step one, you need to set the expectation and position why you want to have this talk and ask permission if it's the right time to have the conversation. If now isn't the right time, schedule it, put it in the calendar, and again, make it intentional. What does this sound like? Let me give you an example: “Hey, Daniel, I'd love to give you some feedback from that meeting we were in together just a few minutes ago. Is now a good time?”

Step two, share your observations and give examples. “Daniel, do you remember laughing during the meeting? It turned out that came at a very critical point in the conversation where we reached a serious topic. When you laughed, it made the topic seem like a joke to our partners. The impact is that they're not going to take this issue seriously anymore and work with us to get it fixed.”

Step three, ask questions so you create a shared understanding of this moment. In Daniel's example, it might be, “Tell me a little bit about how you approached that meeting, “ “How do you feel about that issue in particular?” Don't be afraid to ask follow up questions so you can deepen your understanding of their perspective in this situation. Your agenda here is to share an observable behavior and its corresponding impact to the business. It is not for you to prove that you're right.

Step four, thank them for their time and equally be open to feedback in the future.

Whew, that's it. Super simple, right? It's not simple, it's hard, but it gets better, I promise. The more that you do it, the more natural the conversation becomes. And just like we said, you have to prep yourself to be a giver of feedback, you also have to prep yourself in the same way to receive that feedback. Assume that that person who's giving you that feedback wants to see you succeed, wants you to be great. Listen to what they have to say. It's valid. If it's observable, they've seen something that they need to share with you and ask questions just as they're going to ask questions of you. You need to ask questions back as well so that you can foster that shared understanding.

There are a lot of opinions on the how part of giving feedback. For example, Kim Scott, who's a former Google executive, she popularized the term “radical candor”. She wrote a book in 2017 by that same name. And she argues that even “obnoxiously aggressive” feedback is better than “ruinous empathy” because it puts the ownership on the person receiving the feedback to still get something from it. To be honest, I have a different perspective and ultimately disagree because by making the best of the situation, we're giving somebody permission to deliver feedback poorly and maybe even cultivate that toxic work environment we talked about last week. I like to say, “Control what you can and influence what you can't,” because you can't control how someone delivers feedback to you. And if it's all you're getting, of course you have to do what you can with what you have. Kim shares techniques on how to extract the value from that experience, and to me, that just encourages poor management behavior. I say that with the caveat that I have not read her book, Radical Candor, and I'm very big on reading the source materials. So please take that with a grain because this is based on research alone. You can bet though I'm gonna add that to my reading list.

Another opinion on feedback comes from Ray Dalio. He's the founder of Bridgewater and he uses the term “radical transparency” where employees rate and give feedback publicly about one another's contributions and meetings and it's in shared documents as the meetings take place. That is a big ol’ yikes right there for me with red flags flying everywhere. Mostly because feedback is for everyone. It's not just manager to employee. It's the great leveling playing field. It's peer to peer. It's employee to manager. Everyone needs to be open to feedback and when you get into a situation where what is shared in the meeting is the recorded feedback, that is incredibly one directional and dictatorial.

The steps we talked about earlier are the lowest common denominator. If you've never given feedback in your life, then if you follow those steps, voila, you're giving feedback. That being said, delivery may change based on the relationship you have with someone or the familiarity that you've established. While being respectful of the people you're talking to, find your feedback style. Everyone's going to be a little bit different. But I do want to share the five F's of feedback flaws with you before we're finished for today.

The first F is focus. Feedback is ineffective if the discussion, experience, and expectations are not clear.This goes back to what feedback is and is not.

The second F is formality. When feedback is only delivered during scheduled one on ones or performance reviews, it becomes an activity you have to do or receive versus something you want to do or receive.

The third F is fear. The more you avoid feedback, the less you communicate. Most commonly, managers are afraid to deliver feedback because they're worried it'll introduce tension, demotivate people, or they're straight up conflict averse. Giving in to these fears often results in watered down messages, which make these conversations way less powerful.

The fourth F is frequency. Earlier, we said that feedback is timely. It's in the moment. While I don't support it being as timely as literally written down in the moment, publicly, it's still important to check in quickly and either talk right after or schedule a time when you're both free.

And finally, the fifth F is framing. Feedback needs to be relevant and connected to personal development, team priorities, or business goals in order for the impact to be meaningful enough to motivate change.

As a manager, by not giving feedback, you're depriving your team of mentorship and opportunities for growth. Work environments with poor communication and unclear expectations are also riddled with distrust and disengagement. But leaders who rank in the top 10 percent when giving honest feedback generate teams that rank in the top 23 percent of engagement. So, be vulnerable with your team and share that you're going to try something new with this feedback thing, and ask them to keep you posted on your progress.

Next week, we're going to peel back another layer of feedback delivery by introducing cultural, gender, and generational considerations. I hope you're excited. I know I am.

You've just finished the latest installment of everything is A People Problem. You can find episode transcripts with work cited on diazaferjoyce.com/podcast. Find me on Instagram @EverythingIsAPeopleProblem, and tell me what you thought of the episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe so that you're notified when new weekly episodes become available. Once again, I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce, thanks for joining me and see you next week.

Today's episode was written and produced by Dia Zafer-Joyce. It featured insights and statistics from the Harvard Business Review, the Harvard Business School, and Zenger Folkman, and royalty free music provided by Sarah, the Instrumentalist from Epidemic Sound.

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References

Blanding, Michael. “Why People Crave Feedback-and Why We’re Afraid to Give It.” HBS Working Knowledge, 5 Aug. 2022, hbswk.hbs.edu/item/why-people-crave-feedback-and-why-were-afraid-to-give-it.

Meyer, Erin. “When Diversity Meets Feedback.” Harvard Business Review, 2023, hbr.org/2023/09/when-diversity-meets-feedback.

Tupper, Helen, and Sarah Ellis. “How Managers Can Make Feedback a Team Habit.” Harvard Business Review, 27 Apr. 2023, hbr.org/2023/04/how-managers-can-make-feedback-a-team-habit.

Wilding, Melody. “Overcoming Your Fear of Giving Tough Feedback.” Harvard Business Review, 26 July 2023, hbr.org/2023/07/overcoming-your-fear-of-giving-tough-feedback.

S1E2 The Needs of the Many

Season 1 | Episode 2

Episode Description

Welcome to Everything Is A People Problem; a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people-centric solution with host Dia Zafer-Joyce.

In this episode, Dia explains the concept of toxic individuality and how it thrives in an unhealthy work environment. Good News: leaders can do something about it! Listen along to learn how to transfer that toxicity into trust so that they become a meaningful contributor to their professional community.

Episode Transcript

Hi there. Welcome to Everything is a People Problem, a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people centric solution. I'm your host, Dia Zafer Joyce. Let's talk about people.

Welcome or welcome back. I'm Dia, and I'm so glad that you're joining me today for Everything is a People Problem. Before we jump into our spicy topic of toxic individualism, mmm, I know, right? I want to tell you a story of young enterprising Dia early in her career. I went to college at Clemson University, go Tigers, and after school I came back to Chicago so I could work as a stringer photographer, so basically a photojournalist for various newspapers in Chicago and the Chicago suburbs. To supplement my income, I was working part time in the beginning at an Apple retail store. And one thing led to another, and I received a full time position, and then I ended up letting go of the photography for a bit so that I could focus on my career at Apple.

When I became full time, I moved to a new store, a new team, a new team culture, and a new manager. At first, I didn't really feel like I fit in with the group. And so, even though I went in with a team mindset, I quickly started to look inwards and start to feel as though I needed to just perform at my best so that I could achieve my goals the way in which I wanted to achieve them. This all culminated in one memorable moment. There was a personal shopper position open and I expressed my interest to my manager. Now as a side note, I was also engaged at the time and in a few months I was going to be moving to Alabama once I got married to my partner. That didn't happen, but that's a different story. It's important, because in my email to my manager expressing my interest for this role, I said that I could do more in two weeks than anyone else could do in two months; two months being about the time that I had left at that store.

I am horrified thinking back at that moment at young Dia, because that was such an egotistical thing to say. Don't get me wrong, confidence is nothing to be ashamed of, but my motivation was not in the right place. My store leader, Kelly, a woman who I greatly admire and who shaped me into who I am today, mostly because of this moment, graciously took me out to coffee, sat me down, and said, “I hate to break it to you, but it's not all about you.” I, of course, disagreed with her. But she pushed me to invest in my team instead of myself. And to make them as good as I thought that I was.

This story is important because it showcases how I didn't trust my team at the time, nor did I try to proactively collaborate with them, or cooperate even. And that's a big lead in into the term toxic individualism. It's also known as rugged individualism, but it's a rabid notion of individual freedom and compromises. Basically, it encourages behavior that puts others at risk because you're prioritizing yourself as the individual. In my case, I was prioritizing my career and career growth over the performance of the store and of my peers. The concept of toxic individuality has existed for a while, but the term itself was coined right around 2020, so the start of the pandemic. It actively fights against collectivism, which is the practice or principle of giving a group priority over each of the individuals within it. The thing is that when you have a strong community, that community also becomes beneficial to the individual. So when you have toxic individualism, you are actively degrading the quality of your own life.

This term has economic origins. In fact, in 2009, the first woman won the Nobel Prize in Economics for a topic that discussed how to avoid toxic individualism in a community. That woman was Eleanor Ostrom. She was an American political scientist and political economist. She shared her '“analysis of economic governance, especially the commons” with Oliver E. Williamson, and they identified eight design principles of stable local common pool resource management. Basically eight things that help you focus on productivity for the community over yourself. Past Dia could have really used this list of eight principles, but they include things like group boundaries, accountability, leadership, organization, many behaviors that lead to successful and healthy team cultures and work environments today.

So how is this a people problem, and why do we care? Well, we care because toxic individuality can lead to a toxic work environment and a toxic team culture. MIT did this incredible analysis around toxic company culture. The keys of a toxic culture are lack of diversity, equity, and inclusion and often employees will feel disrespected or observe unethical behavior within an organization and that makes it toxic, but that kind of an environment can lead to high employee turnover, low morale and decreased productivity. So back when we were talking about lower profits from disengaged employees, toxic environments do the exact same thing. In a 2023 Work in America survey that was conducted by the American Psychological Association, they found that employees in toxic environments were three times more likely to experience mental health issues as compared to those in a healthy workplace, and 19 percent of those workers participating in the survey reported their workplace as toxic. That's a yikes.

So if you spend 40 hours a week working, and I say if because work from home culture has really encouraged and sometimes idolized offline work at home during off hours. If you work 40 hours, and you spend, let's say, six hours a night sleeping because you're stressed so you're not going to sleep for 8 hours, you're spending 48 percent of your waking life at work. When you have a toxic environment, people aren't even going to show up for their job. There's going to be a higher rate of absenteeism. There's going to be higher turnover and frequent conflicts between employees. They're going to fight because there's negativity, there's cynicism and overall low morale. So this lack of enthusiasm to do your job because of the toxicity around you will mean the company will result in lower productivity.

Quick sidebar, because you could hear the impact of a toxic work environment and think, “Hmm, that just sounds like someone Quiet Quitting.” I have a lot of feelings about the term Quiet Quitting. Short version, I hate it. Slightly longer version. Quiet Quitting is someone who's fulfilling their job requirements to the expectation of the job description. They're not necessarily taking initiative or working overtime or volunteering for anything else, but they are doing their job. That is a form of balance. A toxic work environment degrades the employee to the point in which they're unable to even do the job per the description. So it is different and more harmful than this term of Quiet Quitting all of this started with toxic individualism because this behavior thrives in a toxic culture and environment and it can't be solved or rectified unless the culture itself is healthy.

So, how do we cultivate a healthy work environment? Well, it starts with leadership. I know, I know. Hold your shock and surprise. Now, anybody can showcase these behaviors and make a change, but it's really going to be up to leadership to combat toxicity and set the tone. And there are three things when you're either establishing or rebuilding trust that you should embody. Number one, accept accountability, and that's for past mistakes or even current shortcomings. There is power in vulnerability and accepting that you've made a mistake makes it more likely that an employee will also recognize when they've made a mistake and feel safe sharing that. Number two, follow your words with actions. Demonstrate that you're committed to change. When you say you'll do something, follow through and do it. And number three, embrace ongoing transparent two way communication between you and your employees. Make feedback a two-way street. Don't just give it, be willing to receive it. Ask your employees how you're doing. Ask for feedback so that you can understand your performance and how that's impacting their work.

A toxic individual doesn't want to give up their freedom, even if it's temporary. So they require a high level of trust in their community and their leadership that they will still remain free while being part of the larger organization. As a leader, let people make decisions. Now give them feedback on those decisions, so that way they can make better choices that are more in alignment with the business moving forward, but avoid micromanaging because that's going to constrain freedoms. We were talking earlier about Eleanor Ostrom and her principles that help avoid toxic individuality. And a couple of those that are important are accountability and consequences. Hold those employees that are exercising their freedom accountable. If they say they're going to do something of their own free will, then make sure that they do it. At the same time, hold yourself as a leader accountable, so that that way you're fostering that behavior out of your entire team. And establish consequences. Those don't necessarily have to be personally destructive. They might be unfavorable business results. That's a consequence of a decision that somebody makes.

A healthy culture comes from a healthy community. And you can still achieve as an individual within a community. In fact, you can usually do it better because you have a community and not just yourself at your disposal. It's good, sustainable logic to think about the community. And there is a wildly logical character that helps bring home this concept for us today.

Spock from Star Trek classically says, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” Now this is a quote originally from Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities, but I think Spock executes it brilliantly. Spoiler alert, although I'm spoiling a movie that was released in 1982, Star Trek Wrath of Khan, so you've had some time to watch it, but regardless, spoiler alert: Spock sacrifices himself in order to save the Enterprise. In this scenario, the needs of the many, or more, the lives of the many, outweighed the need, or the life, of the one.

Now, not all of us, but many of us, are not in life or death situations while at work. But, we can really learn something from embodying the needs of the many being more important than the needs of the few. Going back to my original story, I was not thinking about the needs of the many. I was thinking about the needs of me, of myself. And when my leader at that time told me it wasn't all about me, I took her seriously. I invested in my team. I started training them first at a store level and then expanded to a regional level. I exchanged my professional sense of glory for my own individual accomplishments for joy at seeing their careers flourish.

Toxic individuality is not a death sentence to team culture, but a toxic workplace is a people problem. One that starts with compromised mental health and ends with unsustainable business practices. So let's be inspired by Spock and see how the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, together.

You've just finished the latest installment of everything is A People Problem. You can find episode transcripts with work cited on diazaferjoyce.com/podcast. Find me on Instagram @EverythingIsAPeopleProblem, and tell me what you thought of the episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe so that you're notified when new weekly episodes become available. Once again, I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce, thanks for joining me and see you next week.

Today's episode was written and produced by Dia Zafer-Joyce. It featured insights and statistics from the American Psychological Association, GreatPlaceToWork.com, Harvard Business Review, Personio, LinkedIn, the Los Angeles Times, Wellable, and Wikipedia, and royalty free music provided by Sarah, the Instrumentalist from Epidemic Sound.

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References

Bethune, Sophie. “Apa Poll Reveals Toxic Workplaces, Other Significant Workplace Mental Health Challenges.” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, 13 July 2023, www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/07/work-mental-health-challenges.

“Elinor Ostrom.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 5 Jan. 2024, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom.

Harmon, Marcel. “A Treatment for Toxic​ Individualism.” LinkedIn, 1 Jan. 2021, www.linkedin.com/pulse/treatment-toxic-individualism-marcel-harmon/.

Hastwell, Claire. “How Toxic Company Culture Is Driving Employee Turnover.” Great Place To Work®, 21 Apr. 2023, www.greatplacetowork.com/resources/blog/toxic-company-culture.

McKee, Annie. “Keep Your Company’s Toxic Culture from Infecting Your Team.” Harvard Business Review, 29 Apr. 2019, hbr.org/2019/04/keep-your-companys-toxic-culture-from-infecting-your-team.

Miranda, Carolina A. “Column: U.S. Individualism Isn’t Rugged, It’s Toxic — and It’s Killing Us.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 30 Oct. 2020, www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-10-30/how-toxic-individuality-is-tearing-the-u-s-apart.

“Quiet Quitting: A Proper Guide to a Very Real Trend.” Personio, 1 Dec. 2022, www.personio.com/hr-lexicon/quiet-quitting/#.

Wellable. “Study: 1 in 5 Workers Battle a Toxic Work Environment .” Wellable, 28 Aug. 2023, www.wellable.co/blog/study-1-in-5-workers-battle-a-toxic-work-environment/#:~:text=More%20than%20one%20in%20five%20(22%25)%20employees%20witness%20discrimination,the%20target%20of%20such%20behaviors.

S1E1 It’s not Business, It’s Personal

Season 1 | Episode 1

Episode Description

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Everything Is A People Problem; a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community, uncovering how every business problem has a people-centric solution with host Dia Zafer-Joyce.

In this episode, Dia introduces the podcast and makes the case that there is a direct relationship between employee engagement and business results. Listen along as Dia shares her experience, insights, and research supporting that the key to sustainable growth and success is prioritizing people first.

Episode Transcript

 Hi there, welcome to Everything Is A People Problem, a podcast that explores the connections between business, culture, and community uncovering how every business problem has a people-centric solution. I'm your host Dia Zafer-Joyce. Let's talk about people.

Thank you so much for tuning into this podcast. I'm Dia and I am so excited that you're here. You know how when you finish a very exciting but time consuming life event, you think, “Okay, two years down of my life. Now I'm gonna do all the things that I didn't get a chance to do.” And then two more years goes by and you think, “Oh no! I didn't do any of the things that I wanted to do,” because I spent this time recovering. That is me. I finished my MBA a couple of years ago and I found that through all of my research and reading and application of my program into my daily life and job as a people manager in Silicon Valley that I am obsessed with people and I really want other people managers to be as obsessed with people as I am.

Now before I go into a manager perspective as to why we should be obsessed with people, I just want to call out, you do not have to be a people manager to get something out of this podcast and out of these topics. People are people and we should be investing in relationships with our peers, our co workers, and our direct reports because at the end of the day, that's how we advance progress and success in business. That being said, this podcast is designed for managers at all levels. You may find some content more or less applicable to your specific role and job, but no matter what, this should be easily digestible knowledge and insights that will improve your management behaviors and corresponding results.

Okay, so as a manager, you are responsible for the bottom line. You are contributing to the financial success of a company and so what do people have to do with it? Right? Well, there is a direct relationship between employees, employee engagement, and and business results. You cannot sustain a profitable business without prioritizing your people. Forbes did this excellent study in 2023 where they were trying to identify employee growth retention strategies and they found that disengaged employees decreased a company's profitability by 15 percent. 15 percent is a big deal. Let's say as an example, you earn $10, 000 a week in profit. If you have disengaged employees, you will lose automatically $1, 500 per week. How do you explain that to a shareholder? You might say it's seasonality or it's fluctuations in demand, but when there's a consistency there that you can't fully explain or bullshit your way through, then obviously there's something under the surface that you really need to explore.

This is why everything is a people problem. It's a super simple example, but it's a business problem, profitability or lack thereof, and a business problem doesn't just have a solution in the numbers alone. You have to think about how you're treating your people, how you're prioritizing your people, how you're leading your people. And when you do that, you're able to identify how to treat people in a way that improves your business results, how to prioritize people in a way that drives productivity, how to lead people in a way that creates sustainable growth. A company's growth really comes from management. It's upper leadership being able to clearly communicate vision, priorities, and purpose, and lower management being able to execute on that vision. The catch is that the managers who are in charge of getting this work done need to have the skills in order to be successful. In 2023, a global leadership forecast surveyed companies across the world to identify the top skills crucial to leadership success. They found that managers today need to lead change, think strategically, develop their talent, and make decisions through both influence and authority in order to be effective in their roles. So the bummer is that only 29 percent of the companies that participated in this survey train their management in these skills. And of those sampled leaders, only 12 percent believe that they can exercise those skills. Yikes.

There are two things happening here. One, there's a lack of investment in people from companies and upper leadership. And number two, there's a lack of self confidence from these leaders because they lack the skills or the knowledge of those skills in order to do their jobs to the expectation of their leadership. Now, let's say you are that leadership and you're listening to this podcast. You're a senior director, a VP, and you think, “Yeah, okay Dia, I could probably invest a little bit more in my people. But at what point does personal ownership and responsibility come in for development?” Earlier, I mentioned getting my MBA. That was me making an effort to mitigate the risks that I didn't even know existed. But as a small aside, higher education in the United States is a privilege, not a right. And firmly requiring accreditation, such as MBAs, particularly for women and people of color, causes whitewashed senior corporate leadership that lacks diverse perspectives when making inclusive decisions. Especially those that impact an entire organization. So before we put independent and individual ownership on personal development, let's recognize that there is not equal access to this knowledge. This is why it's so important for companies to invest in and train their people directly.

On the topic of education, access, and upper leadership, I got curious about the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and their CEOs. I wondered how many of them actually got their degrees and was that critical to them becoming the leaders that they are today?

Quick related side story. In 2019, I attended an all women CEO panel discussion at the Grace Hopper Celebration, and someone asked, “Do you need your MBA in order to be a CEO?” They said one of two things. Either one, yes, educate yourself, or two, no, but find somebody that you trust who does have that knowledge. Of the top 50 Fortune 500 CEOs in place today, so this is current 2023 statistics, more than three quarters of them have a graduate degree or higher. And the only people on that list who have reached their position without a master's, or in some cases even without a bachelor's, are white men. So CEOs like Michael Dell and Mark Zuckerberg, who are college dropouts, are truly winners of a rigged lottery and they are the exception, not the rule. Reinforcing that the quickest way to this magnitude of leadership is money, access to education, or social privilege. And speaking of social privilege, the white male demographic makes up three quarters of those 50 CEOs, and then 12 percent are white women, with the remaining 14 percent being non white men and women combined.

Lack of leadership diversity at that level reinforces confirmation bias. And confirmation bias tells us that everything is working fine the way it is, and it's not. It's not working fine, because homogenous leadership is bad for business. There is a clear financial cost to not looking at every problem as if it's a people problem.

I love learning and drawing inspiration from incredibly smart and innovative people. And author Leah Thomas of The Intersectional Environmentalist, How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People and Planet, is one of those folks. She wrote this incredible book that talks about the intrinsic connection between oppression and the malnourishment of our planet. Basically, you can't resolve environmental injustices without also addressing social inequity, because those two ecosystems, our people and our planet, impact one another. This means that you can't create one solution for one of those ecosystems in isolation from the other. No one is going to find an affluent neighborhood next to a dump. That means somebody's going to live close to a dump, and that's likely going to be low income housing. So while you've solved one environmental issue, you have created a social health and safety issue for an entire population of people.

You should see where this is going, because this relationship that Leah Thomas calls out is strikingly similar to employees and business results. Employees are one ecosystem, and business results are another. And similarly, you cannot sustain a profitable and successful business without prioritizing your people. You cannot solve one in isolation of the other.

In this inaugural episode, I've talked a lot about connections between people and business. It's kind of my thing, but I'm hoping that you're going to draw some inspiration yourself from some of these topics and maybe even start to engage with me on social media so that we can start to have some conversations. But I'd like to bring it home with The Godfather.

There's a very famous quote, “It's not personal, Sonny, it's business.” I don't know if you are aware, but it was coined by a real world mob accountant, Otto “Abbadabba” Berman, and that was back in the 1930s. But Michael Corleone was the one who said it to his brother, Sonny. Even though Michael and Sonny have a relationship with the two characters, Captain McCluskey and Virgil “The Turk” Sollozzo, who Michael is going to have to kill, he's explaining that it's not personal. He's killing them because he's treating them the way that they treated his family. So by killing those men, it doesn't mean that he hates them. He's just treating them the way that they treated his own people. It's a transaction. It's business.

I hope we can learn something from Michael because his approach to business is bad. He tanked his business just because he looked only at the numbers. He didn't look at fostering a relationship. He didn't look at how that could be more fruitful in the future and flourish his business and his profits. He just approached it as tit for tat, incoming, outgoing, just by the book and the numbers. Pop culture gives us a great way to talk about these issues. While, yes, it's a bit fantastical how Michael has a business first approach, it does highlight the small crumb of truth that there's an opportunity to change how we lead people. And being a people manager is about people first and the business second.

I've even seen firsthand through my own experience that solving business problems by means of people centric solutions builds a cultural foundation of trust and honesty. It's the long con, but it leads to success and profits, so it's okay. My own experience comes from spending 13 years at Apple as both an individual contributor and a manager, building operational teams from the ground up. I'm also fortunate enough to have been recognized by my peers across multiple companies for my leadership skills and collaborative work ethic. One undeniable element of collaboration is both learning and change. And I can promise you that throughout the life of this podcast, I will change my mind on some topics. And genuinely, I hope you will too.

A podcast is a pretty one directional communication channel. And my own thoughts, opinions, and my research may not yield that inspirational kumbaya, campfire singing moment that I would love to see of people leaders across the world. But my goal is to make you curious and maybe even fire you up a little bit. This is about exposing you to the cost of this myopic bottom line leadership and hopefully piquing your interest to have you subscribe and see how we can positively impact our results in any industry by starting with a people first approach. Can we put people first and still make a profit? Absolutely. Is everyone going to start doing this today thanks to my tantalizing little podcast? No, but fortunately, we have so many other inspirational managers, authors, and thought leaders in the world who also believe that people come first. So I'm really looking forward to sharing that evidence and diverse perspectives with you in episodes to come.

You just finished the very first installment of Everything Is A People Problem. You can find episode transcripts with work cited on EverythingIsAPeopleProblem.buzzsprout.com and I'd love to know what you think of this content, so come interact with me on Instagram @EverythingIsAPeopleProblem. This is just the beginning, so please subscribe so that you're notified when new weekly episodes become available. And once again, I'm your host, Dia Zafer-Joyce. Thanks for joining me and see you next week.

Today's episode was written and produced by Dia Zafer-Joyce. It featured insights and statistics from Forbes, the Niagara Institute, DDI World, Qualtrics, and MovieWeb. com. Royalty free music provided by Sarah, the Instrumentalist from Epidemic Sound.

I'd like to extend a special thanks to the Humble Creative Collective for providing feedback on this episode that shaped it into what it is today.

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References

“The Diversity of the Top 50 Fortune 500 CEOS over Time.” Qualtrics, 4 Aug. 2023, www.qualtrics.com/blog/fortune-500-ceo-diversity/.

Etemesi, Philip. “15 Best Quotes from the Godfather Trilogy.” MovieWeb, 16 Aug. 2023, movieweb.com/best-godfather-trilogy-quotes/#ldquo-it-rsquo-s-not-personal-sonny-hellip-it-rsquo-s-business-rdquo-michael-corleone-the-godfather.

“Global Leadership Forecast 2023.” DDI, 2023, www.ddiworld.com/global-leadership-forecast-2023.

May, Emily. “People Management in 2024: 21 Statistics Everyone Should Know.” Niagara Institute, Niagara Institute, 14 Mar. 2023, www.niagarainstitute.com/blog/people-management.

“Music by Sarah, the Illstrumentalist: Epidemic Sound.” Royalty Free Music for Video Creators, Epidemic Sound, www.epidemicsound.com/artists/sarah-the-illstrumentalist/. Accessed 1 Jan. 2024.

Snyder, Kristy, and Brette Sember, J.D. “Key HR Statistics and Trends in 2024.” Edited by Cassie Bottorff, Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 17 May 2023, www.forbes.com/advisor/business/hr-statistics-trends/.

Thomas, Leah. The Intersectional Environmentalist How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet. Voracious, Little, Brown and Company, 2022.